[this article was written for the Unz Review]
There are two names which often trigger a very strong and hostile reaction from many Russians: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Rezun aka “Viktor Suvorov”. The list of accusations against these two men usually includes:
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn: he made up numbers about 66 million people killed by the Soviet regime, he spoke favorably of General Andrei Vlasov, he was a CIA stooge, he was an anti-Semite, a Russian nationalist and a monarchist. Finally, there is a popular saying in modern Russia: “show me an anti-Soviet activist (“антисовечик”) and I will show you a russophobe” (which makes Solzhenitsyn a russophobe).
- Vladimir Rezun: he is a traitor, he is the creator of the theory that Hitler only preempted a Soviet attack which Stalin was about to launch, he is a MI-6 front to spread russophobic theories.
What I like to do when I hear these opinions is to ask a simple question: how many books by Solzhenitsyn and/or Rezun have you actually read?
The answer is typically rather nebulous. They mostly refer to either one or two books (at most) and a number of articles (often articles not even written by either author, but paraphrasing, often rather “creatively”).
This reminds me of an old Soviet joke: “a Party official comes to some factory or office to deliver a political lecture and absolutely tears into Solzhenitsyn’s famous “Gulag Archipelago” calling it an ugly collection of lies. One of the workers present asks the Party official whether he read the entire book to which the Party official replies “I don’t read such anti-Soviet filth!”
There is much truth to that as I have rarely encountered Solzhenitsyn-haters who actually read at least a few books by him.
Well, it just so happens that I discovered Solzhenitsyn when I was 16 and that I continued to study his writings for the rest of my life. Over the next years and decades, I read every single book and article Solzhenitsyn wrote several times (at least twice, if not more). As for Rezun, I read all his non-fiction books (I don’t like his fiction at all), so I want to chime in here and share with you, the reader, my strictly personal opinion about these two authors and men.
First, I will begin with a couple of general comments.
For one thing, both Solzhenitsyn and Rezun are terrific writers and it is a crying shame not to read them! Their styles are, however, dramatically different: Solzhenitsyn is often compared to Dostoevskii, and rightfully so, even if this applies more to contents and worldview than style. I would say that Solzhenitsyn’s style is unique and very uneven. His masterpiece is, at least in my opinion, the “Gulag Archipelago” (the worst being his poems). Yes, I know, this is a non-fiction book and not one of his purely literary masterpieces (say like “The Cancer Ward” or “In The First Circle“), but I personally happen to find the Gulag Archipelago his most powerful book not only on contents, but also on style and language. His other masterpiece is, again in my totally subjective opinion, his immense cycle “The Red Wheel“, especially “August 14” and “October 16“. On the other end of the spectrum, I also love his short stories (“Крохотки”). By any halfway objective measure, the man is a literary giant on par with Tolstoy or Dostoevskii.
Nobody would say that about Rezun. His style could be described as “pedestrian” if not outright “yellow” (in the meaning of “yellow journalism”). But that is not a problem. What Rezun lacks in elegance and academic rigor, he more than makes up for with a very lively and entertaining writing style, some really catchy ideas and a lot of “creative nonsense”. I have no problem with somebody hating Rezun as a person and traitor, or hating his vulgar style, but don’t tell me that he does not write well: millions of people read his books with immense fascination and appreciation. The man has undeniable talent.
The above is just to point out that those who say that they have not read these authors because they hate their style are most likely not being very honest and it is much more likely that they did not read these authors because of the contents of their books. That is what we shall look into next. Specifically, I will look at Alexander Solzhenitsyn first, he is the more complex one of the two, and then at Rezun.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The very first thing we need to remember is that Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, which means that he was raised by a generation of Russians which remembered pre-1917 Russia. The second thing which we need to also keep in mind is that he was raised by a generation which remembered the chaos of the Kerenskii regime followed by the bloodbath of the Bolshevik coup which itself was following by the bloody orgy of the Russian civil war.
Why is that important?
Because his brand of anti-Sovietism was much more similar to what we would see in the White Guard or the First Generation Russian emigration (those roughly 2 million Russians who left Russia following the Bolshevik coup). For example, this is why Solzhenitsyn wrote so much about the role of Jews in the first Bolshevik governments: this is a topic which was central to the wordview of White Guard and First Generation Russian emigres.
It is also pretty clear that while Solzhenitsyn already had anti-Soviet feelings before he was arrested, it is nonetheless obvious that his incarceration first in a labor camp and, later, into a special jail for scientists exposed Solzhenitsyn to even more anti-Soviet individuals and ideas.
Of course, none of that excuses any false figures (or misguided political opinions) Solzhenitsyn might have had, but it does explain where they came from and why Solzhenitsyn deemed them as credible. Speaking personally, I was raised in exactly that “White Guard” and “First Emigration” political culture, and I can assure you that Solzhenitsyn’s views were really very much “mainstream” amongst those Russians who still remembered pre-revolutionary Russia.
Next, Solzhenitsyn himself described how he asked all his fellow prisoners (the “zeks” he speaks of in the Gulag Archipelago) to send him all the historical documents, memoirs, academic papers, etc. possible for him to write the history of the Gulag. Needless to say, the Soviet archives were not made open for this purpose, nor did the KGB offer to write an amicus brief to help Solzhenitsyn.
Thus, just to recap: what is important here were Solzhenitsyn’s sources of information:
- Pre-1917 Russians who remembered the horrors of the revolution and civil war
- White Guard & First Wave Emigre memoirs and articles
- Exposure to those arrested for anti-Soviet activities (the famous Art 58), whether guilty or innocent, and who were incarcerated with Solzhenitsyn
- Articles by western scholars, political figures, think tanks (aka “western propaganda”).
Is it a big surprise that Solzhenitsyn did get a lot of things wrong, especially when the Soviet state offered very little in terms of credible historical information?
[Sidebar1: here I have to insert a rather lengthy side bar about the nature of the Soviet state. It is my opinion that over its history the Soviet regime changed rather often and rather dramatically. Personally, I would offer the following chronology:
- The early years: (1917-1922). The Bolshevik coup, then the civil war followed by the great Jewish terror of Iagoda, Frenkel, Ezhov, etc. the years of the so-called “war communism”, the NEP, and the collectivization, famine and “dekulakisation” (1932-1933). This period ended with the so-called “Stalin’s purges” (1936-1938).
- Stalin’s preparation for WWII: (1936-1941). During this period most of the Bolshevik “old guard” was either executed, or jailed or demoted and a completely new generation of commanders (“Stalin’s generals”), were put into all key military and civilian positions.
- The Great Patriotic War: (1941-1945). This dramatic period which saw the Russian nation fight for her very survival also saw a truly dramatic change in political culture: the former Bolshevik russophobia was replaced with praise for the heroic Russian nation, military ranks were fully reestablished (along with traditional Russian epaulets), churches were reopened and the repressions dramatically reduced.
- The post-war period and Stalin’s last years: 1945-1961. This period saw a quasi-miraculous rebirth of the Soviet Union from the ashes of WWII and a period of prosperity and stability. While Stalin was probably murdered by his entourage in 1953 and his main executioner (Lavrentii Beria) executed soon thereafter (also in 1953), their legacy of prosperity and stability lasted well beyond the 22nd CPSU Congress which saw Khrushchev make a 180 and suddenly denounce Stalin, the cult of his personality and the rehabilitation of millions of innocent Russians.
- The Great Betrayal (1961-1964): Khrushchev was the worst, most immoral, incompetent, hypocritical, inept and otherwise despicable Soviet leader ever (Eltsin was in the same league, imnsho). He was also a bloody tyrant. Yet, possibly to conceal his own incompetence and his rabid hatred for Stalin, he did liberalize the Soviet Union to a not-insignificant degree, yet just like in the case of Gorbachev’s “glastnost'” – his “new openness” did not help the Soviet Union, far from it. Eventually, Krushchev himself was overthrown by Brezhnev but by then it was already too late: while until 1961 most (or, at least, many) Russians did believe in the ideal of Marxism-Leninism and trusted their leaders, after the shock of the 22nd CPSU Party Congress a period of deep disillusionment gradually set in. (It would only really stop in 2000!).
- The slow-motion deconstruction of the Soviet state, followed by the inevitable collapse: 1964-1991. Most of us remember Brezhnev. Some probably also remember Andropov. Does anybody even remember Chernenko? Then came “Gorbi” and, for a few hours, Ianaev (of the GKChP 1991 coup) and then the Soviet Union was declared dead.
What is crucial to understand here is that each of these six periods generated a very different popular and political culture. Thus, while in the West you often would hear generalizations about “the Soviets”, the truth is that there never once was any one single monolithic Soviet culture. The perfect example of sharp contrast would be to compare the generation which went through the horrors of the Early Years period with the generation which defeated the Nazi war machine and then put the first man in space.
In the case of Solzhenitsyn he was very much a product of the Early Years and should be evaluated against this historical background and not under the kind of criteria a modern professional historian with full access to many preciously secret archives would have.]
Next, we need to take a look at the accusation that Solzhenitsyn’s was an apologist for General Vlasov.
The short answer is that yes, Solzhenitsyn did justify General Vlasov’s betrayal of his oath by saying that the Soviet Union had betrayed Vlasov long before Vlasov betrayed the Soviet Union. Furthermore, there is no doubt that Solzhenitsyn did absolutely hate Stalin whom he considered as a vicious mass murderer. How could he not approve of somebody taking up arms against Stalin? Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion was that if the Russian people had not seized this opportunity to overthrow the Soviet regime, then they really would have proven to the world that they are passive slaves.
[Sidebar2: one of the goals Solzhenitsyn set for himself when he wrote the Gulag Archipelago was to debunk a popular western theory which goes something like this: “Russians have never known freedom and they don’t care about it. Russians have a slave mentality and all they want is some kind of dictator (Czar or Commissar – makes no difference to them) to rule over them with an iron fist“. One of the things which Solzhenitsyn set out to prove was that far from being passive or slave-like, the Russian people resisted the Bolshevik regime at least until 1946! What does he mean by that? He refers to the fact that between 1917 and 1941, the Soviet regime was constantly threatened by all sorts of enemies (from monarchists to Trotskysts) and that following the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the Russian people simply seized this opportunity to rise up again against the Bolsheviks. From this point of view, the entire Vlasov phenomenon is nothing else but a continuation of the civil war. To summarize, when western russophobos liked to gloat about Russians having a slave mentality (they did a lot of them, especially the so-called “Russian/Soviet area specialists” Solzhenitsyn’s intention was to debunk this calumny and reply “oh yes, we did resist, for all of 30 years! You (meaning the folks in the West), in contrast, not only presented very little resistance to the Nazis, most of you became faithful and obedient servants of Hitler! The reality is that we, Russians, are far more freedom loving than you are, this is why we cannot be occupied and why it is so hard to rule over us.]
While I personally cannot justify Vlasov’s betrayal of his oath, I do fundamentally agree that the Soviet regime only achieved full power and security for itself after the end of the war.
Whatever may be the case, does that really surprise anybody that Solzhenitsyn had such views? Such views were, in fact, quite common amongst those who still remembered pre-1917 Russia. In many ways, Solzhenitsyn was a pure product of the political culture of the Early Years of the Soviet regime and I personally see him as culturally much closer to the pre-1917 Russians than to the Russians which were raised already under the Soviet regime.
That does not mean that Solzhenitsyn did not get some facts, even crucial ones, very wrong.
[Sidebar3: it is all well and fun to comfortably sit in our chairs and criticize those who have been wrong in their past, but fundamentally this is both logically wrong and morally hypocritical. The truth is that history, ALL history, very much including our recent history, is chock full with myths, generalizations, simplifications, rumors and, most of all, lies. We all know about 9/11, but that is hardly a unique example. Does anybody remember the “Timisoara massacre” or, even better, the “Srebrenica genocide”? Speaking of Srebrenica, how about the no less fake “massacres” in Markale or Racak? How about Colonel Gaddafi giving Viagra to his men to rape Libyan women? Or this innocent young nurse from Kuwait who reported about the Iraqis tossing babies out of incubators?
These were all lies.
And then, there are the much more serious cases, including the historical truth about the so-called “Holocaust”. Or, who carries the responsibility for starting WWII? How about the Nuremberg Trials which some hailed as a huge victory for civilized mankind, while many others called it a “kangaroo court” of victors. What about the Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia? Do you feel that this was a superb example of justice, or a crude Serbian-nation bashing PR operation?
If we can’t even agree on our recent history, do you really expect people from very different time periods (as all Russians today are, depending on their age), to agree on history, even crucial history?
Of course not!
So what we need to do now is not “smoke out” this or that personality and accuse them of lying (that would be a typically *Soviet* thing to do: to denounce a supposed enemy and demand that he be punished and silenced). We first need to consider what this person knew and did not know at the time that he/she wrote/said what we now consider lies. To err is human, and is therefore excusable. To deliberately lie is something quite different].
