Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First of all I regard Alexandr I.Solzhenitsyn as one of the greatest writers in the last 100 years. He is Russia's modern day Tolstoy. I first read his book The Gulag Archipalego when I was 17 in the summer of 1973 between high school and my freshman year at Vanderbilt. It was an astounding book......a chronology of how an evil stalinist state could subject its people to a slow death prison society that had virtually no mercy. It read well because of Solzhenitsyn's style of writing which is sort of a sarcastic humor which allows you to tolerate an endless rendition of innocent people sent to the gulags in the severe cold of Siberia which was tantamont to a slow death sentence. The only way to survive in the severe conditions under unimaginable conditions was to obtain a role in that hell that did not involve hard labor such as in the kitchen, administration or in the hospital. Anything else was a death sentence. The Gulag Archipalego is now required reading for all Russian high school students. Quite an accolade along with winning the Nobel Prize for literature in the 1970's. So why do we not have an english translation from Russia's great writer on this book ? This makes no sense. When I ordered the book Two Hundred Years Together two years ago I received the books from Amazon and it was all in Russian. I was very disappointed but being an Chief Aerospace Engineer I am used to overcoming challenges. I was unable to read Russian version but I contacted some of my friends with my challenge and one of them adviced me to go to web site with a partial english translation. I was somewhat baffled that one of the world's greatest writers would have his book not translated from Russian to English and upon seeing the English translation I am convinced I saw a reason. The English translation was only 60 % complete when I downloaded it to my hard drive. After I downloaded this english translation to my hard drive I started reading what the author said about the history of the Jews and Russian people together for the last 200 years. The Jews became a part of the Russian empire for the first time when Catherine the Great in the late 18th centuary forced Poland to relinquish part of their country to Russia. The Jews because of their different beliefs and language differences were relegated to the Pale of the Settlement. There was friction between the Russians and the Jews especially in the area of landlording and usery. Later in the early 20th centuary it does appear that there was disproportionate amount of leadership that was jewish in the communist top echelons in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Winston Churchill mentions this in 1920 in an article written in one of the main english newspapers when he supported the efforts and funding the white counter-revolutionaries in the russian civil war. Lenin in Solzhenitsy's book is listed as jewish along with of course Trotsky. It also appears that many of the commisars in the communist revolution were disproportionately jewish. Since the jews were only 4 % of the Russian population out of 180 M this was obvious to many during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1923 because the jews spoke Russian often with a yiddish accent and this gained noticed. Also in general terms jewish and russian facial and hair features (russians tend to be blond) and mannerism are different as you would expect from two different cultures. It appears the the "Reds" attracted the jews and the communist revolutionaries were able to trust the jews for key roles such as the execution of the Czar and his familiy. The White Russians under Denekin and Kolchak fighting the Reds or communists were very cognizant of this issue and made much of the disproportion jewish leadership and especially Trotsky in leadership roles of the communist leadership in that savage struggle where many innocents were murdered. Trotsky is displayed in propoganda posters as an evil red devil caricature to emphasize the alien nature of this communist conquest. The purpose of this famous propoganda poster is to sway the masses that this jew is an outsider and hence an alien menance leading a red russian revolutionary movement. Of course Trosky got his reward in 1939 in Mexico with an ice pick to the brain from an assassin authorized by Stalin. So Trotsky got his reward for killing millions of innocents. Crime does not pay for communist revolutionaries. Today in present day Russia there are only about 200,000 Jews remaining whereas in 1917 there were about 7 M. Hence we have the title of Solzhenitsyn's book. Everything that Solzhenitsyn writes is this book is well documented and footnoted. It appears to be extremely well researched. Perhaps by making books hard to obtain we are more likely to read them.