HISTORICAL FALSE AND TRUTH OF A.I. SOLZHENITSYN. NOTES ON THE FIELDS OF HIS BOOKS

Abstract

Introduction. The scientific article discusses the views of A.I. Solzhenitsyn on the history of Russia, set out in his writings and in the collection of ideas “Russia, the West, Ukraine” about new dangers threatening world civilization, about the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. His famous manuscript “The GULAG Archipelago”, which played an important role in exposing Stalinism, has a large number of inaccuracies, especially when counting the number of victims of repression. He surpassed the books of V. Shalamov, R. Medvedev and others with extraordinary emotionality and the ultimate specification of the sufferings of prisoners. Fixed idea of A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s books is to recognize the GULAG as the main, almost the only, core of the USSR. A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s collections of historical and artistic texts “Red Wheel” and “Two Hundreds Years Together (1795-1995)” are also not full-fledged sources of historical knowledge.Methods. The author of this scientific article reveals the incorrectness of criticism by the writer of both American and Soviet historical science.Results. In the article analyzes the A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s controversial criticism of the B.N. Yeltsin’s reforms in Russia and the nationalist regime in modern Ukraine. The opposition writer was the ideologue of the destruction of the centralized state-empire in socialist times and remained so in the post-Soviet period.Conclusions. The metamorphosis of an eternally opposition writer has been revealed: anti-Stalinist, anti-Communist, anti-Soviet-traditionalist, anti-state, anti-liberal, Russian nationalist.