title: Jens Hoffmann

texts:
 at Goldsmiths, University of London. <mask> was guest lecturer at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan from 2004 to 2016  and associate professor at the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2006 to 2012. In 2012, <mask> was visiting professor and co-taught with Carol Yinghua Lu the curatorial course at the 4th Gwangju Biennale.<mask> organized the 2010 Max Wasserman Forum the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled Parody, Politics, and Performativity, a forum to address critical issues in contemporary art and culture through arts professionals and which included presentations by artists Tino Sehgal, Tania Bruguera, Joan Jonas, and Claire Fontaine as well as art historians Dorothea von Hantelmann and Frazer Ward. In 2000 <mask> was visiting professor at the department of Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. Books and publications
<mask> has written and edited over three dozen books and exhibition publications. Select books
Among his book publications are:

 A book publication of 12 issues of The Exhibitionist journal. Select co-authored books

Journals and magazines
The Exhibitionist: A Journal on Exhibition Making was founded in 2009 by <mask>; the journal has advocated the author theory as developed specifically by François Truffaut in his 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" ("A certain tendency in French cinema") and adapted Truffaut's ideas to the sphere of exhibition making. Hoffman is the editor of The Exhibitionist. <mask> has been editor-at-large for Mousse

masks: Hoffmann Hoffmann Hoffmann Hoffmann Hoffmann Hoffmann Hoffmann


title: Maria Butina

type: original

texts:
<mask> (, sometimes transliterated as <mask>; born November 10, 1988) is a Russian political activist and former entrepreneur who was convicted in 2018 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia within the United States. Beginning in 2011, she worked as an assistant for Aleksandr Torshin, a former member of the Federation Council, a member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, and a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia. In this role, she worked to infiltrate conservative groups in the US, including the National Rifle Association, as part of an effort to promote Russian interests in the 2016 United States presidential election. The Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded that she attempted to persuade the Trump campaign to establish a secret communications back channel with Russia. In July 2018, while residing in Washington, D.C., <mask> was arrested by the FBI and charged with acting as an agent of the Russian Federation "without prior notification to the Attorney General." In December 2018, she pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of the Russian state under 18 U.S.C. §951.In April 2019, a federal judge sentenced her to 18 months in prison. She served more than 5 months in Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution, as well as nearly 9 months of her pretrial prison term since arrest, which were counted, and was released in October 2019, and deported back to Russia. She denied accusations that she was a Russian agent. In 2021, she was elected to the State Duma as a member of United Russia. Early life and education
<mask> was born on November 10, 1988, in the Siberian city of Barnaul, in Altai Krai, about  east of the present Kazakhstan–Russia

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Maria Valeryevna Butina
Mariya Butina
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title: Maria Butina

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 border. Her mother was the chief engineer of an energy enterprise and her father Valery Viktorovich Butin was an entrepreneur who established a furniture manufacturing business in Barnaul. She has one sister and one maternal niece, Kira.She graduated with honors at the age of 17 from Gymnasium Number 22 with in-depth study of the English language, and from school years she strove for active public activity. She studied political science at Altai State University and also received a teaching degree. At age 19, she was elected to the public council of Altai Krai in the last direct election for the council. Business and political career
<mask>, at age 21, launched a furniture retail business in Altai Krai. In 2011, she moved to Moscow and sold six of her seven furniture stores to start an advertising agency. That same year, she participated in the Youth Primaries organized by the Young Guard of United Russia, the youth wing of the United Russia party, which she has described as "the current ruling political party in Moscow." Further in 2011, <mask> founded Right to Bear Arms () described as a Russian gun-rights organization.She began traveling back and forth to the US, initially with Aleksandr Torshin, who was then a Senator in the Federation Council of Russia (and a half-month later became Acting Chairman/Speaker of this Senate of Russian Federation) and a leading member of United Russia. He had hired her as his "special assistant" that year. In 2012, they lobbied the council to expand gun rights. <mask> resigned from her position as the head of Right to Bear Arms in late 2014. According to Russians interviewed by RFE/RL, the organization was notable for avoiding opposition to Putin during the 2011–2013 Russian protests, for

masks: Butina Butina Butina


title: Maria Butina

texts: its "quixotic" support for a cause with little public support and strong government opposition – Putin himself had told Russians "I am deeply convinced that the free flow of firearms will bring a great harm and represents a great danger for us" – for introducing legislation in the Russian parliament that "never went anywhere", and for receding from public view after <mask> stepped down as its head. According to US prosecutors who prosecuted <mask> on charges of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent, her love of guns was a ruse to advance Russia's agenda within the Republican Party. Anders Åslund described Right to Bear Arms as a "front organization with the purpose of infiltrating American groups and forging cooperation with the NRA."In 2013, she met Republican political operative Paul Erickson in Russia. The two became close, started dating, and eventually moved in together. In 2015, she emailed him a description of a proposed project to influence the Republican Party to be friendlier to Russia, through the NRA. In January 2015, Torshin became deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, and <mask> worked as his special assistant until May 2017. In 2017, <mask> told The Washington Post that she never worked for the Russian government. In August 2016, she moved to the US on a student visa, and enrolled as a graduate student in International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C. While a student at American University, <mask> got drunk on at least two separate occasions and bragged to her fellow students about her contacts in the Russian government; on both occasions, her classmates reported her to law enforcement, sources told CNN.In February 2016, Butina and Erickson began a South Dakota business,

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title: Maria Butina

texts:
 Bridges LLC. Erickson later said the company was established in case <mask> needed any monetary assistance for her graduate studies, which <mask> commenced in mid-2016 American University in Washington, D.C. In 2018, she completed a master's degree in international relations. Involvement in U.S. politics

National Rifle Association
As part of her work as a foreign agent, <mask> worked to infiltrate the National Rifle Association on behalf of Russia. Torshin and <mask> established a cooperative relationship between the NRA and Right to Bear Arms. Torshin has attended NRA annual meetings in the United States since at least 2011. Following the 2011 meeting, then NRA President David Keene expressed his support for Torshin's "endeavors" and extended an invitation to the 2012 meeting.Torshin also attended NRA annual meetings in 2012 and 2013. In November 2013, Keene was a guest at the conference of the Right to Bear Arms in Moscow. <mask> and Torshin attended the 2014 NRA annual meeting as special guests of former NRA president Keene. <mask> attended the Women's Leadership Luncheon at the 2014 meeting as a guest of former NRA president Sandy Froman. <mask> presented to then NRA president Jim Porter a plaque from Right to Bear Arms. Afterwards, she tweeted "Mission accomplished". As Keene's guest, <mask> rang the NRA's Liberty Bell, saying, "To the right to bear arms for citizens of the whole world."<mask> and Torshin also attended the 2015 NRA annual convention. In 2015, a number of NRA officials attended Right to Bear Arms's annual gun conference in Russia. Among them were Keene, gun manufacturer and NRA first vice president Pete Brownell, conservative American political operative Paul Erickson, and Milwaukee County sheriff

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title: Maria Butina

texts:
 David Clarke. One of their hosts was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who in 2014 was sanctioned by the White House following Russia's annexation of Crimea. Clarke's trip cost $40,000, with all expenses paid by the NRA, Pete Brownell (an NRA board member and CEO of a gun-parts supply company) and Right to Bear Arms. According to a disclosure Clarke filed, Right to Bear Arms paid $6,000 to cover his meals, lodging, transportation and other expenses. During the meeting, Clarke met the Russian foreign minister and attended a conference at which Torshin spoke.In November 2016, Torshin tweeted that he and <mask> were lifetime NRA members. Republican Party
<mask> has attempted to develop ties to conservative American politics. In a supporting affidavit to the government's support for pre-trial detention following her indictment in United States of America v. <mask>, the FBI stated that she had successfully sought ties to the Republican Party, where it is referred to as "POLITICAL PARTY 1". According to The Daily Beast, she has presented herself as a "Russian central bank staffer, a leading gun rights advocate, a 'representative of the Russian Federation,' a Washington, D.C. graduate student, a journalist, and a connection between Team Trump and Russia" in order to gain access to "high-level contacts" in Washington. At the 2014 NRA annual meeting, <mask> took pictures with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former U.S. Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Rick Santorum. At the 2015 NRA annual meeting, she met Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and in July 2015, she was present at the launch of Walker's 2016 presidential campaign.Obama administration officials
In 2015, Torshin, then the Russian Central Bank deputy

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title: Maria Butina

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 governor, and <mask> met the Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets, to discuss U.S.-Russian economic relations. Separately, they also met with a Federal Reserve vice chairman, Stanley Fischer and with a State Department official. Donald Trump campaign
In a June 2015 article published in The National Interest, a conservative American international affairs magazine, just before Trump announced his candidacy for president, she urged better relations between the United States and Russia, saying, "It may take the election of a Republican to the White House in 2016 to improve relations between the Russian Federation and the United States." Her biography on the article did not mention that she worked for the Russian government. The next month, <mask> attended FreedomFest, where Trump gave a speech, and asked him from the audience about ending U.S. sanctions against Russia, to which he replied, "I don't think you'd need the sanctions." <mask> hosted a birthday party attended by Erickson and Trump campaign aides shortly after the 2016 election. Relationships with Trump associates
<mask> was in a relationship with Overstock.com CEO and Trump conspiracy theorist Patrick M. Byrne.Byrne claimed the FBI encouraged him to pursue <mask>, a claim the FBI denied. In 2019, Byrne divested himself of all shares of Overstock after his relationship with <mask> was revealed. For five years, prosecutors claimed, <mask> lived with and maintained an intimate relationship with activist and fraudster Paul Erickson. During Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, Erickson attempted to develop a back-channel between the NRA and the Russian government. Erickson was jailed and convicted of fraud unrelated to his relationship

masks: Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina


title: Maria Butina

texts:
 with <mask>, then pardoned by Trump in his last week in office. United States of America v. Mariia <mask>, aka <mask>

