3 ms·

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 i

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.

3 ms·

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 i

by andreskytt 6y ago

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.