A man of courage died today.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel literature prize winner, has died.
He was 89 years old.
His voice and books will remain with us:
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days.
The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.
Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.
Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
(Picture by Sergei Karpukhin/AP)