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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

75 quotesHistorian · Born Dec 11, 1918 · Died Aug 3, 2008 · Russia · Male

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (; 11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he would not be allowed to reenter. He was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the state's dissolution. 2Biography 3Early years Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR (now in Stavropol Krai, Russia). His mother, Taisiya Zakharovna (née Shcherbak) was of Ukrainian descent. Her father had risen from humble beginnings to become a wealthy landowner, acquiring a large estate in the Kuban region in the northern foothills of the Caucasu

All Communism (9)Prison (8)Evil (6)Truth (4)Lies (4)Soul (4)Power (4)Totalitarian (3)Russia (3)Statism (3)Literature (3)Socialism (3)Work (3)Totalitarianism (2)Freedom (2)

From “Russia, Ukraine and the Breakup of the Soviet Union”

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation…woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force.

Literature Censorship Totalitarianism

From “The Great Thoughts, Revised and Updated”

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

20th Century Press Media

From “Conspiracy of Credit”

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

Truth Envy

From “Quote Unquote”

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

Talent sharing

From “Small Is Still Beautiful”

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the process loses his soul.

Soul

From “The Prime Movers”

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the state.

Lies Totalitarian Statism

From “The Gulag Archipelago”

That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would even feel awkward to refer to it as a science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event—when, in what…

Marxism Communism

At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear…

Government Moralists Prison Totalitarian

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

History sometimes does know revenge, a sort of voluptuous and delayed justice, but chooses strange forms for it and unexpected executors of its will.

Justice Revenge

Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.

Human Nature

Thanks to ideology the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing calculated on a scale in the millions.

Ideologies Democide Evil

Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body? What, then, can Russia teach the…

Nazi Germany Communist Atrocities Russia

That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.

Ideology Evil shakespeare Villains

The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.

Truth Lies Socialism Socialist Realism

Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another.

Prison Arrest Police

Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For…

Power

Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.

Power

Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.

Cowardice Sacrifice

At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing…

Arrest Prison Resistance Jail

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