Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife shortly before their televised execution on December 25, 1989.
2,188 words
“A regime built on lies always ends in collapse.” — Z-Man, “An Empire of Lies”
Solipsism: a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing. (more…)
1,174 words
Historically, when an authoritarian regime takes power, the written law tends to cease to be representative of real-life interaction with the state. (more…)
1,766 words
Spencer J. Quinn
Solzhenitsyn & the Right
Quakertown, Pa.: Antelope Hill
The widespread perception of Solzhenitsyn as a figure inseparable from the vanished world of the Cold War has become an obstacle to appreciation of his works. To some extent, an earlier generation of his Western admirers contributed to this misunderstanding: e.g., many Cold War conservatives were dead set against any discussion of race, which would make it impossible to apply any of Solzhenitsyn’s insights to our struggle against today’s racially-obsessed Left. (more…)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
171 words / 1:37:05
To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
This is an audio recording of Spencer J. Quinn’s six-part review of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s monumental work Two Hundred Years Together, a history of the Jews broadly in Russia and specifically as part of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union. We would like to thank Gaddius Maximus for this reading. (more…)
3,162 words
Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here
Much of the tremendous value of Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together rests in how it was written completely without rancor. Only a highly cynical or unreasonable person could call it anti-Semitic — that is, a work that professes animosity or anger towards Jews as a people. (more…)
2,288 words
Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here
Large numbers of Jews who did not leave after the revolution failed to foresee the bloodthirstiness of the new government, though the persecution, even of socialists, was well underway. The Soviet government was as unjust and cruel then as it was to be in 1937 and 1950. But in the Twenties the bloodlust did not raise alarm or resistance in the wider Jewish population since its force was aimed not at Jewry. (more…)
2,025 words
By the time the reader begins the second volume of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together, he’s aware of a complex yet fragile balance established by the author in volume one. Jews and Russians have shared the same empire and language for centuries, but not without conflict brought about by their different natures and the exigencies of history. (more…)
3,076 words
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Two Hundred Years Together
Moscow: Vagrius, 2005
No sane person wants to lie. Aside from whatever harm lying might cause, lying also chips away at a person’s dignity. (more…)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4,083 words
The memoirs of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are unique in his vast body of work given that they serve more as metadata than data regarding the man’s impact upon the culture and perspective of the political Right. I’m sure this could be the case with the memoirs of any important person. However, with Solzhenitsyn, so often his work was his life. He drew directly from his experiences as a zek to develop his early works, such as his prison plays, his unproduced screenplay The Tanks Know the Truth (about a gulag uprising), (more…)
3,648 words
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn et al.
From Under the Rubble
Boston: Little, Brown & Company (1975)
Shortly before being deported from the Soviet Union in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn contributed three essays to a volume that was later published in the West as From Under the Rubble. (more…)
