10 ms·

A cold war mentality is still pervading many Western sources, here even when the article itself does not have any inkling that physical safety of Solzhenitsyn w

by publicola1990 5y ago

A cold war mentality is still pervading many Western sources, here even when the article itself does not have any inkling that physical safety of Solzhenitsyn was ever a cause for concern, the headline makes it so feeding a certain perception. The Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the Soviet Union of the 30s. Solzhenitsyn was also a fierce critic of the West, and many who thought who would find him a pro-western voice was gravely surprised in his further commentary after coming to the west. From his commencement address Harvard/78: "Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to flock together and shut off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of a petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events."

kybernetyk 5y ago
>The Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the Soviet Union of the 30s. Yet it was still the Soviet Union and people disappeared.
oytis 5y ago
> The Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the Soviet Union of the 30s. Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov has been assassinated by KGB in 1978
- andrepd 5y ago
  American dissident Fred Hampton was assassinated by the CIA in 1969.
  - oytis 5y ago
    This a) Is a great example of whataboutism b) Totally irrelevant to the discussion c) Is just not true
    - andrepd 5y ago
      c) It really is. a) b) Of course it's relevant. If you condemn one but not the other you are engaging in a double standard.
vagrantJin 5y ago
Who knew the man was a savant. The man had, word for word, given a concise description if the internet platforms in 2021 and the last 5-6 years. With a few notable exceptions, such as HN, a different opinion/worldview is wholly unacceptable. The power of these platforms to silence dissent would have probably made the likes of Joseph Goebels salivate and smack his lips in approval.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  You think Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was prescient? Try George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Or maybe it's that human society doesn't change as quickly as our technological innovations make it feel, so accurate observations about the present tend to hold true centuries after they're made.
  - evgen 5y ago
    The other alternative is that Solzhinitsyn and Eliot had their heads so far up their own asses that they imagined any rebuke or slight as a sure sign of the end of days for civilization when in fact it was not. You could fill entire libraries with the books and articles written by notable (at the time) intellectuals who all decry the state of the current world, blame it all on 'fashion' (as opposed to their own firmly deduced logical conclusions that no one should dare to question), and tell everyone else that we are already tumbling quickly down the slippery slope to some undesirable end state. It must be terrifying for people like this (and those in this same thread trying to make statements from the late 70s sound like prescient warnings for the 2020s) to see the world turning away from their writings or simply deciding that they were not as important or significant as society once thought. When the crowd goes one way and you desperately want it to follow in the direction you are trying to lead it must be quite frightening and depressing.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      I don't think either of these people wrote or talked about the end days of civilisation.
    - 5y ago
ultrastable 5y ago
he was also a rabid antisemite - not exactly a shining beacon of moral anti-Communism
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Can you give an example? Generally speaking, it seems to be clear that accusations of "antisemitism" have become a way to shutdown discussion and make someone you don't like an untouchable. It is a form of ad hominem. (A small historical note: the term "antisemitism" comes from the 19th century and refers to a racial prejudice against Jews, whereas the traditional antipathy toward Jews qua Jews was largely theological, moral, and social in nature, but certainly not racial which is a later development.)
  - mooseburger 5y ago
    He wrote a book called Two Hundred Years Together about the Jews in Russia. It wouldn't surprise me if it really is antisemitic, but it's utterly pathetic to give a damn about the thought-killing cliches of modernity such as antisemitism, racism, etc., so who cares?
    - arminiusreturns 5y ago
      Those who like to use the antisemitic label as a cudgel to stifle discussion on a topic care, and use it as such. This is a such a good example, because despite his first hand experiences, anytime you say the words "jewish bolshevism" together, as he does, you become a target of such a label. Just go look at the wikipedia entry for it, and you would walk away thinking the label is correct! (the truth however, is far separated from wikipedia on controversial subjects)
      - ultrastable 5y ago
        "In the pamphlet The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization, published in 1936, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler wrote: We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.[35]" damn, when it places you in such august company, it's shocking that using the term "Jewish Bolshevism" gets you accused of antisemitism!
mannykannot 5y ago
The use of assassination did not come to an end at least until Beria was out of the picture (ironically, through assassination), and, as we know, it has seen a resurgence lately. The Nobel judges were not aware of the latter, of course, but their concern was not entirely irrational. In this context, whether Solzhenitsyn was either admirable or would have any lasting influence is beside the point.
- publicola1990 5y ago
  The article itself do not indicate that the Nobel Committee feared for Solzhenitsyn's physical safety, concern was about how the Soviet Government would react like not allowing back to the USSR after receiving the prize or not allowing him to travel to Stockholm. There is no concerns elucidated about his personal safety as insinuated by the headline (though not by the rest of the article itself). Article does bot substantiate what the headline wants to insinuate. Beria died in 1953. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the prize in 1972.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    I’m simply pointing out that justified concerns over the safety of those who opposed to whoever held power in Russia did not end with the 1930s, as was suggested by your original post. They are, of course, with us now. A concern over Solzhenitsyn's movements being constrained is even harder to paint as alarmist than concerns over his physical safety.
tester756 5y ago
"Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day you're sure it's 1978, not 2021?
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Can you find any period in history when this is not true, it just seems like restating a fairly obvious fact about what happens to human society as it grows.
  - tester756 5y ago
    >Can you find any period in history when this is not true Probably not. > it just seems like restating a fairly obvious fact about what happens to human society obvious and sad fact. >as it grows. why as it grows?
