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References -
...see here.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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)...and that I don't think people give enough consideration, is that he was what some might call a 'nobody'. He wasn't a politician, revolutionary, philosopher, soldier, scientist, or any of the other types that we would look toward for greatness. He was "an obscure, middle-aged, unpublished high school science teacher in a provincial Russian town."
At a time when nearly everyone in the same circumstances "maturely" accepts their lot in life, he discovered his calling, and then took incredible personal risks against a leviathan that routinely squashed impertinent little bugs such as he.
I think failing to consider the above is why people later found it easy to be critical of him and dismissive of many of his views. They viewed him through the lens of "greatness" and expected superior talent and more prescient consistency than any small town victim could ever deliver.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Why do you hate people from small towns so much?
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )Leszek Kolakowski.
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| parent )...*Main Currents of Marxism* is much better than anything written by Solzhenitsyn.
And there's no doubt that Kolakowski, too, was a man of great personal courage.
But so what? Solzhenitsyn wrote *The Gulag Archipelago* & *The Oak and the Calf*.
Case closed.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )"A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading."
Love that one. By that measure I'm definitely worth reading. I wonder about that nearly every time I hit "Post Comment".
--Of course not!
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| parent )I should have it tattooed on my right forearm, so it'll be in front of me every time I write.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )...Wallace Matson, told me that, years ago.
I guess he was reading Kolakowski before I was.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )philosophers had forearms large enough for that many words.
I kid!!
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )Small font.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Winston Churchill.
Aside from myself, of course ;)
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| parent )Hmmm.
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| parent )and made many terrible errors in judgement, the attack on the Dardanelles in WWI and the evacuation of Singapore in WWII notable among them. But if we view the century in terms of subtraction--the difference that the absence of one heroic figure would make to 'the fabric of time', to employ a cinematic cliche--then Churchill's absence would, in my opinion, have mattered more to the century than that of any other.
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| parent )You think the British would have lost to Germany had anyone but Churchill been Prime Minister? I think your understanding of the matter is weak. Many British loathed Churchill, and even Tories like T. S. Eliot turned to the Labour party and voted him out of office when they had the chance. That didn't stop them from working to defeat the Germans when it was necessary. It's not clear that any other leader would have weakened their resolve.
In 1900, at the start of Churchill's career, the UK was the world's number one economic power in terms of size. By 2000, the nation wasn't even in the top ten.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )And some had good reason to.* It would still be folly to suggest he wasn't one of the central figures of the twentieth century--and a candidate for "greatest man" if one approves of his domestic programs along with his conduct of WWII.
*--Japanese-Americans come to mind in this category.
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| parent )Well, I think it would be folly to suggest that the US would have lost the war against the Axis powers had any other leader than FDR been in office. That's the sort of claim that was made about Churchill, which you may or may not agree with. I don't.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )the victor in one of those WW II theaters falls upon heavily on Truman as does the aftermath.
--"Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much." Ob
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| parent )is weak? I doubt it.
Yes, the British public turned on Churchill and voted him out of office after the war. However, within a few short years they voted him back in again. As for Eliot, he's a remarkably poor example to choose, since he was an American.
Churchill's unpopularity within his own party (which waxed and waned dramatically over his long career) was, aside from his personality and antecedents, principally because he had begun political life as a Liberal. No one who changes party affiliation is ever entirely trusted, which is why so few of our presidents have ever been men who did it.
As for any other leader, again you are incorrect--Chamberlain was a disaster as a war leader and the country only turned to Churchill out of desperation. In any case, his popularity is not the issue, nor his tenure (he didn't take office in 1900 and leave it in 2000, in any case)--what is the issue is his effect on history. Without him, Britain would have reached an accomodation with Germany after the fall of France, and Germany would then certainly have defeated the USSR. The Third Reich might still exist today.
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| parent )Churchill's right hand man. Britons would have soldiered on with him as Prime Minister. I don't doubt that.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )and are not just googling this as you go along. Eden, Churchill's callow assistant during WWII, was the man responsible for the Suez fiasco a few short years later, proving his unfitness to formulate national military strategy beyond any possible doubt.
If you're going to argue reflexively, at least allow a semblance of real knowledge to corrupt your wide-eyed assertions.