In the case of Solzhenitsyn, there is absolutely no evidence of deliberate deception on his part. In fact, the 66 million number is not even his. As I already pointed out in the past:
Here is what he actually wrote in this famous Gulag Archipelago about Soviet terror:
According to estimates by exiled professor of statistics IA Kurganov, from 1917 to 1959, and excluding war losses, only from terrorist destruction, suppression, hunger, the high mortality in the camps, and including the subsequent low birth rate, cost us 66.7 million people” (” The Gulag Archipelago “, part 3, Chapter 1). And in an interview in 1976 Solzhenitsyn said: “Professor Kurganov indirectly calculated that from 1917 to 1959 only from the internal war of the Soviet regime against its own people, that is, the destruction of its famine, collectivization, peasant’s deportation to prisons, camps and simple executions – just from these causes we lost, together with our civil war, 66 million people”. These figures INCLUDE the bloody Civil War, the so-called “War Communism“, the numerous anti-Bolshevik insurrections (such as the one in Tambov), the deaths resulting from the so-called “Collectivization” and “Dekulakization“, the “pure” political repression under the infamous Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code and even the subsequent low birth rate. So we are talking about a “grand max” estimate.
The first thing we can note here is that while Prof Kurganov tried to arrive at a “grand max” figure, the Soviet archives (which show dramatically lower numbers of people arrested and/or executed) only dealt with the number of people actually sentenced under Soviet law and does not include the specific events Kurganov chose to include.
Thus, directly comparing Kurganov’s figures with official Soviet documents is a case of apples and oranges.
Still, Solzhenitsyn clearly loathed the Bolsheviks and the Soviet regime and that most likely made him willing to accept facts and figures which he should have checked much more carefully.
There is also a lot of evidence that, ideologically speaking, Solzhenitsyn was a monarchist in the general line of Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev Tikhomirov or Prof. Ivan Ilyin (whom Putin seems to also quote very often…) and that he had an intense dislike, not only for Marxism or Leninism, but even for “moderate” social democracy (which he saw as unable to stand up to the Soviet Union and its allies). We also know for sure that Solzhenitsyn had nothing good to say about western democracies or the capitalist worldview. However, Solzhenitsyn was hardly a typical “reactionary” since he had very little good to say about the pre-1917 Russia, including its last Czar. In truth, Solzhenitsyn was a typical Russian idealist who combined rather liberal, and even modernist, views about the Russian Orthodox Church with a rather strong dislike of the political system put in place by Peter I (often called “The Great” by westernizers). In fact, I would argue that there are at least three different “Solzhenitsyns” which need to be considered separately:
Solzhenitsyn the author: here it is a matter of personal taste. He did get a Nobel in literature, but we all understand that the Nobel Committee is just a front for the AngloZionist PR machine. Personally? He is one of my favorite Russian authors along with, in a totally different style, Sergei Lukianenko.
Solzhenitsyn the historian: here every single word he wrote needs to be revisited and carefully evaluated in light of what we now think that we know. This is especially true of his Gulag Archipelago which Solzhenitsyn referred to as an “An Experiment in Literary Investigation” thus clearly indicating that this was, by definition, a work in progress, an experiment, and an investigation. As I recently wrote, there is no worthwhile history which is not revisionist, and with Solzhenitsyn being both so famous and so wrong, it is only natural that his writings are the object of a concerted barrage of criticisms and reevaluation.
Solzhenitsyn the philosopher: yet again a case for personal taste. I would argue that Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a giant standing on the shoulders of other giants such as Khomiakov, Dostoevskii, IlIlyinyin, Solonevich, Leontiev, Tikhomirov, Rozanov and many others. Right now his philosophical legacy is completely obfuscated by the historical discussions, but that pendulum will eventually swing the other way, and then his moral philosophy will be studied on its merits.
Right now, these are not good times for “Solzhenitsyn studies”, to say the least. In the West he is hated as Great-Russian nationalist and an anti-Semitic monarchist while in Russia is hated like a russophobic CIA stooge who calumniated his own people and who defended a traitor like Vlasov. These beliefs are ingrained way too hard for me to even bother trying to discuss them here. That discussion will happen, but only once the stridently anti-Solzhenitsyn haters will give way to folks with a better personal knowledge of what Solzhenitsyn actually wrote and what he actually meant. Right now most of his detractors are busy simply flaming the man, everything he wrote and all those who read him.
[Sidebar4: while he was in exile in Cavendish, VT, Solzhenitsyn once told a visiting friend of mine the following: “right now, we don’t have our own country under our feet, this is why it is too early to write on this topic (he was referring to a then still secret book of his which he eventually published after his return to Russia under the title “200 Years Together“), but as soon as Russia recovers her freedom, I will publish this book“. I will paraphrase this by saying that I believe that as long as the former Soviet elites and their off-springs occupy most of the key positions in modern Russia, no serious discussion about Solzhenitsyn will be possible, the level of emotional involvement is simply too high. But that too shall pass. There is already a generation of young Russians out there which does not even remember the Soviet era or the Cold War. It is *their* kids, and even grand-kids, who will, one day, give a fair historical evaluation of this intellectual giant. Right now, modern Russia still lives “in the shadows” of the former Soviet Union. But, sooner or later, Russia will come out from this shadow – that is when Solzhenitsyn’s views will become front and center again]
There is one more thing about Solzhenitsyn I want to share with you: in his pamphlet “Our Pluralists” Solzhenitsyn concludes his essay against Russian “liberals” and “democrats” (in the Russian meaning of the word) by the following words: “we thought you were fresh, but you are still the same“. I often think of this sentence when I read the writings of the Solzhenitsyn haters. During the Soviet period the Solzhenitsyn haters liked to refer to him as “Solzhenitser” (hinting that he might be a Jew). Nowadays, Solzhenitsyn haters in Russia refer to him as SoLZHEnitsyn (the letters “lzhe” means “lie” in Russian, suggesting that he is a liar). That tells you all you need to know about the degree of sophistication these folks are capable of…
Now let’s look at our other traitor,
Vladimir Rezun aka “Viktor Suvorov”
Vladimir Rezun, who writes under the pen name “Viktor Suvorov”, also wrote a lot of books, but that is where his similarity to Solzhenitsyn ends. For one thing, Rezun is from a much later generation, he was born 30 years after Solzhenitsyn, and his formative years were in the 1960s, during Khrushchev’s “Great Betrayal”. Obviously, Rezun did not live through the war, nor during the glorious post-war years. The other big difference between the two men is that while Alexander Solzhenitsyn was forcibly sent into exile, Rezun defected and that defection was officially voluntary (there are some indirect signs suggesting that he was kidnapped in Geneva by the British – I consider both versions equally credible). Then he became a typical defector, let me explain what I mean by that.
I have met quite a few defectors in my life (and quite a few potential defectors who eventually decided not to defect). Here is the typical chronology of what happens to defectors (and here is the reason why I always strongly advised all Soviets against defecting):
- First, you are a “hot potato”. Usually, nowhere nearly as hot as you like to pretend as defectors all need to “sell” themselves to their new masters (that is, indeed, what western officials become for them) so they almost always grossly over-state their opposition to the Soviet regime, how important they were before they defected and how useful they will be now. This does not work very long as western debriefers pretty rapidly can establish who and what the new defector really was in the past and what he/she really knows. After that, these defectors are typically provided with some means of living and typically forgotten.
- Next, you try to impress the general public. The best way to achieve that is for you to write a best seller. Then another one, then one more. That very rarely works for a simple reason: whatever of interest the defector had to say typically comes out in the first, rarely in a second book. After that, the “publicity shock value” imagination tank is empty and defectors typically begin to make up nonsense. That nonsense typically gets worse with each subsequent book. Except for a few diehard commie-haters nobody takes these silly books seriously and the once “hot potato” defector becomes a total nobody, forgotten by all (here I think of that SOB Kalugin for example).
- Eventually, defectors experience a mental collapse, followed by years of substance abuse and, very often, suicide. They realize that nobody needs or cares about them; they realize that their former bosses have long forgotten about them, as have their new bosses too. They have no friends, mostly deeply dysfunctional love affairs which end in disaster, their families often turn away from them and, last but not least, they miss the people and country which they have betrayed and left.
In the case of Rezun he wrote his first best-seller in 1982 entitled “Inside the Soviet Army” which was very entertaining (he had another book before that, “The Liberators” 1981, but it was not that successful). Then, in 1985, he wrote “The Aquarium“, a rather bad and sensationalist book about the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU. Then came 1987 and one of Rezun’s worst books: Spetsnaz, a collection of nonsensical invented stories which was a flop. By then, Rezun clearly had a problem. But being a very intelligent man, Rezun came up with a brilliant idea.
It all began with a short 1985 article followed, in 1988, by the Russian edition of his most famous book, “Icebreaker” (“Ледокол”) in which Rezun, writing as “Viktor Suvorov” claimed he has had evidence that Stalin was about to attack Nazi Germany and that Hitler had no choice but to strike first. His evidence? Lots of things, hundreds of claims, ranging from the somewhat credible to the outright silly. I won’t go into all of them here (lots of excellent historians have already done that – I think of Col. Ret David Glantz’s superb books). I will just mention one which I find particularly galling: Rezun claims that the Soviet military had plans to attack Germany and that various Russian units had even received special glossaries to allow them to speak to the folks they were planning on attacking: the Germans.
I am quite sure that the Soviets had plans to attack Germany. In fact, I am also sure that the Soviets had plans to attack most, if not all, of their neighbors. If not, the entire Soviet General Staff ought to have to been shot (again!). Why? Because that is what the military does in peacetime: prepare for war: including both defensive and offensive operations. Think for yourself: what if you were a Soviet general and you were suddenly summoned to Stalin’s late night working sessions and Stalin asked you “what are our plans to liberate the German workers and peasants from the Nazi regime and how long would such a war last if we attack first?“. Can you imagine yourself replying, “Comrade Stalin, we have no such plans!“? I think that you would die of shame, and possibly fear, even before meeting “your” firing squad. Remember the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 or the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940? They are not exactly known for being stunning successes (though Rezun does have some very interesting views on the latter, but they are not within the scope of this article). So, OF COURSE, the Soviets did have plans for war against Germany, just as Russia today has a plan to destroy the USA (which also has such a plan of its own!). The existence of such plans does most emphatically NOT prove that the leaders of Russia or the USA have the actual intention to attack each other! As for “Russian-German” pocket glossaries, that is just what military linguists mostly do when not at war. Trust me, I used to be one such a linguist – a Sprachspezialist in German – and I even saw “German-Chinese” glossaries! Yet these hardly indicate that Switzerland was planning to invade China, right?!
Did Rezun successfully prove his case? Depends whom you ask, of course. I am not a military historian and I think that this issue should be researched by professional historians, not amateurs like myself. What I do emphatically state is that I think that Rezun’s books should be read and discussed. What I find plain stupid, is what a few Russian TV news shows have done: first, they denounce Rezun as a traitor which he probably was (unless he was kidnapped, of course), but which is also a total non-sequitur. Then they interview his former colleagues who describe his horrible personal character (incompetent, alcoholic, generally disliked) but they fail to explain how such a terrible person, and an incompetent one to boot, managed to get a position in one of the most prestigious GRU “rezidenturas” in the West (the Soviets also did exactly the same with Oleg Kalugin who was assigned to the KGB rezidentura in Washington, DC, no less!). Then, in what they probably imagine as a coup de grâce, they get on a soapbox and proclaim that Rezun’s views are extremely offensive and that he must be a MI6 agent which, whether true or not, is also entirely irrelevant as a book or a historical theory ought be judged on its intrinsic merits, or lack thereof, not on the character of its author.
This is especially true of Rezun for another, special, reason. Long AFTER he wrote his books about how Stalin wanted to attack Germany, Rezun wrote an absolutely amazing historical book entitled “The Purification” (“Очищение”) in which he not only revisits Stalin’s purges but in which he brilliantly defends them. If you understand Russian I urge you to read the book (you can download it in Russian and for free here). The key thesis of the book is as follows: Stalin understood that the first generation of Bolsheviks were superbly skilled at massacring innocent civilians in huge numbers, but as military commanders they were big fat ZEROs (including Marshal Tukhachevskii whom folks in the West always present as some kind of military genius – which he sure was not!). Furthermore, by the mid-1930s Soviet Russia was really cracking and almost collapsing due the hatred most Russians have for their persecutors and torturers, thus while the bloody purge of the Secret Police and Party was seen by these elites (and their Trotskyst supporters abroad) as a “horrible purge”, for most common people this purge must have looked like a liberation and justified execution of the worst of the worst of the Bolshevik monsters. Furthermore, Rezun makes very interesting comparisons between Stalin’s generals and Hitler’s – and he concludes that Stalin had a much better lot (towards the end of the war, Hitler agreed, by the way). I find that thesis very compelling and I hope that one day “The Purification” will be translated into English.
None of the above should be interpreted as a defense of Rezun or, for that matter, Stalin. In the case of Rezun, I am not defending him at all, I am only deploring that he is vilified and dismissed, rather than critically read. As for Stalin himself, I described my personal feelings about the man in my essay “The Controversy About Stalin – a “basket” of Preliminary Considerations“, so I don’t need to repeat myself here.
