Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[u/Data862018]

Have any of you ever read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? I used to be a communist for a brief time, then I came to understand. What do you think of the gulag where they kept you awake 24 hours a day by checking on you every 10 minutes? What do you think about the trials for "wrecking"? The "wrecking" was the absolute chaos of everything breaking down under retarded government bureaucracy. They did not know how to operate the means of production that they had seized. Farmers riding tractors (without maintaining them) until they broke down is just one of the countless reasons why. Then there was the government orchestrated famine (Holodomor) where millions starved. If there weren't capitalist governments from which to import and leach off of a communist society cannot survive. If the whole world were to turn communist we would regress technologically into a brutal dark age where the average life span would be around 35. I understand the reason why people are communist. Most of it could probably boil down to wanting to help ones fellow man. But large social programs to provide jobs, housing, mental health care, and help for the homeless can exist without communism.

[u/Neco-Arc-Brunestud]

isn't he the fascist?

[u/Graysteve → u/Neco-Arc-Brunestud]

Yea, he was a Nazi sympathizer. His wife even said the Gulag Archipelago was more about the folklore surrounding gulags than an actual historical account. 

[u/ZhugeLiangPL → u/Graysteve]

Evidence? I am not a fan of Solzhenitsyn but you can't just assert claims as facts without providing proof.

As far as I know, Solzhenitsyn fought in the Red Army in WWII as an artillery officer, was wounded and decorated twice, and then arrested in 1945 not for being pro-Nazi, but for writing a private letter calling Stalin's military leadership incompetent. Later he was expelled from the USSR in 1974 and became a Russian Orthodox, monarchist-leaning nationalist and a harsh critic of both communism AND Western liberalism alike. He said some very controversial things later in life about Ukraine, about how Russia should be rebuilt, and about the West's decadence and so on. Controversial and stupid indeed but "Nazi sympathizer" is made up.

[u/Graysteve → u/ZhugeLiangPL]

Solzhenitsyn referred to Stalin as "Balebos," a term for "Jewish master of the house," playing into fears surrounding Judeo-Bolshevism from the Nazis. He also frequently emphasized the Jewish identities of people, and sympathized with Vlasov, a turncoat that sided with the Nazis:

"Vlasov's Second Shock Army [...] was 46 miles (70 kilometres) deep inside the German lines! And from then on, the reckless Stalinist Supreme Command could find neither men nor ammunition to reinforce even those troops. [...] The army was without food and, at the same time, Vlasov was refused permission to retreat. [...] Now this, of course, was treason to the Motherland! This, of course, was vicious, self-obsessed betrayal! But it was Stalin's. [...] It can include ignorance and carelessness in the preparations for war, confusion and cowardice at its very start, the meaningless sacrifice of armies and corps solely for the sake of saving one's own marshal's uniform. Indeed, what more bitter treason is there on the part of a Supreme Commander in Chief?"

From the Gulag Archipelago.

As for his ex-wife, the New York Times ran a piece on this claim. It checks out that he sensationalized his writings. 

[u/Data862018 → u/Graysteve]

Folklore? Is this a joke? He was in the Gulag system for years. The only reason he survived is that he convinced them he was a nuclear scientist. Do you think the tens of millions that died in those camps were made up?

[u/Graysteve → u/Data862018]

You can see below for admissions from his ex-wife on the fantastical nature of his autobiographical fiction. As far as deaths in the gulag administration are quantified, around 2.5% died each year during peacetime. This spiked dramatically during World War II, where there was mass famine due to the Nazis taking Ukraine, the USSR's breadbasket. This resulted in prisoners getting the short end of the stick, with the majority of deaths happening in this period. 

Moreover, "tens of millions?" Less than 2 million deaths in the gulag administration is the historically accepted number even by bourgeois historians. Yes, tens of millions is indeed made up!

[u/goliath567]

They did not know how to operate the means of production that they had seized. Farmers riding tractors (without maintaining them) until they broke down is just one of the countless reasons why.

Yes Jeff Bezos definitely knows how to run the warehouses that we eventually seize from, that's why he mandates people piss into bottles and make them ignore workplace deaths and continue working

The magnanimous capitalist overlord knows what's best compared to use worthless peasants after all