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| parent )It was more the French and Israelis who were primarily responsible for the Suez fiasco. The British went along with them and their strategy behind it was a commitment to the alliance with the French and a last ditch attempt to save the empire. As a military maneuver, it was a success. It's failure was political. Churchill may not have embarked on the that particular adventure, but he wouldn't have argued with the broader goals. Churchill had sent troops to keep the flag flying over backwaters like Kenya and Malay, after all. Churchill himself was no stranger to disaster, as you point out. He was also keen on carrying on the war against the USSR, which is pretty questionable.
In any case, I don't think there are any grounds to suggest that the British would have lost any of their resolve to fight Germany had another man or woman been Prime Minister. I can't think of any candidates who would be perfect, though. And quite possibly Churchill was the best man for the job, but not the only one.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )was a major Tory spokesman.
As I say, you're just a chronic arguer.
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| parent )That's what makes his vote for Labour so noteworthy. Which is why I noted it. But as you say, it's not all that important what Britons thought of Churchill.
I'm not a chronic arguer, It's just that I don't suffer fools gladly. If you're fool enough to go on asserting that Britain would have lost with anyone else in the PMO, I will continue to disagree.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )You've been on or just over the edge of the posting rules repeatedly in the last few days, and it's starting to become an annoyance. Please cease and desist, or I will have to take it up with the other moderators.
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| parent )Why on earth would anyone keep blogging at all, if not to suffer fools?
Obviously, the trick is to keep doing it gladly ;)
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| parent )the essence of blogging is to suffer fools crankily. It's in the blogging handbook.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )...then what on Earth would be?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Lucky for you I've already been issued a rules violation warning so cannot respond in kind.
Even luckier for you this site tolerates and seems to encourage your type of member. And that I'm not a mod, because you wouldn't last long here with this type of personal insult as your modus operandi.
Just as a matter of interest to anyone competent or objective reading this exchange, Churchill was voted 'Man of the Century' in many polls in 1999. I don't make my 'nomination' (for that was all it was--I expected people like you to add their own, not merely castigate others')--on the basis of those polls, but it shows that my 'weak' grasp of history and 'fool'ishness were shared by many.
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| parent )that Eisenhower was going to impose a new world order?
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent ). . .at least Eden wasn't *timid*--unless you count the speed with which he--along with the French and the Israelis--backed down when Ike pointedly cleared his throat to resolve the Suez Crisis.
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| parent )that the idea of 'greatness' matters more to those who self-identify as patriots or nationalists than do the horrors of reality. I'm sure in 20 years the memory of Mugabe will be revered in Zimbabwe; already Idi Amin is being rehabilitated in Uganda. Live long enough and perhaps you will observe even Iraqi Shiites rejoining the cult of Saddam.
Charles Manson instinctively understood the concept of "power" in purely magical terms--it amounts quite simply to a heap of skulls sacrificed to your name. From that point of view Stalin and Hitler are the two greatest brujos in history, along with Mao Tse Tung. Somewhere in the realms of the occult they oversee their own perpetual demonic kingdoms, served devotedly by those dead souls who carried out their bidding in life--and like Tibetan tulpas, continually nourished by the ongoing reverence of the living.
Hitler insisted at the end of his life that the German people had failed him and did not deserve him; I have never doubted that the Russian people deserved Stalin. It may very well be that Putin is privately a cynical pro-Western sophisticate who has been checked at every turn in his attempts to advance true democracy and so has resorted to a mild impersonation of Ivan the Terrible because it is ultimately all his countrymen and political apparatus will tolerate and accept from any leader.
EDIT--whoops, this was supposed to be attached to your comment immediately below.
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)Stalin, Lenin, and Tsar Nicholas II [sic] vie for the top spot in an ongoing "internet vote for the greatest Russian in history" sponsored by a Russian TV channel.
It's rather as if a vote for "greatest German" came down to a choice between Goebbels, Hitler, and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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)wrong with Kaiser Bill II?!!
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )it wasn't Yuri Zhivago.
Of course, we can probably credit that to the miracle of multiple choice.
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )to take Gulag Archipelago down from the shelf again. I never made it through the first pass...probably having gotten my fill of true-life unrelenting brutality years ago.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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)The first time I read it was the mid '70's. I was in my early 20's and I confess that my sole purpose in reading it was so as to appear much deeper that I was (or am, for that matter) and thereby increase my chances of "success" with a young woman of my fancy (and she actually was worthy of the book). I wasn't successful, by the way, & I trust that comes as no surprise.
