1 He wrote my favorite book ever, One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The last of the great Russian authors, and very anti-Communist. RIP indeed.

2 Might I also add that I have studied Russian literature extensively (namely Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Solzhenitsyn), and feared that the day this man died, Russian literature as we know it dies. At least we have his amazing works to remember him by.

3 He outlasted the bastards who imprisoned him, and the system that spawned them.  Putin may try to bring the glory days back, but his 'Russian empire' will always be a sad shadow of the real thing.  Rest well, Mr.Solzhenitsyn.  If there is a Heaven, it's waiting for you.

4

Jeff - Agreed.  Ivan Denisovich is brilliant, as was the man who penned it.  He will be sorely missed.

5 Starships will be named after him.

Brezhnev, not so much.

RIP

6 Solzhenitsin was poison to the tenured libs because he wasn't broken in the belly of the workers paradise beast and subsequently called them out on their gutless equivocations.  I don't blame him for being sickened by his surroundings here; I sometime feel the same way.  RIP.

7
Uh, he was sort of an asshole.  He was antisemitic, thought he was superior to the west, really didn't understand the freedoms we have in this country, i.e., expected reporters to submit their questions to him in advance for his approval, etc.

8 he's dead. His work helped free multitudes. RIP, and if you have something negative to say, it reflects more on you than him. Go ahead, post away, thicken your skin, bitches, this could be painful. By the way, be courageous enuf to use you your correct nyms and emails, watermelons

9 god rest his soul

10 The top five people responsible for the destruction of the Soviet Union.

1. Reagan
2. John Paul II
3. Thatcher
4. Walesa
5. Solzhenitsyn

11 Oh, yeah, frank, you got me shaking in my boots. lol! Solzhenitsyn's attempt to blame the jews for the revolution and communism feeds right into the antisemitism still prevalent in russia and in the neo-nazi mind, validates Hitler's attempt to murder them all. 

12

Starships will be named after him.

Wow.  Just fucking wow. That there's something to shoot for...

"Shines the name, shines the name of Solzhenitsyn."

13 grc,

Solzhenitsyn  may have been a real dick in some ways, but  he did help end the USSR. 

He has earned quite a bit of slack, in my opinion.

14

eman, there will be starships named after someone else that we know, too.  And should one of them encounter a race of vicious moonbats in the far reaches of space, its very name will cause their cranial cavities to spontaneously incinerate.

...IYKWIMAITYD

15 Uh, he was sort of an asshole.

You're right, that totally invalidates all the good that he did.

16 courageous, grc, nearly....


pussy

17

eman, there will be starships named after someone else that we know, too.  And should one of them encounter a race of vicious moonbats in the far reaches of space, its very name will cause their cranial cavities to spontaneously incinerate.

...IYKWIMAITYD

Posted by: sherlock

Ace?

18

I didn't see they would pee their panties, I said their heads would explode!  Shit, apparently IYKWIMAITYD just doesn't have the power it once had...

19 You're right, that totally invalidates all the good that he did.

Never said it did. But unlike Frank G., et al, I'm not willing to give Solzhenitsyn a
postmortem blow job.

20 not to say Solzhenitsyn was totally pure by any means, nor am I. Just that his pluses have to bemeasured against his minuses, and the "pure", like grc, would denigrate any societal pluses made at sincere cost by Solzhenitsyn and many others (not officially vetted to sing in a "I'd like to sing the world in perfect harmony" Coke Ad) is absurd. Grc isn't fit to wear their stained underwear. The weren't perfect, but they stood their ground and took their torture and abuse. GRC- you are not worthy, and neither am I

21 U.S.S. Norris

U.S.S Cheney

U.S.S. Reagan

and the flagship,

U.S.S. George W. Bush  (FYNQ - 1701)

22

The T Roosevelt is known as the "Big Stick".

The John Stennis is the "Johnny Reb"

I hope the GWB will be nicknamed: the "WMD"... fuck yeah!

23 Any plans to translate 200 years together into English?

24 Seriously, they need to translate his last work. I'm not convinced it's anti-Semitic, and by extension I'm not convinced he's anti-Semitic. Communism was invented by Jews - true. But Trotsky, Marx, Yagoda et al were apostate and evil Jews. Every nationality has its bad apples. I'm not anti-German because I hate Nazis

25 30 years ago.

26 Got to agree with Frank. Let's not cannonize Alexe, he had his good points and his bad. RIP, The Big Boss will weigh the scales.

