Russian Dissidents: Rostropovich And Solzhenitsyn

Joseph Stalin greatly influenced Russia in the years 1924 through 1932. His rise to this power can be explained by the Russian Revolutionary experience that allowed him to gain authority in Russia. Although historians often refer to Stalin as a ruthless, mindless dictator, he redirected the Russian Revolution to major economic development. Stalin’s character in Russia during the Revolution catalyzed the many events that took place during the time period. Because of Stalin’s ability to both appeal to the masses, and take advantage of events, like Lenin’s death, Stalin was able to rise to power. Essentially, the Russian Revolution fostered the development of Stalin’s dictatorship leading the country into a state of economic growth and influence. The Revolution fostered Stalin’s ability to maintain a central leadership, use violence to gain control, and regenerate a previously disconnected economy.

The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

In the book Sofia Petrovna, the author Lydia Chukovskaya writes about Sofia Petrovna and her dreadful experiences as a widowed mother during the Russian Stalinist Terror of the 1930s. There were four basic results of the Russian Stalinist Terror: first, it was a way of keeping people in order; second, it kept Stalin in power and stopped revolutions from forming, made people work harder to increase the output of the economy, and separated families as well as caused deaths of many innocent people due to false charges.

A leader is defined as a guiding or directing head. Stalin was the leader of the party that was in charge of the Soviet Union. He created a totalitarian regime which brought great suffering to the Russian people. The individual Russian played two distinct roles under Stalin. One role would be that of a person who under Stalin’s system was no different than the person who is standing next to them. Everyone was treated equal in all facets. The other role the individual Russian played was that of a victim. We are able to see by many different accounts that an individual had different roles to play and under Stalin, each role came with a price that sometimes lead to death. The role of the individual Russian played a huge role in Stalin’s aim

The Decembrists was a Russian revolutionary group, mainly composed of those in the upper class. There were two groups—the Northern society and the Southern Society. The Northern Society, with Prince Troubetzkoy as the provisional dictator, wanted the abolition of serfdom and greater freedom, while the Southern Society, with Pestel as the leader, was more radical, wanting to overthrow the absolutist regime and establish a republic, as well as redistribute the land to give half of the land to the peasants. On December 14th, 1825, the Northern society marched 3,000 men to the Senate Square of Saint Petersburg, refusing to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Nicholas I, claiming loyalty instead to Constantine and their Decembrist Constitution. However,

The question of whether or not Stalinism was a logical continuation of Leninism is a difficult one. Stalinism did take significantly more drastic measures than Leninism did. There were differences in policy. But in spite of these, Stalinism still found its basis in Leninism. Even Trotsky, a friend of Lenin and a staunch opponent of Stalin, grudgingly admits that "Stalinism did issue from Bolshevism" (Trotsky). Stalin's policy of socialism in one country, his use of terror to eliminate opposition, and his suppression of democracy and the soviets were all characteristics of Lenin well before they were characteristic of Stalin. Although some of Stalin's policies were different from those of Lenin, what difference Stalinism did

“In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win!” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident, espoused this philosophy to the Swedish Academy. He spoke of the power of art in combating the tyranny and lies of a corrupt government, and as a medium for evaluating society. He was at various times, a soldier in the Soviet army, a political prisoner of the Soviet state, a celebrity for his literary works, and an exile from all of Russia. His fiery philippic against Stalin landed him in prison for eight years; his account of prison life made him immensely popular during the de-Stalinization years of the early 1960’s, and he was deported for his most famous work, The Gulag Archipelago. He has become a symbol of the

“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 Solzhenitsyn said in his impactful narrative that paints a picture of the Gulag labor camps in Soviet Russia through personal experience, eyewitness testimony and interviews, and primary research material. Solzhenitsyn is describing the silence that survivors of the Gulag were forced to exhibit after staring terror and fear directly in the face during their time in the Gulag. The silence Solzhenitsyn is describing, is claimed to be one of the reason the Gulag is often not given the attention in history books and in the forefront of our minds that the Gulag deserves. The Gulag is believed to be one of the most horrible and inhuman acts of the 20th century, yet western society tends to shy away from mentioning the Gulag when discussing tragedy. This paper will examine historians’ views on the Gulag and why it has been overlooked in history as the horrible tragedy it was and the impact that this silence has had, not only on the survivors, but also the impact it has had on Russia and its society as a whole.

After the Russian Revolution, there was a lot of confusion on how to establish institutions strong enough to rebuild and hold the state and society together. An issue with Marxism is that it is is not a theory of governance, rather a theory of how to bring a socialist regime into power—hence explaining the lack of guidance. At this time, Lenin took control. But after his death, the Russians were once again faced with appointing a leader to direct them. The domestic and international conditions in which the Soviet Union found itself, the legacy of Leninist ideology and organization, and Stalin’s overall character were all factors that helped determine the policies Stalin adopted.

While this may be the case for the more information-limited Soviet historians, the more modern, revisionist historians such as Edward Acton, Robert Service, Harold Shukman and Steven Smith have had great exposure to much of the confidential literature, kept secret by the many Soviet Purges and the prolific ‘Iron Curtain’. In the view of Acton “Russia’s workers were

The Impact of Stalin on Russia and the Russian People Joseph Stalin was born to a poor family in the province of Georgia in 1879. Stalin's real surname was Djugasvili; he adopted the name 'Stalin' whilst in prison as he felt the translation 'Man of Steel' would help his image. Stalin joined the Bolshevik party as a young man and soon became an active member organizing bank raids to gain money for party funds; this led to Stalin's imprisonment a number of times. Stalin first met Lenin in December 1905 in Finland and was quite surprised to see him as an ordinary man unlike the person he had imagined. In 1918 Stalin was made Commissar for Nationalities of the Bolshevik party, then in 1922 he became

once this was a very silly idea as they would not be able to pull it

Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin were all important in bringing the Communist Dictatorship in Russia from 1917 - 1939. All three of them wouldn't be able to make progresses without each other. The basement or a trigger to communism in Russia was Lenin as he was the organizer. He has been studying Marxism and Socialism for many years and in the result he has brought the October Revolution in 1917 to Russia.

Solzhenitsyn explains how Russia democracy lasted for eight months, from February to October 1917 and did not exist before neither after that moment. Nevertheless, before this period, he noticed, people of Russia were suffering to a much lesser extent than after the introduction of the ideologically constructed people’s government. Solzhenitsyn thought that the Soviet society was denying fair and legal treatment of its people and, he blamed the West for being unreasonably realistic. Solzhenitsyn was considered a hero for raising awareness for the Gulags and the forced labor systems that Russia was built upon. Solzhenitsyn, I think wanted to maintain Soviet structures because of the lack to democratic position and experience.

RFE’s primary objective during the Cold War was to keep elements of the West in Eastern Europe while strengthening their connection with Western Europe and emphasizing their historic ties to America. RFE was needed because of the contradictions between the regime’s statements and actual society in communist Eastern Europe especially when it involved repression by regimes forcibly maintained by a foreign power. In order to succeed, RFE broadcasters had to refrain from two things.