Conclusion: Vladimir Putin as an example to emulate?
Vladimir Putin is often accused of being nostalgic of the Soviet Union and of wanting to recreate it.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
It is true that Putin declared several times that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” (“крупнейшая геополитическая катастрофа века”). What Putin was referring to was not some kind of nostalgia for the Soviet Union, but an acute realization of the unspeakable suffering the collapse of the Soviet Union meant for millions of people.
In fact, Putin has exactly *zero* nostalgia for the bad old USSR and he is not shy about speaking his mind about it, especially when he is confronted by those who now idealize the Soviet era. Not only that, but Putin has very publicly shown his immense respect for Solzhenitsyn. And the feeling was very mutual as we can tell from this photo:
Contrast this with Putin’s often publicly expressed disgust with defectors!
See, for example, what Putin declared during an interview with the British Financial Times: (emphasis added)
As a matter of fact, treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Not at all. But traitors must be punished. This gentleman, Skripal, had already been punished. He was arrested, sentenced and then served time in prison. He received his punishment. For that matter, he was off the radar. Why would anybody be interested in him? He got punished. He was detained, arrested, sentenced and then spent five years in prison. Then he was released and that was it. As concerns treason, of course, it must be punishable. It is the most despicable crime that one can imagine.
By the way, this suggests that Putin does not share Solzhenitsyn’s sympathy for General Vlasov proving, yet again, that a critical mind can always separate the chaff from the wheat.
Then there is the way Putin likes to mention Ivan Ilyin in his speeches. It is pretty obvious to me that in terms of his personal views on history and politics, Putin is clearly an avid reader of both Ilyin and Solzhenitsyn (which creates a cognitive dissonance amongst Solzhenitsyn-haters who support Putin). However, that in no way implies that Putin endorses or agrees with everything Solzhenitsyn or Ilyin wrote or said. But it does show that not all minds in Russia are still “under the shadow of the Soviet Union”.
But change is inevitable.
First, the pendulum of history will swing the other way, and a lot of ideas which seem popular today are bound to gradually fade out, replaced by hopefully a much more careful evaluation of historical figures like Solzhenitsyn. Second, a lot of people who were raised in a blind hatred of “traitors” will simply pass away, while their descendants will not have the same knee-jerk reactions. Last, but most definitely not least, the future Russia will have to rediscover her historical, philosophical, spiritual and cultural roots, at which point the ideas of philosophers like Solzhenitsyn or Ilyin will automatically get center stage once again (though not necessarily to be uncritically endorsed).
The Saker
A very interesting journey through the last century of Russia and the Soviet Union experience, through the prism of two “traitors”.
Of course, like most things Russian, this has a density that requires language skills to navigate.
I’ve read some of the works of Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag being the first. It took a summer to complete it. I’ve read some of his speeches in the US and have a faint memory of reading parts of other books. I explored 200 Hundred Years, but the English language versions, some partial on the Internet, I never trusted these versions since they were not official or by his translators or sanctioned by his wife or publisher in France.
It is a disgrace that an authorized translation into English is not in existence. Jews have stopped it. Afraid of the truth, no doubt.
The language barrier limits my exploration, but not my interest. So, today’s article is an entreaty to plunge again into the world of Solzhenitsyn.
What we need is trustworthy histories of the span of time that shaped him. That context is important to understand his actions and creative output.
Saker, could you point to English language histories? The famous ones I pursued were British and turned out to be biased, Russophobic and ultimately, untrustworthy. Are Russian-authored histories available in English language?
I would also be interested in reading it.
Exactly what I have been searching for for ages. Especially after reading the horribly Colonialist, arrogant, prejudiced “Journey into Russia” by the much adored and lionised Laurens van der Post on top of another biased and misinformed “History” I swore the only history of Russia I would read would be a good, verified translation of one written by an outstanding Russian Historian.
Nikolai Starikov has published five titles translated to English
https://nstarikov.ru/books
https://twohundredyearstogether.wordpress.com/about/
Most banned book in the world, now has a website, and a complete english translation, note nobody on earth will ‘print’ this book the Mossad has issued a Fatwah that anybody who dare publish this book should be drawn&quartered, but first disembowled
However, the book was published in Russian already, in paper.
Concerning the article of Saker’s:
wow, well written and many THANKS for that.
I personally have read almost all the works of Solzhenicyn and Rezun. Yeah, incl. the fat volumes of Archipelago. And I like Suvorov’s fiction to some extend too.
Russian is ok, publishing in English is what will bring the wrath of God ( Mossad ) down upon you.
I guess they figure there is no fear, as nobody on earth reads Russian, and the ‘they’ don’t care what Russian’s think, as Russians are the ‘bad guys’
Excellent book, I read this english translation about 4 years ago, its really good for confirmation bias, in understanding how Zion (AANZ) took over Russia. There is a similar book in China, where they tell the story of how ZION took over USA, but its the same this Chinese book has not been translated into English. But the Jews don’t care, because in China the Chinese look onto the Jews with admiration for their skill in leading the USA-Goy around by the leash.
In the USA “200 Years Together” is seen as a negative, while to an entrepreneurial society like China, its seen as a tutorial on how to manage and train western people.
It’s quite strange everything in the USA that is bad, is good in Asia; There is no political correctness in Asia; A woman is a woman, a man is a man. Just like in the Muslim world. The odd thing is that Zionism doesn’t seem to be interested in castrating the Asian Male, only the Western goy male.
I read this book in Serbian translation in about 2004. I also found out it was translated into French,
German and in a number of other, mostly European, languages. I did read a few selected paragraphs
to my mother (who couldn’t read any longer) and her first reaction was that he was antisemite.
When I argued that there are over 70 pages of references and citations. 95% of which are from Jewish and Israeli writers/publications, and that A. Solzhenitsyn himself complained of the amount of effort he and his wife spent on checking and rechecking reliability of citations, she, like most Jewish people I talked with, remained unconvinced. That is a fairly classical reaction to alternative viewpoints by those indoctrinated with, or vested to, common/official “truth”.
Regardless of whether or not one thinks A. S. was antisemite , or whether or not he was cherry-picking through Jewish-Israeli publications to support his thesis, his greatest contribution is :
1. A new wealth of apparently reliable historical information he and his wife painstakingly collected from an
almost forgotten and still hidden archives.
2. Presentation and quick ratings of many statements from many of his Jewish friends coming from full
political spectrum.
Some of his personal insights I find remarkable, specifically, the one he offered toward the end of the Vol. II, which roughly states that as long as the Jews were interested in socialism USSR continued to grow, and as soon as they lost that interest, and started to emigrate , it was the beginning of the end of that socialist ideology and USSR as the state. That statement is remarkable in many ways and I am not sure that it is entirely true. Nevertheless, it would be a great debate topic .
Best regards, Spiral
Hi Spiral,
I could not find the french translation. Do you have the source available? Thanks for your help.
An authorized French translation is published in two volumes by Fayard.
•Deux siècles ensemble, tome 1 : Juifs et Russes avant la révolution
•Deux siècles ensemble, tome 2 : Juifs et Russes pendant la période soviétique
This notion that a country or organization can only prosper with the help of Jews is interesting, and the Jews certainly do propagate that idea everywhere, though they probably got the idea from Solzhenitsyn.
But surely any country or organization can establish a task team which replicates what Jews do. Their major asset is having their brothers in all countries, and in all the cities in all those countries, then seeing what works in those countries/cities and then taking it to other countries/cities which don’t have the same thing, where the natives then think that the Jews are just so brilliant. Apparently fish and chips made its way from Portugal to England via this route. Also if one country/city has an abundance of something that is scarce in another country/city, and they see this possibility because they live in both countries/cities, then trade is possible, and he “who trades, prospers, even over rulers.”
But ultimately communism was not stable in any case, as was the idea of the USSR conquering all to form the desired NWO’s One World Government. So maybe they departed to put their effort behind another who might have better success in achieving the desired NWO’s One World Government, the West; though that doesn’t seem to be going too well either.
Most of us like sticking in one place, one city, one suburb in one city, so its the ultimate Globalists, the Jews, who are able to see the possibilities because they infiltrate everywhere. Surely that behavioral pattern can be replicated by a task team.
Western prosperity is overrated anyway, it just seems to be synonymous with debt and Ponzi scheme bubbles and lots of hype. Maybe the slower organic type of grow Russia is into is better than the exponential variety of both the West and China.
“This notion that a country or organization can only prosper with the help of Jews…”
I think Solzhenitsyn meant that the Jews had birthed the ideas & systems that underlay the SU, nursed & nurtured them, and when they withdrew their support, the system naturally decayed and died.
This is the idea that you should analyse and criticise – not the notion you suggest.
People like this man were doing business with their brothers inside USSR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer
DeBeers was doing business with USSR. And on and on and on ….
When the time came to roll up the Show they … withdrew “support” to collapse it and then attempted to pickup the piece at penny on the dollar.
Putin stopped them whether people like it or not. Period.
Happiest places on earth are benevolent monarchy’s.
I think Bhutan is consistently rated best place on earth. Very hard to go there, they put up many obstacles to keep outsiders out, .e.g. to keep it a nice place.
Yes, all of Western Capitalism is a “Cargo Cult”, with corporate and lower caste welfare kicking the can.
I preferred Emma Goldman ‘Anarchism”, she said Anarchism was Communalism in its purest form. Note she said ‘communalism’, not communism. I think many Israelis that I know who were raised young on the Kibbutz, I never hear them talk of return to the Kibbutz, they all talk of getting a “Tel-Aviv Condo” upon retirement
I suspect that the narrative of ‘communism’ for the goy, is that shape of a ‘human tax farm’ aka Government administered by the Jewish elite, they have course have no desire themselves of retiring on that farm, ok it’s fun for kids, but I suspect the real deal lay in Tel-Aviv and hanging out with the movers&shakers.
Amen!
The great Norwegian anthropologist Unni WIkan and her more influential spouse (and expert on exo-Perisian populaisions Fredrik Barth and his mentor von Morgentiærne — also a grrat explorer of ‘India-Afghan border languages ) — have both covered thes issues and agree the Bhutanese are probably the most non.sorrowful people of this world between Venus and Mars.
This thread is going off topic. Please take to the MFC. Mod
This concept, dear Pete Communisme, is in Chinese called “王道/Wáng dào”, i.e; “The royal road”. If beneign, it should be the precursor to the “xiǎokāng shèhùi/小康社會” — The ‘society of incipient affluence(Gailbraith)’ . Thank You for Your comment!
Thank you for posting that link👍
Please contact me at this number Per/Norway: +47 97848988 Tollef Ås Riis/Vinderen — Opslo
Like another Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn supported the imperialist war on Vietnam. In a 1978 address at Harvard University, entitled “The Exhausted West” (see the 1978 July-August issue of Harvard Magazine), in which he lambasted the moral cowardice and the loss of will power of the West, here is what he wrote (motivated by his hatred of communism):
“However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam War. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or Communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American intelligentsia lost its nerve, and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your short-sighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam
capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing spell; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you . That small Vietnam was a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation’s courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small, Communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?”
In the next paragraph he writes:
“At present, some Western voices have already spoken of obtaining protection from a third power against aggression in the next world conflict, if there is one; in this case, the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome on any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with Evil; also, it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people turned around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia in our day.”
Thus, he refers to Vietnam as a ‘half-country’ and to China as “evil” – one can draw one’s own conclusions.
I too have read some of Solzhenitsyn’s works. I am sorry to say that in no way can he be compared to Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. In fact, IMHO, no European writer, in the rich literature of Europe, has the stature of Tolstoy (even Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo). One has only to read “War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina” or “Resurrection” to see for himself or herself.
Unfortunately, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who undoubtedly was a talented writer, could not come out of his hatred of communism (which was generated by his life experiences) and his yearning for the old corrupt, exploitative society of the Russian aristocracy (in this sense he was a reactionary), to attain those heights reached by geniuses like Leo Tolstoy and Rabindranath Tagore.
Hmm, just in case I get your point correctly I’ll ask a simple question. If Solzhenitsyn was wrong about the third power helping the West, why did China attack Vietnam just after Vietnam won the war against the West.
Let me remind you: China’s invading army was destroyed by the Vietnamese army in no time.
One more thing, I am not surprised about Solzhenitsyn’s opinion regarding the war in Vietnam, simply because he hated the commies for which he obviously had a reason.
PLA plundered northern Vietnam province and Vietnam could do nada about that…why? They cracked Red Kmer regime who was Chinas ally..Vietnamese didnt fight with all in attitude..they left only small army against PLA.
@KB, I used my memory and as I remember China threw in 150,000 strong army with which China thought it could conquer Vietnam, what it did not count on was that battle hardened Vietnamese beat the crap out of them in no time.
Looking at Wikipedia, I’d like to say that SU during the war against the West used China to transit the weapons. Therefore, no wonder SU had problems supplying Vietnam during this conflict.We must remember though that in ’79 or there about SU was beginning to experience it’s own internal problems, hence perestoyka followed shortly.
