Finding God in the Gulag

In college, I borrowed a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s famous work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, from the BYU library, and read it.  This was remarkable on two counts.  First, this was not assigned reading for a class; it was of my own free will and choice.  Second, it was fascinating!  It was an engrossing story that pulled the reader in.  I could easily imagine myself right there alongside the title character freezing to death in a work brigade and dealing with the guards and fellow inmates in the barracks.  It brought to life the horrid conditions of Soviet labor camps, something that the world hasn’t entirely gotten away from yet.  It was something I found interesting enough to want to know more about.

Finding God in the Gulag: A History of Christianity in the Soviet Penal System by Jeffrey S. Hardy (ISBN: 978-0-19-775167-1) is a book that gives readers a chance to know more about life in the Gulag.  Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s based-on-a-true-story novel, this book is an academic look at Christianity in the Soviet camps from the earliest days under Lenin to the dying days of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev with a little post-script about a few things in the post-Soviet times.  It catalogs both attempts by inmates to life and express their religions and attempts by the prison management to suppress religion.  It was interesting to note that efforts to extinguish religion in prisoners was not uniform in the Soviet Union.  It was more lax in some camps than in others.  There wasn’t always a central policy that camp managers could look to, so they did it their own way.  Sometimes that meant believers were beaten and spent time in solitary confinement.  Sometimes that meant a Christian guard did nothing when a prisoner prayed or sang a hymn or made an icon.  There was a short section on faith among thieves and other such common criminals, including a few paragraphs about the fascinating world of Russian prison tattoos.  The book also catalogs people losing their faith, which was unsurprising, and one that is not judged neither by the author nor by most prisoners who are cited in the book.  They tended to believe the camps were inhumane and that one should not be judged too harshly or even at all for what they did in the camps.  There was also a little proselyting that happened in the labor camps.  This was especially true of Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but Orthodox and Catholic priests also preached and even baptized people.  Toward the end of the Soviet regime, religion was sometimes encouraged because it generally had a good influence on prisoners and mediated their violent behavior.

The book was an interesting read and would be interesting to people interested in Russian or Soviet history or religion.  It only briefly discussed non-Christian religions, which are major players in Russia, but either weren’t the focus of the book or weren’t such a concern in the Gulag.  I did think the book was slightly disorganized and it felt like the narrative jumped around a lot, but I am not sure how I would’ve better organized it.  I thought the stories about people finding faith and maintaining faith despite great psychological and physical pressure were inspiring.  People sacrificed a lot to maintain their belief in God and to live it according to their conscience.  It’s worth looking to many of these people as examples of standing up for what’s right no matter the consequences.

   

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He Walked the Americas

I remember hearing a story from my grandpa as a young kid about some Indian tribe that believed their ancestors had contact with a great white god and how some people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believed that could easily be explained by Jesus’s visit to the Nephites after His resurrection.  Later, I learned that such legends were likely more widespread and that the natives at the time of the Spanish Conquest may have been influenced by these beliefs to think that the arrival of the white conquerors was a second coming of Christ, the great Queztalcoatl.  I was reminded of those old stories more recently when a Native American man who was also a member of the Church made the rounds on Church-related podcasts and said that when he went through the temple, he found a lot of similarities to his lodge ceremonies.  I don’t know how much these various stories have been convoluted with Mormon culture, but they always seemed interesting to me, and it seemed like there could be at least some truth to them.  

He Walked the Americas: The Trail of the Prophet by L. Taylor Hansen (ISBN: 978-1-939149-19-0) is a compilation of stories from North and South American Indians that relate to a so-called white or pale prophet.  The stories tell about the arrival of the prophet, his activities, and then his departure.  The legends describe the man, usually as wearing white garments (most often with small crosses on the hem), having brown hair, usually a beard, wearing sandals, and usually with cross-shaped marks in his hands.  Sometimes he was accompanied by other white men.  Other times he organized churches, established temples, and called people to continue his teachings after his departure.  The arrival is usually on a ship in the legends, but one of the stories recorded by the author noted that the mysterious white prophet’s ministry started with his appearance at the temple.  The man’s activities while visiting the ancient Indians included preaching peace, ending human sacrifice, healing sick and otherwise afflicted people, and controlling the wind and water.  The last two were kind of important in the legends because this god was often referred to as the feathered serpent.  Wind was often represented by feathers and the water by the snake.  The organization of churches, usually with twelve men called to be leaders and teachers, and the establishing of temples was the other main activity of this white prophet in the legends.  The stories then tell of his departure, usually with the people mourning his leaving and eventually forgetting his teachings and reverting to war and human sacrifice.

