Truth Demands Vigilance. And Life is A Highway.

Truth is messy.

Actually, what Alexandr Solzhenitsyn says is “[T]ruth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.”

Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, dissident, and political philosopher most known for “The Gulag Archipelago,” in which he describes the prison system of the former Soviet Union through the experiences of others and his own time spent in the gulags, spoke these words – translated from Russian – in June 1976 as he delivered a graduation address at Harvard University in the United States.

He called the speech “A World Split Apart,” in which he outlines what he perceived as the “truth” of the West, which welcomed him from exile from an oppressive regime that censored and imprisoned him, but also a West in which he sees increasing weakness and loss of resolve as it faces the unpleasant, bitter truths he believes to be increasingly coming to light. He cautioned his listeners that “[T]ruth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on its pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings.” In other words, even those who think they know the truth had better constantly check themselves, lest their grasp on truth loosen without them realizing.

The aim of his speech was to caution those in the West to avoid not only resting on the laurels of openness and freedom but also to recognize, as Thomas Jefferson once said, that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” 

He went on to provide what he regarded as evidence that the West has failings that could lead to places as unpleasant as he experienced in the East, cautioning his listeners that the need to reassess and occasionally recalibrate their grasp on truth is essential to preserving their way of life.

This may sound familiar: The prophet Nephi, as recorded in the Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 28:24-25), offered this warning: “Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion! Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well.” God, through Nephi, warned his people about the dangers of complacency – which often led to pride, the pursuit of riches over helping others, and eventual downfall. Solzhenitsyn echoes this religious allusion by reminding his Harvard listeners “This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom – in this case, our Earth – divided against itself cannot stand.”

Solzhenitsyn outlines a series of general and specific malaises he saw in Western society. While it’s difficult to know what specific events might have triggered his thoughts, it’s important to recognize that the 1970s were a period of increased societal and political turmoil in the West and in the United States, where he spoke these words.

The nation had ended the Vietnam War in defeat. Richard Nixon, a towering political figure in the early 1970s, had resigned the presidency in late 1974 in the aftermath of Watergate, leaving significant distrust of government in his wake. Terrorism, civil rights marches, hostage-takings, military coups, and other events rattled the free world.

And the free world, Solzhenitsyn believed, was increasingly paralyzed in knowing how to react.

 “The Western world has lost its civil courage,” he said, “both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. . . Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.”

Solzhenitsyn also saw increasing weakness in Western society in general. “[T]he constant desire to have still more things,” he said, “and a still better life and the struggle to attain them imprint many Western faces with worry and depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition fills all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development.”

This lack of civil courage and the turning in of governments and individuals, he cautioned, was leading to increased proclivity to protecting a sentiment of “what’s mine is mine, and I don’t care if you have what you need.”

He said: “The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It’s time in the West – it is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”

That is the most famous line from his speech: “It’s time in the West – It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.” Rights and obligations often intertwine, but in a society in which he warned against passive and cowardly politicians, clever interpreters of the law, and increased worldliness and selfishness among the general population, the right to do what one individual seems fit can often trump and trample the obligations human beings owe their fellow man.

This we have heard before: Amulek and Alma fought against those who used their education in law to eventually put the followers of God to death: (Alma 10, 15, 17) “Now these lawyers were learned in all the arts and cunning of the people; and this was to enable them that they might be skillful in their profession. Now they knew not that Amulek could know of their designs. But it came to pass as they began to question him, he perceived their thoughts, and said unto them: O ye wicked and perverse generation, ye lawyers and hypocrites, for ye are laying the foundations of the devil; for ye are laying traps and snares to catch the holy ones of God.”

Solzhenitsyn urged those listening to him at Harvard to consider a truth: “On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. IN the West, commercial interests suffocate it. This is the real crisis: The split in the world is less terrible – the split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.”

In other words, both East and West have lost, or are losing their way when it comes to respecting human obligations over human rights.