2002-03-06

wisdom from aleksandr solzhenitsyn

"The West simply had to understand that Bolshevism is an enemy for all man kind. But the West did not understand at all. . .In World War II the West kept defending its own freedom and defended it for itself. As for the rest of [Russia] and as for Eastern Europe, it buried us in an even more absolute and hopeless slavery."

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

and that is so true. I hope "the west" keeps these words in mind as we fight the war on terrorism. which mind you is a direct result of us turning our backs on afghanistan after they fought the ussr for us years ago. it has already come back to haunt us. and it will again if we're not careful.

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This is interesting:

"Thus, very early and very clearly, I had this consciousness that prison was not an abyss for me, but the most important turning point in my life."

-solzhenitsyn

"I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put in jail once on this account for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if i were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. . .I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax."

-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience