Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard 1978 - what a great man he was

'The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom - in this case, our Earth - divided against itself cannot stand.'



'How short a time ago, relatively, the small new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered peoples' approach to life. On the face of it, it was an overwhelming success, there were no geographic frontiers to it. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the 20th century came the discovery of its fragility and friability. We now see that the conquests proved to be short-lived and precarious, and this in turn points to defects in the western view of the world which led to these conquests. Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the west, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the west to foot the bill.'

This revolt against the West explains the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, of course. Russia has retained the vast empire she won in the 17th century without people noticing and is not considered, nor is, Western. Though whether empty Siberia will remain Russia forever alongside populous China is an open question.Turkey was also a vast empire, just within living memory, but does not feel guilt about it, nor China.