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Gabriel Hays - 2h ago
> I’ve never seen this level of sophistication on the information plane.
In an endeavour to put the Putin-Solzhenitsyn relationship into perspective, Daniel Mahoney, author of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology and co-editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader, insisted that it was “a terrible mistake to assume that Solzhenitsyn is an uncritical supporter of the status quo in Russia today”. Nonetheless, “he surely credits Putin for taking on the most unsavoury of the oligarchs, confronting the demographic crisis (it was Solzhenitsyn who first warned in his speech to the Duma in the fall of 1994 that Russians were in the process of dying out), and restoring Russian self-respect (although Solzhenitsyn adamantly opposes every identification of Russian patriotism with Soviet-style imperialism) …. The point is”, Mahoney concluded, “that Solzhenitsyn remains his own man, a patriot and a witness to the truth.”[vii]
In actual fact, although Solzhenitsyn had certainly come in from the cold since his days as a dissident, he was only pursuing in his discussions with Putin what he had sought to pursue with the Politburo of the Soviet Union thirty-four years earlier in his Letter to Soviet Leaders. The only difference was that Putin was prepared to listen to Solzhenitsyn’s wisdom, and to discuss it with him in person, whereas the communist old guard had sought to silence him. If Putin was really prepared to listen to Solzhenitsyn’s warnings about the population implosion caused by the culture of death, or about the need to tackle corruption, or the necessity of strong local democracy, or the difference between true nationalism and chauvinistic imperialism, why should Putin be criticised for listening or Solzhenitsyn for speaking his mind?
On June 23, 2007, the German weekly magazine, Der Spiegel, published an interview with Solzhenitsyn. Not surprisingly, the recent controversy over his acceptance of an award from Vladimir Putin was one of the key questions asked. The question, and Solzhenitsyn’s reply, warrant quotation in extenso:
Der Spiegel: Thirteen years ago when you returned from exile, you were disappointed to see the new Russia. You turned down a prize proposed by Gorbachev, and you also refused to accept an award Yeltsin wanted to give you. Yet now you have accepted the State Prize which was awarded to you by Putin, the former head of the FSB intelligence agency, whose predecessor the KGB persecuted and denounced you so cruelly. How does this all fit together?
Solzhenitsyn: The prize in 1990 was proposed not by Gorbachev, but by the Council of Ministers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, then a part of the USSR. The prize was to be for The Gulag Archipelago. I declined the proposal, since I could not accept an award for a book written in the blood of millions.
In 1998, it was the country’s low point, with people in misery; this was the year when I published the book Russia in Collapse [Russia in the Abyss]. Yeltsin decreed I be honored the highest state order. I replied that I was unable to receive an award from a government that had led Russia into such dire straits.
The current State Prize is awarded not by the president personally, but by a community of top experts. The Council on Science that nominated me for the award and the Council on Culture that supported the idea include some of the most highly respected people of the country, all of them authorities in their respective disciplines. The president, as head of state, awards the laureates on the national holiday. In accepting the award I expressed the hope that the bitter Russian experience, which I have been studying and describing all my life, will be for us a lesson that keeps us from new disastrous breakdowns.
Vladimir Putin – yes, he was an officer of the intelligence services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag. As for service in foreign intelligence, that is not a negative in any country – sometimes it even draws praise. George Bush Sr. was not much criticized for being the ex-head of the CIA, for example.
Asked whether the Russian people had learned the lessons of their communist past, Solzhenitsyn responded optimistically, referring to the “great number of publications and movies” on the history of the twentieth century as “evidence of a growing demand” for greater knowledge of the recent past. He was particularly pleased that the state-owned television channel had recently aired a series based on the works of Varlam Shalamov, whose Kolyma Tales is a classic of Gulag literature. The television adaptation showed “the terrible, cruel truth about Stalin’s camps”, said Solzhenitsyn. “It was not watered down.”
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>Zyklon B
The Jewish response to G. K. Chesterton's antisemitism, 1911–33
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322X.1990.9970052?journalCode=rpop20
>Driving the news: Musk secured around $5.2 billion in equity commitments from 18 investors, plus a rollover of nearly 35 million Twitter shares from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.