Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate

Subject: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 08:49 PM

BBC article

Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89.

The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure.

The Nobel laureate had suffered from high blood pressure in recent years.

After returning to Russia, Solzhenitsyn wrote several polemics on Russian history and identity.

His son Stepan was quoted by one Russian news agency as saying his father died of heart failure, while another agency quoted literary sources as saying he had suffered a stroke.

He died in his home in the Moscow area, where he had lived with his wife Natalya, at 2345 local time (1945 GMT), Stepan told Itar-Tass.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer's family, a Kremlin spokesperson said.

Prisoner, patient, writer

Solzhenitsyn served as a Soviet artillery officer in World War II and was decorated for his courage but in 1945 was denounced for criticising Stalin in a letter.

He spent the next eight years in the Soviet prison system, or Gulag, before being internally exiled to Kazakhstan, where he was successfully treated for stomach cancer.

Publication in 1962 of the novella Denisovich, an account of a day in a Gulag prisoner's life, made him a celebrity during the post-Stalin political thaw.

However, within a decade, the writer awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature was out of favour again for his work, and was being harassed by the KGB secret police.

In 1973, the first of the three volumes of Archipelago, a detailed account of the systematic Soviet abuses from 1918 to 1956 in the vast network of its prison and labour camps, was published in the West.

Its publication sparked a furious backlash in the Soviet press, which denounced him as a traitor.

Early in 1974, the Soviet authorities stripped him of his citizenship and expelled him from the country.

Moral voice

He settled in Vermont, in the USA, where he completed the other two volumes of Archipelago.

While living there as a recluse, he railed against what he saw as the moral corruption of the West.

Scathing of Boris Yeltsin's brand of democracy, he did not return to Russia immediately upon the collapse of the USSR in 1992, unlike other exiles.

His homecoming in 1994 was a dramatic affair as he travelled in slowly by land from the Russian Far East.

Solzhenitsyn's latter works, which included essays on Russia's future, courted controversy.

In 2000, his last major work Two Hundred Years Together examined the position of Jews in Russian society and their role in the Revolution.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 08:54 PM

Sorry to see this. I remember when the first of Archipelago came out. It was riveting...I could not put it down and it was terrifying. Thanks to him for telling the world of it.

RIP, Sir,

kat

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 09:48 PM

A brave soul, a person of great conviction, a man who loved his country so much that he sacrificed 20 years of his life.

Mick

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Peace
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 09:49 PM

Indeed.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 10:25 PM

I think the first book I read in college for a lit class was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Makes one grateful for very small things.

Could one of the elves make that subject title "Nobel" with a capital N? Thanks.

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 10:57 PM

A modern hero.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Joy Bringer
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 03:29 AM

I remember the 1974 incident well, hard to believe it was 34 years ago.

There is nothing admirable or warrants respect of someone who is both disloyal and unpatriotic to the country of his birth.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Peace
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 03:31 AM

Tell that to the guys and gals who 'caused' the American Revolution.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:34 AM

Joybringer,
I'm not a huge fan of Solzhenitsyn, I don't think he is that hot a writer, BUT you are being unbelievably harsh. Solzhenitsyn wasn't loyal to the then-current government in his country, which he considered, wrong, harsh and oppressive. He had plenty of cause not to be keen on it, after all, his parent's way of life was destroyed violently when he was an infant, his family's hard-earned property was confiscated and he had to practice his faith in secret, as well as never being able to talk about who his father really was. Then there was the long period of imprisonment and abuse.
Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned under one of the treason laws, but when you consider that what he did was write a few uncomplimentary comments about Stalin in a letter to a friend, then I would suspect that you are just as guilty of such 'disloyalties' and 'unpatriotic' actions as he was.
I don't see anything unpatriotic in Solzhenitsyn, even though I disagree strongly with most of his politics.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Joy Bringer
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:55 AM

Thank you Volgadon. It never fails to amaze me how someone like Solzhenitsyn seems surprised at the reaction they receive after writing inflammatory material against their own establishment. What reaction had they hoped for ?

I read his last book "Two Hundred Years Together". When I finished it, I asked myself the question, If the world is being asked to forgive and forget their past, why can't the people he wrote about ?

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:58 AM

What I admire about Solzhenitsyn is that he has stuck with his convictions no matter what, even though I consider most of them ridculous.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:24 AM

Anyway, Joybringer, there is nothing unpatriotic about standing up to or criticising your government or regime, if you think they are wrong. There is a difference between that and just whining, sure, but the blind, unthinking kind of patriotism is what leads to things like Nazi Germany.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Joy Bringer
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:27 AM

He always struck me as a very complex man. I felt his thought pattern was bizarre to say the least. Really he was used like a pawn by the west to get the boot into the communists.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 12:43 PM

"One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich" was a great book from a political and a literary standpoint.

