According to a report at The Hindu News Update Service the Russian writer, considered by many to be one of Russia’s more important writers of the past century, apparently died of a heart attack at his home near Moscow.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dead at 89
By Gregg Jocoy on August 4, 2008 12:36 AM
Gregg Jocoy
I'm gonna be 51 in August. Married for 28 years. Two wonderful daughters, two wonderful grand daughters. Microbusiness owner, committed Green, and eternal optimist.
Leuenberger was a great man and a lone voice for freedom where there was none. May his memory and ideas live on forever. May he rest in peace.
Trent,
1) Solzhenitsyn as a topic is political
2) Solzhenitsyn was not a member, candidate or representative of any “major” party either in the US or, to my knowledge, Russia (he obviously broke with the Communist Party, and his post-Soviet writings, according to Wikipedia, “criticized the oligarchic excesses of the new Russian ‘democracy,’ while opposing any nostalgia for Soviet communism.”
He was nothing if not independent personally, and his writings had a significant impact on the thinking of many third party and independent activists.
God rest his soul. This is a man who endured a brutish torture at the hands of communists. I am thankful everyday he had the energy and courage to recount his experiences for the naive West, which was dangerously close to being suckered into radical crap during the turmoil of the ’60s.
Yes, he was a Slavophile, but so what? Can anyone really blame him, when the bloodthirsty Reds stomped on all nationalities in the old Soviet Union? Some have even contended that the Russians–through the destruction of their religion, their culture, their way of life–had it worst of all. Solzhenitsyn was a proud nationalist, and there is much to admire in the history of the old Russia, as he well knew.
He will best be remembered not for nitty gritty economic critiques, but for documenting the appalling human suffering on soul and body under communism. That is a libertarian thing, and a paleo-conservative thing, and an American thing. It’s an achievement that ought to resound in the hearts of anyone who has one. Except maybe the Marxist cults in this country and the Greens, who are content these days to keep company with Worker’s World: a poisonous “party” that celebrates the ruthless power imposed by China and the USSR on countless Eastern Europeans, Tibetans, political dissidents, and many others.
I do really like A Day in the Life of…, and I maybe wrong on Solzhenitsyn being an actual monarchist, I think he had more of mystical attachment to Old Mother Russia.
Solzhenitsyn was a Russophile nativist, ultra Russian Orthodox christian, and monarchist, who proclaimed love for Israel, but had some “dubious” views on Jews in Russia’s history. Hardly a spokes person for any libertarian world view.
While I agree with his analysis that Lenin and Trotsky had the same sort of violent jacobin tendencies as Stalin. But, to suggest he is a reliable analyst of Marx’s economics theories is pretty dubious as well.
I believe some of the political parties covered by IPR are of a socialist bent, and I don’t mean the Greens either. Solzhenitsyn’s writings are important as a critique of Marxism in general and Soviet style communism in particular.
Some might just slip up and suggest he was as important as Rothbard or Rand, but not me! I know my political thinkers place in the cyber pecking order.
….What does this have to do with Third Parties or Independent candidates? Is hid corpse running for President?
….He’s got my vote.
On a personal note, his book
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
was an amazing story, as clear eyed and understandable at any classic I have ever read.