Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its
evildoers and Russia is not. What kind
of dangerous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge
ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body? What, then, can Russia teach the world?[1]
-
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956.
Volume I (1973).
[1]
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag
Archipelago, 1918-1956. An Experiment in
Literary Investigation, Vol 1., tr. Thomas P. Whitney (Toronto: Fitzhenry
& Whiteside, 1973), p. 176.