tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807238897188927967.post5068319243821090115..comments2009-11-11T20:54:33.809ZAMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00559413440743290550noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807238897188927967.post-86654440140822557892009-11-11T19:30:49.120Z2009-11-11T19:30:49.120ZI have only ever read Alexander Solzhenitsyn&#39;s &#39;Gulag Archipeligo&#39; and that was many years ago as a youth in Hydebank but his accounts of his journey across the bleak landscape in a savage Stolypin carriage made me strangely grateful for my cell.<br /><br />At the time when Solzhenitsyn was the Western media&#39;s golden boy, the word &#39;dissident&#39; had extremely positive connotations. The mass media is a lot more unkind to contemporary dissidents. Perhaps due to the mass media&#39;s global audience and influence nowadays where it is important to them everyone should know their place and be a good passive audience Solzhenitsyn would be branded a dissident journalist...ISKRAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03065833901884525518noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807238897188927967.post-5806638829253354292008-08-29T19:42:00.000+01:002008-08-29T19:42:00.000+01:00Are we?AMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00559413440743290550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807238897188927967.post-18961465570275222792008-08-27T14:35:00.000+01:002008-08-27T14:35:00.000+01:00Are we talking about the same Alexander Solzhenitsyn who urged Margaret Thatcher not to give in to the demands of the Republican hungerstrikers of 1981?pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11679532104041841469noreply@blogger.com