The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.
On the threshold of the classless society, we were at last capable of realising the conflictless trial – a reflection of the lack of inner conflict in our social structure – in which not only the judge and the prosecutor but also the defence lawyers and the defendants themselves would strive collectively to achieve their common purpose.
If you live in a graveyard, you can’t weep for everyone.
But my favorite quote of his is this bit of black humor from The Gulag Archipelago:
They greeted prisoners with a roll call based on cases. “So-and-so! Article 58-1a, twenty five years.” The chief of the convoy guard was curious: “What did you get it for?”
“For nothing at all.”
“You’re lying. The sentence for nothing at all is ten years.”
I read all three massive volumes of The Gulag Archipelago the summer before my senior year of high school. I was of course too young to absorb it all, but it nevertheless left its mark. For one thing, it inoculated me against the proggy bits of my university education, knowing that all those collectivist fantasies in real life metastasized into concentration camps and secret mass graves.
And that’s it, really. I don’t have anything particularly weighty or insightful to add, other than to say that he was my hero, a big part of my spiritual furniture, and that one of my prized possessions is a thank-you letter from his wife. About twenty years ago, in an act of tribute/appreciation, I sent him two books of early color photography in Russia. One of them was the famous collection of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, featuring color photos of Russia in the 1910s. The other was a collection of personal photographs by the writer Leonid Andreyev, also pre-Revolution, also in color. To my intense delight, his wife sent back a typed letter of thanks. They had once possessed the Prokudin-Gorskii book, but had given it away to friends. They had never seen the Andreyev book, and so were pleased to have both of them. I had that letter taped on my refrigerator for years, before it occurred to me to have it laminated.
Oh, and I guess one other thing would be the laugh that The Progressive unwittingly provided in 1980, when it reviewed Solzhenitsyn’s proto-blog The Oak and the Calf. That book is a journal of his career in the Sixties, from his celebrity during the Khrushchev Thaw to his expulsion from the Soviet Union after the publication of Gulag. The reviewer made a gallant-enough effort to explain the book for his lefty readership, people who had never stifled an opinion for political safety, never lost a loved one to political violence, never missed a meal because of political edicts, yet who nevertheless considered themselves champions of people who had–provided that the oppressor was a brownshirt rather than a red scarf. He bridled at Solzhenitsyn’s denunciation of Western intellectuals, who angrily denied, studiously ignored, or heartily applauded Soviet communism, the most murderous political regime ever to arise in Europe. But in the end the reviewer granted him his laurels as a 20th century hero.
And in the back of the same issue was a column by someone named Milton Meyer, congratulating himself on disobeying the new mandatory seatbelt laws.
Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints.
Update: Over at The Corner, an apparently beloved policy wonk named Peter Rodman is being eulogized, having passed away yesterday. A.S. rates a couple or three posts, as of this writing. It’s too bad that William F. Buckley preceded him in death, for he was probably the only American contemporary of Solzhenitsyn who could have done his obituary justice.
Comment by Kirk on 8/3 @ 8:13 pm #
With out a doubt, there is one less brave man in the world this evening.
Comment by dicentra on 8/3 @ 8:22 pm #
I read through part of it, then couldn’t take it anymore. How anyone can still support the Utopian idealists after being even superficially aware of the Gulag is beyond me.
Because, kiddies, the U.S. certainly had its own bloody beginnings, but our political philosophy cannot be used to justify horrors, nor does it necessarily lead to them.
But if you want Utopia, everyone has to be on the same page, and that only happens when you get rid of those who aren’t.
Comment by Freedoms Truth on 8/3 @ 8:31 pm #
“I read all three massive volumes of The Gulag Archipelago the summer before my senior year of high school. I was of course too young to absorb it all, but it nevertheless left its mark. For one thing, it inoculated me against the proggy bits of my university education, knowing that all those collectivist fantasies in real life metastasized into concentration camps and secret mass graves. ”
I had the same experience of reading his massive volumes in the teens. I had the same innoculation from the foolish and condemnable mindset that treat human spirit as
cogs in a giant social experiment. His Truth raged against the Lies of the 20th Century Communist Totalitarians, and its worst practitioner, Stalin.
One of his quotes that I will never forget: “The line between good and evil crosses every human heart.”
Comment by McGehee on 8/3 @ 8:38 pm #
I once tried to talk to a co-worker about what I had read in Archipelago. he refused to engage, assuring me he was “there” when it all went on. I can only assume he meant he was alive during a time before Stalin died. Which, I suppose, made him as much an expert on what Stalin had done, as Solzhenitsyn was.
It’s one thing to be ignorant, and it’s something else entirely to be proud of it.
Comment by Techie on 8/3 @ 8:44 pm #
He who laughs last, laughs best.
RIP, AS. Your labors on this middle-Earth are through.
Comment by dre on 8/3 @ 8:57 pm #
Obama on my life;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BtJG0BonMQ
Comment by JHoward on 8/3 @ 8:58 pm #
A whole lotta beauty in that post, Sanity Inspector. I won’t sully it trying to itemize it all. Thank you and well done.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 8/3 @ 8:59 pm #
Thanks, JHoward; that means a lot.
Comment by TmjUtah on 8/3 @ 9:16 pm #
I read Gulag two decades ago. I tried to get through “The First Circle” twice, but the enormity of the state’s indifference to any individual chased me off it both times.
I have recently become immersed in a quest to understand the Soviets. The objectives, or even the limits of my study are as yet unknown but I keep finding more facts that immediately lead to more questions…
These people should all be named Chin or Wong; the oriental traits of fatalism and stoicism are so overwhelming as to remove any trace of “western” in an evaluation of Soviet, later Russian, culture.
My Ukrainian barber in Frisco spoke of Solzhenitsyn’s work.
“You can smell the sh*t and feel the snow”.
Nice eulogy, Mr. Inspector.
Comment by geoffb on 8/3 @ 9:41 pm #
I’m so sorry to hear this.
Twice in my life my mother gave me large multi-volume books which I couldn’t put down until I finished all the volumes. In high school it was Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”
In my leftist early twenties it was “The Gulag Archipelago”. By the time I finished “The History of Our Sewage Disposal System” I was no longer a leftist. By the time I finished it all I couldn’t believe anyone would ever want to be one.
That they still do proves the old saying is true, there is one born every minute.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 8/3 @ 9:53 pm #
Shukhov went to sleep fully content. He’d had many strokes of luck that day: they hadn’t put him in the cells; they hadn’t sent his squad to the settlement; he swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he’s built a wall and enjoyed doing it; he’d smuggled that bit of hacksaw blade through; he earned a favor from Tsezar that evening; he’d bought that tobacco. And he hadn’t fallen ill. He’d got over it.
A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.
There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail.
Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days.
The three extra days were for leap years.
Comment by cynn on 8/3 @ 10:39 pm #
I can only hope his stuff stays in the gene pool.
Comment by bill on 8/3 @ 10:43 pm #
One thing I recall from “Gulag” is a commentary Solzhenitsyn made how the stooges that ran the Gulags were totally befuddled by true Christian believers who didn’t fear death. They, like all totalitarians realized the limit and transitory nature of their power; their inability to conquer the human spirit. Solzhenitsyn’s effort to preserve on scraps of paper that terrible history stands forever to shame the Marxist toadies on western universities who have tried to hold up that rotten stinking hellish system as something noble. RIP to a great man.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 11:15 pm #
Solzhenitsyn was an incredible man. Solzhenitsyn was a Russian and emblematic of a good many Russians, Russian culture, Russian pride, humility, intellect and fortitude.
