'UNDERSTANDING SOLZHENITSYN,' BY ABRAHAM BRUMBERG. THE NEW LEADER, 27 MAY 1974. 'THE REAL SOLZHENITSYN,' BY JERI LABER. COMMENTARY, MAY 1974.

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• Publication Date: June 1, 1974
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Between Issues
WE Go about planning our semiannual book issues in
fairly standard fashion-checking the publishers' catalogues
and Publishers Weekly for books about to come out that
seem worthy of particular attention; trying to match up
the best possible reviewers; striving (generally in vain) to
achieve some kind of balance between fiction and nonfic-
tion. Our initial list of potential candidates for inclusion
each time around runs to 150 titles, of which we actually
arrange to have roughly 25 reviewed. In the end, space
limitations usually prevent us from taking up more than
15-20 books, and most often these include one or two
we could not know about when the planning began. So
the whole process involves less personal preference or
plotting or even predictability than some want to believe.
And frequently, as we are about to put such a book num-
ber to bed, we ourselves are struck by some aspects of its
contents.
We had no inkling until the man in the White House
took to the tube last April 29, for example, that the
runaway bestseller of 1974 would be making its initial
appearance the next day under the unlikely imprimatur of
the Government Printing Office, with the hardly catchy
title, Submission of Recorded Presidential Conversations
to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Rep-
resentatives by President Richard Nixon. The unexpected
event prompted a phone call to a veteran NL contributor
who is widely regarded as one of the most knowledgeable
Watergate specialists in the Washington press corps, Daniel
Schorr of CBS News. Hence the singular analysis of the
White House transcripts leading off our regular reviews.
Less surprising perhaps, but nevertheless interesting to
us, is the fact that five of the writers whose works are dis-
cussed in this survey of major spring publications have
been among our contributors over the years: James
Baldwin and Albert Murray, the subjects of Pearl K.
Bell's unflinching opening essay, virtually began their writ-
ing careers here; ditto Diane Ravitch, a former staff mem-
ber now specializing in education who is the author of
The Great School Wars: New York City 1805-1973; while
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose eloquent Letter to the
Soviet Leaders receives the careful scrutiny it deserves in
Abraham Brumberg's essay, was first published in this
country in these pages; and most recently Stanley Hoff-
mann, whose new book is Decline or Renewal? France
Since the 1930s, wrote our cover article, "The Incom-
patible Allies" (NL, April 1).
We could go on citing other curiosities, but you will
surely note them yourself. More important, we trust you
will find what follows engaging in every sense of that
word.
THE NEW LEADER: Published biweekly-except twice in July and once
in August-by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs.
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right ? 1974 by the American Labor Conference on International Af-
fairs, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction In whole or in part without
written permission prohibited.
le
VOLUME LVII, NUMBER 11
MAY 27, 1974
Blacks and the Blues/PEARL K. BELL .................... 3
The Tapes as Literature/DANIEL SCHORR ................ 6
Slavery in a New Light/DAVID ROTHMAN ................ 7
Understanding Solzhenitsyn/ABRAHAM BRUMBERG.... 10
The Limits of Stalemate Politics/MARK KESSELMAN..14
The Manuals Never Tell All You Need to Know/
DUDLEY FLAMM ........................................................15
Fragments Against the Day of Ruin/
KINGSLEY SHORTER ....................................................18
Fair Game/WALTER GOODMAN ................................19
Social Pressures and Public Education/
SEYMOUR P. LACHMAN ..............................................21
Revising the Checks and Balances/HENRY F. GRAFF..22
The Very Private Jefferson/RICHARD B. MORRIS ........24
On Art/VIVIEN RAYNOR ............................................26
Executive Editor: MYRON KOLATCH
Associate Editor: CHARLES CREESY
Assistant Editor: BARRY GEWEN
Assistant to the Editor: JOSEPHINE P. MEGRATH
Art Director: Herb Lubalin. Regular Critics-Literature:
Pearl K. Bell; Kingsley Shorter, Isa Kapp. Film: John Simon.
Television: Marvin Kitman. Art: James R. Mellow.
Regular Contributors-Daniel Bell, Theodore Draper,
Milton R. Konvitz, Irving Kristol, Robert Lekachman,
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UNDERSTANDING
SOLZHENITSYN
BY ABRAHAM BRUMBERG
CPYRGHT
WHEN EXCERPTS from
Aleksandr Solzhenit-
syn's 15,000-word
Letter to the Soviet Leaders first
appeared in the Western press, it
looked-least to those who had not
followed his work, fiction and non-
fiction-as though the Nobel lau-
reate had finally decided to shed
the writer's mantle for that of the
prophet. And in the process he, like
so many of his predecessors, seemed
to be embracing sundry obscuran-
tist Slavophile attitudes, including
contempt for the "decadent West,"
an admiration for the pristine vir-
tues of pre-Peter-the-Great Russia,
and an ardent belief in the superi-
ority of. the Russian Orthodox
Church.
With their penchant for icono-
clasm, American newsmen quickly
seized upon the Letter as evidence
that Solzhcnitsyn is an "isolationist"
(New York Times), a "utopian
conservative" (Tittle) and a. "dis-
believer in democracy" (Newsweek).
