Word: solzhenitsyn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kremlin's least favorite writers, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, won the literature award in 1970. He decided he would not attend the presentation for fear of being refused permission to return home. He was probably correct: four years later he was exiled from the Soviet Union. Soviet-born poet Joseph Brodsky was already in exile in New York City when he won the prize for literature in 1987. Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov thought it was "a good thing" that world attention would be focused on Russian poetry, but he was sour about Brodsky, who had been sentenced to a work camp...
...debate was torrid, the issue momentous. But even in the midst of last week's parliamentary debate over the country's economic destiny, many Soviet lawmakers could not tear their eyes from the newspapers in their laps. Here was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the exiled dissident, writing a polemic about the nation's current crisis in the pages of nothing less than Komsomolskaya Pravda (circ. 22 million), the mouthpiece of the Young Communist League. The 16,000-word text was also printed in Literaturnaya Gazeta (4.5 million), which only five years ago berated its author as "that vile scum of a traitor...
...recent years Soviet officials have permitted the publication of some of Solzhenitsyn's earlier writings. But no major new works have appeared in the Soviet Union since the master of Russian letters was banished for treason in 1974. And never before has Solzhenitsyn written about Gorbachev's Soviet Union...
Judging that at last it was possible to publish practically anything in his homeland, Solzhenitsyn finally spoke out from his home in Cavendish, Vt. Opening his piece with the potent words "The death knell has sounded for Communism," he dismissed the years of "noisy perestroika" as a waste that brought about an "ugly, fake, election system" with just one goal: preserving the Communists' power. Arguing that the Soviet empire "sucks all juices" from the Russian heartland, Solzhenitsyn called for the creation of a Slavic state comprising the republics of Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia and the northern parts of Kazakhstan, which...
...Solzhenitsyn's plea will please some secessionists, though his concept of a "Russian Union" would hold little appeal for independence-minded Ukrainians. The article may also liberate him from his reputation as an advocate of authoritarianism. Though he maintained that democracy must grow "from the bottom up," he clearly endorsed the system. He cautioned, however, against excessive Western influence, decrying "degraded pop, mass culture ((and)) vulgar fashions...