"Russia. The West. Ukraine" out in Russian
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CoLibri Books have just published a new collection of Solzhenitsyn’s thoughts, entitled “Россия. Запад. Украина” (“Russia. The West. Ukraine”), compiled by Natalia Solzhenitsyn. This is a beautifully presented slim 5x7 hardback of 176 pages. It opens with a 4-page introduction from the compiler, followed by a 110-page section entitled “Россия и Запад” (“Russia and the West”). This section, presented in chronological order, is comprised of 21 selections excerpted from Solzhenitsyn’s speeches, press-conferences, interviews, and essays, beginning with the Walter Cronkite/CBS interview of June 1974, and ending with the Der Spiegel interview of July 2007. There follows a 39-page second section entitled “Об Украине” (“About Ukraine”), comprised of 11 selections, again presented chronologically, from the prophetic part V, chapter 2 of the Gulag Archipelago (written in 1967), to the author’s Izvestiya article from March 2008, just months before his death. The book is rounded off by a 9-page “Краткие пояснения” (“Brief explanatory notes”) that place each selection in context and provide precise bibliographical information about earlier publications across various languages.
“This book, timed for the centenary of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, collects his thoughts about the true meaning of Freedom, about Russia and the West’s false conceptions of each other, and about new dangers that threaten modern civilzation.
A separate section is devoted to a Slavic tragedy—the writer’s “perpetual sorrow and pain”—to Ukraine, about relations with whom he had written already a half-century ago, and until his very last days.”