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You're commenting as if Capitalism and Imperialism are squeaky clean, which is incredibly far from the truth. Just to give a little more context, Solzhenitsyn w

You're commenting as if Capitalism and Imperialism are squeaky clean, which is incredibly far from the truth. Just to give a little more context, Solzhenitsyn was a Fascist who supported the Germans during WWII and openly supported Franco in Spain. He was also a notorious anti-semite even at a time when anti-semitism was punishable by death in Soviet Russia. I've read Gulag Archipelago and he's a pretty good writer, but it should not be considered a work of non-fiction. A quote from an interview with his wife: "Natalya Reshetovskaya, a Russian chemist who twice married the dissident writer Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, and questioned the famous account he gave of Stalin's prison camps in ''The Gulag Archipelago,'' died in Moscow on May 28. She was 84. In her 1974 memoir, ''Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'' (Bobbs-Merrill), she wrote that she was ''perplexed'' that the West had accepted ''The Gulag Archipelago'' as ''the solemn, ultimate truth,'' saying its significance had been ''overestimated and wrongly appraised.'' Pointing out that the book's subtitle is ''An Experiment in Literary Investigation,'' she said that her husband did not regard the work as ''historical research, or scientific research.'' She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ''camp folklore,'' containing ''raw material'' which her husband was planning to use in his future productions. He began a series of love affairs with younger women and when Miss Reshetovskaya protested, she wrote that he replied: ''I have to describe lots of women in my novels. You don't expect me to find my heroines at the dinner table, do you ?'' He eventually left her for Natalya Svetlova, a young mathematician. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovskaya-84-is-dead-solzhenitsyn-s-wife-questioned-gulag.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovska... He has a "on Russians and the jews" bit on his wiki. Ridiculous anti-semite the west used as a poster boy for the horrors of the gulag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_Russia_and_the_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_Russ... What is a gulag? It's a penal colony or a labor camp or a prison. The US today houses more prisoners for slave labor as a percentage of it's population than the Soviet Union at the height of the gulag period, modern day Russia, Iran or China.

