Harvard University Commencement Address
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A World Split Apart
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"We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections."
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This speech was delivered June 8, 1978.
 Write a Review of Harvard University Commencement Address
 
The translation of the Speech, August 06, 2008
Reviewer: Ladymaggic
The words are wonderful...and it is great hearing his voice reading the speech, and the translation is very good once you get into the pattern of understanding it.
There is a transcript that helps too..
It is a wonderful speech.
Thank you
Harvard University Commencement Address "A World Split Apart", January 03, 2008
Reviewer: kmwakak8
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
I found this speech quite eloquent and insightful, even before the time that we would be in a state of enhanced crisis and calamity,
we have continued in a cycle of self destructive leadership and
power plays. The Grand Chessboard has come full circle. In 1978 he spoke of Vietnam, today we have not evolved far from the self absorbed society that maintains living according to destructive means.
His reference to the Declaration of Independence is fitting for the time he gave this speech, and even more so today
My Favorite Speech of All Time, August 10, 2006
Reviewer: learnoutloud
from Los Angeles, California
Here is a free speech that is not to be missed. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago) delivered the Harvard University Commencement Address in 1978. While in exile from the Soviet Union, he spent a number of years in the United States and this address is his analysis of the Western predicament.
In this comprehensive one hour speech he discusses Western politics, the media, our role in Vietnam, the lack of courage in leadership, Soviet communism, commercialism and materialism, and the spiritual state of Western man. Most of Solzhenitsyn's criticisms still hold true today. He delivers the speech in Russian and it is simultaneously translated into English.
- Published:
1978
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
H016986
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