--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
> ^^^^^
> CB (CD -- on the dissidents opposing the breakup of
the USSR): Thanks. I didn't know that.
Why would they have wanted to destroy the Union? They
were opposed to the Soviet system. Noam Chomsky is
opposed to the American system. He doesn't want to
destroy the United States.
>
> To play devil's advocate, why doesn't he admit that
> the Communists did a
> good thing in making the USSR, making it a powerful
> modern nation , etc ?
Solzhenitsyn (I'm not saying I agree with him) of course is a ferocious anti-Communist. He thinks for whatever reason that the Bolshevik Revo derailed Russia from making genuine progress.
>
> So, what did Solzenhenitsyn want to do , turn the
> non-Russian Soviet nations
> back into colonies ? He's not a Uzbekistanian
> nationalist , is he ?
It's very debatable to what extent the non-Russian nations were colonies. Many of them supported the Whites (the Kalmyks, for example, were part of the Don Cossack Host, and some Muslim peoples believed they would be better off under the Whites than under the atheist Reds). Some peoples clearly were oppressed (Jews and Poles come to mind). Others were not. For instance, Central Asians were pretty much left alone and were exempted from conscription until late in WWI. Introduction of the draft there caused massive unrest in I think it was 1916. They lived under shariah law too, not Russian law. Armenians and Ossetians have always been very pro-Moscow.
If Sol. were God, Russia would consist of its present borders, plus traditionally Russian/Russian Orthodox territories, which in practice would mean absorbing Belarus, eastern Ukraine and northern Kazakhstan (which is historically Cossack land). I must say I'm not opposed to that idea myself, nor would be the populations of those territories.
>
> Sakharov wasn't a chauvinist nationalist like Sol. ,
> was he ?
Not that I know of.
>
> Gorbachev didn't support breaking up the USSR , did
> he ?
Nope. He was very much agin' it.
Of course,
> Gorbachev supported "more democracy, more
> socialism", and I understand
> Solzenhenitsyn is not pro-democracy.
>
Solzhenitsyn is in favor of a grass-roots, locally based democracy based on the old Russian peasant commune, heavily informed by Orthodox values (being a Russian nationalist, after all).
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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