poweronselftest 6y ago
> What is a gulag? It's a penal colony or a labor camp or a prison. If only. Never thought I would see gulag apologism, but I am not surprised. I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov was a facist anti-semite, too. PS. Nice touch with the whattaboutism. PSS. As a Jew I just love when antisemitism is invoked in character assassinations. Makes me feel loved, valued and most all: protected! ;)
- mushbino 6y ago
  How is this whataboutism? I'm in no way apologizing for gulags, but the "Socialism and Marxism always leads to utter destruction" take is so tired and insulting to those who actually study history and political science. Also, this "Ultimately that adherence to a singular ideology, with aggressive suppression of all others, leads to every subsequent horror." You do realize this holds true under every economic system, right. It was true under feudalism and it's absolutely true under Capitalism. That's kind of the nature of a system. Edit: The point of bringing up the anti-semitism and Fascism was to show that his views, pretty much all around, were strongly forbidden in the Soviet Union at the time. Absolute free speech works fairly well in America, but you have to understand that at the time in that part of the world there were many different cultures with high-tensions sharing the same space. If hate speech was allowed it would result in non-stop war. The same thing was the case in Yugoslavia where hate speech was strongly punished and it served the purpose of keeping the peace, until Tito died. The history of the Balkans illustrates this point quite well. Yes, we all love free speech, but endless wars are good for nobody. FWIW, I've traveled through all of these countries extensively and Russian is my second language. I also speak a bit of Serbo-Croatian. Traveling around and speaking with these people changed the lens with which I view these things. There is more nuance than words can describe and the history is complicated to say the least.
  - andreskytt 6y ago
    When and where did you do your travels? Living in the former USSR I can absolutely confirm the history is way more complicated, than it is commonly presented. Changes over time, changes depending on people you speak to. In my country we have had read army, Finnish army and Waffen SS veterans living out their lives quite peacefully together but they would no doubt give you a very different perspective on how the GULAG felt. And it’s not that you can tell from the outside. As to the ideology, I agree with you about fundamentalism leading to death and destruction. Marxism, however, contains the premise, that one particular class must be liquidated. Also, it requires people to behave in a very particular and unnatural way leading easily to a conclusion that these should be eliminated too. So maybe it lends itself better as a tool for madmen raising to power, than some others. Maybe it’s not that people trying to implement Marxism have ended up in chaos but that people seeking absolute power have tended to use it as an ideological cover and to rally a support?
UncleOxidant 6y ago
> In her 1974 memoir, ''Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'' (Bobbs-Merrill), she wrote Was she still living in Russia at the time this was published?
- mushbino 6y ago
  I believe she was.
evv555 6y ago
I've known the "liberal arts" have an apologist streak for Soviet Communism but this is the equivalent of doubting the Holocaust. The idea that these kinds of attitudes are permeating through universities and SJW circles today is terrifying.
- jeofken 6y ago
  Ragarding the Holocaust - if anyone has a reference to someone debunking the common arguments for denying its size I’d appreciate a link. Arguments such as all death camps being in the soviet controlled part of Germany (after the war), the wooden doors in gas chambers idea, that holes for putting gas in gas chambers were made after the war, and that gas and collection of shoes (I remember the mountain of them when visiting) were used for delousing. It’s easy to find claims online that these things point to the event being a communist propaganda fabrication, but surely the well read HN community can help me debunk such claims.
andreskytt 6y ago
He was fighting in Red Army during the WWII and got wounded doing so. How that constitutes supporting fascism, I do not know. In his later years his views did indeed drift to russian nationalism bordering on russian supremacy. This led him to fall out with, among others, Estonians who sheltered him while he was writing the Archipelago. This is a pity, but does not negate the significance of his early work. Neither does his work imply anybody else to be squeaky clean. It explores evil, it’s working on people and documents the outcome of that work in a particular case.
- mushbino 6y ago
  He was fighting for his country. If someone invaded the US during the Trump, Bush, or Obama depending on who you dislike, we would all be fighting to defend our country regardless of who was in charge. Defending your was of life, family, countrymen doesn't take a huge amount of imagination to wrap your head around. He ended up leaving the US and going back to Russia because he said the US had no culture. Not saying I agree with that, but that's how he felt. It's pretty common for people to become more nationalistic after they leave their home country. The facist tendencies come from a meeting he had with Thatcher where he said "The German army could have liberated the Soviet Union from Communism but Hitler was stupid and did not use this weapon." It seems extraordinary that Solzhenitsyn saw the failure of Nazi Germany to annex the Soviet Union as some kind of missed opportunity. He also visited Franco in Spain on a number of occasions and did a TV interview where he praised Franco. When I first read Gulag Archipelago I accepted it as fact and projected his feelings onto the rest of Russian society. It was only through later studies that I found this to not be the case.

poweronselftest 6y ago

> What is a gulag? It's a penal colony or a labor camp or a prison. If only. Never thought I would see gulag apologism, but I am not surprised. I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov was a facist anti-semite, too. PS. Nice touch with the whattaboutism. PSS. As a Jew I just love when antisemitism is invoked in character assassinations. Makes me feel loved, valued and most all: protected! ;)

