Editing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (section)

=== Criticism of communism and allegations of fascist sympathies ===

[[File:The monument to Solzhenitsyn in Moscow 2.jpg|thumb|409x409px|Monument to Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Moscow]]
[[File:Brodnica sołżenicyn.jpg|thumb|A monument dedicated to Solzhenitsyn in [[Brodnica]] in Poland]]
Solzhenitsyn viewed the Soviet Union as a [[police state]] significantly more oppressive than the [[Russian Empire]]'s [[House of Romanov]]. He asserted that Imperial Russia did not censor literature or the media to the extremely systematic style as the Soviet-era [[Glavlit]],<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20030525182749/http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/about_database/russia.html "A brief history of censorship in Russia in 19th and 20th century"]}} ''Beacon for Freedom'' </ref> that Tsarist era political prisoners were not forced into [[katorga|labor camps]] to even remotely the same degree,<ref>{{Citation | last = Gentes | first = Andrew | year = 2005 | chapter-url = http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:8015/katorga.pdf | chapter = Katorga: Penal Labor and Tsarist Siberia | title = The Siberian Saga: A History of Russia's Wild East | editor-first = Eva-Maria | editor-last = Stolberg | place = Frankfurt am Main | publisher = Peter Lang }}</ref> and that the number of [[political prisoner]]s and [[Special settlements in the Soviet Union|internal exiles]] under the Romanovs were only one ten-thousandth of the numbers of both following the [[October Revolution]]. He noted that the Tsar's [[secret police]], the [[Okhrana]], was only present in the three largest cities, and not at all in the [[Imperial Russian Army]].{{Citation needed|date = July 2011}}

[[File:RR5110-0156R 2 рубля 2018 100 лет Солженицыну.png|thumb|200x200px|A commemorative Russian coin of 2 rubles with the image of Alexander Solzhenitsyn]]

Shortly before his return to Russia, Solzhenitsyn delivered a speech in [[Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne]] to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the [[Vendée Uprising]]. During his speech, Solzhenitsyn compared Lenin's [[Bolshevik]]s with the [[Jacobin Club]] during the [[French Revolution]]. He also compared the Vendean rebels with the Russian, Ukrainian, and Cossack peasants who rebelled against the Bolsheviks, saying that both were destroyed mercilessly by revolutionary despotism. He commented that, while the French [[Reign of Terror]] ended with the [[Thermidorian reaction]] and the toppling of the Jacobins and the execution of [[Maximilien Robespierre]], its Soviet equivalent continued to accelerate until the [[Khrushchev thaw]] of the 1950s.<ref>''The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947–2005'', (2008), [[ISI Books]]. pp. 602–605.</ref>

According to Solzhenitsyn, Russians were not the ruling nation in the Soviet Union. He believed that all the traditional cultures of all ethnic groups were equally oppressed in favor of atheism and Marxist–Leninism. Traditional Russian culture was even more repressed than any other culture in the Soviet Union, since the regime was more afraid of peasant uprisings by ethnic Russians than among any other Soviet ethnic group. Therefore, Solzhenitsyn argued, moderate and non-colonialist [[Russian nationalism]] and the [[Russian Orthodox Church]], once cleansed of [[Caesaropapism]], should not be regarded as a threat to the civilization of the West but rather as its ally.<ref>{{cite journal | title= Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Russian Nationalism |first= David G | last= Rowley | journal = Journal of Contemporary History |volume=32 |issue=3 |year=1997 |pages=321–337 |jstor= 260964 | doi=10.1177/002200949703200303|s2cid= 161761611 }}</ref>