Today, Russia continues to very strong ties with Vietnam.
Of course, the anti-communism of Solshenechin is freely sprinkled with traditional Russian Czarist-time fear of the “Yellow Peril”. The Czar was inspired in this by the German Keiser who had been influenced buy the British propaganda of Henry, king of Britain and Raj of India before WW1.
A great overview of Russian history which is of special interest to me as hubby and his family fled the Soviet Union. The battle of Kursk overran their village which was part of the Autonomous Lokot under Kaminski and German occupation. Kaminski later joined up with Vlasov (at least that is what I read) – so they both could be ‘traitors’.
I have read all of the Gulag by Solzhenitsyn. Grim going but necessary to understand the era my in-laws lived through.
Some time back I read parts of 200 Hundred Years as only some was available in English.
However, in recent times the ‘forbidden’ chapters were online, but that site ‘surprisingly’, no longer exists.
Thanks for the thought provoking article.
The humans (we are all people of different earth locations) who have passionate virtues are considered by the vile, confused and / or disturbed, to be an enemy. Our own species decided to be separate. That tragedy must be cured. Human Being is what it is. Humans doing is a form of distraction from Being. We are not appearing to understand the simple truth of nature. Humans that cannibalize other Humans have control and do not appear to be able to be enlightened. The conscious mind seeks to be superconsciousness. The degenerate mind seeks to do what great artistes such as Goya “Saturn Devouring His Son” painted. Long way to go. Love your brilliant mind Saker. Your honoring the great Russians is truly the level of Goya.
A most interesting, clear and illuminanting perspective on Russian history, especially for those who do not know Russian, and who are hesitant to pass judgment based on prejudice, iideology or hearsay – or who judge things in response to personal feelings derived, in turn, from personal emotions.
As The Saker points out, we are inevitably prisoners of our own times and of our own sometimes hidden self-contradictions. This essay helps to sort the judgments on Solzhenitsyn into separate literary, philosophical, historical and psychological components. A task, for that matter, almost or completely ignored in Western criticism at large – a generalization not based on any detailed personal knowledge.
Still, Solzhenitsyn’s “Deux Siecles Ensemble,” along with Dostoyevsky’ specific chapter on the same issue (in his “Diary of a Writer”), have helped convince me that the reasons for my opinion on the same matter, are not biased by unwarranted prejudice.
my problem with both of them is not even their personalities, backgrounds or affiliations (though in Rezun’s case, him being a traitor certainly does not help his case). it’s the ridiculously huge amount of incorrect information and provably false numbers and statements in their writings. in Solzhenitsyn’s case, Archipelag Gulag has been analyzed by a lot of people in the Russian historical community, and so many inaccuracies have been found there that it cannot really be considered anything but pseudohistorical fiction. basically “Harry Potter and Stalin’s Gulag” level. his books certainly have literary value, but only as fiction, not as credible historical documents.
Rezun’s case is worse. he’s grossly incompetent in military history (and has no background in it either) and though he tries to obscure it by quoting names and numbers endlessly, when real military historians start to analyze it, it’s even worse than Solzhenitsyn, exactly because he has so many numbers/statements that can be fact-checked and proven wrong (as opposed to Solzhenitsyn, who’s much more vague and generic). Aleksey Isaev, PhD in military history and one of the deepest specialists on WWII in Russia today , has done it on many occasions and even wrote a book specifically analyzing and taking apart “Ледокол” (Icebreaker) and other Rezun’s books, called “Антисуворов” (Anti-Suvorov – A Big Lie by a Little Man) http://militera.lib.ru/research/isaev_av1/index.html
Isaev is literally a walking encyclopedia on WWII, and can quote regiment numbers, configurations, commanders, operational logic and backgrounds from memory for literally hours on end. when he finds literally dozens of errors within a single page of Rezun, it tells volumes about the historical accuracy/quality of Rezun’s writings.
Cross posted from https://www.unz.com/tsaker/reading-the-traitors-a-good-or-a-bad-idea/#comment-3732126
Rezun, Icebreaker Hitler pre-empted Stalin.
Please explain why H. Liddell Hart in his interviews with German generals:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/German-generals-talk-Berkley-Books/dp/B0007ESISK/
Which was revised as:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Side-Hill-Germanys-Generals/dp/0330253417/
These generals never hint at any of this nonsense.
It is pure shameless invention to please Rezun’s new masters.
Also, in above mentioned book, not one word is mentioned about vast Russian supplies being seized by the German invaders.
Seems that Rezun was pranking his patrons: “How dumb are these people ? Will they believe anything ?”
Consider the following, does it sound like Germany was in a rush to invade Russia ? Yes, there was a small window of time – after the winter thaw and before the next winter freeze. That was part of what motivated Germany. Stalin’s imminent invasion is complete B.S.
Thanks for this great article, dear Saker! Truth is very difficult business. Most people prefer to keep it simple, being loyal to their habitual concepts. But we can only grow in wisdom by accepting that historical exploration always is “a work in progress” and some of our cherished “knowledge” is nothing but cheap propaganda.
“As concerns treason, of course, it must be punishable. It is the most despicable crime that one can imagine.”
and that my friends is the story surrounding the prophecy of Gog and Magog of Ezekiel chapter 38 and 39 and of Revelation chapter 20 all of which occurs after the one thousand year reign of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus on earth!!!!
I sincerely hope that the Christian west will and soon completely repudiate all notions that Russia and Germany are these nations Gog and Magog.
The error of this is truly staggering and its belief among the political class is frightening stuff. Bush for example and of course Trumpf Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East currently with Magog now seen as what preparing the way for Armageddon?
see book Lies, all Lies by Gerry Fox
Alexander Solzhenitsyn IS a patriot.
I was not able to read the last part of “Gulag Archipelago” “the spring” .
My emotional feeling was not able to support it.
Until Orhodox conserve their spirit there is no place for the empire.
One more thing.
The first chapter of “Gulag Archipelago” “THE ARREST” is enough to say,
How can it possible and GOD where were you.?!
Thank Saker the sharing knowelde.
I’ve never read any of the books by Solzhenitsyn, likely never will. I did however watch him in an interview once, all of about 10 minitues long. My impression from that; without reading any of his books……….he was Russian to his core, body, soul and spirit.
Alexandre Soljenitsyne “Deux siècles ensemble 1795 – 1995” is available in french at the Following address
http://jean.de.peyrelongue.free.fr/jean.htm
Viktor Suvorov “The Chief Culprit” is available in English at the Following address
http://jean.de.peyrelongue.free.fr/suvorov/Stalin.htm
and the Icebreaker at
http://jean.de.peyrelongue.free.fr/suvorov/icebreaker.htm
Could someone please translate this for me “…….of the GKChP 1991 coup” ?
One of the interviewees on the Documentary “, was remembering the Dark years of American invasion and recollected “that GKChP circus, when the CIA leader led Marines from the USA embassy on a march down Red Square to the Mausoleum; they were celebrating their victory”.
It’s always bothered me that I had no idea what he meant by CKChP. Here it is again :-)
Help?? Many thanks.
The State Committee on the State of Emergency, abbreviated as SCSE, was a group of eight high-level Soviet officials within the Soviet government, the Communist Party, and the KGB, who attempted a coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev on 19 August 1991. American publicist Georges Obolensky also called it the Gang of Eight.
Ah, thank you Larchmonter. I had an unintended deletion in the post above, which tends to happen when I do a block format. It was the Documentary “Putin; The documentary sure to change everything you thought you knew about the President” by Andrei Kondrashev..
The quote about that gang marching down Red Square with the CIA director and American marines now is all the more meaningful. Clearly standing up and acknowledging themselves for the traitors they were. It means so much more now I know.
I read Gulag Archipelago in Serbian translation many years ago but I did not too much positive opinion then. Maybe if I read it today it would be different.
I have had impression about Solzhenitsyn as a some Orthodox mystic and fanatic and I have never had an opinion about that as a right path for Russia.
It would be path to absolute disaster.
I don’t know, but I did not like him. And those numbers of 66 million deaths are pure fantasy.
When I was young I was communist and I respected USSR despite the fact of ideological conflict between USSR and Yugoslavia 1948 – 1953. In Yugoslavia we blamed Stalin for that and developed anti-Stalinism after 1948.
Of course today is everything somehow different but I still consider Stalin as a very significant historical person in Russian and USSR history.
Nothing is black and white. So not communist USSR and not Imperial Russia. Imperial Russia could not survive. It was doomed with or without bolshevic revolution. And whites were nothing better than reds.
Stalin was ruthless person but I think he did not have much choice. And Stalin really created great and successful state. His crimes are overblown to the Science Fiction proportions. Yes, he was not very pleasant person but in his position he had to be like that or to share fate of all weak leaders like Czar Nicholas II. And Russia and USSR would collapse and it would be destroyed by Germans.
Leader of such state as Russia is MUST BE STRONG PERSON. Like Ivan the Terrible, like Peter the Great, like Katherine the Great.
Otherwise, Russia would not survive. Putin is right when he said recently that Russian federation needs strong Presidential system. But also has to develop specific kind of democracy to avoid any dictatorship in future.
And to achieve that hybrid which would be functional and successful is very difficult task.
I hope that Russia with Putin and leaders which will come after him will be successful in searching of the political model suitable for Russia.
I do not know about that Rezun but I think that he was a traitor. The same as that quisling Vlasov.
No excuse for such people and ideological hatred toward certain regime cannot be excuse for betrayal of their people or their country in hard times when their people fight for life against the enemy that wants to destroy their people and country.
General Vlasov was not real quisling, I believe months of starving in swamp made him enemy of Soviet regime. Even Zhukov could become agent against Reds, if conditions were right imo and nothing wrong with that.
Solzenicin is much better writer than Tolstoj imo..there is much deeper life story, suffering in gulags, fighting against evil state, starving-real thug life.
My order of A.I.S. work:
1.Rakovij korpus
2.Arhipelag Gulag
3. First circle
4.V avguste1914
Solzenicin have cured me of cult of death named socialism/komunism
which was put into my cradle…I was really blinded, I have taught our Partizans were some kind of angels fighting against Whites ( Slovene katholics) and against filthy fashists.
He was a giant of human race.
“I do not know about that Rezun but I think that he was a traitor.”
This is exactly what the Saker’s article is warning against. Forming opinion based on gossips and insufficient knowledge is something I’m trying to get away from. I had my personal mental vendetta against Rezun and Solzhenitsyn, but as I attained a bit more knowledge in this regard, that is unsullied by the pack of dishonest historians and reviewers, my view on this subject gradually changed. It is a long road and it is unlikely to ever end.
I graduated from an Ivy League college in 1972, but it wasn’t Harvard, where Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave its 1978 graduating class its Commencement Address in 1978.
https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php
It is titled “A World Split Apart”
I saved a printed copy in 1978….it was printed in the local newspaper’s editorial page…..and I clipped it out and referred to it several times over the next few of years, into the early nineteen eighties.
Upon reflection now, 42 years later, that address is probably more substantially responsible for the fact that my two sons are half Russian, than anything else.
I won’t explain here, but I will note that in my only nine years in America prior to graduating from college I had felt a dissatisfaction with what Solzhenitsyn criticizes about American life “as a friend”…in that commencement address………….and had sojourned so far west, searching for “something else”, that I almost reached Russia!
In a subtle way, I DID reach it……in what was once Russian America:
A few years before A World Split Apart was spoken in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was in Alaska …or Russian America..both. “New Archangelsk” that is, Sitka …..and Unalaska, out in the Aleutian Chain:
https://cityseeker.com/unalaska/681665-russian-orthodox-cathedral-of-the-holy-ascension
Reading “A World Split Apart” in 1978 was impactful, after 6 years of such a search that Solzhenitsyn seemed to almost have recommended…., some years after I undertook it,. An excerpt from his Harvard commencement address that I took seriously in 1978…and still do:
“But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening.
A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points.”
Evidently this conclusion by was reached by the Russian emigre after only 4 years (?) of residency in the USA….in Vermont, if I recall correctly.
It resonated, and still does this morning, after reviewing it for the first time in several decades, prompted by Saker’s article……….because I had had a very big hunch of the same emptiness, during college, and sought something more satisfying to my spirit, without knowing that Russia would have anything to do with that search.
The address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn entitled “A World Split Apart” which you cited (https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php) differs from the essay by Solzhenitsyn “The Exhausted West” that was published in the July-August 1978 issue of Harvard Magazine (https://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1978_Alexander_Solzhenitsyn.pdf) from which I had quoted in my earlier post.
Besides subtle differences in language between the two essays, in the former article an entire section, consisting of several crucial paragraphs that offer an insight into Solzhenitsyn’s thinking on international affairs, has been removed, which is available in the latter essay (please see pages 24-25 which contain these missing paragraphs). It is in this section where he criticizes George Keenan, one of the foremost imperialist planners, as being weak because of his suggestion of “unilateral disarmament” (in the face of nefarious, evil communism). Further, he rubs salt into the wound by saying: “As for Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country, right next to yours.” And then, instead of condemning the Vietnam War, like Jean-Paul Sartre did by his refusal to accept the Nobel Prize, he condemns the anti-war movement for protesting against this massive violence unleashed by imperialism on three Asian countries (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) since he is looking at historical events through his anti-communist lens.
