The first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris on this day in 1973. Within two weeks, critical essays on Solzhenitsyn’s new work were published in the largest Soviet newspapers: “The book The Gulag Archipelago is clearly designed to fool and deceive gullible people with all sorts of fabrications about the Soviet Union. The author of this work is literally suffocating from pathological hatred for the country where he was born and raised, for the socialist system, for the Soviet people. “This book, disguised as a documentary, could be called the fruit of a sick imagination, if it were not filled with cynical falsification, concocted to please the reactionary imperialist forces… “Solzhenitsyn was awarded what he so diligently strived for: the fate of a traitor, from whom every Soviet worker, every honest person on earth cannot help but turn away with anger and contempt.” (Pravda, January 14, 1974) Source: Facebook group: “PremiaProsvetitel” |