(1918-2008)
I've always had a deep love of Russian culture and history, and I have always counted three great contemporary Russians among my own personal heroes. Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975, and Mstislav Rostropovich died last year. News from Russia tonight; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died at the age of 89.
I won't go into the particulars of Solzhenitsyn's legacy. The New York Times obituary I linked yo above is a pretty exhaustive one, and if you're not familiar with Solzhenitsyn, I hope you'll take some time to read it. Neither A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich nor especially The Gulag Archipelago are easy summer reads; indeed, I can't imagine very many people outside of Russia have read Gulag in its entirety. But you don't have to read much; like Holocaust history, the story of Stalinism (which hardly died with Stalin, or is dead even now) and the Russian terror state is probably too big for one person to encapsulate it. But Solzhenitsyn must have come close.
For me, there are two great chroniclers of the cruelty of life in the Soviet Union. Shostakovich showed us how it felt, and Solzhenitsyn told us how it was. The world is infinitely the poorer for his passing.
6 comments:
I am in the middle of the Gulag Archipelago and my husband (who has read the Gulag in its entirety) and I were just talking today about how we'd love to meet Aleksandr...
Then I randomly came across your blog and this very sad news. Thanks for posting!
I read the first half of the Gulag Archipelago (I bought the first volume not realising that there were two parts - Russians are NOT big on brevity, are they?). It was incredibly harrowing and eye-opening. If you haven't read them yet, Simon Sebag-Montefiore's two biographies of Stalin (The Young Stalin and Court of the Red Tsar) are incredibly personal and detailed accounts of the impetus behind the horror.
My husband and I read Gulag about three years together, while I was pregnant and on forced bedrest. He read it in original Russian while I read what is considered the better translation (He teaches Russian). Harrowing is one word but it is also one of the best books I've ever read.
"The line between good and evil lies not between states, not between classes and not between parties, but rather cuts across every human heart."
Perhaps the wisest sentence I have ever read, and it was written by this remarkable man.
I've always loved Solzhenitsyn and at a very age (11) read the Life of Ivan Denisovich. When I tackled the whole Gulag Archipelago in high school my parents thought it was amazing that something and someone had taken me so deep into exploring a single author. I later fell in love with Andrei Sakharov's memoirs writing, I still believe, because of the earlier experience of Solzhenitsyn. He was such a odd bird when you come down to it with the way he kept to himself and then his support of Post-communist leaders, so I think he will always be an enigma to me but one whose writing I dearly love. Cancer Ward is another one which is amazing.
Good afternoon Rob!
I
am just going through all of the books that were handed down to me from my parents and there parents and so on, and I found a copy of The Gulag Archipelago. There was an article (folded and saved inside the book) detailing how Aleksandr was made by the Russian government to release the book that he had thought he might not have ever published. It spoke of him and his family, and it gave me a better understanding of Aleksandr as a person rather than just a (albeit genius) literary figure. The reason for this LONG comment is to thank you for this post, which was the catalyst for me to pick up this (one of many) book and take the time to open it. I can't wait to dig into it now.
Lots of love to you and your family!
Suzanne
xoxoxo
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