Colin Graham: Gorbachev, Solzhenitsyn, and Putin
[A British journalist based in Warsaw, Colin Graham writes on culture and politics in Eastern Europe. He has written on Real Estate Investment in the Montenegro Coastline, The European Union, the Polish satirical cartoonist Marek Raczkowski, the Stanislaw Wieglus scandal as well as Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan for Culturekiosque.]
The two news items came out almost simultaneously and couldn’t have been more at odds with one another. In one, former Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, laid into Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin for taking Russia down the path of authoritarianism — not exactly an unheard of claim about the country’s leadership. In the other, Vladimir Putin voiced his approval that an abridged version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s landmark anti-Soviet work, The Gulag Archipelago, was being published for Russian schools.
Perhaps it is because journalism operates in such a 24-hour frenzy these days that it is often illiterate in matters of history.
The first of these stories was wholeheartedly embraced by the Western press, with some saying that Gorbachev’s opinions simply confirmed what we already "knew" about the current set up in the Kremlin: that it is anti-democratic to the core and should be treated with the utmost suspicion. But it was the second that had many chroniclers in a spin, expressing amazement that the likes of hard man Putin should want to fraternize with anything that smacked of dissent against repressive governance. Some said the prime minister’s words were "unusual" for the likes of someone with his background as a former KGB man.
Perhaps it is because journalism operates in such a 24-hour frenzy these days that it is often illiterate in matters of history. Maybe it has genuinely suffered from the endemic culture of dumbing-down. But the fact of Putin’s rapport with Solzhenitsyn when he was alive really shouldn’t be that hard on the memory, as it was a reality as recently as three years ago....
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The two news items came out almost simultaneously and couldn’t have been more at odds with one another. In one, former Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, laid into Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin for taking Russia down the path of authoritarianism — not exactly an unheard of claim about the country’s leadership. In the other, Vladimir Putin voiced his approval that an abridged version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s landmark anti-Soviet work, The Gulag Archipelago, was being published for Russian schools.
Perhaps it is because journalism operates in such a 24-hour frenzy these days that it is often illiterate in matters of history.
The first of these stories was wholeheartedly embraced by the Western press, with some saying that Gorbachev’s opinions simply confirmed what we already "knew" about the current set up in the Kremlin: that it is anti-democratic to the core and should be treated with the utmost suspicion. But it was the second that had many chroniclers in a spin, expressing amazement that the likes of hard man Putin should want to fraternize with anything that smacked of dissent against repressive governance. Some said the prime minister’s words were "unusual" for the likes of someone with his background as a former KGB man.
Perhaps it is because journalism operates in such a 24-hour frenzy these days that it is often illiterate in matters of history. Maybe it has genuinely suffered from the endemic culture of dumbing-down. But the fact of Putin’s rapport with Solzhenitsyn when he was alive really shouldn’t be that hard on the memory, as it was a reality as recently as three years ago....