Complaint

On July 15, 2018, <mask> was arrested in Washington, and charged with acting in the United States as an agent of a foreign government; specifically the Russian Federation, without prior notification to the Attorney General, a conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, to wit, 18 U.S.C. §951 (foreign relations, agents of foreign governments), in violation of 18 U.S.C.§371 (conspiracy). After her arrest, it was mistakenly reported she was charged with a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S.C. §11 foreign agents and propaganda). United States law dictates that all lobbyists representing foreign governments must register as such with the Department of Justice. Her attorney said that "the allegations of the indictment are essentially that her only illegal act was not registering." On July 18, <mask> pleaded not guilty, and a District Court judge ordered her jailed pending trial. She was also said to be cooperating in a federal fraud investigation in South Dakota.<mask> was held in solitary confinement in Alexandria Detention Center. Affidavit

According to the affidavit in support of the complaint, from as early as 2015 and continuing through at least February 2017, <mask> worked at the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government, who, according to The New York Times, was believed to be Torshin. The court filings detail the Russian official's and <mask>'s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in the Republican Party and in

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title: Maria Butina

texts:
 conservative politics—such as the National Rifle Association, the National Prayer Breakfast and some religious organizations—for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation. The filings also describe certain actions taken by <mask> to further this effort during multiple visits from Russia and, later, when she entered and resided in the United States on a student visa. The filings allege that she undertook her activities "without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law." <mask>, Torshin, and Erickson have been subjects of an investigation by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Erickson is referred to in <mask>'s indictment as "Person 1."In addition, George D. O'Neill Jr., a conservative writer and Rockefeller heir, is "Person 2." Torshin has also been the subject of a probe by the FBI into whether the Russian government attempted to illegally funnel money to the NRA in order to help Trump win the presidency. The FBI began to monitor <mask> in August 2016, after she had moved to the United States on an F-1 student visa. Rather than confront her immediately, the FBI chose to track her movements and gather information on whom she was meeting, and what her end goals were to be. Plea deal

<mask>'s attorneys and federal prosecutors declared in a November 16, 2018, court filing that they had entered into plea negotiations. On December 13, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an illegal foreign agent, while the original charge of failing to register as a foreign agent was dropped. She faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and, according to a CNN


title: Maria Butina

texts:
 report, will "likely be deported after serving any time."On April 26, 2019, <mask> was sentenced to 18 months in prison by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, in accordance with the recommendations of prosecutors. <mask> later complained that in the U.S., she was forced to sign a plea-deal. She claimed that she was sentenced for simply being Russian. Russian reaction
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had no prior knowledge of <mask>. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov made a statement saying that <mask>'s arrest was designed to undermine the "positive results" of the Helsinki summit between U.S. President Trump and Russian President Putin. She was arrested a day before Trump met his Russian counterpart. <mask>'s father has called the accusations against her "a witch-hunt".Leonid Slutsky, head of the lower house of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, called <mask>'s case a "modern political inquisition." Russia's Foreign Ministry accused the United States of forcing false confession from <mask>. According to the foreign ministry spokesperson, <mask>, "having created unbearable conditions for her and threatening her with a long jail sentence, she was literally forced to sign up to absolutely ridiculous charges." Timeline

2011

 Butina founds the "" organization. April 29 – May 1: Nashville lawyer G. Kline Preston IV introduces Russian Senator Aleksandr Torshin to National Rifle Association (NRA) president David Keene at the NRA annual meeting in Pittsburgh. A witness claims financial support for Torshin by the NRA was discussed. May 7: Keene sends Torshin a handwritten letter offering to help in his endeavors.2012
 April 12–15: Torshin attends the NRA annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri, with an "all

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title: Maria Butina

texts:
 access" pass. November 8: Torshin visits the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. 2013
 May 3–5: <mask> and Torshin attend the NRA convention in Houston, Texas. Early October: <mask> makes a presentation on "Right to Bear Arms" to the Association for the Promotion of Weapons Culture in Israel. Her presentation includes a slide claiming her organization has cooperation agreements with similar organizations in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Estonia, and she informs the group that it also has a cooperation agreement with the NRA. Another slide states it has a cooperation agreement with the International Defensive Pistol Association, which the Texas-based organization denies when asked in 2018. Early November: Keene, Alan Gottlieb, Gottlieb's wife, and Paul Erickson attend the "Right to Bear Arms" conference in Moscow where they meet with <mask> and Torshin.Gottlieb and Keene are invited speakers at the event. Gottlieb and his wife dine with Torshin and <mask>, and receive "gifts that [display] research into their interests." In 2017, Gottlieb tells the Washington Post, "They wanted to keep communications open and form friendships." December 10: John Bolton promotes gun rights in Russia in a video made for <mask>'s "Right to Bear Arms" organization. 2014
 <mask> tells an American Facebook friend who complained about California's gun restrictions that he should "hold demonstrations" for gun rights. April 24: <mask> presents NRA president Jim Porter with an honorary membership in "Right to Bear Arms". April 25–27: <mask> and Torshin attend the NRA annual conference in Indianapolis.<mask> attends several meetings as a guest of Keene. Late 2014: <mask> resigns from her position as the head of "Right to Bear Arms". September 3: Paul

masks: Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina Butina


title: Maria Butina

texts:
 Erickson attends a "Right to Bear Arms" forum in Moscow where he is a featured speaker. 2015
 February: Dimitri Simes meets with Putin and other Russian officials in Moscow. Simes is the publisher of The National Interest and CEO of the think tank Center for the National Interest (CNI). The Center arranges meetings between Torshin, <mask>, and U.S. government officials in April. The following year he would arrange Trump's April 27, 2016, speech at the Mayflower Hotel.February 26–28: <mask> attends CPAC. <mask> and Torshin meet with Treasury undersecretary for international affairs Nathan Sheets to discuss U.S. Russian economic relations during the Obama administration. The meeting was arranged by the CNI. Torshin and <mask> participate in discussions about the "Russian financial situation and its impact on Russian politics" at a private event moderated by Hank Greenberg and organized by the CNI. April 7: Torshin and <mask> meet with Federal Reserve vice chairman Stanley Fischer to discuss U.S. Russian economic relations during the Obama administration. The meeting was arranged by the CNI. April 10: <mask>, Torshin, and David Keene attend a fundraiser in Tennessee for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.April 11–12: Torshin and <mask> attend the NRA convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Torshin briefly converses with Trump. Torshin and the Trump family dispute how much was said. June 12: <mask> argues in an article she wrote for The National Interest that only a Republican president can improve relations between the U.S. and Russia. July 11: <mask> attends FreedomFest in Las Vegas, where Trump is speaking and taking questions. She asks Trump his stance on continuing sanctions; he replies he knows Putin and doesn't think sanctions

masks:
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title: Maria Butina

texts: are needed. Reviewing a video of the encounter, Bannon points out that "Trump had a fully developed answer".July 13: <mask> is present at Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's presidential candidacy announcement. August 4–6: Rohrabacher and Behrends travel to Russia. While there, Rohrabacher meets <mask> and Torshin for breakfast. In July 2018, Rohrabacher tells Politico he dined with <mask> and another congressman accompanying him on the trip. November 25: In an email to incoming NRA President Pete Brownell, Erickson writes, "most of the FSB agents 'assigned' to her [<mask>] want to marry her", saying that is why she was able to arrange a tour of a Russian arms factory for the NRA delegation. December 8–13: Outspoken Trump supporter Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, former NRA President David Keene, future NRA President Pete Brownell, NRA Golden Ring of Freedom Chair Joe Gregory, major NRA donors Hilary and Arnold Goldschlager, Outdoor Channel CEO Jim Liberatore, and NRA member Paul Erickson travel to Moscow for the "Right to Bear Arms" convention. They meet Russian government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.Rogozin is under U.S. sanctions. <mask> accompanies the delegation on a tour of the gun manufacturer ORSIS, where they meet with the company's executives, including Svetlana Nikolaev, president of ORSIS's parent company and wife of billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev. They also meet with Torshin and Sergei Rudov, the head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation. They attend a party at a Moscow hunting club hosted by Torshin and Pavel Gusev, the Chairman of the Public Council of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Clarke later files an ethics report


title: Maria Butina

texts:
 showing that <mask>'s organization, "Right to Bear Arms", covered $6,000 of his expenses. After the Lavrov meeting, <mask> emails Torshin, writing, "We should let them express their gratitude now, and put pressure on them quietly later." In May 2018, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch denies there was an NRA trip to Moscow, then clarifies in July 2018 that it wasn't an official trip.2016

