13 ms·

Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

44 points by ola 18y ago

nickb 18y ago
Some of my favorite quotes from the great man: “It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.” “Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.” “When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.” “The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature” “I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.” And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago. "During an arrest, you think since you aren’t guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We didn’t love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."
- lupin_sansei 18y ago
  > And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago. Although fascism and Communism are pretty darn close (both seek total control of the economy and the culture), let's not forget that he was specifically writing against a Communist system, not a fascist system. It's shocking that the BBC link doesn't even use the word "Communism" in it once. Can you imagine an article on someone who stood up to Hitler without using the word Nazi once? Perhaps Solzhenitsyn can shed some light on that?: "For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Solzhenitsyn "Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn I suggest we honour Solzhenitsyn's life by actually not avoiding focusing his criticism directly at Communism and more generally at Totalitarianism.
  - bmj 18y ago
    What's also interesting is that Solzhenitsyn was not necessarily an enemy of authoritarian governments. Time Magazine ran an article in 1974, as he was expelled from the Soviet Union (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943077-1,00.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943077-1,00...): Solzhenitsyn questions whether democracy would bring real freedom to Russia. "The multiparty parliamentary system is impracticable in Russia," he writes. "It has never been necessary to the prosperity and high achievements of mankind. Authoritarian regimes are not terrible in themselves--only those which are not answerable to God or their own conscience. Russia will most probably move from one authoritarian form of government to another. This will be the most natural and least painful path of development. Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force--a man can still live without harm to his soul under such regimes--what makes ours uniquely horrible is that it demands total surrender of the soul. What we need is not political liberation--only liberation of the soul from participation in the lie forced upon us."
ckinnan 18y ago
An inspirational man. Another quote: "If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?"
babul 18y ago
Wikipedia (updated moments after the news broke): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
mynameishere 18y ago
I've actually read the entire "Gulag". Anyone else here...?
- smhinsey 18y ago
  I found it an easier read than Cancer Ward, for what it's worth.
- gleb 18y ago
  Yes. Interesting read.
- cousin_it 18y ago
  Of course. But then again, I'm Russian, and one of my great-grandfathers was a victim.
blurry 18y ago
I can't help but post a joke here: A new convict arrives at a Gulag labor camp. Everyone gathers around the new man. - What's your sentence? - Twenty years. - What for? - Nothing, I am innocent! - Bullsh-t. Innocent people get five.
bmj 18y ago
GetReligion.org has a take on the press coverage of Solzhenitsyn and the rocky relationship he had with Western elites because of his faith and general distrust of Modernity: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3779 http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3779

44 points by ola 18y ago

nickb 18y ago

Some of my favorite quotes from the great man: “It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.” “Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.” “When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.” “The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature” “I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.” And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago. "During an arrest, you think since you aren’t guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We didn’t love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."

lupin_sansei 18y ago
> And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago. Although fascism and Communism are pretty darn close (both seek total control of the economy and the culture), let's not forget that he was specifically writing against a Communist system, not a fascist system. It's shocking that the BBC link doesn't even use the word "Communism" in it once. Can you imagine an article on someone who stood up to Hitler without using the word Nazi once? Perhaps Solzhenitsyn can shed some light on that?: "For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Solzhenitsyn "Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn I suggest we honour Solzhenitsyn's life by actually not avoiding focusing his criticism directly at Communism and more generally at Totalitarianism.
- bmj 18y ago
  What's also interesting is that Solzhenitsyn was not necessarily an enemy of authoritarian governments. Time Magazine ran an article in 1974, as he was expelled from the Soviet Union (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943077-1,00.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943077-1,00...): Solzhenitsyn questions whether democracy would bring real freedom to Russia. "The multiparty parliamentary system is impracticable in Russia," he writes. "It has never been necessary to the prosperity and high achievements of mankind. Authoritarian regimes are not terrible in themselves--only those which are not answerable to God or their own conscience. Russia will most probably move from one authoritarian form of government to another. This will be the most natural and least painful path of development. Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force--a man can still live without harm to his soul under such regimes--what makes ours uniquely horrible is that it demands total surrender of the soul. What we need is not political liberation--only liberation of the soul from participation in the lie forced upon us."

ckinnan 18y ago

An inspirational man. Another quote: "If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?"

babul 18y ago

Wikipedia (updated moments after the news broke): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

mynameishere 18y ago

I've actually read the entire "Gulag". Anyone else here...?

smhinsey 18y ago
I found it an easier read than Cancer Ward, for what it's worth.
gleb 18y ago
Yes. Interesting read.
cousin_it 18y ago
Of course. But then again, I'm Russian, and one of my great-grandfathers was a victim.

blurry 18y ago

I can't help but post a joke here: A new convict arrives at a Gulag labor camp. Everyone gathers around the new man. - What's your sentence? - Twenty years. - What for? - Nothing, I am innocent! - Bullsh-t. Innocent people get five.

bmj 18y ago

GetReligion.org has a take on the press coverage of Solzhenitsyn and the rocky relationship he had with Western elites because of his faith and general distrust of Modernity: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3779 http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3779