Gulag Archipelago - Will it radicalise me? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15036738
skinster wrote:
Maybe try some other fiction that makes you less emotional?


Or evokes some cheerier emotion. Something by Rowan Atkinson as an example. (I just dug out a winter T-shirt, specifically my Blackadder Christmas T. Always makes me happy.
#15036739
SolarCross wrote:I seem to remember that Sun Tzu was big on "knowing your enemy".


He was also big on focus and discipline. If you don't have the discipline to keep your emotions in check and remain strategically focused then you're not going to win.

I feel he would say I should read the Gulag Archipelago then, to know what I am up against.


Solzhenitsyn doesn't just show you what you're up against, he shows you why defeating this strain of evil is an absolute imperative.
#15036741
skinster wrote:Maybe Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will make you less angry. :)


“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

You are another that would do it all again.
#15037071
SolarCross wrote:So I have an abridged copy of the Gulag Archipelago which I have not yet had time to read. My son has picked it up though and started reading it. He has relayed some odd snippets from it to me which really disturbed me. I knew it would be grim and appalling but, from the sound of it, it is even worse than I imagined.

My experience of communists in the present day has already lead to me loathing them all and wishing they were all dead. If I hear more about how they are when they have the opportunity to really live out their morbid hatred of humanity I am a bit concerned it will push me over the edge of civilised restraint. Should I avoid reading it then?


By all means read them. I've read all of the Gulag Archipelago and most of his fiction, which varies in quality. It's curious that the Russian Gulag inflames you so, while the vastly more expansive American archipelago leaves you with only a shrug. Perhaps the violence has always been there, SC, just waiting for the right trigger.
#15037084
quetzalcoatl wrote:By all means read them. I've read all of the Gulag Archipelago and most of his fiction, which varies in quality. It's curious that the Russian Gulag inflames you so, while the vastly more expansive American archipelago leaves you with only a shrug. Perhaps the violence has always been there, SC, just waiting for the right trigger.

The US penal system is not beyond criticism. Too many laws and a well funded police system will result in a big prison population. Then there is the war on drugs which is overdue some reform. But US prisons are palaces of comfort and well regulated by basic moral decency for the most part and "political" prisoners practically do not exist. There is no comparison.

Since you have read the GA then the real curiosity is not why I "shrug" at the US law enforcement system (I am not a fan btw) but why you shrug at what the Soviets did.

That commies still give each other a free pass for atrocities just underscores that not one of you can be trusted with anything.
#15037101
"My experience of communists in the present day has already lead to me loathing them all and wishing they were all dead"

(shrugs) And you're threatening folks for calling you a pretty mild insult?

You've out-Stalin'd Stalin. :D

"Ty shall be sent to the gulag archipelago for your disorderly disruption of the soviet system with your unjustified comments tovarisch! Angliskij who post such comments must be smert!"
Last edited by Presvias on 27 Sep 2019 21:15, edited 1 time in total.
#15037104
Presvias wrote:"My experience of communists in the present day has already lead to me loathing them all and wishing they were all dead"

(shrugs) And you're threatening folks for calling you a pretty mild insult?

You've out-Stalin'd Stalin. :D

Wishing is not doing.
#15037417
SolarCross wrote:Not until now. Thanks for the heads up.

You're in for a treat. Varlam Shalamov was a literary genius of the highest order, the true heir of Isaak Babel. :up:

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