But the most strident reaction of all
came from Times columnist William
Saflre. In it piece distinguished as
much by vulgarity as by ignorance,
the former White House savant ad-
monished the Russian author for
"disappoints ing] the people over
here who are grabbing up your
hooks like hlinis," and informed
him that "we need a Tolstoy, not a
Rasputin."
Now, it is true that Solzhenitsyn's
Letter contains views and sentiments
with which many of his admirers,
East and West, are bound to dis-
agree. Soviet civil rights activist An-
drei Sakharov, for instance, has is-
sued a critical response. But dis-
agreements are one thing, and prim-
itive condemnations (or facile com-
parisons) another. Even Sa Charov,
whose general philosophicial ap-
proach is profoundly at od s with
that of his compatriot, nay yet.
come to revise some of his o inions,
based as they are on easily is1cad-
ing "excerpts broadcast over West-
ern radio stations." In additi m, the
excerpts he heard may hav ? been
those the New York Times unfor-
tunately saw fit to print an com-
ment upon the very day that he full
text, extensively revised by S Izhcn-
itsyn himself, appeared in th Lon-
don Sunday Times'.
The final version (copulished
here this month by the In ex on
Censorship and Harper & Row, 59
pp., $3.95), though in ma1y re-
spects curious and disturbing,) is im-
mensely powerful and entire) con-
sistent with the author's p evious
writings. Indeed, for all its faults
(which, Solzhcnitsyn notes in his in-
troduction, he is ready to correct
if confronted with "cogent an con-
structive criticism"), it may ulti-
mately be regarded as one f the
most important documents to conic
ABRAHAM BRUMBERG. is the )editor
of In Quest of Justice: Protet and
Dissent in the Soviet Union oday.
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from the pen of a contemporary
Russian writer.
The Letter was written and dis-
patched last September, in the hope
of eliciting some sort of response
from the Soviet leaders. Lest Solz-
henitsyn he suspected of a touch
of megalomania, it should perhaps
be recalled that many other promi-
nent dissidents have adopted the
same procedure: All three of Sak-
harov's famous memoranda, for ex-
ample, were also addressed to the
Party leaders, presumably with sim-
ilar expectations.
In any event, it is hardly surpris-
ing that Leonid Brezhnev and Com-
pany took no public notice, for the
Letter is above all an acrid attack
on Marxism-Leninism, the ideology
Solzhenitsyn holds responsible for
all the ills of Soviet society, from
agricultural stagnation to the arbi-
trary terror of Stalin and the judi-
cial repressions of his successors.
Wholly convinced the USSR faces
the threat of a major war with
China, he ascribes even that to ideo-
logical causes: "Sixty million of our
fellow countrymen may be killed .. .
because the sacred truth is written
on page 533 of Lenin and not on
page 335."
In the long run, whether or not
Solzhenitsyn believes that the So-
viet leaders are reluctant "to change
even a single syllable of what Marx
said" is as irrelevant as whether
their "adherence to the precepts of
Marxism-Leninism" is a matter of
mindless rigidity or political expe-
diency (as Sakharov obviously be-
lieves). To the best of my knowl-
edge, nobody in the West has fully
explained the relationship between
Marxism-Leninism as a "guide to
action" and as a tool, and if Solzhe-
nitsyn fails to give us an adequate
explanation, he does no worse than
hundreds of Western Sovietologists.
The important fact is that ideol-
ogy permeates all facets of Soviet
life, that it is employed as a justi-
fication for every policy, foreign
or domestic. and that Solzhenitsyn
gives us a devastatingly brilliant
and incisive picture of how this
works in practice. While his pleas
to "throw away the dead ideology"
and let the Chinese "glory in it for
awhile" are certainly naive, his de-
scription of the use of doctrine to
justify political repression, econ-
omic inefficiency and social ine-
quality is superb. Many have
written about Soviet ideology as a
system of lies, but few with such
verve, passion and wit:
"How else can something dead
pretend that it is living except by
erecting a scaffolding of lies? Every-
thing is steeped in lies and every-
body knows it-and says so openly
in private conversation, and jokes
and moans about it, but in their
official speeches they go on hypo-
critically parroting what they are
`supposed to say,' and with equal
hypocrisy and boredom read and
listen to the speeches of others:
how much of society's energy is
squandered on this!"
OLZHENITSYN, then, is not a
political thinker, but a
chronicler; not a political
analyst, but a critic-if you will, a
poet. These deficiencies and quali-
ties, as well as their inherent con-
tradictions, emerge most forcefully
in the passages where the author
gives vent to his nostalgia for the
past, his idealization of simple Rus-
sian virtues, and his spirited rejec-
tion of Western values-especially
the belief in industrial and tech-
nological progress. Understandably,
many Western observers have taken
him to task for advocating such
"retrogressive" notions.
In pleading with the Soviet lead-
ers to reject unbridled technological
growth as "not only unnecessary
but ruinous," and placing the blame
for it (along with Marxism, that
"dark un-Russian whirlwind") at
Western doors, Solzhenitsyn cer-
tainly follows in the footsteps of
the early 19th-century Slavophiles.
Not unlike them, he also seems
to think that Russia's troubles be-
gan when Peter the Great abandon-
ed the ancient capital of Moscow
and hordes of Protestant and Catho-
lic workers descended on the coun-
try to help build its new capital.
