A Voice in the Wilderness

I read today that Alexander Solzhenitzen( sp) has died at 89 yrs of age. Yrs ago I read most of his books. I remember when he was exiled from Russia and lived in Vermont. He was pretty much dismissed as irrelevent from those yrs forward as he expressed his Christian faith and his disdain for the west and it's moral and spiritual decay. The West had looked upon him as a great writer( honored him w/ the Nobel) and as one of great personal courage, a hero throughout his yrs in the Soviet Union. But then he got here and he did not say what we wanted and expected him to say, you know, laud the west, criticise the east. He retained a great love for his native Russia, and did return and live there for his remaining 10 or 15 yrs.
When one becomes a voice in the wilderness, as he did, I think we should listen. His food writing was limited to the bread and soup that kept him alive in yrs of imprisonment in the Gulag. The struggle and triumph of the human spirit, individually and collectively, was his terrain.