For a guy that was so critical of the Communists in the past, Solzhenitsyn sure gets fired up when the west doesn’t trust a “former” KGB agent? I wonder why he defends old Putin so much?
He's damn near ninty, that and the poor nutrition he received in the prison camps have probably eroded his thinking capacity considerably.
Putin is trying to restore pride in his country. If he is more authoritarian, it is because traditionally, that is what the Russian people have wanted AND needed. They are a different mold from us, and cannot be judged by our standards of democracy.
Solzi was always a vehement nationalist and never really took the Kremlin to task for the genocide of 12 million Ukrainians and Germans in 1921 and 1932.
Neither did he ever credit the Gulag underground that was run by Ukrainians for saving his butt.
Putin is not a Communist, he is a Russian nationalist. There is something in the Russian psyche that demands they must be a “maverick” country, just for the sake of being mavericks.
Churchill put it best, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” That has not changed one iota.