However, his denunciation of the decadence of western materialism, which leads to a free-for all nihilistic society without any restraint, at the expense of higher spiritual values that should actually guide a civilization, is to be appreciated.
@S, regrading Stalin’s preemptive strike. Youtube has number of Greek video’s claiming that Stalin actually tried to work with Hitler. I’ll come back with some links, which I must find first.
Read David Irving’s Hitler’s Warfor a balanced and insightful account of the buildup to Hilter’s attack on the Soviet Union. Rezun’s thesis is not that unlikely.pasha
This is one of the most important and best articles you have written imho.
I can only imagine the flak you get over @ the UNZ comment section from the trolls and the poor souls that prefer cognitive dissonans and the status quo😂
This is one of the most important and best articles you have written imho.
I can only imagine the flak you get over @ the UNZ comment section
Thank you for your kind words!
As for the nasty comments (or hate emails) they come with the territory.
In fact, I often perceive such comments as making my point for me.
Stay tuned for more, shall we say, philosophical/historical articles from me in the not too distant future (there is SO MUCH to cover – 10 lifetimes would not be enough!)
Kind regards
The Saker
@ The Saker
I am sure that you have read Alexander Gorlov’s book “Incident at a Summerhouse (A Chance Encounter at Solznenytsin’s Dacha)”. It was published originally in Russian, in 1977; I have a copy of its 1990 English language edition, signed by the author in 1991, when we were colleagues at different departments at Northeastern University (he was a professor of Mechanical Engineering). It refers to the year 1971, when Solznenytsin asked his friend Gorlov for the favour to retrieve for him some personal items from his dacha – where Gorlov then surprised a group of KGB agents searching the dacha!
The illegal search was supposed to be a “top government secret”, but now “the cat was out the bag”, and – Gorlov got in a terrible trouble. The account of what followed shows in vivid detail how the corrupt Soviet system operated at that time.
One can warmly recommend this informative and interesting book to anyone who have not already read it.
https://www.amazon.com/Incident-Summerhouse-Chance-Encounter-Solzhenitsyns/dp/B0006EVBTY
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22596363726
So, we are searching for the Truth, aren’t we? Truth can be found in facts (in deeds) in thoughts, in feelings.Truth can be found in nature, nobody can say that nature is lying, there are Rules of its functioning, only the Man is the one that is embedded with Lies. It looks as if we were cursed from the beginning, we can’t evade the path of lying, whatever we do, we are falling back. We say that the Empire is lying, the kings, the lords, the politicians, etc. But we are lying too, in our private life a thousand times. Sure, aren’t we saying? “That’s a little lie,” and then we add another one and so it goes. On the other hand, if you are pursuing to tell the truth, in any circumstances, under any conditions, it might end not well for you. We know many such cases (just look at Assange recently) history shows many bad examples on how such people have ended their lives. That’s why, telling the Truth is not always a good thing to do and that is valuable not just for politicians but for simply people like you and me. If we, simple minions are aware of this, in our private life, including our family, just multiply that awareness a thousand fold when you are a high ranked politician.
The big problem with The Lie is that is a huge Trap, for one lie follows the other one and after a while there is no way out…just another lie. The man has created itself a world of illusions because of its continuous lying, generation after generation growing up in those illusions, multiplying them continuously, like in a perpetual “catch me if you can” play. Many are saying, “I don’t care, after me, the flood”, thinking that death will solve everything.
This being said, I am skeptical regarding an eventual review of historical lies, because logically, the powers may be today, are not eager to play with open cards, for obvious reasons. Maybe in a hundred years, if new lies will not emerge meanwhile.
As a ” second generation ” Polish American I remember my grandparent’s comments about both the Germans and the Russians….with Poland caught between the Two. Murderers are Murderers even if the victim is “but” a single person. Stalin, Hitler, as well as the currently popular Donald Trump ; by his “gratuitous” { and deadly } Tomahawk attack on a Syrian Airbase back in 2017 also fits into this horrible category. Solszenitzen served Humanity when he called the World’s attention to the evil actions by the Bolsheviks in his brilliant books { most of which I have read }. Much of what goes on today by Academics who dispute various details in the Historical Record seems to me ; to be picking Fly Poop out of Pepper. The root causes of many of past and present mankind’s difficulties can be honestly attributed to a rather minuscule but influential group of ” Believers ” outlined in a book written by a man { from their group } by the name of Israel Shahak. The ; “Wallace Rosenthal 1976 Interview” { on Google } may also add some additional light on the present difficulties the World is experiencing. The “Best” is yet to come if one looks to the ” Cobwebs in the skies” { a Hopi prophecy }. The entire Wold { including Red Square and Washington DC} is being blanketed by such Cobwebs .
“Stalin, Hitler, as well as the currently popular Donald Trump ; by his ‘gratuitous’ { and deadly } Tomahawk attack on a Syrian Airbase back in 2017 also fits into this horrible category.”
Token airstrike to keep himself from being impeached, years sooner, because he was cutting off Obama’s funding of ISIS/etc in Syria, and allowing Russia to crush the CIA backed “moderate” Muslim rebels. If you haven’t noticed, the President isn’t really in command of much of government that nominally answers to him, the CIA being one of the most obvious, with them trying to prevent his election and impeach from day one.
well done. i have read (a very hard to find complete and uncut) “200 years together” and parts of “gulag” but now i might look deeper into his back catalog.
tangential: i have to wonder what you think of “the death of stalin” by armando iannucci? while it does a good job showing the slimy rapist character of beria it might be a little more sympathetic toward krushchev than you’d like (though steve buscemi’s performance is quite amazing as usual). it’s also odd that the cast is either overtly american or even more overtly british.
i also wonder (again, tangentially) if there are any good writings regarding pytor stolypin. he seems like a very interesting and significant pre-revolution figure but until recently all i could find was his (until recently only a paragraph or two wikipedia page.
Can anyone explain why Stalin is vilified from saving the USSR from Nazi Germany while Gorbachev and Yeltsin are held in high regard for almost destroying the country by getting sucked into the western neoliberal scam.
With pleasure, PeterP
Nazi Germany was the main force of Western imperialism directed against the USSR. Personally, I don’t believe that the Western “Elites” were significantly worried about their grip on the Western imperial heartland (Western Europe and North America) where the people had grown accustomed to imperial bribery and imperial loot, duly accompanied by racism and jingoism. First and foremost, hatred of the USSR was based on the fears among the Western “Elites” about revolutionary contagion in the West’s oppressed colonies overseas — fears that were to be corroborated by the course of history. So Nazi Germany presented itself as the saviour of Western imperialism; especially its intent of smashing the USSR and plundering its resources for the benefit of the entire West.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin, two political scum giving the West free reign raping not only Russia but the entire globe. Celebrated accordingly in the West and scorned accordingly in Russia. Putin elicits exactly the same passions. Another illuminating case in point is the West’s virulent slander against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and the corresponding flattery of the political misfits ruling Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
There’s a lot of hate for Gorbachev, but frankly by the time Gorbachev reached power the whole thing was falling apart. Part of it was the dysfunctional unwieldy top-down bureaucracy, part of it was simply that so much resources, labour and the best people were spent on the military in a doomed attempt to keep up with the US and the rest of the West. It’s ironic that in the US, the Cold War machinery gained so much power that they’ve kept on doing to themselves even with no opponent what they pushed the USSR into doing to itself.
Gorbachev had the brains to see it, and the guts to try some drastic approaches to change things. He didn’t have what it took to hold things together, but maybe nobody could have. But as far as I can tell he was doing his best, with Russia’s interests in mind. Something had to be done, and he tried something, and it didn’t work, but he at least wanted it to work. Not like Yeltsin who was just in it for himself and perfectly willing to sell Russia out.
Plus, imagine for a moment that they’d kept on putting in people like Andropov, while the downward spiral kept on. When things finally fell apart for real, would the results have been even worse? Would it have been too late to rebuild? And would some inflexible-minded Soviet leader, seeing the whole thing crashing down, have pressed the nuclear button? The results of Gorbachev presiding over the fall of the USSR were a lot less worse than things could have been if it was someone else.
One thing I’ll say for Gorbachev is that he gave the lie to Western anti-communists and Trotskyists and their perpetual Tourette slanders of the USSR as ”Stalinist” and ”totalitarian”. Looking back, the USSR died very peacefully, but that doesn’t absolve Gorbachev from his status as a dirty, rotten traitor. He happily surrendered the GDR to the Zionazis in ”exchange” for empty promises of peace and respect from NATO (if he sincerely believed these congenital liars, it’s really not any better). Having thus emerged victorious from the Cold War, the Zionazis celebrated by resorting to unrestrained lawlessness and violence. 30 years later, Russia has recovered while the West is dying and decomposing. Its lies/propaganda have been used up.
Saker will you write something on the syria / turkey crisis?
yes, probably.
I am keeping an eye on what Erdogan is saying and what the Turks are doing.
Looks to me like they are desperate and that they don’t stand a chance.
But I rather wait until we know how much of the Turkish “barking” will results in actual “biting”.
Kind regards
The Saker
“In the case of Solzhenitsyn, there is absolutely no evidence of deliberate deception on his part. In fact, the 66 million number is not even his.”
Which, in my view, makes Solzhenitsyn rank even lower than the other specimen Suvorov, who at least had some fresh imagination pertaining to his drooling, panting, political fiction. Solzhenitsyn is proof positive of the fact that the ultimate difference between a plagiarizer and what passes for a researcher is their respective number of sources. Solzhenitsyn was just another contributor to the utter insane rumour mill about Stalin’s USSR where people allegedly were murdered/incarcerated/tortured en masse 24/7. A much more credible case for suchlike horror stories would have been Winston Churchill and British India.
Suvorov — well, I have addressed his inanities in my comments to earlier blog posts here. He has contributed yet another — equally preposterous — anti-Soviet falsehood about Stalin and the outbreak of WW2 “competing” with at least two other ones in the West’s curriculum. Suvorov’s brainchild is not preposterous and mendacious because it contradicts the other main falsehoods “on the market”. What all three have in common is that they pretend as if the USSR didn’t have a very consistent foreign policy in the 1930s, just like the West had, with regard to the fascist surge in Europe. As the West clearly preferred Hitler to Stalin (Spain, Czechoslovakia), the USSR was damned right to sign the Non-Aggression Treaty with Nazi Germany. The latter’s genocidal designs on Russia were well-known. Suvorov’s nonsense about poor little Nazi Germany forestalling the Russian menace by racist butchery is below contempt really.
The tropes of the demonization of Solzhenitsyn were established at the meeting of the Politburo of 7 January 1974 which decided his expulsion from USSR and the propaganda campaign for his discreditation. You learned well the lesson.
My bad — I thought it was Solzhenitsyn who peddled the lie about 66 million dead because of Stalin. Thanks for letting me know he was being slandered by the Politburo, attributing these insane numbers to him. It was you who taught me 😄
Any feedback on my views regarding Suvorov?
You are right about Suvorov. That does not make you right about Solzhenitsyn.
The most ridiculous accusation is that Solzh is a ‘plagiarizer’. Whom did he ‘plagiarized’?
Ironically, Solzhenitsyn accused the sacred monster of the Soviet literature, Nobel Prize winner, Mikhail Sholokhov of plagiarism. Actually the accusation was brought against Sholokhov since the publication of the first volume in 1928. Not unexpectedly Sholokhov was a scathing critic of Solzh.
No less ridiculous is the parroting by all ‘critics’ of Solzh, almost verbatim, of the line ‘he was a mediocre writer, but could not come out to attain those heights reached by geniuses like Leo Tolstoy and Rabindranath Tagore…boring… not worth wasting time reading’.
You misunderstood my post. Had Solzhenitsyn taken this totally unfounded number of 66 million from one single “authority” (like CIA/Conquest) and made it his obnoxious trademark, that would have singled him out as a plagiarizer, end of discussion. Now, Solzhenitsyn had quite a few contemporary right-wing Western political pornographers to inspire and lead him in the right direction, hence my sarcastic remark about research as extended plagiarizing. If you already know what you are expected to deliver, then you don’t really need to be an able writer like Solzhenitsyn.
Swedish communist Mario Sousa wrote a pamphlet in 1998 “Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union. From Hitler to Hearst. from Conquest to Solzhenitsyn” where he passes the following profound verdict:
Among right-wing pseudo-intellectuals, Robert Conquest is a godlike figure. As for the figures cited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn – 60 million alleged to have died in labour camps – there is no need for comment. The absurdity of such an allegation is manifest. Only a sick mind could promote such delusions.
Mario Sousa begins his ‘exposee’ about Solzhenitsyn with three lies:
“In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature with his book The Gulag Archipelago”.
In reality he was awarded the Prize for: “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” cited by the Swedish Academy “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” The ‘Gulag’ was not yet known.
