By: Upal Deb

Upal Deb — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:54:40 +0000

Dissidence is a symptom of multivalence,a symbol of ideas jockeying for a space in the discourses which conveniently hide a fascist political agenda.True that Russia was never short of great writers.But many Soviet writers and poets used this dissidence in a garb of artistry.Take Akhmatova or Pasternak.But history witnessed the great Communist purging of writers or their prohibitive wares bearing testimony that any totalitarian regime fears literature which probes the ruling dispensation in a free-wheeling manner.Brecht might have noted the sentiment of dissidence in the clearest terms as he spelled out in horror that the Hitlerite titalitarianism dogged him for years and he had to change places as people change their sandals.Manash Bhattacharjee
deserves kudos for reminding us the horrid saga about Solzhenitsyn.In the dynamics of unipolarist world order,many of us have turned our back on the antics the Soviet communist regime unfurled in a way the fascists showed their regressive fangs.While the fascists are still in action,though in different garbs,the tribe of Solzhenitsyns is slowly becoming extinct.Writers are increasingly becoming parlour artists or crypto-humanists.The article offers us a welcome chance to perceive the dialectics of contemporary totalitarianist values and embers of dissidence which many of us have chosen to suavely gloss over.

Comments on: Saluting a Lone Survivor: Manash Bhattacharjee

By: Upal Deb