Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide and searching for humanity’s possible paths forward. Solzhenitsyn explores the two-edged nature of limitless freedom and the power of art to elevate the human spirit.