“In 1974, Solzhenitsyn renounced his Soviet citizenship and emigrated to Switzerland and then the US”.
In reality Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his citizenship and deported: “For malicious anti-Soviet activities, as expressed by the transfer to foreign publishers and information agencies of manuscripts, books, letters and interviews that: slander the Soviet system, the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and their foreign and domestic policies; defile the radiant memory of V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the CPSU and Soviet State, and the victims of the Great Patriotic War and the German-fascist occupation; justify the actions both of internal and of foreign counter-revolutionary and elements and groups hostile to the Soviet system; and also for gross violation of the rules for publishing literary works in foreign publishing houses, laid down by the World (Geneva) Copyright Convention, Solzhenitsyn A.I. is to stand trial”… ‘he wrote a hostile novel “August 1914”, the lampoon “Gulag Archipelago” and now he is writing “October 1917”, a new anti-Soviet composition”.
“Solzhenitsyn sums up by telling us that from the collectivisation of agriculture to the death of Stalin in 1953, the communists killed 66 million people in the Soviet Union”.
In reality Solzhenitsyn wrote that “According to the estimates of emigre Professor of Statistics Kurganov, this ‘comparatively easy’ internal repression cost us, from the beginning of the October Revolution up to 1959 a total of…sixty-six million- 66,000,000-lives. We, of course cannot vouch for his figure, but we have none other that is official. And just as soon as the official figure is issued the specialists can make the necessary critical comparisons”.
When you start with lies, it is a fair assumption that the rest are lies too.
You’re over-estimating Solzhenitsyn — he jpined in with the West’s proprgandists who had use of him; hence the Nobel prize, Mario Sousa’s key judgment is generally correct: “As for the figures cited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn – 60 million alleged to have died in labour camps – there is no need for comment. The absurdity of such an allegation is manifest. Only a sick mind could promote such delusions*. Possibly with the minor quibble that “greedy” could have been added in the last sentence.
Reading Solzhenitsyn — Suvorov’s “art” is plain litterature (two t’s) — evokes a sense of refined amusement given the track record of Western imperialism. Solzhenitsyn approved of America’s genocide in Indo-China as well as Franco’s fascist rule in Spain. And his fame is rightfully on its way down in Russia.
But what do say about his support for the imperialist war on Indo-China as I documented? Also, when I compared him with Tolstoy and Tagore, I clearly stated that that was my (personal) opinion. Solzhenitsyn, for all his talents, was circumscribed by his narrow Russian nationalism and anti-communism (just like Putin, in sharp contrast to Lenin) unlike Tolstoy or Tagore, whose works, although set in their local conditions of time and space, addressed universal themes. And this is the same difference that can be observed between the films of the great directors like de Sica, Bergman, Kurosawa, and Ray compared to those of a Hollywood film director like Spielberg.
Would you call these “White Guard and First Generation Russian emigres” traitors?
“We Believe That the Brilliant Hitler Represents Our Best Hopes”: What You Need to Know About Russian Monarchists From Nice…
https://www.stalkerzone.org/we-believe-that-the-brilliant-hitler-represents-our-best-hopes-what-you-need-to-know-about-russian-monarchists-from-nice/
A traitor is somebody who breaks an oath.
White Guard did no such thing (the Red, however, did, at least those who in their past had pledged their loyalty to the Czar). As for First Generation Russian emigres (like my family) they were exactly that: emigres. To go into exile is not an act of treason by itself either (especially when you are escaping certain death as a “class enemy”).
As for Russian monarchists, they came in all sorts of flavors and colors. Some initially believed in Hitler, just like German monarchists. Others never bought the Nazi propaganda (Solonevich is a good example). Illyin initially also had hopes for Hitler.
That is the fallacy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
But to present the Russian emigration is significantly Fascist/Nazi is simply factually not true.
Cheers
The Saker
Thank you, Saker.
I totally agree with you. My own father, born in the Russian city of Odessa, was an emigre who did fight Hittler in the French Resistance, as many of his Russian friends.
“Stalin understood that the first generation of Bolsheviks were superbly skilled at massacring innocent civilians in huge numbers, but as military commanders they were big fat ZEROs … .”
Nothing much changes with later generations.
Nonsense! The Soviet WWII generals won the biggest war in history.
The Saker
As to the title, “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” Matthew 15:11
I don’t look at either of these 2 celebrity writers as traitors. I see them as flawed historical writers who intertwined fiction with nonfiction. IE: what they wrote, and claim, is not a reliable source of factual information. It’s quite clear their individual biases took precedence over their judgement of what they present as factual material and it is also very clear their biases skewed the results.
I grew up reading american historians who did this sort of thing ubiquitously and called it history. The use of propaganda and falsehoods in so much of american sourced historical work lead me to consider all american sourced historical work suspect unless collaborated by outside and unconnected sources.
My point here is that if a source is inaccurate, why waste time with it. Unless one’s purpose is debunking or rebuttal. I know fox news, guardian, cnn and bellingcat are useless for serious news and don’t bother with such sources. They are unreliable. So I simply don’t use them. The same with historical analysis, once a source shows itself to be factually unreliable, I don’t use them. This is true for sources I once thought were accurate, but found later to be not accurate.
It’s a clever maneuver that Kurganov pulled, to pull in so many quite different things, emphasize the tyrannical and violent ones (like actual murders), and then total them up as one big number. A reduced birthrate is a very different thing from a massacre, but you can give the impression that it was all more or less equivalent–and then if challenged protest that no, you didn’t say the regime killed that many people.
By that standard, the Chinese “one child” policy was the greatest crime the world has ever seen . . . but they would probably be in deep trouble if they hadn’t curbed population growth–look at poverty levels in India.
Difficult think to say regarding Solzhenitsyn. Reading it as a youngster I wasn’t too enamored. In my opinion the writing style between him and Dostoevsky has similarities – bluntly, copiousness – but morally Solzhenitsyn rings hollow.
Note that Vladimir Nabokov loathed Dostoevsky as a “JOURNALIST” in style
It is no wonder that the author of Lolita loathed Dostoevsky who speaks of the rape of a 12 years girl as a grievous sin. Besides Nabokov was from those liberals loathed by Dostoevsky.
Refer to:
https://www.amazon.com/Leopard-Giuseppe-Lampedusa/dp/0679731210
Thanks, Saker. I enjoyed every word.
I’ve always admired you for your courage as a writer. I think of you as an essayist, albeit one with little time, rather than an analyst of the moment, which I think events force you into.
I enjoy all your writing but I’m always glad to see you writing a piece like this, on a deep and broad scale, getting to stretch your legs a little with almost 6,000 words. Very glad to see in one of your comments that you plan to continue writing such essays.
May you live many years to write many of the words you would like to.
Yes, Putin has his own opinions about the impact of Stalin on the history of Russia:
https://www.rt.com/news/408266-putin-stalin-persecution-memorial/
Alexander Solzhenitsyn shared with Fyodor Dostoyevsky going to prison and facing premature death, and both credited prison with being of profound benefit, deepening them. In the case of S., he was told he had a terminal cancer while in prison, but lived for roughly half a century after, whereas D. was placed before a firing squad and then given a last minute reprieve.
I found quite interesting that the leaders of the USSR struggled mightily with whether or nor to publish Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
From an article I wrote a few years ago and published at Rense.com
“In 1961, Alexander Tvardovsky, editor of the leading literary journal in the USSR, Novy Mir, receives a manuscript that keeps him up all night, spellbound, reading and rereading: it is called Shch-854, written by an unknown, an A. Ryazanksy ; it is a short novel about one person’s single day in a Soviet prison camp. It is realistic; it broaches forbidden themes; it is well crafted: thus the chances of it being allowed to be published seem very slim.”
“In 1962, there is consternation at the highest levels of political power in the USSR: The unpublished novella Shch-854 has escaped into the public underground and is being widely hand copied in the USSR. It is later given the title One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The author’s real name has turned out to be Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Khrushchev and sidekick Anastas Mikoyan read manuscript copies of Shch-854, and the tale is said to have induced a trickle of tears in this tough pair. Khrushchev arranges for the entire Central Committee of the USSR to receive copies, and they read the forbidden, and wrestle with the dilemma: What troublesome processes might they unleash by allowing the publication of a work of literature which contradicts the make-believe world of officially sanctioned narratives? But on the other hand, is panic by the power structure over a mere novella’s foray into reality not a confession of utter political and ideological weakness?”
However one evaluates Solzhenitsyn as a novelist or historian or ideologist or moral philosopher, there is also the question of his real-world significance, his actual extent of influence, on the process of disintegration of the Soviet Union. Altogether, he was a giant.
Thank you for wading into contentious waters Saker!
I read Solzhenitsyn avidly thirty years ago, and when I think back he certainly contributed to my search in understanding Russia, however my sense for a long time is that of a powerful Russian who has made Russia intelligible, consumable by virtue of a level of his westernization of character.
I realize that won’t go down very well, as Solzhenitsyn had knowledge of what it meant to be, and feel, like a Russian, holding this up clearly for the west to see, but for literature, history and philosophy, there are other 20c writers of equal and far greater talent who have contributed to these broad cultural areas.
The difficulty is the leap from western thought types, habits of a century or more, the continuing drive to dominate materialistic inclinations of perception into others that are vastly different. I think this leap takes enormous courage.
Don’t forget the Wests propaganda drive has been to thoroughly crush what being a Russian means, with the hope to extinguish knowledge of this in the West – West meaning figuratively, not geographically. Russia is now in a process of revamping popularization, courtesy of Western values, but that’s another topic.
Somehow we need to look at the root cause at the West’s ongoing attempted destruction of the Russian Soul and Spirit, to recognize the purpose, what has such potential value ?
Thank you Saker, contentious waters indeed…
I will try to answer : first of all, take an atlas and look at the map of Russia, it is the biggest country on Earth. Now imagine the western leaders two-three hundred years ago what they thought. They asked themselves,”how is that possible that God gave them such a huge land, are they rightly the real Christians?”. Later, as the relationships have developed, the western elites begun to make an inventory of the huge Russian territorial natural reserves and that opened their eyes more wider, the greed and envy multiplied. The so called Russian Soul is so wide and deep as Russia itself, being a mixture of many different people, living together for very long time, sometimes at war, then in peace, learning the way of common life in a vast space, each system of governance adding its own favor, each belief doing the same, until a common bent grew up.
Please notice that all detractors of Solzhenitsyn who pretend to believe that he invented the figure of 66 million, invariably skip this part: ‘We, of course, cannot vouch for his [Prof. Kurganov] figure, but we have none other that is official. And just as soon as the official figure is issued the specialists can make the necessary critical comparisons”. That proves their dishonesty.
It is no longer fashionable to support Solzhenitsyn, and for me this is reason enough to reject his detractors and their arguments as plain gossip. And why is he so uncool? Because the evolving Russian ethos is favorable to the Soviet Zeitgeist, as an understandable reactionary defense mechanism — the defense of a defeated people, of a fallen empire. The past fell to dust, and the West rubs their noses in that dust to this day, so why not reminisce about former glories, however hollow they may be?
There is more to Solzhenitsyn than being a giant of literature, and philosophical-historical inquiry, he is proven to be a prophet, if not by the revelation of the world he foresaw, than by the very rejection of his own people.
“And why is he so uncool? Because the evolving Russian ethos is favorable to the Soviet Zeitgeist, as an understandable reactionary defense mechanism — the defense of a defeated people, of a fallen empire.”
As the saying goes: To hell with Russian public opinion. Moreover, you are confusing past and present. In the past, when Russia was a living hell (looted US colony), there was a substantial defeatist Zeitgeist which made Solzhenitsyn and the West’s so-called “intelligentsia” look like sages. It is Putin which has contributed more than anybody else to Russia’s present self-esteem which has little room for Russophobes/Sovietophobes.
Therefore being anti-Solzhenitsyn means to be anti-Putin, since he gave him the place of pride.
Without the Gulag the West would never have had a Solzhenitsyn. And perhaps years from now, we will have had our own martyrs of conscience, who will burn equally brightly. But until now we don’t, we have nothing like this, and nothing to compare to, because one is Golgotha, and the other a whitewash.
Solzhenitsyn is contributing to the rebirth of soul, by shining a lamp on secret darkness, the lamp he uses is a book written in blood, the Gulag Archipelago, and the darkness dispelled is inside of us in the heart, and in every heart. The “camp jargon”, the foul speech of the thieves and half-castes, permeates and corrupts the souls of men, turning their words into lies and curses, and betraying the evil in their hearts. The Gulag exposes the darkness of corrupt speech to the light of rational inquiry, of historical inquiry, and follows the actual mechanisms by which the cancerous metastasis infected the entire vast Russian land with thieves’ jargon. And this is not just Russia, where the camp jargon pervades the psyche, but America also, where the language is now the gangster-rap of the prison cells, and where men are called bitches, niggaz, and homies, and whoremongering and hustling is the praised profession of life. The romance of murder and brigandage is now the foundation of day-to-day living, just as in Russia in Solzhenitsyn’s time, but magnified beyond all scale of comprehension. America is a land of prisons, her people are children of jail cell and cell blocks, and Solzhenitsyn is our only hope of freeing our souls from this tyranny of bondage, as he helped do in his own land.