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Maybe it doesn't even need to grow but Eternal September's are definitely a real thing. When it comes to prescient-ness, reading some ancient Greek history (contemporaneously written) really changed my view in that if you read what (IIRC) Thucydides is writing about it's pretty much exactly the same as today ("An old man complained in the streets that the youths are spending too much time lounging around instead of fighting") but slower.
  - xhkkffbf 5y ago
    It's a bit of a circular definition. Certainly it shouldn't be surprised that the set of popular things is full of things that are popular. It shouldn't be a surprise that people are focused on fashionable topics since the notion of fashion is defined by what people are talking about.
    - 5y ago
cousin_it 5y ago
By Solzhenitsyn's account, he was the victim of an attempted poisoning in 1971. Also see the attempted poisoning of Voinovich in 1975 and the poisoning of Markov in 1978.
publicola1990 5y ago
The full speech here:https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenit... One of the import speeches made in the USA in second half of 20th century. "But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening."
varjag 5y ago
So much vitriol only to spend the remainder of his life travelling across Siberia in Putin's carnival wagon.
Mediterraneo10 5y ago
Solzehnitsyn strikes me as someone who struggled with cultural shock and language barriers after arrival in a new country, but who had the sort of personality that would build up this myth of spiritual decay and opposition of civilizations in order to channel that personal frustration. Another example might be Sayyid Qutb: was 1940s USA really that heinous for an ordinary Egyptian, or did Qutb just feel ill at ease during his time in the country and direct that frustration in an unhealthy direction?
- bobthechef 5y ago
  The "myth" of spiritual decay? That seems rather dismissive both of his perspective as an outsider looking in and of the general observations of those Americans who somehow have preserved or gained some measure of perspective. This is not an unusual or even original analysis of where we are. Tell a fish he's swimming in water and he'll ask you "what's water?", so I am not surprised that some might not understand. But the culture is truly stupid.
- tremon 5y ago
  myth of spiritual decay Would you consider a society in which metal detectors at school entrances are a widely accepted norm "spiritually enlightened"?
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
  > myth of spiritual decay Advertising has been warping the West since Gutenberg, but it really took off exponentially after 1900. You drop anyone from former centuries (or more insular/insulated cultures) into the late XX century, they'll go into shock. Anyone with current average Western beliefs, as induced by media, would be considered mentally ill in the not too distant past.
motoboi 5y ago
The media wasn’t interested, but now it doesn’t care. Today every person is media conglomerate (at least until YouTube bans them)
mycologos 5y ago
I first read this speech a few years ago and read it again just now and, while I admire the force and clarity of the writing, the speech is frustratingly long on generalities and platitudes and short on ... anything concrete? Our leaders are feckless, our youth are directionless, our forefathers were wiser and deeper and more spiritual, the powers that be ignore the wisdom of their people, nobody will talk about this -- it's the sort of speech that's been given repeatedly throughout history, and part of that is because the gaps in it are nicely filled by whatever prejudices the listener has. It's not hard, for example, to draw a line between the ideas of this speech and Solzhenitsyn's eventual boosting of Putin, who was just the man to acquire immense power in the name of getting things done and some vague alignment with tradition and Christianity. I do, of course, admire Solzhenitsyn's courage and work. Part of the speech's moral force is probably lost because I read it instead of seeing him speak it. But as a piece of writing, I struggle to find anything new or incisive in it. Oh, and fun fact I learned reading about him this morning: his son did his undergrad at Harvard, and is (or recently was) a senior partner at McKinsey in Moscow [1, 2]. [1] https://www.castelli-international.it/online-interview-with-yermolai-solzhenitsyn/ https://www.castelli-international.it/online-interview-with-... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180614021146/https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/yermolai-solzhenitsyn https://web.archive.org/web/20180614021146/https://www.mckin...
- bumblelad 5y ago
  I suppose if you merely skimmed over the speech, which I presume you did, since you found it boring, I can see why you'd arrive at those generalizations and platitudes. I instead found insight on the strong spiritual characteristic of the East that the West lacked. -of America's inability to decisively win wars after Vietnam -of its future alliance/allegiance to China, which is more economic, but we see the exact same problematic outcome -of the similarities of the outcome of censorship produced by Western media and groupthink compared to Eastern state controlled media, where unpopular ideas might as well be censored as they will never reach anybody. -the problem of humanism without much 'spirituality', and how that drives forward America's mediocrity by its adherence to the letter of the law without much moralism, and how that cold adherence has led to a society that is prosperous yet at the same time quick to looting as soon as electricity is gone for a few hours. -his questioning of the West's backbending subservience to former colonies -the notion that communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat in the East, but the West's infatuation with it continues to allow it to persist. -He actively critiques the 'forefathers' (as you put it) as well. Elaborating that the Western born view of the world developed during the Enlightenment and Renaissance has inevitably led to this self centered materialistic worldview. I suppose this summarizes his main prevailing hope: "If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it"
freshair 5y ago
What is this whitewashing? The Soviet Union never stopped assassinating people, and the practice clearly continued into present day Russia. Boris Yeltsin was one whim away from being assassinated in 1991 on orders from the KGB; the only reason it didn't happen is because the Alfa group commanders decided not to be bloodthirsty that day.
- mongol 5y ago
  This I would like to learn more about
  - freshair 5y ago
    Here are some quick links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Group#1991_Soviet_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Group#1991_Soviet_coup_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat... The gist of it is in August of 1991, hardline Soviet leaders, opposed to political reform, attempted a coup. As part of this coup, the elimination of Yeltsin was planned. Yeltsin was inside the Russian White House, which was surrounded by a very large crowd of civilians who opposed the coup. KGB chairman and leader of the coup, Vladimir Kryuchkov, ordered the KGB's spetzna (Alfa) to fight their way through the crowd of civilians into the Russian White House to eliminate Yeltsin. Alfa showed up to do the job, but upon seeing and mingling with the crowd of civilians, decided against slaughter. Incidentally, Alfa is also the group that in 1979 stormed the Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and assassinated Hafizullah Amin, starting the Soviet-Afghan War.
    - mongol 5y ago
      Aha. Perhaps the same day when the famous photo of Yeltsin on a tank was taken? Thank you!

