Word: solzhenitsyn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...share Solzhenitsyn's antipathy toward progress. If mankind is the healthy organism I believe it to be, then progress, science and the constructive application of intelligence will enable us to cope with the dangers facing us. Having set out on the path of progress several millenniums ago, mankind cannot halt now -- nor should...
...Solzhenitsyn and I differ most sharply over the defense of civil rights -- freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom to choose one's country of residence, the openness of society. I have no doubt whatsoever as to the value of defending specific individuals. He assigns only a secondary importance to human rights and fears that concentration on them may divert attention from more important matters...
...Calf, Solzhenitsyn makes a great deal of my supposed naivete, my impracticality and especially my susceptibility to "pernicious" influences. Among those who (in his view) have hitched themselves to "this strange, huge, conspicuous balloon, which was soaring to the heights without engine or petrol" -- me -- Solzhenitsyn's sharpest, if covert, thrusts are aimed at my wife. Her "deleterious" influence, he suggests, led me to harp on emigration by Jewish refuseniks -- people "who did not feel that Russia was their own country...
...shame that Solzhenitsyn understood so little about me, my thoughts on emigration, human rights and other matters, and about the real Lusia and her true role in my life. Late in 1974 a German correspondent brought me a gift from Solzhenitsyn, a copy of The Oak and the Calf, with a warm and complimentary inscription from the author. I already knew what was in it, and when I saw the inscription, I couldn't help exclaiming, "Solzhenitsyn really offended me in this book...
...concluding excerpt from Memoirs recounts how his activism infuriated the KGB and led to his exile. -- Was Solzhenitsyn friend or foe? -- Who killed Baikal? -- The case for nuclear power...