A Socialist "third way" was Jawaharlal Nehru's plan for India, which remained in place pretty much until 1991, when liberal economic policies were introduced. With Indira Gandhi as the prime minister during most of my years in India, and with my father deeply committed to Nehru and I. Gandhi, and with political leaders and intellectuals--pseudo and real--constantly praising the USSR, for the longest time I was an avid proponent of Socialism, including the Soviet and Chinese flavors.
And then somewhere in my mid-to late teens I read three books, which I am not sure if I really understood them at that time. George Orwell's 1984, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Solzhenitsyn 's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A few years after that, I got to watch the movie version of 1984 at the British Consulate in Madras. The pot had been stirred enough. The old facades were rapidly collapsing within me, and the world started becoming clearer and clearer. To this day my parents wonder how I changed my mind and took off to America--after all, I was not a big fan of the US when I was young. I don't think they know how much Solzhenitsyn, among others, played a role.
It is not that I am a rah rah fan of America. Of all the imperfect societies that exist, I am convinced that I will gladly take the US over others. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, I do not ever consider myself to be in exile in America from any country. I suppose he was too much in poetic love with Russia for him that any soil other than Russian was only a temporary lodging. His jingoistic feelings for Russia rubbed many, including me, the wrong way, more so when he casually put down the feelings of non-Russians. And, the philosopher he was, Solzhenitsyn ought to have known that poetic love is idealized way too much that real life then is a failure. Well, he returned to Russia, only to be shocked at how impoverished the country was.
But, thanks to Solzhenitsyn, even if now I don't recall any of the specifics from The Gulag Archipelago. So, hey, thanks.
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