kybernetyk 5y ago

>The Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the Soviet Union of the 30s. Yet it was still the Soviet Union and people disappeared.

oytis 5y ago

> The Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the Soviet Union of the 30s. Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov has been assassinated by KGB in 1978

andrepd 5y ago
American dissident Fred Hampton was assassinated by the CIA in 1969.
- oytis 5y ago
  This a) Is a great example of whataboutism b) Totally irrelevant to the discussion c) Is just not true
  - andrepd 5y ago
    c) It really is. a) b) Of course it's relevant. If you condemn one but not the other you are engaging in a double standard.

vagrantJin 5y ago

Who knew the man was a savant. The man had, word for word, given a concise description if the internet platforms in 2021 and the last 5-6 years. With a few notable exceptions, such as HN, a different opinion/worldview is wholly unacceptable. The power of these platforms to silence dissent would have probably made the likes of Joseph Goebels salivate and smack his lips in approval.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
You think Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was prescient? Try George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Or maybe it's that human society doesn't change as quickly as our technological innovations make it feel, so accurate observations about the present tend to hold true centuries after they're made.
- evgen 5y ago
  The other alternative is that Solzhinitsyn and Eliot had their heads so far up their own asses that they imagined any rebuke or slight as a sure sign of the end of days for civilization when in fact it was not. You could fill entire libraries with the books and articles written by notable (at the time) intellectuals who all decry the state of the current world, blame it all on 'fashion' (as opposed to their own firmly deduced logical conclusions that no one should dare to question), and tell everyone else that we are already tumbling quickly down the slippery slope to some undesirable end state. It must be terrifying for people like this (and those in this same thread trying to make statements from the late 70s sound like prescient warnings for the 2020s) to see the world turning away from their writings or simply deciding that they were not as important or significant as society once thought. When the crowd goes one way and you desperately want it to follow in the direction you are trying to lead it must be quite frightening and depressing.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    I don't think either of these people wrote or talked about the end days of civilisation.
  - 5y ago