God bless Alexander Solzhenitsyn and God bless the land he loved, Russia.
Comment by Minister Jack X Klompus Muhammad Ali al-Shabbaz on 8/3 @ 11:20 pm #
RIP to a TRUE dissident. Every time I have to suffer the hot air of pseudo-dissident poseur douchebags like the idiot upper class college students who “take to the streets” and break Starbucks windows, I’m reminded of those who truly took on and stood up to genuine oppression. Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, today’s Iranian student movement, etc. were and are true, genuine, brave, rebels. “Speaking truth to power” actually involves some real serious risk for the sake of principle, not trading Chomsky quotes and listening to the Dead Kennedys in your dorm at Brown. Today’s spoiled, coddled American pseudo-radical idiots wouldn’t know genuine adversity if it bit them in the ass and canceled their facebook accounts. God bless you Alexander. You were truly a man of principle who stared down evil.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/3 @ 11:41 pm #
“….that terrible history stands forever to shame the Marxist toadies on western universities….”
- Solzhenitsyn once said “[You] cannot shame animals that mimic people, but have no soul. For them, killing is the highest purpose in life.”
- Mankind may have a future if we can ever learb how to deal with the pathological strain that runs through our species.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 8/4 @ 1:41 am #
After high school in the late 70’s, I worked for a printing company. They had lots of AS in the library, and I spent a year reading virtually nothing else.
While I’m enormously grateful for the work he left behind, I can’t help but feel the world is a poorer place without him.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 2:29 am #
If there’s a point to your post I’m sure it’s only to be found under your hat.
Comment by Nikolay on 8/4 @ 3:25 am #
Sure, Galug Archipelago is a very great book. Too bad Solzhenitsyn turned into a raging anti-Semite of the Dostoevsky’s type and into Putin’s fan in his old age. He also disliked America strongly, but this you probably know.
I know it’s not right to say such things when people die, but it seems that people in the USA have a very idealized image of Solzhenitsyn in their minds, and this should be corrected, not only for the sake of the truth, but also out of respect for the complexity of Solzhenitsyn’s character.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 4:39 am #
Thank you Nikolay. If I tried to say what you said the PW winger-jackal pack would sloganeer chant and textbook lecture me.
After volunteering at a excavation site outside Moscow, I came to the conclusion that mass grave wasn’t filled by Communist Manifesto-clutching executioners reciting Marx. Killers are just killers, and they kill for power using many excuses as their guise. Bush had just looked into Putin’s soul at the time and found him a decent fellow. Putin, of course, had just pulled funding for these excavations. Private donations from left-wing dumb-bulbs like George Soros and loyal Russian volunteers saw to it that the excavations continued.
For every Solzhenitsyn the West honored, there were thousands and thousands of similar Russian minds hard at work trying to bring change their country. Many payed a heavy price. Heavily partisan Americans like the hero/villain Jerry Bruckheimer version of Russia, the rest is too complicated for ‘em, too nuanced, as they like to say here. There were also many good, honest hardworking Russians that believed in Marxism and Communism but would later turn on Stalin’s totalitarianism. Yet again, too nuanced, no room for grey in the r-wing extremist’s Commmies-are-killers and Americans-are-brilliant-Fuck-Yeah floated meme.
Solzhenitsyn was a Russian who loved Russia. U.S. r-wingers who use Marxism and Commies as nothing more than blackened semiotics and left-wingers who willingly ignore the tyranny of an over-arching state authority simply float in two different boats on the same sea of BS. I don’t think Solzhenitsyn would have wanted anything to do with either partisan American winger. He was about Russia.
Comment by B Moe on 8/4 @ 4:54 am #
For every Solzhenitsyn the West honored, there were thousands and thousands of similar Russian minds hard at work trying to bring change their country. Many payed a heavy price. Heavily partisan Americans like the hero/villain Jerry Bruckheimer version of Russia, the rest is too complicated for ‘em, too nuanced, as they like to say here. There were also many good, honest hardworking Russians that believed in Marxism and Communism but would later turn on Stalin’s totalitarianism. Yet again, too nuanced, no room for grey in the r-wing extremist’s Commmies-are-killers and Americans-are-brilliant-Fuck-Yeah floated meme.
Notice how you are stereotyping Americans while complaining about Americans stereotyping Russians thor? It is interesting how you point out the individuality of Russians, the individuality that is denied and suppressed by Communism, and supposedly protected and nurtured by our Constitution. That is the dichotomy most of us PWers worry about. It has nothing to do with Partisanship.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 5:12 am #
I’m stereotyping two partisan stereotypes, true, good point, I’ll grant you that. I show no respect or fealty to the Left or Right. I’m not a groupie-ist in that regard.
Russia is an interesting place, very different than America. And don’t worry, I had to lecture the Russians in over-simplifying their views of America.
That Soros, real loser he is, eh. Worthless coward Leftist-killer! Not so much, actually, and I say that being no fan of moveon.org. Soros was the first to build a fiber optic loop in Moscow. The Russian mob would later force Soros out of his building with privately hired Omon (guns!), in other words they stole his money. Tough place that Moscow.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 5:17 am #
That’s passion thor. Russia needs you. Get thyself to Russia. We’ll be OK. You’ve done well, and your work is done here. You’ve taken the pain of living in America far too long. You don’t owe anybody anything. You’ve fielded the PW slings and arrows. Rest now. Mother Russia calls you to her bah-zooms.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/4 @ 5:22 am #
Shut up, thor.
If you’re not drunk, you’re demented.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 5:26 am #
Beautiful white Russian tit-mouses, mm, mm, mmmm!
You want stories of ze Russian vemen? The dyevushka like za boom-boom because it doesn’t cost much and it’s fun on a cold night.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 5:30 am #
O’Brain and the jackal-pack collective are having their coffee. Top of the morning to ya! Privet chudak.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 5:37 am #
You did kind of wig out on that oil thread thor.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 5:37 am #
- Theres nothing nuanced about Socialism thor. Its the politics of the absurd, and a social construct designed by people with child-like minds who hate society. In other words, someone like yourself.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 5:43 am #
or every Solzhenitsyn the West honored, there were thousands and thousands of similar Russian minds hard at work trying to bring change their country.
Really? No shit. I mean, I thought Solzhenitsyn was the ONLY one. THANKS Thor. My education continues. I guess it’s wrong to praise/admire Solzhenitsyn because if we do, we – by default – leave out ALL THE OTHERS.
There were also many good, honest hardworking Russians that believed in Marxism and Communism but would later turn on Stalin’s totalitarianism. Yet again, too nuanced, no room for grey in the r-wing extremist’s Commmies-are-killers and Americans-are-brilliant-Fuck-Yeah floated meme.
