"Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangesr – such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade", wrote Solzhenitsyn in an open letter to the fourth Soviet writers’ congress in 1967.

          Leopold Labedz has documented in this collection of letters, speeches and articles Solzhenitsyn’s courageous fight for freedom and the antagonisms that divide the Soviet literary scene.