No one is talking about the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn around here. True, he was in hardly any sense a liberal; but few people did more for liberal values in the last century than Solzhenitsyn. I am looking forward to Dean’s thoughts about this towering figure among modern-day lay Christians.
I wrote a little about it here, myself.
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Then, I will talk about him!
He was 89.
He survived Stalin’s purges, the Nazis on the Eastern Front, Gulag, and a cancer asylum.
He wrote great books, explaining to open-minded people, that the USSR had created an internal security state, that quelched liberty and destroyed aspirations.
Kruschev, mercifully, was an improvement over Stalin — but that’s like saying murderer Scott Peterson was an improvement over mass-murdered, Timothy McVeigh. Somehow, AS was able to navigate through the Kruschev and Breshnev regimes and, based on his huge literary stature, was able to emigrate to the west (although he was branded a traitor to the motherland).
He was dissappointed with the West — he thought we were fat, lazy whiners and that the hippie protest movement was self-absorbed, childish and a fraud.
After the Soviet Union fell, he went back to Mother Russsia. He was dissapointed there too — he thought his people had lost their soul, could not fathom how wretched and murderous the past had been, showed no gratitude for the current blessings, were incapable of handling their new found freedoms.
He was a great man, but very jaded by mankind.
HB
I’m mildly ashamed to say that I’ve never read more than a paragraph or two of his writing.  So I just don’t know him.  I know the name, and know he was a Soviet dissident, but that’s about it.Â
But then again, I didn’t need him to show me that communism and socialism are abominations, killers of free will and motivation, and fertile fields for despots and dictators.  And that millions died, and hundreds and of millions suffered (and still suffer) needlessly under communist rule, with their “dear leaders†covering the spectrum from despotic, to benevolent, to ambivalent.Â
If he helped others see the light, and maybe changed the world, then God bless him. Â But to me, he was not much of a factor. Sorry.
Everybody marches to the tune of their own drummer.
Does anyone really know what went on in this man’s soul ?
The problem is Solzhi, was all lament and no smiles. He dumped equally on Mother Russia commie style and his host country, USA.
And he dared to get in the ring with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, a challenge even Hemingway studiously avoided.
His three sons all became US citizens.
Perhaps that may be his legacy to freedom.
One of the comments I read today was about a fellow dissident (forget which one) who left the Soviet Union for England in the 1920′s.Â
He went to Cambridge, where he was chided for saying how horrific the Soviet Union was for its acts against its own citizens, because he just didn’t understand, and didn’t know what he was talking about. You see, the Cambridge Intellectuals knew that Communist Revolution was the way to go, and therefore their opinion was worth more than someone who lived through it.
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He was a great writer and a Russian nationalist. Study it’s history and it’s hard not to love Russia. I’m a bit of one myself.
I’ve been thinking about Ron’s invitation to comment on it, but I honestly don’t know where to begin. I’m in awe of this man’s life, which makes mine seem very tiny and insignificant indeed.
The man who finally made the world sit up and realize the evil that is and always has been Communism is gone. May the Lord bless him and keep him forever.
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