I thought the book was very interesting.  Hansen simply compiled the stories and lets the reader judge for himself what to think.  If someone is well acquainted with Mormon theology, the most likely candidate for the great white prophet is Jesus after His resurrection.  The legends allow for a few other Book of Mormon-related possibilities, too.  Many of the legends involve the white prophet’s arrival via boat.  Both the Jaredites and the Nephites arrived by sea and brought with them seeds, which was also in the legends.  Some have claimed the legends, especially in North America are the result of Moroni’s travels before finally depositing the plates in the Hill Cumorah.  There’s no real way to know since the stories are clouded by time (admitted by the compiler and by some of the Indians relating the legends), but the similarities are fascinating and with so many from such a disparate set of sources, there is also no real reason to discount them all.  Knowing the Book of Mormon is true comes through study and prayer, but anthropological evidence for it like this is always nice to have once the spiritual testimony has been gained.

   

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The Anxious Generation

Anxiety wasn’t a thing I grew up with.  I heard about it only in the context of someone being worried before giving a talk in church or performing at a piano recital or something like that.  That was dealt with by simply standing up in front of the congregation and doing one’s best.  Much later, while serving as a young men’s advisor in the ward (congregation) where we were living, I encountered anxiety again, this time as it is known in the modern world, a mental condition.  I honestly had no idea how to deal with it, and I think the other leaders and I mostly didn’t.  If the kid didn’t want to do something, that was fine.  It didn’t bother us.  Since that, which is already fifteen years or so in my rear view mirror, anxiety has only become a bigger thing in society.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-593-65503-0) explores why anxiety and other so-called mental health problems have exploded over the last fifteen years.  The author believes that most of the blame lies with smart phones.  He doesn’t deny that there are good things about smart phones, but he points out that because they allow unfettered access to the Internet and social media in particular, children and teenagers who spend time on the Internet lose out on formative experiences that steel them against anxiety and other mental problems while increasing their likelihood of being negatively affected.  Haidt first argues that children need to be exposed to a certain level of risk while they are young to attune the body’s natural response to risk.  Throughout history, kids have generally done this by playing outside with other kids, usually unsupervised.  A culture of safetyism (eliminating all risks even when the positives of some risk are considered) encourages — in some places, usually more liberal places, forces — parents to keep their kids indoors and only let them out when they or other adults can supervise.  This tends to make kids view the world around them as a large and constant threat.  The perception of a constant threat is just what so-called clinical anxiety is.  Additionally, without being exposed to little risks (the risk of falling off a swing or the risk of being rejected by a peer) that come with interacting with others while outdoors conditions kids to be comfortable only when there is no risk.  The second half of Haidt’s argument is that social media exasperates these feelings in most people.  Social media generally presents only the good side of things, which is something people on it then worry about it.  It is also designed to be addictive (people experience hormone-induced positive sensations when their posts are liked, for example), so it’s a cycle of doom where people endlessly scroll, looking at the supposedly perfect lives of those around them while the post themselves, hoping to feel the dopamine-caused high of the next like or comment.  If those are few and far between, the anticipation of the next like keeps people scrolling, all the while increasing negative feelings toward oneself.  Haidt notes that girls are particularly prone to this type of activity.  Boys are also negatively affected by constant time online.  They are less likely to be anxious about social media, but video games and pornography easily engage the young male mind, pulling them away from reality.  Since it’s relatively easy to exist in a world where you don’t have to engage in real-world situations that may have negative consequences, boys withdraw into these virtual worlds and try to not emerge.  The book ends with some ideas on how to overcome the problems caused by smart phones.  He has ideas for governments and for individuals, led by eliminating smart phone exposure for those under fourteen and limiting it for those over, both in school (complete bans on smart phones at schools are his preferred option) and at home.  He also advocates letting kids get out and play and do other things on their own, like run simple errands, do chores around the house, and other things that are relatively safe, but still have distinct negative consequences for not accomplishing them.

