Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn

I haven’t thought about Aleksander Solzhenitsyn much for a few years, when I see an article with is name in it I will read it out of general interest, I can’t say I am greatly saddened by his passing or shocked, he was 89 years old which is amazing considering what he lived through. He had his quirks and I disagreed with him politically on occasion but deeply respected his opinions because of his background. I do owe a great deal of gratitude to him though! I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich when I was a teenager. It was this short novel that spiked an interest in Stalinist USSR; later I read The Gulag Archipelago. As I read more about Russia and the years Stalin was in power I received an understanding for a culture vastly different than my own and the politics of Totalitarian govening. I read about J Edgar Hoover and the anti-Communist movement in the US and Westerrn countries and came to realize that they weren’t a whole lot different than Stalin. Yes they didn’t killed millions of people or bandish them to remote work camps that only gave people the bare minum of supplies to live on but I have a strong feeling they would have if they could have gotten away with it. Nixon would have used more of Stalin’s techniques if also, especially against the counter-culture. The whole extreme Right Wing movement, neo-con, that has risen up since Reagan is in idealogical lock step with Stalin, one party total control, dissents will be punished, dissents are to be silenced or imprisoned, they are getting away with more than their share of un-Constitutional deeds the way it is. If you spend any amount of time reading or listening to the most popular right wing pundits it doesn’t take long to figure this out, also people like Cheney, Perle, Norquist, Wolfowitz, follow this same philisophy, W Bush is just a puppet for these people. So it is because years ago I picked a book called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich that I am aware of how my own government can imitate a Totalitarian regime. Thank the powers that be that we still live in a democratic society where there is freedom of speech and free elections, although both have been limited the last few years, because we still do have people in high office who question the motives of others, who will investigate coruption, who will speak up for the good of all our great citizens people like Feingold, Slaughter, Waxman, Conyers, Kennedy, Sanders; these Stalinist haven’t achieved their goal, I have a feeling they have also read Solzhenitsyn and owe him a bit of graditude too.
So RIP Mr. Solzhenitsyn, thank you for your writings, your bravery, your will to live under the harstest of conditions, thank you for my freedom, thank you for an inspiration you may have given to others living in political exile or prison, those who today who may not be able to freely speaker their mind but having read your books have gathered a little more strength to keep moving forward.