Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
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Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#2Reading The Gulag Archipelago at university changed my life. I'd been reading Dostoyevsky for a bit, which I was enjoying, but The Gulag Archipelago was the book that opened my eyes to the idea that literature could have fierce moral purpose. I also loved the fact it was dripping with deadpan sarcasm and irony. A wonderful response for the powerless to take given the Kafkaesque situations that people found themselves in under Stalinism. I'm in awe of the incredible bravery of samizdat publishing given the horrific consequences that could follow if you were caught.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#3Great profile of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; one of the most important writers of the last century who was prolific up until his death. It's a shame that his last non-fiction work has yet to get a proper English translation even after all these years.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#4Great profile of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; one of the most important writers of the last century who was prolific up until his death. It's a shame that his last non-fiction work has yet to get a proper English translation even after all these years.
Well, I heard it's rather... controversial, to say the least.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#5Great profile of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; one of the most important writers of the last century who was prolific up until his death. It's a shame that his last non-fiction work has yet to get a proper English translation even after all these years.
Well, I heard it's rather... controversial, to say the least.
He's a writer, not an historian. Thus his non-fiction works do not have to be read like history books, more like journalistic opinion pieces. In that sense, the factual errors on this book are mostly irrelevant, and the work is still very interesting and insightful.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#6Shame much of what he wrote down was a lie, or at the very least fiction. Which wasn't necessary, because the system was terrible enough. The Gulag Archipelago is useful as a source for life within the system, but cant be taken as truth. His wife is quoted as saying the book was meant as fiction, but the West took it as fact (i'm sure they had no good reason at all to promote the shit out of an anti-Soviet book). Solzhenitsyn also praised Franco and his dictatorship, was fiercely anti-Semitic and would have preferred Hitler winning the war against the Soviets. So yeah, stand-up guy overall. Guess he simply preferred a different dictatorship than the one he to to live in.
Current historical analysis places the gulag system in a different light, with political opponents being a minor part of the population, sentences being much shorter (less than 5 years) and general conditions being better than described in the book. Solzhenitsyn talks about 50 million prisoners with a peak population of 14 million, while current figures are somewhere around 14-18 million prisoners in total, with 2 million peak population at it's height. Still really high, but really, compared to America in this day and age not that shocking.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#7Shame much of what he wrote down was a lie, or at the very least fiction. Which wasn't necessary, because the system was terrible enough. The Gulag Archipelago is useful as a source for life within the system, but cant be taken as truth. His wife is quoted as saying the book was meant as fiction, but the West took it as fact (i'm sure they had no good reason at all to promote the shit out of an anti-Soviet book). Sol…
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Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#8Shame much of what he wrote down was a lie, or at the very least fiction. Which wasn't necessary, because the system was terrible enough. The Gulag Archipelago is useful as a source for life within the system, but cant be taken as truth. His wife is quoted as saying the book was meant as fiction, but the West took it as fact (i'm sure they had no good reason at all to promote the shit out of an anti-Soviet book). Sol…
I always wondered why Franco has such a bad rep. I'm not really knowledgeable about the Spanish civil war but it seems he prevented Spain from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian country, which is a good thing in my book.
I mean no doubt he was a brutal dictator but in the grand scheme of things he was by far the lesser of two evils.
Edit: also I think your comparison of the American prison system and the gulag to be rather ridiculous. Afaik, american prisoners aren't worked to death in arctic conditions.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#9The sad thing is that while the soviet union has lost the old war economically, it's ideas have been internalized by a great deal of western "intelligentsia" voluntary with open hearths, instead listening to people like Solzhenitsyn.
Re: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
#10Shame much of what he wrote down was a lie, or at the very least fiction. Which wasn't necessary, because the system was terrible enough. The Gulag Archipelago is useful as a source for life within the system, but cant be taken as truth. His wife is quoted as saying the book was meant as fiction, but the West took it as fact (i'm sure they had no good reason at all to promote the shit out of an anti-Soviet book). Sol…
I always wondered why Franco has such a bad rep. I'm not really knowledgeable about the Spanish civil war but it seems he prevented Spain from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian country, which is a good thing in my book. I mean no doubt he was a brutal dictator but in the grand scheme of things he was by far the lesser of two evils. Edit: also I think your comparison of the American prison system and the gulag to be r…
> prevented Spain from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian country,
Or maybe it would be a flop and something closer to present euro-socialism which Spain ended up implementing anyway.
One should avoid being a brutal dictator since you never know at which rate you exchange real blood to imaginary one.