SOLZHENITSYN ON UKRAINE

2006 From Interview with Vitali Tretiakov, Moscow News MOSCOW NEWS: What is your perspective on the situation in Ukraine? In this context, what do you think about the problem of the division of the Russian nation (the largest divided nation in modern Europe)? Should Russia—if not politically, at least intellectually—ponder the possibility of reunification of ethnic Russians and Russian lands if Ukraine joins the EU and especially NATO?

SOLZHENITSYN: I am pained by what has been going on in Ukraine—ever since the 1991 referendum. The fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language (which, according to previous polls, was used as the main language by over 60 percent of Ukraine's population) is simply an act of atrocity that is aimed against Ukraine’s own cultural perspective.

Vast tracts of land, which have never been part of historical Ukraine, e.g., Novorossia, Crimea and the entire southeastern region, have been forcibly incorporated into the modern Ukrainian state and into its policy of acquiring NATO membership at any cost. Throughout Yeltsin's term in office, not a single meeting that he had with any of the Ukrainian presidents had gone without capitulation and concessions to them.

Pushing the Black Sea Fleet out of Sevastopol (the city was never ceded to Ukraine, not even under Khrushchev) is an outrageous humiliation of the entire 19th- and 20th-century Russian history.

Under these conditions, Russia must not cast Ukraine’s multimillion Russian population to the whims of fate, abandoning it, and cutting off all links with it.

Solzhenitsyn besides being dead(2008), was a Russian Imperialist, a staunch monarchist who believed that for a vast country like Russia—especially transitioning out of the wreckage of Communism—a strong, centralized, and even authoritarian leadership was practically superior to a sudden imposition of Western political systems.

Critics frequently pointed to Solzhenitsyn’s proposals for a unified Slavic state—encompassing Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of northern Kazakhstan—as proof of an underlying Great Russian chauvinism

• William Harrison: Labeled Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn an "arch-reactionary" for his nationalist and expansionist views.

• Ales Antsipenka: The Belarusian philosopher called him a "common Russian imperialist".

• Yevhen Sverstiuk: The Ukrainian writer and former political prisoner stated that Solzhenitsyn joined a "very narrow, reactionary, and primitive world of Russian imperial ideology".

• Byelorussian Publicists: Writers in Belarus shifted from seeing him as a symbol of anti-Soviet resistance to a proponent of Russian imperial policy following his 1990 essay Rebuilding Russia.

• Eugen Loebl: Argued that Solzhenitsyn downplayed the imperial continuity between Tsarist Russian policies and Soviet leadership.

Solzhenitsyn died in 2008 and was on the record as being against a resignation of Soviet style imperialism.

He did not live long enough to see that Putin was a chameleon.

He did not live long enough to see Putin reignite the cold war or Putin’s bombing
and massacres of Ukrainians for having the gall to try and defend themselves.

He was still looking into his eyes like George Bush, hoping that decades of training in the dark arts of espionage was going to fade away.

Do you think a man who had been imprisoned in Russia’s gulag would support a Russian leader who has enlisted forced labor from North Korea, a country that runs death camps incarcerating entire families? Do you seriously think Solzhenitsyn would approve of the assassinations of opposition journalists and rivals?

I don’t.

He would not approve of Putin!s concessions to hardline communists and the reinstatement of Stalinist shrines and homage to Stalin, the mass murderer of Ukrainians and ally of Adolf Hitler.

If he would approve of Outin now, then he would be as evil as his former oppressors.

I think he would be appalled at how Putin used him and the church to murder Russia’s neighbors.

Those ‘parts’ of Poland were only Polish for twenty years (1921–1939). Before that Western Ukraine (primarily the historical region of Galicia and Lodomeria) was under Austrian Habsburg rule from 1772 to 1918.

Yes. I’ve often posted that WWI somehow keeps biting us in the rear more than a century after it ended. And Hitler justified ‘his’ portion of Poland based on the fact that he was just taking back the Prussian and Hapsburg bits of Poland.

But there was a nation called Poland that got wiped from the map by being divided between the Prussian, Russian and Hapsburg empires about the time our nation was founded.

And don’t forget that the Russians invaded Poland in the 1920s trying to get back ‘their’ bit, but Poland managed to hold them off. As I said earlier, there is an awful lot of bad blood in that part of the world that isn’t likely to go away any time soon.

“He did not live long enough to see Putin reignite the cold war or Putin’s bombing and massacres of Ukrainians “

You mean in February 2014, when the Ukrainian government started bombing their own people before Russia acted?

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) threw all the civilians out. In Volnovakha, there was only one building on the block with a basement that was big enough. They came and kicked all the civilians out, and went into hiding there. And then, when they retreated to Mariupol, they used a tank and leveled the entrance to the building. During negotiations, they said that all the people had been evacuated,” Tanya said.

“Even the children here know where the missiles are flying from and why. I have a six-year-old niece. She sits in a taxi and says, ‘My God, what a nightmare. They are attacking us, aren’t they?’. I say, ‘Yes... And who is attacking us?’ She says, ‘Ukraine.’ She knows how to hide and where the attack is coming from.

During our walk around the city, Lyudmila frequently pointed to locations which have been hit by Ukrainian strikes. Near the opera house, a missile killed a girl with her grandmother. At the bank, another hit elderly people who were standing in line. At the local market, civilians out food shopping were killed. Missiles have struck schools and kindergartens.

“Every place around here has been hit. We used to think these were accidental, scattered attacks: I mean on schools, kindergartens, apartment buildings. Now we know that it’s targeted. If today there are two shellings of the same school porch, tomorrow it will happen again.”

Lyudmila says that for eight years, the Ukrainian side announced ceasefires that were given “characteristic” names – like the “Easter truce” or “school truce” in honor of the start of school on September 1. But the same party that proposed them immediately violated these agreements.

Recounting the events of 2014, Lyudmila remembers how the residents of Donetsk went to Lenin Square carrying Russian flags, and called for their region to become part of Russia.

“In 2014, there were large rallies here. Everyone shouted that they sided with Russia, only with Russia. We did not agree with the coup that happened in Kiev. It was immediately clear that our paths had separated. Then we held a referendum. Everyone hoped that it would be like in Crimea. In Crimea, it all complied with international law. But in our case, there were no [legal] grounds. And it was too early to get involved in a big war. And now, here is the big war. Unfortunately, we got the big war.”

Ukrainian attacks surged just before the Russian offensive in February 2022.

From the window of the house, they could see Ukrainian tanks driving along the streets and firing at residential areas. The family cooked food on a wood stove, each time fearing that their house would be discovered and attacked.

“Two or three times a day, the AFU would engage in a ‘tank biathlon’ - they fired at houses, residential buildings, people. We were afraid to kindle a fire in the stove, because the smoke [coming out of the chimney] would make us an easy target. When my husband got the fire burning, I would shout, ‘Put it out, they’re going to attack us now!’”

https://rt-english.com/russia/578156-life-dpr-ukraines-crimes/

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