Widow mourns Solzhenitsyn, but most Russians are unmoved - Telegraph

Widow mourns Solzhenitsyn, but most Russians are unmoved - Telegraph: "Widow mourns Solzhenitsyn, but most Russians are unmoved
Russians yesterday filed past the coffin of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the former dissident and Nobel laureate who became the conscience of a nation that did not want to listen."

This is the most accurate reporting of late on Solzhenitsyn's place in the Russian consciousness.

I recall reading "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" as a teen in highschool, and it disturbed me. The West loved Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but every native Russian I have met has responded in a blase manner to his work. So what that he described Soviet life in such detail--did it inspire? No, it simply reinforced the grim grey reality of the USSR. Most former-Soviets read to escape or to ponder the bigger questions of life. Why experience the sadness of Soviet-ness, over and again?

I do profoundly believe that Mister Solzhenitsyn's true fans, those in the West, and in the US, would have given the writer a grand funeral. Perhaps, with time lessening the impact of the USSR, Russia will come to hold him in the same esteem.

RIP.

Can I get a rain check?

Ulyanovsk Gov. Sergei Morozov has decreed Sept. 12 a Day of Conception and is giving couples time off from work to procreate. Couples who give birth nine months later on Russia’s national day — June 12 — will receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

A smaller region in Russia declared September 12 as a "Day of Conception" and they were offering folks time off from work to go home and make babies. I think we should have a day like that here in the States. Or at least a F---- You day. Or F---- yourself day. Anything with that favorite word in it.

I don't know about you, but I'd love to have a day to go home and "try" to conceive. Sounds like unadulterated fun to me. Here's why we must defer on occasion to the richness of Russian culture. Where else could you be sent home to F--- in the name of patriotism? And to think that some commentary from the locals says they aren't buying it.

Italianetz aka "The Italian"

We watched the movie "Italianetz" the other day. I think it was well done. It was about a young Russian boy who lives in an orphanage and who has a chance to become the adopted son of an Italian pair. Thus he is dubbed "Italianetz" by his peers at the orphanage.

Orphanages in Russia have been used as 'dumping grounds' for women who are not ready to become mothers, and so there are occasions where the mothers show up to take the child home.

The critical moment in this film is when a mother arrives...just a little too late.

Italianetz believes that his mother would come too, if only she knew where he was. So he decides to find her himself.

It is a remarkably courageous child to travel in Russia alone in modern times, aside from traveling while being pursued by the greedy "orphan-sellers" who stand to make a fortune on the sale of this child.

The movie ends heartwarmingly. I see it as a patriotic call to Russians not to sell their children to foreign lands. It would be a cold-hearted person to not be affected by the child's tribulations or the grey, cold landscape of 'somewhere' in Russia.

Russians are still masters at mass propaganda. So much so that it makes one want even more of it.