We must analyze in greater depth the mechanisms of a blindness that may, if we are not careful, perpetuate the Western "decline in courage" denounced in his time by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but which we thought belonged to the past.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Russia is brazen, Europe weak

He was a fierce and public defender of dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who today called his friend's death a bitter blow to our culture.

NPR: Yo Yo Ma Reflects on Rostropovich

Ms Applebaum has some distinguished predecessors in writing the history of the Gulag system, notably Robert Conquest and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

ECONOMIST: Soviet Russia