mushbino 6y ago
How is this whataboutism? I'm in no way apologizing for gulags, but the "Socialism and Marxism always leads to utter destruction" take is so tired and insulting to those who actually study history and political science. Also, this "Ultimately that adherence to a singular ideology, with aggressive suppression of all others, leads to every subsequent horror." You do realize this holds true under every economic system, right. It was true under feudalism and it's absolutely true under Capitalism. That's kind of the nature of a system. Edit: The point of bringing up the anti-semitism and Fascism was to show that his views, pretty much all around, were strongly forbidden in the Soviet Union at the time. Absolute free speech works fairly well in America, but you have to understand that at the time in that part of the world there were many different cultures with high-tensions sharing the same space. If hate speech was allowed it would result in non-stop war. The same thing was the case in Yugoslavia where hate speech was strongly punished and it served the purpose of keeping the peace, until Tito died. The history of the Balkans illustrates this point quite well. Yes, we all love free speech, but endless wars are good for nobody. FWIW, I've traveled through all of these countries extensively and Russian is my second language. I also speak a bit of Serbo-Croatian. Traveling around and speaking with these people changed the lens with which I view these things. There is more nuance than words can describe and the history is complicated to say the least.
- andreskytt 6y ago
  When and where did you do your travels? Living in the former USSR I can absolutely confirm the history is way more complicated, than it is commonly presented. Changes over time, changes depending on people you speak to. In my country we have had read army, Finnish army and Waffen SS veterans living out their lives quite peacefully together but they would no doubt give you a very different perspective on how the GULAG felt. And it’s not that you can tell from the outside. As to the ideology, I agree with you about fundamentalism leading to death and destruction. Marxism, however, contains the premise, that one particular class must be liquidated. Also, it requires people to behave in a very particular and unnatural way leading easily to a conclusion that these should be eliminated too. So maybe it lends itself better as a tool for madmen raising to power, than some others. Maybe it’s not that people trying to implement Marxism have ended up in chaos but that people seeking absolute power have tended to use it as an ideological cover and to rally a support?

UncleOxidant 6y ago

> In her 1974 memoir, ''Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'' (Bobbs-Merrill), she wrote Was she still living in Russia at the time this was published?

mushbino 6y ago
I believe she was.

evv555 6y ago

I've known the "liberal arts" have an apologist streak for Soviet Communism but this is the equivalent of doubting the Holocaust. The idea that these kinds of attitudes are permeating through universities and SJW circles today is terrifying.

jeofken 6y ago
Ragarding the Holocaust - if anyone has a reference to someone debunking the common arguments for denying its size I’d appreciate a link. Arguments such as all death camps being in the soviet controlled part of Germany (after the war), the wooden doors in gas chambers idea, that holes for putting gas in gas chambers were made after the war, and that gas and collection of shoes (I remember the mountain of them when visiting) were used for delousing. It’s easy to find claims online that these things point to the event being a communist propaganda fabrication, but surely the well read HN community can help me debunk such claims.

andreskytt 6y ago

He was fighting in Red Army during the WWII and got wounded doing so. How that constitutes supporting fascism, I do not know. In his later years his views did indeed drift to russian nationalism bordering on russian supremacy. This led him to fall out with, among others, Estonians who sheltered him while he was writing the Archipelago. This is a pity, but does not negate the significance of his early work. Neither does his work imply anybody else to be squeaky clean. It explores evil, it’s working on people and documents the outcome of that work in a particular case.

mushbino 6y ago
He was fighting for his country. If someone invaded the US during the Trump, Bush, or Obama depending on who you dislike, we would all be fighting to defend our country regardless of who was in charge. Defending your was of life, family, countrymen doesn't take a huge amount of imagination to wrap your head around. He ended up leaving the US and going back to Russia because he said the US had no culture. Not saying I agree with that, but that's how he felt. It's pretty common for people to become more nationalistic after they leave their home country. The facist tendencies come from a meeting he had with Thatcher where he said "The German army could have liberated the Soviet Union from Communism but Hitler was stupid and did not use this weapon." It seems extraordinary that Solzhenitsyn saw the failure of Nazi Germany to annex the Soviet Union as some kind of missed opportunity. He also visited Franco in Spain on a number of occasions and did a TV interview where he praised Franco. When I first read Gulag Archipelago I accepted it as fact and projected his feelings onto the rest of Russian society. It was only through later studies that I found this to not be the case.