Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1919-2008)

[Michael]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1919-2008)

What can one say about this remarkable man that hasn't been said already? I'll just to say a couple of words about what this man means to me.

1. The resiliance of the human spirit despite severe adversity is truly a thing of wonder. Solzhenitsyn himself provides just one famous example of this.

2. Solzhenitsyn, who did as much (or more) to bring down the rotten edifice of the USSR, was no friend or admirer of the West and never became one or even pretended to be one.

3. That Russia continues to produce such remarkably brilliant radicals is as much a testament to the intellectual quality of Russian culture as it is to the the depressing and continuing failures of Russian history.

I salute the passing of a remarkable man. Rest in peace Alexander Solzhenistyn.

[Michael]

One reply recovered for this thread...

I'll mention one thing that so many other haven't about him. Not only did he also give a great insider reporting of the gulag system, his recounting of his experiences on the eastern front in WII are invaluable IMO. Thanks to his recorded recollections, he brought attention to matters of the war often overlooked such as the systematic raping, brutalising and murdering of millions of German women by the Soviet forces, stories about the often unrecognised Soviet defector units fighting in the German forces (and how the Soviets treated them when captured), etc.

For example, in "Prussian Nights," he recounted the following story witnessed in Neidenburg, East Prussia (today it's Nidzica, Poland):

Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. It's not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother's wounded, half alive. The little daughter's on the mattress, dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl's been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse. . . . The mother begs, "Soldier, kill me!"

He reported plenty of other horror stories. For the longest time, former Soviet soldiers were both afraid to report what happened as well as self-interested in not reporting vile behaviours that they and/or their comrades committed. History is also written by the victors, and atrocities committed by the victors much more rarely come to their proper light.