We would like to think that things are simple enough to be perfectly consistent. They are not, of course. Solzhenitsyn was not only an amazingly brave anti soviet writer, he was also a classic xenophobic Russian nationalist creep.
Everybody behaves in what we perceive as contradictory ways, which really means that our definitions are simply wrong, or at least incomplete. Maybe being a Russian nationalist and anti-soviet are two sides of a coin.
What is truly unlikely is that someone embodies only the good. Maybe even someone as incredible as Nelson Mandela is human, and is as imperfect as he would have us believe.
It is a real problem that we always want to believe that there is such a thing as purity or perfection. Our belief in heaven and hell are manifestations of this, as is our hero worship, and our violent anger when someone dares not live up to the image of them we have created.

Well said Semion. Bravo!

Oops! I meant to say Simeon. Damn keyboard keeps making mistakes.

Walt Whitman wrote joyfully of self-contradiction: “I have large borders; I contain all.” To hear one’s most treasured ideas come out of the lips of an utter scoundrel or madman is quite a Zen moment. Any image that latches onto the archetypes is going to carry the full load of the collective unconsciousness’s third rail. There was once an officer in the British army who swore a scared oath before God never to take up arms against his king or country. He forswore that oath and became a murdering terrorist and a filthy rebel traitor who should be dammed forever with no grass upon his stinking grave: his name was George Washington. The reverse amuses us: when evil becomes common. Adolf Hitler genuinely loved dogs and was good with children. How can that be? He read American pulp fiction and ate pastries. Do you recall the story of the death camp survivor who went to testify at the trial of an ex-SS captain held in Israel in the 1960’s? The survivor took one look at the defendant and fainted dead away. When asked later why, he said that he had not seen the evil captain in over two decades but had prepared himself to stare Satan in the eyes...absolute EVIL...what he saw was somebody’s poor old German grandfather, bent, quiet, calm, and at peace...that image was too horrible to bare. Our private world constructs are our most prized possessions; we don’t give them up without a fight. The father of America was not an oath breaker (Yes, he was; had to be by definition even if he was a private subject at the time of the Revolution.) This great Russian writer could not be a racist. (Why not? If Abraham Lincoln had come home to find his wife in bed with a black man, what do you think would have been the first...okay, maybe the third, word out of his mouth?) What about heroes? Can we live without them? Yes and no. We can, like Christians, choose not to think very deeply about our heroes. I site the example of Jesus clearing the temple with a whip. You can believe that all of those merchants and the entire Roman police force just stood there and watched calmly, or as common sense dictates, there was a full blown riot. If even one child was trampled, if there was so much as one sprained ankle, there goes the image of Christianity’s fair haired boy right out the window. Ah well, such is the way of legends after all.