When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian-born author and dissident, passed away in 2008 at the age of 89, he was remembered for his courageous defiance and literary prowess.

Perhaps best known for his book, The Gulag Archipelago, an account of a brutal Soviet labor camp believed to have imprisoned 60 million people across its lifetime, Solzhenitsyn was forced to flee Russia in 1974.

At the time of his death, Solzhenitsyn might also have been hailed as something of a prophet, a visionary who could read the times and see what was coming around the corner.

Speaking in a light rain to Harvard’s class of 1978, the Russian writer warned of a coming storm if America continued along its morally bankrupt path. At the time, he was chastised by many American journalists, especially since he took aim at their reckless and irresponsible reporting.

Baseball’s Yogi Berra once wryly suggested, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But as a student of history and convert to Christianity, the Russian writer knew well the human condition.

At the top of his address, Solzhenitsyn warned of his cultural projections, “Truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter.”

Consider some of his choice comments:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.

He went on to compare the apathy to a “lack of manhood” – and officials who get “tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.” He then ominously warned that a decline in courage is often the first symptom of the end

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades.

In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: The constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings.

Sound familiar? We think money, power, sex, and fame will bring happiness – but all depression and disappointment follow.

People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.

In the years since, America has grown even more litigious. According to the most recent data, over 100 million lawsuits are filed in state trial courts every year. Solzhenitsyn warned, “Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

[The] tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of this world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected.

In other words, it’s never our fault. All our misery is attributable to systemic faults that must be addressed – by lawsuit or government mandate.

After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

Just imagine what the Russian transplant would have to say about the endless offerings of trash available online today.

“What sort of responsibility does a journalist, or a newspaper have to the readership or to history”

“We may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation’s defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan ‘Everyone is entitled to know everything.'”

“Hastiness and superficiality—these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.”

Some things never change.

Many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

It’s ironic that Solzhenitsyn would receive a standing ovation for this statement in Harvard Yard, the very same spot this past spring where many of the university’s students expressed significant sympathy for socialism.

There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

“But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?”

Five years later, when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the outspoken Russian said he had boiled down culture’s woes to a single sentence:

Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Too few have heeded his words since, but there is no denying that time and history’s events have proven him correct.

Image from Getty.