Aleksander Solzhenitsyn has died at age 89. Not much to add to all the obituaries, just my two kopecks’ worth that A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was the most important book published between 1950 and 1975. Just when you think Solzhenitsyn is finished with his tour de force, the last sentence falls like a hammer blow.
Most of us are fortunate enough to live in countries that do not need their writers to become prophets and catalysts of change. He was not, and what he wrote helped to crack open the Soviet system. Russians will always be able to draw on his courageous example.
After watching Solzhenitsyn’s general performance during this last decade of his life, the idea of “Russians drawing on his example” is, well, sort of frightening.
The impact of his literary works and his Nobel prize on the downfall of the Soviet system is debatable, and describing a reactionary Great Russian arch-conservative nationalist as a “catalyst of change” is sublime irony.
Hopefully, they’ll bury him deep enough.
Cheers,
J. J.
He was also an antisemite, so it’s quite natural he’s getting his laurels from the “jews to the frontlines” kind of ‘free westerners’.