27 There are many people that accomplish great things who are assholes, racists, misogynists, alcoholics, etc.  You can't dismiss their achievements because they aren't nice.  That's juvenile.

28 @10: Ahmed Shah Masood probably should be in there as 5a or something.

29 Interesting guy. VERY Russian. One of the meanest things I ever tried to do was in a game of movie title Charades. I tried to make the other team name the title "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (they made a movie out of the book). The rest of my teammates blocked me. Besides "One Day" I've also read his "Cancer Ward", "The First Circle", Gulag I & II and "August 1914". I was too young to understand Cancer Ward and The First Circle. Ivan and August 1914 rocked. Gulag I was about the most shocking book I've ever read. (I said, "They did WHAT?!" over and over again).

30 Solzhenitsin will live forever

31 Fuckin' Narc

32

There are many people that accomplish great things who are assholes, racists, misogynists, alcoholics, etc.  You can't dismiss their achievements because they aren't nice.  That's juvenile.

I don't think anyone is dismissing Solzhenitsyn's work. I've read most of his books and a lot of respect for his life and his writings, but we should also be realistic about how he actually was as a person. He was great in many ways, but he was also a flawed man, with very typical Russian flaws.

33 Right on brother!

34

God bless.

Death has been in the air lately for the great conservatives, and it is my sincere hope that the passing of men such as Aleksandr Isayevich will accrue to the overall betterment of our world. They deserve no less.

Solzhenitsyn’s works were simultaneously directed to both Soviet cruelty and Western excess. He was right on both counts.

Solzhenitsyn was a true hero. May he at last rest in peace.

35

A great and brave man who actually "spoke truth to power".

RIP

36 Memory Eternal!  Rest well, servant of God, Alexander.

37 During the summer of 1986, I read the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's magisterial Gulag Archipelago. I hadn't planned to, but I continued on and read Vol2 and 3. I considered it almost a religious duty to do so. His cry at the end of Vol3, "There is no law" echoes in my ears to this day.

My God grant rest to his soul.

38

I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as a graduate student looking for something to do and I was immediately impressed by the courage of the man. Such efforts emphasize the magnificence of the freedom of speech that we enjoy.

I expect all men to have their flaws, and some will be fatal. I do not know if Solzhenitsyn was a good man, but he was a courageous one. He stepped up when the world needed courage.

I do not know that hating the Jews that were involved in the establishment of Communism in Russia and anti-Semitism is the same thing. I also do not know enough about Solzhenitsyn to know whether he was guilty of one, or the other, or both.

39 I'm going to highlight my moron credentials, I don't think I ever heard of him before.

40 Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89
— Ace

RIP.

Thanks to Daniel.

Way to go, Daniel. 

41

Checked on Amazon, and apparently only Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago is still in print.

That's a sad commentary on our culture. Perhaps his death will insprire someone to reprint the other 2 volumes.

They should be required reading at some point in every college.

42 I always say if I could make every politician read one book, it would be One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.  The ending always sends chills up and down my spine.

There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch, from the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail.

Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days.

The three extra days were for leap years.

43 I agree Solshenitsyn had some strange political views -- he advocated the
return of the monarchy and expressed disdain for Western democratic
traditions.

But if you've read any of his works -- the list is quite long -- and especially
the seminal work that made him famous, you know why he is a giant in
modern literature.  As much as I love "One Day ... ", I think "Cancer Ward"
is its equal.  Still, if you've read his Nobel masterpiece then you became Ivan Denisovich.  Solzehnitsyn perhaps did not have the same impact Thatcher and Reagan had on the collapse of the Soviet Union but he was a significant player. If not for his contribution, who knows, we might all be doing the Denisovitch for real (and will be if Generalismo Pelosi and Messiah Obama get their way).

While we're blaming the Jews for communism, it is helpful to remember that
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and Pol Pot were not Jews.  Marx
was simply one among many "socialists" in the 19th century -- the French
Leftists were probably as influential in bringing about that disaster as
Marx and most of them were not Jews.  Let's be fair about this sort of blame.

44

OT:

Slub broke the comments!

 

And it's getting to be time for that Kwisatz-Haderach p-shop, right? 

45 George Orwell once wrote that, contrary to the old aphorism, the evil a man does dies with him but the good he does will live on. And so it is with Solzhenitsyn. He was Russian to his very core, with all of the Russian virtues, including loyalty, passion, and a sense of history, and all of their vices, including more than a whiff of anti-Semitism. But most importantly, he was on the side of truth against the Soviets' empire of lies. He fought the lie with all of his enormous strength and talent, and helped to bring it down.