Whatever Thor. But, lets pretend for a moment that most of us know the history of Communism, understand the complexities, and have reached a conclusion about it (it SUCKS!) w/o going through the whole intellectual rigamarole? The whole “nuance” and grey area? Yea, we (if I can speak for just about everyone ) know. You’re not speaking to uneducated yokels who haven’t thought through their positions. Shesh.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 5:47 am #
Well, we do regulate public companies that generate electricity, right? Yet r-wingers seem to think being sodomized by Exxon/Mobil makes for a richer American experience.
I don’t think it should work like that. Stock performance pay packages for a bunch of clowns who have our economy by the balls don’t make sense to me. Call me a class-warfare Socialist! Standard Oil of Ohio needing a little tending to and so does Exxon/Mobil, imho.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 5:51 am #
Thor, you’re being sodomized by OPEC, not Exxon/Mobil. Oh, and the Chi-cons, who should go back to riding their bikes.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 5:52 am #
Chi-Coms. Sorr. Chi-cons soungs like it could be a fast-food restaurant.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 5:55 am #
Capitalists and Communists in Russia aren’t always who/what you think they are, Carin. It’s not America and totally blurs your clichés and stereotypical poli-econ labels. You’re opinion ain’t worth a kopeck in Russia, and never will be.
Get.Over.It.Amerikansky.
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/4 @ 6:07 am #
My wife and I once acted as host-family for a Croatian student who married a pretty young American prog, president of the campus Democrats. Given that we don’t believe the personal is political, socializing with them was no problem until one evening they began condemning Christianity as the source of all America’s evils. I pointed out that Christianity had its problems, but that the greatest atrocities of the 20th century had occurred in countries under atheism. They asked “Like what?” and I said “Communism, for instance.” They couldn’t speak. It seemed like a totally new idea for them. And then I realized my Croatian student’s father had been a successful academic and Communist in the old Yugoslavia.
Notice sashal’s silence?
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 6:14 am #
- How about myself thor? Am I an “Amerikansky” also.
- Your every comment speaks to your immature rank jealousy of Americas freedoms. If only the greedy bastards would recognize your obvious genius, and reward you with the wealth you so obviously have a right to, all would be correct with the world. The evil Capitalists have all conspired to deny you your due.
- Why anyone would get the idea that you’re embittered, and class warfare animates your every thought, is simply amazing.
- They just don’t understand you. Its the nuance.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 6:26 am #
Thor, you seem to have trouble separating politics from personal. As if criticism of communism is a slap on people of Russian descent or something. I don’t get it.
But, please don’t assume you know what I do, or do not, understand. Your experience in Russian simply doesn’t trump everyone’s knowledge. Sorry.
Just as my living in Detroit doesn’t make me an expert on absolutely EVERYTHING about Detroit.
And, your asinine dismissals usually consists of I WAS THERE AND IT WASN’T LIKE THAT. Not very full of argument stuff.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 6:28 am #
And, OT, but I can’t help poking nishi:
Ivins also had a patent pending for an additive that would improve vaccines that prevent deadly pathogens used in bioterrorist attacks. It also received federal funding, including $12 million to Coley Pharmaceutical Group to further test the additive.
The revelation of the potential motive came to light as a portrait emerged of a beautiful mind that became warped through frustration and anger over stalled research. Ivins appears as an incredibly intelligent man who lived life in a small world, estranged from his brothers, walking two blocks to work every day for decades and regularly weighing in on morality and mundane issues of life to the local paper.
Chew on that, cudlips.
Comment by B Moe on 8/4 @ 6:42 am #
Well, we do regulate public companies that generate electricity, right? Yet r-wingers seem to think being sodomized by Exxon/Mobil makes for a richer American experience.
So a government mandated monopoly will lower oil prices? You might need to elaborate on that theory a bit for me to completely grasp it.
Comment by B Moe on 8/4 @ 6:43 am #
And what the fuck is a cudlip, anyway?
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 6:53 am #
Yes I do. Maybe I’ve seen the damage done by insulting Russians with the Marxist-Commie fish-slap. Older Russians should be respected and not insulted. You haven’t a clue what they went through.
Yes it does.
And, your asinine dismissals usually consists of I WAS THERE AND IT WASN’T LIKE THAT. Not very full of argument stuff.
Distinctions of Detroit are incomparable in relation to Russia. Lame. You’d read a book by Michael McFaul without the ability to discern he never left his Moscow hotel room when he wrote it.
Now you’re doubly dismissed.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 6:54 am #
“And what the fuck is a cudlip, anyway?”
- B Moe. Its possibly an indirect slur against people born with Mongoloid disfigurements.
- The same people who would use terms like that, who think at the level of playground name calling as debate, would also have a habit of calling others racist at every opportunity. Projection, thy name is Secular Progressive.
Comment by SevenEleventy on 8/4 @ 6:56 am #
And what the fuck is a cudlip, anyway?
It was griefquest’s attempt at belittling those who don’t share her beliefs. Her original phraseology was ruminant cudlips.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 6:57 am #
- thor, you’re a liar. “nuance” is 25 to life in the Gulag.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 7:01 am #
Wittle big banger can’t take his trumpage! What am I supposed to do, not remind you that you know nothing of Russia just to make you feel good?
Sorry dude.
Comment by BJTex on 8/4 @ 7:03 am #
Methinks thor is cranky due to the favorite target of his racial accusations being MIA.
Must. Find. New. Targets.
CULTURAL IGNORANCE: IT’S THE NEW RACISM!
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:07 am #
Yes I do. Maybe I’ve seen the damage done by insulting Russians with the Marxist-Commie fish-slap. Older Russians should be respected and not insulted. You haven’t a clue what they went through.
I rarely respect, or disrespect, any group wholesale. Again, you have NO FUCKING idea what I know or don’t know. In addition, I think it’s in your mind that people have insulted Russians. Criticizing politics isn’t criticizing Russians. Oh, except if I say something about Stalin. Then I’m being personal too. That guy was a piece of human excrement.
Yes it does.
No it doesn’t.
Just as my living in Detroit doesn’t make me an expert on absolutely EVERYTHING about Detroit.
And, your asinine dismissals usually consists of I WAS THERE AND IT WASN’T LIKE THAT. Not very full of argument stuff.
Distinctions of Detroit are incomparable in relation to Russia. Lame. You’d read a book by Michael McFaul without the ability to discern he never left his Moscow hotel room when he wrote it.
NO, see, I was pointing out that my experience as a Detroiter trumps absolutely EVERYTHING else that anyone may know about detroit. And, when I argue (in the future) I’m not going to attempt to support my (asinine) opinions with facts. I’m just gonna call people names and say they are wrong.
In addition, I’ve never read any book by Michael McFaul. YOu have no idea what books I’ve read so you can stfu about it. You also have no idea about the people I know, or where I’ve traveled.
Now you’re doubly dismissed.
That’s a joke. You argue by merely telling people they are wrong, yet feel you have the ability to dismiss them? Please.
Honestly, you have issues, Thor. I find it ironic that you’re telling me that I disrespect the Russians, and all that shit, when for years one of my talking points with friends is how it is possible people have ignored what the Russians went through. I consider Communism a crime against them.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 7:09 am #
- Aww crap. Wrong again thor. I’m 20th generation Russki, Georgian to be exact.