He made his mark and it will endure unlike the words of many of his critics.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: PoppaGator
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:01 PM

Love of country should not be equated with blind loyalty to its ruling authority. All governments are at least a little imperfect, and some have quite clearly been outright enemies of most of their own citizens, and of the very land and air and water whereupon the nation-state is based.

It's one thing to disagree with various aspects of this cantankerous old man's options, but to characterize him as "disloyal and unpatriotic" for his courageous opposition to Stalinist repression is, to me, simply unbelievable.

The idea of "my country right or wrong," as promulgated by the most closed-minded of American right-wingers, is obnoxious and ignorant enough. But to my mind, the "my ideology right or wrong" stance of doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists is even worse, and harder to fathom, especially in this day and age. I didn't believe anyone still clung to that long-since-discredited brand of blind orthodoxy. (I'm still fairly confident you won't find many Russians nostalgic for the good old days of Stalinist rule.)

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:03 PM

JoyBringer is good at pissing on lots of very reasonable Mudcat subjects. By the measure he/she uses in this thread, JoyBringer (such a bad choice of names!) probably despises anyone who detests George Bush and his criminal neo-con partners in the cabinet. Complainers must be unpatriotic for not supporting their nation.

By the way, this argumentative tactic has been used to great effect by a few Mudcat malcontents who routinely bring the subject around to themselves, away from the topic at hand. Most of them end up banned or asked repeatedly to leave. M-G comes to mind, Shambles, etc.

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Lox
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:16 PM

Don't get drawn in.

By JB's logic I should have no respect for Dith Pran because he was against Pol Pot.

I should have no respect for Martin Luther King for criticizing American electoral Law.

I should have no respect for Tsvangirai for criticizing Mugabe.

I should have no respect for Ang Lee for criticizing the Burmese Junta.

This is clearly such laughable nonsense as to be significantly beyond the jurisdiction of rational scrutiny.

And who cares ...

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:32 PM

Ivan Denisovitch is a great book, yes, but I don't think his WWI or Red Wheel cycles will really outlive anything. I admire him for ataking a stand on what he thought was right, and sticking to it.

Poppagator, I met very, very few Russians who liked Stalin and missed his reign. They are often nostalgic for the Soviet Union, but NOT for the Stalin days.

My country, right or wrong, as stated by Decatuer, doesn't, I think, mean that whatsoever my country does will be right, but that it's still my country. That certainly seemed to be Solzhenitsyn's view, so it is harsh to consider him unpatriotic.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 02:02 PM

I would argue that someone who allows a miscreant to weild power in their own country and doesn't criticize them, is guilty of a distinct lack of patriotism.

After all, what is the nation-state if it is not comprised of it's people.

It is the patriots job to have their interests at heart above all.

A tyrant subverts the state by betraying its people.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: PoppaGator
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 02:24 PM

Volgadon, I've long been aware that the phrase "my country right or wrong" CAN be interpeted in a manner by which it might be a reasonable sentiment: I love my homeland despite any evils that may have been perpetrated in its name.

However, I did not know the name "Decatuer" as the person who coined this phrase which has become so famous ~ and, I suppose, so widely misunderstood. So, thanks!

I might note that the USA differs from most of the world's other nations in that its identity has never been based primarily upon the ethnic/tribal/genetic homogenity of tis citizens ~ it's based primarily upon an idea of human equality and human rights. The fact that adherence to this concept has always been less than perfect does not negate it. When a citizen of another nation loves his "country" despite some shortcoming or another, it's because he can't help but feel attached to his clan, his family. When an American perceives his government as failing to measure up to the ideals expressed by Jefferson, Franklin, et al, his/her judgement should not as easily be compromised by identification with an "American" ethnicity that doesn't (or at least shouldn't be seen to) actually exist...

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 02:41 PM

Poppagator,

I would add to your point by suggesting that when Americas name has been blighted it has been as a result of ethnic conflict, and when Americas name has been praised it has been because of it's identification with the principles you speak of.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Goose Gander
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:54 PM

"There is nothing admirable or warrants respect of someone who is both disloyal and unpatriotic to the country of his birth."

Criticizing one's government is NOT equivalent to disloyalty to one's country or lack of patriotism. Often, it's the exact opposite.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:47 AM

While Solzhenitsyn's brave exposition of the Stalinist gulag system was in itself worthy of the Nobel Prize, I felt he lacked any broader vision of freedom, and that what he really meant was religious freedom for the Russian Orthodox Church, and little more. His culture shock on finding that the West was not simply the "opposite" of Commmunist Russia was palpable, and following his exile he seems to have had little constructive to say. But perhaps it's a bit captious to criticise a person for what he didn't see, and simply accept the value of such vision that he did have.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:17 AM

Excellent post, Paul Burke.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:19 AM

A musical connection. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxkN8UrxfDs