Unfortunately, since my wife is aware of this story, I anticipate that I may have some questions to answer when she sees that book on the nightstand.
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )" Honey! You LIED to me?! After ALL these years together ... you're telling me you only read the Cliff's Notes?!!"
"No! It's not that way at all, hon! I didn't even read the Cliff's Notes!" :)
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )that this comes right on the heels of my sudden interest in all things BMW :-)
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )and on a more serious note, the hedonism represented so effectively and on so many levels by that link was one of the aspects of western life (in the US in particular) that Solzhenitsyn supposedly despised.
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )Being a minor pleb.. I have never read him or heard of him.. Not sure if it is do to my reading habits or age..
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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)The fact that even so reasonably literate a member of your generation as yourself could reach marriageable age without even having so much as *heard* of the author of *The Gulag Archipelago*...
Well, it reduces me to despair.
But before I go out to buy a big bottle of vodka with which to drink myself into a stupor wherein I can pretend that I just don't give a damn, anymore...understand this:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was quite possibly the greatest example, not just in the 20th Century, but in all of human history, of a lone man who spoke truth to power, regardless of the consequences for himself.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )-o-O-o-
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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| parent )n/t
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )The Gulag Archipelago is rather like Moby Dick: those readers who get past the rigging of the ship are in for a fine adventure tale.
To approach Gulag Archipelago, take the Python approach "Skip a bit, Brother Maynard." Start with the third volume. That's the heart of the matter. The Forty Days of Kengir, the tale of a camp revolt and the hellish consequences of that revolt, and The White Kitten (Georgi Tenno's Tale), the tale of an escape which contains the darkest of all parables: does the escapee kill innocent people to preserve his freedom, or surrender, only to return from where he came: these tales freeze the mind. You cannot be the same having read them.
The great genius of Solzhenitsyn's prose is his power of understatement. Where Kafka and Gogol only hinted at madness, Solzhenitsyn gives you the stark, explicit, precise draftsmanship of a master craftsman. It is, even in translation, some of the finest prose ever written, and Vinteuil is entirely correct to call him the greatest man of the last century.
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| parent )His earlier novels are really worth a look. I can't recommend anything else. I found the Gulag Archipelago too much for me - rather like my reaction to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: flinching at the unrelieved horror.
All this came out in the early 70s, and I don't believe his reputation has stood the test of time. His last book, on the history of Jews in Russia (2001), was unavailable and untranslated last time I checked at Amazon. Even our diarist, vinteuil, had never heard of it!
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )Referring to Solzhenitsyn's "history of Jews in Russia," you write: "even our diarist, vinteuil, had never heard of it!"
I mean, WTF???
May I ask who issued you your licence for just making up stupid lies about people?
V.
P.S.: it figures that *The Gulag Archipelago* would be "too much" for you.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )That was in a diary some time back where you claimed that a Russian artist went unappreciated in the West due to the machinations of the Communist government. I had to point out to you that in the case of Solzhenitsyn, communist disapproval gave his career a big boost, and now that communism has fallen, his works are ignored.
I'm trying to point out the flaws in your reasoning and you tell me I'm lying. That is ingratitude.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )First you lie. Then you obfuscate.
Why? What drives you?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )If you're uncertain what I meant in any of my comments and want to know more clearly, just ask me. I'll try to be helpful. This is your diary and I'm thankful that you gave us a chance to discuss issues that interest me. I know that the pomp and circumstance of the Nazis attracts many, myself included when younger, but recently the icy ambiguities of the Soviet Union are more to my taste.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent ). . .that V. is fond of either the Nazis or the Soviet Union, your innuendo notwithstanding. You're still on the safe side of the line as far as the rules go, but you might want to veer off of this rhetorical pathway rather soon.
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| parent )That was not my intention at all to suggest he was in favour of either. I don't care in any case. I was talking about myself. He asked what was driving me, and I told him that though many people have an interest in studying the Nazis, including myself, I have recently found the Soviet Union more important. You know as well as anyone that the two regimes are often placed side by side and discussed together, or in the same breath. I think it is more profitable to discuss the USSR on its own terms without reference to the Nazis, just as the discussion went down here.
