From a Warning to the West by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Harvard, 1978
we did not pay attention..........
You have to understand the nature of communism. The very ideology of communism, all of Lenin's teachings, are that anyone is considered to be a fool who doesn't take what's lying in front of him. If you can take it, take it. If you can attack, attack. But if there's a wall, then go back. And the Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt and laugh at persons who continually give in to them. Your people are now saying - and this is the last quotation I am going to give you from the statements of your leaders - "Power, without any attempt at conciliation, will lead to a world conflict." But I would say that power with continual subservience is no power at all.
It is almost a joke now in the western world, in the 20th century, to use words like "good" and "evil." They have become almost old-fashioned concepts, but they are very real and genuine concepts. These are concepts from a sphere which is higher than us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, shortsighted political calculations and games we have to recognize that the concentration of World Evil and the tremendous force of hatred is there and it's flowing from there throughout the world. And we have to stand up against it and not hasten to give to it, give to it, give to it, everything that it wants to swallow.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/SolzhenitsynWarning.php
