Talk:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Speech

Vietnam War Once in the United States, Solzhenitsyn urged the United States to reconsider its attitude towards the Vietnam War (which had ended in April 1975). In his commencement address at Harvard University in 1978,[54] Solzhenitsyn alleged that many in the U.S. did not understand the Vietnam War. He rhetorically asked if the American Anti-War Movement ever realized the contemptuous laughter which, he said, their actions had always provoked among the elderly men in the Soviet Politburo. Solzhenitsyn also accused American anti-war activists of moral responsibility for the political repression that followed the Fall of Saigon: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?"[54]

Nowhere can I find any of this in his speech. Please, follow the link to the speech: None of the above is to be found there. Please, remove it (if it's fake) or revise it with the correct information (if it does in fact exist).Mwidunn (talk) 20:39, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, I did not find it. Removed. I also included a secondary RS about this. My very best wishes (talk) 02:05, 7 June 2018 (UTC) Does appear in this ref. It is another question what should be cited, but this is something he said. My very best wishes (talk) 04:05, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

frenkel thought up the prison camp system?

According to author Elisa Kriza, "Although it is true that the central theme of the [The Gulag Archipelago] is to protocol the longevity of the Soviet prison camp system and therefore condemn communism as a whole, it contains other ideological arguments too. One of them was that the prison camp system was thought up by Naftaly Frenkel, a “Jew” who hated Russia."

Please do not restore an idiotic claim that frnkel invented prison camp system. Really??? Someone has to read wikipedia before write wikipedia. - Altenmann >talk 06:57, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

References

 Everything written in this article is to the point and very informative. Marta.tkachuk (talk) 19:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

On page 207, Kriza writes that Solzhenitsyn's accusation and his depiction of Frenkel is skewed by "anti-Semitic stereotypes". Pay attention, people. Frenkel did not invent the gulag, the camps existed even before 1917. They were expanded by Stalin, but not by Frenkel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lauri 0924 (talk • contribs) 13:11, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

CIA's role in disseminating Solzhenitsyn's work in USSR

The New Yorker alleges that "The C.I.A. supported the publication of underground books in the Soviet Union by such authors as Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a ploy that the agency knew would enrage the Kremlin leadership and deepen anti-Soviet sentiment among dissident circles inside the country." Source: "Private Mossad for Hire", by Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker, 2019, online: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad-for-hire (accessed Tues., Feb. 12, 2019) 2600:1702:2FF0:1D00:8563:4D65:93D8:714B (talk) 04:33, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

US Military (NSA) role in disseminating Solzhenitsyn's work to the West

William Eldridge Odom "while serving at the United States embassy in Moscow in the early 1970s managed to smuggle out a large portion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's archive, including the author's membership card for the Writers' Union and Second World War military citations" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eldridge_Odom

A reasonable conclusion is that Soviet and US Intelligence agencies were in fact working together to promote their own respective controlled oppositions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.153.109.219 (talk) 21:27, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Section: On Russia and the Jews

Cited to D.M. Thomas's Solzhenitsyn biography, the "On Russia and the Jews" section quotes a comment from Daniel Pipes in a review of "August 1914" printed in The New York Times of 13 November 1985, giving the impression that Pipes is the review's author. That article may be read here. It will be seen that the author is actually Richard Grenier. It will also be seen that other people quoted defend Solzhenitsyn.     ←   ZScarpia   20:46, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

You are welcome to fix/improve it. Personally, I think that certain passages form his certain books can be regarded as antisemitic, but that's irrelevant. There was indeed a debate about it, and it should described neutrally. My very best wishes (talk) 20:52, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Two more fixes. Frenkel was indeed an important figure; the book was hardly a bestseller. My very best wishes (talk) 22:47, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Whitewashing of fascist support

There's a lot of whitewashing of Solzhenitzysn misogyny and support for fascist dictators Hitler and Franco. These facts are sourced and the concerted attempts to remove this factual information is nothing more then WP:IDONTLIKEIT 31.187.2.168 (talk) 08:50, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Oh no, what your are trying to insert is an outright distortion. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did not support fascist dictators. As linked source tells, "he was a twice decorated commander in the Red Army". Yes, he was an anti-communist who would be happy if the Soviet communist regime would be defeated, but that's another matter. Your text is also meaningless. "Hitler was stupid and did not use this weapon". What "weapon"? Also note, what you are citing is a blog post by an unknown person. My very best wishes (talk) 15:59, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

There's no distortion. He wanted Hitler to invade the Soviet Union and win. This is fact. He supported Franco in the civil war and on multiple occasions defended him. This is also a fact.31.187.2.160 (talk) 16:03, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, his support of Hitler and Franco must be mentioned in the article, clearly whitewashing is at play. However, I think your wording (including grammar) was not quite clear enough. Notrium (talk) 05:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

The IP used this source [1], for example. Yes, this is valid RS, but it tells something opposite: S. "made a speaking tour there in the days after strongman Francisco Franco’s death: “I had to explain to the people of Spain in the most concise possible terms,” he recalled, “what it meant to have been subjugated by an ideology as we in the Soviet Union had been, and give the Spanish to understand what a terrible fate they escaped in 1939.” This was not a common view among American diplomats, even at the time. For Winston Lord, a protégé of secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Solzhenitsyn was “just about a fascist.” He was not. He was a writer, a literary writer, sucked into a set of political conflicts he had not chosen.", etc. per this source. My very best wishes (talk) 02:21, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

He definitely supported Franco and Fascist Spain, that is without question. In this article in the New York Times from 1976, he says liberals should not push too hard for reform. This was during the government of Carlos Arias Navarro during the transition to democracy in Spain. GoldenSensei (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:19, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

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