One of my favourite authors, the man who penned "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "Gulag Archipelago", has passed away. This weekend, at age 89, Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn succumbed to heart failure. Solzhenitsyn survived Stalin's Gulag prison camps, documented their tyranny, challenged Soviet rule at home and in exile, was a critic of corruption upon his return to Russia, and on Sunday was recognised with a lying-in-state in Moscow.
Words from Solzhenitsyn...
"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."
"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."
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