Yet stripped of their apocalyptic
overtones and read simply as so-
cial criticism, Solzhenitsyn's angry
words make sense: "We have
squandered our resources foolishly
. .. sapped our soil, mutilated our
vast expanse with idiotic `mainland
seas' and contaminated belts of'
wasteland around our industrial
centers." Likewise, his poignant
evocation of the beauty and seren-
ity of Russia's "old towns before
they were invaded by multistory
blocks" and "poisonous internal-
combustion engines" is surely no
less applicable to our country than
to his. As he himself notes in
acknowledging that "progressive
Western scholars" are in large
measure the source of his ecological
observations: "It is not 'conver-
gence' that faces us and the West-
ern world now, but total renewal
and reconstruction in both East and
West, for both are in the same im-
passe."
If Solzhenitsyn's practical sug-
gestions are often oddly and hope-
lessly impractical, they nevertheless
adumbrate a vision of an ideal fu-
ture bound to appeal to millions of
his countrymen whose lives have
been ravaged by the regime's relent-
lesi "Drang nuch Westen." So will
hi> plca to concentrate on develop-
ing the USSR's vast northeastern ex-
panses, to which he devotes a good
portion of his Letter.
Solihenitsyn's call for an end to
meddling in other countries' affairs,
though rather jauntily phrased, will
also surely find an echo among mil-
lion; of Soviet citizens who view
their Lovernment's economic (and
political) aid to underdeveloped na-
tions as unconscionable hypocrisy
and a squandering of resources that
could be put to much better use:
"Let's leave the Arabs to their fate,
they have Islam, they'll sort them-
selves out. And let's leave Africa
to find out for itself how to start on
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an independent road to statehood
and civilization, and simply wish
it the good fortune not to repeat
the mistakes of `uninterrupted pro-
gress."' And his proposal to grant
independence to the non-Russian
nationalities that comprise nearly
half of the Soviet population will
strike a responsive chord, too.
There can be no question, he says
firmly, "of any peripheral nation
being forcibly kept within the
hounds of our country."
AlI these notions might con-
ceivably be classified as "Sla-
vophile." But they have nothing in
common with the xenophobia? ;rnti-
Sernitisrn and philistine provincial-
ism that characterize the drinking of
many Soviet patriots today-both
those who advocate their ideas
openly in the pages of Party jour-
nals (with the watchful connivance
of the authorities) and those who
contribute to samizdat.
Open modern Slavophilism has
found its home in organizations like
the All-Russian Society for the Pro-
tection of Historical Monuments,
officially inaugurated in June 1966,
and in journals such as Nfolodatia
Gvarcliva (Young Guard), the
monthly organ of the Komsomol
(Young Communist League), which
frequently express ill-disguised
chauvinistic and anti-Semitic views.
The scunizdat publication Veche
(tile word for town-assemblies in
medieval Russia), edited by V. Osi-
pov, a one-time Marxist turned pa-
triot, pretends to espouse the posi-
tion of the early liberal Slavophiles,
but frequently runs articles more
reminiscent of the views of the
Tsarist Black Hundreds. Thus issue
No. 3, 1971, carries a letter-sign-
ed by Petukhov, a Moscow priest;
Varsonofii Khaibulin, a student of
the Moscow Theological Academy;
and one Fornin, a "senior research
fellow"-placing the blame for the
ills that have befallen Russia (in-
cluding secularization and the per-
secution of Russian Orthodoxy) on
"world Zionism-Satanism."
XXT ttAT OF Solzhenitsyn's
disdain for Western
parliamentary democ-
racy, and his belief that the Par-
ty should remain in power if it
allows free reign to "art and litera-
ture" and to "philosophical, ethical,
economic and social studies"?
Again, the parallels between his
proposals and those of some 19th-
century Slavophiles are unquestion-
ably striking. ("What the Russian
people want," wrote one of their
principal representatives, Konstan-
tin Aksakov, "is not political free-
dom but freedom of the spirit.")
Nowhere does Solzhenitsyn betray
the effects of his isolation from the
outside world more than in his ex-
coriation of "'democracy run riot'
... every four years the politicians,
and indeed the entire country, near-
ly kill themselves over an electoral
campaign,
masses"
trying to gratify the
Solzhenitsyn's hostility to the
West derives as much from a reac-
tion to the rampant cynicism and
hypocrisy that he perceives in con-
temporary Western societies as
from the traditional Slavophile ab-
horrence of Western civilization.
Essentially a moralist, he is equally
revolted by the systematic violence
of the Soviet regime and by the
acquiescence to it on the part of
individuals and governments in the
West. His credo, affirmed in his No-
bel Lecture, is disarmingly simple:
"All internal affairs have ceased to
exist on our crowded Earth. The
salvation of mankind lies only in
making everything the concern of
all. People in the East should with-
out exception be concerned about
what people are thinking in the
West; people in the West should
without exception care about what
is happening in the East."
A careful reading of Solzhenit-
syn's Letter, moreover, makes it
clear that he is not in principle op-
posed to democracy. "You are real-
ists par excellence," he says to the
Soviet leaders, "and you will not
allow power to slip out of your
hands. That is why you will not
willingly tolerate real e1ceti ms, at
which people might not vote you
in." lie conics to the "mela choly"
conclusion that "the sudden rein-
troduction" of a multiparty parlia-
mentary system in the USSR might
not work at this time, and g es on
to say: "So should we not perhaps
acknowledge that ... for the fore-
seeable future, whether we like it
or not, whether we intend it or not,
Russia is nevertheless dcsti ed to
have an authoritarian order." (Ital-
ics mine.-A.B.) But this iardly
makes him a determined foe >f de-
mocracy or a dogmatic a thori-
tarian, as some have alleged.
