• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Russian Best

Russian Life & People Digest

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Questions and Answers
    • History and Politics
    • Culture and Science
    • People and Language
    • Lifestyle and Attributes
    • Russian Sports
    • Food and Drinks
    • Traveling Russia
    • Economy and Geography
    • Russian Military
    • Books & Movies
Browse: Home / History and Politics

Did the Russian people deserve communism?

Question by Jaizu: Christians: Did the Russian people deserve communism?
In one of his books, the first volume of “Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about how the communists in Russia were able to maintain their grip on all of Russia by keeping the Russian majority, which hated them, too frightened to resist. Solzhenitsyn writes of the period in 1934 and 1935, when the commissar Genrikh Yagoda headed the Soviet secret police, and Yagoda’s black vans went out every night in St. Petersburg, known then as Leningrad, to round up “class enemies”: former members of the aristocracy, former civil servants, former businessmen, former teachers and professors and professional people, any Russian who had graduated from a university. A quarter of the population of the city was arrested and liquidated by Yagoda during this two-year period.

And Solzhenitsyn laments that the citizens of St. Petersburg cowered behind their doors when the black vans pulled up at their apartment houses night after night to arrest their neighbors. If only the decent Russians had fought back, Solzhenitsyn says, if only they had ambushed some of these secret police thugs in the hallways of their apartments with knives and pickaxes and hammers, if only they had spiked the tires of the police vans while the thugs were in the apartments dragging out their victims, they could easily have overwhelmed Yagoda’s forces and forced an end to the mass arrests. But they didn’t fight back, and the arrests and liquidations continued. And so, Solzhenitsyn concludes, because of their cowardice and their selfishness the Russians deserved what the communists did to them.

Answers and Views:

Answer by m92
66 million russian orthodox christians died under the soviet (1917-1991), so no, nobody deserves it…And as for why, because anyone who opened his/her mouth got sent to the Gulags or executed…

Read all the answers in the comments.

Give your own answer to this question!

See other posts in History and Politics

Reader Interactions

Comments ( 3 )

  1. JulieSacredHeart says

    NOBODY deserves communism!

    I think what he's really saying here is just a long form of the old adages, "You reap what you sow" and "we get the leadership we deserve." I don't think he's speaking literally, but rather, pointing to the reality that those who remain silent give consent, and thereby they "deserve" what they have sown through their refusal to stand up for what is right.

    By the same token, the same could be said in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, etc., during WWII as their Jewish neighbors' rights were ripped from them bit by bit, finally ending in the mass murder of thousands upon thousands. But did Germany, Poland, the Netherlands et. al. deserve Nazism? CERTAINLY NOT!

    A lot of times you have to read things such as "Gulag Archipelago" critically and not literally – look at what he's really saying, which isn't necessarily the literal approach.

    Reply
  2. Ruth says

    Solzhenitsyn had a point. I see it in the Christian people. They let a small minority of Americans tell us what our schools will teach. Tell us there will be gay marriage.We must support abortion through taxation. On and on.
    If you don't stand up and say NO you have no one else to blame.

    Reply
  3. Jesus A$$Clown says

    I'd rather be a commy… Maybe you should ask yourself – did the communists deserve christianity?

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Popular Posts

Pushkin's Tatiana writing a letter to Onegin

Onegin’s Tatiana Was Only Thirteen?

Russian shashlik

My Favorite Russian Food

Dacha – Home Away From Home

Subway Dog

Subway Dogs of Moscow

Cape Cod on the Rocks

What is a cocktail with vodka and cranberry juice called?

Categories

Recent Comments

  • Pat on What does Nazdrovia actually mean?
  • Ted on Where can i send free SMS messages to Russian mobiles?
  • PutinPow on What does Nazdrovia actually mean?
  • bigdogg on What does Nazdrovia actually mean?
  • HAMISH A McDONALD on What Russia would be like today if Nicholas II had not been executed?

Copyright RussianBest.com © 2025 · About · Privacy Policy · Disclaimer: RussianBest.com is an informational website, and its content does not constitute professional advice of any kind.