📅 Thought for today:
‘A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.’
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#thoughtfortoday #war #excuse #tyranny #repression
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn died in the midst of the global financial crash of 2008, if he had lived to the present day I am sure he would have had plenty to say about the “war” in Ukraine. The war in Europe.
As a former political prisoner, he was an outspoken critic (a “dissident”) of both Communism and the political repression that came with it.
He was exonerated at one point and then exiled, only to return to the country of his birth, and to die there in 2008. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature and his work serves to remind us of the rich cultural legacy of Russia as a nation of people which has been lost or forgotten.
He sacrificed his liberty to speak his mind in a political environment where opinions were carefully vetted.
He was very well placed to make the statement above based on his personal experience.
