RIP Solzhenitsyn
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn has died. Solzhenitsyn was an unusually strong-minded and uncompromising man who looked like an Old Testament prophet or Captain Ahab, and acted somewhat like both. Rest in peace.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
An interestimg person. I have always swung back and forth on him given different knwings at different times. Though i can be sure that every old world latvian i ever knew had a copy of his book. to think that he probably held back doesnt jibe with youngers who think that he is over exagerating.
one more for the pile of novels and confessionals having something to tell the world that it just doesnt want to hear or believe..
(read Dear God i wanted to live, by ruta U. shows what one week can do to last a lifetime)
A giant without whom we would not know a significant degree of the truth… The entire “Gulag” volumes, which I read shortly after publishing, should be required history reading now for everyone under 25…
A remarkable man and a courageous voice against the tyranny of the Soviet era. My parents had The Gulag Archipelago, from which I read as a teenager. He even spoke out against some of the excesses of the new Russian oligarchy. He had his quirks, of course, but was nevertheless a symbol and spokesman for freedom for a dark period of Russian history.
Everybody should read his Harvard Adress – the most profound critique of self-destructive tendencies of western liberalism. Thirty years later it has not lost a bit of its actuality – an astonishing feature for political speech! See
.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html