100 Years Ago a Writer Was Born

[Litwitlou]

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The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire


"In 1962, the literary magazine Novy Mir caused a sensation with a novella set in the gulag by an unknown author named Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.
That novella, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” took the country, and then the world, by storm."

nytimes.com/2018/12/11/opinion/solzheni ... e=Homepage

The title of the book (BTW) is "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
December 11, 1918, Kislovodsk, Russia
Died: August 3, 2008, Moscow, Russia




I should have posted this yesterday but it got by me.

[Robert Tulip]

Thanks Litwitlou, this Solzhenitsyn anniversary had passed me by unawares.

Reading his great book The Gulag Archipelago was a major influence in shifting me away from my youthful communist sympathies. I then proceeded to read A Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, For the Good of the Cause, Cancer Ward, First Circle, Lenin in Zurich and August 1914. These are all wonderful classics of modern literature that I highly recommend, especially to understand the risks of a renewal of totalitarian thinking today, and how to build the social capital of civil society as a primary inoculation against these dangers. I also have his memoir, The Oak and the Calf, which maybe I should read too.

Remarkable to read in the NYT piece that Putin has made Solzhenitsyn a hero in Russia.

[Litwitlou]

Thanks Litwitlou, this Solzhenitsyn anniversary had passed me by unawares.

Reading his great book The Gulag Archipelago was a major influence in shifting me away from my youthful communist sympathies. I then proceeded to read A Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, For the Good of the Cause, Cancer Ward, First Circle, Lenin in Zurich and August 1914. These are all wonderful classics of modern literature that I highly recommend, especially to understand the risks of a renewal of totalitarian thinking today, and how to build the social capital of civil society as a primary inoculation against these dangers. I also have his memoir, The Oak and the Calf, which maybe I should read too.

Remarkable to read in the NYT piece that Putin has made Solzhenitsyn a hero in Russia.

The Gulag Archipelago was a life changer for me as well. The part that still resonates me is how the KGB would come for people in the middle of the night and no one resisted. They all thought since they were innocent they'd be released. This happened hundreds of thousands of times. Also, I was reading that book in a bar and a woman began talking to me about it. This was in maybe 1998 — I still have that book with her phone number inside the front cover. Books are awesome in so many ways.

If anyone is interested I recommend One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It's a novella — a short, fast read, and it's unforgettable.

[DWill]

Remarkable to read in the NYT piece that Putin has made Solzhenitsyn a hero in Russia.

Putin has never quite denounced Stalin, I believe, although he has admitted that the Stalin era was not a happy one for the Soviet Union. Russian citizens apparently do love Stalin, however, maybe even more than they love Putin. Putin can make Solzhenitsyn a hero based on the writer's strong Russian nationalism.

[Robert Tulip]

Putin can make Solzhenitsyn a hero based on the writer's strong Russian nationalism.

This reminds me of Churchill's Russian doll line of a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Here is an article explaining Putin's admiration for Solzhenitsyn https://theimaginativeconservative.org/ ... earce.html