> And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago.
Although fascism and Communism are pretty darn close (both seek total control of the economy and the culture), let's not forget that he was specifically writing against a Communist system, not a fascist system.
It's shocking that the BBC link doesn't even use the word "Communism" in it once. Can you imagine an article on someone who stood up to Hitler without using the word Nazi once?
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn can shed some light on that?:
"For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion."
"Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome."
Solzhenitsyn questions whether democracy would bring real freedom to Russia. "The multiparty parliamentary system is impracticable in Russia," he writes. "It has never been necessary to the prosperity and high achievements of mankind. Authoritarian regimes are not terrible in themselves--only those which are not answerable to God or their own conscience. Russia will most probably move from one authoritarian form of government to another. This will be the most natural and least painful path of development. Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force--a man can still live without harm to his soul under such regimes--what makes ours uniquely horrible is that it demands total surrender of the soul. What we need is not political liberation--only liberation of the soul from participation in the lie forced upon us."
"Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome."
This is an interesting quote. If you replace Marx and Engels with Mohammed, Communism with Islam, and Russian with say Iranian you end up with "something you can't say".
People can criticize communism in Russia today, or outside Russia in the past, but it takes real guts to do what Solshenitzyn did - criticizing communism when he knew it could result in incarceration or worse. It would be like someone in Iran criticizing Khomeini.
> This is an interesting quote. If you replace Marx and Engels with Mohammed, Communism with Islam, and Russian with say Iranian you end up with "something you can't say".
Which is again interesting, because it isn't true. You'll have to be pretty blinded not to see the main difference between Marxism and Islam - namely that the latter is a religion which can exists independently of a government, while Marxism in it's very core is a layout for a state.
It doesn't make sense to live as a practising Marxist in a capitalism society, but you can very well live as a practising Muslim in a Christian or secular society.
Way too many governments are using Islam to subdue their people in a totalitarian state, and they are helped by islamophobes in the west, who lend them legitimacy by claiming that it's just the way Islam is.
Comments
> And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago.
Although fascism and Communism are pretty darn close (both seek total control of the economy and the culture), let's not forget that he was specifically writing against a Communist system, not a fascist system.
It's shocking that the BBC link doesn't even use the word "Communism" in it once. Can you imagine an article on someone who stood up to Hitler without using the word Nazi once?
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn can shed some light on that?:
"For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Solzhenitsyn
"Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
I suggest we honour Solzhenitsyn's life by actually not avoiding focusing his criticism directly at Communism and more generally at Totalitarianism.
What's also interesting is that Solzhenitsyn was not necessarily an enemy of authoritarian governments. Time Magazine ran an article in 1974, as he was expelled from the Soviet Union (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943077-1,00...):
Solzhenitsyn questions whether democracy would bring real freedom to Russia. "The multiparty parliamentary system is impracticable in Russia," he writes. "It has never been necessary to the prosperity and high achievements of mankind. Authoritarian regimes are not terrible in themselves--only those which are not answerable to God or their own conscience. Russia will most probably move from one authoritarian form of government to another. This will be the most natural and least painful path of development. Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force--a man can still live without harm to his soul under such regimes--what makes ours uniquely horrible is that it demands total surrender of the soul. What we need is not political liberation--only liberation of the soul from participation in the lie forced upon us."
"Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome."
This is an interesting quote. If you replace Marx and Engels with Mohammed, Communism with Islam, and Russian with say Iranian you end up with "something you can't say".
People can criticize communism in Russia today, or outside Russia in the past, but it takes real guts to do what Solshenitzyn did - criticizing communism when he knew it could result in incarceration or worse. It would be like someone in Iran criticizing Khomeini.
> This is an interesting quote. If you replace Marx and Engels with Mohammed, Communism with Islam, and Russian with say Iranian you end up with "something you can't say".
Which is again interesting, because it isn't true. You'll have to be pretty blinded not to see the main difference between Marxism and Islam - namely that the latter is a religion which can exists independently of a government, while Marxism in it's very core is a layout for a state.
It doesn't make sense to live as a practising Marxist in a capitalism society, but you can very well live as a practising Muslim in a Christian or secular society.
Way too many governments are using Islam to subdue their people in a totalitarian state, and they are helped by islamophobes in the west, who lend them legitimacy by claiming that it's just the way Islam is.