What does /lit/ think of Solzhenitsyn? He doesn't appear on the recommended Russian lit on the wiki list in the sticky. Was thinking of picking up a copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, worth reading? Any other suggestions/insights/comments/opinions?
He's the best rebuttal in regards to Mandela-lovers.
Spent years in a Gulag; never once resorted to, or advocated, violent resistance.
He'd spend his free time writing in his cell, only for the guards to come in and invariably destroy his work at the end of day. Then he'd do the same all over again the next day.
>>7889825
Mandela accomplished something politically. What did this sack of fat shit do other than write tripe?
>>7889831
I don't know, just put his name into the archive search and you'll probably find something.
>>7889831
My understanding is that before Gulag Archipelago, people didn't really understand that the USSR was the murderous hellhole that it actually was. People tend to give him the vast credit for exposing that. His works were championed by Kruschev when he became premier and worked to reform Stalinist USSR, though I believe when Brezhnev took over Solzhenitsyn fell back out of favor and was exiled.
>>7889825
>Spent years in a Gulag; never once resorted to, or advocated, violent resistance.
This is a respectful position to take, but this just sounds dumb. This elevates violence with a paper trail over justified resistance. Structural/institutionalized is simply abstracted out due to bureaucracy yet its effects are still harmful. This isn't to say violent resistance ought to be the first option just that it needs to always be on the table.
>>7889862
I think part of the idea is that when he was an officer on the eastern front in WW2, Solzhenitsyn literally witnessed german women and young girls being raped to death by soviet soldiers (part of this is recounted in Prussian Nights)--- I can see how this might sour one for violence.
At any rate, back on topic--- has anyone actually read any Solzhenitsyn?
>>7889891
All I read was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and didn't care much for it, so I didn't continue. Are his other works much different?
>>7889891
Cancer Ward is bloody good thus far, although depressing in a matter-of-fact way that I really find myself unsure of.
>>7890625
That guy had really seen some shit in his life, eh? It's incredible to me that he could go through all of that and still love his country the way he did.
