Alexander Solzhenitsyn

[franksolich]

I just got done reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life (D. M. Thomas, 1998, St. Martin's Press); it's a big book, but well worth the read.

The book not only covers the life of this Giant of the 20th Century (1918-2008; the book was written while he was still alive), but throughout gives a good overview of Russian history of the last century, and explains his prolific research for his histories, most notably The Gulag Archipelago.

The Gulag Archipelago, perhaps the most important literary work of the last century, should be required reading for primitives, but alas it's three big volumes and has a lot of really big words in it, so no primitive could possibly be up to the task.

The author examines Solzhenitsyn's complicated and failed "relationship" with his first wife, but both the author and reader fail to come up with any conclusion as to why it failed.

It was most peculiar; this was a woman Solzhenitsyn met and married just a year before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, meaning they had only a year of marital bliss before the war separated them.

And of course after the war (actually near the end of the war), Solzhenitsyn was sent to the camps for subversion, and absent for 11 years, 1945-1956.

Even though such was perilous during the socialist Stalinist regime, she and her family actually kept in contact with Solzhenitsyn, visiting him in person a few times (something usually impossible, and involving a great deal of trouble), writing him all the time, and occasionally managing to get food packages through to him.

A very hazardous thing to do, fraternizing with an Enemy of the State.

Solzhenitsyn's wife had been educated and trained as a chemist, but he persuaded her to punch the ivories, becoming a better-than-middling pianist.

After his release in 1956, Solzhenitsyn and his wife got back together, but something didn't work out.  She was in love with him (and remained so the rest of their lives), and the writer got along well with her relatives, but he essentially shunned her.

One is mystified; not only did she care about him very much, but she was also a very aesthetic woman.

The book answers all questions one might have about Solzhenitsyn, excepting this one.

[DumbAss Tanker]

A brilliant man, I recommend "August 1914" as well to your attention if you haven't read it.  I've not read "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" but after the concentrated depression and despair of "Gulag Archipelago" I think I've got the idea, the misuse of mental health facilities to punish State enemies is covered at some length in the later parts of it.

As far as relationships go, though, brilliant or not, who among us has all their eggs correctly arrayed in the basket?  For the most part, fallible men succeed marvelously in their relationships simply by not failing dismally.

[franksolich]

A brilliant man, I recommend "August 1914" as well to your attention if you haven't read it.  I've not read "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" but after the concentrated depression and despair of "Gulag Archipelago" I think I've got the idea, the misuse of mental health facilities to punish State enemies is covered at some length in the later parts of it.

As far as I know, I've read (and own) every book Solzhenitsyn wrote--of which One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is the most shallow, almost a children's book (I myself read it when 11 years old)--but while his works of fiction I've read only once and then put aside, his works of non-fiction still hold me after several readings.

Most people agree that The Gulag Archipelago is depressing, but I get the contradictory impression; that it's glorious and inspiring, showing the tenacity of the human spirit to survive.

I dunno why, but that's the impression I get from it.

[DumbAss Tanker]

No, I can see that; Solzhenitsyn's history of the Gulag has many dimensions to it.  There is a book titled "The Long Walk" you would probably enjoy, about the anabasis of a captured Polish officer escaping from the Gulag, filled with tragedy and yet ultimately triumphant.

[SVPete]

The Gulag Archipelago, perhaps the most important literary work of the last century, should be required reading for primitives, but alas it's three big volumes and has a lot of really big words in it, so no primitive could possibly be up to the task.

I can't comment on the literary attainments of DU Folk, Koslings, etc., but at 2700-3000 pages in the paperback edition I have, it is imposing. Depressing? Maybe, but it does show the depths to which ordinary human beings can go - in cruelty and in the endurance thereof. More personally, it gave me a clue to a family mystery. My grandparents came to the US from Russia in 1904. They knew what was coming, and there was a failed revolution in 1905-1906. AFAIK, all my Grandfather's family got out. My Grandmother, however, had brothers who were in the Russian army. They did not leave, but stayed in contact with my grandparents into the late 1920s ... and then went silent. While I don't know exactly what happened, they had been in the Czarist regime, were German, were from the Ukraine, and were the sons of land-owning farmers. Any one of those items on a life's "resume'" could have led one to the Gulag in Stalin's Russia or to death in prison or the Ukrainian famine.

[DumbAss Tanker]

The book by the Polish officer who trekked thousands of miles to freedom, from northern Siberia through the Himalayas to India, is "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, a true first-hand account of harrowing adventure rather than distinguished literature, of course.

[franksolich]

The book by the Polish officer who trekked thousands of miles to freedom, from northern Siberia through the Himalayas to India, is "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, a true first-hand account of harrowing adventure rather than distinguished literature, of course.

Okay, now I remember.

I read that book.

He and a few others in 1940 or 1941 actually hiked from northernmost Siberia down through the entire Gobi desert, ending up in Nepal about the time of Pearl Harbor.

It's been 15-20 years since I read it, but I remember it now.