Solzhenitsyn made a speaking tour after [[Francisco Franco]]'s death, and "told liberals not to push too hard for changes because Spain had more freedoms now than the Soviet Union had ever known." As reported by ''[[The New York Times]]'', he "blamed Communism for the death of 110 million Russians and derided those in Spain who complained of dictatorship."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/22/archives/solzhenitsyn-bids-spain-use-caution.html|title=Solzhenitsyn Bids Spain Use Caution|work=The New York Times|date=22 March 1976|access-date=13 August 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Solzhenitsyn recalled: "I had to explain to the [[Spanish people|people of Spain]] in the most concise possible terms what it meant to have been subjugated by an ideology as we in the Soviet Union had been, and give the Spanish to understand what a terrible fate they escaped in 1939". This was because Solzhenitsyn saw at least some parallels between the [[Spanish Civil War]] between the [[Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War)|Nationalists]] and the [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Republicans]] and the [[Russian Civil War]] between the [[anti-communist]] [[White Movement|White Army]] and the Communist [[Red Army]].

This was neither a popular or commonly held view at that time. [[Winston Lord]], a protégé of the then United States Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]], called Solzhenitsyn, "just about a fascist",<ref>{{cite news|last=Caldwell|first=Christopher|date=10 January 2019|url=https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/01/28/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-book-review/|title=Solzhenitsyn in Exile|work=National Review|access-date=13 August 2021}}</ref> and Elisa Kriza alleged that Solzhenitsyn held "benevolent views" on [[Francoist Spain]] because it was a pro-Christian government, and his Christian worldview operated ideologically.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kriza|first=Elisa|year=2014|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t1H_BgAAQBAJ|title=Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cold War Icon, Gulag Author, Russian Nationalist?: A Study of His Western Reception|publisher=Columbia University Press|page=235|isbn=978-3-8382-6689-3}}</ref> In ''The Little Grain Managed to Land Between Two Millstones'', the Nationalist uprising against the [[Second Spanish Republic]] is "held up as a model of a proper Christian response", to [[religious persecution]] by the [[Far Left]], such as the [[Red Terror (Spain)|Spanish Red Terror]] by the Republican forces. According to Peter Brooke, however, Solzhenitsyn in reality approached the position argued by Christian Dmitri Panin, with whom he had a fall out in exile, namely that evil "must be confronted by force, and the centralised, spiritually independent Roman Catholic Church is better placed to do it than Orthodoxy with its otherworldliness and tradition of [[Caesaropapism|subservience to the State]]."<ref>{{cite magazine|last=MacNeice|first=Louis|date=Summer 2010|url=https://drb.ie/articles/what-came-up-was-goosegrass/|title=What Came Up Was Goosegrass|magazine=Dublin Review of Books|access-date=13 August 2021}}</ref>

In 1983 he met [[Margaret Thatcher]] and told her "the German army could have liberated the Soviet Union from Communism but Hitler was stupid and did not use this weapon".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Demissie |first1=Simon |title=New files from 1983 – Thatcher meets Solzhenitsyn |url=https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/new-files-from-1983/ |publisher=[[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]]}}</ref>

In "Rebuilding Russia", an essay first published in 1990 in ''[[Komsomolskaya Pravda]]'', Solzhenitsyn urged the Soviet Union to grant independence to all the non-Slav [[Republics of the Soviet Union|republics]], which he claimed were sapping the Russian nation and he called for the creation of a new Slavic state bringing together [[Russia]], [[Ukraine]], [[Belarus]], and parts of [[Kazakhstan]] that he considered to be [[Russified]].<ref name= RFLSolUKma>{{Citation | url = http://www.rferl.org/content/Solzhenitsyn_Leaves_Troubled_Legacy_Across_Former_Soviet_Union/1188876.html | title = Solzhenitsyn Leaves Troubled Legacy Across Former Soviet Union | newspaper = [[Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]] | date = 6 August 2008}}</ref> Regarding Ukraine he wrote “All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is recently invented falsehood” and "we all sprang from precious Kiev".<ref>{{cite news |title=What Putin's Favorite Guru Tells Us About His Next Target |url=https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/vladimir-putin-guru-solzhenitsyn-115088/ |agency=[[Politico]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Conradi |first1=Peter |title=Who Lost Russia? From the Collapse of the USSR to Putin's War on Ukraine |date=2017}}</ref>