This is the real legacy of the “Great Writer”.
Solzhenitsyn’s anti-communism, it is increasingly clear, was never a defense of individual freedom. It was a defense of a different kind of collectivism: ethnic, religious, and traditionalist. This is far from the only time that such a mind-set — anti-secular, anti-modern, anti-individualist — has been linked to prejudice against those who don’t fit into the collective.
All those Nazis in the comments found exactly what they were looking for: a comrad, an ideologue, a Himmler.Goebbels [corrected. Thank to Zenpundit for pointing out the error]
I have just skim-read some of that site you linked to, populated entirely by ‘The Stoopids’, as far as I can tell. One commenter claimed that Germany had never planned the First World War and so one can only assume that the name of von Schlieffen and an organisation called ‘the German General Staff’ are totally unknown to him.
I couldn’t stay on the site too long, the smell was overpowering!
They were undoubtfully Joooos, don’t you know it?
Welcome, David, happy to see you here. Feel free to peel back the pages; you’ll like the Nursing post with all its links – it so resembles your friend Little Willy story, I thought they were twins (separated by the ocean)!
Thanks for the links, especially to the Reason article. I read a few of the obits with an uneasy feeling, though I couldn’t quite remember why it should be so. Cathy Young puts it all together. The Great Writer was, indeed, a fraud. An apologist for lynching, no less. Oh, my.
Actuially, I didn’t provide the link, I’ll fix it now.
Solzhenitsyn, as far as I know, didn’t say anything about lynching of Blacks in American South in that book.
Ms. Young used “lynching” as parallel, to explain to Americans what Solzhenitsyn attitude towards anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia means. It’s a metaphore.
Yes, I’m familiar with metaphors. ;-) I was using it in that sense also. I guess it was Duff that supplied the link. Anyway, thanks for it, however I got to it.
I think you are going a bit overboard here. Himmler was a primary actor in the murder of 6 million Jews and several millions of others. Solzhenitsyn wrote a history book in his twilight years that evinced anti-semitic conspiracy theories. A bad thing certainly, but not remotely equivalent to being the orchestrator of a continental genocide.
Himmler didn’t kill those people himself – he was just an ideologue. A professional propagandist. A leader, a respected figure – he only made his own anti-semitic theories public – willing listeners did the rest. Have you read the article above I linked to ? Do you have any doubts that the commenters, if all the stars fell right, will be those willing participants in a new Jewish genocide?
Read Young’s Reason piece, Zenpundit. He was also doing this stuff before his twilight years–in his Gulag book, in fact. She’s got him.
Creepy.
I personally prefer trolling the VNN message boards or the Freedom4Um intellectual wasteland-if they even exist any longer. When people try to add a pseudo-historical cant to discredited racist ideas and anti-Semitic bigotry it just smacks of desperation-slightly pathetic, if you ask me.
I thought one of the comments left on Prof. Volokh’s blog about Cathy Young’s essay was interesting. To wit, that she’s one of the reasons that anonymous blogger doesn’t read Reason Magazine. In my opinion Cathy Young and Jacob Sullum-and to a lesser extent, Gillespie-are two of the only reasons to read that. Brian Doherty is also a pretty sensible, smart editor.
Have you ever read Radicals for Capitalism?
Etat,
Re: Young:
She’s stretching with complaints of anti-semitism in August 1917 and The Gulag. Or at least it’s odd that she cited those but at the same time, left out something as important as Lev Rubin in The First Circle. One would think Solzhenitsyn’s treatment of a major character who was Jewish in a novel might have some bearing on her argument. Which begs the question of how well does she even know Solzhenitsyn’s body of writings in the first place?
Frankly, being very familiar with Richard Pipes’ work on Russian and Soviet history and not being familiar with Ms. Young’s accomplishments in that field at all, she has a high bar to meet in debating this point. It can hardly be argued that Richard Pipes was either pro-Soviet or uncritical of Tsarist Russia. For that matter, I’d trust David Remnick’s judgment here more than I would Young’s.
Re: commenters: There are many Jew-haters in the world and they frequently appear online when anything regarding Jews, the Holocaust or Israel are discussed to spit their venom. Go look at the comments at The History News Network (HNN) sometime.
Re: Himmler:
Rosenberg and Goebbels are examples of ideologues and propagandists. Heinrich Himmler was a great deal more.
Himmler was the bureaucratic head of the SS and the ultimate coordinator of all the German police and intelligence agencies ( Abwehr excepted) from the Gestapo to the Sipo to the uniformed police battalions of the ordinary constabulary. Himmler’s immediate subordinates organized the Einsatzgruppen, were the primary planners at the Wannsee Conference and designed the logistical system to move millions of Jews to ghettos and then to death camps. Without the organizational abilities of Himmler and many like him in the Nazi regime, genocide on such a scale would hardly have been possible.
Which is why I think the analogy was absurd.
Zen: my bad. I meant Goebbels, not Himmler. For some reason in my mind eye I pictured that War-time caricature on Goebbels in front of a radio microphone, but wrote Himmler; go figure.
About jewish characters in fiction: so you think if a writer designate a positive character in his book as Jewish, he could no longer be called anti-Semitic? That strikes me as a bit simplistic. In my opinion, it’s a literary version of someone saying – some of my best friends are Jewish, BUT…
David Remnick? Strange choice for authoritative source. In any case, I don’t need Pipes, or Remnick, or even Solzhenitsyn telling me about Soviet history. Btw, he was very boring, as a writer. Ever tried to read “Red Wheel”? Yawn.
Gerard: no, didn’t even hear of them. Is it a blog, a book, a magazine?
I wouldn’t purposefully read a filth like above; I just happened on that link when googling “Solzhenitsyn 200 years together”.
Something else came to mind, Zen. If you want an example of truly good documentary (fiction based on autobiographical knowledge) writing about gulag and life in Stalin times – try Evgenia Ginzburg and Varlaam Shalamov.
It’s a history of the libertarian movement within the United States, which explores its beginnings, different philosophers, activists, gadflies, political movements, think tanks, etc…
Radicals for Capitalism
It makes for some interesting reading.
Oh yes, now I remember – I read about it when the book came out.
I’ll put it on my Amazon wish list.
Thanks
No problem.
I really liked the book, which is very detailed. Over a hundred pages of footnotes, IIRC. There’s an entire section devoted to Ayn Rand and some her female contemporaries in the libertarian movement, and a lot of really interesting stuff about Murray Rothbard.
I’ve read Evgenia Ginsburg’s work and can’t say enough good things about her. Not familiar with Shalamov.
Good to see your blog, Tat. I’d add it to my blogroll but can’t seem to access it. My blogroll, that is.
Hi, Miriam, happy to see you here. [can Rachel help you with all things Blogger?]
Yes, one of my little personal victories, to argue successfully for 2-volume Ginsburg book as part of my divorce setlement!
Not much beyond that, though…
I have to say, I really liked Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life…
He was no master of literature, his opinions can be discarded, but his contemporary observations as portrayed in those two books were excellent. For his descriptions of camp life and Soviet minutiae, I will always keep him on my bookshelf.
He’s not the only person by a long way who can make excellent observations and descriptions but stink to high heaven on interpretation of events and opinions. Robert Fisk, for example.
Incidentally, I thought this comment was good.
Oh yes, the comments (yours and BR’s) are right on target.
Unfortunately, there are many who practice selective criticism, as in “from here to here the Man was a hero and everything else I prefer not to pay attention to”. And then they talk about ‘legacy”, as if their picking-and-choosing encompasses the whole bag of utter nonsense that was left by their hero.