Jordan B. Peterson quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as saying that “…the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” While viewing Peterson’s Biblical Series, I remembered that I had a copy of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago , which includes Parts I and II, and decided it was high time to read at least that much.

Here is a passage I found quite moving (from Part I, p. 443) in which Solzhenitsyn describes how certain former prisoners commemorated (and possibly still do) the death of Stalin:

“In one household I am familiar with, where some former zeks [prisoners – their own word for themselves] live, the following ceremony takes place; On March 5, the day of the death of the Head Murderer [that would be Stalin], they spread out on the table all the photographs of those who were shot and those who died in camps that they have been able to collect – several dozen of them. And throughout the day solemnity reigns in the apartment – somewhat like that of a church, somewhat like that of a museum. There is funeral music. Friends come to visit, to look at the photographs, to keep silent, to listen, to talk softly together, And then they leave without saying goodbye.

“And that is how it ought to be everywhere. At least these deaths would have left a small scar on our hearts.

“So that they should not have died in vain!”