FINAL WARNING TO THE WEST
By
Arthur Topham
March 6th, 2022
“Very soon, only too soon, your country will stand in need of not just exceptional men but of great men. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hears. Find them in the depths of your country.”
– Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Speech to U.S. Senate, July, 1975
In 1974 the famed Russian dissident, author of The Gulag Archipelago and Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, was finally expelled from the Soviet Union. Eventually he made his way to the United States of America and during the summer months of 1975 he travelled across the nation giving three memorable speeches; two of them to the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the last, on July 15th, to the United States Congress. Following his speaking tour Solzhenitsyn published his speeches in a small book which he titled “Warning to the West” in the same year.
His first speech on June 30th, 1975 was given in Washington, D.C. The occasion was a dinner given in his honour by the AFL-CIO. The host of the event was then President of the union George Meany.
In his introduction Meany had some farsighted words to say about Mr. Solzhenitsyn much of which I will quote below. He also had what I consider rather prescient and prophetic things to say about the state of the world given that it was forty-seven years ago since the speech was first recorded. Referring to Solzhenitsyn Meany stated:
“When we think of the historic struggles and conflicts of this century, we naturally think of famous leaders: men who governed nations, commanded armies, and inspired movements in the defence of liberty, or in the service of ideologies which have obliterated liberty.
Yet today, in this grave hour in human history, when the forces arrayed against the free spirit of man are more powerful, more brutal, and more lethal than ever before, the single figure who has raised highest the flame of liberty heads no state, commands no army, and leads no movement that our eyes can see.
But there is a movement – a hidden movement of human beings who have no offices and headquarters, who are not represented in the great halls where nations meet, who every day risk or suffer more for the right to speak, to think, and to be themselves than any of us here are likely to risk in our entire lifetime.
Where are the members of this invisible movement? As we prepare tonight to honour the presence of one of them among us, let us give some thought to the rest: to the millions who are trapped in Soviet slave-labour camps; to the countless thousands drugged and strait-jacketed in so-called insane asylums; to the multitudes of voiceless workers who slave in the factories of the commissars; to all those who strain for bits and pieces of truth through the jammed frequencies of forbidden broadcasts, and who record and pass outlawed thoughts from hand to hand in the shadows of tyranny.
. . . No man in modern times and very few in all of history have demonstrated as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the power of the pen coupled with the courage to free men’s minds.
We need that power desperately today. We need it to teach the new and the forgetful generations in our midst what it means not to be free. Freedom is not an abstraction; neither is the absence of freedom. Solzhenitsyn has helped us to see that, thanks to his art and his courage.
We need echoes of his voice. We need to hear the echoes in the White House. We need to hear the echoes in the Congress and in the State Department and in the universities and in the media . . . .”
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s speech to the members of the AFL-CIO was long, direct and forceful and it presented to the audience a picture of what life under a communist totalitarian dictatorship is truly like. In doing so he also outlined the role that America’s corporate elite played in promoting for profit such a system of governance; one built upon brute force and cold-hearted, calculated enmity toward all who stood, or potentially stood, in the way of the party’s ideological agenda for absolute control of every aspect of human endeavour. And in doing so he also called out previous American administrations like that of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933 to 1945) who were always eager and willing to recognize, legitimate and support Stalin’s communist, totalitarian state.
Linking his talk with the working class in the states and the abhorrent conditions under which the people of the Soviet Union were forced to endure Solzhenitsyn illustrated again and again the milieu under which millions of Christian people were living (if one could even describe their plight with such a descriptive adjective) or surviving. He described how the communist system worked and how its atheistic ideology, as expressed through the Bolshevik regime, exhibited no redeeming characteristics; that the basis of its political agenda consisted of nothing more than violence and that it could only be through firmness in the face of such a regime that one might counter this cold, calculating force – not, as American had been doing through the years, by constantly making concessions to communism. Cutting to the chase he delineated the truth about the communist system in the following manner:
“This was a system which which deceived the workers in all of its decrees – the decree on land, the decree on peace, the decree on factories, the decree on freedom of the press.
This was a system which exterminated all other parties. And let me make it clear to you that it not only disbanded each party, but destroyed its members. All members of every non-Communist party were exterminated.
This was a system which carried out genocide of the peasantry. Fifteen million peasants were shipped off to their deaths.
This was a system which introduced serfdom, the so-called passport system.
This was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing six million persons to die in the Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. They died on the very threshold of Europe. And Europe didn’t even notice it. The world didn’t even notice it. Six million persons!