 April 27:
 Erickson contacts Trump campaign advisor Rick Dearborn. In an email headed "Kremlin Connection", Erickson seeks the advice of Dearborn and Sessions about how to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin. Erickson suggests making contact at the NRA's annual convention in Kentucky. The communication refers to Torshin, who is under instructions to contact the Trump campaign. At <mask>'s urging, Christian activist Rick Clay emails Dearborn with the subject "Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite" offering a meeting between Trump and Torshin. Dearborn, then Sessions's Chief of Staff, sends an email mentioning a person from West Virginia seeking to connect Trump campaign members with Putin. Dearborn appears "skeptical" of the meeting request.Jared Kushner rejects the request. Torshin and Trump Jr. later meet and speak at the NRA convention. May 10: Dearborn receives an email about arranging a back-channel meeting between Trump and Putin with the subject line "Kremlin Connection." It is sent from a conservative operative who says Russia wants to use the NRA's convention to make "first contact." May 16: Dearborn receives a similar second proposal, which he forwards to Kushner, Manafort and Rick Gates. Both efforts appear to involve Torshin, who was instructed to make contact with the Trump campaign. Kushner rebuffs the proposal.May


title: Maria Butina

texts:
 19–22: The NRA annual conference is held in Louisville, Kentucky. Trump and Trump Jr. attend. Trump Jr. meets briefly with Torshin and <mask> on May 20. August: <mask> arrives in the U.S. on a student visa to attend American University in Washington, D.C.
 August 9: Bloomberg reports that the Spanish Civil Guard believes Torshin assisted the Taganskaya crime syndicate with money laundering through banks in Spain. September 29: <mask> meets J. D. Gordon at a party at the Swiss ambassador's residence. Gordon was the Director of National Security for the Trump campaign from February to August. That night, Erickson emails <mask> and Gordon offering to "add an electronic bridge" to their meeting at the party.In his email to <mask>, Erickson writes that Gordon is "playing a crucial role in the Trump transition effort and would be an excellent addition to any of the U.S./Russia friendship dinners to occasionally hold." He writes that all the "right" people listen to Gordon on international security. Erickson's email to Gordon describes <mask> as a "special friend" of the NRA and the special assistant to the deputy governor of the Bank of Russia. October 18: <mask> and Gordon attend a Styx concert together. November 12 : <mask> holds a birthday party at Cafe Deluxe in Washington, D.C., attended by Erickson and Trump campaign aides. She claims to be part of Russian communications with the Trump campaign, something she has bragged about for months. 2017

 January 20: <mask> attends the inaugural Freedom Ball with Paul Erickson.It is one of the three balls Trump attends. January 27: Alexander Torshin, <mask>, Paul Erickson, and former Kremlin staffer Andrey Kolyadin dine with Representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Thomas Massie at a

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 private dinner hosted by Rockefeller heir George O'Neill Jr.
 February 2: Alexander Torshin and <mask> attend the National Prayer Breakfast. Torshin is scheduled to meet privately with Trump beforehand, but the meeting is canceled after a national security aide points out that Torshin is under investigation for organized crime and money laundering. A spokesman for Torshin later says Torshin was officially on vacation at the time, adding, "President Trump has never proposed a meeting to Mr. Torshin." August 11: The Senate Intelligence Committee asks Sigal Mandelker, the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to provide any "suspicious" or "derogatory" transaction records reported by banks involving <mask>, Alexander Torshin, Paul Erickson, Investing With Dignity, or Bridges LLC. Erickson owns Investing With Dignity and jointly owns Bridges LLC with Butina.The committee sends a follow-up request on December 7 complaining that it hasn't received a response. December: <mask> declines a request to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee because of lack of support from Republican members. 2018

 January: Federal agents photograph <mask> dining with Oleg Zhiganov, the director of the Russian Cultural Center. Zhiganov is expelled from the U.S. in March for being a suspected Russian spy. In a July hearing, prosecutors offer <mask>'s association with Zhiganov as one reason she should be considered a flight risk and denied bail. March 12: <mask> responds to a Federal Election Commission query "about whether or not certain donations had been made to political campaigns." April: <mask> testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed session for eight hours.She tells the committee

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title: Maria Butina

texts: that Russian billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev funded "Right to Bear Arms" from 2012 to 2014. In July, A spokesperson for Nikolaev confirms the funding support after initial denials. April 25: FBI agents in tactical gear search <mask>'s apartment. One of the warrants executed is related to a fraud investigation of Paul Erickson. May: <mask> graduates from American University with a master's degree in international relations. May 7: The NRA announces board member Oliver North will replace Peter Brownell as president of the organization after Brownell announces he will not seek a second term. The selection of North is unusual because the NRA board normally selects someone who has served two terms each as the first and the second vice president, and North has held neither position.In August, David Corn of Mother Jones points out that the move comes two weeks after the FBI raided <mask>'s apartment and that Brownell is an associate of <mask>. June: <mask> offers to assist prosecutors in an investigation of Paul Erickson. July 15: <mask> is arrested in Washington, D.C., on charges of being an unregistered foreign agent of the Russian Federation working to infiltrate politically influential organizations in the U.S. and influence U.S. officials. July 16: The Justice Department announces <mask>'s arrest and the criminal charges that led to it. NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch clarifies her May 8 denial of the December 2015 NRA trip to Moscow, telling Mark Follman of Mother Jones that she meant it wasn't an official trip. July 17: Prosecutors file an indictment of <mask> in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Rohrabacher tells Politico he is unsure whether he is the U.S. congressman mentioned in the <mask> indictment,


title: Maria Butina

texts: though he admits to being in Russia in August 2015 and dining with Butina and another congressman.He calls the charges against <mask> "bogus" and a function of the "deep state." July 18: <mask> pleads not guilty at a preliminary hearing. The judge orders <mask> be held without bail pending trial. July 19: The Russian Foreign Ministry calls on people to show their support for <mask> by changing their social media avatars to a photo of her, in 'Free <mask>' campaign. July 23: Senators Ron Wyden, Robert Menendez, and Sheldon Whitehouse send Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin a letter demanding the "production of any documents relevant to financial links between the NRA, its associated entities and Ms. <mask> and any entities or individuals related to her." The letter is a follow-up to a similar letter Wyden sent Mnuchin in February. July 23: After initial denials, a spokesperson for Russian billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev confirms that Nikolaev funded "Right to Bear Arms" from 2012 to 2014.August 9: The Daily Beast reports that Igor Pisarky, the founder and chairman of the Russian public relations firm R.I.M. Porter Novelli, was <mask>'s point of contact for the funding she received from billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev. September: The U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, D.C., sends Paul Erickson a letter informing him that it is considering bringing charges against him for secretly acting as a foreign agent and a possible additional charge for conspiracy. The Daily Beast reports that Erickson is under investigation by the FBI and the U.S. attorney in South Dakota for fraudulently seeking $100,000 investments at conservative political events to fund North Dakota companies allegedly involved in the Bakken oil fields. September

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title: Maria Butina

texts:
 19: NPR reports that beginning in 2014, <mask> urged Americans to hold gun rights demonstrations. December 11: CNN reports that <mask> agreed to plead guilty to spying and is now cooperating with the prosecutor. December 12: Reuters reports that Putin is unclear about why <mask> was arrested.He said, "She risks 15 years in jail. For what? I asked all the heads of our intelligence services what is going on. Nobody knows anything about her." December 13: <mask> pleads guilty in a D.C. federal court to trying to infiltrate the U.S. conservative movement as an agent for the Kremlin. She admits to working with Erickson to forge bonds with NRA officials and conservative leaders while under the direction of Torshin. In her plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of failing to register as a foreign agent in exchange for cooperation.In the statement of the offense, Erickson is identified as "U.S. Person 1", Torshin as the "Russian Official", the Republican Party as "Political Party #1", and the NRA as the "Gun Rights Organization". December 19: In a Moscow news briefing, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman <mask> says that <mask> was coerced into making a false confession: "<mask> confirmed that she had done a deal with U.S. investigators and confessed to being a foreign agent. Having created unbearable conditions for her and threatening her with a long jail sentence, she was literally forced to sign up to absolutely ridiculous charges." 2019

 September 27: U.S. Senate report is released which considers the NRA acted as a 'foreign asset' to Russia ahead of 2016 election. October 25: <mask> is released from Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution, and is deported to Moscow. December 17: <mask> got a job on the RT

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title: Maria Butina

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 channel as the host of the "Beautiful Russia boo-boo-boo" YouTube channel.Life after prison
In 2021, she visited Alexei Navalny, who was on hunger strike, in prison, stating that the conditions in the prison are better than in hotels in the Altai Territory, and Alexei himself is eating candy, not starving. In October 2021, she became a member of the State Duma representing Kirov Oblast for the United Russia party. See also
 Anna Chapman
 Patrick M. Byrne
 Criminal charges brought in the Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019)
 Lobbying in the United States

References

External links

 Government's opposition to bond review – DocumentCloud
 Department of Justice complaint against <mask> (PDF) – Justice.gov
 Affidavit in support of application for criminal complaint (PDF) – Justice.gov

1988 births
Living people
21st-century businesswomen
21st-century Russian businesspeople
21st-century Russian criminals
American University alumni
Conservatism in Russia
Gun rights advocates
People deported from the United States
People from Barnaul
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Russian spies
Russian women in business
Russians associated with interference in the 2016 United States elections
Russia–United States relations
Russian businesspeople in the United States
Eighth convocation members of the State Duma (Russian


title: Joe Carstairs

texts:
Marion Barbara '<mask>' <mask> (1 February 1900 – 18 December 1993) was a wealthy British power boat racer known for their speed, eccentric lifestyle, and gender nonconformity. In the 1920s they were known as the ‘fastest woman on water’. Biography

