Solzhenitsyn: My Murdered Grandfather’s Voice | Newsweek International

Epic Struggles
Andrew Nagorski 6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
History lives and breathes—it's never static. Debates about history always tell us as much about the present and the struggles for power as about the past, often more so. As George Orwell famously pointed out: "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."
WORLD AFFAIRS
Fading To Black
Owen Matthews 4/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
Seen from the Kremlin, the scenes of protesters overrunning Moldova's parliament and ransacking its president's office looked chillingly familiar. More than five years ago, young pro-Western protesters toppled Moscow-friendly regimes in Georgia and Ukraine. Those "color" revolutions marked the nadir of Russia's power in the region and became the cornerstone of Kremlin policy ever after. At home, Moscow stamped out foreign-funded NGOs, abolished local elections and concocted youth groups to counter the possibility of anything similar happening inside Russia. Abroad, the Kremlin's priority has been asserting its right to a sphere of influence and fighting back the tide of Western influence. The outcome of Moldova's latest unrest, then, is about much more than a disputed election: it's a key test of both Russia's soft and hard power in the region.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Missions Critical
Andrew Nagorski 2/9/2009 12:00:00 AM
Stanislaw Ciosek was once a member of the Polish communist regime that tried to suppress Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement in the 1980s. It imposed martial law and arrested many of Solidarity's leaders, but later negotiated the "roundtable" accords that led to the partly free elections in 1989. That ballot produced a landslide victory for Solidarity that signaled the end of one-party rule and the collapse of communism in Poland, triggering ripple effects throughout the region.
BOOKS
A Turbulent Russian Century
Owen Matthews 1/15/2009 12:00:00 AM
Alexandra (Sashenka) Zeitlin is clever, spirited and rich, the beloved daughter of a Jewish industrialist growing up in Petrograd during the first world war. She's also a revolutionary who reads the works of Marx and Plekhanov after lights-out at the elite Smolny Insitutue for Young Noblewomen.
THE LAST WORD
Francis Fukuyama: Back To The End Of History
Matthew Philips 9/20/2008 12:00:00 AM
In 1992, Francis Fukuyama, a second-generation Japanese-American historian and philosopher, published the precocious, controversial treatise "The End of History," which held that the age-old struggle over political ideologies had ended and that liberal democracy was the victor. But the past 16 years—the rise of Russian authoritarianism, China's huge economic growth and the failure of neoconservative ideals in Iraq, where Fukuyama argued early to dislodge Saddam Hussein—have cast doubt on his premise. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Matthew Philips. Excerpts:
Solzhenitsyn Goes Home

At 75, Russia's greatest living dissident was returning with a mission: to save the Russian soul. ""I hope that I can be of some help to my tortured nation,'' he said in a farewell speech in Vermont. But his nation may no longer have a place for cultural figures as spiritual leaders -- or for dissidents. ""Those times have passed,'' says Vitaly Tretyakov, the editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which ran an article dismissing Solzhenitsyn as ""hopelessly outdated.'' Says Tretyakov, ""Nobody believes in anything anymore.'' Cynicism, individualism and downright exhaustion from maneuvering through a new, chaotic economy have fundamentally changed Russia.