Posted on 08/03/2008 2:40:29 PM PDT by the scotsman
'Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel prize winner for literature who was exiled from the Soviet Union and graphically portrayed life in Soviet labour camps, was dead at age 89, the news agency Interfax reported early Monday.
The agency quoted literary circles in the Russian capital.
The world famous writer and historian had not been seen in public for months. He died from the aftermath of a stroke, according to unconfirmed information.'
(Excerpt) Read more at monstersandcritics.com ...
I have one of his very old books in my collection...First American edition I think...
“Cancer Ward”, was an eye opening depiction of Soviet health care.
May he rest in peace.
“You are under arrest.
Me? What for?
That’s what they all say....”
my dad was a Zek way before Solzhenitzn had a tour of the camps, he had many chances to speak with the author while he took refuge in VT but his comments were always: “What’s there to talk about.”
Long ago I read Gulag Archipelago and one of the things that always remained with me from the book is when he tells about sentences being handed out. They were taken one by one from a larger room into a smaller room and the first guy came back from the smaller room extremely distraught and tearful that he got 5 years, and then the next guy came back and was smiling and giggling like a fool and said he just got 20. Of course I can’t word it like he did but I always remembered that part.
Hmmm ~ didn’t know your family were from Ukraine.
A tragic loss. Farewell to the Dostoyevsky of the 20th Century.
RIP
Those of us in Vermont were happy to be his host while he was in exile.
I read the Gulag Archipelago (all 3 volumes)when it came out in the 70s. It was very tough reading but I knew this was one of those books which would define the 20th century.
What really incredible is that the Democrats are trying to make the U.S. a socialist country. They haven’t learned a thing from the collapse of the USSR. People like Obama think the federal government should take over all medical care. The Demo-Socialists think private enterprise is wrong. They want more decisions made inside the American Kremlin. They want less individual freedom of choice and more state control over our lives.
August 1914 and the Gulag Archipelago were masterpieces!
RIP
The man was a giant in the Cold War climate of the early 1970s.
I practically memorized a column in Reader’s Digest he wrote titled “Wake Up! Wake Up!”
Excellent.
If they could get away with it, I have little doubt they would try.
Why? What did snopes try to do?
His mission was a simple one ~ which I am sure he recognized from the first day he undertook to write anything ~ he did provide a memory of what it was like from the inside for the illumination of the successor nation that would arise out of the Communist wreckage.
No doubt he was flawed, as all prophets are flawed, but sometimes God must be satisfied with second or third best.
Not everyone who is called to the task is willing to accept the hardships that go along with it. And few would be that willing to restart after the loss of the first manuscripts.
So, what should any of us remember about this man? "One Day.....", "Cancer Ward....", "Gulag Archipelago",....etc. Those were the memories he was chosen to preserve. The smattering of meritless rantings as he descended into the senility that can encompass us all are meaningless.
IMHO, Solzhenitsyn didn’t hate America; he was too much of a humanitarian for that. But in his 1978 Harvard speech he expressed his frustration that most Americans didn’t understand the full horrid truth about the Gulag, the USSR, and communism. They vaguely knew they didn’t especially like any of those things, but Americans assumed (smugly in my view) that such could never happen here.
Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, yes.
But never here.
Solzhenitsyn tugged at the firebell rope until his arms grew tired. Then the earth moved, the Soviet Union dissolved, and he forsook his Vermont home-in-exile to return to his beloved “Rodina Mat’”.
I wonder what dear lovable Vladimir Putin really thinks about the former zek and immortal author.
Aleksandr Isayevich, tebye Bog blagoslovi!
He just saw Obama coming.
“The First Circle”, brilliant novel.
Unlike Little Dick Durbin, Solzhenitsyn really knew what a gulag was like. RIP, Aleksandr.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.