Word: solzhenitsyns
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...anonymous authors are scarcely in a class with Russia's Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But their writings are evidence that some Chinese are culturally starved for something more nourishing than party propaganda. Although few dare openly challenge the mindless conformity imposed by the Communist regime, the spread of irreverent songs and jokes indicates that the Chinese sense of humor is irrepressible. One favorite device is to sing love lyrics, sotto voce, to the tune of solemn hymns to Mao Tse-tung...
PRUSSIAN NIGHTS by ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN Translated by ROBERT CONQUEST 113 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $8.95. $2.95 paperback...
...before he was deported from Russia. Solzhenitsyn secretly made a recording of Prussian Nights, now available in the West. The author reads the 1,200-line war poem in the declamatory mode favored by many Russian poets, obviously savoring every line. Trochaic tetrameters and thumping end rhymes roll off his tongue. In an unexpectedly boyish baritone he interjects snatches of song, whispers, conversational asides and other special effects that hark back to his teen-age ambition to become an actor. The voice suits the poem. Prussian Nights represents the young Solzhenitsyn, still a decade away from the fine-tuned virtuosity...
Written in 1950, Prussian Nights is the earliest work the author has released for publication. Like much of his writing, it is essentially autobiographical. Solzhenitsyn had served in his mid-20s as an artillery officer in World War II, commanding a reconnaissance battery in one of the most dangerous of frontline positions. During the long pauses between the fighting, he kept a war diary and even managed to complete several short stories based on his experience. Prussian Nights is the fruit of Captain Solzhenitsyn's participation in the rampageous march of the Red Army across East Prussia to Berlin...
...atrocities committed by vengeful Russian soldiers along the route to Berlin have been acknowledged as "excessive" even by Soviet military historians. Solzhenitsyn coolly chronicles the passage of troops through Prussia as they swill schnapps, set fire to towns and villages, rape and murder German civilians and loot houses of items ranging from vacuum cleaners to Vienna rolls. As the narrator, Solzhenitsyn at first remains aloof, offering a succession of vignettes of violence without comment. Only once does his voice break, seemingly to signify some greater grief than the desolation of war. The moment comes when the narrator sights an "endless...