“At a good Russian prison in Solzhenitsyn's day, you could be sure of meeting the most interesting people in society. For in the former USSR, where most prisoners were despatched to slave labour camps, it was only a handful of the most brilliant thinkers who had the right to internment in a better order of prison” :

Daily Telegraph obituary of Alexander Solzhenitsyn –“voice-of-the-gulag.”– 4/8/08
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2495704/Alexander-Solzhenitsyn-voice-of-the-gulag.html

The Telegraph chose to illustrate its obituary with a photograph taken of Solzhenitsyn with Thatcher in 1983. He wore a long beard of the slavic faith-healer type whilst she wore a blue flower patterned frock with twinset pearl necklace. Solzhenistyn's second son, first by his second marriage, Yermolai Solzhenistyn had just been awarded an international scholarship to Eton College. Thus we can surmise that Thatcher & Solzhenistyn spoke more about political prisoners and camps and less about school fees. Although She was in her election year which see her ideology of free market sell-offs hand a share bonanza to speculators of all classes and types save none, she had only finished the Irish Hunger Strikes with their pretensions to political status a mere 2 years before.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike

‘Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western
World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One
would like to ask: by whom has it been elected, and to whom is it
responsible?’
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The above quotation appeared in one of the first printed pamphlets encouraging people to activism and IMC stuff for Manchester. It was sandwiched between a quote from an editor of the NYT in 1953 "......There is no such thing as an independent press... If you express an honest opinion, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the
truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon; to
sell his race and his country for his daily bread. We are tools and vassals of
rich men behind the scenes. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
- John Swinton, Former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, to the New York
Press Association, 1953 and a quote from a former director of the CIA "‘The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the
major media.’ - William Colby, former CIA Director.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2004/03/286795.pdf

So let's look at the former "manchester" Guardian for their "other take" on Mr Solzhenitsyn "Praise his critique of the Soviet system certainly, but remember that it was informed by a deeply reactionary pan-Slavism" writes William Harrison.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/solzhenitsyn.russia

For just as the younger Solzhenitsyn left Eton when the scholarship ran out, the elder returned to his motherland as soon as the possibility became a comfortable one. & like his friend Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich would steer a singular voice through the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet unlike Rostropovich would not play such a crucial role in the choice of Yeltsin as succesor to Gorbachev during the attempted coup of 1991. The return of Solzhenitsyn would wait till 1994 and within 5 years he would compare NATO and the west to Hitler for their bombing of the former Yugoslavia :-

"Hurling aside the United Nations and trampling its Charter, NATO proclaimed to the whole world and to the next century an ancient law -- the law of the jungle: he who is mighty is completely right. If you are technically superior, excel your condemned opponent in violence a hundredfold. And they want us to live in a world like this from now on. In the sight of humanity a beautiful country is being destroyed while civilized governments applaud. And desperate people leave bomb shelters and come out as living targets to die for the salvation of Danube bridges... Is this not antiquity? I do not see why Clinton, Blair, and Solana would not tomorrow burn and drown them........................I don't see any difference in the behavior of NATO and of Hitler,''"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, April 8, 1999  http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws001/solzh001.htm

Eton had just employed its first Russian, Peter Reznikov, who was chosen to head up the Russian department. Odd to think they never had Russian classes before. Perhaps they did extra woodwork hours?

All the former prisoners & oppressed of the "very best class and order" would take their piece of bread and drink a cup of tea with Putin. Thus Rostropovich got his medal “For Merits to the Fatherland” (First Class) and house visit in March 2007 & then "On June 5, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree conferring the State Prize of the Russian Federation for the humanitarian work of Solzhenitsyn. President Putin personally visited the writer at his home on June 12, 2007, to give him the award."

(re Solshenitsyn  http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws001/solzh001.htm  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn re: Rostropovich and the Moscow Coup  http://www.indymedia.ie/article/82207  http://itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11479074&PageNum=0 )

Gulags of the USSR  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gulag_camps
Gulags of the USA  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_prisoners_of_the_United_States

______________________________________________________________________


& so without labouring the point for this is no task at which we need work long -

what does Gulag mean to you today?
what does the forced movement of peoples and workers mean today?
what does forced exile and the fetishised legalistic disruption of workers' families mean today?
what and where are the prisons of which we find no official sign post, to which we may address no food parcel and to which we are told unknown flights go?

Are they still out east?...........................................................the mysterious east?

Who shall follow Solzhentsyn's imperative of conscience mixed so sagiciously with political expediency in telling us where those prisoners are?

Will they be of the Telegraph's class?

_______________________________________________________________________
last obituary in the series marked the passing of the quite famous Swiss chemist who discovered LSD “Albert Hofman has died at 102 years & 4 months”
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/397892.html