Author Who Chronicled Soviet Abuses Dies At 89
by Martha Wexler
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All Things Considered, August 3, 2008 · Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian literary giant who shook the foundations of the Soviet state with his works exposing the horrors of the Communist regime, died Sunday night at his home outside Moscow. He was 89 years old and, according to his son, died of heart failure.
For years, Solzhenitsyn had written with scant hope of seeing his works in print. Then, in 1962, during the brief post-Stalin thaw, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered the publication of Solzhenitsyn's short novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
The story, set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, a day that was unremarkable for millions of prisoners like him, despite the brutal hardships.
Author Who Chronicled Soviet Abuses Dies At 89 : NPR
Despite what some might think, his heart attack was not known to have been prompted by the knowledge that the voters living in the world's bastion of capitalism and freedom, the USA, were seriously considering electing a Communist to be President.
We already elected a Communist in 2000. He ran on the Neocon platform. His mentors were:
this thread really shows how much Bkhad respects Solzhenitsyn.
enough to use his name in one of the most transparent misappropriation of an issues legitimacy for its savage partisan rape in this forum's post-stinger history.
And who is it that is calling for a militarization of our urban centers? Maybe he'll call for a "gulag" for those suspected of possessing banned substances. We who obey the masters can go to the train stations and throw rocks at the "criminals" as they are shippped off.
Obama may have grand dreams of wealth redistribution and will be terrible for the US, but McCain is frightening in his willingness to destroy liberty in favor of militant authoritarianism.
An anti-semitic, NAZI sympathizing, lying **** is dead.
Good riddance.
An anti-semitic, NAZI sympathizing, lying **** is dead.
Good riddance.
World War II
Solzhenitsyn criticized the Allies for not opening a new front against Nazi Germany in the west earlier in World War II. This resulted in Soviet domination and oppression of the nations of Eastern Europe. Solzhenitsyn claimed the western democracies apparently cared little about how many died in the east, as long as they could end the war quickly and painlessly for themselves in the west. While stationed in East Prussia as an artillery officer, Solzhenitsyn witnessed war crimes against the civilian German population by Soviet "liberators" as the elderly were robbed of their meager possessions and women were gang-raped to death. He wrote a poem, "Prussian Nights", about these incidents in which the first-person narrator seems to wholeheartedly approve of these crimes, expressing his desire to take part in the plunder himself. The poem describes the rape of a Polish woman whom the Red Army soldiers mistakenly think to be a German.[21]
Vietnam war
In his commencement address at Harvard University in 1978 (A World Split Apart), Solzhenitsyn alleged that many in the U.S. did not understand the Vietnam War. He rhetorically asks if the American antiwar proponents now realize the effects their actions had on Vietnam: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?"[23]
During his time in the West, Solzhenitsyn made a few controversial public statements: notably, he characterized Daniel Ellsberg as a traitor.
The West
“ …there also exists another alliance—at first glance a strange one, a surprising one—but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well-grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. The very famous Armand Hammer, who is flourishing here today, laid the basis for this when he made the first exploratory trip into Russia, still in Lenin's time, in the very first years of the Revolution. ”
“ And if today the Soviet Union has powerful military and police forces—in a country which is by contemporary standards poor—they are used to crush our movement for freedom in the Soviet Union—and we have western capital to thank for this also. ”
Testimony to the U.S. Congress, July 8 1975.[26]
“ Until I came to the West myself and spent two years looking around, I could never have imagined to what an extreme degree the West had actually become a world without a will, a world gradually petrifying in the face of the danger confronting it…All of us are standing on the brink of a great historical cataclysm, a flood that swallows up civilization and changes whole epochs. ”
Modern world
He described the problems of both East and West as "a disaster" rooted in agnosticism and atheism. He referred to it as "the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness."
It has made man the measure of all things on earth—imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.[27]
Well, even though he was anti-Semitic we shouldn't totally dismiss what he got right.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Author Who Chronicled Soviet Abuses Dies At 89 : NPR
Despite what some might think, his heart attack was not known to have been prompted by the knowledge that the voters living in the world's bastion of capitalism and freedom, the USA, were seriously considering electing a Communist to be President.
Oh, so you are saying that George Bush is a Communist?
You sure took your sweet time informing us of this. Maybe because you just LOVE Commies, huh?
John McCain is perfectly well suited to be President.
Barack Obama will do and say anything...ANYTHING to gain the power he craves...despite his obvious disqualifying faults.
And you have something invested in his win just as you had something invested in the US loss in the GWOT.
Everyone, like you, who has been against the USA and/or the GWOT in the past is now FOR Obama.
That should tell every one of you reading this everything you need to know.
McCarythism was less retarded then the War on Terror, because the Soviets actually had the power to obliterate or conquer us.
And who is it that is calling for a militarization of our urban centers? Maybe he'll call for a "gulag" for those suspected of possessing banned substances. We who obey the masters can go to the train stations and throw rocks at the "criminals" as they are shippped off.
Obama may have grand dreams of wealth redistribution and will be terrible for the US, but McCain is frightening in his willingness to destroy liberty in favor of militant authoritarianism.
But that's even worse. The cold war is over, the commies have lost, and Obama isn't communist at all. Bhkad uses the word "communist" as he would call Bush "fascist" if he disagreed with him.
And who's the one who called for a federal militia on par with the U.S. military to operate domestically?
Sorry but employing high visibility saturation techniques in high crime areas is a pretty sound policy.
And who's the one who called for a federal militia on par with the U.S. military to operate domestically? Oh ya that would be Obama. Sorry but employing high visibility saturation techniques in high crime areas is a pretty sound policy.
That sounds a tot overstated, oops, I mean a tad overstated. :mrgreen:
Well, even though he was anti-Semitic we shouldn't totally dismiss what he got right.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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