ABSTRACT
When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke at Harvard on June 8, 1978, he demanded and got attention. Solzhenitsyn was one of a long line of Russian religious thinkers critical of the intrusion of Western influences that since the nineteenth century had threatened Slavic culture. Solzhenitsyn had sounded the same complaints before his arrival in America, for he spoke not only of the United States alone but of the West as a whole — and about that he knew something long before he left the Soviet Union. Perhaps the failure of communication was due to distance: those not actually at scene missed the impact of personality that reinforced the message. More likely, many who should have listened refused to hear what Solzhenitsyn had to say. The theme was clear: loss of will in the West, reflected in a culture dominated by "the idols of the prevailing fad," in the disarray of social institutions, and in the inability to deal coherently with global problems.
