Solzhenitsyn in gulagul de azi ...

Blue-collar Solzhenitsyn
Zinovy Zinik

THE SOLZHENITSYN READER, New and essential writings, 1947–2005

Edward E. Ericson, Jr, and Daniel J. Mahoney, editors

Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

[...] Gradually Solzhenitsyn became convinced of his God-given powers to bring down the Soviet regime and secure the renaissance of a Russian nation that would renew its commitment to the Russian Orthodox Church. His open “Letter to the Soviet Leaders” was followed by addresses and encyclicals to the Russian people (sometimes beginning in a Stalinist fashion with “Dear Compatriots . . .”) on a variety of subjects: from urging people to boycott the mendacious Soviet state institutions to reviving obsolete and archaic Slavic vocabulary uncontaminated by the influence of the Latin world. Shalamov detected this moralistic, pedagogical streak in Solzhenitsyn quite early, refusing cooperation with him in writing about the Gulag, and later accused him of being a political manipulator, exploiting the horrors of the Gulag to fulfil personal ambitions.

But could the work of such an epic dimension as The Gulag Archipelago have been created by an objective apolitical chronicler? Could it have reached the mass audience in the West without a certain degree of political manoeuvring? Does the creator of such a seminal work need to be defended against his detractors? The editors of "The Solzhenitsyn Reader" firmly believe that he does:

“Solzhenitsyn is ritualistically dismissed as a Slavophile, romantic, agrarian, monarchist, theocrat, even anti-Semite. There are few major intellectual figures who have been so systematically misunderstood or have been the subject of as many wilful distortions”.

This volume, with a comprehensive preface and informative introductions to each part, was compiled with the full approval and cooperation of Solzhenitsyn and his family. Its aim is clearly to correct what they see as the gross misrepresentation of Solzhenitsyn’s views, especially in the West. To achieve this aim, the editors have concentrated on those samples of his fiction, as well as non-fictional writings, that elucidate his ideas. Solzhenitsyn emerges from this book as a moderate conservative, a religious but tolerant old-fashioned thinker, with views not so very different, as the editors concede, from those of many blue-collar workers. Soviet ideology was bent on the destruction of those spiritual and literary traditions that were detrimental to egalitarian, atheist and populist notions in art and culture. Paradoxically, from a Western liberal point of view, this encouraged Russian dissidents to preach conservative values and attitudes in life, politics and religion. Solzhenitsyn insists on religion as the foundation of morality, of the social fabric of life, and repudiates the predominance of the rational over the spiritual approaches in modern thinking; he condemns excessive consumerism and legal machinations that replaced the sense of social justice in the Western world.

[...]
It was clearly a shock for Solzhenitsyn to discover that his role had ceased to be regarded as that of a spiritual leader of his people. Initially, his well-publicized comeback to the motherland was clouded by his admirers’ disappointment with their prophet’s outdated political wisdoms and Solzhenitsyn’s own disapproval of the way the country had liberated itself from the shackles of Communism. For a short time, he had a weekly fifteen-minute television programme called Meetings with Solzhenitsyn. It was dropped after a few months owing to a lack of audience response, to be replaced by a programme featuring the Italian parliamentarian and porn queen, La Cicciolina.

Solzhenitsyn’s status in Russia today would have been deemed peculiar if it were not almost tragic. On the face of it, the outlook is good. He celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday at his private estate near Moscow, which was specially built as a replica of his retreat in Vermont. With the ascent of Vladimir Putin to power, his optimism and belief in the new Russian state grew. He granted an audience to Putin who came to his house to discuss the Russian nation’s current problems; he has accepted state honours and honorary titles. The first parts of the multi-volume edition of his complete works are due to appear in the bookshops this year. Last year, a state television channel showed the ten-part serialization of his novel The First Circle which was narrated by Solzhenitsyn himself. According to witnesses he was moved to tears when he was shown the first episodes. After he endured eight years in labour camps (he was arrested on the front line in 1945 for criticizing Stalin in private correspondence with a friend), exile in Kazakhstan and the threat of cancer, his semi-underground existence in Moscow and fight with the literary establishment after Stalin’s death and during the Khrushchev thaw – after all that, it looks as though the truth has triumphed. Has it?

Whatever the causes, we are now faced with a country once again under the thumb of a transformed state security apparatus, divided into warring factions and yet united in destruction of any semblance of political opposition – be it a politically active industrialist or charismatic journalist. The sense of impunity among criminals, old and new, is such that it has a demoralizing effect on the rest of the population: “Everything is permitted” is the person on the street’s opinion. And, since the origin and mores of the new Russian elite are transparent to the outside world, the new establishment is wary of foreigners and outsiders, whips up nationalistic feelings among the populace, and creates an atmosphere of deep suspicion of Western alliances. The West is for shopping, not for learning historical lessons. Russians are not to imitate the Western way of life blindly, we are told; instead they have chosen what is now called “controlled democracy” for the “indigenous population”. In short, the country – with all its current wealth, feverish economic activity and cultural exuberance – might easily sleepwalk into a state which in the good old days was called fascist.

[...]

Solzhenitsyn once dedicated his life to the fight against the regime in which the state security machine made everyone feel an accomplice in turning the country into a prison camp. He has now become part of a society where the mass media are reduced to self-censoring impotence, Soviet style; dissident artists and writers are regularly beaten up; journalists who expose corruption and the abuses of centralized political power are murdered. And yet Solzhenitsyn is silent; silent even when his most cherished idea of saving Russia by strengthening the independence of local government, Swiss-style, was first ridiculed in the press and then trampled over by a presidential decree that reinstalled the central authority of the Kremlin over the whole of Russia. On the whole, Solzhenitsyn avoids public appearances these days and refrains from public utterances. And yet, he found the time and energy to express his approval of the recent cutting off of gas supplies to Ukraine for a discount price “because that country tramples over Russian culture and the Russian language and allows NATO military manoeuvres on its territory”. Oh well. My country, right or wrong.

To the amazement of the Western world, Russia (as well as Malaysia and China) has proved that capitalism and the pursuit of happiness are not incompatible with authoritarianism and nationalism. We shouldn’t forget that the Gulag was also a Stalinist capitalist enterprise that used cheap slave labour for state projects. Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelago as a cautionary tale for the West. Perhaps it is the time for the Russians to reread it from their own historical perspective.

(full article here ... TLS, March 7, 2007 )