Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008

Writing for Global Voices Online, Veronica Khokhlova has translated a post in Russian by Armenian journalist Mark Grigorian on the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

For me Solzhenitsyn began from the kitchen radio set. Week after week, every evening, my grandfather listened to The Gulag Archipelago being read. I was listening, too, understanding little of Solzhenitsyn’s text, but catching episodes that [were so powerful they left one breathless] - due to the facts, eyewitness accounts and the sequence of events [presented in them].

[…]

His essay on How to Make Russia Better repelled me immediately. I couldn’t - and still can’t - accept that open nationalism that was revealed in that little text. Though in 1990, the first phrase - “The clock of communism has stopped striking.” - read like a literary, artistic summary of what had happened. What had finally happened.

[…]

But, leaving aside my inner rejection of the philosophy and, at times, the [literary style] of Solzhenitsyn, I’d still like to say that his Gulag Archipelago was a true feat. In the Soviet conditions, having to fight censorship and persecution, despite searches, Solzhenitsyn managed to collect the unique material, systematize it and convey it in form that’s absolutely striking in its clarity.