Betrayals Teheran Yalta Warsaw Uprising Confronted By Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Thomas P. Whitney (Translator), Georgi Plekhanov (Quoted), Leon Trotsky (Quoted). 1974

Eminent Russian Writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn Confronts and Condemns the 1944 Soviet Betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising and the Teheran-Yalta Sellout of Poland

This monumental work and successive volumes (reviewed also by me), provide priceless information about the Gulags, arcane details about Russian history, insights into Soviet thinking and policies, etc. I can only touch on a few of these.

CRIMES UNDER CHRISTIANITY WERE TRIVIAL COMPARED TO THE CRIMES UNDER COMMUNISM

Anti-Christians never tire of bringing up the Spanish Inquisition. Yet this most severe of inquisitions paled in comparison not only with the killings under atheistic Communism, but even with ONLY the deeds of the Cheka further LIMITED to only the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Solzhenitsyn comments, “…in a period of sixteen months (June 1918 to October 1919) more than sixteen thousand persons were shot, which is to say MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND A MONTH…during the eighty years of the Inquisition’s peak effort (1420 to 1498), in all of Spain ten thousand persons were condemned to be burned at the stake–in other words, about ten a month.” (p. 435; emphasis is Solzhenitsyn’s).

TROTSKYISM? NO BETTER THAN ANY OTHER FORM OF COMMUNISM

Some Communist apologists have claimed that Communism “went bad” only because of Stalin, and that, had Trotsky (Bronshtein) ruled instead, Communism would’ve been rosy. In actuality, Trotsky wasn’t substantially different from Stalin. Solzhenitsyn quotes Trotsky as saying: “‘Terror is a powerful means of policy and one would have to be a hypocrite not to understand this.'” (p. 300). Also: “The terror Trotsky inspired as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council was something he acquired very cheaply, and does not at all demonstrate any true strength of character or courage.” (p. 410).

FALSE SOVIET PRETEXT FOR COLLABORATING WITH NAZI GERMANY IN THE 1939 CONQUEST OF POLAND

The 1939 Soviet conquest of Poland’s Kresy had been justified as a protection of the Byelorussians and Ukrainians (and, of course, liberation from those big, bad “Polish landlords”). Ironic to this, Solzhenitsyn condemns the imprisonment of successful members of those groups, and of Poles, which, he admits, led to Katyn. (p. 77). Otherwise, he rarely mentions Gulag Poles (e. g., p. 81, 86).

SOLZHENITSYN CONFRONTS AND DENOUNCES THE SOVIET BETRAYAL OF THE POLES’ 1944 WARSAW UPRISING

Contrary to his portrayal as a “Russian nationalist” (who, one would think, would adopt a blame-the-victim approach), Solzhenitsyn is very candid about both old and new Russian imperialisms against Poland. He is unsparingly critical of Stalin’s order to stop the Red Army on the outskirts of Warsaw, for five months, so that the Germans could defeat the Uprising and then destroy Warsaw (and nearly all her cultural treasures) at leisure. He writes, “Still worse: In October, 1944, the Germans threw in Kaminsky’s brigade–with its Moslem units–to suppress the Warsaw Uprising. While one group of Russians sat traitorously dozing behind the Vistula, watching the death of Warsaw through their binoculars, other Russians crushed the Uprising. Hadn’t the Poles had enough Russian villainy to bear in the nineteenth century without having to endure more of it in the twentieth? For that matter, was that the last of it? Perhaps more is still to come.” (p. 257). God forbid!

SOLZHENITSYN CONFRONTS AND DENOUNCES THE CHURCHILL-ROOSEVELT TEHERAN-YALTA SELLOUT OF POLAND

Solzhenitsyn has choice words about Teheran and Yalta: “In their own countries Roosevelt and Churchill are honored as embodiments of statesmanlike wisdom. To us, in our Russian prison conversations, their consistent shortsightedness and stupidity stood out as astonishingly obvious. How could they, in their decline from 1941 to 1945, fail to secure any guarantees whatsoever of the independence of Eastern Europe?” (p. 259).