I could continue this enumeration, but I must stop because I have come to the year 1933 when, after all the facts I have named, your President Roosevelt and your Congress decided that this system was worthy of diplomatic recognition, of friendship, and of assistance.”
At one point in his speech Solzhenitsyn encapsulated all he had told his audience:
“Finally, to evaluate everything that I have said to you, we need not remain on the level of practical calculations. Why did such and such a country act in such and such a way? What were they counting on? Instead, we should rise above this to the moral level and say: “In 1933 and in 1941 your leaders and the whole Western world made an unprincipled deal with totalitarianism.” We will have to pay for this; someday it will come back to haunt us. For thirty years we have been paying for it. And we’re going to pay for it in an even worse way in the future.
One cannot think only on the low level of political calculations. It is also necessary to think of what is noble, and what is honourable – not just of what is profitable. Resourceful Western legal scholars have now introduced the term “legal realism,” which they can use to obscure any moral evaluation of affairs. They say, “Recognize realities: if certain laws have been established in countries ruled by violence, these laws still must be recognized and respected.”
At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality – law is something which is shaped and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: morality is higher than law! Law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth, and present it in the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned. We must acknowledge it with our hearts and souls.
In the twentieth century it is almost a joke in the Western world to use words like “good” and “evil.” They have become old-fashioned concepts, yet they are very real and genuine. These are concepts from a sphere which is above us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, shortsighted political calculations and games we must recognize that a concentration of evil and a tremendous force of hatred is spreading throughout the world. We must stand up against it and not hasten to give, give, give, everything that it wants to swallow.”
. . . . . . .
In Solzhenitsyn’s second speech to the AFL-CIO in New York City on July 9th, 1975, the union’s secretary-treasurer, Lane Kirkland, introduced him in part with the following words:
“His [Solzhenitsyn’s. A.T.] work is not devoted to the advancement of any political doctrine or fashion in political discourse or any passing notion of expediency – but to the most elemental values of human dignity, human justice, and human freedom.”
Solzhenitsyn commenced his speech with the following opening remarks:
“Is it possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to suffer? Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not? Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger?”
He then went on to speak about Communism itself and how it is so astonishing that its adherents have been openly talking about it for the past 125 years (now 170+ years. A.T.) and that everyone’s heard about The Communist Manifesto yet no one seems to have read it or knows what it really is all about.
“I think it is not only a question of the disguises that Communism has assumed in the last decades. It is rather that the essence of Communism is quite beyond the limits of human understanding. It is hard to believe that people could actually plan such things and carry them out. And it is precisely because its essence is beyond comprehension, perhaps, that Communism is so difficult to understand.”
Further into his talk he gets a bit more explicit in his description of this peculiar ideology:
“Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat axe. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. This whole created being – man – is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement [and, as Solzhenitsyn states in another part of his speech, forced injections that are administered daily until the brain eventually rots away. A.T.].”
“…Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of “good” and “evil” as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends upon class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad [the World Economic Forum comes to mind. A.T.]. But I must say that in this very respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea. Among progressive people, it is considered rather awkward to use seriously such words as “good” and “evil.” Communism has managed to persuade all of us that these concepts are old-fashioned and laughable. But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will sink to the status of animals.
Both the theory and the practice of Communism are completely inhuman for that reason…That which is against Communism is for humanity. Not to accept, but to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. Such a rejection is more than a political act. It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil. ”
Further yet down the path toward Communism Solzhenitsyn explains:
“The most frightening aspect of the world Communist system is its unity, its cohesion. . . All the apparent differences among the Communist Parties of the world are imaginary. All are united on one point: your social order must be destroyed.”
[Hmmm, isn’t that what we’re seeing today as we witness the lockstep actions and reactions of governments throughout the West ever since the decision was made to fabricate the Covid-19 ‘epidemic’ and have it imposed upon nation after nation without their consent? A.T.]
. . . . . . .
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s final speech in America in 1975 took place in Washington, D.C. when he talked to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. That speech was, by comparison to his other two, succinct, direct and, as seen now from the perspective of an additional 47 years of time, both precocious and prophetic.
First off he thanked the US Senate for having declared him to be an honorary citizen of the United States. Then he conveyed to them the heavy weight of responsibility that he was carrying on his shoulders as he traversed the country attempting to explain to the American citizenry what the conditions were like in the Soviet Union and those eastern block nations still under Soviet domination. At one point he told his audience, “In virtually every respect, our Russian historical experience has been almost the opposite of yours” and that “in my few addresses in your country I have attempted to break through that wall of disastrous unawareness or nonchalant superiority” that he sensed.
