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Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

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Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#51

Post by ncmncm »

mushbino wrote: post #24
JPKab wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you are replying to was rife with absolute inaccuracies. I can assure you you won't get anywhere trying to argue against that person. Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned by Stalin because while on the front lines fighting against the Nazis he wrote a letter that was intercepted with statements in it critical of Stalin's poor execution in supplying the army. The parent commenter doesn't even get this basic fact ri…

What part is inaccurate and where did I say anything contradicting what you're saying? I've studied Russian history for many years. We know much more about the gulags since Glasnost and the opening of the archives. We can now compare actual numbers against Solzhenitsyn's. I've studied this quite a bit and could go on forever, but here's a link to one post on AskHistorians: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comme…

During WWII, German prisoners, and anybody else drafted into service for Germany and captured, were killed or sent to the Gulags. During and after the war, anyone who had been taken prisoner and returned to Soviet custody were considered deserters, and shot or sent to the Gulags. Civilians in places first overrun by German and then Soviet forces were considered collaborators and commonly killed or sent to the Gulags. The choice which often depended on availability of transportation.

Gulag terms were often only a few years because the lifespan of prisoners at many sites was short, particularly gold mines.

So, not just prisons or labor camps. It is hard to imagine how 81% or 87% could be identified as ordinary criminals in the absence of any semblance of due process. A tortured confession is not a verdict.

All that said, I welcome injections of nuance.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#52

Post by obscoth »

bennysonething wrote: post #41
poweronselftest wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a big chunk of the Gulag Archipelago in Russian last year and it was, to my surprise, one of the most beautiful things I'd ever read. It reads like poetry, especially the beginning. Now I am thinking: maybe he recited and memorized all those passages to himself and used the verse-like structure to aid memorization. In the Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn cites something that has really stuck with me: > Martin La…

The whole woke my movement is this type of thinking all over again. What you are, where you are from, what group you identify with gives your argument weight. Not your actual thoughts. The scary thing is I'm experiencing this being accepted as normal in the work place. To challenge this type of thinking is to become a heretic. Or worse a racist. I keep my views to myself.

I don’t see the problem here. Do we want bigots to feel free to spew their hatred unopposed?

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#53

Post by yew »

obscoth wrote: post #52
bennysonething wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole woke my movement is this type of thinking all over again. What you are, where you are from, what group you identify with gives your argument weight. Not your actual thoughts. The scary thing is I'm experiencing this being accepted as normal in the work place. To challenge this type of thinking is to become a heretic. Or worse a racist. I keep my views to myself.

I don’t see the problem here. Do we want bigots to feel free to spew their hatred unopposed?

There's a reason fascists keep showing up in the comments. Not that the moderation is likely to do anything about it.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#55

Post by zpeti »

shimonabi wrote: post #13
throwawaysea wrote: post #2

The Gulag Archipelago is one of those pieces I wish everyone would read. These days the lessons of socialism and communism are lost on a younger generation that seems blind to what Marxism led to, and how much suffering and death it caused. The ideologies behind these government systems require authoritarianism, from the state and the mob. It requires a single ideology to win with everything else stamped out, and thi…

There are different kinds of socialism, like there are different kinds of capitalism. The author lived in the most extreme one and his writings show that. I can tell you that from my personal experience that the time after the fall of communism and before the agents of capitalism gained power in society was the most free time in my life.

So, the only way this could possibly be true, as someone who has lived through the fall of communism, is if you are an oligarch or in an oligarch family who had first access to the resources of the state and got rich by getting ownership rights to it. Oh, sorry, the other alternative is that you were part of the mafia that took over control of a lot of where the police couldn't.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#56

Post by zpeti »

WaxProlix wrote: post #16
throwawaysea wrote: post #2

The Gulag Archipelago is one of those pieces I wish everyone would read. These days the lessons of socialism and communism are lost on a younger generation that seems blind to what Marxism led to, and how much suffering and death it caused. The ideologies behind these government systems require authoritarianism, from the state and the mob. It requires a single ideology to win with everything else stamped out, and thi…

It's an interesting book and (I think) well written, but we should take care not to take it as factual. Gulags were real and very awful places, but Solzhenitsyn wasn't writing a history or a scientifically investigated piece. He was writing material for future novels, and much of the book is fabrication. His wife's autobiography (and other places) confirm what's a fairly widespread view outside of the OECD world. She…

Are all the books written about Auschwitz also "more novels than scientific fact then"?

