while i always remember as a child, in my parents' numerous book collection, solzhentizyn's 'gulag archipelago' --- and even having lived in bulgaria, a miserable creation of the russians for two years, suffering the worst kind of misery... even during the time solzhenitzyn went through 'transition' (death) as they say, i never could get into his work... finally i am ready to read the gulag archipelago....
other books in my parents' collection that attracted me were aesop's fables as a young child... the first book i ever read was a biography on mozart written for teenage readers in a simplified english and my brother discovered me reading it and told my father about it, who asked me if i was reading it and understood it and i said, 'yes'... at the time i was about 4 years old and struggling to adapt to the mediocre english education i was getting in australia in kindergarten where my teachers did not understand that i could read.... the fact that i could read came as a surprise to my father as in those days (1980) our family commonly played a game during tv commercial breaks of current affairs shows like '60 minutes' where the first person or team to guess the maker or product of the commercial would win a point, i was the only one excluded from the rule that if the product name or advertiser was shown in writing, a point would not be awarded (incidentally, some 18 years later, at around age 22, i spent a week or two internship at Fox tv station - australia only got cable tv in 1996 - some 20 years after the americans - where a former '60 minutes' executive producer was my boss - and who, in the typical self-limiting style of the english rednecks of australia (who go to such lengths to deny their own ethnicity) - would not wish to advance the fact that i was already writing at a better style than seasoned journalists in their 50s there (which was obvious, at least to me) -- there was no future for me there, as indeed there isn't in australia in general, in the intelligentsia, because no englishman or woman wishes to be outshone by a spaniard - pure and simple.... i have also been accused various times of plagiarism for extremely well written high school and unversity pieces at a time when software for automatically checking for plagiarism was not available
have i ever doubted that my petty, bitchy little problems with the english, and by extension, with the americans, in terms of their rigid hypocrisy ever could compare to the hardships that russians like solzhenitsyn endured? of course i have never even joked like this to myself....... for the kind of monsters that solzehnitzyn was dealing with, and that is the only word to describe this caste of KGB monster: a hellish monster..... how can one compare the haughty, bitchy, elitist, exclusivist model set by the english redneck in cahoots with his anglo-saxon name bearing ignoramus american brethren that supports him in this endeavor? for on the one hand, you have a pure and utter monster, the predecessors to the putins and modern day KGB.... on the other, you simply have a ridiculous, elitist, ignorant buffoon, but not a violent psychopath
the monsters that solzhenitzhyn describes limit freedom by means of incarceration and physical torture.... the english redneck and his anglo-saxon-name-bearing american enablers merely limit freedom by rejection from university, a corrupt running of the university coupled with a decrease in standards of quality and seriousness with the usual hypocritical gesturing and debates about how many angels can fit in the head of a pin (oh wait, that was black ages medieval europe and the church caste, no the english redneck/american anglo-saxon-name bearing enabler university junta argue things like 'how can we justify anti-semitism against ashkenazi jews - never mind the sephardic ones mind you)... and a general rejection from intellectual life
which is more tolerable? obviously it's no matter to forgo a university education and condemn the media and liberal arts universities of america and english redneck australia and the english in general as corrupt and steer clear of them... much better than being incarcerated and tortured like poor old solzhenitzyn! in australia the english rednecks are selling a passed year at university to the communist chinese for $20,000 a pop, God only knows where all this money goes to... likewise the americans buy a guaranteed pass for a similar price.... students like myself, that receive a long-term loan to study are only permitted free speech to express their opinions if they are willing to be failed automatically for daring to question the might and majesty (basically the perfection and infallibility) of the british empire (and people - just you try to question their perfection!).... this sad state of affairs is repeated ad infinitum in the cultural world of music, acting, etc, between the americans and anyone they can find with an anglo-saxon name and that speaks english fluently (for this they must search nz, australia and england)... the result is a failure of the universities, a low standard of journalism in america on both right and left (due to entrenched racist/culturalist-elitist practices) which means that the television inevitably is turned off and the cinemas left abandoned or to the idiots.... this of course makes of the american and his anglo-saxon brethren of england and elsewhere a hopeless, buffoonish, bigot.... but it doesn't make of him a monster, just an idiot... what solzhenitisyn is showing is the russian monsters of the ruling caste (KGB, communist party members, et al)... needless to say, these evil matters he refers to are playing out in china as we speak
at around 17 i had made a very detailed study of world war ii and also the evolution of communism in russia from the 1919 october revulotion til the end of the time of stalin... therefore, reading solzehnitsyn now, nothing, in terms of the purges, in terms of there having occurred surprises, what surprises, and what the history books, with all their names and statistics do not reveal is the sheer brutality and evil of it all that solzhenitizyn accurately portrays.... this is not a book for everyone as who can stomach this unhappy brutality and evil? who is ready to know about it? why not laugh happily in the sunlight and the fresh air, running around gaily and not even think once about this dark, despicable chapter of human existence?
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