Talk:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Language and literature good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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Article protected

I have protected the article for 2 weeks, probably on the WRONG version, because of the ongoing revert war about the nationality/ethnicity in the lead. Just a few remarks: To all parties: the amount of revert warring is disproportionate to the quantity and quality of arguments exchanged between the participants, here on the talk page or elsewhere – which has been close to zero. This reflects poorly on all participants. To Jsqqq777 (talk · contribs): single-purpose accounts who spend their time here doing nothing but revert-warring about things such as inserting "USSR" into as many articles as possible, are unwelcome in this project. Please reconsider your attitude and aims in participating here. – To Borealis55 (talk · contribs): a repeated edit summary like "that's really too much! - see Infobox/citizenship" is uninformative and not a proper justification for a revert. – To Galassi (talk · contribs): your argument that he had "several citizenships" doesn't really link up well with the change you are making – why do you insist on inserting this particular citizenship at that point? Also, "disruptive nonsense rm" is not a constructive contribution to the discussion and not a legitimate justification for a revert, especially since your edit wasn't even removing anything but re-adding something. – To GrahamColm (talk · contribs): I would strongly advise you not to take admin action on this matter, such as blocking other users, since you are evidently involved in the content dispute.

Now please work this out here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:01, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

i notice the reference for "soviet" writer says he is russian. should that be "anti-soviet"? Occoquan (talk) 22:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

He was published in the Soviet Union, and thus was in fact a Soviet writer.--Galassi (talk) 22:40, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Solzhenitsyn & Putin photos - fakes?

I am not an expert on this but I STRONGLY feel that the Solzhenitsyn & Putin photo in the article looks fake, with pre-Photoshop crudity. My feeling on that is strengthened by having seen a much cruder fake of Putin visiting the dying Solzhenitsyn. Putin's image looked about as convincing as if some Stalinist thug had cut out his picture with a pair of blunt scissors and pasted it in next to Solzhenitsyn with a mixture of bread and water. It was printed in all the Western papers without comment.

I remember thinking, the Russians might have to take this bull, but SURELY this should raise a few eyebrows here. Solzhenitsyn is regarded by many in Russia, and outside, as about as close to Mandela as you could get. Like Mandela, he suffered prison, but was released and won a Nobel Prize, and saw his vision vindicated. Putin could not possibly allow himself to be seen as being off side with this "saint". But Solzhenitsyn's view of Putin was simply to see him for what he was - a KGB assassin who , since then, has been DIRECTLY responsible for the murder of journalists and citizens who oppose him, even ones resident in the United Kingdom.

I can understand why the Stalinists who still run things up there would get their goons to doctor up photos showing Solzhenitsyn sucking up to Putin and vice versa, what I CAN'T understand is why we swallow this manifest bullshit. Anyone thinking on these lines? Myles325a (talk) 05:12, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Reversion of recent edits

