Brilliantly addictive:
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Thursday, 7 August 2008
The death of Solzhenitsyn
By Andrey Kurkov
Published 05 August 2008
The Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov on how the author of the Gulag Archipelago, who related the terrible truth about Soviet totalitarianism, outlived his era to become something of a living monument to Russia's past
On the death of such figures as Solzhenitsyn, the phrase ‘end of an era’ is bound to come up, but Alexander Isaevich outlived his era and never truly accepted the new ‘post-soviet’ epoch.
Having sincerely dedicated his life to a desperate struggle against communism, in 1991 Solzhenitsyn suddenly found himself without a battle to fight.
From that moment his activities grew less noticeable. He was less and less asked for his commentary on developments. A note of irony appeared in the use of his nickname: the ‘Vermont Recluse’. Then in 1994 he came out of seclusion and returned to Russia.
He returned to the country he had literally torn apart in 1962 with his short story “A Day In the Life Of Ivan Denisovich”. During a meeting of the Politburo Khrushchev himself insisted on the story’s publication. It contained no direct criticism of the Soviet system. It was a simple but detailed description of one day in a camp prisoner’s life, one almost happy day.
Solzhenitsyn was immediately made a member of the writer’s Union. More of his work was published. He felt his time had come and he tried to write as much as possible, perhaps fearing that any ‘thaw’ would be temporary. However you look at it, Solzhenitsyn was of great use to Krushchev in his efforts to ‘de-Stalinize’ the Soviet Union.
Solzhenitsyn had been sent to a camp three months before the end of the Second World War for having referred to Stalin and Lenin disrespectfully in a letter to an old school friend who was serving on the front line.
Solzhenitsyn spent eleven years in camps, special prisons, secret KGB institutions and internal exile. During that time he twice overcame cancer.
It seems he was destined to be hardened through the cruellest of suffering. He admitted that having overcome cancer for the second time, he lost all fear of death and after the publication of his first stories he lost his fear of the Soviet system.
Kruschev had been overthrown, but Solzhenitsyn still believed in the possibility of democracy in the Soviet Union. Publication of his work ceased in 1965 and, two year later, in an open letter to the Fourth Congress of the Writers’ Union of the USSR he said: “I call upon the Congress to demand and insist on the abandonment of all forms of censorship…”
In May 1967 the Soviet authorities decided to ‘deal with’ Solzhenitzyn, but the writer himself saw it the other way round; he was dealing with the Soviet Authorities.
His 1968 novels “Cancer Ward” and “In the First Circle”, which were banned from publication in the USSR, were published abroad. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn smuggled out to the west a microfilmed manuscript of his most important work – the three volumes of research into the Soviet system of repression and punishment, “The Gulag Archipelago”.
A Samisdat (homepublished) copy of this work appeared in my home at the beginning of the eighties. My older brother had managed to get hold of a copy for a couple of days. I remember trying to read it as quickly as possible.
Anyone found by the KGB in possession of it would get five years in a prison camp. By that time the author was already living in Vermont, where he had bought a house with 20 hectares of land around it to guarantee his creative isolation.
He had already won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1974 he had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship and sent into exile as a traitor. This was the “humane face” of the Brezhnev era. After all, instead of a special flight to Germany, he could have been thrown into a train wagon bound for the camps.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn never fell in love with the USA or the west in general and, having returned to his homeland he was disappointed to discover that his compatriots no longer read his books. Disenchantment with the Yeltsin’s form of democracy encouraged pro-Putin sympathies.
Putin himself would go to ‘take tea’ with Solzhenitsyn and discuss what was to be done with Russia. But Putin’s visits were more representative than practical – a ritual attendance at a ‘living monument’ to the fight against Communism and Stalinism.
Solzhenitsyn was unable to influence contemporary Russia, although he did provoke further discussion of the “Jewish question” in one of his last works, “Two Hundred Years Together”. That book will continue to stir emotion within Russia, but on the international plane, Solzhenitsyn will forever remain the author of “Gulag Archipelago” - that terrible and truthful book about the Soviet totalitarian regime.
Published 05 August 2008
The Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov on how the author of the Gulag Archipelago, who related the terrible truth about Soviet totalitarianism, outlived his era to become something of a living monument to Russia's past
On the death of such figures as Solzhenitsyn, the phrase ‘end of an era’ is bound to come up, but Alexander Isaevich outlived his era and never truly accepted the new ‘post-soviet’ epoch.
Having sincerely dedicated his life to a desperate struggle against communism, in 1991 Solzhenitsyn suddenly found himself without a battle to fight.
