1978 Solzhenitsyn's Harvard speech

Forty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave a speech to a gathering of Harvard University alumni entitled "A World Divided." A Russian writer in exile said:

"The Western world has lost public courage and all as a whole, and even separately for each country, each government, each party, and of course - in the United Nations ... Having spent my whole life under communism, I will say: it is terrible that society in which there are no impartial juridical scales, but a society in which there are no other scales than juridical ones is also of little worth to man.

A society that has become on the basis of the law, but not above, weakly uses the height of human capabilities. Law is too cold and formal to influence society beneficially. When all life is permeated with legal relations, an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity is created, deadening the best ups of a person.

This speech provoked sharp criticism of Solzhenitsyn in the West.