ultrastable 5y ago

he was also a rabid antisemite - not exactly a shining beacon of moral anti-Communism

bobthechef 5y ago
Can you give an example? Generally speaking, it seems to be clear that accusations of "antisemitism" have become a way to shutdown discussion and make someone you don't like an untouchable. It is a form of ad hominem. (A small historical note: the term "antisemitism" comes from the 19th century and refers to a racial prejudice against Jews, whereas the traditional antipathy toward Jews qua Jews was largely theological, moral, and social in nature, but certainly not racial which is a later development.)
- mooseburger 5y ago
  He wrote a book called Two Hundred Years Together about the Jews in Russia. It wouldn't surprise me if it really is antisemitic, but it's utterly pathetic to give a damn about the thought-killing cliches of modernity such as antisemitism, racism, etc., so who cares?
  - arminiusreturns 5y ago
    Those who like to use the antisemitic label as a cudgel to stifle discussion on a topic care, and use it as such. This is a such a good example, because despite his first hand experiences, anytime you say the words "jewish bolshevism" together, as he does, you become a target of such a label. Just go look at the wikipedia entry for it, and you would walk away thinking the label is correct! (the truth however, is far separated from wikipedia on controversial subjects)
    - ultrastable 5y ago
      "In the pamphlet The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization, published in 1936, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler wrote: We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.[35]" damn, when it places you in such august company, it's shocking that using the term "Jewish Bolshevism" gets you accused of antisemitism!

mannykannot 5y ago

The use of assassination did not come to an end at least until Beria was out of the picture (ironically, through assassination), and, as we know, it has seen a resurgence lately. The Nobel judges were not aware of the latter, of course, but their concern was not entirely irrational. In this context, whether Solzhenitsyn was either admirable or would have any lasting influence is beside the point.

publicola1990 5y ago
The article itself do not indicate that the Nobel Committee feared for Solzhenitsyn's physical safety, concern was about how the Soviet Government would react like not allowing back to the USSR after receiving the prize or not allowing him to travel to Stockholm. There is no concerns elucidated about his personal safety as insinuated by the headline (though not by the rest of the article itself). Article does bot substantiate what the headline wants to insinuate. Beria died in 1953. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the prize in 1972.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  I’m simply pointing out that justified concerns over the safety of those who opposed to whoever held power in Russia did not end with the 1930s, as was suggested by your original post. They are, of course, with us now. A concern over Solzhenitsyn's movements being constrained is even harder to paint as alarmist than concerns over his physical safety.

tester756 5y ago

"Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day you're sure it's 1978, not 2021?

mhh__ 5y ago
Can you find any period in history when this is not true, it just seems like restating a fairly obvious fact about what happens to human society as it grows.
- tester756 5y ago
  >Can you find any period in history when this is not true Probably not. > it just seems like restating a fairly obvious fact about what happens to human society obvious and sad fact. >as it grows. why as it grows?
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Maybe it doesn't even need to grow but Eternal September's are definitely a real thing. When it comes to prescient-ness, reading some ancient Greek history (contemporaneously written) really changed my view in that if you read what (IIRC) Thucydides is writing about it's pretty much exactly the same as today ("An old man complained in the streets that the youths are spending too much time lounging around instead of fighting") but slower.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  It's a bit of a circular definition. Certainly it shouldn't be surprised that the set of popular things is full of things that are popular. It shouldn't be a surprise that people are focused on fashionable topics since the notion of fashion is defined by what people are talking about.
  - 5y ago

cousin_it 5y ago

By Solzhenitsyn's account, he was the victim of an attempted poisoning in 1971. Also see the attempted poisoning of Voinovich in 1975 and the poisoning of Markov in 1978.

publicola1990 5y ago

The full speech here:https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenit... One of the import speeches made in the USA in second half of 20th century. "But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening."

varjag 5y ago

So much vitriol only to spend the remainder of his life travelling across Siberia in Putin's carnival wagon.