S FOR Solzhenitsyn's
mitment to rcligio
the one hand, he
for "a competition . . . nc
power but for truth-betwc
ideological and moral Curren
particular between all relig
adding parenthetically: "i
self see Christianity today a
only living spiritual force capa
undertaking the spiritual heali
Russia. But I request and pr
no special privileges for it, si
that it should be treated fairly
not suppressed." On the other 1
he extols "Christian Orthodoxy the
ancient, seven-centuries-old Oitho-
doxy ... before it was battered by
Patriarch Nikon and bureaucratized
by Peter the Great."
In view of the character of
Orthodox Church in Russia
on
leads
t for
n all
s, in
my-
the
g of
pose
mply
and
and,
the
ver
.0th
and
since its establishment in the J
century-bigoted, authoritarian,
whenever possible a firm ally of
State, rather than an adversar
these words are, to say the 1
discomfiting. Solzhenitsyn's un
the
er-
standing of this history is called into
question by his contempt for the
two men (however disparate) who
attempted to reform the Church:
the 17th-century Patriarch Nik n,
who struck fear in the hearts of he
faithful by bringing some of the
rituals more into line with the pric-
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ticcs of the rest of the Eastern
Church; and Peter the Great, whose-
pro-Western proclivities outraged
his benighted followers by flout-
ing their conviction that Russian
Orthodoxy alone was the true Or-
thodoxy.
Still, it would be wrong, not to
say offensive, to assume that a
belief in Russian Orthodoxy is in
itself tantamount to embracing
obscurantism and intolerance. The
doctrines of Eastern Orthodoxy, if
not the institution, have over the
past century or so inspired some of
the most outstanding figures in Rus-
sian history, including the early
Slavophiles-who thought the Or-
thodox faith had the potential to
unite a divided society-and such
diverse thinkers as Nikolai Berdya-
ev, Lev I. Shestov or, for that mat-
ter, Leo Tolstoy.
Obviously, Solzhenitsyn's belief
in the purifying mission of the Or-
thodox faith is more in keeping
with early Slavophile notions than
with the thinking of representatives
or apologists of a servile and au-
thoritarian Church. His 1969 story
"The Easter Procession," describing
the desecration of an Easter celebra-
tion in a Russian village, gave us
an insight into the depth of his re-
ligious convictions. And his March
1972 "Lenten Letter" to the Patri-
arch of All Russia revealed his hos-
tility to a Church that cooperates
with state authorities openly com-
mitted to the eradication of religion.
His devoutness, then, is a peculiar
mixture of contradictory and per-
haps even. conflicting emotions, but
this does not justify wholesale con-
demnation or derogatory epithets.
In sum, Solzhenitsyn's Letter is
not of the same order as most of
his fictional writings or the remark-
able Gulag Archipelago. It is a pro-
foundly Russian work-extreme,
passionate, at times mystical, and
frequently at odds with itself. It
belongs in the mainstream of Slavo-
phile writings, in that it seeks to
find Russia's salvation in the coun-
try's unique historical and religious
traditions. It sets Solzhenitsyn apart
from many other Soviet dissenters,
particularly Sakharov, who strongly
advocates Western concepts of po-
litical freedom and democracy.
Sakharov's pained reaction to
some of the ideas expressed in the
Letter has revived the century-old
debate between the "Westerners"
and the Slavophiles among Russian
intellectuals, in itself a fascinating
phenomenon. Yet just as not all
"Westerners" were radicals (Alex-
ander Herzen, the most Western-
minded of all the 19th-century Rus-
sian writers, was revolted by many
of Western Europe's democratic in-
stitutions), so not all early Slavo-
philes (who bitterly opposed the
repressive Tsarist regime) were "re-
actionaries."
Neither is a man so deeply com-
mitted to spiritual and intellectual
freedom as Solzhenitsyn. In assess-
ing the importance of the Letter to
the Soviet Leaders, one must take
into account not only the author's
lack of realism but his humanity
and uncompromising dedication to
moral values. Above all, one must
view the Letter against the back-
ground of Solzhenitsyn's long, cour-
ageous and often lonely struggle
for decency and truth in a coun-
try that for more than half a cen-
tury has known little of either.
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Commel- #-tr
,k itc
VOLUME 57 NUMBER 5 MAY 197.1
Editor:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editors:
Editorial Assistant:
Business Manager:
Production Manager:
Cover:
25 Was Woodrow Wilson Right? Daniel P. Moynihan
32 The Real Solzhenitsyn Jeri Laber
36 Farewell to Oil? Edward N. Luttwak
48 The Trouble With France Walter Laqueur
40 Building Blocks Allen Hoffman
53 Is There a New Anti-Semitism? Earl Raab
55 Quotas and Soviet Jewry William Korey
58 Our Best-Known Neglected Novelist John Romano
61 Cagney & Other Movie Stars William S. Pechter
4 from Edward W. Said, Gil Carl AIRoy, Alexander Morgan Capron,
Robert H. Williams, S. J. Ravin, 7'heodore Draper, Arval A.
