Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn: Alas, the Evil of the Twentieth Century Is Possible Everywhere on Earth
Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Russian novelist and historian.
[Scroll down for the English]
KISWAHILI
“Kama ingewezekana kwa taifa lolote kufahamu uzoefu wenye uchungu wa watu wengine kupitia kitabu…ni majanga na makosa mangapi lingeweza kuepuka. Lakini ni vigumu sana. Sikuzote kuna imani hii potofu: ‘Haingekuwa sawa hapa; hapa mambo kama hayo hayawezekani.’
"Ole, maovu yote ya karne ya ishirini yanawezekana kila mahali duniani."
- Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), mwandishi wa Kirusi na mwanahistoria.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
“If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people’s bitter experience through a book…how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.’
“Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
- Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Russian novelist and historian.
Chanzo (source): Solzhenitsyn, Alexander I. In his "Introduction to the Abridgement" of The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956—The Authorized Abridgement. HarperCollins, 1985, pages 22-23. Reissued in Harper Perennial Modern Classics with a Foreword by Anne Appelbaum, 2007. Digital edition, 2020. Kindle Edition. This work was originally published in three separate volumes in Russian in from 1973 to 1976, with English translations in 1974, 1975, and 1978 from Harper & Row Publishers.