- Most be hell lugging that huge brain pan around with you every where you go “dude”.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 8/4 @ 7:10 am #
And here I thought this thread was about Solzhenitsyn. If I remember my Gulag, Solzhenitsyn made a point of skewering not just the Stalinist era, but the whole Soviet experiment from start to finish. Can’t see as how one could admire Solzhenitsyn for what he did, survived, wrote about, lectured about, and miss that point.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:11 am #
Thor’s got a hightened sense of Ego. My husband lived in Germany for years, and speaks the language fluently. His mother is a German immigrant and her entire family still lives over there. We honeymooned in German, and my husband has visited the country many times.
Would my husband present himself as ALL KNOWING about Germans? Trumping everyone else’s knowledge about German politics? Nope. Some people are a tad more humble.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 7:21 am #
We honeymooned in German
Carin, I apologize. I cannot let this go. Here’s the image that this innocent little typo brings to my mind. Again, I apologize:
“Schneller! schneller!, wundervoll, ein wenig mehr rechts. viel schneller!”
Comment by BJTex on 8/4 @ 7:23 am #
thor #30:
Take it up with The Wall Street Journal. Their view is a bit more … what’s that word? … Oh nuanced than yours.
Nuance: The other white meat!
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:24 am #
Snort. I’m happy that I could entertain you.
But, I refuse to “own” my typos. Thor got me too pissed off to proofread.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 7:24 am #
Whenever I bag on Russia or Moscow too hard my girlfriend reminds me, “it’s not better or worse; it’s just different.” It’s a game we play, because when she bags on America I have to remind her of our agreed-on line.
We may move back to Moscow after December. Her family’s got a nice flat way out on Tallinskaya that they don’t use. Yeah, I might know a thing or two about Russians, since I’ve been sleeping with this one here since 2001.
But no way! thor can’t know anything, he’s ‘tooopid! Hey, dig this, her Dad was a apparatchik, a real Commie. But he’s dead, so go ahead and impale his corpse with your wisdom.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 7:25 am #
BTW, 14 is my limit on schnitzendruben.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 7:25 am #
- Give us some more of the Aparatchik party line thor. The picture of the “Good Communist”.
- If I were unaware of the tens of millions of Russians that were murdered as a direct result of that innocent little lie I might find your so called “expert grasp” of Russian life amusing.
- As it is, it just disgusts.
- Think the average “Amerikansky” is an easy mark, huh thor. Good luck.
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:26 am #
honeymooned – So, the mental picture of something pouring honey on you while you were mooning Germans has been cracking me up since you typed that.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 7:28 am #
That crosses the line JD.
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:31 am #
I always knew there was a line somewhere, and am proud of the fact that not only did I find it, but I leapt right over it.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:32 am #
Yeah, I might know a thing or two about Russians, since I’ve been sleeping with this one here since 2001.
That’s an interesting credential. Think you could use it on your application for Ambassador to Russia?
Comment by BJTex on 8/4 @ 7:32 am #
Is that the honeysuckle line, al?
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:33 am #
Carin – Does that mean I can be the Ambassador to Viet Nam?
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:34 am #
So, the mental picture of something pouring honey on you while you were mooning Germans has been cracking me up since you typed that.
Kinda like a companion piece to sugartits?
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:34 am #
Honeysuckle – a marvelous bush. Such aromatic goodness.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:34 am #
Yes it does, JD. I get to be ambassador to Germany though.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 8/4 @ 7:35 am #
Apparatchik == leech. Slave owner. One of those who perpetuated the system for their own gain.
Sure, “it’s different”. Doesn’t mean we can’t point out that it was evil.
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:35 am #
Carin – That whole honey on the sugartits thing has been done before, see Jenna Luvs Brianna. That never gets old though.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 7:37 am #
- Oh I know thor. Heres an assignment for you and your gal on your trip. Follow in the footsteps of Oswald. Your gal isn’t a good little Kupchik, but thats ok. They always welcome any dumb Ameirikanskies that so buy the party line.
- Maybe you could get a job in a radio factory. Then come back and strike a blow for the revolution.
- ‘Course you’ll have to work hard at being different. So much of it has all been done before. But if your blind obedience to the party hasn’t left you totally devoid of imagination I’m sure you can come up with something new and nuanced.
- Genius will not be denied!
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 8/4 @ 7:37 am #
“Honestly, you have issues, Thor.”
He’s emoting Carin. Just let the poor dear go. You’ll get nowhere, and fast, with him. He’s got a very vested interest in O! because O! is like the pied piper of victims (like most democratic presidential nominees, this surely doesn’t make O! anything special). And Thor is obviously a victim. The whole non-extremist nuance angle he plays? Bullshit. Of course he’s right in the sense, that yes, not everything lib is evil, but that’s the straw man he builds everytime he gets to emoting. No one is saying that, nor have I heard anyone ever say that in here.
RIP Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future, but overall, the man was a symbol of courage and determination in the face of overwhelming adversity. Can’t we just clelebrate that?
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:39 am #
RIP Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future, but overall, the man was a symbol of courage and determination in the face of overwhelming adversity. Can’t we just clelebrate that?
Well said, Infidel.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 7:39 am #
Her dad worked his way to be the manager of two factories. Right there should tell you he had to join the ranks. Her uncle, Sergei, he just retired from the Russian diplomatic corp., from his coveted office in the White House.
Nice family. Somewhat connected, and that means everything there. Just doing what they have to do to get by. Eating the shit sandwich put on their plate, just like we do here. Except nobody in her family killed 10-million people, sorry.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 8/4 @ 7:40 am #
“BTW, 14 is my limit on schnitzendruben.”
Al, you’re making a German spectacle of yourself…
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 7:45 am #
“Except nobody in her family killed 10-million people, sorry.”
- Yes. Its just down-eight amazing. All those dead bodies, and yet its almost impossible to find a single person that was responsible.
- Apparently they were all abducted by aliens immediately after the fall.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 7:45 am #
Al, you’re making a German spectacle of yourself…
Auf Wiedersehen, baby.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 8/4 @ 7:47 am #
Thor you still haven’t told me why living in America is akin to eating a sh1t sandwhich.
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 7:47 am #
I am not up on my German, but does Auf Widersehen refer to Heidi Klum wearing lederhosen and thigh-high lace stockings?
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 7:48 am #
Who didn’t read Gulag and note to themselves that the man’s memory was unbelievable.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:50 am #
Thor you still haven’t told me why living in America is akin to eating a sh1t sandwhich.
I think it is something about “the MAN” keeping him “Down.” FIGHT THE POWER!
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 7:50 am #
- Actually the thor/Obama tie-in makes sense in one way. If thor studies the Chicago Daley political machine he’ll be well equipped to deal with the Russian Mafia government in the Rodina these days.
- So there is that.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 7:52 am #
As long, BBH, he doesn’t “study” by reading books. He’d have to go to Chicago and bang a few chicks who live there.
Comment by BJTex on 8/4 @ 8:02 am #
Carin #79: Oh, SNAP!
Evil. Tasty, tasty evil.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:03 am #
I flew a Russian fighter jet. It was a two-seater trainer so I got to take the stick and everything. That was also one of the ways I made money on the side in Moscow, fixing up Yanks, Aussies and Brits with the Russian jet ride. They loved going up with thor’s fighter jet service and barfing up their breakfast.
