APPRECIATION

Solzhenitsyn: My Murdered Grandfather’s Voice

With the loss of Russia's greatest dissident, the nation has lost its conscience too.

By Owen Matthews | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 5, 2008 | Updated: 10:38  a.m. ET Aug 5, 2008

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  • Posted By: jaf04 @ 08/12/2008 1:50:27 PM

    They are doing better now.

    Posted By: Nar27 @ 08/09/2008 7:27:37 PM
    Comment: I am a liberal and I hate what the communist did.

  • Posted By: Nar27 @ 08/09/2008 7:35:36 PM

    Any system that excludes certain people is wrong, as defined in the UN Declaration of Human Right. The beauty of Sozheniskin is that he had a conscience. What a beautiful world this would be if all had a conscience and all thought that we are all one human race without preferential treatment to ones group or the ones with power.

  • Posted By: Nar27 @ 08/09/2008 7:27:37 PM

    I am a liberal and I hate what the communist did.

  • Posted By: Nar27 @ 08/09/2008 7:26:39 PM

    I am a liberal and I hate what the communist did.

  • Posted By: sgoldbarg @ 08/06/2008 10:18:16 PM

    thehappyamerican,

    You must be joking. Liberals know stalin, mao, pol pot, and other commie rightwingers were mass murderers. Where do you get this nonsense??? It was the ford admin that overthrew Prince Sihanouk and installed the hated Lon Nol, who was incapable of defeating the murderous khmer rouge. If it weren't for ford, 2 MILLION Cambodians could have lived full lives. You republicans aren't going to be satisfied until you snoop in everyone's communications, and extend your gulag of torture and premature death from abu ghraib and Guantanamo to Peoria and Omaha. Please, don't kid us that you love America.

    • Posted By: thehappyamerican @ 08/07/2008 2:42:22 AM

      No joke! Liberals have a very tough time acknowledging anything negative about former regimes that were formed under communism. I get it from Liberals themselves! The source! Right wing were socialist (accepted a free market) where as full order communists are LEFT Wing and oppose free markets.
      I do hope the "us" you refer to are other people who despise Americans. You don't sound like a very happy guy!
      It was Pol Pot who created the death camps in Cambodia.. not President Ford.
      .

  • Posted By: jeanfawa @ 08/06/2008 2:50:56 PM

    I started to discover the real world about politics reading his amazing novels since I started my english and law studies.

  • Posted By: jellay @ 08/05/2008 2:38:59 PM

    It's funny to hear Gorbachev speak of "the real nature of the [Soviet] regime", when he participated in it throughout his life, and promised to uphold it. And the process that Solzhenitsyn and Gorbachev helped start completely destroyed freedom and democracy in the [now former] Soviet Union, and it's silly to say that Solzhenitsyn made the country better in the light of how it is today.
    And which intellectuals served the regime and don't deserved to be called intellectuals? Lots of intellectuals supported Solzhenitsyn, throughout his career. Lots likewise denounced him and did so voluntarily. The intelligentsia in USSR was one of the most liberal forces.
    Calling his letter private is a lie, because he was a soldier writing to a civilian, and under wartime conditions ALL such letters were inspected by censors. I've even read that he criticized not only Stalin, but the entire Soviet system in a whole series of letters. Also, he spent only half his time in the "nightmarish" GULAGs, spending the rest working in a sharashka (living in much better conditions) and performing skilled labor (as a mathematician).
    The Communist Party did cause "unimaginanle human suffering" (which nevertheless can't and shouldn't be compared to the suffering under Nazi occupation, which claimed many more lives), but it was also a key part of the structure of the system that supported, raised, and fed hundreds of millions until it was indeed "cracked" and then called "rotten" in hindsight.

    Solzhenitsyn was right in speaking out and writing and returning to Russia after exile and is thus an important and positive figure, but your article is full of exaggerations. You hate the Soviet system in all its forms, and are quite far from understanding Russian and Soviet history, even to the extent that most Russians do, which is indeed very conflicted.

    • Posted By: ilen @ 08/06/2008 11:39:08 AM

      jellay, you are mistaken: Nazi regime did not claim "many more" lives, as compared to Stalin's. Taking into account not just those perished in gulags, which by themselves numbered around 12 million, but also deaths due to catastrophic famines, unnecessary human losses due to ineptitude of our top military comander, tovarisch Stalin, during the Great Patriotic War, and other such "experiments" on people -- most historians come up with a much larger number. But I agree with you, there is really no point in running comparisons -- human suffering is human suffering, whether it's just one person or millions.