I liked the book.  I may have had a preconceived bias since I find most of what kids do on cell phones to be a waste of time (although, I, like the author, see that there are some good things).  However, I went into my reading not knowing about the reasons behind the market change in kids’ behavior over the last fifteen years or so.  There are lots of things that people can do by opening their eyes and seeing what is going on, and I think the negative trend when it comes to things like resiliency, critical thinking, and mental fortitude in young people is obvious, but a book like provides all kind of solid charts, graphs, and analysis of that.  I always like having the data behind the things I see and believe.  I also thought the prescriptive section of the book was a little stronger than most are.  Usually that is the weakest section in these types of books, but here I thought the author provided some relatively realistic suggestions for both governments and individuals.  I also liked that they were more concrete than those of most authors.  That might be because the data was so straightforward.  If it’s painfully obvious that teens under 16 are hurt by exposure to social media, it’s pretty easy to say parents should do all they can to keep kids off social media.  If all the data says kids do better at school when they have to set their phones aside for the entire school day, it’s not hard to recommend that schools ban cell phone entirely (not just during class).  I thought all the policy and parenting prescriptions were solid.  If you want to understand why the youth of today don’t seem to measure up to what you remember, this is a great read, especially because it provides some realistic suggestions to help not only kids, but also adults improve their quality of life and make them more resilient, forward-thinking people.

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Verrat verjährt nicht

As a kid, the world was bipolar when it came to international relations.  There was the free and capitalist West, led by the United States, and the Communists, led by the Soviet Union.  One of the great tragedies of that division, from my standpoint, was the fact that there were split countries like North and South Korea and East and West Germany.  The German situation was especially interesting to me because of my German heritage.  I was aware of the plight of the people oppressed by communist systems.  Their lack of opportunity to express themselves, to freely assemble, to worship as they wished, and the lack of economic prosperity seemed very unnecessary to me.  The idea of an ever-present and all-knowing secret police was fear I was happy to be living without.

Verrat verjährt nicht: Lebensgeschichten aus einem einst geteilten Land (usually translated as Betrayal Never Dies: Life Stories from a Once Divided Land) by Christhard Läpple (ISBN: 978-3-492-25467-0) retells the stories of East Germans from a few different standpoints.  The author, after studying many accounts in the archives, chose a few that seemed extra compelling and reached out to people to see if they would be willing to tell their stories.  A few were, and they are recorded in this book.  There is a former Stasi spy; a regular guy who wasn’t part of any resistance movement, but still fought the regime; a woman who wrote fiction and hoped to have her views published in the West; and a brother and sister who ended up on opposite sides of the wall after she fled to the West and he stayed in the East.  Each chapter in the book tells the story of one of these members of East German society from their standpoint.  The spy told of his craft.  He worked in academia and reported on his colleagues and students.  He seemed to not feel much remorse for this.  The man who made several attempts on his own to flee and the authoress whose efforts to see her work published in the West seemed the most sympathetic.  They despised the system that suppressed the basic urges of all mankind to be free.  The story of the brother and sister was another one where the reader hopes for the storybook, happy ending, but it never comes.  The sister hated the East and got out when she could thanks to some human traffickers that it took her a while to extricate herself from once she got to the West.  The brother was a true believer in the East and remained so for quite some time.  The Stasi asked him to spy on her, which he did.  The author did not lay blame on anyone but the Communists running the awful system and just let the subjects tell their stories.  At the very end is a rather extensive timeline of events pertaining to East Germany, from its formation to its fall.

The book, available only in German (and I admit I spent a bit of time in the dictionary to get through it), was a very interesting read.  It had a raw and truthful feel.  Läpple let the subjects of his interviews do the speaking.  Their desperation, indifference, disgust, and yearning were tangible.  It was interesting to read about the pervasiveness of the security apparatus that spied so heavily on its own people.  It was obvious while reading, just as it was to 1980s me, that a system that requires so much overhead just to keep its own people in check is not a system that respects people and has clearly taken away their God-given rights.  I was surprised to learn that people weren’t always summarily shot for making attempts to get to the West.  The bravery and courage required to stand up the evil of communism are always inspiring, and this book provides a clear contrast between those who yearned for freedom and those who actively chose to suppress the freedom and potential of others.  I also found the timeline at the end of the book to be fascinating.  As a non-expert in East German history, there were a lot of events that were new to me.  It was also depressing to read about how few of the high-level Communists and security service officials were brought to any kind of justice in this world.  Most ended up serving either light or no sentences, including some who fled to Russia or South America.  The lack of culpability in high-level government officials seems to be an oft-repeated problem.