Morris, Eugene V. Rostow, Michael Mellsner, Joseph W. Bishop, Jr.,
Sol Schlosser, Johanna Kaplan, Barbara Krttpit, Lyman Owen,
James Hitchchock, Claire Huchet Bishop, William H. Brownlee,
Robert Alter, and others
64 The American Condition, by Richard N. Goodwin James Q. Wilson
68 Songs of Jerusalem and Myself, by Yehuda Amichai Leon Wieseltier
71 Fragments ofthe Century, by Michael Harrington Michael Novak
75 H. G. Wells: A Biography, by Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie Dan Jacobso lI
80 Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, by James
R. Alellow; Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B.
"l'oklas, edited by Edward Burns Sonya RudikofJ
86 Plain Speaking, by Merle Miller Samuel McCracken
Norman Podhorctz
Neal 1Cozodoy
Marion Magid
Brenda Brown
Maier Deshell
Robert Alter
Milton Ilimmelfarb
Walter Laqueur
Yvonne M. Lancaster
Ronald Greene
Bruce Lodi
The Drawing Board, Inc.
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The Real Solzhenitsyn
CPYRGHT
Jeri Laber
T T HE full text of Alexander Solzhenit-
syn's Open Letter to the Soviet
Leaders was first published on March 3 by the
London Times, which described it as "a testament
of astonishing power, with uncanny relevance to
our own problems in the West." In its introduc-
tion the Times glossed over the authentically re-
actionary nature of Solzhenitsyn's political state-
ments. Those who have remarked upon it have
done so with surprise. Many Western admirers of
his fight against despotism had considered Sol-
zlienitsyn an advocate of liberal values and had,
until the publication of the Open Letter, refused
to acknowledge what should have been evident
from it careful reading of his fiction and his earlier
political pronouncements. Steeped in a mysticism
distinctively Russian, shaped by circumstances
peculiarly Soviet, Solzhenitsyn has evolved a
unique, eccentric viewpoint. It is worth trying to
understand, both for what it tells us about hint
and. in order to revise certain faulty Western
perceptions of recent Soviet events.
I
W ~/ W HEN he was arrested in 1945 for
criticizing Stalin in a letter from
the front, Solzhenitsyn was twenty-seven years old,
a gifted mathematician and a capable, respected
artillery officer. He had yet to become aware of
the full vindictiveness of Stalin's rule. If anything,
his outlook and training, by his own admission,
might very well have led him to become one of
the executioners. Instead, he became a victim and
was sent to prison. He emerged after eight years
of forced labor, only to be engulfed by a new
sentence: "exile for life" in a remote South
Kazakhstan desert town. There he became seri-
ously ill with cancer. Once again he confronted
pain and the likelihood of death; once again he
survived, quite miraculously cured. In 1956, three
years alter Stalin's death, he was "rehabilitated.";
alter eleven years, lie was free.
At thirty-eight, Solzhenitsyn was an ex-prison-
er, an outcast, alone. His mother had died during
the war-, and his wife had divorced him and rc-
married. Ile had no job to return to, nor had he
Jr,ru L.ArrrR, it new contributor, is a graduate of the Russian
Institute at Columbia. She has written on Soviet allaiis fur
a variety of magazines, among them the New Republic,
Commonweal, Problems of Gout mum i3in, and Slavic Review.
even committed to paper the novels, plays, and
poems he had composed and stored in his head
during his years of imprisonment.
Ile had emerged from prison with two pas-
sions: an intense, mystical fixation upon Russia
and her suffering people, and an abhorrence of
Soviet Marxism. While in prison he had become
a very religious man. He saw the ordeals that he
had survived as trials devised by God to strength-
en his moral character. His future fame, thus, was
ordained; he had been "chosen" fora mission: to
expose the terrors of Soviet violence. Ycars later,
in his Nobel Lecture on Lileralurc, he said:
I have climbed my way to this lectern from
which the Nobel Lecture is read ... out of the
(lark and the cold where I WAS FAT-'.nAll SURVIVE
and where others, who possessed perhaps greater
talent and were stronger than 1, perished.
Solzhenitsyn was in official favor for a short-lived
period, coinciding more or less with the rise and
fall of Nikita Khrushcliev in the Kreniiiu. One Day
in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it fictionalized ac-
count of prison life and the book which brought
Solzhenitsyn instant international fame, was pub-
lished in 1962; aside from a few short stories, it is
the only work of his that has been issued in the
USSR. And by 19(36 he had become a "non-
person." No reference was made to ]rim in jour-
nals or the press, his name was excised from ref-
erence books and literary histories, and his few
published writings vatushed from bookstores and
library shelves. He was to be ignored until lie
could be disposed of, quietly.
It was then that he began an active cam-
paign to increase his public exposue., counting
upon sympathetic world opinion to protect hire
front oliicial wrath. 'I'hc furthering of his cause
thus gained added significance; it pecan w, in itself,
a means of sell-preservation. If is public: statements
were more frequent and more forceful, planned
with military precision, timed to coincide with
specific political events and introduced in ways
that would insure the greatest anoint of I'Vest-
ern press coverage and publicity. A New York
Mmes photographer fen- vVhoni he posed
described how Solzlrenitsyn :mtnt?ccl a serious ex-
pression, "evidently thinking of his world image."
For the first time lie joined with others-men like
Andrei Sakharov and %.hores ,Ucdvedev-in pro-
testing the abuse of civil rights in the I1$SR.
