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Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“In 1934, at the January Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the Soviet Communist Party, the Great Leader (having already in mind, no doubt, how many he would soon have to do away with) declared that the withering away of the state (which had been awaited virtually from 1920 on) would arrive via, believe it or not, the maximum intensification of state power. This was so unexpectedly brilliant that it was not given to every little mind to grasp it, but Vyshinsky, ever the loyal apprentice, immediately picked it up: "And this means the maximum strengthening of corrective-labor institutions." Entry into socialism via the maximum strengthening of prisons! And this was not some satirical magazine cracking a joke, either, but was said by the Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union!”

Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, was born on December 11, 1918, and died on August 3, 2008. He is renowned for his works that profoundly exposed the dark side of the Soviet political system and is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. more

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“বিজনের রক্তমাংস’ তো ‘পরিচয়’ পত্রিকা ফেরত পাঠিয়েছিল। এগুলোই আমায় পার্টি থেকে সরিয়ে দিয়েছে। আসলে তখন আমি ভেবে দেখলাম – এভাবে হবে না। কারণ, এর আগে আমি যত কমিটেড লেখা লিখেছি সেগুলো কিন্তু যথারীতি গুরুত্ব দিয়েই ছাপা হয়েছিল। দীপেন নিজের হাতে ‘বিজনের রক্তমাংস’ ফেরত দিয়ে যায়। যদিও পরে এ ঘটনাটা নিয়ে দেবেশ রায় আমাকে বলেছিল, ‘তুমি কি করে ভাবলে দীপেন ওই লেখা ফেরত দিল?’ পরে আমি ভেবে দেখেছি, দেবেশই ঠিক বলেছিল। কারণ তখন তো সম্পাদক ছিলেন সত্য গুপ্ত, যিনি পরবর্তীকালে এমএল পার্টিতে যোগ দেন। দীপেন সত্যবাবুর বাতিল করে দেওয়া লেখাটা কেবলমাত্র আমার হাতে তুলে দিতে এসেছিল। পরবর্তীকালে ‘বিজনের রক্তমাংস’ যখন ছাপা হয় তখন দীপেন ভূয়সী প্রশংসা করেছিল। ওই সময়েই তো ‘অশ্বমেধের ঘোড়া’ ছাপা হল। আউট-স্ট্যান্ডিং স্টোরি! ওইরকম গল্প হয়তো আর লেখা হবে না। হয়ওনি।”

“On the edge of a tropical ocean, in a thousand reflections of the silver light of an invisible moon, among undulations of restless waters, ceaselessly changing... Among silent breakers, the tremors of the shining surface, in the swift flux and reflux martyrizing the patches of light, in the rendings of luminous loops and arcs, and lines, in the occultations and reappearances of dancing bursts of light being decomposed, recomposed, contracted, spread out, only to be re-distributed once more before me, with me, within me, drowned, and unendurably buffeted, my calm violated a thousand times by the tongues of infinity, oscillating, sinusoidally overrun by the multitude of liquid lines. enormous with a thousand folds, I was and I was not, I was caught, I was lost, I was in a state of complete ubiquity. The thousands upon thousands of rustlings were my own thousand shatterings.”

“Christopher Columbus and his brothers were no different from many of the Spanish adventurers of the time. They were a roughhewn lot, who wrote the rules by which they lived. As with their fellow conquistadors, they had a code of honor that sadly did not include the Indians. Since most of the Indians were never baptized, killing or enslaving them was not considered sinful. Human life was cheap to them, as they lived and died by the sword. The same was not true of the gentry or the clergy, many of whom saw that their responsibility was to administer “the Great Commission” as mentioned in the Bible, which was to convert the heathens to Christianity. However, many of the Spanish Adventurers never got outside of their own bubble and had no idea what the World was really all about. It is interesting that Columbus Day is celebrated, when in fact he was not the first to discover America, nor was he really an honorable person, as we understand the word “honorable” now. It can only be said that things were different. Things were the way they were!”