   

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The Freedom Line

Almost twenty years ago, I was able to visit the Netherlands, which was a lot of fun.  Like any fan of history, I made sure to visit the Anne Frank House, which is world-famous and on every tourist’s list, but was worth it, especially since her story had intrigued me since first learning about her when an exhibit came to the old Salt Palace in the 1980s.  Less well-known, or at least less well-known to me, is the Dutch Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum).  I wanted to visit it, too, and made time to go a little off the usual, well-worn touristy paths in Amsterdam to see this museum.  It was full of World War II artifacts and many stories of the Dutch Resistance efforts, big and small, that had fascinated me since first picking up a copy of the Winged Watchman as a kid.  What I remember most vividly from the museum is that the curators recognized that not everyone could be a hero, rescuing dozens or actively fighting the German occupiers.  Some people had to take more calculated risks and passing along a flyer was all that was in their power.  Those little thing often led to much bigger things, as little things tend to do.

The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis during World War II by Peter Eisner (ISBN: 0-06-009663-2) is a book largely about big things undertaken by people in Belgium, France, and Spain to do what they simply considered their part in fighting the Nazi regime.  The book tells the story of the Freedom Line, a group of people that moved downed Allied airmen from occupied territory to Spain, where they could link up with American or British diplomats and be safely taken home.  The Freedom Line was not a huge operation, with no more than a couple dozen figures aided by scores of friends and confidants, but was fairly effective and managed to smuggle between 650 and 700 Allied soldiers out of harm’s way.  While there were a few routes that escapees used, the main one was the Comet Line, run mainly by Dédée de Jongh, her father, Jean-François Nothomb, Florentino Goikoetxea, Kattalin Aguirre, and Elvire de Greef.  These Belgians, Frenchmen, and Basques worked together to rescue Allies troops from the invaders.  It was dangerous work, and many of the resistance members running the Comet Line ended up in prison, concentration camps, or dead, either executed by Germans or perishing along the treacherous smuggling routes through the Pyrenees Mountains.  They had a network of safe houses between Belgium and Spain, but there was always the chance traitors would infiltrate the line, and one notorious traitor — Jacques Desoubrie — did so, resulting in the deaths of many Allied airmen and the death or imprisonment of many resistance members.  The main figures running the Freedom Line preferred to control their own destiny despite British intelligence’s efforts to exert some control over the operation.  British assistance was welcomed, but not necessarily with open arms.  The book mainly follows the journey of a crew of Americans, piloted by Bob Grimes, shot down over Belgium from that fateful day to their eventual freedom.  That approach provides insight into how the line operated and who the main players were.  Sometimes, details from other escapees’ stories are included to complete the picture or provide fun anecdotes like the American pilot passionately kissed on a train by a woman he barely knew only as his guide from one safe house to the other in order to avoid having to show any papers to Nazi soldiers on the train.

The book was interesting and told a lot of good stories, providing what I thought was a rather complete picture of the Freedom Line.  I did think the focus on Bob Grimes’ crew possibly limited the scope, but it added a narrative element that helped the book flow in a story-like manner (something the modern history reader seems to expect).  The author’s wife is Basque, so the Basque players in the story get some extra focus, but that probably adds to the story instead of detracting since much of the effort would have been impossible were it not for truly heroic efforts by people like Florentino, making the trip through the Pyrenees hundreds of times with airmen and smuggled intelligence.  After reading a few pages of the book, I was reminded that I had once read a book called Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler across the Pyrenees, which chronicled the same people and effort; however, I thought the Freedom Line was a little more interesting than Cruel Crossing because it was pure history and not the combination of history and travelogue my earlier reading was.  What was the most powerful thing about the book was the usual selfless dedication shown by the resistance members who risked their lives and the lives of those around them simply because it was the right thing to do.  Many noted that they were simply doing what anyone would or should do and never wanted or expected to be rewarded for their efforts.  It is an example of duty and courage that all can learn from.  The book is worth a read to be inspired and to learn about the underground efforts to defy the Nazis, some small, some large, all of which contributed to the Allied victory.

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A Man Called Intrepid

World War II history has always fascinated me, although that fascination started more because of cool drawings of bombers, fighters, and half-tracks that I saw in a Richard Scarry book, Hop Aboard!  Here We Go!  Later, I saw the models that a couple of my uncles built, only deepening my interest in this conflict that directly impacted me via my grandparents, who lived through and fought in the war.  I still think the vehicles are a pretty cool part of the war, but the history of the people and places has grown on me since my childhood.  Since the scope of the war is so broad, there are many stories to tell.

