Larisa Alexandrovna On Solzhenitsyn (And An Excerpt Of His Writings)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/08/alexander-solzh.html

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dead at 89

Okay, my whole family is in mourning. I have been getting calls all evening from crying relatives and I share their grief. The world has lost a hero, a historian, a voice of sanity in times of desperation, a human rights advocate, a truth-teller, a legend:

Rest in peace dear beloved Alosha and help guide us from above out of our current nightmare.

Someone left the famed excerpt from Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" in the comments section of her post:

"How we burned int the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt."

"If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure!... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

[Hissyspit]

1. .

[Liberty Belle]

2. Sozhenitsyn predicted his influence would increase after death:

"I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth," -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/alexander_solzhenitsyn/3.html

For those younger readers not familiar with Solzhenitsyn's exposure of the Soviet gulag system, which ultimately helped lead to the downfall of the Soviet Union, here's what I wrote about him in 100 Books Which Shaped World History. Larisa, I'm wondering if Solzhenitsyn spoke out against the Bush regime's torture, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc. in his later years?

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (1973-1975)
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp for criticizing Russian leader Joseph Stalin, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn spent eight years memorizing names, records, and oral accounts of other prisoners. Determined to tell the world about the brutal gulag system of camps where millions of political prisoners had been forced into hard labor and died under the communist regime, Solzhenitsyn documented his experiences—and those of other prisoners—after his 1953 release.

His first exposé of life in a Soviet prison camp came with publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. The novel created an international sensation. A year later, the Soviet government prohibited publication of Solzhenitsyn’s works.

He circulated his next books illegally, publishing them abroad in 1968. First Circle exposed ethical dilemmas faced by Soviet research scientists; Cancer Ward was based on Solzhenitsyn’s treatment for cancer.

Awarded a Nobel Prize in 1970, Solzhenitsyn declined to travel to Sweden to accept it for fear he would not be allowed to return home.

After the KGB (Soviet secret police) seized his manuscript of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn smuggled a copy to Paris, where he published volume one in 1973. The work, along with subsequent volumes, exposed records of the gulag, which expanded dramatically under Stalin’s rule. From 1928 to 1953, 40-50 million prisoners were confined in the camps, according to Solzhenitsyn; 15-30 million people died.

The Gulag Archipelago was a literary triumph as well as an important historical document. Solzhenitsyn explored the human condition: “It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back . . .this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good.”

Within each human heart, he wrote, there exists potential for goodness and evil. “It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person,” he concluded.

Solzhenitsyn was convicted of treason and exiled in 1974. After collecting his Nobel Prize, he moved to the United States. In 1974 and 1975, he published volumes two and three of The Gulag Archipelago.

Born into a family of Cossack intellectuals in 1918, Solzhenitsyn was raised by his mother, since his father died before his birth. While studying at a Russian university, he took correspondence courses in literature.

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Solzhenitsyn was drafted into the Red Army and became commander of an artillery battery at the front. His bravery earned him medals, wounds, and promotion to captain.

Near the war’s end, Solzhenitsyn’s criticism of Stalin led to his eight-year imprisonment. He endured back-breaking work, brutality, starvation, and diagnosis of cancer, surviving to become one of the Soviet Union’s greatest authors.

Solzhenitsyn wrote in exile in the West for two decades. His works remained forbidden in the Soviet Union until a policy of glasnost (openness) was adopted. In 1989, officially approved excerpts from The Gulag Archipelago were published in a Soviet newspaper.

Solzhenitsyn’s dream of seeing an end to communism in his homeland was fulfilled when the Soviet Union collapsed. In 1990, his citizenship was restored. In 1994, he returned to Russia.

Now in his eighties, the bearded sage commands worldwide respect, despite criticizing both capitalism and the materialism of modern Russia. Termed “the prophet of freedom” by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Solzhenitsyn was honored in 2000 by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

The Russian newspaper, Kommersant, has concluded that although the Soviet communist system would have fallen sooner or later, “it was Solzhenitsyn who drove the stake through its heart.”



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