In 1945, on the front lines of East Prussia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a battery commander in the Artillery Reconnaissance Division of the Soviet Red Army, returned to his bunker command post covered in gunpowder and mud following extended artillery fire.
Unbeknownst to him, two Cheka personnel of the Red Army were waiting for him at the post. These counter-revolutionary military officers held even more power than the commissars, and when Solzhenitsyn saw them, a chill ran up his spine.
One of the officers asked: “Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, we intercepted one of your communications.” “Intercepted one of my communications?” he replied.
“We noticed you use vicious language to criticize our great commander-in-chief, Comrade Stalin. We doubt your loyalty, and you can no longer assume command positions on the front lines. We also have reason to suspect that you are plotting to create an anti-Soviet organization.”
Arrested and imprisoned
So the commander, who had twice received medals for his bravery in battle, was stripped of his epaulets and cockade and, under the horrified eyes of his comrades, was taken away from the front line. Over the next eight years, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced and thrown into various prisons and labor camps, after which he spent an additional three years in forced exile.
Not long after he was imprisoned, he fell seriously ill. Following an examination, doctors determined that he had stomach cancer.
“Solzhenitsyn, we have already consulted with one another, and we think you have only three weeks left to live. We will operate on you, but it won’t do much. I’m sorry.”
In a split second, he had been deprived of his career and his honor, and now, just as suddenly, his life had been pronounced to be over. His mind reeled at the news, and he nearly lost the ability to think.
Adventures in a late-night ward
It was already the second half of the night when the operation concluded. There was no loved one’s warm care to greet him, only endless loneliness and fear. Suddenly, in the dark of the night, Solzhenitsyn heard a low and weak voice speak out from another bed. Though initially thought it was simply the groans of another helpless life, he soon understood that another patient was trying to talk to him.
Although he could not see the other person’s face clearly in the dark, he began to understand that the man was a Christian doctor who had also been sentenced for opposing Stalin’s autocracy. The doctor told him about his life, mainly focusing on how he had transitioned from Judaism to Christianity.
Solzhenitsyn had one of his life’s most essential and enlightening conversations on that dark and perilous night. As the man shared the words of the gospel, they acted like a light, illuminating the darkness in his heart.
This newfound belief in God gave him the eternal remedy he later used as a writer to cure the evils of the human psyche.
Perhaps it was God’s will that the Christian doctor died on the operating table early the following day, only after talking to Solzhenitsyn.
Becoming a Christian
From this day on, Solzhenitsyn, who had experienced the ups and downs of life and death, began to have religious feelings. He became a devout Christian, which provided him with great moral power in the writing he would go on to do.
Perhaps God extended Solzhenitsyn’s life that night when he saw that Solzhenitsyn, enlightened to the magnificence of the Lord’s glory, began to fulfill his mission in this life.
Not only did Solzhenitsyn live for three weeks, as the doctors predicted, but he fully recovered and tenaciously survived, ultimately walking out of the terrible Soviet labor camp.
