Alexander Solzhenitsyn's words remain a warning
Rocky Mountain News
Published August 5, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated August 5, 2008 at 12:13 a.m.
After eight years in the Soviet Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn lived to become an elder among Russian writers, dying Sunday at the age of 89. The Nobel-prize winner went into the camps a Leninist, convicted of disrespecting Josef Stalin in a private letter, and emerged to tell the world about the horror of conditions there.
The KGB - which would employ Vladimir Putin as an operative - waged a campaign of persecution against Solzhenitsyn for those tell-all works. In later years, when the spy became president of the Russian Federation, the two men would agree on the country's need for a system different from Western-style democracy, but would at times part ways on how to put nationalism into action. A year ago, speaking to Der Spiegel, Solzhenitsyn defended the heavy-handed Putin's narrow version of democracy.
Yet with Putin and his successor this year as president, Dmitry Medvedev, securely in power, the thought police have resurged. The canaries in the coal mine are Russia's journalists, who have fallen prey to a spate of government media takeovers, abductions and threats, and even murder.
A backslide to Soviet ways may be difficult for younger Russians to comprehend. But surely Solzhenitsyn's own words, published in 1973, would urge caution against what's happening today:
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future."
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August 5, 2008
7:14 a.m.
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VVVV writes:
Oh my god. You mean somebody has control of the media and only publishes what they want people to hear? The horror. The people will be misled and follow anything, even if it completely misguided, based in lies, and spoon fed to them as if it were the truth. What are we to do in this land of moderated freedom with all of those people who want to control us?
I know, let's throw them a convention...at our expense.
August 5, 2008
8:52 a.m.
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HolierThanThou writes:
Greg Palast is an American reporter who has been writing for BBC. In 2000, he reported on the sham election in Florida as it was rigged by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris. The real problem was not about hanging chads. A software firm, ChoicePoint, was hired to implement the removal of "felons" from Florida's voter registry. They removed a few felons along with thousands of legitimate voters. The legitimate voters just happened to be concentrated in Democratic-leaning counties.
Where was the American media in all that?
American media is controlled by large corporations. These corporations also control the government via bribery. Oh, excuse me, I mean campaign contributions. Collecting money under this system now occupies over 95% of the average Congressional Representatives' and Senators' careers. When do they have time to serve the people?
The Russians see our corruption. They also watch as our ruling classes impoverish the rest of the country offshoring jobs and trying to trick us with tomfoolery like Amendment 47. They observe that there is no press freedom in America, you investigate and publish what the executive office tells you to publish. Real investigation is now left up to the people themselves, those of us who volunteer as activists for our communities, and anyone else who enjoys that increasingly rare combination of money and conscience.
Freedom in America is a sham just like in the Soviet Union. Ever read the Soviet Constitution? It's a work of literary and legal beauty conveying rights and dignity to everyone. Trouble was it didn't work like that. And neither does ours.
We don't jail people for speaking out so much. That's too expensive. Instead, they get fired from their jobs, loose their homes, and ultimately become non-persons. In America, dissent isn't punished in the Gulag, at least not yet. It's erased.
Guantanamo Bay is an experiment that presently uses rats as test material. We don't mind what they're doing to those rats because we don't understand the nature of the experiment. But like any medical experiment done on rats the medicine is being prepared for us.
August 5, 2008
9:34 a.m.
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T1anda writes:
We are all witnessing the MSM and their "repression" of the news. They certainly do not let the facts get in the way when reporting any news that doesn't fit their socialist leaning (leftwing) agenda. They eliminate or ignore criticisms of the Democrats.
Who was it that said Socialism is the next step to Communism?
August 5, 2008
3:27 p.m.
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Marshdale writes:
T1anda: You are paranoid. Talk radio is so far right it is pathetic. Liberal talkers if they are lucky might be one in ten. Any of the Sunday news magazines lean right especially FOX News. The only liberal TV people are Oberman and Colmes. Numerous media watch organizations have studied this, and have proven that there is no liberal bias. You righties see truth as a liberal construct. Liberals see truth as truth. Do some research.
August 5, 2008
9:13 p.m.
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Conservativeslayer writes:
Reality has a well known liberal bias. That's why the righties hate every media outlet except Faux Noise Channel. The MSM occasionally do report reality, and it doesn't confirm with the fantasy world the righties want to live in. So they scream and cry about how "liberally" biased the MSM is. The problem isn't with reality, it's with the righties government policies. They don't work, well at least not as advertised. The conservative policies do work in enriching the wealthy and destroying the middle class. That's what those policies are designed to do. The problem is righties listen to the propaganda of right-wing hate radio, that tell them if you make the rich wealthier it will trickle down to you working class folks. Only it never does, because it's not designed to do that. But the dumb righties not understanding how they've been duped into voting against their economic interests, don't understand that. So the right-wing hate radio propagandists say it's those liberal news folks, they aren't telling you the truth.
August 6, 2008
11:50 a.m.
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T1anda writes:
Yep, Marshdale "paranoid" like a fox!!!!
August 6, 2008
12:04 p.m.
