Originally posted by Neubob
Sakharov did work, earlier in his career, that would have made his bid for a peace prize questionable. His efforts to reverse the potentially catastrophic effects of his scientific ambition was admirable, but I can at least see how he's a mixed bag when it comes to this question
We know very little about Sakharov's "humanitarian" ideas. Very few things are left, and I'll not waste my time on any "dissident" reasonings.
Originally posted by Neubob
Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, exposed a monstrocity. And you can deny it up and down, but I've had family members and close family friends that served in the gulags. People I've met, talked to, listened to--people's whose scars I have seen with my own eyes. These aren't traitors either, even though I'm sure you'll think of them as such. These are writers, artists, doctors. Normal people whose humanity was perhaps just a bit too strong for their own good. Even the hardest hardliners I've talked to have nothing to say when asked about Stalin's penchant for cruel and unusual punishment.
A "monstrocity" was exposed by dr. Goebbels 30 years before Solzhenitsyn...
Solzhenitsyn's "work" is a collection of myths and fiction. Take a look at this:
http://kampus.tomsk.ru/index.php?newsid=135Did you try reading him in Russian? He's horrible.
Now he's a "Russian nationalist", a person who advocated Germans in WWI...
His political career is nothing but a matter of collaborationism. A part of a campaign against USSR in 1970s. Like Bzezinsky said later, they used "human rights" only as an instrument of pressure, no one in the Western leadership _ever_ cared about poor Soviet Jews.
Another thing is that becoming a "Russian nationalist" Alexander Isayevich openly said that all his numbers that he gave in Archipelago were sucked out of finger.
I have said that my family suffered enough in Stalin's times, but there is a certain difference between my GrandFather who kept serving after he was released and all charges were dropped and this home-made prophet living on CIA money. He moved to Russia only in 1993, probably after they stopped paying him.
Originally posted by Neubob
To deny this is just revisionist self-delusion, Pasha. This is my Rodina too, remember, but it's a shameful chapter in its history. To pretend that it's a lie is almost on par with the act itself.
I know you like to preach about the glory days of the CCCP, Pasha, but don't try to bull**** me. Thanks in advance.
It's quite silly to deny "repressions", especially for a person from a family like mine. But people in the West base their opinions on Solzhenitsyn's "works", seeing only one side of the coin. Yes, it was a horrible time, but, fortunately, we survived a much greater threat.
Here's a collection of interesting links in Russian:
http://semen-serpent.livejournal.com/291277.htmlThe truth about "repressions" is open now, for those who want to compare it with Solzhenitsyn's bull****. And it's painful to see how this hallucinations become "Party line" now.