I have Scammell's book open at pages 76–77, and 153, and no there is no mention of "Koka" but there is "Kirilla" and "Kirochka", which refer to his friend Kiril Simonyan. It says on page 153 that (Captain Ezepov) had "copies of all correspondence between Solzhenitsyn, Nikolia, Natalia, Kirill, and Lydia from April 1944 to February 1945", which is why I changed "friend" to "friends". Nowhere on the pages cited does it say "fellow officer. The second "reference" that you have restored just says "Current Biography, 1969". What does this refer to? And what is the full citation? Furthermore, the Russian reference cited, from "Black Fire Pandemonium" is not a reliable source. I will restore my changes until this is resolved, as I don't see that "there are MANY citations apropos" as was written in the edit summary. Graham Colm (talk) 17:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I have added a citation referring to Vitkevich explicitely, but you deleted it with the previous ones.--Galassi (talk) 18:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Which one was that? Graham Colm (talk) 18:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Warrax.net one.--Galassi (talk) 18:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, ""Black Fire Pandemonium" is not a reliable source". It's a biased Russian occult/anarchist site. Graham Colm (talk) 18:30, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's a better one - http://bibliofil.info/book_reviews/politics/solzhenitsyn_treason_spiral//.--Galassi (talk) 19:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a blog, and besides I can't see where any of this can be used to support the text that was in the article. Even the original book sounds biased. "Solzhenitsyn's spiral of deceit". Exactly who is Томаш РЖЕЗАЧ? Can you enlighten me? Graham Colm (talk) 20:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Tomas Rezac (needs diacritics) (1935-1992) was a Czech journalist and detective fiction writer who knew AS in Switzerland. His book is much reviled by the Russian pro-AS contingent. I don't trust it fully, but there is a lot of negative info in it that is not discountable. There is a better book still, A.Ostrovsky http://www.litru.ru/br/?b=120348&p=1.--Galassi (talk) 20:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This is not a book. Among other things, it is a website that offers to tell me how I can lose weight quickly! I am not prepared to wade through any more unreliable Russian websites. To watchers of this page, it might seem that we are arguing over a trivial point, but I have been watching this page for years, and the development of this article is being stifled by reversions and biased editing. Although non-English sources are allowed for non-controversial statements, they should not be used for contentious edits that readers who cannot read Russian are unable to check. My views on the quality of Solzhenitsyn's character are irrelevant, and so should those of other editors. We need reliable sources that are easily verifiable if this article is ever to do justice to Misplaced Pages. There is a wealth of literature on AS in English, please do not add any more contentious material from unreliable Russian sources.Graham Colm (talk) 20:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

You are wrong, it is a book, hardcover - http://reeed.ru/lib/books/solzhenitsyn_proshanie_s_mifom/. The e-version is on ad-supported site, unfortunately. some ads are sof-core pornographic. but that is the way Russia is these days. The book itself is legit, myriad of footnotes.--Galassi (talk) 21:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Vietnam War

I wanted to explain my edit. The article originally said that Solzhenitsyn, after arriving in the United States, urged the US "to continue its involvement in the Vietnam War". This is nonsensical, since Solzhenitsyn did not get to the US until mid-1976, over a year after the Vietnam war ended (with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975), and his Harvard Commencement speech, in which he commented publicly on the Vietnam war and which this section refers to, was in May 1978, three years after the war ended.

The footnote for the statement was to a August 6, 2008 article in the Independent on Solzhenitsyn's death by Mark Steel. "http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-a-reactionary-called-solzhenitsyn-886115.html". Steel's article in fact said, "Once in America . . . he urged the US to continue bombing Vietnam." That is more specific and still more ridiculous, because US bombing of Vietnam stopped in early 1973 (two years before the war ended and five years before Solzhenitsyn's commencement speech). An earlier version of the Misplaced Pages article simply copied what Steel actually wrote; someone apparently tried to make that less nonsensical by watering it down.

I know nothing about Steel (his Misplaced Pages article says he is "a British socialist columnist, author and comedian"), but it is obvious from this article that he is not a historian or a serious commentator on Solzhenitsyn. Steel knows next to nothing about Solzhenitsyn, as he readily admits: the article begins "I had no idea Solzhenitsyn was still alive . . . It was as if someone said 'Have you heard the sad news – Joan of Arc's dead.'". It goes on in that vein: lots of laugh-inducing gag lines but no real knowledge or understanding of Solzhenitsyn's life and work.

Alas, just being in "The Independent" does not guarantee seriousness: one must distinguish between serious journalism and light-hearted, lightweight articles like Steel's. For what Solzhenitsyn actually said on Vietnam, see instead his Harvard Commencement speech (cited in this section).

James Dunlap (talk) 05:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Marriages and children

It makes sense to me to make this a separate section, rather than parcel it out into the different subsections by chronology. (It was all in the "early life" section, before WWII started, which was inaccurate). Marfinan (talk) 13:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Restored edits by User:Jacob Peters

@Galassi. First paragraph here. Did you personally check that quotation was indeed in the source? Who knows. We can not AGF with respect to banned users. Besides, I do not think we can indiscriminately quote Soviet propaganda sources (such as "Pravda") in such manner: this contradicts our NPOV rules. My very best wishes (talk) 19:37, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

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