Solzhenitsyn and Speaking Truth to Power today

Photograph: Bert Verhoeff for Anefo

This is the transcript of the Revd Prof David Wilkinson’s ‘Thought For the Day’ on BBC Radio 4, 12^th February 2024.

Good morning. On this day 50 years ago, the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of Soviet citizenship and the next day exiled to West Germany. His life is a picture of speaking truth to power in both its cost and its complexity.

A few months earlier his book The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris. Based on his experience of prison camps following his criticism of Stalin, the book is a savage critique of the Soviet system but also a journal of his embrace of Orthodox Christianity with his repentance for some of his actions in the second World War. He writes, ‘Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every human heart.’

On the day of his arrest, an underground press published his essay ‘Live Not by Lies’, which he closed with a commandment in capital letters: ‘DON’T LIE! DON’T PARTICIPATE IN LIES, DON’T SUPPORT A LIE!’. This commandment was used by jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny at his Moscow trial and is at the heart of speaking truth to power.

I am grateful for those who see speaking truth to power as both responsibility and gift. In journalism, its embodiment is in Christiane Amanpour, who on last week’s Americast spoke of its personal cost and its continued relevance, not least in the forthcoming US presidential elections. Time magazine has called 2024 ‘The Ultimate Election Year’, where 49% of the global population are meant to take part in national elections. In all of this, democracy will only be sustained where journalists, politicians and religious leaders have the courage to call out lies.

At the heart of the message of Jesus was speaking the truth of God’s love and justice for all to those in power, in particular those whose religious authority was exercised in hypocrisy and by falsehood.  So those of us who are Christians need to call out our own religious authorities when abuse is covered up or discrimination ignored, knowing that there is often a cost. 

Solzhenitsyn shows the cost of speaking truth to power, but in his own person demonstrates its complexity. Returning to Russia he became of supporter of Putin and was strongly against Ukrainian independence on historical and religious grounds. The leader, the writer or the preacher is never above being open to challenge themselves and being ready to repent.