From that moment his activities grew less noticeable. He was less and less asked for his commentary on developments. A note of irony appeared in the use of his nickname: the ‘Vermont Recluse’. Then in 1994 he came out of seclusion and returned to Russia.
He returned to the country he had literally torn apart in 1962 with his short story “A Day In the Life Of Ivan Denisovich”. During a meeting of the Politburo Khrushchev himself insisted on the story’s publication. It contained no direct criticism of the Soviet system. It was a simple but detailed description of one day in a camp prisoner’s life, one almost happy day.
Solzhenitsyn was immediately made a member of the writer’s Union. More of his work was published. He felt his time had come and he tried to write as much as possible, perhaps fearing that any ‘thaw’ would be temporary. However you look at it, Solzhenitsyn was of great use to Krushchev in his efforts to ‘de-Stalinize’ the Soviet Union.
Solzhenitsyn had been sent to a camp three months before the end of the Second World War for having referred to Stalin and Lenin disrespectfully in a letter to an old school friend who was serving on the front line.
Solzhenitsyn spent eleven years in camps, special prisons, secret KGB institutions and internal exile. During that time he twice overcame cancer.
It seems he was destined to be hardened through the cruellest of suffering. He admitted that having overcome cancer for the second time, he lost all fear of death and after the publication of his first stories he lost his fear of the Soviet system.
Kruschev had been overthrown, but Solzhenitsyn still believed in the possibility of democracy in the Soviet Union. Publication of his work ceased in 1965 and, two year later, in an open letter to the Fourth Congress of the Writers’ Union of the USSR he said: “I call upon the Congress to demand and insist on the abandonment of all forms of censorship…”
In May 1967 the Soviet authorities decided to ‘deal with’ Solzhenitzyn, but the writer himself saw it the other way round; he was dealing with the Soviet Authorities.
His 1968 novels “Cancer Ward” and “In the First Circle”, which were banned from publication in the USSR, were published abroad. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn smuggled out to the west a microfilmed manuscript of his most important work – the three volumes of research into the Soviet system of repression and punishment, “The Gulag Archipelago”.
A Samisdat (homepublished) copy of this work appeared in my home at the beginning of the eighties. My older brother had managed to get hold of a copy for a couple of days. I remember trying to read it as quickly as possible.
Anyone found by the KGB in possession of it would get five years in a prison camp. By that time the author was already living in Vermont, where he had bought a house with 20 hectares of land around it to guarantee his creative isolation.
He had already won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1974 he had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship and sent into exile as a traitor. This was the “humane face” of the Brezhnev era. After all, instead of a special flight to Germany, he could have been thrown into a train wagon bound for the camps.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn never fell in love with the USA or the west in general and, having returned to his homeland he was disappointed to discover that his compatriots no longer read his books. Disenchantment with the Yeltsin’s form of democracy encouraged pro-Putin sympathies.
Putin himself would go to ‘take tea’ with Solzhenitsyn and discuss what was to be done with Russia. But Putin’s visits were more representative than practical – a ritual attendance at a ‘living monument’ to the fight against Communism and Stalinism.
Solzhenitsyn was unable to influence contemporary Russia, although he did provoke further discussion of the “Jewish question” in one of his last works, “Two Hundred Years Together”. That book will continue to stir emotion within Russia, but on the international plane, Solzhenitsyn will forever remain the author of “Gulag Archipelago” - that terrible and truthful book about the Soviet totalitarian regime.
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
Obama ancestry traced to 18th century Dublin
Genealogists have uncovered fresh evidence of Barack Obama’s Irish ancestry revealing the US presidential hopeful descended from an 18th century Dublin property mogul.
Previous records found Mr Obama’s fourth great-grandfather was a shoemaker in the midlands village of Moneygall whose son Fulmuth Kearney left for the US in 1850.
But researchers at Trinity College Dublin delved further into the Democratic candidate's past to find his sixth great-granduncle was a prominent Dublin businessman in the 1700s.
Wig-maker Michael Kearney brushed shoulders with Ireland’s aristocracy on a daily basis and bought and sold property throughout the city and parts of the country.
A distant cousin was also discovered - John Kearney - who served as the head of Trinity College and Bishop of the midlands Diocese of Ossory in the early 19th century.
Research director with the Trinity company heritage group Eneclann Fiona Fitzsimons said they were amazed by the discovery.
“I didn’t expect this,” she said. “When we started off we had Joseph Kearney shoemaker, that sounded like a
country shopkeeper. We were surprised to find any link to Dublin at all.
“He (Michael) made his money from periwigs and perukes, but then he invested the profits from that in a lot of property.
“I think we found 16 deeds in the registry of deeds and some of those refer to other deeds which we didn’t find.”