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In all this, Solzhenitsyn was evidently preparii
himself for martyrdom. As early as 1967 lie de-
clared that "no one can bar the road to truth, and
to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even
death." At a tempestuous writers' meeting in Thud)
lie read the same words again, underscoring what
then began to seen like a self-fulfilling prophecy,
and he repeated another of his statements, that lie
would "fulfill [his] duty as a writer ... from the
grave even more successfully and more irrefutably
than in [his] lifetime." Last September lie told
Soviet leaders that he was "prepared to sacrifice
[his] life."
Solzhenitsyn notified Western reporters that he
might (lie mysteriously at the hands of the KGB.
He advised them that he had sent unpublished
works to the West with instructions to publish
them should he (lie. The reference was to Gulag
Archipelago, his exhaustive and momentous in-
dictment of the Soviet prison-camp network. The
recent publication of Gulag in the X-Vest was of
course not triggered by Solzhenitsyn's death but
by the suicide of a Leningrad woman who lied
turned a copy of the manuscript over to the KGB
after five clays of brutal questioning. Once the
contents of Gulag were known to the secret po-
lice, there was no reason to delay its publication
further. "In this act of seizure," Solzhenitsyn said,
"I saw the hand of God. It meant the time had
come,"
After Gulag was published in Paris, Solzlienit-
syn's position became untenable. "I and my fanc-
ily are ready for anything," he said in ,January of
this year. "I have fulfilled my duty to those who
perished and this gives me relief and peace of
mind." His message was heard throughout the
world: he was prepared for a martyr's fate-arrest,
a trial, imprisonment, even death. His wife's first
reaction, on being told that he was safe in
Germany after his arrest, was: "It's a great
misfortune."
Mrs. Solzhenitsyn's spontaneous response may
sound strange to Western readers, accustomed as
they are to the idea that human life is a supreme
value, the willing sacrifice of it evidence of irra-
tionality or worse. Moreover, the post-Freudian
concept of human complexity lays even heroic
behavior open to scrutiny. We question the exis-
tence of "pure virtue" or "pure evil," and are
suspicious of the motives of anyone who claims
moral purity for himself.
This is not Solzhenitsyn's view of Truman na-
ture. Like the characters in his novels, people for
him are essentially good or bad. And the unwav-
ering self-assurance with which lie has pursued
his own goal demonstrates Solzhenitsyn's personal
identification with "the righteous"-a very select
company. Unlike Tolstoy, who believed that tcis-
dom was to be found by "going to the people,"
Solzhenitsyn believes in the "spirituual superiority
of certain people Thus, Nerzhin, the hero of
The First Circle, having shared the life of "the
people" in the camps, "not as a condescending
and therefore alien gentleman, but as one of
them," discovers that "the People had no ltone-
sprin superiority to himself." Most of thcin lack.d
"that personal lwint of view which becomes ])lot(,
prccc ious tb;ui life itself."
'1'h;tt "point of view," according to Solzhen t-
syn, au iscs out of hardship and snflering: tln?on Ii
suffering "one must try to temper, to cut, top I-
isli one's soul so as to become a. human being."
Success depends not on social origins but on
strength atccl inora] fervor. "The cultivation of
one's soul," .So]ihenitsyn has said, "is more impo ?t-
tant than the well-being of countless future g n-
egations." This he learned from the hardships f
his own life, and it is this which lie believes qual-
ifies hint for membership in the spiritual elite.
II
D r?.SPITE differences between thet ,
Solzhenitsyn's concern with the suf-
fering of the Russian people reflects the cot r-
nlanding influence of Tolstoy on his life and his
writings. Solzhenitsyn's beard, his humble dress,
his disdain for material possessions, his love f
hard labor, and his almost ascetic style of life a e
all "7'olstoyan." There are parallels as well I e'-
twcen Solzhenitsyn's public role in Russia and tl e
role played by Tolstoy in his time. And Tolstoy,'s
Literary influence is evident in all of Solzhenitsyr's
wen k, rcaclting extreme proportions in Angiect
1911, in which whole episodes are modeled oil
scenes Irotn liar and Peace and many characters
are no more than latter-day simplifications of tl e
Rostoys and the Bolkonskys. Tolstoy clominat es
the content of the book, too: his pictures adorn
the walls of bourgeois homes, his views are fol.
lowed and debated, and, in a hopelessly store-0i-
typed scene, 1'olstoy himself appears, sententious-
ly preaching about "good" and "love."
As a novelist, however, Solzhenitsyn is no Tol-
stoy. In later life Tolstoy renounced his carliet
(and greatest) novels, alleging that they contr i-
dicted his teachings. As his writing became.ir111-
creasingly didactic, it was saved from utter tedi-
ousness only by his monumental talent as aI i
artist. It may, in fact, be said that what accounts
for the incredible vitality of 'I'olstoy's work is the
conflict between his intuitive sensibilities and It s
conscious goals, This conflict does not exist for
Solzhenitsyn. His work, for the racist. part, is didac-
tic, as he intends it to he, stud it is often du I
and ponderous.