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Conservativeslayer writes:
I really wish the editorial board of the Rocky would pay more attention to the creeping fascism going on in our country, and let the Russians take care of themselves. America just attained it's first conviction in what any reasonable person would call a show trial. OBL's driver was just convicted of supporting terrorism. Confessions obtained through coercion (beating it out of the guy) was allowed as evidence. Hearsay evidence, which would never be allowed in an American court room, was also allowed. The trials are so stacked against the defendant, convictions are basically assured. Even if by some miracle the defendant was to be acquitted, the government was never going to release him anyway. Remember when our country condemned the Soviet Union for these type of sham trials? When did the USA become the USSR?
August 6, 2008
5 p.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
"Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."
Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."... Alexander Solzhenitsyn
August 6, 2008
5:14 p.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
Conservativeslayer writes:
"I really wish the editorial board of the Rocky would pay more attention to the creeping fascism going on in our country..."
I think they have given Obama plenty of attention...
August 6, 2008
5:31 p.m.
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Conservativeslayer writes:
HazardousT spoken like a true fascist. Thanks for identifying yourself.
August 6, 2008
6:31 p.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
It's pretty funny seeing all the contortions you lefties go through to distance yourselves from your fellow travelers... typical though...
I have no idea whether you are ignorant or complicit, but the truth is that Fascism is just another branch on the Socialist family tree...
August 6, 2008
7:15 p.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
One more thing...
"In his towering book, The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn recounts an incident which apparently took place in 1937-38 at a district Party conference meeting in Moscow Province. The secretary (replacing an arrested one) was paying tribute to Comrade Stalin. The group, including the new secretary, was standing and applauding their esteemed Leader. Even a single minute of feverish clapping consumes energy, but in this case it was important to sustain the "enthusiasm" much longer. Three, four, five minutes passed and more! Tired arms!--but who could risk stopping? Seven, eight, and nine minutes elapsed. It was absurd! Finally after eleven minutes (!), a local factory director stopped clapping and sat down. All followed suit, but that night the one who stopped first was arrested and given ten years! He was told, "Don't ever be the first to stop applauding!" Solzhenitsyn queries, "And just what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to stop?" In harmony with the position of this article, he adds:
Now that's what Darwin's natural selection is. And that's also how to grind people down with stupidity.
August 6, 2008
7:22 p.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
Who will be the first to stop applauding Comrade Obama?
August 6, 2008
8:35 p.m.
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WestminsterJ writes:
HTT- Well said in your first post.
August 6, 2008
9:01 p.m.
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WestminsterJ writes:
Hazardous_T: You're right, every evil in the history of mankind is just another aspect of Socialism.
The Roman crucifiers of Jesus- socialists
The Viking plunderers of Europe- socialists
The medieval inquisitors- socialists of course
Louis XV- a socialist
Of course your guru Rush Limbaugh has already explained how the Nazis were really socialists (funny though that the Communists were their mortal enemies)
Funny how that mirrors exactly what the Soviets used to say about capitalism
And while we're on that subject, what, pray tell, did Solzenhitsyn say about American capitalism and consumerism?
August 7, 2008
3:17 a.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
Typical lefty argument, absurd analogies and name calling...
WestminsterJ writes: Of course your guru Rush Limbaugh has already explained how the Nazis were really socialists (funny though that the Communists were their mortal enemies)
No, Hitler explained that himself... "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions"
Funny, apparently YOUR guru Chris Mathews explained to you that because Hitler and Stalin were "mortal enemies" Hitler couldn't possibly be a socialist... By that logic I guess Stalin was a right winger because he had an icepick deposited in Trotsky's head...
It's also funny that Hitler and Stalin were "mortal enemies" when Hitler invaded Poland and France with Soviet fuel in his tanks... (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Aug,23 1939)
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/19...
Leftists have always been nothing more than petulant children who will throw a tantrum and literaly stab their brother in the back,( Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa.) so your assertion that they were mortal enemies only strengthens my argument...
Perhaps someday you lefty fools will figure out that your "progressive ideas" have all been tried and failed...
August 7, 2008
3:28 a.m.
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Hazardous_T writes:
As I said before, your contortions in trying to distance yourself from the truth are quite amusing... Now I'm off to pursue the Capitalist dream...
August 7, 2008
9:37 a.m.
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AngelontheSidelines writes:
Haz,
Don't fool yourself, Obama is in the club. Globalists own every candidate for major office, and their minions in the CFR, Bilderbergs and Trilateral Commission all work to eliminate national sovereignty and to make world government.
Soapbox grandstanding labeling Obama as a socialist merely shows how well your indoctrination has taken your thoughts. The schism created between left/right, liberal/conservatives is entirely artificial, designed to divide America and weaken our unity. Make no mistake, Obama, and McCain are cut from the same cloth. Both will take our freedom in the name of safety. Both will chip away more of our Constitution, and work to destroy the USA for globalist dominion.
August 8, 2008
12:20 p.m.
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T1anda writes:
I, for one would not argue with you Angel.
There are no more champions or gaurdians at the gate!!
August 8, 2008
12:26 p.m.
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T1anda writes:
Thumbs up!!! Hazardous T.