<mask> was born in 1900 in Mayfair, London, England, the child of Frances (Fannie) Evelyn Bostwick, an American heiress who was the second child of Jabez Bostwick and his wife Helen. <mask>' legal father was Scottish army officer Captain <mask>, first of the Royal Irish Rifles and later the Princess of Wales's Own. Captain Carstairs re-enlisted with the Army the week before <mask> was born; he and Evelyn divorced soon afterwards. At least one biographer has suggested that the captain may not have been <mask>'s biological father. Carstairs' mother, an alcoholic and drug addict, later married Captain Francis Francis, with whom she had two more children, Evelyn (Sally) Francis and Francis Francis Jr. (Frank).She divorced Captain Francis to marry French count Roger de Périgny in 1915, but eventually left him because of his infidelity. Her fourth and last husband, whom she married in 1920, was Serge Voronoff, a Russian–French surgeon who become famous in the 1920s and 1930s for his practice of transplanting monkey testicle tissue into male humans for the claimed purpose of rejuvenation. For some years Evelyn had believed in Voronoff's theories, and she funded his research and acted as his laboratory assistant at the Collège de France in Paris. Evelyn died in March 1921. Carstairs had a rocky relationship with their mother, who sent them to boarding school in Connecticut at the age of 11, due to their rebellious behaviour. 1916–1934
Carstairs lived a colourful life. They usually dressed as a man; had tattooed arms; and loved machines, adventure and speed.Openly lesbian, they had

masks:
Joe
Carstairs
Carstairs
Joe Carstairs
Albert Carstairs
Joe
Joe


title: Joe Carstairs

texts: numerous affairs with women, including Dolly Wilde—Oscar Wilde's niece and a fellow ambulance driver from Dublin with whom they had lived in Paris—and a string of actresses, most notably Greta Garbo, Tallulah Bankhead, and Marlene Dietrich. During World War I, Carstairs served in France with the American Red Cross, driving ambulances. After the war, they served with Britain’s Royal Army Service Corps in France, re-burying the war-dead; and in Dublin with the Women's Legion Mechanical Transport Section, which acted as transport for British officers during the Irish War of Independence. <mask>rs married a childhood friend, the French aristocrat Count Jacques de Pret, on 7 January 1918 in Paris. The purpose of the marriage was simply to allow Carstairs’ access to their trust fund independently of their mother. The marriage was annulled immediately after their mother's death on the grounds of non-consummation. By means of a deed poll, they renounced their married name and resumed using the name Carstairs in February 1922.In 1920, with three former colleagues from the Women's Legion Mechanical Transport Section, they started the X Garage, a car-hire and chauffeuring service that featured a women-only staff of drivers and mechanics. Carstairs (and their friends and lovers) lived in a flat above the garage, which was situated near Cromwell Gardens in London's fashionable South Kensington district. Several of the X-Garage staff had served as drivers during the war and spoke French, German, or Italian. The cars and drivers could be hired for long-distance trips and the business specialised in taking grieving relatives for visits to war-graves and former battlefields in France and Belgium. They were also hired for journeys within London and the garage had an arrangement with the Savoy Hotel to transport guests to the theatre or


title: Tyra Shackleford

texts:
<mask> (born in Ada, Oklahoma) is a Chickasaw textile artist who specializes in various hand woven techniques. Her three most prominent weaving techniques are sprang, fingerweaving, and twinning, which all date back prior to European contact, She has opened her traditional form of art to more conceptual and wearable art. Her crafts are exhibited across the United States since 2011. <mask>'s goal with her art is to preserve her Chickasaw culture and traditions and educate viewers. Biography
<mask> was born in Ada, Oklaholma. Both of her parents were instructors; her father Randy taught math and computer science while her mom taught chemistry. As a child her father introduced her to her culture and the Chickasaw community.<mask> attended Chickasaw community council meetings and performed dance demonstrations such as the stomp dance. Along with stomp dances, she attended language and art classes where she learned traditional weaving techniques. She has cited Wisey Narcomey, a Seminole elder, as her most influential teacher. When she was twelve <mask> learned traditional fingerweaving from Narcomey, who would also dance with her when she was little. She attended college at the East Central University in Ada, where she majored in chemistry and minored in math. After receiving her degree <mask> chose to pursue a different career as a weaver and took a position in the Chickasaw Nation Cultural Resources department, where she worked from 2009 until 2015. She began as a demonstrator and eventually worked herself up to the position of special projects coordinator.While working as a demonstrator <mask> participated in stomp dance demonstrations and showcased her weaving techniques. <mask> has credited her husband James as encouraging her to take a different perspective, she has expanded her traditional approach to native arts to a more conceptual and contemporary craft. Techniques
Shackleford uses the technique sprang, which she used to create "The Lady". This is an ancient

masks:
Tyra Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford


title: Tyra Shackleford

texts:
 textile method that Native Americans have used prior to European contact to make pieces of shawl. The outcome of this technique is to create a net figure where the threads have wrapped around each other to create patterns. Her second technique she uses is fingerweaving. This technique forms basic patterns such as diagonal, diamond, lightning, and arrowheads all while not using a loom.The purpose of fingerweaving is to mainly create belts, sashes, and straps that is a form of wearable art. The third technique is known as twining. The spacing of the yarns between each other creates holes that can be used to contrast the negative space. The negative space creates distinct lines that can be formed into figurines or geometric patterns. The type of the fabric itself can also impact the variations of the art, making it colorful and vibrant. <mask> has done many other arts such as bead work and basket weaving, but prefers the three weaving techniques. Artworks

"The Lady" (2017)
This is one of Shaclkeford's most notable pieces of art where it is a ghostlike shawl standing at 9 ft. tall and 4 ft. wide.<mask>'s use of the sprang technique allowed her to create this delicate shawl without the use of a loom or any modern technology. In preserving Chickasaw culture, the title refers to the Lady of Cofitachequi who had an encounter with outside colonizers and conquistadors. Being that Cofitachequi was a powerful, female leader, this piece resembles the strength and resilience of all Chickasaw women. This piece is now permanently being held at the Eiteljorg Museum of the American Indians and Western Art for all to see. "Twin Turkey" (2018)
This is a twin turkey design that is made by using the sprang weaving technique. This is mainly used for clothing but <mask> has taken this art with a different approach towards contemporary art. In this piece, there is an image of a two turkeys and a cedar tree.The cedar tree is at the center of the art and it is from an ancient shell

masks: Shackleford Shackleford Shackleford


title: Tyra Shackleford

texts:
 carving during the Mississippian era. The cedar tree in the middle between the two turkeys represents the three worlds. It stretches to the upperworld represented by the sky and down to the underworld represented by the water beneath. The sky and the water is connected to our world which are represented by the two turkeys. "Oshiitiik" (2017)
Shackleford began making this bag with a rose in the center when she was expecting a newborn daughter, Zora Rose. The title of this piece, "Oshiitiik", actually means the daughter in the Chickasaw language which will be given to Zora Rose after her first birthday. This was made through two traditional Chickasaw techniques known as twining and fingerweaving.Specifically, she used the twining technique to make the bag itself while having finger woven the strap. Exhibitions

Group exhibitions
 Chickasaw Visitor Center, Oklahoma (March - July 2015)
Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art, The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (Aug. 2019 - Jan. 2020)
University of North Carolina Museum of the Southeast American Indian, Pembroke, North Carolina (March - July 2020)
The Heard Museum Indian Fair & Market, Phoenix, Arizona (March 2020)
Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (Sept. 2020 - Jan. 2021)

Collections
Shackleford's art is held in the permanent collections of the following:

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art
Santa Fe Indian Market (New Mexico)
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.)

Honors and awards

 Harrison Eiteljorg Purchase Award for a finger-woven shawl titled The Lady
First Place and Best of Division at the Southwest Association of Indian Art (SWAIA) for "sprang" manufactured shawl

References

External links

Oral History Interview with <mask> Shackleford

Living people
21st-century Native Americans
Artists from Oklahoma
Chickasaw people
Native American artists
People from Ada, Oklahoma
Year of birth missing (living


title: Harry Barris

texts:
<mask> (November 24, 1905 – December 13, 1962) was an American popular singer and songwriter, and is one of the earliest singers to use "scat singing" in recordings. <mask>, one of Paul Whiteman's Rhythm Boys, along with Bing Crosby and Al Rinker, scatted on several songs, including "Mississippi Mud," which <mask> wrote in 1927. Biography
<mask> was born to Jewish parents in New York City. Gary Giddins described him as "small, wiry, and moon-faced with glittery eyes, and dark hair slicked back and parted in the middle." He was educated in Denver, Colorado. <mask> became a professional pianist at the age of 14. He led a band which toured the Far East at the age of 17.Barris married Hazelle Thompson in 1925 and they had a daughter, Hazelle <mask>, in 1926. The same year, Barris played the piano and occasionally sang in Paul Ash's orchestra. In the same year, Al Rinker and Bing Crosby became members of Paul Whiteman's Orchestra as a singing duo. However, appearing at the vast New York Paramount in February 1927, where there were no microphones, they could not be heard by the audience. They were promptly dropped from the bill. However, a band member who knew <mask> suggested that they add him to make a trio and The Rhythm Boys were formed in April 1927. In 1930, Barris divorced Hazelle Thompson.The Rhythm Boys left Paul Whiteman the same year and joined Gus Arnheim's Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. They made one more recording together, "Them There Eyes" (November 20, 1930), but the boys decided to quit in May 1931 and they went their separate ways. However, <mask> changed his mind and returned to the Cocoanut Grove to complete his contract. Barris joined Arnheim's singing group The Three Ambassadors. Barris met Loyce Whiteman, who

masks:
Harry Barris
Barris
Barris
Barris
Barris
Barris
Barris
Barris


title: Harry Barris

texts:
 also sang with the Orchestra, and married her in 1931. They appear together in an episode of Rambling 'Round Radio Row. They had one daughter, Marti <mask>, who also became a musician.They divorced in 1946. Barris appeared in 57 films between 1931 and 1950, usually as a band member, pianist and/or singer. Seven of those films had Bing Crosby as the star. In 1932, Barris signed a contract to star in six shorts for Educational Pictures, similar to Bing Crosby's launch into films. The first of these shorts was That Rascal. In The Lost Weekend (1945), he is the nightclub pianist who humiliates Ray Milland by singing "Somebody Stole My Purse". An unusual change of pace for Barris was his comedy role in The Fleet's In (1942), as a runty sailor named Pee Wee who perpetrates malapropisms in a surprisingly deep voice.During World War II, <mask>, along with Joe E. Brown, went overseas to entertain troops. Barris had a lifelong drinking problem. In a fall, he fractured his hip in March 1961. Despite a series of operations, his condition deteriorated. He died in Burbank, California, aged 57. His composition "Never Been So Lost" was published shortly before his death. Compositions

 "Hong Kong Dream Girl" (1924), with George E. Springer
 "'Tain't Cold" (1925), with Jack Mills
 "And She'll Do It For a Long, Long Time" (1926)
 "Brown Sugar" (1926)
 "I'm Out in Nowhere, Going to Go Somewhere" (1926)
 "I Got a Sweet Lil' Girl" (1926)
 "Jimmy-Da-Walk, Da Boss-A New York" (1926), with Howard Johnson and James Cavanaugh
 "Why Does My Sweetie Love (Nobody But Me)" (1926), with Irving Mills
 "Mississippi Mud" (1927), with James Cavanaugh
 "That's Grandma" (1927), with Bing Crosby and James Cavanaugh
 "Play It, Red" (1927)
 "Sweet L'il" (1927)

masks: Barris Barris


title: Harry Barris

texts:
 "From Monday On" (1928), with Bing Crosby
 "Wa-Da-Da (Ev'rybody's Doin' It Now)" (1928), with James Cavanaugh
 "What Price Lyrics?"(1928), with Bing Crosby and Matty Malneck
 "My Blue Print of Dreams" (1929), with Billy Moll
 "So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together" (1929), with Billy Moll
 "That's What's Troubling Me" (1929), with Billy Moll
 "Ev'rything's Agreed Upon" (1930), with Bing Crosby
 "At Your Command" (1931), with Bing Crosby and <mask>
 "Chances Are" (1931), with Gus Arnheim and Ralph Freed
 "It's the Darndest Thing" (1931)
 "I Surrender Dear" (1931), with Gordon Clifford
 "It Must Be True" (1931), with Gordon Clifford
 "Lies" (1931), with George E. Springer
 "What Good Would Be Tomorrow (Without You, Dear)" (1931), with Gus Arnheim and Ralph Freed
 "What Is It?" While this record survives, his few other solos recorded in 1926 have been destroyed. They include:
 "Could I, I Certainly Could" (Victor Matrix BVE-37174)
 "I'm Out in Nowhere, Going to Go Somewhere" (Victor Matrix BVE-37175)
 "I Got a Sweet Lil' Girl" (Victor Matrix BVE-37176)

During the 1930s, it was uncommon to hear <mask> perform completely solo outside of films. A rare example is a Cocoanut Grove broadcast tape of "It's the Darndest Thing." References

Sources
Donald Shepherd and Robert F. Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981),

External links

 <mask> recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings. 1905 births
1962 deaths
American male singer-songwriters
Singers from New York City
Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
20th-century American singers
Bing Crosby
Articles containing video clips
20th-century American male singers
Singer-songwriters from New York

masks:
Harry Tobias
Barris
Harry Barris


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts: <mask> (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer, and political prisoner. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, <mask> was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union (USSR), in particular the Gulag system. <mask> was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. While still young, <mask> lost his faith in Christianity and became a firm believer in both atheism and Marxism–Leninism; in his later life, he gradually became a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian as a result of his experience in prison and the camps. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, <mask> was arrested by the SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw, <mask> was released and exonerated. After he had returned to the Christian faith of his childhood, he pursued writing novels about repressions in the Soviet Union and his experiences.He published his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, with approval from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which was an account of Stalinist repressions. <mask>'s last work to be published in the Soviet Union was Matryona's Place in 1963. Following the removal of Khrushchev from power, the Soviet authorities attempted to discourage him from continuing to write. <mask> continued to work on further novels and their publication in

masks:
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts:
 other countries including Cancer Ward in 1968, August 1914 in 1971, and The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, the publication of which outraged the Soviet authorities. In 1974 <mask> lost his Soviet citizenship and was flown to West Germany. In 1976, he moved with his family to the United States, where he continued to write. In 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his citizenship was restored, and four years later he returned to Russia, where he remained until his death in 2008.He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature", and The Gulag Archipelago was a highly influential work that "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state", and sold tens of millions of copies. Biography

Early years

<mask> was born in Kislovodsk (now in Stavropol Krai, Russia). His father was of Russian descent and his mother, Taisiya Zakharovna (née Shcherbak), was of Ukrainian descent. Her father had risen from humble beginnings to become a wealthy landowner, acquiring a large estate in the Kuban region in the northern foothills of the Caucasus. During World War I, Taisiya went to Moscow to study. While there she met and married Isaakiy Semyonovich <mask>, a young officer in the Imperial Russian Army of Cossack origin and fellow native of the Caucasus region. The family background of his parents is vividly brought to life in the opening chapters of August 1914, and in the later Red Wheel novels.In 1918, Taisiya became pregnant with <mask>. On 15 June, shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident.

masks: Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts:
 <mask> was raised by his widowed mother and his aunt in lowly circumstances. His earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War. By 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm. Later, <mask> recalled that his mother had fought for survival and that they had to keep his father's background in the old Imperial Army a secret. His educated mother (who never remarried) encouraged his literary and scientific learnings and raised him in the Russian Orthodox faith; she died in 1944.As early as 1936, <mask> began developing the characters and concepts for a planned epic work on World War I and the Russian Revolution. This eventually led to the novel August 1914; some of the chapters he wrote then still survive. <mask> studied mathematics and physics at Rostov State University. At the same time he took correspondence courses from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, by this time heavily ideological in scope. As he himself makes clear, he did not question the state ideology or the superiority of the Soviet Union until he spent time in the camps. World War II

During the war, <mask> served as the commander of a sound-ranging battery in the Red Army, was involved in major action at the front, and was twice decorated. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star on 8 July 1944 for sound-ranging two German artillery batteries and adjusting counterbattery fire onto them, resulting in their destruction.A series of writings published late in his life, including the early uncompleted novel Love the Revolution!, chronicle his wartime experience and growing doubts about the moral foundations of the Soviet

masks: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts:
 regime. While serving as an artillery officer in East Prussia, <mask> witnessed war crimes against local German civilians by Soviet military personnel. Of the atrocities, <mask> wrote: "You know very well that we've come to Germany to take our revenge" for Nazi atrocities committed in the Soviet Union. The noncombatants and the elderly were robbed of their meager possessions and women and girls were gang-raped. A few years later, in the forced labor camp, he memorized a poem titled "Prussian Nights" about a woman raped to death in East Prussia. In this poem, which describes the gang-rape of a Polish woman whom the Red Army soldiers mistakenly thought to be a German, the first-person narrator comments on the events with sarcasm and refers to the responsibility of official Soviet writers like Ilya Ehrenburg. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote, "There is nothing that so assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one's own transgressions, errors, mistakes.After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my Captain's shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: 'So were we any better?'" Imprisonment

In February 1945, while serving in East Prussia, <mask> was arrested by SMERSH for writing derogatory comments in private letters to a friend, Nikolai Vitkevich, about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin, whom he called "Khozyain" ("the boss"), and "Balabos" (Yiddish rendering of Hebrew baal

masks: Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts: ha-bayit for "master of the house"). He also had talks with the same friend about the need for a new organization to replace the Soviet regime. He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code, and of "founding a hostile organization" under paragraph 11. <mask> was taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was interrogated. On 9 May 1945, it was announced that Germany had surrendered and all of Moscow broke out in celebrations with fireworks and searchlights illuminating the sky to celebrate the victory in the Great Patriotic War. From his cell in the Lubyanka, <mask> remembered: "Above the muzzle of our window, and from all the other cells of the Lubyanka, and from all the windows of the Moscow prisons, we too, former prisoners of war and former front-line soldiers, watched the Moscow heavens, patterned with fireworks and crisscrossed with beams of searchlights.There was no rejoicing in our cells and no hugs and no kisses for us. That victory was not ours." On 7 July 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by Special Council of the NKVD to an eight-year term in a labour camp. This was the normal sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time. The first part of <mask>'s sentence was served in several work camps; the "middle phase", as he later referred to it, was spent in a sharashka (a special scientific research facility run by Ministry of State Security), where he met Lev Kopelev, upon whom he based the character of Lev Rubin in his book The First Circle, published in a self-censored or "distorted" version in the West in 1968 (an English translation of the full version


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts: was eventually published by Harper Perennial in October 2009). In 1950, he was sent to a "Special Camp" for political prisoners. During his imprisonment at the camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan, he worked as a miner, bricklayer, and foundry foreman.His experiences at Ekibastuz formed the basis for the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. One of his fellow political prisoners, Ion Moraru, remembers that <mask> spent some of his time at Ekibastuz writing. While there <mask> had a tumor removed. His cancer was not diagnosed at the time. In March 1953, after his sentence ended, <mask> was sent to internal exile for life at Birlik, a village in Baidibek District of South Kazakhstan. His undiagnosed cancer spread until, by the end of the year, he was close to death. In 1954, he was permitted to be treated in a hospital in Tashkent, where his tumor went into remission.His experiences there became the basis of his novel Cancer Ward and also found an echo in the short story "The Right Hand." It was during this decade of imprisonment and exile that <mask> developed the philosophical and religious positions of his later life, gradually becoming a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian as a result of his experience in prison and the camps. He repented for some of his actions as a Red Army captain, and in prison compared himself to the perpetrators of the Gulag. His transformation is described at some length in the fourth part of The Gulag Archipelago ("The Soul and Barbed Wire"). The narrative poem The Trail (written without benefit of pen or paper in prison and camps between 1947 and 1952) and the 28 poems composed in

masks: Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts:
 prison, forced-labour camp, and exile also provide crucial material for understanding <mask>'s intellectual and spiritual odyssey during this period. These "early" works, largely unknown in the West, were published for the first time in Russian in 1999 and excerpted in English in 2006. Marriages and children

On 7 April 1940, while at the university, <mask> married Natalia Alekseevna Reshetovskaya.They had just over a year of married life before he went into the army, then to the Gulag. They divorced in 1952, a year before his release, because wives of Gulag prisoners faced loss of work or residence permits. After the end of his internal exile, they remarried in 1957, divorcing a second time in 1972. Reshetovskaya wrote negatively of <mask> in her memoirs, accusing him of having affairs, and said of the relationship that "[<mask>]'s despotism ... would crush my independence and would not permit my personality to develop." In 1973, <mask> married his second wife, Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova, a mathematician who had a son, Dmitri Turin, from a brief prior marriage. He and Svetlova (born 1939) had three sons: Yermolai (1970), Ignat (1972), and Stepan (1973). Dmitri Turin died on 18 March 1994, aged 32, at his home in New York City.After prison

After Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, <mask> was freed from exile and exonerated. Following his return from exile, <mask> was, while teaching at a secondary school during the day, spending his nights secretly engaged in writing. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech he wrote that "during all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced I should never see a single line of mine in print in my

masks: Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts: lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared this would become known." In 1960, aged 42, he approached <mask>, a poet and the chief editor of the Novy Mir magazine, with the manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was published in edited form in 1962, with the explicit approval of Nikita Khrushchev, who defended it at the presidium of the Politburo hearing on whether to allow its publication, and added: "There's a Stalinist in each of you; there's even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil." The book quickly sold out and became an instant hit.In the 1960s, while he was publicly known to be writing Cancer Ward, he was simultaneously writing The Gulag Archipelago. During Khrushchev's tenure, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was studied in schools in the Soviet Union, as were three more short works of <mask>'s, including his short story "Matryona's Home", published in 1963. These would be the last of his works published in the Soviet Union until 1990. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brought the Soviet system of prison labour to the attention of the West. It caused as much of a sensation in the Soviet Union as it did in the West—not only by its striking realism and candor, but also because it was the first major piece of Soviet literature since the 1920s on a politically charged theme, written by a non-party member, indeed a man who had been to Siberia for "libelous speech" about the leaders, and yet its publication had been officially permitted. In this sense, the publication of <mask>'s story was an almost unheard of

masks:
Aleksandr Tvardovsky
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts:
 instance of free, unrestrained discussion of politics through literature. However, after Khrushchev had been ousted from power in 1964, the time for such raw exposing works came to an end.Later years in the Soviet Union

<mask> made an unsuccessful attempt, with the help of Tvardovsky, to have his novel Cancer Ward legally published in the Soviet Union. This required the approval of the Union of Writers. Though some there appreciated it, the work was ultimately denied publication unless it was to be revised and cleaned of suspect statements and anti-Soviet insinuations. After Khrushchev's removal in 1964, the cultural climate again became more repressive. Publishing of <mask>'s work quickly stopped; as a writer, he became a non-person, and, by 1965, the KGB had seized some of his papers, including the manuscript of The First Circle. Meanwhile, <mask> continued to secretly and feverishly work on the most well-known of his writings, The Gulag Archipelago. The seizing of his novel manuscript first made him desperate and frightened, but gradually he realized that it had set him free from the pretenses and trappings of being an "officially acclaimed" writer, a status which had become familiar but which was becoming increasingly irrelevant.After the KGB had confiscated <mask>'s materials in Moscow, during 1965–67, the preparatory drafts of The Gulag Archipelago were turned into finished typescript in hiding at his friends' homes in Soviet Estonia. <mask> had befriended Arnold Susi, a lawyer and former Minister of Education of Estonia in a Lubyanka Building prison cell. After completion, <mask>'s original handwritten script was kept hidden

masks: Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts: from the KGB in Estonia by Arnold Susi's daughter Heli Susi until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1969, <mask> was expelled from the Union of Writers. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He could not receive the prize personally in Stockholm at that time, since he was afraid he would not be let back into the Soviet Union. Instead, it was suggested he should receive the prize in a special ceremony at the Swedish embassy in Moscow.The Swedish government refused to accept this solution because such a ceremony and the ensuing media coverage might upset the Soviet Union and damage Swedish-Soviet relations. Instead, <mask> received his prize at the 1974 ceremony after he had been expelled from the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago was composed from 1958 to 1967, and  has sold over thirty million copies in thirty-five languages. It was a three-volume, seven-part work on the Soviet prison camp system, which drew from <mask>'s experiences and the testimony of 256 former prisoners and <mask>'s own research into the history of the Russian penal system. It discusses the system's origins from the founding of the Communist regime, with Vladimir Lenin having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts such as the Kengir uprising, and the practice of internal exile. Soviet and Communist studies historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft wrote that the book was essentially a "literary and political work", and "never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective" but that in the case of


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts:
 qualitative estimates, <mask> gave his high estimate as he wanted to challenge the Soviet authorities to show that "the scale of the camps was less than this." Historian J. Arch Getty wrote of <mask>'s methodology that "such documentation is methodically unacceptable in other fields of history", which gives priority to vague hearsay and leads towards selective bias.According to journalist Anne Applebaum, who has made extensive research on the Gulag, The Gulag Archipelago'''s rich and varied authorial voice, its unique weaving together of personal testimony, philosophical analysis, and historical investigation, and its unrelenting indictment of Communist ideology made it one of the most influential books of the 20th century. On 8 August 1971, the KGB allegedly attempted to assassinate <mask> using an unknown chemical agent (most likely ricin) with an experimental gel-based delivery method. The attempt left him seriously ill but he survived. Although The Gulag Archipelago was not published in the Soviet Union, it was extensively criticized by the Party-controlled Soviet press. An editorial in Pravda on 14 January 1974 accused <mask> of supporting "Hitlerites" and making "excuses for the crimes of the Vlasovites and Bandera gangs." According to the editorial, Solzhenitsyn was "choking with pathological hatred for the country where he was born and grew up, for the socialist system, and for Soviet people." During this period, he was sheltered by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who suffered considerably for his support of <mask> and was eventually forced into exile himself.Expulsion from the Soviet Union

In a discussion of its options

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 in dealing with <mask> the members of the Politburo considered his arrest and imprisonment and his expulsion to a capitalist country willing to take him. Guided by KGB chief Yury Andropov, and following a statement from West German Chancellor Willy Brandt that <mask> could live and work freely in West Germany, it was decided to deport the writer directly to that country. In the West

On 12 February 1974, <mask> was arrested and deported the next day from the Soviet Union to Frankfurt, West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. The KGB had found the manuscript for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago. U.S. military attaché William Odom managed to smuggle out a large portion of Solzhenitsyn's archive, including the author's membership card for the Writers' Union and his Second World War military citations. <mask> paid tribute to Odom's role in his memoir Invisible Allies (1995). In West Germany, Solzhenitsyn lived in Heinrich Böll's house in .He then moved to Zürich, Switzerland before Stanford University invited him to stay in the United States to "facilitate your work, and to accommodate you and your family". He stayed at the Hoover Tower, part of the Hoover Institution, before moving to Cavendish, Vermont, in 1976. He was given an honorary literary degree from Harvard University in 1978 and on 8 June 1978 he gave a commencement address, condemning, among other things, the press, the lack of spirituality and traditional values, and the anthropocentrism of Western culture. On 19 September 1974, Yuri Andropov approved a large-scale operation to discredit <mask> and his family and cut his communications with Soviet