      • Posted By: thehappyamerican @ 08/06/2008 12:52:44 PM

        Soviets murders indeed rivaled the Nazi's. Murdering the undesirables on mass scale is a communist trait and trait some how American Liberals can't stand to be reminded of that. Especially the killing fields of Cambodia.
        NEWSWEEK does not hate the former Soviet system at all! A single culture and the fusion of nations is common sense to Newsweek, and Lenin!

  • Posted By: GTX13 @ 08/05/2008 11:56:53 PM

    No ! You don't need a Solzhenitsyn just now, because you have an Obama, surrounded by a "bullshitmoveon.org", a black"KKK movement theology" against the whites and promoting a subversive communist policy against all Americans. But they will be crack down and completely failed in November 2008 ! All this Nazi-socialist propaganda promoted by Obama's puppets and supported by some corrupted so "called" "elected leaders", are working on the same hand with the Muslim Countries and our enemies, to get the power on the US Government ! See the special interest of the corruption "on the oil problem"! But finally they will be smashed one by one by the People's Power !...And all these stupid leaders surrounded by "www.bullshitmoveon.org" will be deported by the real American People into Siberian Animal Farm Hell, managed by "Lenin,Stalin & Brezhnev/ghost.com" !!!

  • Posted By: ItsmeDavid @ 08/05/2008 5:24:42 PM

    Great article! Would be great to have someone do the same for the U.S. as well. With 700 bases around the world, running a war that has killed over 1.2m people + counting, a mirror to look at our happy, blissful existence and proponents of 'democracy' could very healthy indeed. We need a Solzhenitsyn for this country, for this time...

  • Posted By: jellay @ 08/05/2008 2:38:33 PM

    It's funny to hear Gorbachev speak of "the real nature of the [Soviet] regime", when he participated in it throughout his life, and promised to uphold it. And the process that Solzhenitsyn and Gorbachev helped start completely destroyed freedom and democracy in the [now former] Soviet Union, and it's silly to say that Solzhenitsyn made the country better in the light of how it is today.
    And which intellectuals served the regime and don't deserved to be called intellectuals? Lots of intellectuals supported Solzhenitsyn, throughout his career. Lots likewise denounced him and did so voluntarily. The intelligentsia in USSR was one of the most liberal forces.
    Calling his letter private is a lie, because he was a soldier writing to a civilian, and under wartime conditions ALL such letters were inspected by censors. I've even read that he criticized not only Stalin, but the entire Soviet system in a whole series of letters. Also, he spent only half his time in the "nightmarish" GULAGs, spending the rest working in a sharashka (living in much better conditions) and performing skilled labor (as a mathematician).
    The Communist Party did cause "unimaginanle human suffering" (which nevertheless can't and shouldn't be compared to the suffering under Nazi occupation, which claimed many more lives), but it was also a key part of the structure of the system that supported, raised, and fed hundreds of millions until it was indeed "cracked" and then called "rotten" in hindsight.

    Solzhenitsyn was right in speaking out and writing and returning to Russia after exile and is thus an important and positive figure, but your article is full of exaggerations. You hate the Soviet system in all its forms, and are quite far from understanding Russian and Soviet history, even to the extent that most Russians do, which is indeed very conflicted.

  • Posted By: cobrow @ 08/05/2008 2:05:34 PM

    The arrogance of many of my country-mates, Americans, in thinking that everyone WANTS to be "Americanized" in one form or another, is evident even in this article that appears so well-written. We have to wake up to the fact that our way of life is not necessarily "God's Gift" to everyone. There is value in any society that esteems life and does not seek to destroy any other society. This would be my definition of "Tolerance" not the one that appears to be in use today.

  • Posted By: BrantleyHobbs @ 08/05/2008 1:50:27 PM

    Solzhenitsyn's moral compass never once wavered; in his speech at Harvard in 1978 (30 years ago!) he decried the Western idea of capitalism and its fundamentally dualistic philosophy. Even in this well written article, the author falls into this trap by assuming that when Solzhenitsyn wanted to change Russia, that he meant that it should change into the United States. Can you not see how consistent he was? He wanted RUSSIA! Not an Americanized version of it.

  • Posted By: srvgirl @ 08/05/2008 1:27:29 PM

    A fantastic article...well-written. I like how the author succinctly describes how Russians are torn, and why. Russia has such a complicated history, one that I am only beginning to learn about, and I think the people and country are greatly misunderstood (particularly by those that cannot fathom not living in a capitalistic society). Socialist Idealists have a lot to offer, if we are willing to listen.

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