The national daily Le Figaro devoted a full half front page to on the day of his passing and followed during the week by a series of articles, the leftist Liberation ran a full front page, and the news magazines such as Le Point headlined “Solzhenitsyn; A Giant of His Century.” In France the paeans came from right and left of the political spectrum. He was in the words of Helene Carrere d’Encausse of the French Academy, “The Russian conscience in a century of tragedies.”

Probably best known for his monumental volume the Gulag Archipelago published in 1973, Solzhenitsyn elaborately and painstakingly chronicled the prison life which characterized Stalin’s Russia. The archipelago, a euphemism for the widespread web of concentration camps spread throughout the Russian vastness and which countless millions languished and died, was testament to the brutality of the communist system which he himself had experienced firsthand as a prisoner for eight years. The book which became a bestseller in the West, saw Solzhenitsyn rearrested by the KGB secret police and later exiled from his homeland.

The French historian Stephane Courtois said the book’s publication proved an “an electroshock for the left…his expulsion in 1974 transformed him into an emblematic figure.” Pierre Rousselin editorialized in Le Figaro, “The veil which covered the reality of the USSR was suddenly ripped away.”

Besides his role as the author of at least twenty major books, Alexander Solzhenitsyn above all embodied in an almost mystical way the living memory of a land which had either chosen to erase its memory, alter it, or deliberately flaunt it. He remained in a sense a classical figure, clearly the grandest Russian author of the 20th century, of the stature of a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky.

His role as a political figure who kept the flame of history alive, during the darkest and depressing days of Soviet communism must be appreciated in the context of the Cold War. During the 1970’s and 1980’s there was both a spirit of “détente” with the Kremlin as well as a willingness by many in the West either to forgive, forget or rationalize Soviet aggression. During this period, Solzhenitsyn while revered, became increasingly embarrassing as a voice in the wilderness, to those who wished to accommodate the Soviet system.

Solzhenitsyn chose his exile in America. In Vermont whose verdant beauty and deep forests reminded him of Russia, and allowed him to pursue his literary work for nearly twenty years, he lived in contemplative seclusion. While in the USA he was probably best recalled for his memorable speech at Harvard University which while decrying the dangers of the still threatening Soviet system, was also critical of many of America’s cultural mores and moral decay. While this address made his more of a “non-person” with many of the “intelligencia” in the United States, Solzhenitsyn continued to write, to think, and to remain a conscience of his beloved land which had exiled him.

Solzhenitsyn’s philosophy was rooted in the traditional Russian love for the land, a desire to restore the memory and the true knowledge of the past, “eternal Russia,” rooted embodied in spiritual Orthodoxy.

Writing in Le Figaro Magazine, Helene Carrere d’Encausse states, “He showed the nature of the totalitarian Soviet regime and restored to his compatriots their lost past; this was the double design of Solzhenitsyn.” She adds that his books were “A work of art which sanctifies martyrdom and the memory of the Russian people.”

Since the formal collapse of the communist rule, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 only to find his homeland in a state of collapse. “He was shocked by its consequences, a galloping materialism, a race for making money, out of control individualism and going astray of good manners. All that he condemned in an abrupt manner.”

There are so many ironies here. As the world commemorates Solzhenitsyn’s wisdom, we again witness a renewed and vile aggression against neighboring Georgia by Russia’s contemporary leadership, heirs of the KGB, who reassert a misplaced national pride.

Seeing this, Solzhenitsyn would have quietly wept, but having come to the end of his momentous life, closed his eyes. He had seen too much.