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Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies

editor

editor

hiraethified
'One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich' was one of my favourite books and the fella certainly lived a rich and varied life.

Born: 11 December 1918
1945: sentenced to eight years for anti-Soviet activities
1962: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich published in Russia
1970: Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
1974: First volume of The Gulag Archipelago published
13 February 1974: Exiled from his native Russia
1994: Returns to Russia
3 August 2008: dies in Moscow


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7540038.stm
 
He did. Not too keen on the greater-russian chauvanism or the anti-semitic stuff he later became associated with though. ('associated with' is too weak a term, 'promoted' would be closer to the facts)
 
Gosh. RIP.

Still 89 is a good age for anyone to reach, especially someone who had cancer AND went to the Gulag. :eek:

Cancer Ward's one of my favourite books but I've enjoyed everything of his I've read. I bought August 1914 a while back but haven't read it yet. Is it worthy? I heard that this was to be part of a trilogy.
 
I read his books as a teenager
Very powerful stuff
89 is a good innings, TBH I thought he's died years ago
RIP Alexander Solzhenitsyn
 
butchersapron said:
He did. Not too keen on the greater-russian chauvanism or the anti-semitic stuff he later became associated with though. ('associated with' is too weak a term, 'promoted' would be closer to the facts)
Click to expand...
Do you think that Solzhenitsyn's anti-communist stance that over-implicated the role of Jews in the October revolution and in administration of Soviet Russia influenced the American anti-communist, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories of post-WWII America incl. the Cold War McCarthy era?
 
tangentlama said:
Do you think that Solzhenitsyn's anti-communist stance that over-implicated the role of Jews in the October revolution and in administration of Soviet Russia influenced the American anti-communist, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories of post-WWII America incl. the Cold War McCarthy era?
Click to expand...
No. Solzhenitsyn was in the Gulag in McCarthy's era. His fame and dodgy views came later.

He was a meticulous, hugely skilled, analytical writer, and as cold as the Siberian winter.
 
Cancer Ward is a brilliant novel.
The Gulag Archipelago is monumental in its breadth in trying to capture the essence of the soviet prison-industrial complex in its entirety.
First Circle is a brilliant novel, the way it a little like James Joyce's Ulysees takes place in a very short period of time, it essentially within the prism of three days gives a snapshot of the entire society, from Stalin at the top, to the soldiers on front, to the families of those in the labour camps.
 
Cancer Ward and First Circle are fine novels in the grand Russian tradition of Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy, engaging with the great political and moral issues of the day through the interaction of characters from all sides of the debate. In his fiction, he seems to understand the Russian people, but in his non-ficition, he raged against their complicity with the system.
 
Cancer Ward was really, really bleak and I also (enjoyed isn't quite the right word) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

I read them a long time ago but certain scenes stick in my mind to this day.

Namely the time that Ivan Denisovich is overjoyed to discover fish eyes in his usually watery soup. He must have been so ravenous for the fish eyes to look so delicious.

The other thing is from Cancer Ward. It was the dilemma of the patients whether or not to place a hot water bottle over the tumour. To do so relieved the pain but made the tumour grow faster. In retrospect, I didn't realise it at the time of reading, I think it was a metaphor for whether or not to go along with supporting the the Soviet system.
 
I'd been looking for a thread as well. A great loss to literature, I remember reading Ivan Denisovich as a teenager and being pretty upset by it. First Circle is incredible. I didn't hear anything about his later views- part of me wants to keep it that way, remember him for the writing.
 
Fledgling said:
Gosh. RIP.

Still 89 is a good age for anyone to reach, especially someone who had cancer AND went to the Gulag. :eek:

Cancer Ward's one of my favourite books but I've enjoyed everything of his I've read. I bought August 1914 a while back but haven't read it yet. Is it worthy? I heard that this was to be part of a trilogy.
Click to expand...

It is, but it greatly helps if you have a detailed map of the area around Tannenburg: there are lots of details of troop movements.
 
I don't get people on this site. how can you read Solzenitsyn and still be communists, or sympathic to communists or at the very least, be not-very-hard-on-communists-ists? Solzenitsyn was part of my horrifying discovering of the truth about communism and the soviet Union and other communist regimes (Albania North Korea, Pol Pot and so on and so on and so forth), although he was at the end of my self-education, his "gulag-archpelgo" stands as a first attempt to chronicle all the attrocities of the Soviet Union under Stalin. This site is riddled with people calling themselves DotCommunist, Cliche Guvera, etc. promoting Communist events, or events set up by communist groups. and even if a communist group, like the SWP, is critisized, it is not for being communists, but for their style or ineffectualness or some small tactic that might have gone wrong, not for being unrepentant Soviet-emmulating Communists!:mad:
 
There are probably more conservatives than communists on urban75, assuming one defines 'communist' sensibly, rather than including anyone who watches Channel 4 or goes to the Chinese takeaway.

Would hardly have thought the monicker 'Cliche Guevara' was promoting communism btw.
 
Che Guevera is used to promote, glamourise Communism, a bit of Freedom Fighter chic, that's my problem with him. I wouldn't want to live in Soviet Cuba, nothing excites me about Cuba except for the weather. Plus there the double-standard on this site, there wouldn't be allowed some one calling him/her self DotNazi (although i know that doesn't work), or cliche Mengele.
 
Cro-Magnon Man said:
Plus there the double-standard on this site, there wouldn't be allowed some one calling him/her self DotNazi (although i know that doesn't work), or cliche Mengele.
Click to expand...

Yup, thats because Communism isnt comparable to Nazism.

We have a poster named Nixon, despite that Presidents involvement in genocide :p
 
Cro-Magnon Man said:
Plus there the double-standard on this site, there wouldn't be allowed some one calling him/her self DotNazi (although i know that doesn't work), or cliche Mengele.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't these be allowed? A mod may be able to clarify, but I don't see anything in the faqs against either of these names.
 
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