Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The BBC on the day that Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the USSR.
“By the decree of the Praesidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, A I Solzhenitsyn has been stripped of citizenship of the USSR for systematically performing actions that are incompatible with being a citizen of the USSR and detrimental to the USSR and was expelled from the Soviet Union on 13 February 1974.”
A man of such courage deserves to be remembered and honored.
From what I know of the Russian “expat.” point of view: Being stripped of the citizenship of the USSR was certainly the greatest privilege one could be granted at that time.
Here again, Solzhenitzyn is certainly one of the most significant Russian authors, however I am not sure I want to honor a person who has highly disturbing opinions on his fellow citizens of Jewish faith. Recent works of Solzhenitzyn even reveal ugly traits of a reactionary panslavism that is everything but “honorable”.
NV
I understand Nathalie’s note that “I am not sure I want to honor….” Solzhenitsyn upholds a political view that is broadly Panslavist and that rejects western liberalism. Of course, I have no desire to honor those views. But that doesn’t stop me from recognizing the courage that led him to tell the truth about the horrors and injustices of communism, and to do so at great risk to himself.
I think this article by Reason’s Cathy Young (a Russian expat herself) has a good take on Solzhenitsyn’s own politics:
http://www.reason.com/0405/co.cy.traditional.shtml
Of course, I agree entirely with Tom here: we don’t have to agree, or glorify, or excuse his views in order to see his insight into the Soviet machine of repression — and I say that as being an expatriate [ex-]Soviet Jew. His accounts could just as well have been written by a Jewish “old Bolshevik” in the 1930’s, or an innocent Jewish doctor in the 1950s (Doctor’s Plot), or a Zionist in the later days.