Let's read some Solzhenitsyn on sycophancy

[struggle4progress]

... A district party conference was underway … presided over by a new secretary … replacing one recently arrested. At the conclusion … a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for, Of course, everyone stood up … The small hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising to an ovation.” For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause, rising to an ovation,” continued … It was becoming insufferably silly … However, who would dare to be the first to stop? The Secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it … But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who had been arrested. He was afraid … And in that small obscure hall … the applause went on —- six, seven, eight minutes. The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium … applauding. Nine minutes! Ten! … With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding til they fell … Then after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a business like expression and sat down …To a man, everyone else stopped … and sat … That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he signed … the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding” ...

A. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago

[JoseBalow]

1. One of my favorite excerpts from that book

[Janbdwl72]

3. I read that book many years ago as a college student

It was some very scholarly and academic reading.

But Solzhenitsyn makes an excellent point there.

[Timeflyer]

4. Thanks for the reminder--time to reread Gulag Archipelago.

That line, "don't ever be the first to stop applauding,"---perfect.

[tanyev]

5. I can just hear Trump bragging about something like that:

Thirty-two minutes! They kept applauding and cheering for me for thirty-two minutes! Can you believe it? Nobody’s ever gotten that kind of applause—especially not Taylor Swift!

[Prairie Gates]

6. Cool story, Aleksandr