No, you can’t touch my shoulder with your extended finger. Unless you’re a party member that is!
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 8:04 am #
- Heh. Carin, put thor on any corner in the South side, he’d be lucky to last 5 minutes.
- They’re not big on nuance.
Comment by JHoward on 8/4 @ 8:04 am #
Ah, we’ve discovered something else, then, that pisses thor off. I say “we’ve discovered it”, if only by the evidence of his manic behavior, because surely the little twat himself has yet to.
Unlike in AS’s case, you really have to wonder how some folks acquire the view of things that infests their souls. Like watching a sunset and immediately coming to the subconscious conviction that curling in Omaha should be prohibited on alternate weekends simply because you despise granite.
In some parallel universe late 20th Century wingnuts are directly responsible for the Russian gulag fifty years and half a world prior. Because, you know, of the %@$& shit sandwiches.
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/4 @ 8:08 am #
I’m 20th generation Russki, Georgian to be exact.
Jimmy Carter refused to sing “Marching Thru Georgia” when he was at Annapolis. Clearly, he was having second thoughts even then.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:09 am #
If you really want to read a good gulag story The longest Walk by Racwiz is entertaining.
He ate a Siberian shit sandwich.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 8:12 am #
- Hey JH. A good party follower has to have his or her bogeymen. If Bush didn’t exist the Left would have had to invent him.
- You can’t put on a revolution without a nemesis, and you’re not allowed to notice the party itself is screwing you up the poop chute, so its despising granite colored sunsets or you’re screwed.
Comment by mcgruder on 8/4 @ 8:12 am #
this may have been posted already, but i think that the Harvard University class day address of 1978 is instructive. A beautiful and important speech of its accord, natch, but all the more telling is that any number of students and faculty stood with their backs to him.
Faced with a man who survived the gulags and described it, they publicly marginalized his message of individualism versus the evil of the collectivist utopianist state.
I can think of no greater indictment of the left.
no matter what he became, or even his failings then, he forced a cruel and unforgiving light upon the modern US left and its milk-nurse, the academy.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:24 am #
I forgive Edmund Wilson for Return to Finland Station. I think he proved himself to see things more clearly as they developed.
Most honest evaluation of the early Left and the American Communists – Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties by Murray Kempton. The Nation gives it two-thumbs up! Ah, but before you’re knuckles spring from the ground in rage, Kempton was a conservative with a talent for perspective, something so sorely absent – cough, cough – in many here.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 8:25 am #
- Well, at least its good to know that thors apparent collectivist insanity springs from the most ordinary of sources; Female Pheromones. Apparently hes in lust.
- So with that we should not be expecting anything other than silly and sophomoric from him, and it does explain a lot.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/4 @ 8:28 am #
The adulation, worship, of a politician isn’t a good thing.
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 8:31 am #
I love thor.
14 & 20
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 8:32 am #
- That one is easy too Mikey. His gal says Obama is dreamy.
- When hes asked to give a single example of “why” he thinks Obama is Presidential material, he comes up blank, and he can hardly be expected to say “because my sweetie says so”.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:33 am #
BBH, you’re just jealous of my Russian jet, ti chorney zadnitza pizdoon.
Comment by Ouroboros on 8/4 @ 8:40 am #
“Yet r-wingers seem to think being sodomized by Exxon/Mobil makes for a richer American experience. ”
Ok.. Maybe we’re not getting screwed by just Exxon.. seems to me it’s more of a gangbang.. first Opec.. then the US Gov getting sloppy seconds and Exxon settling for caboose… I guess we consumers just get to bend over, eat the pillow and do our duty to God and country..
… do wish they’d use some lube, though..
Comment by JD on 8/4 @ 8:41 am #
Bunch of damned felchers, they are, Ouroboros.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:48 am #
Hmmm? You can’t steal my dual corp-gov.t felched vibe! Something satirical is going on here because you’re sounding too much like my action.
Very Vickian.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 8:48 am #
- Heh. Jealous?. What you got anyone would be jealous of thor. Your eyes are to close together, and you have a rediculous idea of your own importance. Not much future with that attitude, so you should get used to failure and lowered expectations.
- Be careful. When your gal grows up she’ll be looking for security instead of empty rhetoric.
- àðÑÂцõûуùтõ üþù Georgian thor øшðúð.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 8:50 am #
In summation –
When the right praises Solzhenitsyn, we’re being a bunch of right-winged, commie-bashing, nuance-lacking hacks. When Thor praises Solzhenitsy, it’s ok because only HE understands the extreme complexity of the situation.
And Sashal gives him kudos.
Got it.
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 8:51 am #
Solzhenitsyn is dead. Christophobe Hitchens still lives. Really, really sad day.
Nikolay, I loved AS works as well.
But I do not agree with the part about raging anti-semitism, so did not AS as well when he was alive.
BTW, AS was a severe critic of the West as well
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 8:54 am #
Carin !
Did I say anything at all about praises to AS by other guys here?
I just loved thor comments the most and singled him out , they were more understandable and closer to the Russian soul
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:55 am #
Ti chorney zhopa! Hahaha, and you admitted it. Maybe you used to sell cigarettes at the kievskaya vokzal when I walked by, zjelob neshtiasny.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 8:56 am #
- Its the ole’ “chickenhawk” meme in disguise Carin.
- When they can’t argue the atrocities of the past hundred years, as practiced by their beloved Socialism, they resort to efforts to silence everyone with the “in-authentic” bromide.
- What they never do is debate. They are defenseless in the arena of ideas.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:58 am #
101 to 97
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 8:58 am #
Well, Sashal, he is banging a Russian chick. We can’t compete with experience like that.
Comment by the wolf on 8/4 @ 9:01 am #
I especially enjoyed his turn as Eli Lapp in Witness.
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 9:04 am #
104, LOL, carin.
that will get you love Russian soul and other things
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 9:04 am #
- sashal. I doubt anything thor has to say supports your idea that hes in touch with the soul of Russia.
- Unless, of course, you imagine Russia’s soul to reside in a pair of panties.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 9:07 am #
You can praise AS for the right reasons, adopting him as iconic of the American right-wing isn’t one of them.
There politics are totally different, it’s not left-wing university liberalism versus lower-tax corporate types over there. They have a lot of love for their country and a lot of hate for each other, sort’a.
And BBH, never admit you’re Georgian to a Russian. Georgians are the butt of most jokes.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 8/4 @ 9:07 am #
“other things”
Russian herpes? I keed. I keed. I did date a Polish girl for a few years. Beautiful and very nice. She learned her English from watching TV, as many do. She spoke like a valley girl. This was hilarious in NE Ohio. Too bad, she was a psycho.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 9:10 am #
“And BBH, never admit you’re Georgian to a Russian. Georgians are the butt of most jokes.”
- Gawd its sad what passes for “elite” these days.
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 9:13 am #
AS was anti-communist, anti-secularist.
He was Russian nationalist, traditionalist and severe critic of the West.
He did embrace Putin and the regime in the end of his life.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 9:16 am #
Podonok, eta moorzilka, the lowest train station sluts, that’s the way they joke about Georgians.
Russians get down and dirty with it. Ain’t no pc there.