As for the charges of lying, they arise out of stupid statements that he made. He, not me. They are too moronic to rehash again. I haven't the interest and this diary is about to fall
--off
the
front
page....
Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )Your statement that I "had never heard of" AS's "history of Jews in Russia" was flat out false. I have been *acutely* aware of the books existence, and of its non-publication in English, for years now. Why you made such an absurd claim remains wholly mysterious to me.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )You must never consider Solzhenitsyn a political man. He lays out the case for his own transformation, for he was once a soldier in the Red Army. He did believe in the cause of Russia: that never changed. But Solzhenitsyn emerges from a longer tradition of Russian writers, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and most especially Pushkin, men who wrote as their consciences dictated.
Arts and literature in Russia are treated quite differently than in the West, where such things are seen as artifacts produced by a single man who seeks fame for himself and followers for his cause. This is not true in Russia: the people are more closely bound to their society, they see themselves as part of something and their art becomes part of the society's framework, and the artists are pressed into the service of the State.
I used to make a grim joke, though I am sure it is not my own: Russians were put on earth to show mankind what suffering really looks like. In Russia, artists and musicians are emblems of the society itself. Though Stalin would have very gladly hanged him a thousand times, he dared not touch Shostakovich. Instead, he sent the people around Shostakovich to the gulags. Even Stalin had his limits.
You must remember, for a brief shining moment, Solzhenitsyn was the darling of Russia under Khruschev. Stalin's monstrous villainy was known to all, and Solzhenitsyn had the book. The artist was pressed into the service of the state. This would not last for long: after Khruschev, the light died down and the monsters came out again. Solzhenitsyn was reduced to homelessness, his every move the subject of investigation. Yet the KGB dared not touch him: such was their awe of him.
In the first chapter of the Book of John, it is said "and the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world".
Solzhenitsyn is not the province of the political pundits, he is a holy man whose works dwell on the light that shines in the darkness, in which light only a believer may walk. The darkness will never understand such a light. You completely misunderstand Solzhenitsyn and his witness. He is not a political cause célèbre. He was a prophet who pointed a bony finger at the Soviet Union, and in very many ways he was the bravest man of his era, a man of true conviction, whose taut prose will live forever.
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| parent )I was talking about his celebrity in the West in the 1970s. Of course he was a figure of great courage, but I suspect that there was an element of him being used and discarded as a tool to embarrass the USSR. Why don't you go now to the nearest bookshop, and ask for his last work. In any language.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )I am usually to be found, these days, at the Univ. of Georgia bookstore. I buy books online, often from specialty dealers. The last thing I need is an Oprah Must Read or yet another cookbook.
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| parent )in a second-hand bookstore. I didn't have much money at the time, but I bought it anyway. The book would change my life forever.
I'd known collective life in a boarding school, a rather bad one as I would later come to learn by way of comparison, for it was not the only one I would attend. The bullying, the toadying, the arbitrary cruelty, the pettiness. Only here it was, given fullness of form, the endpoint of the human condition, where survival was paramount and no indignity was too disgraceful.
My father sent me the Gulag Archipelago, then newly-translated into English. If One Day was the novel, here was the back story, the facts of the matter. The whole rotten, stinking corpse of Communism, its pathetic excuses stripped away, dangling at the end of a meat hook. No longer could the Tweedy Types defend the thing: its ends and means were now apparent.
It has always perplexed me: how did the USSR ever survive as long as it did? The answer may lie in its defenders, one of whom was once Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn himself. Had he not been caught up in the scythe and bails of the Gulag for an idle remark about "Old Whiskers" Stalin, Solzhenitsyn would have gone on with his life, as did so many others. He would later renounce Marxism and become the deadliest enemy the Soviet Union would ever know, but Solzhenitsyn's work only comes to us by proxy. There were other heroes, the cellist Rostropovich who hid Solzhenitsyn in his own home: much of the Gulag Archipelago was written in Rostropovich's house. The hundreds of prisoners whose accounts are faithfully preserved in the Gulag Archipelago risked their lives to tell the tale, especially in the third volume. The dozens of people who hid parts of the manuscript, several of whom were caught, are as much contributors to the work as Solzhenitsyn himself.
We are presented with a dark riddle in the life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When does man rise up against evil? Usually when he becomes its victim. While evil happens to others, no matter how many others, we go on with our lives for our chief priority is survival. But in the frozen camps of Siberia, survival was no less a priority, conformity and subservience and tattling for the temporary heaven of an extra ration of food the stuff of life itself. But in the camps, nobody cared if you called Joe Stalin "Old Whiskers". It was the only place in the Soviet Union were you could speak your mind. You could shout whatever you like at the top of your lungs.
In the so-called Land of the Free, we are running secret prison camps in far-away places, where law is impotent and torture is rampant. We do not much care about these things, except in some abstract way. When Joe Stalin died, he was sincerely mourned, and many people feel the inhabitants of our gulags in Guantanamo deserve their fates. There is a limit to this sort of thing: we cannot lock up everyone who hates us. There will come a day when we are called to account for the Gitmo Archipelago we have built both here and in secret locations around the world. All our fine talk about the Bill of Rights and La-dee-da American Values and Country First will be stripped and hung on the meathook on which Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn hung the USSR, and it cannot come soon enough for me.
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)I loved Solzhenistyn's works when I read them as a lad, but I don't think they shed much light on the USSR except to show how hideous it could be. I couldn't finish The Gulag Archipeligo, it was so oppressive. I have also been fascinated by the awful regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia and read rather widely on it, visited and spoken to people who were involved. Chandler's book on the interrogation camp, S21, basically throws up its hands in surrender when it comes to the question of why the regime expended so much effort in obtaining and archiving patently false confessions from 1000s of obviously harmless people caught up in various witch hunts.
The most convincing answers I have come across were in In Defence of Lost Causes by Slavoz Zizek who looks at such matters from a psychoanalytic point of view. Quite an interesting book with lots of informed discussion on the Stalinist show trials, the question of the arts etc. I have an 18 meg. pdf should anyone be interested.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )...except to show how hideous it could be."
Right. And *The Diary of Anne Frank* didn't shed much light on the Nazis (except to show how hideous they could be).
Like that was only a minor detail...
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Millions wept like babies when Stalin died. I don't think it's a frivolous question to ask why. And Solzhenitsyn, in spite of all his courageous efforts, doesn't come close to giving us an answer.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )W.H. Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
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| parent )I know this tyrant stuff goes down very big here, but I don't believe it gets to the heart of the matter.
Here is Shostakovitch on his 1937 interview with the secret service:
I was given a [security] pass and went to the [NKVD] office. The investigator got up when I came in and greeted me. He was very friendly and asked me to sit down. He started asking questions about my health, my family, the work I was doing — all kinds of questions. He spoke in a very friendly, welcoming and polite way. Then suddenly he
asked me: "So, tell me. Do you know Tukhachevsky? "I said yes, and he said "How?". So then I said: "At one of my concerts. After the concert, Tukhachevsky came back stage to congratulate me. He said he liked my music, that he was an admirer. He said he'd like to meet me when he came to Leningrad to talk about music. He said it would be a pleasure to discuss music with me. He said if I came to Moscow he'd be happy to see me. " "And how often did you meet?" "Only when Tukhachevsky came here. He usually invited me for dinner." — "Who else was at the table?" "Just his family. His family and relatives." — "And what did you discuss?" "Mostly music." —"Not politics?" "No, we never talked politics. I knew how things were." — " Dmitri Dmitryevich, this is very serious. You must remember. Today is Saturday. I'll sign your pass and you can go home. But on Monday noon, you must be here. Don't forget now. This is very serious, very important." I understood this was the end. Those two days until Monday were a nightmare. I told my wife I probably wouldn't return. She even prepared a bag for me—the kind prepared for people who were taken away. She put in warm underwear. She knew I wouldn't be back. I went back there at noon [on Monday] and reported to reception. There was a soldier there. I gave him my [internal] passport. I told him I'd been summoned. He looked for my name: first, second, third. He said: "Who summoned you? "I said: "Inspector Zakovsky. "He said: "He won't be able to s e e you today. Go home. We'll notify you." He returned my passport and I went home. It was only later that evening that I learned that the inspector had been arrested.'