Soviet readers, however, brought sup on tli.
aridilic's of socialist realism, have been electrified
by Solzhenitsyn's concern with what he calls
"eternal values" and his dealing with such forhic -
d(?it thrnu?s as Stalinist tc?rrut. 71icrres \fcdvc'dct
,
in his recent, quietly affecting tribute to
izhcni -
syn, Ten Years After Ivan Denisovirh,"
has d -
scribed reading The First Circle in one twent)-
four-hour sitting, "stopping at intervals for cups
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of ])lack coffee." Me(lve(lev points out that. since
everyone in Soviet society has been touched in
sonic way by terror, "many people read his hooks
several times over . . . mentally experiencing
them so acutely that they failed to notice, or
ignored, subtlety of style...." Alt bough illedvcdev
considers Solzhenitsyn a writer of unquestiou;ible
stature, he does adroit that in the case of August
191.1, which did not have such extra-literary inter-
est, even some Soviet readers were more critical.
The? situation is different in the West, where
Solzhenitsyn is probably one of the least read
of best-selling novelists. Despite the inflated
praise he has received from Western reviewers,
whose admiration for Solzhenitsyn's courage is
often mistakenly expressed as esteem for his
works, many Western readers appear to find his
novels heavy-handed, humorless, and monot-
onous. Solzhenitsyn's characters lack dimension:
his heroes are all passive, prisoners not so much
of themselves as of immutable circumstance.
The political and philosophical theories for
which the novels serve as vehicles are oversimpli-
fied and irritatingly presented with a repetitious,
self-indulgent verbosity. His works often seem
like morality plays, with each character represent-
ing a specific abstract idea. This is why One Day
in the Life of Ivan Denisovicli, the least ambi-
tious of Solzhenitsyn's writings, is in some ways the
most successful: it is a morality play.
There are admittedly a number of fine
merits in Solzhenitsyn. Even Aug-list 191-1,
most cumbersome of his novels, contains a
111(r-
the
few
scenes-bourgeois life at the Tornchaks, Salnso-
nov's suicide-that recall the best of Russian 19th-
century realism. But Solzhenitsyn seems to tire
quickly of such moments, no doubt feeling driven
to go on to "weightier" problems. Like his life,
Solzhcnitsyn's novels have become increasingly
didactic over the years. Again in a manner renl-
iniscent of Tolstoy, he may well decide one clay to
abandon fiction altogether in favor of polemics;
if so, Gulag Archipelago will have been the
harbinger.
mix all of Solzllenitsyn's writings
Ware indictments of Soviet society,
three of his works deal specifically with the Soviet
penal system: One 1)ay in the Life of Ivan Dcni-
.covich, an understated account of prison life as
viewed through the eyes of a simple prisoner dur-
ing the course of an "ordinary" day; The First
Circle, a much more ambitious attempt to show
]low the prison-camp atmosphere affects all as-
pects of Soviet society; and, most definitively,
Gulag Archipelago, a unique, exhaustive, non-
fiction work which documents every aspect of the
labor-camp network, building one detail upon
another to create what must be the lengthiest and
most excoriating account of institutionalized ter-
ror in world literature.
The "truth" that Solzhenitsyn serves in these
works is not metaphysical; it is historic;d truth,
the story of what happened in Rus'si'a after 1917.
Solzhenitsyn is worried about ''the amputation of
the national memory"; as he explained in his
Nobel Lecture, lie wants to restore to Russia the
missing chapters of her history:
. . . literature communicates irrefutable and
condensed human experience-front generation
to generation. In this way it becomes the living
memory of nations. In this way it. keeps warm
and preserves within itself its lost history in a
way not subject to distortion and falsification. -
Nikita Khrushchev had tentatively begun such
a process of restoration, bill the devastating effect
of his revelations about Stalinism on the entire
fabric of Soviet political society caused the pro-
cess to be abruptly halted, and a full accounting
was never made. Now a new generation is coming
of age in the Soviet Union; it knows nothing
about what happened under Stalin and does not
really care. Unless the facts are recorded by those
who witnessed them, those terrible events will be
a totally forgotten chapter in Russian history.
This prospect is unthinkable to Solzhenitsyn.
In Gulag, however, Solzhenitsyn blames not
Stalin but Marxism itself for the system that de-
stroyed millions of his countrymen:
... then Stalin quietly died. But how much has
the course of our ship of state changed in fact?
... lie simply followed in the footsteps.
Contrary to what has been asserted of him by
some Western observers, Solzhenitsyn rejects the
view that Soviet Marxism can be restored to a
correct path by eliminating vestiges of Stalinism;
for him Marxism itself is the colt iipmioll.
Marxism for Solzhenitsyn is the antithesis of
everything Russian. "Patriotism means the rejec-
tion of Marxism," he has said. Western in its
origins, concerned with world domination rather
than internal Russian development, atheistic and
totally antagonistic to spiritual values, Marxism in
Soizhenitsyn's view is a dark, un-Russian force
imposed by Lenin on a helpless and unprepared
society: "The murky whirlwind of progressive
ideology swept in on its from the West at the end
of the last century and has torniented and rav-
aged our soul quite enough."
What alternative to Marxism does Solzhenitsyn
envisage for Russia? Definitely not Western tie-
mocracy, which he finds "weak and effete" and
lacking a "built-in ethical foundation." The free-
dom from suffering in western societies-freedom
from that unremitting pain which Solzhenitsyn
alternately deplores and reveres-has led to "com-
plaisane c and concession"; in the West people
"have lost the will to like a life of deprivation,
sacrifice, and firmness," And Solzhenitsyn has
nothing but scorn for the workings of a dem-
ocratic system in which politicians "nearly kill
themselves . . . trying to gratify the masses," in
which a judge "panders to the passions of society"
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(by releasing Daniel Ellsbcrg), and in which
"evert the will of the majority is not immune
to misdirection."