Ms Fitzsimons said they found a significant amount of transactions for Kearney involving the buying and selling of houses and buildings both in Dublin and in counties Tipperary and Offaly. His wig company was located near Dublin Castle.
Kearney became a Freeman of Dublin in 1718, giving him the right to practice his trade, conduct business in the capital and have a vote in elections for the city council.
Within a decade of joining he was elected Master of the Guild of Barber Surgeons. Not afraid of confrontation, when the aristocracy tried to rig Dublin City Council elections in the 1750s to put in their own candidates Kearney was prominent among the Dublin Guildsmen in opposing them.
After the 1780s the fortunes of this line of the Kearney family went into a fairly rapid decline due to a combination of the economic changes brought about after the Act of Union in 1801 and the decline in the fashion of wig wearing.
In May a Church of Ireland rector found Mr Obama’s fourth great-grandfather - Joseph Kearney - was a shoemaker from Moneygall in Co Offaly, whose son Fulmuth emigrated for the US in 1850.
“Apart from the obvious interest of a link to a US presidential candidate, the story of the Kearney family of Moneygall is a fascinating story in itself,” Ms Fitzsimons said.
Mr Obama, a married father of two daughters, was born in Hawaii in 1961, to Kenyan Barack Obama Senior and Ann Dunham, a white woman from Kansas. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983 and moved to Chicago in 1985 before studying at Harvard Law School.
PA
Previous records found Mr Obama’s fourth great-grandfather was a shoemaker in the midlands village of Moneygall whose son Fulmuth Kearney left for the US in 1850.
But researchers at Trinity College Dublin delved further into the Democratic candidate's past to find his sixth great-granduncle was a prominent Dublin businessman in the 1700s.
Wig-maker Michael Kearney brushed shoulders with Ireland’s aristocracy on a daily basis and bought and sold property throughout the city and parts of the country.
A distant cousin was also discovered - John Kearney - who served as the head of Trinity College and Bishop of the midlands Diocese of Ossory in the early 19th century.
Research director with the Trinity company heritage group Eneclann Fiona Fitzsimons said they were amazed by the discovery.
“I didn’t expect this,” she said. “When we started off we had Joseph Kearney shoemaker, that sounded like a
country shopkeeper. We were surprised to find any link to Dublin at all.
“He (Michael) made his money from periwigs and perukes, but then he invested the profits from that in a lot of property.
“I think we found 16 deeds in the registry of deeds and some of those refer to other deeds which we didn’t find.”
Ms Fitzsimons said they found a significant amount of transactions for Kearney involving the buying and selling of houses and buildings both in Dublin and in counties Tipperary and Offaly. His wig company was located near Dublin Castle.
Kearney became a Freeman of Dublin in 1718, giving him the right to practice his trade, conduct business in the capital and have a vote in elections for the city council.
Within a decade of joining he was elected Master of the Guild of Barber Surgeons. Not afraid of confrontation, when the aristocracy tried to rig Dublin City Council elections in the 1750s to put in their own candidates Kearney was prominent among the Dublin Guildsmen in opposing them.
After the 1780s the fortunes of this line of the Kearney family went into a fairly rapid decline due to a combination of the economic changes brought about after the Act of Union in 1801 and the decline in the fashion of wig wearing.
In May a Church of Ireland rector found Mr Obama’s fourth great-grandfather - Joseph Kearney - was a shoemaker from Moneygall in Co Offaly, whose son Fulmuth emigrated for the US in 1850.
“Apart from the obvious interest of a link to a US presidential candidate, the story of the Kearney family of Moneygall is a fascinating story in itself,” Ms Fitzsimons said.
Mr Obama, a married father of two daughters, was born in Hawaii in 1961, to Kenyan Barack Obama Senior and Ann Dunham, a white woman from Kansas. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983 and moved to Chicago in 1985 before studying at Harvard Law School.
PA
The Two Faces of Fergie
This Is The One - Alex Ferguson: The Uncut Story of a Football Genius
By Daniel Taylor (Aurum) £8.99 328p
For the most part, I have always thought of Alex Ferguson as a cantankerous, red faced, foul-mouthed bully who has based a large part of his success on intimidation and fear and reading this book does little to change my opinion. Of course he can be charming and humorous at times when one sees him in public, but only on his terms; only when things are going well at Manchester United and he is top of the pile, winning trophies and triumphantly looking down upon everyone else. When things at the ‘worlds biggest club’ are less rosy however, we get to see the darker side of Ferguson, the man who berates people in public, cranks the anti-media and anti-establishment paranoia up to absurd levels and uses techniques such as the infamous ‘hairdryer’ treatment on anyone who dares step out of line or raise any issue of contention surrounding the Red Devils.
