Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel literature prize winner, has died aged 89, the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.
He died of a stroke, the agency said, quoting literary sources in Moscow.
As a kid I remember wandering into what we called our "living room" -- a room in an area of the house we never went into, but that had a lot of bookshelves in it -- and finding a copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was the first book I remember reading all the way through in one sitting. I remember the scene where Denisovich runs across the camp and comments in amazement that he's heard that there are people who do such thing...for fun was it?...and thinking, "Wow, I live in the good part of the world..."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was certainly no friend of Russian Jews. Whether or not he was an out and out anti-Semite, his writings or Russian-Jewish relations are useful to the out and out anti-Semites. Solzhenitsyn, argues, in effect, that the problems of Russian Jews during the Czarist period, were caused by the Jews themselves. Solzhenitsyn believes that Jewish misconduct lead to the Russian Pogroms, that Jews were behind the Communist revolution, and that Jews largely maned the Communist state terror organizations.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was certainly no friend of Russian Jews. Whether or not he was an out and out anti-Semite, his writings or Russian-Jewish relations are useful to the out and out anti-Semites. Solzhenitsyn, argues, in effect, that the problems of Russian Jews during the Czarist period, were caused by the Jews themselves. Solzhenitsyn believes that Jewish misconduct lead to the Russian Pogroms, that Jews were behind the Communist revolution, and that Jews largely maned the Communist state terror organizations.
I believe that Solzhenitsyn was most likely an anti-Semite.
That said, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was one of the best books I have ever read.
BHG