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texts: dissidents. The plan was jointly approved by Vladimir Kryuchkov, Philipp Bobkov, and Grigorenko (heads of First, Second and Fifth KGB Directorates). The residencies in Geneva, London, Paris, Rome and other European cities participated in the operation. Among other active measures, at least three StB agents became translators and secretaries of <mask> (one of them translated the poem Prussian Nights), keeping the KGB informed regarding all contacts by <mask>.The KGB also sponsored a series of hostile books about <mask>, most notably a "memoir published under the name of his first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, but probably mostly composed by Service", according to historian Christopher Andrew. Andropov also gave an order to create "an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion between Pauk and the people around him" by feeding him rumors that the people around him were KGB agents, and deceiving him at every opportunity. Among other things, he continually received envelopes with photographs of car crashes, brain surgery and other disturbing imagery. After the KGB harassment in Zürich, <mask> settled in Cavendish, Vermont, reduced communications with others. His influence and moral authority for the West diminished as he became increasingly isolated and critical of Western individualism. KGB and CPSU experts finally concluded that he alienated American listeners by his "reactionary views and intransigent criticism of the US way of life", so no further active measures would be required. Over the next 17 years, <mask> worked on his dramatized history of the Russian Revolution of 1917, The Red Wheel.By 1992, four sections had been completed and he


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

texts: had also written several shorter works. Despite spending almost two decades in the United States, <mask> did not become fluent in spoken English. He had, however, been reading English-language literature since his teens, encouraged by his mother. More importantly, he resented the idea of becoming a media star and of tempering his ideas or ways of talking in order to suit television. <mask>'s warnings about the dangers of Communist aggression and the weakening of the moral fiber of the West were generally well received in Western conservative circles (e.g. Ford administration staffers Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld advocated on Solzhenitsyn's behalf for him to speak directly to President Gerald Ford about the Soviet threat), prior to and alongside the tougher foreign policy pursued by US President Ronald Reagan. At the same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his reactionary preference for Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox religion.<mask> also harshly criticised what he saw as the ugliness and spiritual vapidity of the dominant pop culture of the modern West, including television and much of popular music: "...the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits... by TV stupor and by intolerable music." Despite his criticism of the "weakness" of the West, <mask> always made clear that he admired the political liberty which was one of the enduring strengths of Western democratic societies. In a major speech delivered to the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein on 14 September 1993, Solzhenitsyn implored the


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 West not to "lose sight of its own values, its historically unique stability of civic life under the rule of law—a hard-won stability which grants independence and space to every private citizen." In a series of writings, speeches, and interviews after his return to his native Russia in 1994, <mask> spoke about his admiration for the local self-government he had witnessed first hand in Switzerland and New England. "The Cavendish Farewell" in Ericson (2009) pp. 606–07 He "praised 'the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy, in which the local population solves most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decisions of higher authorities.'" <mask>'s patriotism was inward-looking.He called for Russia to "renounce all mad fantasies of foreign conquest and begin the peaceful long, long long period of recuperation," as he put it in a 1979 BBC interview with Latvian-born BBC journalist Janis Sapiets. Return to Russia

In 1990, his Soviet citizenship was restored, and, in 1994, he returned to Russia with his wife, Natalia, who had become a United States citizen. Their sons stayed behind in the United States (later, his eldest son Yermolai returned to Russia). From then until his death, he lived with his wife in a dacha in Troitse-Lykovo in west Moscow between the dachas once occupied by Soviet leaders Mikhail Suslov and Konstantin Chernenko. A staunch believer in traditional Russian culture, Solzhenitsyn expressed his disillusionment with post-Soviet Russia in works such as Rebuilding Russia, and called for the establishment of a strong presidential republic balanced by vigorous institutions of local self-government. The

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 latter would remain his major political theme. <mask> also published eight two-part short stories, a series of contemplative "miniatures" or prose poems, and a literary memoir on his years in the West The Grain Between the Millstones, translated and released as two works by the University of Notre Dame as part of the Kennan Institute's Solzhenitsyn Initiative.The first, Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile (1974–1978), was translated by Peter Constantine and published in October 2018, the second, Book 2: Exile in America (1978–1994) translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore and published in October 2020. Once back in Russia Solzhenitsyn hosted a television talk show program. Its eventual format was <mask> delivering a 15-minute monologue twice a month; it was discontinued in 1995. <mask> became a supporter of Vladimir Putin, who said he shared <mask>'s critical view towards the Russian Revolution. All of <mask>'s sons became U.S. citizens. One, Ignat, is a pianist and conductor. Another Solzhenitsyn son, Yermolai, works for the Moscow office of McKinsey & Company, a management consultancy firm, where he is a senior partner.Death

<mask> died of heart failure near Moscow on 3 August 2008, at the age of 89. A burial service was held at Donskoy Monastery, Moscow, on 6 August 2008. He was buried the same day in the monastery, in a spot he had chosen. Russian and world leaders paid tribute to <mask> following his death. Views on history and politics

 On Christianity, Tsarism, and Russian nationalism
According to William Harrison, <mask> was an "arch-reactionary", who argued that the Soviet State "suppressed" traditional

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texts: Russian and Ukrainian culture, called for the creation of a united Slavic state encompassing Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and who was a fierce opponent of Ukrainian independence. Harrison also alleged that <mask> held Pan-Slavist and monarchist views. According to Harrison, "His historical writing is imbued with a hankering after an idealized Tsarist era when, seemingly, everything was rosy.He sought refuge in a dreamy past, where, he believed, a united Slavic state (the Russian empire) built on Orthodox foundations had provided an ideological alternative to western individualistic liberalism." In his writings and speeches, <mask>, however, has sharply criticized the policies of every Tsar from the House of Romanov. A persistent theme in his criticism has been that the Romanovs preferred, like Nicholas I during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, to intervene in the internal affairs of foreign countries while governing badly at home. <mask> has also repeatedly denounced Tsar Alexis of Russia and Patriarch Nikon of Moscow for causing the Great Schism of 1666, which Solzhenitsyn says both divided and weakened the Russian Orthodox Church at a time when unity was desperately needed. Solzhenitsyn also attacked both the Tsar and the Patriarch for using excommunication, Siberian exile, imprisonment, torture, and even burning at the stake against the Old Believers, who rejected the liturgical changes which caused the Schism. <mask> has also argued that the Dechristianization of Russian culture, which he considers most responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution, began in 1666, became much worse during the Reign of Tsar Peter the Great, and


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texts: accelerated into an epidemic during The Enlightenment, the Romantic era, and the Silver Age. Expanding upon this theme, <mask> once declared, "Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.'" In an interview with Joseph Pearce, however, <mask> commented, "[The Old Believers were] treated amazingly unjustly, because some very insignificant, trifling differences in ritual which were promoted with poor judgment and without much sound basis. Because of these small differences, they were persecuted in very many cruel ways, they were suppressed, they were exiled. From the perspective of historical justice, I sympathise with them and I am on their side, but this in no way ties in with what I have just said about the fact that religion in order to keep up with mankind must adapt its forms toward modern culture. In other words, do I agree with the Old Believers that religion should freeze and not move at all? Not


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 at all!"When asked by Pearce for his opinions about the division within the Roman Catholic Church over the Second Vatican Council and the Mass of Paul VI, <mask> replied, "A question peculiar to the Russian Orthodox Church is, should we continue to use Old Church Slavonic, or should we start to introduce more of the contemporary Russian language into the service? I understand the fears of both those in the Orthodox and in the Catholic Church, the wariness, the hesitation, and the fear that this is lowering the Church to the modern condition, the modern surroundings. I understand this, but alas, I fear that if religion does not allow itself to change, it will be impossible to return the world to religion because the world is incapable on its own of rising as high as the old demands of religion. Religion needs to come and meet it somewhat." Surprised to hear <mask>, "so often perceived as an arch-traditionalist, apparently coming down on the side of the reformers", Pearce then asked Solzhenitsyn what he thought of the division caused within the Anglican Communion by the decision to ordain female priests. Solzhenitsyn replied, "Certainly there are many firm boundaries that should not be changed. When I speak of some sort of correlation between the cultural norms of the present, it is really only a small part of the whole thing."<mask> then added, "Certainly, I do not believe that women priests is the way to go!" On Russia and the Jews

OGPU officer Naftaly Frenkel, whom Solzhenitsyn identified as "a Turkish Jew born in Constantinople", is represented as having played a major role in the organisation of work in the Gulag. <mask> claimed


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texts: that Frenkel was the "nerve of the Archipelago". In his 1974 essay "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations", Solzhenitsyn urged "Russian Gentiles" and Jews alike to take moral responsibility for the "renegades" from both communities who enthusiastically embraced atheism and Marxism–Leninism and participated in the Red Terror and many other acts of torture and mass murder following the October Revolution. Solzhenitsyn argued that both Russian Gentiles and Jews should be prepared to treat the atrocities committed by Jewish and Gentile Bolsheviks as though they were the acts of their own family members, before their consciences and before God. Solzhenitsyn said that if we deny all responsibility for the crimes of our national kin, "the very concept of a people loses all meaning." In a review of <mask>'s novel August 1914 in The New York Times on 13 November 1985, Jewish American historian Richard Pipes wrote: "Every culture has its own brand of anti-Semitism.In <mask>'s case, it's not racial. It has nothing to do with blood. He's certainly not a racist; the question is fundamentally religious and cultural. He bears some resemblance to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was a fervent Christian and patriot and a rabid anti-Semite. <mask> is unquestionably in the grip of the Russian extreme right's view of the Revolution, which is that it was the doing of the Jews". Award-winning Jewish novelist and the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel disagreed and wrote that Solzhenitsyn was "too intelligent, too honest, too courageous, too great a writer" to be an anti-Semite. In his 1998 book Russia in Collapse, Solzhenitsyn criticized the Russian