I was college in Canada when the "GULAG Archipelago" was first published. It hit like bombshell, destroying the pretentions of the pro-Soviet left. It was one of the most important books of the 20th century, and is well worth reading even today.

In years to come, the failures of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, like those of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy or Chekhov, will be seen as the failures of a difficult, talented man who was, despite a terribly hard life and his own flawed character, a benefactor of mankind.

46 GRC calls him an antisemite, and I've heard that many times over the years.  It's a bullshit charge.  Solz notes, quite accurately, that the communist leadership early on had a lot of Jews in it.  He never said that Jews were bad, or that Jews had something inherent to do with the horros of the USSR.  Solz wroet a lot about how communism affected different religions, and how the Orthodox Christian church was particularly harmed because it was the more popular, and how less popular religions were not at the same level of risk from the Athiests.

He simply reported the truth about the USSR.  To call him an antisemite, you have to point out something he said that was antisemitic.  Noting that a lot of New Yorkers are Jewish is not antisemitic, for example.  Now, Solz didn't like the communist monsters, so he didn't like Jewsich communist monsters either, but he was pretty damn consistent in his views of people regardless of their religion.

Think of it this way: there are reasons why blacks in the US are almost entirely democrats.  It's useful to talk about that, but some out there will leap to the conclusion that you're racist if you do (even if you're black).  That's exactly what the antisemitic charge against Solz resembles.

47 IYKWIMAITYD.....what the hell is that acronym?

48 The Dixie Chciks and other wannabe persecutees are going to have to pretend to be someone else now.

49 If You Know What I Mean And I Think You Do. I suppose for sfcmac it should have read IYKWIMAISYMN ...I Suppose You Might Not

50

Count me in the "he was an asshole" camp. I read A Day in the Life in High School and was duly impressed. At that time, Solzhenitsyn was living in Vermont, pissing and moaning about American culture and how inferior it was. I remember thinking that the great man somehow couldn't make the connection between freedom and pop culture.

51

Yea, I read it in high school, too.  We had a student teacher from BC one semester who was also the starting safety on the football team.  The guy was built like the proverbial brick shit house.  All the girls were in heat and the guys were in serious hero worship. He brought the book and we all read it and tried to impress him with our deep thoughts on the horrors of the Soviet way of life and the moral clarity of Alexander.

He got us tickets to one of his games and a bunch of us went to see the great poet warrior in action.  He also played on the kick off coverage team so we got there early for the opening kick.  First play of the game he goes screaming down field and into the wedge and gets knocked cold.  Out.  End of hero worship.

It wasn't long after that I started hearing Solzhenitsyn bleating on about the decadent western way of life from his mountain perch in Vermont made possible through the generosity of the American people.  End of hero worship, part II.

He was a great writer, ballsy guy and virulently anti-communist but he was no fan of democracy or America.

52 Never forget that it was Khrushchev who gave Solzhenitsyn his international voice (and protection) by allowing the publication of the anti-Stalinist One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich during his 'thaw'; its publication vaulted Solzhenitsyn to world-wide renown.  By such small points is History made.  The Rule of Unintended Consequences and all that.

53

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are lionized by the left for "Truth to power". Yet Solzhenitsyn really did suffer for the Truth, and the left hates him for it.

54

It is worth remembering the Gulag on this day, and the person most responsible for us knowing about it.

And you have to wonder about those complaining so stridently about Gitmo, Abu Gareb, etc.  It makes one laugh.

I seem to remember that those who complain so loudly these days (Kennedy, Kerry, etc.) were the same ones who were conspiring with the Soviets to get rid of Reagan.  They didn't seem to worry so much about Lubyanka prison then.

For that matter, it was the same people who spent the entire Cold War talking appeasement and telling us what good folks the Soviets really were.

55 Solzhenitsyn earned his star on the Walk Of Real Heroes by being the 1 guy the commie-huggers could never refute. They would bad-mouth Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher, the CIA, et al all day long. Then the Russian exile would stand up and say, "no really, the Communists are evil, their system is brutal, I saw it, I was there." After that there was little else left to say.

He wasn't just anti-Soviet either, he detested all authoritarian & totalitarian government as well. I used to have his novel 1914, and despite it outweighing Doctor Zhivago by a couple pounds, it was just as pointed a denunciation of the Czars (and the last Czar in particular) as anything he directed against the Communists. Poor Russia, doomed to be always ruled over by brutal, greedy men (and practically no women), unwilling to share the power or the wealth.

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