Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on war and the blessing of defeat

There is a simple truth which one can learn only through suffering: in war not victories are blessed but defeats.  Governments need victories and the people need defeats.  Victory gives rise to the desire for more victories.  But after a defeat it is freedom that men desire - and usually attain.  A people needs defeat just as an individual needs suffering and misfortune: they compel the deepening of the inner life and generate a spiritual upsurge.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 272