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 far-right's obsession with anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theories.In 2001, <mask> published a two-volume work on the history of Russian-Jewish relations (Two Hundred Years Together 2001, 2002). The book triggered renewed accusations of anti-Semitism. In the book, he repeated his call for Russian Gentiles and Jews to share responsibility for everything that happened in the Soviet Union. He also downplayed the number of victims of an 1882 pogrom despite current evidence, and failed to mention the infamous Beilis affair, a 1911 trial in Kiev where a Jew was accused of ritually murdering Christian children. He was also criticized for relying on outdated scholarship, ignoring current western scholarship, and for selectively quoting to strengthen his preconceptions, such as that the Jews were often treated better than non-Jewish Russians during the Soviet Union. Similarities between Two Hundred Years Together and an anti-Semitic essay titled "Jews in the USSR and in the Future Russia", attributed to Solzhenitsyn, have led to the inference that he stands behind the anti-Semitic passages. <mask> himself explained that the essay consists of manuscripts stolen from him by the KGB, and then carefully edited to appear anti-Semitic, before being published, forty years before, without his consent.Cathy Young: Reply to Daniel J. Mahoney in Reason Magazine, August–September 2004.According to the historian Semyon Reznik, textological analyses have proven <mask>'s authorship. Criticism of communism

<mask> emphasized the significantly more oppressive character of the Soviet police state, in comparison to the Russian Empire of the House of


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texts: Romanov. He asserted that Imperial Russia did not censor literature or the media to the extreme style of the Soviet Glavlit, that political prisoners typically were not forced into labor camps, and that the number of political prisoners and exiles was only one ten-thousandth of the numbers of prisoners and Exiles following the Bolshevik Revolution. He noted that the Tsar's secret police, the Okhrana, was only present in the three largest cities, and not at all in the Imperial Russian Army. Shortly before his return to Russia, <mask> delivered a speech in Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Vendée Uprising. During his speech, <mask> compared Lenin's Bolsheviks with the Jacobin Club during the French Revolution. He also compared the Vendean rebels with the Russian, Ukrainian, and Cossack peasants who rebelled against the Bolsheviks, saying that both were destroyed mercilessly by revolutionary despotism.He commented that, while the French Reign of Terror ended with the Thermidorian reaction and the toppling of the Jacobins and the execution of Maximilien Robespierre, its Soviet equivalent continued to accelerate until the Khrushchev thaw of the 1950s. According to <mask>, Russians were not the ruling nation in the Soviet Union. He believed that all the traditional culture of all ethnic groups were equally oppressed in favor of atheism and Marxist–Leninism. Russian culture was even more repressed than any other culture in the Soviet Union, since the regime was more afraid of ethnic uprisings among Russian Christians than among any other ethnicity. Therefore, <mask> argued, Russian nationalism and the Russian


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texts: Orthodox Church should not be regarded as a threat by the West but rather as allies. Solzhenitsyn made a speaking tour after Francisco Franco's death, and "told liberals not to push too hard for changes because Spain had more freedoms now than the Soviet Union had ever known." As reported by The New York Times, he "blamed Communism for the death of 110 million Russians and derided those in Spain who complained of dictatorship."<mask> recalled: "I had to explain to the people of Spain in the most concise possible terms what it meant to have been subjugated by an ideology as we in the Soviet Union had been, and give the Spanish to understand what a terrible fate they escaped in 1939", a reference to the Spanish Civil War between the Nationalists and the Republicans, which was not a common view at that time among American diplomats. For Winston Lord, a protégé of the then United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, <mask> was "just about a fascist." According to Elisa Kriza, <mask> held "benevolent views" on Franco's dictatorship and Francoist Spain because it was a Christian one, and his Christian worldview operated ideologically. In The Little Grain Managed to Land Between Two Millstones, Franco's Spain is "held up as a model of a proper Christian response to the evil of Bolshevism." According to Peter Brooke, Solzhenitsyn approached the position argued by Christian Dmitri Panin, with whom he had a fell out in exile, namely that evil "must be confronted by force, and the centralised, spiritually independent Roman Catholic Church is better placed to do it than Orthodoxy with its otherworldliness and tradition of subservience to the


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 state." In "Rebuilding Russia", an essay first published in 1990 in Komsomolskaya Pravda, <mask> urged the Soviet Union to grant independence to all the non-Slav republics, which he claimed were sapping the Russian nation and he called for the creation of a new Slavic state bringing together Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Kazakhstan that he considered to be Russified. On post-Soviet Russia

In some of his later political writings, such as Rebuilding Russia (1990) and Russia in Collapse (1998), Solzhenitsyn criticized the oligarchic excesses of the new Russian democracy, while opposing any nostalgia for Soviet Communism.He defended moderate and self-critical patriotism (as opposed to extreme nationalism). He also urged for local self-government similar to what he had seen in New England town meetings and in the cantons of Switzerland. He also expressed concern for the fate of the 25 million ethnic Russians in the "near abroad" of the former Soviet Union. In an interview with Joseph Pearce, <mask> was asked whether he felt that the socioeconomic theories of E.F. Schumacher were, "the key to society rediscovering its sanity". He replied, "I do believe that it would be the key, but I don't think this will happen, because people succumb to fashion, and they suffer from inertia and it is hard to them to come round to a different point of view." <mask> refused to accept Russia's highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, in 1998. Solzhenitsyn later said: "In 1998, it was the country's low point, with people in misery; ... Yeltsin decreed I be honored the highest state order.I replied that I was unable to receive an award from a


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 government that had led Russia into such dire straits." In a 2003 interview with Joseph Pearce, <mask> said: "We are exiting from communism in a most unfortunate and awkward way. It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed." In a 2007 interview with Der Spiegel, <mask> expressed disappointment that the "conflation of 'Soviet' and 'Russian'", against which he spoke so often in the 1970s, had not passed away in the West, in the ex-socialist countries, or in the former Soviet republics. He commented, "The elder political generation in communist countries is not ready for repentance, while the new generation is only too happy to voice grievances and level accusations, with present-day Moscow [as] a convenient target. They behave as if they heroically liberated themselves and lead a new life now, while Moscow has remained communist. Nevertheless, I dare [to] hope that this unhealthy phase will soon be over, that all the peoples who have lived through communism will understand that communism is to blame for the bitter pages of their history."On 20 September 2000, <mask> met newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2008, <mask> praised Putin, saying Russia was rediscovering what it meant to be Russian. <mask> also praised the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev as a "nice young man" who was capable of taking on the challenges Russia was facing. Criticism of the West

Once in the United States, <mask> sharply criticized the West. Solzhenitsyn criticized the Allies for not opening a new front against Nazi Germany in the west earlier in World War II. This resulted in Soviet


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texts: domination and control of the nations of Eastern Europe. <mask> claimed the Western democracies apparently cared little about how many died in the East, as long as they could end the war quickly and painlessly for themselves in the West.Delivering the commencement address at Harvard University in 1978, he called the United States "Dechristianized" and mired in boorish consumerism. The American people, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were also suffering from a "decline in courage" and a "lack of manliness." Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He also condemned the 1960s counterculture for forcing the United States federal government to accept a "hasty" capitulation in the Vietnam War. In a reference to the Communist governments in Southeast Asia's use of re-education camps, politicide, human rights abuses, and genocide following the Fall of Saigon, Solzhenitsyn said: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?" He also accused the Western news media of left-wing bias, of violating the privacy of celebrities, and of filling up the "immortal souls" of their readers with celebrity gossip and other "vain talk".He also said that the West erred in thinking that the whole world should embrace this as model. While faulting Soviet society for rejecting basic human rights and the rule of law, he also critiqued the West for being too legalistic: "A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches


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 any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities." <mask> also argued that the West erred in "denying [Russian culture's] autonomous character and therefore never understood it". <mask> criticized the 2003 invasion of Iraq and accused the United States of the "occupation" of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. <mask> was critical of NATO's eastward expansion towards Russia's borders. In 2006, <mask> accused NATO of trying to bring Russia under its control; he claimed this was visible because of its "ideological support for the 'colour revolutions' and the paradoxical forcing of North Atlantic interests on Central Asia". In a 2006 interview with Der Spiegel he stated "This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border.At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc." On the Holodomor
<mask> gave a speech to AFL–CIO in Washington, D.C., on 30 June 1975 in which he mentioned how the system created by the Bolsheviks in 1917 caused dozens of problems in the Soviet Union. He described how this system was responsible for the Holodomor: "It was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing 6 million people to die in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933." <mask> added, "they died on the very edge of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it. The world didn't even notice it—6 million people!" Shortly before his death, <mask> opined in an interview published 2 April 2008 in