Zizek notes: "If ever there was a carnival, in which today you are a king and tomorrow a beggar, this was it." It's worth noting that Shostakovitch wrote, according to many, the music of the 20th century, right from under the wing of Stalinist patronage. There was terror, but it was mixed in with a grotesque and absurd joyful hilarity that didn't emanate from a lofty tyrant, but permeated the entire society. This is what fascinates me about the era.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )... though it's not an entirely factual account of the period. It captures something you are attempting to describe, and Shostakovich was one of the lead characters in this novel. It's a magisterial work, Europe Central, the sort of thing good enough to read aloud and enjoy.
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| parent )and Solzhenitsyn's ruthless prose taught me what not to write. I'll write about man's inhumanity to man, of his cowardice in the face of oppression, of his pettiness, of the bravery of those who survived in the face of tyranny. These and many another of Solzhenitsyn's themes appear in my writing: these are immortal themes. If I am not his equal, I can write of these things in my own lesser way. God hears my prayers, as he heard the prayers of that good man.
The Gitmo Archipelago is grossly immoral. This much I know for sure, no sooner does one man rise up to condemn immorality than another will arise to shout him down. In a sense, S21 is the confirmation of my allegation: there were plenty of people who defended Stalin's worst excesses, as they now arise to defend the wickedness of Gitmo.
I'd known collective life in a boarding school, a rather bad one as I would later come to learn by way of comparison, for it was not the only one I would attend. The bullying, the toadying, the arbitrary cruelty, the pettiness. Only here it was, given fullness of form, the endpoint of the human condition, where survival was paramount and no indignity was too disgraceful. Hundreds of miles from home, in Africa, there was no running away from the school, though one boy tried. We endured it, and the tales of our suffering were not believed.
When Solzhenitsyn condemned immorality in the West, he was mildly derided as an old crank of a spiritual nature. When he returned to Russia, he became irrelevant. In death, he is given a quick and imperfect review by the usual writers of obituaries, but his whole life was dedicated to writing the obituary for millions of faceless prisoners of a regime which promised freedom and delivered tyranny. As Russia slides back into the abyss of Putin-esque tyranny, Solzhenitsyn is again put on the pedestal, as Khruschev put him on the pedestal for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It will not last. Russians again are enslaved, the prisons are full of dissidents, here and there one hears dark rumors. We are fated to see it all again.
Solzhenitsyn gives us something eternal in his characters, the grinning prisoner who games the system, the little acts of decency and solidarity in a world of meaningless suffering. His condemnation of the Gulags goes far beyond the political. It enters the spiritual realm, and gives us hope that our sufferings are not forgotten, that wrong shall fail and right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men. We cannot lock up all our enemies.
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| parent )http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1945/
They changed the world... How many of you or those you know are here because of them?
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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)...and to demonstrate that picking three is just as stupid as picking one...
- Mao Tse-Tung (the way I learned to spell it)
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Daniel Ellsberg
Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )I blame it all on the Internet
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). . .you could always name the man (or woman, if such is the case) you'd give that title to. Or you could accept the core purpose of the diary--to pay tribute to someone who is almost universally recognized as a great figure of the twentieth century--and say something to acknowledge the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn .
Or you could use it as an opportunity to snipe at V. Whatever works, I suppose.
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| parent )it was hyperbole, and I said so. What's the problem with that? I don't think I need to come up with a list of my own Most Important People to criticize vinteuil's nomination.
Solzhenitsyn was admirable for many things, but he had a real blind spot when it came to monarchy and religion. Hardly the makings of the most important person of the past century IMO.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Well, he went to prison and he wrote books. And he had the wisdom not to do both at once.
I have thought that the combination of solitude and time afforded by a spell in prison would give rise to great writing. This doesn't appear to be the case. Hitler, Gramsci, Negri - these are the great 'prison writers' of the last century that come to mind. It's not a particularly impressive list.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )That's all anybody here, tonight, has to say?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Or was it just his critique of communism?
I'm imagining probably both, but I want to hear it from you.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )Though I'd imagine a self-described paleo-libertarian would have to have some reservations about Solzhenitsyn's more throne-and-altar-esque version of conservatism - no?
(Incidentally, I'm with Scott - "Rest in Peace," or the like, is a pretty pale response to the passing of a moral/literary giant, and I don't have the stuff to do him justice.)
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent ). . .though I certainly wish him a peaceful rest--he was a great man and an advocate for freedom. You have expressed the opinion that he was the greatest man of the last century--could you elaborate on that? With a little more to work with, you might find the response more to your liking
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