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.
Thanks for the clarification......I need to go back and read that book again.
Everyone should.
One of the things that stood out in the Gulag was the absolute inability of many communists to ever admit that the State could do wrong.
I recall reading of one who said, “yes, I know that I did not do anything wrong. But there must be a higher purpose that is not clear to me. The State is more important than a single individual.”
This was, in fact a common theme. It makes clear that to many, the State is a simple substitute for God, and their belief in the State is their religion.