Posted on 12/11/2018 7:18:29 PM PST by Rummyfan
Any thinking person or person who read some of his works would truly understand the Communist system and the millions who perished under it’s banner. I read the Gulag trilogy years ago and it changed my life. The man was a real genius though I understand, an Antisemite perhaps in the Tolstoyan sense?
In any event anybody who has studied the CCCP knows the horrific truth and Alexsandr open it up for all to see.
bmp
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
And the 21st century?
Read it when it came out. All 3 volumes. A tough slog but it got easier as you got into the second and third volumes. And yes it was obvious you were reading a monumental work by a giant of literature.
” ‘Gulag Archipelago’ was a long dry read, Got through half of it.”
It was long, yes. Dry? I did not think so. I read it all the way through. Sometimes I had to stop reading for a while to absorb the human tragedy it recorded, and to recover my emotional equilibrium. The ‘dry’, quiet, matter-of-fact tone of the translation of the 3 volumes of history I read was, I think, deliberate. ‘This is not a sensational, action packed, pathos racked story; this is how things were; this is what we did to each other and to ourselves.’
I hope it’s not “Resistance Is Futile” in 2020 but am discouraged with the American people.
Because Dr. Jordan Peterson is one of the few academics trying to teach Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s lessons, I think that’s why he was asked to do a recent audio book foreword.
He relied heavily on the “Gulag Archipelago” for this.
When Victimhood Leads to Genocide - Prof. Jordan Peterson on Dekulakization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeYRK16PIlA
“The First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” are probably the most brilliant works I have ever read.
the publication of The Gulag Archipelago was instrumental to the fall of the USSR.
One of my problems was long Russian names.
I don't think so. He's been dead since 2008 after all.
We are exiting from communism in a most unfortunate and awkward way. It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed. Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme. The name of “reform” simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as “we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology”. The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.
- Interview with Joseph Pearce, Sr. (2003); http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/an-interview-with-alexander-solzhenitsyn.html
“Human rights’ are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
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?
Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.
Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.
But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?
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. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
good selection
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