A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible WWII Narrative of the Hero Whose Spy Network and Secret Diplomacy Changed the Course of History by William Stevenson (ISBN: 978-1-59921-170-1) is the story of Sir William Stephenson, whose code name was Intrepid, a Canadian who served as the head of British Security Coordination (BSC) during World War II, which coordinated most of the UK’s espionage efforts in the Atlantic Theater, particularly with the United States, including before the U.S. was officially involved in the war.  The book is long and full of all kinds of stories about things like Camp X, a training center in Canada for various clandestine operators (spies, saboteurs, guerillas, etc.), code breaking, honey pots, financial schemes, resistance efforts (including the Norwegian efforts described in more detail in the Winter Fortress), and even some more traditional spying.  Intrepid, in addition to being involved in intelligence activity, was also a diplomat.  His efforts were instrumental in securing U.S. and Canadian support for many of the efforts the UK was involved in.  He had access to the highest levels of government, including President Roosevelt.  He had to navigate inter-agency and inter-service battles, but did so largely successfully and got most of the support he needed from England’s allies, eventually leading, both directly and indirectly, to the Allied victory against the Germans.  Many historians figure that without the efforts of Intrepid, the war could have gone very differently, and the book lays out that case rather convincingly.  The book ends with an interesting discussion of how Intrepid would’ve preferred a more open society after the war even though clandestine activity helped the Allies secure victory.

I thought the book was very interesting and a good read.  It was published in 1976, so is slightly more academic in nature than modern mass-market history (a fact that I appreciate).  The intriguing information it contains hasn’t aged.  Some of the code breaking and diplomacy-related sections are a little dryer, but fit into a bigger picture of a man who was clearly talented and helped change the course of history.  The book doesn’t get into the philosophical or political implications of intelligence work until the very end.  Many of the stories in the book can be read about in their own books.  This doesn’t always have all the details, but it’s detailed enough in most instances to keep one’s attention and provide an informative read for those interested in the course of World War II.  It even has a couple dozen pages of pictures.

 

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The Coddling of the American Mind

Twenty to twenty-five years ago, my university experience presented me with a chance to learn about a variety of different subjects in both general education classes, electives, and my major classes.  I probably found the electives to be the most interesting.  In any case, some classes presented me with ideas that I disagreed with, usually from a political standpoint.  I don’t remember anyone on either side of an issue ever being bothered or offended that someone brought up a countering viewpoint or argument.  It actually seemed like it was expected.  It was also expected that people be able to back up their statements.  An introductory economics class was one that featured more intense discussion than most.  Some students were of a more socialist persuasion than the professor, and I found the discussions to be kind of interesting, as did others in the class.  Since then, it seems that most college students and many people have decided that, somehow, ideas and words are violence, and opposing viewpoints must not be argued and parlayed with facts and reason, but simply shouted down and suppressed.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-7352-2489-6) takes a look at how American children and young adults are being set up by the education system and modern parenting for what the authors believe is a more difficult path through life, maybe even often including failure.  They believe that there are three “great untruths” being fed to young people in modern America: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and life is a battle between good people and evil people.  They discuss what they term “safetyism,” meaning the idea that kids must be protected from every possible harm, both physical and psychological.  They note that there are many acceptable risks and that for someone to grow up mentally and physically strong, one must take risks.  Helicopter parenting and safetyism don’t allow for much, if any, risk-taking, thereby stunting development.  The authors reject the idea that feelings trump truth.  They believe that truth trumps feelings and that to arrive at the truth, one must be exposed to ideas that one might not necessarily agree with.  They’re not arguing for purposefully offending people, but have little patience of the concept of micro-aggressions, preferring to use cognitive techniques that tend to assume good intentions and a less adversarial view of the world.  That leads to their third point, in which they argue that the world is not good people against bad people.  There may be good and bad ideas, but that should be hashed out in a free exchange of ideas, and one should not assume that someone purveying what one believes to be a bad idea is a bad person.  After making their case, they suggest solutions to the problems.  Their solutions embrace free speech, personal responsibility in how one reacts to ideas one perceives as negative, and an education system and parenting milieu that encourages taking acceptable risks instead of avoiding all risk whatsoever. 

The book is an interesting one that lays out an idea that I found convincing, both in the description of the problem and in some of the suggested prescriptions.  The authors believe in limited social media for children (and adults, really), more chances for kids to be outside and exploring instead of inside behind a screen, and in letting them hash out minor differences without adult intervention.  In high school and college, the authors want students to exchange ideas and be exposed to various ideas.  They decry the fact that colleges in the U.S. are skewed strongly to the left among both the faculty and the student body.  They wonder how those individuals can ever expand their minds if they hear only things they agree with.  If the reader is a conservative, the book can present some cringy moments when the authors lay out their support for various liberal ideas, including some that most view as woke, but it only seems right that they present those views in a book that challenges ideas about how one thinks.

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