Language is a touchstone of soteriology, as no society is saved by curses and insults, but rather further destroyed, condemned to live in a self made prison cell. How a land, a people, becomes a slave to wickedness, is called the mystery of iniquity, beyond our understanding, and how any one man identifies the worm of iniquity in his own heart, and uproots it, is by exposing that darkness to light, and then the darkness flees. So to do this we must call darkness dark, and not light, and to accomplish this there must be prophets and martyrs who can explain to us how darkness crept into our own souls and minds, and then root it out with the light of truth and reason. Thank you Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for exposing the darkness of lies.
Someday, someone should convene a symposium on the historic alikas and differences of anti-Russian propaganda and ani-Soviet opinion in West Europe (Everywhere west of the north-south line running through the center of Urope, which lies in SE Lithuania). From ca. The great skisma beween Rome and the east in 1048 till before Napoleon, Then from before the British and French and Ottoman Krimean war until today.
Has that oevre already been published in any West European language, Anyone?
@Tollef. For your history of anti Russianism:
“A mess of Russians”. — ShakeSpear, Loves Labour’s Lost
Nice one Dr NG Maroudas !
One may hardly ignore the vital importance of the dramatic historian, including that of Alexander Pushkin, who greatly admired Shakespeare, and his play’s are a brilliant synthesis of the many of his researched.sources.
Unfortunately, as is well known, he died young at the hands of some French fellow who had apparently made advances to his wife, thus provoking Pushkin to call for a duel.
Clearly, his ability and potential popularity for producing meritorious works with truth embedded in them, of which he had plans to write more, were seen as a threat to be dealt with. One never hears about that, a good cover-up operation. Only his funeral at night one reads of, in order to avoid the crowds who would undoubtedly have attended.
Russian language seems to me much easier to learn to read than any other Slavic language.
Havvuíng gone back and forth on the Trans-Siberian railroad a few times, I was able to enjoy the russian language versions of both the “A Hero for Our Times” and “How the Steel Was Tempered” — much with the help of Russsian fellow travellers.
Good luck in reading Russian — it’s much easier than English or Japanese!
Agree with other commenters that Saker has written, once again, an excellent scholarly paper. Many comments are also worth saving on USB.
I have a question/suggestion to Saker – to write about the role of criminal elements in Russia, from pre-revolutionary times, through Soviet rule, to post-1990 era. My limited knowledge comes from Wikipedia (which is very inaccurate due to constant monitoring and altering), from the booklet “Chronic tajnoj wojny” by Bielych and Lichanow, (1990) and some scattered short newspaper notices. Is there continuity of the mafia-like structures throughout Russian recent 100-150 years history? I do not remember Solzhenitsyn talking about it, but again, I am familiar with his work, other than “August 1914”, “One day in life of Ivan Denisovitch”.
Thank you
correction, …”i am not familiar with his work, other than…”
sorry about this error in editing
“Did Rezun successfully prove his case? Depends whom you ask, of course. I am not a military historian and I think that this issue should be researched by professional historians, not amateurs like myself.”
David Irving, a historian, wrote a book in 1979 or so entitled, “HITLER’S WAR” and in that he states that Stalin had a forward attack area stocked with all sorts of military equipment and they were getting ready to go.
If you can find that book it is interesting.
White Russians were good people, whether they were in Paris or Chicago or New York City. Good People.
I think the Soviets and Stalin, were Not good people.
The Jewish attack on Solzhenitsyn has its roots in the ongoing battle of the synagogue against the Church. In his 1995 essay, “The Russian Question At The End Of The Twentieth Century,” Solzhenitsyn wrote:
— “Russian nationality is not about blood but about spirit. The greatness of our people is to be sought in its inner development, in its breadth of soul. The Russian spirit and Russian culture have existed for centuries. All those who feel themselves part of this heritage in spirit are true Russians”
Rezun/Suvorov didn’t prove anything. At best, he made a mere suggestion, amusingly in total contradiction to similar creative suggestions about Stalin and the USSR at the time of Nazi Germany’s onslaught.
Now, assume for the sake of argument that Suvorov is actually correct in that the Red Army was highly present at the border. This of course does not rule out a Soviet attack in the making. The problem — apart from proving the alleged strong presence of Soviet troops to begin with — is that there are no traces whatsoever in the form of deciphered Red Army communications about preparing for an attack against Nazi Germany. It’s much more reasonable to assume that Suvorov made skillful use of his understanding of the West’s ingrained habit of projection. Like: “Hey, why not try out the ‘unorthodox’ approach of the baby-eating monster Stalin itching for a land-grab at poor little Nazi Germany’s expense?”.
So to re-cap, we have at least three mutually exclusive explanations to the heavy Soviet losses in the early months of Operation Barbarossa:
1) Stalin was very fond of Hitler, further corroborated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. Didn’t see the looming danger. Border wide open with very little troops.
2) Stalin did have sufficient troops at the border but ignored the warnings by the British and French about an impending Germán attack. Free-fire zone ensued.
3) Stalin had huge amounts of troops at the border to conquer all of Europe, starting with Germany. The poor Nazis were acting in pure self-defence by launching a campaign of mass terror and racist genocide.
The corollary question that should be on everybody’s lips by now is: What is Nussiminen’s take on the issue?
Nussiminen’s verdict: Nazi Germany’s plan to murder/enslave the peoples of the USSR, the Russians in particular, was no secret. Hence, it was Nazi Germany that amassed troops at the border to accomplish this mission; no need for any touching excuses about self-defence. As for the Soviets, their soldiers were possibly not sufficient numerically-wise. The Nazi rabble, high on fascist megalomania and bloodlust, had some initial successes given their colossal manpower. The rest is history.
Khrushchev takes the “‘pepsi’ challenge,”
https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/2018.02/original/5a817dae85600a30462a845c.jpg
subsequently to be outdone by Gorbachev doing a “Pizza hut” advertisement:
https://giphy.com/gifs/pizza-hut-FtvqflIkRqCg8
It’s suspect that Solzhenitsyn is revered by the Western Oligarchy. I recently visited the library of a very jewish, now deceased banker daughter (who was bat-shit crazy, I might add). Included in her collection were Solzhenitsyn’s major works. People mention his sharp rejection of his hosts at Harvard. Alright. But who gets invited to Harvard? Can we mention his daughter? She’s still at war with Stalin. At least that’s how she acts at various Solzhenitsyn commemorations. Maybe the woman is just too dumb to get up to speed with the times and the real problems we face. Maybe.
Maybe Solzhenitsyn had a change of heart, maybe he was a triple agent, maybe a lot of things. I guess “200 years together” can be reviewed by someone who is willing. I listened to part of the audio book and it came off as a “it’s the jews” thing. For an Orthodox man, shouldn’t it be “it’s the serpent,” or, “it’s the fall.” I suppose: not in a historical work, maybe.
Finally, a comment on Stalin. People should simply read his interview with HG Wells if they want to understand why Stalin was better than a liberal, why the discussion should be about how bad Roosevelt and Churchill were, who between those two was “the worst killer in history,” and so on. Interview found here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm. I believe it can also be heard online at some of the popular video hosting sites.
Solzhenitsyn is reviled by the Western Oligarchy for obvious reasons (“200 years…”).
Yes, and there is another reason as well: Solzhenitsyn strongly and correctly approved of Vladimir Putin as a genuine Russian patriot to be respected for his services to Russia.
An important fact, which no one here is even mentioning: Solzhenitsyn’s works were in fact brought to public prominence in Russia by none other than Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev!
It happened a few short years following Khrushchev’s famous speech at the closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. Ever since Stalin’s unexpected death in 1953 (in which he might have been one of the co-conspirators), he was at pains to justify his own political existence in the USSR, by denouncing Stalin across the board. He “discovered” Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (Один день Ивана Денисовича) as a convenient tool in this – and eventually published the book in the reputable Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (Но́вый Ми́р), in 1962.
[A small side detail. In 1962 Tito’s Belgrade daily “ПОЛИТИКА” published this entire book in the sequels, in its literary appendix. For one thing, that was the time of “greatly improved relations” between USSR and Yugoslavia (mainly economic). For another thing, Tito himself was thrown out of Stalin’s club in 1948, and has had own struggle for domestic political survival since.]
The book in pdf format, free download:
http://kkoworld.com/kitablar/aleksandr_soljenitsin_ivan_denisovichin_bir_gunu-eng.pdf
The British-Norvegian 1970 film based on the book (it is interesting that the film was at the time banned in Finland “not to damage relations between USSR and Finland”!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqG1uwhTX2o
Correction to the first half of my first sentence above: Robert Snefjella already did bring up this point in his informative comment above (21 February 2020, 21:57). Sorry, my oversight.
Well worth discussing if you are interested not only in Russian Literature but in contemporary history. From the books by Solzhenitsyn which I have read in English I would say he is a major writer about OUR modern world not just Russia. I have read: One Day, Cancer Ward, Prose Poems, Matriona, Harvard Lectures, 200 Years, Gulag, First Circle– they opened my eyes to what is happening around us
I agree with that, and can only repeat what I have written above.
Perhaps I may add that the obvious woeful lack of knowledge of other 20c writers, some of far greater talent than Solzhenitsyn, is due solely to the success of Bolshevism. This uncomfortable statement were better acknowledged while there is still time. The continuing suppression and death of writers occurred long before the founding of the Soviet Writers Union 1934, this served merely as formalization of state, cultural protocol whilst at the same time clothing their goals in fine phrases for global consumption.
Other writers works were also published, in many cases (not all) decades after their death and first in the West. At the end of the day, it is the question of inner freedom of deciding to make that leap of faith I wrote of above, and discover the voices of these great writers of our time.
Read “The Red Wheel” and you’ll have your eyes wide open. It is in fact the ‘introduction’ to the Gulag (and to ‘200 years…’). This is what really infuriated equally the Soviet nomenklatura, the die hard revolutionaries of the left, the bezbozhniki, the antifascists, the anti-anti-semites, the liberals.
This is the magnus opus of Solzhenitsyn that all his detractors refer to when regurgitating the phrase ‘comparing to Tolstoy Solzh is a mediocre writer, etc’, although they never talk directly about (because they haven’t read it either).
It is a literary work and as such Solzhenitsyn takes some liberties with the strictly documented history (the available one at the time), but Tolstoy was not above reproach in that respect either. One can say that he didn’t go far enough.
Dear Anonymous,
I was born with my eyes wide open, fact, deal with it.
I know Saker, he is deep kindred spirit, despite many differences of opinion.
I have expressed appreciation and thoughts on this thread for Solzhenitsyn.
Mia
My reply was addressed to Dr. Maroudas.
“Finally, there is a popular saying in modern Russia: ‘show me an anti-Soviet activist (‘антисовечик’) and I will show you a russophobe’ (which makes Solzhenitsyn a russophobe).”
Mostly correct. Unlike the all-powerful hogwash Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism which has nothing to show for it (except, of course, impressive juridical muscle), anti-Sovietism was very much a matter of racist contempt and flat out hatred of Russians as a people. Today, the Western tripe constantly levelled at Putin proves that the West’s Sovietophobes effortlessly switched to become Russophobes, because they truly hate all things Russian and, hence, all things that strengthen Russia.
My quibble concerns the part put within parentheses. Solzhenitsyn was, after all, quite a different kind of specimen. He didn’t follow the West’s “sages” to become a born-again Russophobe as that would have turned him into a Russian Liberal animal — something he deeply loathed. He respected Vladimir Putin in whom he correctly saw a genuine Russian patriot. Needless to say, that didn’t help his case outside Russia.
I read “The Gulag Archipelago” and ended with zero belief in the veracity of its contents. I read “August 1914”, compared it with actual historical accounts of the Battle Of Tannenberg, and concluded that Solzhenitsyn was talking through his hat. I read “One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich” and had the exact same reaction to Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, to wit, it’s nonsense written to please a western market. Overall I have absolutely no reason to consider Solzhenitsyn to be anything more than a bad joke. I have not read Rezun directly so I can’t say anything about him except that the idea that the 1941 Soviet armed forces, based around obsolete I 15 biplane and I 15 fighters, SB 2 bombers with so many design defects that Stalin was appalled, and with tanks distributed among infantry divisions and so unable to conduct blitzkrieg offensives, could even think of invading Germany is something only the militarily illiterate can believe.
Great read Saker! Quality or nothing.
It is entirely plausible that Stalin was planning to double cross Hitler in 1941 before Hitler could double cross him.
He was willing to go to war over Czechoslovakia in 1938 before Munich.
He seems to have accepted that war was inevitable.
He knew of the plans for a colonial empire in the East that were set out in Mein Kampf.
But if he had been left alone, he might well just have continued with the status quo and the uneasy alliance.
Please cough up any deciphered Red Army communications about an impending attack upon Nazi Germany.
On second thought: Stalin might have devoured so many infants for breakfast that he had to look abroad for continued supply.
