Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89

[Barry]

You don't think that was preferable to war?

 

Some amount of war was inevitable and underway. Some greater amount was good (in the short run) in order to avoid lengthing' date=' expanding, or even losing the ongoing war. While there was the possibility of too much war between the US and the USSR there was also the possibility of too little in the short run (but there was no possibility that there would be none). If re-elected in 1980, Jimmy Carter would have waged too little war with the USSR and that would have been the wrong approach for the long term.[/quote']

And what if this war had ended up being fought on US soil?

[rogueyam]

wasn't vietnam a proxy war with the soviets. not that it was a good thing. nothing good about war.

 

Central America, Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, there was and is war everywhere. Back in the days of the USSR, wars often pitted the USSR against the US by proxy or more directly. Ronald Reagan knew this and knew that the correct strategy was "We win, they lose."

 

[rogueyam]

And what if this war had ended up being fought on US soil?

 

The strategy remains the same: We win, they lose.

[rogueyam]

Back on the subject of Solzhenitsyn (from National Review):

 

Monday, August 04, 2008

 

None So Deaf as Them That Don't Want to Hear [John Derbyshire]

 

Back in the 1970s, Solzhenitsyn inspired me to dig out all the Soviet truth-tellers I could find. The truly dismaying thing was how many of them there were: Anatoli Granovsky, Viktor Kravchenko, Victor Serge â?¦ This stuff goes back to the 1920s. It subtracts nothing from Solzhenitsyn's suffering, work and achievements to note that the West had to be ready for him.

 

The truth about Leninism was there from the beginning. Reading Lenin's pre-1917 works, in fact, you could say it was there from before the beginning. Perceptive observers didn't need telling. Bertrand Russell went to Lenin's Russia in 1920, saw through the whole thing, wrote a book about it (The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, 1920), and lost half his friends. The young Vladimir Nabokov, whose family fled for their lives from the Leninists, was at Cambridge University 1919-20, baffled by his fellow-students' inability to grasp what he was telling them about the new regime. They just listened politely and smiled indulgently. They knew better!

 

T.S. Eliot's "humankind cannot bear very much reality" doesn't tell the half of it. Humankind in general loathes reality, and will escape from it through any hatch that can be kicked open.

 

Link

 

[Barry]

And what if this war had ended up being fought on US soil?

 

The strategy remains the same: We win' date=' they lose.[/quote']

 

It was never that certain. And even if you did win, a pyrrhic victory wouldn't have been much of a victory.

[rogueyam]

It was never that certain. And even if you did win, a pyrrhic victory wouldn't have been much of a victory.

 

A loss is a loss. Fast or slow, if you lose it all, it's all gone. Could still happen.

[rogueyam]

Point is, he had his choice of places to go, "came" here (Gee, what was wrong with Switzerland, Germany and Norway?) Then took what ever we had to offer, then bad mouthed us, so FUCK HIM!

 

Here's Solzhenitsyn, in 2004, in tribute to Ronald Wilson Reagan:

 

In July 1975, I concluded my remarks in the reception room of the U.S. Senate with these words: "Very soon, all too soon, your government will need not just extraordinary men â?? but men of greatness. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hearts. Find them within the breadth and depth of your homeland." Five years later, I was overjoyed when just such a man came to the White House. May the soft earth be a cushion to his present rest.

 

And may the same be true for Mr. Solshenitsyn.

[Barry]

In July 1975, I concluded my remarks in the reception room of the U.S. Senate with these words: "Very soon, all too soon, your government will need not just extraordinary men â?? but men of greatness. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hearts. Find them within the breadth and depth of your homeland." Five years later, I was overjoyed when just such a man came to the White House. May the soft earth be a cushion to his present rest.

So who visited Reagan in 1980?

[..]

Well, that just goes to show this poor old boy's misguidedness. That he sings the praises of the second worst Prez America has ever seen...

 

Cheers,

SD

[rogueyam]

On the other hand, the old boy had his differences with Bubba it seems.

 

Letter from Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

 

Having thrown away the United Nations and trampled its Charter under foot, NATO has proclaimed before the world for the coming century an old law, that of the jungle: the strongest is always right. If your high technology permits it, surpass a hundred times in violence the adversary you condemn. And it is in this world that you invite us to live henceforth.

 

Under the eyes of humanity they are destroying a magnificent European country, and the civilized governments applaud it.

 

When the people [of Serbia] in despair leave their shelters and make human chains, at the risk of their lives, to save the bridges over the Danube, does this not rank with the high heroics of antiquity? I do not see what could stop Clinton, Blair, and Solana from exterminating them by fire Danube, does this not rank with the high heroics of antiquity? I do not see what could stop Clinton, Blair, and Solana from exterminating them by fire and water to the last man.

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Moscow, 8 April 1999