How does your post truth attitude account for the fact that the stories that have come out of the gulags and auschwitz by many many people seem to tell the same stories? Are these just fictional novels popping up in everyone's heads?

Shameful, I'm so angry after reading this, as someone from one of these countries who's family was affected. You should be ashamed for trying to normalise this type of society.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#57

Post by zpeti »

WaxProlix wrote: post #48
TimTheTinker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reads like propaganda, trying to hand-wave away one of the greatest works of journalism in the 20th century. Of course it reads like a novel and not an exposé - he had to memorize a huge portion of it. But it's an accurate indictment nonetheless.

I think that you seeing this work of fiction as one of the greatest works of journalism of the 20th century is exactly why I posted. I agree that the gulag system sucks? So don't think I'm in favor of the USSR or something, because I'm not. But the book's content isn't real, it's largely fabrication, and you can say something like "I think he speaks to the truth of the situation despite not accurately representing fa…

Gulag system sucks?

I don't know what country you are from, but I doubt its any with experiences of death camps. Take your non historical post truth head out of your ass and realise that MILLIONS of people were killed in nazi germany, the gulags, by the chinese communists. MILLIONS others were starved to death because food was confiscated from them.

These systems don't SUCK. They were the lowest points of human history.

I'm so fucking angry with apologists like you. You have no idea what people went through.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#58

Post by shimonabi »

zpeti wrote: post #55
shimonabi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different kinds of socialism, like there are different kinds of capitalism. The author lived in the most extreme one and his writings show that. I can tell you that from my personal experience that the time after the fall of communism and before the agents of capitalism gained power in society was the most free time in my life.

So, the only way this could possibly be true, as someone who has lived through the fall of communism, is if you are an oligarch or in an oligarch family who had first access to the resources of the state and got rich by getting ownership rights to it. Oh, sorry, the other alternative is that you were part of the mafia that took over control of a lot of where the police couldn't.

Not all post-communist countries had rapid privatizations. I was born in a lower class workers family in Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#59

Post by bennysonething »

obscoth wrote: post #52
bennysonething wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole woke my movement is this type of thinking all over again. What you are, where you are from, what group you identify with gives your argument weight. Not your actual thoughts. The scary thing is I'm experiencing this being accepted as normal in the work place. To challenge this type of thinking is to become a heretic. Or worse a racist. I keep my views to myself.

I don’t see the problem here. Do we want bigots to feel free to spew their hatred unopposed?

I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not a racist. Far from it. I don't think race should come into anything. However it seems we're trying to make identity and race part of everything. That someone's opinion should count more or less because of their identity. This isn't a good idea.

Re: Solzhenitsyn’s Rosary (2016)

#60

Post by poweronselftest »

mushbino wrote: post #24
JPKab wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you are replying to was rife with absolute inaccuracies. I can assure you you won't get anywhere trying to argue against that person. Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned by Stalin because while on the front lines fighting against the Nazis he wrote a letter that was intercepted with statements in it critical of Stalin's poor execution in supplying the army. The parent commenter doesn't even get this basic fact ri…

What part is inaccurate and where did I say anything contradicting what you're saying? I've studied Russian history for many years. We know much more about the gulags since Glasnost and the opening of the archives. We can now compare actual numbers against Solzhenitsyn's. I've studied this quite a bit and could go on forever, but here's a link to one post on AskHistorians: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comme…

What do you say to a person who cites Soviet statistics in earnest?

What do you say to a person who, in one comment, rails against incarceration in the United States, only to say that in the Soviet Union the GULAG wasn't so bad because... "87% of them were ordinary non-political criminals like thieves, cons, etc."

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