A decade after death, Solzhenitsyn draws a blank with young Russians

Agence France Presse ^ | 2 Aug 2018

[CondoleezzaProtege]

A decade after the hugely influential author's death, some young Russians admit to only a passing knowledge of Russian dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who won a Nobel Prize for chronicling the horrors of the Soviet Gulag.

"Solzhenitsyn was a dissident, someone who opposed the Soviet regime and he was a great writer," summed up Alexander Polyakovsky, 23, who is studying international relations.

He admits he has not read any of the author's books.

"They talked about him a bit when I was at high school, during the Russian literature lessons, but I don't remember too much," he added.

Alexander Altunyan, who teaches journalism at Moscow's International University, also notes the younger generation has little interest in Solzhenitsyn's weighty historic tomes and grimly realist novels such as "Cancer Ward."

"Out a class of 30 students, no more than two or three will have read a book by Solzhenitsyn. Most of them don't know a thing about him."

School teachers say they have to choose which books on the curriculum to focus on in literature lessons and some get the bare minimum of class time.

Yet some do focus on Solzhenitsyn, saying his moral and political views are still relevant.

"We really do need to read Solzhenitsyn today as there are more and more attempts to deny Stalin-era repressions, when some people say nothing terrible happened in that era," said Olga Mayevskaya, a teacher of Russian language and literature.

"What's unbelievable is that they are not told about this in history lessons. This is the history of our country. They have to know it so it does not happen again."

Russia in recent years has seen a strong tendency to present Stalin in a positive light, while officials downplay the repressions and forced collectivisation that killed millions.

[allendale]

Its a pity. Educated people everywhere should read his books. The man was courageous and insightful.

[Mogger]

I read One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich when I was a teenager.

Also met Solzhenitsyn.

Search on youtube for the movie.

It's very well done.

[Tijeras_Slim]

The freedom we preserved in WWII was handed to a generation where many mistook license for liberty. The freedoms they did have, they were happily handing them over to an ever growing government.

That is probably what he saw.

[BatGuano]

I remember that passage, the question of “what would things have been like if?” I have read the three volumes of the “GA” and recommend it to all. I have even thought of visiting one of the sites mentioned, the Solovetsky Islands and the Solovetsky Monastery. You can visit it on Google Maps, earth depiction and one is able to view at ground level the wall etc., using the “little gold guy.” It looks like a cold, barren landscape, ideal for a location on the archipelago.

One other passage that impressed me was about how the person who turned in the “enemy of the state” would likely be with that enemy on the transport to the Gulag!!!

[Eagles6]

Same here.

[Bonemaker]

We are lucky if two or three out of a thousand know who Mark Twain, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, etc were.

[MrEdd]

Absolutely it was evident.
Except for people in denial.

Abortion. The rapidly ascending homosexual movement.

The high levels of pedophilia, and the broad efforts that worked to cover that up which were still mostly successful at the time.

The adulation given to celebrities and athletes who would have been quite properly in jail if they were employed in any other enterprise.

The ever growing drug problem.

The only people who couldn’t see our moral decay were the people who defiantly refused to see our moral decay even when someone from outside pointed our heads at it and held our eyelids up.

[elcid1970]

You’re being rather dismissive. Solzhenitsyn wrote about the Gulag Archipelago from experience of ten years in it. Not just being there but recalling the millions of lives wrecked or snuffed out by the evil system that they were caught in.

His books were memorials to all those lives. After Stalin croaked and people were liberated from the labor camps, survivors started a ritual where photos of victims were laid out on a table in someone’s flat; survivors filed in and gazed at them and spoke in low tones like a memorial service. Then they left silently.

If Solzhenitsyn is forgotten both in Russia and here, it’s poverty for both peoples. Yes, I read his works back in the seventies and it was heavy going to be sure. The Russians, Germans, and Japanese all seek to forget their own history and for selfish reasons.

Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard speech was panned all around because he was warning America, don’t let this happen to you and it will happen if you don’t wake up. Liberty is temporary, not to be taken for granted, and never to be given up without a fight. We should at least heed those who have already been there.

[ops33]

“Cancer Ward” is my favorite.