Comment by Ouroboros on 8/4 @ 9:16 am #
“he is banging a Russian chick”
Is that all it takes to be a Russian expert? Hell, I bagged a Russian chick once.. or maybe she was Georgian or Ukrainian.. whatever.. she was hella pretty, had a cool accent and made a pierogi to die for. So should I just write up a few random sexual anecdotes in a narrative and attach it to my State Department job application or do I have to get all detaily as to names, dates and favorite positions ? Do I need to attach pictures?
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 9:19 am #
ns, adopting him as iconic of the American right-wing isn’t one of them.
There politics are totally different, it’s not left-wing university liberalism versus lower-tax corporate types over there. They have a lot of love for their country and a lot of hate for each other, sort’a
Wanna point to where anyone’s done that? I think you just can’t stand that the “right” admires the man.
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 9:20 am #
ouroboros, it is obviously to me , that thor, knows much more about Russia then just the beauty of her female inhabitants.
He made an effort to acquaint himself with the culture, history and traditions.
BTW, the same praise goes to Dan and Carl.
They know about that subject much more then average American..
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 9:20 am #
In addition, you seem disturbed that many would read his work, and become anti-communist. If that’s not what Solzhenitsyn was going for …
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 9:22 am #
Sure, Sashal, but his “debating” points fail to rise about namecalling and pointing to his Russian bone-fides. It fails … how you say … to convince.
Pingback by From Left Field: Protein Wisdom Are the New Soviets [Dan Collins] on 8/4 @ 9:23 am #
[...] Well, guess what? It’s started. [...]
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 9:25 am #
- Trust me thor. Sniffing your girlfriends crouch won’t get you educated in the Russian ways.
- She’ll put up with the “stoopid Amerikansky” as long as you’re useful.
- Just maybe, provided you’re not as immature as you sound, you can adapt fast enough to keep her interest.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 9:27 am #
Carin, in Russia they tire of Americans analyzing their situation through American eyes. They have their own ways. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different!
Read him, respect him, but he’s an icon of Russia’s internal struggle.
Wait until you get lectured by a Russian on Martin Luther King and how bad racism is in America, then you’ll know how it feels.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 9:33 am #
Erm, what Russian am I lecturing? Would a Russian really disagree with me on the issue that Stalin was a fucking fucker? And, if he did, would you say that my knowledged lacked the proper nuance?
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 9:36 am #
“Carin, in Russia they tire of Americans analyzing their situation through American eyes. They have their own ways. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different!”
- So then, what to make of a partially educated American with limited Russian experience analyzing American ways using an incomplete misunderstood Russian standards as a baseline?
- Whats the word I’m looking for here. Incongruent? unreasoned? Poorly conceived? Just plain silly?
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/4 @ 9:36 am #
Wait until you get lectured by a Russian on Martin Luther King and how bad racism is in America, then you’ll know how it feels.
Crap, I’m from Mississippi and Yankees have been lecturing me about lynching and shit for years. I just always say “It’s not better or worse, it’s just different!”
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 9:40 am #
Salt lick, us Yankees just don’t get the nuance of the whole lynching thing. If only I’d banged a few Southerners …
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 9:45 am #
If you want to know
If she loves you so
Its in her politics
Oooh, Oooh, Oooh…
Comment by Ouroboros on 8/4 @ 9:47 am #
Sashal: Thor obviously has some first hand experience with Russia and the Russian people.. I do respect that.. I’m just kidding around.. Never actually dated a Russian girl though I’ve seen some beauties.. I did, however, live in Italy for a while.. Lived on the economy (as we’d say..), got to know a number of Italians.. Lived day to day life with them..celebrated their milestones with them.. and while I’m not in any way an authority on Italy or the Italian mind I do have an insight that people who’ve only experienced Italy from a tour bus or a couple hours on the vacation channel lack… Thor’s experiences living in Russia must have given him unique insights as well and I, for one, am interested in hearing them …
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 9:47 am #
124, carin
banging certainly helps
and the more the better……
Comment by Sdferr on 8/4 @ 9:47 am #
“…American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. …”
“…On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. …”
“…If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era. …”
Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, Harvard Address, “A World split Apart” June 8, 1978
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 9:48 am #
- Obama is doing his 8th trip to Mich. today. They must really be worried about those unseated delegates.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 9:55 am #
Yes, some, mostly older, Russians do admire Stalin, some even think he was grand. It’s their prerogative. It’s their history, their country, and they have their reasons. You don’t live there. You don’t know all that they know. They don’t have to look at things the way we do.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 8/4 @ 9:58 am #
Sashal,
Thanks for your #99 and #111 – I think that’s the crux of the matter.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 10:07 am #
Russians do admire Stalin, some even think he was grand. It’s their prerogative. It’s their history, their country, and they have their reasons. You don’t live there. You don’t know all that they know. They don’t have to look at things the way we do.
Well, then, I guess I can expect to see your admiration for Bush supporters, right?
Comment by royf on 8/4 @ 10:09 am #
Salt lick, us Yankees just don’t get the nuance of the whole lynching thing. If only I’d banged a few Southerners …
I don’t know Carin looks like yankees had a natural talent when it fit their agenda. A illustration from the NYC draft riots Here.
In the Shadow of Slavery:
African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863
by Leslie M. Harris
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 10:09 am #
- thor. That there are a number of Russian families, most of whom in one way or another were tied through relatives to party insiders, own some part of their better opportunities, or favored living conditions or even their bare survival, to some nepotism on Stalins part, is in any way an explanation for the millions of atrocities “done for the cause” in the parties namre, is patent bullshit, and you know it.
- Stalin was a clever street thug. He did exactly what he had to do to stay in power, and he was enough of a mad dog to do it with effectiveness.
- That is all Stalin was. He was promoted in the way of the Socialist cult figure by the party nomenclature, and kept that way for their very survival. He goes down, they go down. That was the entire purpose of the myth of the “Good Communist”.
- Exactly in the way the Left adores its cult figures, with most likely similar results if it comes to pass. Only different in degree.
- Surely in view of your vast understanding of the “Russian way” you can do better than this. I’m disappointed.
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 10:14 am #
132, carin,
some Russians and mostly the older ones
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 10:15 am #
royf, I was … joking. REad 123. The joke is that with a bit of nuance a person understands lynching. Shit, if I have to explain it … it loses teh (mild) funny.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 10:19 am #
Thanks. Russians are well educated and hobby lovers. They have fun hobbies, but most all paint, draw, etc.., and it seemed even the janitor knew more about art than I did. When I was in one really small town the town doctor also ran the video rental store. He bartered a lot. He also had leeches in a jar. There is one lone skin ailment that leeches actually do work on. The liked to collect things useful and what was to them fancy. The doctor’s brother was a railroad worker. Travel bottles of American and European cosmetic products was his hobby. A whole wall with small Prell, JnJ, Nivea and dozens of others were displayed like trophies. The guy got to know the train conductors by talking to them on the radio and the conductors, who, unlike ordinary Russians, used to have contact with sailors and other miscreants who traveled to the forbidden outside world. The conductors tossed these little Head and Shoulders shampoo bottles to him as they rolled past through his train yard. He had them all, and they were from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and some new. It was actually very cool. But in that small town in Russia, it was the main attraction, for which I was the first American to see! To that guy it was like proof they he wasn’t just some bumpkin behind the iron curtain, it was his proof that he knew all about us, even our beauty secrets. His worldly treasure. That was a funny one. And he kept his travel bottle collection cleaned and preserved so well that it was very cool to see.
