The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Solzhenitsyn formulated this idea in the wake of his imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag and his later literary reckoning with totalitarianism. In the early 1960s–70s, as he moved from being a celebrated Soviet writer to an outspoken dissident, he rejected simplistic moral narratives that cast entire classes or nations as purely “evil.” His monumental documentary-literary work on the camps, written from survivor testimony and personal experience, insists that the machinery of repression depended not only on ideologues but also on ordinary people’s compromises, fears, and self-justifications. The line about good and evil “running through the heart” crystallizes his conviction that moral responsibility is personal and universal, not confined to political enemies.

The quote argues against moral absolutism applied to groups: no person is wholly good or wholly evil, and the decisive struggle is internal. Solzhenitsyn suggests that the same human capacities—cowardice, resentment, compassion, courage—exist in everyone, and circumstances merely reveal which side we choose. This view reframes political and historical catastrophe as an accumulation of individual moral failures and accommodations, not just the work of monsters. It also implies a demanding ethic: reform begins with self-scrutiny rather than scapegoating. The “battleline” metaphor emphasizes that ethical life is ongoing conflict, requiring vigilance, humility, and the recognition that one can become what one condemns.

1) “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
2) “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”
3) “The dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”