Solzhenitsyn and the Merger of Dissent

In: Worldview, Volume 15, Issue 8, p. 5-8

Abstract

Easter comes in Russia later than in the West. The Russian Orthodox Church, conservative to its depths in so many respects, has never relinquished its ancient loyalty to the Julian calendar—and, indeed, twice in this century it has forcefully resisted efforts to abolish the embarrassment of the thirteen-day lag in that out-of-date schema. Easter of 1972, for peculiar reasons connected with the lunar cycle, came only a week after the Western churches had celebrated the feast, but if 1972 is to be signaled out for any particular note when the histories of our times are written, it will not be for this. Instead, a single letter, circulated from hand to hand and reaching the West in April, 1972, will mark this particular Lenten season as worth remembering.