The Man Who Defeated Communism

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Centenary

Roger Kaplan for The American Spectator

At The American Spectator, we always agreed that it was quite fair and true to admonish our neighbors (and now our children and even grandchildren) to remember that the Soviet Union was defeated, and thus the Cold — often hot — War won by the Free World, largely thanks to three men: Ronald Reagan, Karol Jozef Wojtyla, and Lech Walesa.

We thought as well, however, that you could not beat the Soviet Union before communism was exposed for what it really was, and this required an inside job. It was done by a man who took almost everything communism could throw at him — we say almost because he did not get a bullet in the neck in the basement of the Lubyanka prison — and lived to write it down — it and much besides: the whole appalling story.

The 40^th American president — ably aided by Lady Margaret Thatcher during those last dicey years of West vs. East, convinced the Soviet leaders that they would never conquer a coalition of free men living in free nations. The Polish Pope — John Paul II — showed them their lies and the cant with which their apologists in the West sought to cover them could not replace the faith carried by the eternal truths of the West’s great faiths. The Gdansk ironworker showed the working class they could break the chains communism put on them........To Read More....