Posted on 08/03/2013 8:21:25 AM PDT by ReformationFan
Five years ago today, August 3, 2008, one of my heroes died. I never met him, but I think I know him. Of one thing I’m certain, the influence exerted on me by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is incalculable. It’s difficult to explain the personal impact of Solzhenitsyn. He was such a massive figure in the public eye and provoked controversy (the good kind) throughout the course of his life. He was born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk in southern Russia. Toward the end of WW II, in 1945, while serving as a captain in the Red Army, he was arrested for making disparaging remarks about Stalin in a private letter to a friend. He was initially taken to the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow and was eventually sentenced to eight years of hard labor in several of the prison camps that he would later write about in his monumental three-volume, Gulag Archipelago. When I think of Solzhenitsyn, and I think of him often, several things come immediately to mind: highly principled, ferociously outspoken, unwavering, prolific author, unashamedly theocentric, inveterate enemy of all forms of totalitarianism, perseverance, endurance, faith, and perhaps most of all, suffering, suffering, and more suffering.
(Excerpt) Read more at samstorms.com ...
And he is warning us what is coming to America...
Sons of Liberty
Live on, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
In one of his books he recounts how after a politician in power gave a speech to a group, the whole crowd stood and applauded. This continued for minutes. Then more minutes. After many minutes of this (I forget the exact number.....15?) one elderly man stopped applauding and sat down.
He was taken and executed.
I will never forget that story.
bump
It ain’t coming, My FRiend. It is already here. At this point in time, the sheep are being fattened and sedated until slaughter day.
And Congress remains quiet.
Meanwhile, Obastard will kiss the ass of every Islamic tyrant in the world. This is how far relations with real anti-communist heroes have sunk.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn ... Many will remember him ... He finished well.
I have a 12 year old Grand daughter named Alexandria, living in Jacksonville Beach. Florida: and a 3 month old great, great grandson named Alexander ... living in Houston, Texas. coincidence of course.
It's already here, but I think it is likely to get a whole lot worse in the future. I keep waiting for for someone or some people to turn the country around, but instead of getting better, it seems to get worse. I think I heard a caller to a radio talk show say something similar once.
He was born and died in proximate times as my father.
These men in the west and east saw the world change in a manner we have difficulty understanding no mater their walk of life.
We received so much from them.
That was the three hundred member Supreme Soviet listening to a speech by Stalin. When he finished the entire hall broke into a standing ovation that went on and on and on until everyone was drenched in sweat but were afraid to stop applauding.
When the one delegate stopped clapping & sat down, all the others instantly joined him. He was not immediately executed but was arrested & thrown into the Lubyanka where an NKVD officer shouted at him, “Don’t EVER be the first to stop applauding Comrade Stalin!!”
However, to prevent a recurrence the Praesidium (higher than the Supreme Soviet) ordered the installing of large bells in the assembly hall. After each subsequent speech by Stalin the standing ovation would take place until it was deemed appropriate (by whom?) to ring the bells at which the exhausted delegates could take their seats.
Solzhenitsyn is missed by lovers of freedom everywhere. After his 1978 speech at Harvard the Left tried to demonize him as a closet tsarist.
In fact, it appears that post-soviet Russia is moving in the direction of economic & other freedoms, with a revival of religion & rising birthrate reflecting new hope. Perhaps Solzhenitsyn is being vindicated in his own homeland after all.
They [the Republicans] forgot a very important rule: Never trust a traitor.
Thanks for the clarification......I need to go back and read that book again.
Everyone should.
There were several Party Congress shots of exactly the scene you describe (minus anyone sitting down): they must have applauded until their hands were numb. At first it was hilarious until you realized the level of fear that must have been involved. The Poles I was with regarded it with a mixture of amusement and angry disgust at their national humiliation.
One of the most brilliant men who ever lived.
When Stalin spoke, they would ring a bell to tell everyone to stop applauding.
Yes, when he returned to Russia in 1994, he became a leading critic of the West, and he pretty much nailed it.
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