Purging the Purged: Solzhenitsyn, Ukraine, and the West

Tempo fa cercai in libraria un libro, molto bello, di Solzhenitsyn, il dissidente russo autore di “Arcipelago Gulag”.
Un testo straordinario che racconta tutto il dramma di una realtà dispotica, burocratizzata e assistita, sin quasi alla perdita di ogni gioia o interesse per la vita.
Non ne trovai traccia, non si ristampava da più di un decennio. Questo articolo, assai interessante, spiega i tanti perché del dimenticatoio. Collocando la figura dell’autore nel contesto geopolitico e culturale dei rapporti fra est ed ovest.

Nina Byzantina

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is one of the best-known Soviet dissidents, so much so that he earned the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. His Gulag Archipelago, written in the 1950s-60s, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich from 1962—both about the Stalin-era labor-camp system—are his most famous works outside of Russia. Yet after the collapse of the USSR, it became increasingly clear that much of his foreign support was not inspired by the Western ideal of ‘human rights’ or concern for average Russians, but served as a tool of geopolitics instead.

His statements about resurgent Russia, particularly in the last years before his death in 2008–well into the era of Putin’s leadership–did not suit those that would rather have the country in the permanently weak state of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ of the 1990s, so that its resources could continue being plundered by domestic oligarchs and foreigners alike, while its culture–transformed into…

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