Re: Alexis de Tocqueville, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Mahan (whatif?)

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Re: Alexis de Tocqueville, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Mahan

Posted on: Fri, 26 May 2006 05:51:46 +0000 (UTC)

"Right now I'm primarily interested in hearing how his views have
changed since 1991 and since his return to Russia. Has there been any
real fundamental change or is it just that he no longer moderates his
speech to appeal to the West? I confess I mostly stopped reading after
his 1916 book but had read pretty much everything up till then."

This all depends on how you look at it. Tsarist Russia was stratified
society, highly repressive, and not terribly good at fighting poverty.
The famine was prevalent mostly during the first world war, when the
Tsar tried to live beyond his means, and his people starved. Then come
the Bolsheviks.

Bolshevik Russia (especially under Stalin and Lennin) certainly would
inspire nostalgia for the Tsarist era (although probably not for the
Tsar). The famine created by the Bolsheviks in their war on the kulacks
easily killed more people then the Tsar. Meanwhile, the Gulag is
gathering momentum. Secret police, basically acting as despot with
modern technology, wipe out most of the Russian intellectuals, which
had flourished under the Tsars. Solzenhenitsyn probably would have been
harboring nostalgia for the "good old days", but I don't think that
makes him a monarchist. I could see him as a more moderate democrat-
conservative, but a believer, nevertheless.

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