Solzhenitsyn

Lee Congdon's study treats Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's life and writing as a way of examining what came of revolutionaries building their movement on atheistic socialism. It starts with the Russia that existed after the upheaval, the country Solzhenitsyn was born into.

From there, the book follows the Bolshevik triumph in the civil war, the rise of the concentration camp system, and the regime's campaign against Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church. It then turns to Solzhenitsyn's arrest close to the end of the war and the years he spent in the labor camps.

The later chapters cover his battle with cancer, his exile, and his growing estrangement from Western society, followed by his return to Russia. Congdon ends by recalling Solzhenitsyn's caution to the West that it was heading down the same road that had led Russia to ruin.