Thursday, August 07, 2008
The death of Russian Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn clearly marks the end of an era Cold War River; Like my father Jozef, Alexander (Sasha) survived Civil War, World War and Cold War. However, only few suffered as much as Alexander who suffered Stalin's camps and Brezhnev's repressions; he fought cancer when exiled without possessions in remote Kazakhstan, and resisted Western materialism to concentrate on his writing as a rich exile in his Vermont estate. As he himself had predicted, he lived to see the sorry collapse of Soviet Communism, and returned to his homeland in triumph. As a youth, he believed in the promises of Marxism-Leninism, but was brutally disillusioned when arrested as a young officer fighting Nazi Germany, turned to Christianity, and roundly defeated the legions of Soviet stool pigeons, security police and censors who tried to suppress the revelations which poured from his acerbic pen. Solzhenitsyn's truth outweighed the world; Without individual conscience, argues Solzhenitsyn, both Communist and capitalist societies have repulsive aspects. ALEXANDER Solzhenitsyn took millions of readers inside the horrors of Stalin’s prison system – and by extension, ripped the mask off the brutal regime which I escaped in 1980 A soul in exile
Literary Giant, Solzhenitsyn inspired many Chinese who will tear the wall down just like the Ztmbabweans will … Alexander Solzhenitsyn is the man who put the writing on the wall for Leninist totalitarianism. In a country that employs a vast bureaucracy to monitor all types of internet activity and where posting a comment critical of the authorities can land you in re-education camp, people have to choose their words very carefully Chinese netizens rail against Great Firewall
The face of 'human rights The Great Writer Who Buried Communism: The wealth manifesto
Ehrenreich's skill, apart from the sheer quality of her writing, is to illustrate her opinions with wave after wave of examples of unglamorous labour disputes and everyday injustices that don't get much of a look-in elsewhere.
There's this powerful myth that America doesn't have classes; that they're an ancient English or European thing that we abolished. And that if you're not rich, it's your own damn fault
• Warren Buffett recently said that he thought the effects of the financial crisis were far from over… A hunger for anything except more of the same in Sydney Society; [They came in a trickle rather than a flood, but raw emotions were never far from the surface To Russians, 'a ray of light' is now dimmed ; 'SOUL-DESTROYING" has become a cliche for life in a Soviet prison camp. He lived not by lies. Solzhenitsyn: exiled then exalted in Russia Of Good and Evil - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]
• · Read SPIEGEL's final interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, my teenage hero, the last given to the Western media. I Am Not Afraid of Death: SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN; Solzhenitsyn -- a prophet the West must prove wrong
• · Evil is all too real and had to be confronted – why be afraid of death? One Day in the Life of Jozef Imrich; Solzhenitsyn and piercing pens
• · · There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development is quite different. Other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises ; Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises: Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events. A World Split Apart