Returning to one of his former themes he again touched on the possible futility of trying to convey to others the depth of despair and hopelessness that arises in a nation when it has lost all its personal freedoms. He said, “Alas, such is human nature that we never feel the sufferings of others, and they never darken our temporary well-being, until they become our own. I am not certain that in my addresses here I have succeeded in conveying the breadth of that terrible reality to a complacently prosperous American society. But I have done what I could and what I consider my duty. So much the worse if the justice of my warnings become evident only some years hence.”
Speaking of the Vietnam war and its effect upon America in dividing the nation Solzhenitsyn remarked, “I can say with certainty that this ordeal was the least of a long chain of similar trials which awaits you in the near future.”
In closing his brief speech he told the Senate and the House:
“I would like to convey to you how we, the subjects of Communist states, look upon your words, deeds, proposals, and enactments, which are made known to the world through the media. We sometimes greet them with passionate approval, at other times with horror and despair. But we never have a chance to respond aloud.
Perhaps some of you, in your minds, still consider yourselves to represent only your state or party. But, from over there, from afar, we do not perceive these differences. We do not look up you as Democrats or Republicans, or as representatives of the Eastern Seaboard or the West Coast or the Midwest; we see you as statesmen, each of whom will play a direct and decisive role in the future course of world history, as it proceeds toward tragedy or salvation.
In the oncoming conjunction of a world political crisis with the present changes in a humanity exhausted and choked by a false hierarchy of values, you and your successors on Capital Hill will have to confront – you are already facing – problems of overwhelming difficulty, incomparably greater than the short-term calculations of diplomacy, inter-party struggles, or of the clash between President and Congress. There is but one choice: to rise to the task of the age.
Very soon, only too soon, your country will stand in need of not just exceptional men but of great men. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hears. Find them in the depths of your country.”
. . . . . . .
Within the Context of Present Day Russia and Ukraine
My point, in referencing all the above information which Alexandr Solzhenitsyn conveyed to American during the summer of 1975, is to illustrate the fact that what he warned the West of, i.e. the impending and greater infiltration and capture of all western governments by the persistent, relentless actions of the communist ideologues has now turned out to be an unquestionable reality in 2022.
For those who have done their due diligence over the past half century and longer in researching and studying the workings of western governments since the 1930’s this reality comes as no surprise. Neither does the fact that it was able to be manifested on such a global scale and that too was only due to the power of the perpetrators who own and control all the mechanisms of mass communication and who, at the same time, own and control (through multiple methods) all the politicians, bureaucracies and judicial systems throughout the western nations.
Having steadily and persistently programmed their captive audiences since the end of WW2 into believing their false narratives and also having the financial clout to influence all levels of the education systems throughout the west, the Bolshevik communist mindset that Solzhenitsyn describes so well in his speeches and, more importantly, in his books (especially The Gulag Archipelago series) has now, in both a figurative and literal sense, accomplished what Lenin and Stalin and their gang of Bolshevik commissars had envisioned back in 1917 – a World Revolution wherein all other democratic forms of governance and freedom of the individual would be abolished and an elite cartel of like-minded miscreants and atheistic, psychopathic deviants and pedophiles would lay final claim to the planet and all its resources.
Thus far, since the year 2020, the world has not only witnessed but bore the brunt of these unilateral decisions made under the secretive and shadowy auspices of the Tyranny that now IS. The names and the companies and the motives and the madness of these entities from Hades are everywhere present, both on the world wide web and throughout all the other media. The future that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was able to envisage while he watched and lived through his own personal gulag during the years of Soviet Bolshevik communist rule and which he laboured with the intensity of a Titan to convey to the world has now come to pass.
Those who know this and those who are beginning to awaken to such a knowing are the ones upon whom this grave realization has now devolved and it is this community of like-minded individuals (now everywhere present throughout the West and beyond) who must pick up and bear the torch of universal freedom and human rights that Solzhenitsyn carried to the West 47 years ago. They, and no one else, are the only hope left in the world and as Solzhenitsyn told us never to forget, “morality is higher than law.” We have that duty to be guided by the Spiritual realization that man-made laws do not supersede God’s laws and by following our hearts and minds instead of edicts forced upon us we will eventually overcome the clear and present EVIL that now besets the human family and the planet upon which we depend for our survival.
~Ω~