Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn thread to discuss what was likely the greatest Russian writer of the 20th century. A little about him he was a soldier in ww2 until he made a joke about Stalin getting him a ticket to the gulage.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
ia800301.us.archive.org/32/items/Solzhenitsyn200YearsTogether/Solzhenitsyn-200 Years Together.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=QwQkgfRUI9M
youtube.com/watch?v=WA0DG-JWQME
youtube.com/watch?v=j6p1zxKnDeM
snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-new-world-order-is-communism.html
rense.com/general86/realholo.htm
youtube.com/watch?v=j9fFg923PmE
cvltnation.com/brutal-drawings-from-the-gulag/
rense.com/general75/ehr.htm
ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_Weber.html
thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Gulag1.pdf
germanvictims.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/WALENDYsolje-Russia-and-the-Jews.pdf
archive.org/details/collectionofrepo00grea
radicalpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/200-Years-Together.pdf
voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf
ia801703.us.archive.org/13/items/RussiaNo.11919--ACollectionOfReportsOnBolshevismInRussia1.ed./Russia_No.1_1919--A_Report_On_Bolshevism_In_Russia.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=eP18DvPFn9w
ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

some good quotes

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power–he's free again.”

“When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.”

“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”

“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.”

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

“One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?

There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.

Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.

In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.

But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.

And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?”

“A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.”

the particular flavor of nationalism he wanted was I always felt the correct choice for Russia. They should remove most of the foreigners and set the majority of the none slavic lands free from the federation and reunite Belrus Ukraine and Russia into one state

“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.”

his wiki
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

His anti jew work was 200 years together a history of jews in Russia. It has never been translated into english

There is nothing that so assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one's own transgressions, errors, mistakes. After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my Captain's shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: 'So were we any better?'