You probably want to specify that you mean Solzhenitsyn's early works, the ones written before he left for the USA. Later in life he became a reactionary writer and, while no apologist for the Holodomor as such, he insisted on the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples in a way that many members of the latter found suffocating. He also wrote a book on the Jews that is still little-known internationally in translation, so shocking are its contents. So, as a defender of ethnic minorities, Solzhenitsyn's record is equivocal.

Here's an interview of Solzhenitsyn from 2007: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview...

Der Spiegel tries to pin him down as a reactionary Putinist and anti-semite. I think the attempt fails but judge for yourself. I don't think we have a category for people like Solzhenitsyn anymore but "jew-hater, authoritarian, reactionary" doesn't seem accurate to me.

I just read the article; the parts about Jews are particularly interesting. It looks like in the current climate a critical look at activities of some countries or peoples became a taboo. I understand the motivation behind that, but by stifling any reasonable discussion we might get an opposite result.

Don't you see the contradiction there? First he says it isn't helpful if foreigners criticize Russia, because Russians need to learn to criticize themselves. But later he says that his work aimed to lead the Jews to examine themselves, even though he is an outsider to that people and, by his own declared standards, it is none of his business.

Also, after the Holocaust it is extremely inappropriate for any non-Jew to suggest that the Jews as a people have done anything bad or negative. The sole appropriate thing Solzhenitsyn could have done with regard to the Jews is either say something nice or not say anything at all.

> Don't you see the contradiction there? First he says it isn't helpful if foreigners criticize Russia, because Russians need to learn to criticize themselves. But later he says that his work aimed to lead the Jews to examine themselves, even though he is an outsider to that people and, by his own declared standards, it is none of his business.

This only follows if we accept the axiom "Jews aren't Russian". I'm not convinced that he thinks that (and I certainly don't).

> Also, after the Holocaust it is extremely inappropriate for any non-Jew to suggest that the Jews as a people have done anything bad or negative. The sole appropriate thing Solzhenitsyn could have done with regard to the Jews is either say something nice or not say anything at all.

To me, this is intellectual cowardice.

As far as I know, Solzhenitsyn's controversial view about Jews in the USSR is that they were viewed as less likely to be counterrevolutionary, and therefore quickly climbed the party hierarchy...at least initially. Stalin eventually adopted various anti-semitic measures (and Solzhenitsyn mentions this in The First Circle).

For something more modern (and referencing Solzhenitsyn himself) I recommend _Bloodlands_ by Timothy Snyder.

Also Holodomor by Philip Wolny and Red Famine by Anne Applebaum.

Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" is another one.

Anne Applebaum wrote a forward for Solzhenitsyn's abridged Gulag Archipelago, would recommend.

Well, "non-fiction." I'm not sure about his other writings, but Archipelago has been found in recent decades to contain many exaggerations and half-truths.

Yes, but to my knowledge (for whatever my knowledge is worth on the subject), any stretching of the truth were a function of time, simply forgetting exact details. A non-trivial amount of of Solzhenitsyn's anecdotes in Gulag Archipelago were given to him verbally from other prisoners, so Solzhenitsyn's burden became remembering all of the nitty gritty on top of, y'know, literally living in a Soviet prison camp.

To be fair, Russia only gives very limited access to its state archives nowadays, and Gulag record-keeping was far from stellar. Imagine what it was like trying to uncover the truth back when KGB and the Iron Curtain still existed, from inside the system in which many monstrous and inhuman events had really happened. Exaggerations seemed true and truth seemed exaggerated.

I knew the gulags were in fact holiday camps !

Interestingly, he does not consider the Holomodor to be a genocide against ukrainians.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/apr/03/swallo...

Nothing interesting, typical russian scum.

Do keep in mind his work is literary and political and not a work written by a historian.

I’m yet to meet a person or heard of one, who has lived through 1917-1953 and has said the book is an exaggeration. People were sent to die in psychiatric hospitals in the 80s. The last documented resistance fighters were around til the 70s. There’s an entire generation I grew up with who went through this and nobody made a peep. Only after they start to pass away, some folks start to appear from the woodwork making statements about inaccuracies. The history of genocide is inaccurate because most people die, no records are kept and the survivors are deiven borderline mad by the experience.

Plenty of historians have taken a critical look at his work and dismissed it. That doesnt mean things didnt happen, but that his work is not to be used as a factual account. But somehow this critical look at sources just goes out of the window if it concerns something horrible or if it places an ideological enemy in a bad light. Then it is acceptable to go "well this is sorta right so good enough".