Fall 2010: Polaris Lecture features talk by Daniel Mahoney on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Monday, Nov. 29, 7:30 p.m.
UAA/APU Consortium Library, Room 307

Daniel J. Mahoney is chairman and professor of political science at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1986. His areas of scholarly expertise include statesmanship, religion and politics, French politics and philosophy and anti-totalitarian thought. He is the author of books on Raymond Aron, Charles de Gaulle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Bertrand de Jouvenel, among other subjects. He has also edited or co-edited many books, including The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005 (2006). His latest book, The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends, will soon be published by ISI Books. In 1999, Mahoney was the recipient of the Prix Raymond Aron.



The Russian Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was one of the monumental figures of the twentieth century. He was that rare writer who had a truly dramatic impact on the modern world. The Gulag Archipelago (1973-76), his monumental three-volume "experiment in literary investigation," arguably did more than any other piece of writing or political act to delegitimize the communist enterprise.

After discussing Solzhenitsyn's principal target in that magisterial work ideology -- the utopian illusion that human nature and society can be remade at a stroke -- the presentation will explore Solzhenitsyn's positive alternative to the ideological deformation of reality. That alternative was rooted in the best traditions of Russia and the West, in openness to both faith and reason, and in a moderate and humane patriotism that has nothing to do with extreme nationalism. But Solzhenitsyn's 'anguished' love of country has been misunderstood by many on the left who disparage patriotism and tradition as inherently reactionary and by some on the right who see "eternal Russia," and not communist ideology, as the true source of the Soviet tragedy. Against these critics, Mahoney's presentation aims to do justice to Solzhenitsyn's paradoxical middle path, committed as it was to tradition and liberty, faith and reason, patriotism and national self-restraint.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking is free at 7:30 p.m.