In small towns everyone actually does bring chocolate and/or flowers to women upon visiting, meaning if a male friend went to visit his male friend he’d take a present for his friend’s mom, so it’s not just for dates. That custom isn’t just a rumor.
Comment by Carin on 8/4 @ 10:19 am #
No, Sasah, I get it. I just want to get it on record that Thor respects and admires Russians who respect and admire Stalin because It’s their history, their country, and they have their reasons. You don’t live there. You don’t know all that they know. They don’t have to look at things the way we do.
Is Thor going to apply this same code to Bush? To Mugabe? To Chavez? Bush certainly has supporters. As does Mugabe and Chavez.
REally, I guess we can’t criticize ANY world leader, because we might hurt the feelings of their supporters. I mean, that’s where this started, right? That “anti-communist” talk was hurtful to Russians?
Comment by royf on 8/4 @ 10:20 am #
Carin
Sorry didn’t mean to step on your joke….
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/4 @ 10:30 am #
- BREAKING – “The actor Morgan Freeman was badly injure in a one car accident last night while traveling through Mississippi. He is in “critical condition” according to local hospital officials, with a broken shoulder and arm. Further details on his condition to be released sjortly….”
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 10:36 am #
I also liked the outdoor meat markets. No flies in the winter time there. They just hang the meat and salo (pork fat) on hooks outside the stall. Makes sense. The women would die for Mason jars, even asked me about ‘em. They do much preserving still. Veggies during the winter come from the jars. Then there was somagon at the breakfast table. Somagon is moonshine. Just a shot, or two, for breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays.
Cardboard boxes, the very good quality ones, ones we throw away all the time, they seemed very interested in those. Russian paper products, though improving dramatically, were on the poor quality side, and that means Russian toilet paper sucked. Many still use the cut up newspaper.
The communal apartments, now that was a trip. One bathroom, four families. I stayed in one in Saint Petersburg. A older ballet instructor was in one of the rooms. She was pretty hot, and, I don’t know why, but catching a glimpse of her nude/half-nude seemed like no big deal to everyone there, except me. They’re kind’a cramped so privacy is a luxury, in other words if it’s a dark corner, it’s a bedroom, and people screw in their bedroom, which means if there over there screwing, don’t watch or stare, just let ‘em have some privacy. Hehe, it’s true. A place to screw was also a luxury.
Comment by Ouroboros on 8/4 @ 10:37 am #
Thanks, Thor.. You can spend years memorizing names and dates and events and still never understand the people.. I like anecdotes like yours because that glimpse of their lives adds a dimension that numbers and statistics don’t. It gives them humanity.
Comment by Ouroboros on 8/4 @ 10:54 am #
For many years there was a Russian cafe across the street from my office that was frequented by a virtually all Russian clientele… You could go in there at 6 in the morning and there’d be tables filled with people having breakfast and washing it down with Vodka shots.. I always figured it was a front for the Russian Mafia here in Seattle because the men looked kind of stern and hard.. but maybe that was just the nameless narrator romanticist in me..
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 10:57 am #
One weird thing is their crime magazines. They love ‘em. Remember our old crime and detective mags from the 50’s and 60’s? They still have those. Except they use real pictures. Yep, the real crime scene police pictures after a murder are shown in these magazines. My roommate Oleg’s mom, a babushka if there ever was one, used to read those mags all day when she’d visit. I’d pick ‘em up and thumb through ‘em and almost barf. It was very funny, a few hot chick pics for the sake of page-5-type eye candy and then boom, straight into corpse and chalk outlines in black and white with long Dragnet story narratives.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 11:06 am #
The CSKA hockey practice facilities were a indoor and outdoor skating rink with military barracks, and you guessed it, an armed guard post and a barbed-wire fence around the facility.
If you wonder why Russian hockey players are good, well, they didn’t have the option to run away, or quit, when they hated their coach. They were barbed-wired in. They got toughened up good.
Comment by West on 8/4 @ 11:54 am #
The CSKA hockey practice facilities were a indoor and outdoor skating rink with military barracks, and you guessed it, an armed guard post and a barbed-wire fence around the facility.
If you wonder why Russian hockey players are good, well, they didn’t have the option to run away, or quit, when they hated their coach. They were barbed-wired in. They got toughened up good.”
Yes, Thor, I, too sometimes get nostalgic for doing things the old ways. Just goes to show that the system was not all bad. Keep up the good work!
Morticia: Children, do you think we love the baby more than we love you?
Wednesday, Pugsley: Yes.
Morticia: Do you think that when a new baby arrives, one of the other children has to die?
Wednesday, Pugsley: Yes.
Grandma: Well that’s just not true. Not anymore.
Comment by alppuccino on 8/4 @ 12:00 pm #
Comment by sashal on 8/4 @ 8:31 am #
I love thor.
I think your credibility just came out of the toaster, thor. Time to rebuild, my friend.
Comment by Thomass on 8/4 @ 1:47 pm #
Comment by Nikolay on 8/4 @ 3:25 am #
“I know it’s not right to say such things when people die, but it seems that people in the USA have a very idealized image of Solzhenitsyn in their minds, and this should be corrected, not only for the sake of the truth, but also out of respect for the complexity of Solzhenitsyn’s character.”
I’m aware of his faults and still like him. It is lefties who demand perfect compliance and/or airbrush either you… or your faults… I also can not say all his criticisms of the US were wrong. From the vantage point of the 70s I’d say he was mostly right… although we later course corrected some…
Comment by Sdferr on 8/4 @ 1:51 pm #
Are you comfortable with his religiosity, Thomass? I’m not.
Pingback by More on Alexander Isayevich… | sassafrassin.com on 8/4 @ 3:05 pm #
[...] From Jeff Goldstein, blogging at “Protein Wisdom:” “I read all three massive volumes of The Gulag Archipelago the summer before my senior year of high school. I was of course too young to absorb it all, but it nevertheless left its mark. For one thing, it inoculated me against the proggy bits of my university education, knowing that all those collectivist fantasies in real life metastasized into concentration camps and secret mass graves. [...]
Comment by Cave Bear on 8/4 @ 3:12 pm #
Comment by Sdferr on 8/4 @ 1:51 pm #
Are you comfortable with his religiosity, Thomass? I’m not.
****
Huh? Oh, OK. Isn’t Sdferr the PW pet atheist? Never mind…..:)
Comment by Sdferr on 8/4 @ 3:15 pm #
Pet atheist, Cave Bear? Wherefor?
Comment by McGehee on 8/4 @ 4:33 pm #
I don’t consider it my job to decide whether someone else’s religiosity fits my comfort zone, as long as they’re not forcing it on me.
Solzhenitsyn never tried to force anything at all on me.
Comment by Diana on 8/4 @ 4:59 pm #
By God, thor. You really are a clichè. How cute it all was, eh?