There is no enigma lying at the heart of Ferguson, we all know exactly what makes him tick: winning and to paraphrase the man himself, knocking teams of their f***ing perch. What is fascinating though is how the most successful and long-serving manager at the highest level of the English game possesses some kind of split personality, from the street brawler brought up in working-class Glasgow, with the steely persona and caricature of steam blowing out of his ears, throwing tea-cups around the dressing room, to the man who is reportedly kind and warm to those who are close to him, someone who becomes a surrogate father figure to many of his players, and the generous spirit that gives up his time readily for charity work.
This contrast is captured perfectly in Daniel Taylor’s revealing and behind-the-scenes account of two very different seasons for the legendary football boss in 2005-06 and 2006-7.
The former was probably Ferguson’s least successful year at the club, if you discount his first few seasons after his arrival in 1986, and it is here, through the eyes of the Guardian’s Taylor and the Manchester football press pack, that we get to see the bus-pass eligible manager behaving at his worse, picking fights with anyone around and losing his cool at the slightest little thing. On certain occasions during pre-match press conferences, Ferguson would lose his temper so much with journalists about their questioning that he would swing his arm and smash their Dictaphones lined up on the table into a nearby wall; his rather extreme way of saying the interview was over. Another time he took exception to what one journalist had written that day, so made him leave the briefing and frog marched the bemused hack into the nearby toilets and told him to stay there until everyone else had finished their interviews. There are countless insights like this in the book of the shouting matches, bans, and general rollicking grown men doing their jobs faced every week from Ferguson (although Taylor must be a shrewd cookie as he never seemed to be on the end of any, but has plenty of stories about less fortunate journos). And the absurdity of the relationship between Ferguson and the press is highlighted best when he even ends up boycotting MUTV, the club’s own satellite channel which is known cynically as Pravda TV, because a presenter had the temerity to talk on air about the formation of the team.
Of course journalists are not whiter than white and Ferguson openly admits that he does not like what they do and what the modern media has become, but the relationship is still a two-way thing. He often complained about what they had written as being ‘shite’, but this would be on occasions when he left the press high and dry by holding an eighty second press conference or most bitterly of all, the day when Old Trafford legend Roy Keane abruptly left the club, the Manchester United boss met the media half an hour before the story broke and told them everything was fine with the Irishman.
From reading this account, Taylor’s position as the Guardian’s Manchester United correspondent is not an enviable one, nor it seems is any journalist’s role dealing with the club. The point can be argued that most managers in the pressure cooker that is the Premier League have their own particular faults and flaws, but nonetheless it is hard to imagine Arsene Wenger, Rafa Benitez or Mark Hughes behaving in such a way with people simply trying to do their jobs. Many Manchester United fans reading this book will also argue that they don’t care about how Ferguson behaves as long as the team is winning, and that fickleness is highlighted extensively in t
he first half of the book, when many supporters wanted shot of their greatest ever manager after a couple of quiet seasons on the trophy front.This is a book of two halves, to twist the classic football cliché, and from Taylor’s writing during the following 2006-07 season we see the other side to Ferguson: joking, likeable, self-effacing and it is a relief because it breaks the routine of continuous rows and run-ins from the first half of the book, which nearly slips toward monotony. The reason why we see the flip side of Fergie’s personality, the softer touches so to speak, in the second part of the book is simple: his team are winning and on top again and that seems to make the Scot a whole lot easier to live with, although one wonders why he could not be like that most of the time. Nevertheless, we see Fergie doing what he does best in rising to the challenge of Chelsea, new kid on the block Jose Mourinho and their oil funded mega-millions. He shows his man-management skills once again in healing the Wayne Rooney and Ronaldo World Cup rift and also his ruthless streak in unceremoniously dumping his most prolific striker and Old Trafford hero Ruud Van Nistelrooy for the good of the team. Consequently Manchester United reclaimed the Premier League title, made the final of the FA Cup and semi-final of the Champions League; a vast improvement from the season before, which produced only the Carling Cup.
The Alex Ferguson we leave behind by the end of the book is a lot more mellow and magnanimous and Taylor puts forward the theory that someone very close to him, perhaps a family member, had a talk with him in the close-season between the two documented here, to explain that life is too short and everything does not have to be a battle or fight. This may be the case and it has paid further dividends most recently when Ferguson won the Premier League again and the Champions League for the second time. Like Taylor’s book, that season too will surely provide a roller coaster read, but pity the poor football journalists if the Scotsman starts to come under any pressure again.
Niall McGarrigle
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