Mediterraneo10 5y ago

Solzehnitsyn strikes me as someone who struggled with cultural shock and language barriers after arrival in a new country, but who had the sort of personality that would build up this myth of spiritual decay and opposition of civilizations in order to channel that personal frustration. Another example might be Sayyid Qutb: was 1940s USA really that heinous for an ordinary Egyptian, or did Qutb just feel ill at ease during his time in the country and direct that frustration in an unhealthy direction?

bobthechef 5y ago
The "myth" of spiritual decay? That seems rather dismissive both of his perspective as an outsider looking in and of the general observations of those Americans who somehow have preserved or gained some measure of perspective. This is not an unusual or even original analysis of where we are. Tell a fish he's swimming in water and he'll ask you "what's water?", so I am not surprised that some might not understand. But the culture is truly stupid.
tremon 5y ago
myth of spiritual decay Would you consider a society in which metal detectors at school entrances are a widely accepted norm "spiritually enlightened"?
B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
> myth of spiritual decay Advertising has been warping the West since Gutenberg, but it really took off exponentially after 1900. You drop anyone from former centuries (or more insular/insulated cultures) into the late XX century, they'll go into shock. Anyone with current average Western beliefs, as induced by media, would be considered mentally ill in the not too distant past.

motoboi 5y ago

The media wasn’t interested, but now it doesn’t care. Today every person is media conglomerate (at least until YouTube bans them)

mycologos 5y ago

I first read this speech a few years ago and read it again just now and, while I admire the force and clarity of the writing, the speech is frustratingly long on generalities and platitudes and short on ... anything concrete? Our leaders are feckless, our youth are directionless, our forefathers were wiser and deeper and more spiritual, the powers that be ignore the wisdom of their people, nobody will talk about this -- it's the sort of speech that's been given repeatedly throughout history, and part of that is because the gaps in it are nicely filled by whatever prejudices the listener has. It's not hard, for example, to draw a line between the ideas of this speech and Solzhenitsyn's eventual boosting of Putin, who was just the man to acquire immense power in the name of getting things done and some vague alignment with tradition and Christianity. I do, of course, admire Solzhenitsyn's courage and work. Part of the speech's moral force is probably lost because I read it instead of seeing him speak it. But as a piece of writing, I struggle to find anything new or incisive in it. Oh, and fun fact I learned reading about him this morning: his son did his undergrad at Harvard, and is (or recently was) a senior partner at McKinsey in Moscow [1, 2]. [1] https://www.castelli-international.it/online-interview-with-yermolai-solzhenitsyn/ https://www.castelli-international.it/online-interview-with-... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180614021146/https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/yermolai-solzhenitsyn https://web.archive.org/web/20180614021146/https://www.mckin...

bumblelad 5y ago
I suppose if you merely skimmed over the speech, which I presume you did, since you found it boring, I can see why you'd arrive at those generalizations and platitudes. I instead found insight on the strong spiritual characteristic of the East that the West lacked. -of America's inability to decisively win wars after Vietnam -of its future alliance/allegiance to China, which is more economic, but we see the exact same problematic outcome -of the similarities of the outcome of censorship produced by Western media and groupthink compared to Eastern state controlled media, where unpopular ideas might as well be censored as they will never reach anybody. -the problem of humanism without much 'spirituality', and how that drives forward America's mediocrity by its adherence to the letter of the law without much moralism, and how that cold adherence has led to a society that is prosperous yet at the same time quick to looting as soon as electricity is gone for a few hours. -his questioning of the West's backbending subservience to former colonies -the notion that communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat in the East, but the West's infatuation with it continues to allow it to persist. -He actively critiques the 'forefathers' (as you put it) as well. Elaborating that the Western born view of the world developed during the Enlightenment and Renaissance has inevitably led to this self centered materialistic worldview. I suppose this summarizes his main prevailing hope: "If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it"

freshair 5y ago

What is this whitewashing? The Soviet Union never stopped assassinating people, and the practice clearly continued into present day Russia. Boris Yeltsin was one whim away from being assassinated in 1991 on orders from the KGB; the only reason it didn't happen is because the Alfa group commanders decided not to be bloodthirsty that day.

mongol 5y ago
This I would like to learn more about
- freshair 5y ago
  Here are some quick links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Group#1991_Soviet_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Group#1991_Soviet_coup_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat... The gist of it is in August of 1991, hardline Soviet leaders, opposed to political reform, attempted a coup. As part of this coup, the elimination of Yeltsin was planned. Yeltsin was inside the Russian White House, which was surrounded by a very large crowd of civilians who opposed the coup. KGB chairman and leader of the coup, Vladimir Kryuchkov, ordered the KGB's spetzna (Alfa) to fight their way through the crowd of civilians into the Russian White House to eliminate Yeltsin. Alfa showed up to do the job, but upon seeing and mingling with the crowd of civilians, decided against slaughter. Incidentally, Alfa is also the group that in 1979 stormed the Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and assassinated Hafizullah Amin, starting the Soviet-Afghan War.
  - mongol 5y ago
    Aha. Perhaps the same day when the famous photo of Yeltsin on a tank was taken? Thank you!