Solzhenitsyn, chronicler of Soviet gulag, dies

[Zomby Woof]

MOSCOW - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author whose books chronicled the horrors of dictator Josef Stalin's slave labor camps, has died of heart failure, his son said Monday. He was 89.

Stepan Solzhenitsyn told The Associated Press his father died late Sunday at his home near Moscow, but declined further comment.

Through unflinching accounts of the years he spent in the Soviet gulag, Solzhenitsyn's novels and non-fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_en_ot/obit_solzhenitsyn_9

[realisticphish]

1. that sucks

a true revolutionary, and one who did it through words, not guns. Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich started my interest in soviet history

[rug]

2. He was a good writer but far from a revolutionary.

In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is. There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Kremlin officials laugh at your political wizards. As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war 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? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?

The American Intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm

He had more in common with the White Russians and the American Republicans.

[realisticphish]

3. that doesn't make him non-revolutionary

being a revolutionary doesn't mean leftist, it means that he is attacking the ruling power, which he most certainly was. I don't agree with all of his politics, but there is absolutely no denying that his work contributed to the fall of the soviet union, or at least the rise in international pressure in regards to human rights