From The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer - Originally published Tuesday, Aug. 5

Long-bearded, intense and messianic, Alexander Solzhenitsyn the man could be hard to take. In a blunt 1978 Harvard speech while in exile, he upbraided Americans for their materialism, loss of faith in God and "TV stupor." Finally able to return to a newly independent Russia in 1994 with his citizenship restored, Solzhenitsyn turned that scolding finger on his countrymen.

Yet Solzhenitsyn the writer will endure as one of the greatest the 20th century had to offer. From his magnificently ironic short first novel, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," about compromised Soviet justice, to his epic "Gulag Archipelago," about Stalin's camps, his courage shone through in every brutally honest, piercing word. His was an opus that spanned four decades and encompassed much of his beloved Russia's history.

Solzhenitsyn, who died in Moscow of heart failure Sunday at age 89, worked almost to the last. He dared speak and write the truth, and his words helped bring down an empire.