@ paul
Yes, indeed, it is all quite plausible. While, I think, the bottom line is “… if he had been left alone, he might well just have continued with the status quo and the uneasy alliance …”
In any case, his reason for concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was to bide time, to strengthen the Soviet military prior to any possible conflict. Besides the military hardware issues, there was also the one of urgently reorganising commanding personnel, pursuant to his “purges” of the late 1930s that had decimated the highly qualified officers’ ranks.
Solzhenitsyn was not a traitor in my opinion, but he allowed himself to be manipulated by Russia’s enemies (US/UK/Israel) because of his hatred of communism. He was given the Nobel Prize in 1970 because his criticism of the USSR fit the agenda of the Anglo-Zionists (don’t forget the USSR cut off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967 following their invasions of Palestine, Egypt and Syria). The “liberation” of Russia in the 1990s can hardly be considered to have improved the country or the quality of life for ordinary Russian people – quite the opposite. Of course, once he deviated from their agenda by writing “200 Years Together”, he was no longer receiving Nobel Prizes and was not even having his books published in English. I think he was a bit naive about the intentions of his Anglo-Zionist patrons, believing they were merely “anti-communist” rather than anti-Russian – something that we can all see now was not true. I still respect him though.
His writing style reminds me of Dostoevsky, he encapsulates the “Russian soul” better than any other modern Russian author I’ve read, although admittedly I haven’t read that many. His criticism of the early years of communism up until Stalin’s death are legitimate, although he did exaggerate the number of victims. I think he failed to recognise that Khruschev got rid of most of the worst aspects of communism in the 1950s and that the Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the same Soviet Union of the 1930s. It basically would be similar to condemning the modern French Republic because of the Great Terror and the genocidal campaign in the Vendée. While it is still technically the same state, in reality the modern French Republic is a lot different than the one that existed in the 1790s. Nobody calls for “regime change” in France today because of the crimes committed in the early years following the French Revolution.
Speaking of Khruschev, I have to disagree with your analysis of him. In my opinion, he was the best Soviet leader and the one who oversaw the country’s greatest achievements (Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin) while at the same time drastically improving day to day life for ordinary people (shutting down the Gulag system, surpassing the USA in life expectancy, reducing military spending). I think Brezhnev caused a stagnation – he was a decent leader, but he lacked Khruschev’s dynamism and vision for the future.
With regards to Rezun, I think it’s pretty clear he was just a traitor, typical of the many military “defectors” who moved to the UK/US during the Cold War in exchange for money. The way it usually works is the CIA or MI6 will offer money for classified information from the source. If there is a danger of the source being compromised or once all useful information has been extracted, they will then offer the source a new life in London or America, with a luxurious home and a generous salary far exceeding the standard of living they would have had as a military officer in a communist country. All they have to do in exchange is give the odd interview or write books (often ghost-written by their CIA/MI6 handlers), talking about how terrible life was back in their communist homeland, and how wonderful “Western freedom” is in comparison. Often the information in their books and interviews later turns out to be completely made up or hugely exaggerated.
Rezun, for example, claimed that millions of people were still secretly imprisoned in Gulags in the 1980s and that the Soviet Governement was lying when they said they had all been shut down in 1954. When the Soviet Union broke up a few years later, it was proven that he was lying and the Soviet Government had been telling the truth. But it would have been very difficult to prove that in the 80s since foreigners didn’t have access to the Soviet archives. The same is true with regards to his claims about Stalin planning to attack Germany in 1941. In the 80s it was very difficult to disprove this, but since then many foreigners have examined the Soviet archives and found no evidence to back up his claims.
An interesting contrast between himself and Solzhenitsyn is that after the end of communism, Solzhenitsyn moved back to Russia and lived there for the rest of his life, whereas Rezun still lives in Britain and has shown no intentions of moving back to Russia – indicating that he did not leave Russia merely because he was fleeing communism, but because he wanted to live in a richer country where he would have a higher standard of living.
In summary Solzhenitsyn is worth reading, while Rezun or “Suvorov” is not.
Actually Solzhenitsyn did not allowed himself to be manipulated by Russia’s enemies. He fell into their disgrace following his famous ‘Harvard address’, 1978, and when they realized that the ‘Gulag’ was naming the creators of the Gulag (who, he insisted, were not loving the Russian people!), when they realized that Solzhenitsyn was not restricting himself to the denunciation of Stalin (which was what was expected from him) but denounced Lenin and Trotsky and their toadies and exposed the collusion of the ‘capitalists’ with communism. Long before ‘200…’. He was not naive at all.
”Rezun, for example, claimed that millions of people were still secretly imprisoned in Gulags in the 1980s and that the Soviet Governement was lying when they said they had all been shut down in 1954.”
Next time, he’ll tell us he was born in captivity and came out with all these millions only in 1991, LOL.
”/ Khruschev / was the best Soviet leader and the one who oversaw the country’s greatest achievements (Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin) while at the same time drastically improving day to day life for ordinary people (shutting down the Gulag system, surpassing the USA in life expectancy, reducing military spending). I think Brezhnev caused a stagnation – he was a decent leader, but he lacked Khruschev’s dynamism and vision for the future.”
Brezhnev, along with Stalin, stands out as the most popular Soviet leader in today’s Russia. The USSR of the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s was slowly improving its public services but could not keep up with the West’s deliberately insane military spending. However, I do agree that the preceding government under Khruschev was doing all right. Life improved and there were significant political achievements internationally such as quelling of the clerico-fascist putsch in Hungary, neutering of the West’s ”cheapest atom bomb” (West Berlin), and — last but not least — the protection of the Cuban revolution.
“…then the civil war followed by the great Jewish terror of Iagoda, Frenkel, Ezhov, etc.”—The serious problem with this statement is the following: if those men were “communist” in their beliefs and motives, then how can they be called “Jewish” unless the implication is that it was their genetic lineage from Hebrew-Khazarian genes which caused them to be so bloodthirsty. Which is a “racial soul” concept which the Saker is supposedly against.
Not at all! Russian Jews were very distinct from the rest of the population, not only by their dress or isolation in shtetls, but also by the fact that according to a census made in the late 19th century, 98% of them spoke Yiddish at home. Thus, the CULTURAL aspect of their education was extremely strong. Many Jews rejected the life of a religious Orthodox Jew ruled by rabbis, and many became Marxists including Bolsheviks. They ditched their religion, but kept its hatred of the goy, especially the Russian Orthodox goyim. Similarly, the Neocons are former Trotskysts who hate Russia. They ditched their Trotskysm but kept their russophobia. Nothing new or particularly mysterious here.
The Saker
However, Felix Dzerzinski who remained the master-leader of the whole bloodthirsty terror operation was understood to be of Polish genetic lineage, even of minor Polish aristocratic pedigree. So does that make Polish genes also tending to produce extra bloodthirstiness?—As for Stalin’s purges-murders of his top older established professional generals-commanders, it seems to be an action of furious paranoia, fear that in the course of any war any one of these persons might overthrow Stalin. Otherwise, why actually murder them? Why not just demote them if they were simply incompetent. Ivan IV “the Terrible” began this trend of terror when he began executing his most talented commanders like Gorbatiy-Shuyskii and then began driving away or murdering anybody who he imagined might outshine him in any way. And in the end, he murdered his only viable heir to throne, finished off his dynasty, and his realm plunged into the Time of Troubles, Russia almost disappeared completely and forever, and this has been the pattern of Russian government ever since,—though maybe not as drastically rule by terror today as it has been under Stalin’s regime.—The question still remains, if not the leadership vacuum drastically caused by the murder of top military commanders, what else was the major cause of early German military successes in 1941.—Well, Stalin did do the preëmptive strike against potential rivals in order to keep his personal power.
To the comment by The Saker:—The unanswered issue still remains, why would Jews reject religious life ruled by the rabbis which was the culture from which the hatred of the non-Jews would be springing in the first place and yet keep that part of culture which involved special hatred of non-Jews. Accounts exist how various non-Jews including Denikin’s White Russian forces, and assorted other Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and other non-Jews did plunder and kill many Jews who were clearly not Bolsheviks or “Red”.—Hatreds were running high and mutual on all fronts during that upheaval,—in the 1920’s I suppose. Wasn’t there an internationalist class-warfare approach where huge numbers of people were murdered based exclusively on the category
of socioeconomic class or if they adhered to any religion, including Judaism?—History seems to record that “the West” was not particularly russophobic in the 10th through 13th and maybe even up to the reign of Ivan IV “the Terrible” but after that debacle the Russians came to be viewed as unusually “barbaric” and something like “the Mongolian horde”—ready to go on a rampage across Western Europe, if allowed.—Eventually the rise of godless genetically racist nationalisms in the “West” starting with arguments by such as Gobineau that French aristocracy of Germanic Frankish bloodline had a “right” to beat down all others led to the European genocidal practices.—But the question remains unanswered, why would the Jews who turned against other aspects of their religious heritage from which hatred of non-Jews presumably was springing would nonetheless not turn against the hatred of non-Jews as well and simply go beyond the parameters of a religious fanatical cult? To the fanatical “communist” both the religious Orthodox Jew and the religious Orthodox Christian Russian would be hateful, or why not?
Rulership-government by mass murder, specifically by mass-murder done administratively which in Europe seems to have been pioneered during the French Revolution, as contrasted to the massacres of population done in chaotic ways by plundering armies throughout history before.—So to look at the murderous purges done by Stalin’s regime, one may say, first a cadre of mass murderers set about exterminating people along religious and socioeconomic class lines, the Christians, the capitalists-bourgeoisie, rich peasants, aristocrats,—then a new cadre was organized to exterminate the first cadre of mass-murderers so that they do not become too strong and established, and then still another cadre was organized to exterminate the second cadre of exterminators, and so on forever. All of this to make sure that no one could rise to overthrow the vozhd.—Justice for the prior murderers was never any concern, just survival of the greatest and bloodthirstiest predator. This was a system ripe for destruction by any outside force, any outside invader, except someone who was just as murderous. In other words, had Hitler adopted the same policy toward the USSR as the Macedonian Alexander adopted toward Persians and the Persian Empire,—read historical records about that,—the USSR regime would have been swept away and some sort of Eurasian Realm would have been established then and there. And why was Hitler’s regime so murderous? Maybe read an interesting approach to the whole “fascist” movement, the portion about Hitler in the book written by one of his ideological supporters, “Savitri Devi”, entitled “The Lightning and the Sun” first published in 1958.
Savitri Devi (aka Maximiani Portas – a French-English-Greek), like before her the other pseudo-‘Indian’ female guru Madame Blavatski (who was German-Russian) was a rabid anti-Christian.
The Theosophism groomed after the First World War Jiddu Krishnamurti to become the “vehicle for the Lord Maitreya” an advanced spiritual entity periodically appearing on Earth as a World Teacher to guide the evolution of humankind.
Savitri Devi ascribed to Hitler the same role.
Preparing the ways for the Anti-Christ.
She was a hoaxer. Possibly a ‘free-lance’ intelligence agent.
What a copious load of psychobabble. Makes one associate to some third rate horror movie with ”mass-murderers”, ”bloodthirstiest”, ”predator”, ”exterminators” and so on and so forth.
As usual, not only was this an anonymous blog barf. The author also committed the same error as every other person who peddles the hollow Stalin-Hitler hyperbole. Europe has perpetrated genocide and ecocide for more than half a millennium. But, of course, this was not intentional — perish the thought.
“an anonymous blog barf”—so what name is “nussiminen”? Sounds a bit like Finnish but very doubtful that it is anyone’s real name.—The whole reply is a load of emotionalistic babble contributing nothing.
Lets keep the insults out of this, mod
And the whole scenario of Europeans coming and bringing with them diseases which wiped out much of indigenous population especially in the Western Hemisphere and in Polynesia,—that is an unintentional twist of some sort of wicked providence, since it could have been the other around, the Europeans pick up some strange new disease from the natives and 90% of Europe gets wiped out.
I read Solzhenitsyn’s fantastic book “200 Years Together”. Russian Empire/Soviet Union has a totally different national history from Nigeria (my country). Yet, I’m struck by similarities in the history of ethnic tensions within Russian Empire/USSR and Nigeria (a secular multi-national federation of over 250 ethnic nationalities speaking mutually unintelligible languages; each with its own unique history and culture. On top of that, it is also a multi-confessional country where majority adhere to either Islam or Christianity).
Indeed, the very word “pogrom” is commonly used in many Nigerian history books although it has nothing to do with Jews and all to do with waves of massacres of ethnic Igbos which eventually led to the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967-70).
There are other similarities as well– Ukrainian corruption competing for first prize with Nigerian corruption. Many Delta-Igbos (in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria) denying being a part of the larger Igbo ethnicity (of Eastern Nigeria) while continuing to speak an Igbo dialect and bear Igbo names reminds me of West/Central Ukrainians denying Russian ethnicity while speaking what is essentially a dialect of Russian language.
…No wonder I’m fascinated by Russia, Ukraine and The Saker Blog which I started following in 2013…