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Comment by ultrastable | Hacker News Reader

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Sorry I down voted you by accident. Meant to up vote.

Now you are taking this in a strange direction - it's true that there is a stream of anti-Communism or anti-Sovietism which comes from an angle of Russian nationalism, or imperialism, or chauvinism, or whatever you want to call it, but it was not a particularly large or significant stream at the time when Solzhenitsyn created his main works. One of the justified criticisms of Solzhenitsyn's later works is that he retroactively rewrites his motivations and even actions in order to place himself within that stream (he started out as a fairly orthodox believer in the Soviet ways, of which you can find traces in his early works, but not in his late works), and he also insults many of his friends and allies at the time, who did not follow him in this more imperialist direction.

tbh when I mentioned the figure of the reactionary who blames history on Jews I wasn't thinking of something specifically anti-Soviet or even Russian - European or Western would have been a better way of putting it, Hitler being the cliché example

Btw Soviet Russia was imperial.

i have no idea why people are down-voting you, you speak the truth. the cold war era was often driven by "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of logic.

Nowhere so strong as in the US: supporting genocides across the planet because they were "bulwarks against communism" is very strange indeed.

The idea that Solzhenitsyn is a reactionary doesn't hold up when you read his books.

The First Circle is a deep exploration of so many things. Friendship, Stalinism, Marx, Marxist Dialectic, Christianity, Catholicism, Jews, and so on. No one comes out of it clean and Solzhenitsyn doesn't think he has the answers. Two things the book is sure of are: suffering is real and being does not determine consciousness (contrary to Marx's dictum).

I believe the attempt to frame Solzhenitsyn as a reactionary and antisemite is wrong. It stems from him saying things you're not supposed to say about Jews being overrepresented in the early Soviet prison system (an empirical question) and failing to condemn Putin as much as the West would like. Solzhenitsyn was highly critical of Gorbachev for seeming to put his reputation with the West ahead of his country. It's clear Solzhenitsyn wanted to avoid that.

Also, regarding his alleged antisemitism, The First Circle contains a narrative about Stalin turning against the Jews highly placed in the Soviet prison system. Solzhenitsyn's view here is nuanced. I haven't read 200 Years Together but I highly doubt it's slavering antisemitism. And 99% of the people claiming it is haven't read it either.

He both-sides Russian pogroms, too. His insight is that it was bad for Russians to exterminate the Jews, but it is also bad for Jews to control everything and not work like good Russians. You can't let this sort of framing pass for argument, because it can be placed around everything.

This is where he got his history lessons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Dikiy

The fact that you're using "both-sides" as a verb makes it hard to take you seriously. That is a neologism that exists to prevent people from thinking. As if there are always two sides and one of them is always absolutely right.

I highly doubt Solzhenitsyn was an antisemite based on what I've read of him (there are plenty of Jewish characters). I could be wrong (I haven't read everything) but I strongly suspect that this is one more example of unhinged culture warriors connecting dots based on their preconceived ideas of what is and isn't acceptable to say and think.

> That is a neologism that exists to prevent people from thinking.

No, it's a neologism that intentionally points out that there is a bias towards moderation that assumes that the more central a position is, the more right it is. People prone to this bias are more easily manipulated by changing the framing of a question, and trust people more who scrupulously avoid consistent positions.

e.g. If Jewish Russians are trying to conquer and run Russia for their own pleasure and to avoid work at the expense of non-Jewish Russian death and suffering, attacking them is self-defense. However, if attacking Jews is wrong, then they can't be trying to take over Russia to oppress non-Jewish Russians. Maybe we should just have a little pogrom, or a special tax.

Consistent positions are held by people who don't think. The world isn't consistent and if your positions are, that shows fealty to some silly ideological framework. This doesn't necessarily lead to moderacy...it leads to inconsistency.

I highly doubt you've read the book you're criticizing and I grant roughly zero chance that you've fairly summarized Solzhenitsyn's argument ("the Jews kind of had it coming because they tried to rule the Russians" or whatever nonsense). Your framing is exactly what I'd expect from someone with the mind virus infecting the people who use "both-sides" as a verb.

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