Solzhenitsyn was a good author. His novel In the First Circle is excellent. I highly recommend if people haven't read it. In that novel, there's a really funny character whom the author gently mocks for his extreme Russian nationalism. The dude is so Russian, he avoids using any foreign words, including "engineer" and "mathematics", which is quite hard given that he's a mathematician. He's also immoral and shallow, in spite of prattling incessantly about morality.
I'm going into so much detail about this character because after mocking this type of mealy-mouthed, holier-than-though, abnormally nationalistic individual... Solzhenitsyn turned into exactly that kind of person. The large series of historical novels he wrote later in life is impossible to read because the author's avoidance of foreign words makes the text sound ridiculous.
In what concerns his ideas, Solzhenitsyn hated Jews and Ukrainians, and his entire ideology revolved against the narcissistic wound inflicted on his Russian soul by their existence. But In the First Circle is still absolutely worth reading. And so is Cancer Ward which is weaker but still good.
US lefties detest Solzhenitsyn because he told the truth about the horrors of Stalinism. He's not much liked in Russia today for the same reason.
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