Produced for Inspection
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Concluding today, National Review publishes three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s about-to-be-released , The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 3, translated by Marian Schwartz, available Friday, for the first time in English, from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold. (For Tuesday’s excerpt, go here. For yesterday’s, here.) Today’s selection—the closing chapter of Book 3—shows Emperor Nikolai II, just hours after his careless abdication on March 15, 1917, preoccupied with the health of his children rather than the fate of his abandoned people. He is roused by his Empress just enough to be force-paraded in front of a “Soviet” commissar whose overt malice portends the ruin to come.
Click here to read the full chapter at National Review.
“Starker yet were his snake eyes, they burned with hatred. The commissar’s face twisted, and he was shaking feverishly.
In front of this vivid appearance of malice, the Emperor stopped, woke up—and felt it. On his face, puffy with weariness, the meaning became apparent—as did his exhaustion.
He swayed a little from foot to foot. He jerked one shoulder. And was about to turn and go—but couldn’t, out of politeness, not nod to the group in parting.
He nodded.
And walked away, his step unsteady—but rather than go very far forward, in the direction he had been heading, he went back to from whence he had come.”