Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Criticism of the West

Once in the United States, Solzhenitsyn sharply criticized the West.

Solzhenitsyn criticized the Allies for not opening a new front against Nazi Germany in the west earlier in World War II. This resulted in Soviet domination and control of the nations of Eastern Europe. Solzhenitsyn claimed the Western democracies apparently cared little about how many died in the East, as long as they could end the war quickly and painlessly for themselves in the West.

Delivering the commencement address at Harvard University in 1978, he argued that the United States had declined in terms of its "spiritual life" and called for a "spiritual upsurge". He added "should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively". He critiqued the West for its lack of religiosity, materialism, and a "decline in courage".

Solzhenitsyn was a supporter of the Vietnam War and referred to the Paris Peace Accords as 'shortsighted' and a 'hasty capitulation'.

In a reference to the Communist governments in Southeast Asia 's use of re-education camps, politicide, human rights abuses, and genocide following the Fall of Saigon, Solzhenitsyn said: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?"

He also accused the Western news media of left-wing bias, of violating the privacy of celebrities, and of filling up the "immortal souls" of their readers with celebrity gossip and other "vain talk". He also said that the West erred in thinking that the whole world should embrace this as model. While faulting Soviet society for rejecting basic human rights and the rule of law, he also critiqued the West for being too legalistic: "A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities." Solzhenitsyn also argued that the West erred in "denying autonomous character and therefore never understood it".

Solzhenitsyn criticized the 2003 invasion of Iraq and accused the United States of the "occupation" of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Solzhenitsyn was critical of NATO's eastward expansion towards Russia's borders and described the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as "cruel", a campaign which he said marked a change in Russian attitudes to the West. He described NATO as "aggressors" who "have kicked aside the UN, opening a new era where might is right". In 2006, Solzhenitsyn accused NATO of trying to bring Russia under its control; he claimed this was visible because of its "ideological support for the ' colour revolutions ' and the paradoxical forcing of North Atlantic interests on Central Asia". In a 2006 interview with Der Spiegel he stated "This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc."
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