One of the titans of 20th Century literature has died, aged 89.

Reading The Gulag Archipelago, which I picked up for 50 cents at the local library in my home town, was really the first time I started to grasp the full enormity of the horror of the Soviet Union. While Solzhenitysn in his later years transformed himself into something resembling a hardcore Russian nationalist with a nasty religious bent, most people, myself included, will remember him as a brave dissident and a writer who helped inoculate many of us against collectivist thinking.

[EDIT 08/04]

Some thoughtful comments from Ilya Somin.

Plus, BBC’s “Life in Pictures“.

And more from Hitchens.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm by Vincent and is filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.