Alexander Sohlznetsin might be said to be great literarily (at least very good), and he fought the Marxists just as well as Rand did, if not a bit better."
First, I had no problem reading Rand's books, but couldn't get through Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's.
Typical Russian writer -- hard for Americans to read.
Second, Solzhenitsyn wrote about what he knew: i.e., the Gulag Archipelago in Soviet Russia.
Great stuff, it helped bring down the old Soviet Union, but it had nothing directly to do with the good ol' USA.
Solzhenitsyn does not warn us about the socialist rot in our own national character which is eating us from inside.
Indeed, while Solzhenitsyn decried "materialist" western culture, he was not so opposed to a "kinder-gentler" socialism and even advocated return of the Russian monarchy!
He was also Putin's pal.
So Solzhenitsyn is essentially Russian, not American.
By stark contrast, Rand arrived here while still young enough to learn the best of American values, and to sharply contrast them to those she left behind in Russia, but too often also found here.
It's what Ayn Rand did -- in the 1950s -- and so far as I can tell, she did it better than anyone before or since.