The alternative for Solzhenitsyn is not West-
ern democracy but an idealized Russia, a Russia
purified, turned inward, away from the Wrest, to
her own "vigorous, inexhaustible, spiritual
strength." Solzhenitsyn's ideal Russia would be
governed by "those who can direct its activities
intelligently." He believes in a benevolent atuthor-
itarianism, "an authoritarian order, but one
founded not on inexhaustible 'class hatred' but
on love of your fellow men." An authentic reac-
tionary, he longs for a return to Russian Ortho-
doxy and to the values with which "Russia lived
for a thousand years."
Indeed, Solzhenitsyn appears to distrust the
very freedom for which he has so long fought. He
has declared that "freedom is moral . . . only if it
keeps within certain bounds, beyond which it de-
generates into complacency and licentiousness."
He is appalled by the "innumerable drunks and
hooligans who pester women in the evenings and
t: 1l they are not at work." "If no police force
..it handle them," he has said, "still less are they
going to be restrained by an ideology that claims
to be a substitute for morality."
Solzhenitsyn combines iris belief in authoritar-
ianism with an intense nationalism. He considers
it "perfectly feasible for a colossus like Russia,
with all her spiritual peculiarities and folk tradi-
tions, to find its own particular path." He is an
isolationist, advocating an all-Russian state with
no ties to Eastern Europe or to the many nation-
alities that presently constitute the USSR. He is
uninterested in global solutions to world prob-
lems, even those affecting Russia: "After all we
have endured, it is enough for the time being for
its to worry about how to save our Oran people."
Yet in describing the Russian "colossus," Solz-
henitsyn uses the vocabulary of great-power pol-
itics. He boasts of Russia's industrial prowess, its
capability of overtaking the West, and he is dis-
dainful of "backward" countries:
We, a great industrial superpower, like the
meanest of backward countries, invite foreigners
to exploit our mineral wealth and, by way of
payment, suggest that they carry off our price-
less treasure, Siberian natural gas.
His Open Letter to the Soviet Leaders offers a
chauvinistic dream for the Russia of the future,
based on his analysis of the relative weakness and
indirection of the Western world:
Neither after the Crimean War, nor, more re-
cently, after the war with japan, nor in 1916,
1931, or 1941, would even the most unbridled
patriotic soothsayer have dared to set forth so
arrogant a prospect: that the time was approach-
ing, indeed was close at ]land, when all the great
European powers taken together would cease to
exist as a serious physical force; that their rulers
would resort to all manner of concessions simply
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to wits the favor of the rulers of the future
Russia, would even vie with one another to gain
that favor, just so long as the Russian press
would stop abusing them; and that they would
grow s,o weak, without losing a single war; that
countries proclaiming themselves "neutral"
would seek every opportunity to gratify us and
pander to us; that our eternal dream of control-
ling .straits, although never realized, would in
the event be niaclc irrelevant by the giant strides
that Russia took into the Mediterranean and
the oceans; that fear of economic losses and
extra-administrative chores would become the
arguments against Russian expansion to the
Nest; and that even the mightiest transatlantic
power, having enrerged all-victorious from two
world wars as the leader and provider for all
mankind, would suddenly lose to a tiny, distant
Asiatic country and show internal dissension and
spiritual weakness.
IV
R EACTiONARY, authoritarian, chauvin}
istic-hardly adjectives that sit coni
fortably with the typical image of a freedom
fighter and Nobel Prize winner. But Solzhenitsvi
is a figure in whom contradictions abound. I-Id:
believes in the Russian people, but does not t?us
them to govern themselves; outspoken against tyre
tinny, lie advocates authoritarianism; appalled lai
Russia's suffering, lie criticizes the West for nO
enduring enough; opposed to war, lie brags of
Russia's potential for world power.
Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, and all his lif :
has known only the Soviet system. Some of hi;
attitudes-his anti-modernism in literature anti
art, his disdain for Western "decadence," his con--
mitment to self-sacrifice, his utopian dreams 1n
the future-in a curious Way reflect the Sovie
dogma on which he was raised. Thus, for Marx'
"withering away of the state" lie has substitutci~,
the concept of an "authoritarianism based orb
love," a solution which no doubt seems to hinh
more realistic but which in point of fact is equally
unworkable; and in place of the dictatorship of
the proletariat he has proposed the equally anti-
democratic system of rule by a spiritual elite.
Solzhenitsyn also seems affected by the attitud~:
of paranoid suspicion toward everything foreigin
that pervades Soviet society. It is as much througl1l
choice as through circumstance that lie has beet
cut off from intellectual currents in the outsid
world. Thus in some ways, although he has beeli
received with adulation into the arms of the Wesi,
lie seems today even more alone than ever.
And yet lie is hardly without resources: hips
writing, his mission, and, above all, his own sense:
of himself. Responding recently to a Republicai
Scuator who had called him a "citizen of th
world," Solzhenitsyn said that he did not deserve
the designation "since my life experience has net
yet given me an opportunity to include the tasks
and needs of the entire world." It will be interest-
ing to see what he will make of the opportutrit
now that it has forced itself upon him.
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