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Solzhenitsyn
Dust jacket, red cover with gilt lettering to spine and contents in almost new condition.
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 24, 2014
A friend of mine who escaped from Castro's dungeons and fled to
America once said that "Communism is total control of EVERYTHING."
I never really understood what he meant, or how it could be possible,
until I read this book.
At first glance the book looks to be a rather dated recounting
of Solzenitsyn's life in Russia up to the point of his early
publications during the Khrushchev "thaw". But what it really
contains is a penetrating account of how a totalitarian Communist
regime systematically extinguishes independent thought, and what
it is like to try to survive as an artist in such circumsatances.
It would take someone like Solzhenitsyn, having survived combat in
World War II, ten years in Stalin's Gulag, and stomach cancer,
to be capable of the relentless, iron-hearted struggle of the
repressed against an unmovable totalitarian State, which this
book documents.
The book is very difficult reading due to the literal translation
of the Italian in which it was written, which results in nearly
unbelievable syntactical contortions, but it is well worth
the effort. The detailed descriptions of the institutions and
methods by which a totalitarian, utopian State can constrain the
writings and even the thoughts of its authors who are all beholden
to it for publication, of the byzantine machinations and self-abasement
to which the authors must subject themselves and their art in order to
survive, and of the rude awakening of the leftist intellectuals of
Europe, besotted with Communist ideology, upon seeing the
treatment of Solzhenitsyn at the hands of the Soviet regime, are
a monument to the end result of Utopian ideologies.
America once said that "Communism is total control of EVERYTHING."
I never really understood what he meant, or how it could be possible,
until I read this book.
At first glance the book looks to be a rather dated recounting
of Solzenitsyn's life in Russia up to the point of his early
publications during the Khrushchev "thaw". But what it really
contains is a penetrating account of how a totalitarian Communist
regime systematically extinguishes independent thought, and what
it is like to try to survive as an artist in such circumsatances.
It would take someone like Solzhenitsyn, having survived combat in
World War II, ten years in Stalin's Gulag, and stomach cancer,
to be capable of the relentless, iron-hearted struggle of the
repressed against an unmovable totalitarian State, which this
book documents.
The book is very difficult reading due to the literal translation
of the Italian in which it was written, which results in nearly
unbelievable syntactical contortions, but it is well worth
the effort. The detailed descriptions of the institutions and
methods by which a totalitarian, utopian State can constrain the
writings and even the thoughts of its authors who are all beholden
to it for publication, of the byzantine machinations and self-abasement
to which the authors must subject themselves and their art in order to
survive, and of the rude awakening of the leftist intellectuals of
Europe, besotted with Communist ideology, upon seeing the
treatment of Solzhenitsyn at the hands of the Soviet regime, are
a monument to the end result of Utopian ideologies.
Displaying 1 of 1 review