Comment by Sdferr on 8/4 @ 5:30 pm #
He certainly wasn’t forcing his religiosity on anyone, McGehee. I wouldn’t for a moment suggest he was. He was criticizing, as was his right, what he found in the west and suggesting a better way. I think his proffered help valuable enough to think about, to examine, for who knows, he could be right. That is my job as I see it. And it is in his suggested vision of a better world I find his religiosity troubling, though for all I know, it is not troubling for you.
Comment by LunarTuna on 8/4 @ 5:41 pm #
Wow! I thought I was the only one!…In the late 70’s I too had just finished reading LOTR whi I picked up The Gulag Archipelago. It’s like one set the ground work for the other. Both writers had experenced the naked face of horrific Evil firsthand. JRR Tolkien in the trenches of the first World War and Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag. Both had the gift of crafting words. Question: Where they aware of each other?
Comment by TmjUtah on 8/4 @ 7:32 pm #
“If you wonder why Russian hockey players are good, well, they didn’t have the option to run away, or quit, when they hated their coach. They were barbed-wired in. They got toughened up good.
As a part of my new interest in things Soviet, I have that it cost near eight Soviets (citizens or soldiers to kill one German soldier in World War 2. Even during the post – Kursk phase of the war, when the Red Army never attacked with less than a five- to- one superiority in artillery, three- to- one in manpower, and holding local air superiority, they still routinely paid five or six to one for their battles.
It was said by Stalin himself(I paraphrase) that in the Red Army it was more dangerous to retreat than it was to attack.
Was the secret of the Soviet power that they, unabashed, operated on the principle that the Russian peasant psyche responds to coercion only? It certainly seems to me that they went straight to gulags or executions right out of the gate… and the only other world power to go Marxist Communist was…China.
Stalin slaughtered or starved the only self-motivated class in the Soviet Union, the kulak landed peasantry. The Chinese are still trying to destroy the family. What’s left? Collective farms, urban serfs, and party functionaries doing what they have to do to stay off the farm or off the factory floor.
Hmmmmm. I need to think on this some more.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 8:28 pm #
By God, thor. You really are a clichè. How cute it all was, eh?
Yes it was quaint, until you killed them. Want to know why many a Russian would rather kick you in the face than listen to your condescending economic garbage? Wanna know why they equate Stalinism with Capitalism? Because dumb (add c-word) like you have no goddamn empathy for them. You’re too stupid to have any humanity, that’s why.
A whole generation (millions of people) stuck out in Siberia with no money and no fuckin’ prospect to earn a single dollar, and you, cunt (now you’re a metaphor), you celebrated their death by sending a bunch of asshole Harvard and Stanford PhD’s, paid for by the U.N., mind you, to collapse their livelihood, their lifeline. And they died.
You starved them and cut them off from the medicines they would need to stay alive. Sudden capitalism meant they perished like fruit.
Died. Dead. Corpses. Stacked High. The heroes of WW2, starved by theory-spewing cunts like you. And for them, I say “Fuck You y Poshyel k Chyertu!”
Comment by Slartibartfast on 8/4 @ 8:30 pm #
Yep, it was Harvard PhDs that killed Russians in the Gulags.
thor, you’ve cemented your reputation as a fucking idiot.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 8/4 @ 8:34 pm #
And as everyone knows, cement kills mother Gaia.
Comment by Diana on 8/4 @ 9:30 pm #
There ya go, thor … typical tourist.
Comment by Dread Cthulhu on 8/4 @ 9:35 pm #
Slartibartfast: “Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.”
Not at all — per Gallagher, cement seals in the Earth’s natural nutrients, as opposed ot those evil farmers, who consume them and leach them from Mother Gaia
Comment by TmjUtah on 8/4 @ 9:56 pm #
“Yes it was quaint, until you killed them. Want to know why many a Russian would rather kick you in the face than listen to your condescending economic garbage? Wanna know why they equate Stalinism with Capitalism? Because dumb (add c-word) like you have no goddamn empathy for them. You’re too stupid to have any humanity, that’s why.”
Slaves must free themselves, you know. Points for recognizing, obliquely, that the U.N. is probably a greater danger to any nascent democracy than any three dictators that could be named. Slaves must free themselves – whether they are in Russia, Africa, or East Saint Louis. Yes, it sucks if they don’t pop out of the earth with a toolbox of Locke, Jefferson, and Reagan… but life is lots of things. But it is never, ever, fucking fair.
Ever notice that a lot of collectivist agenda can be traced back to “wouldn’t it be nice if….?”
You can fill in the blank. Here’s mine: “Wouldn’t it would be nice if individual freedom was the default state of humans in society?”
But it’s not. And all the good intentions, social engineering, awareness campaigns, citizen’s courts, gulags, or mass graves won’t ever make it so. Freedom begins with individuals. It ends – ALWAYS – via the state.
The CPUSSR was so fucked up it died of terminal uselessness while literally holding the whip… and in less than ten years the Russians found it in themselves to elevate a czar to replace the Chairman.
As time rolls by I am more grateful than I can say for our Scots-Irish ancestors and their intransigent, pig headed refusal to be governed by tyrants OR idiots. We need to embrace their philosophy and act accordingly before we end up electing our own czar.
But the important part of my comment is here-
You win, thor.
If I see your name in a comment thread, not only is there no need for me to read your comment, there’s no need to read the thread, no need to comment.
Comment by thor on 8/4 @ 11:58 pm #
Sorry I had turn your tables over and create such a mess of your propaganda pamphlets and shiny coins.
Instead of worshiping money changers you could have followed Jesus’s teachings and avoided your crucifixions.
Just sayin’.
Heahahahahaha.
Comment by thor on 8/5 @ 3:56 am #
Hey goof, were talking about the Yeltsin years and the collapse of the ruble.
Comment by thor on 8/5 @ 4:51 am #
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/600/42/369534.htm
Comment by Rusty on 8/5 @ 5:45 am #
#157
In the Winter War with Finnland, 1939-1940, The Finns lost 35,000 more or less to the Soviets. The Finns had, no tanks , no airforce , noheavy artillery. Their snipers consistend of simply the best shots, no special rifles, only 200 or so rifle scopes in the whole country. The Soviets had everyhting.
Many years later a Finnish diplomat asked Kruschev how many russian soldiers were killed in the Winter War. He offhandedly said,” Oh about 400,000.”
Comment by McGehee on 8/5 @ 8:56 am #
Hrm. In other words, you’re perusing the entire recipe to judge the dish, whereas I look at the ingredient list, see something interesting worth learning more about, and tend to ignore the brussels sprouts.
Pingback by Freedom of Accredited Speech [Dan Collins] on 8/5 @ 12:26 pm #
[...] follow up to my follow up to a reaction against TSI’s eulogy for Solzhenitsyn, only written by Ralph Peters: The show preceding mine featured a young woman, [...]
Comment by Slartibartfast on 8/5 @ 10:39 pm #
My comment still stands, thor. Harvard PhDs killed people in the Gulags? Capitalism killed the USSR? I suppose there was never any suffering that was internally imposed there in the workers’ paradise, eh?
Comment by Rob Crawford on 8/6 @ 6:28 am #
Slart, nothing is ever anyone’s fault. Unless you’re talking about the US and free markets. Everything bad is their fault, and anything good is just an illusion created by propaganda.
Just as douchebag dave. He’ll tell you all about it.
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