Over at the Federalist, Stella Morabito recapitulates key themes of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address.
“The Harvard speech is a must-read for our times, a diagnosis of what ails us, whether or not you agree with all of it.”
At NRO, Matthew Spalding compares Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard address with Hillary Clinton's recent address at Yale.
“Solzhenitsyn eschewed the traditional clichés and head pats for the students, delivering instead a stunning analysis of the East and West, one which took seriously Harvard’s celebrated motto of Veritas — Truth — to speak of the imminent danger the West faced in losing not only the Cold War but also its democratic soul.”
In 2018 — the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth and the 40th anniversary of his prophetic Harvard commencement address — the University of Notre Dame will launch several initiatives connected to the work of this novelist, critic of Communism and 1970 Nobel laureate for literature. Through his writing on the system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn brought worldwide awareness to the devastating core of totalitarianism.
The University’s plans include the acquisition and first English translations of Solzhenitsyn works, as well as major academic conferences and postdoctoral fellowships that will connect researchers from around the world to the manuscript and print collections held by the Hesburgh Libraries — which are among the most extensive holdings in the United States related to the life and work of Solzhenitsyn.
“Nobody lived a more powerful witness to the truth about the human person’s right to dignity, freedom and human flourishing than this great writer.”
At the American Conservative two days ago, Jeff Groom recapitulates the Harvard address and concludes that many of Solzhenitsyn's challenges to Western societies are yet to be met.
“Forty years after a ‘World Split Apart’, as Americans search for answers to our present state of dissatisfaction, our leaders and citizens would be wise to heed the central theme of Solzhenitsyn’s message:
’It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.’”
At Law and Liberty yesterday, Mark Judge reflects on the major themes of the Harvard address.
“In a lecture full of striking pronouncements, this warning about the nature and quality of statesmanship stands out. The signs of a “threatened or perishing society,” Solzhenitsyn said, were two: “a decline of the arts [and] a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete.””
Today marks exactly 40 years to the day that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered his famous Harvard address. In Chapter 4 of his memoirs of the West, Between Two Millstones—forthcoming in English this October—Solzhenitsyn reflects on the controversy spawned by his speech. Those reflections are excerpted in the new issue of National Review.
“Before my Harvard speech, I naïvely believed that I had found myself in a society where one can say what one thinks, without having to flatter that society. It turns out that democracy expects to be flattered. When I called out “Live not by lies!” in the Soviet Union, that was fair enough, but when I called out “Live not by lies!” in the United States, I was told to go take a hike.”
A recent post on Harvard Magazine online from author Wanda Urbanska, a member of the Harvard graduating class of 1978, and present at Solzhenitsyn's famous address on 8th June of that year.
“IF YOU THINK no one will remember your words next week, let alone next year, think again. In fact, try 40 years—as I was recently reminded when a startling invitation popped up in my LinkedIn account. It was in Cyrillic.”
Learn more about the forthcoming English publication of BETWEEN TWO MILLSTONES, Book 1: Sketches of Exile.
Writing in Le Figaro yesterday, the French novelist Antoine Rault marvels at the phenomenon of Solzhenitsyn, calling him "one of the greatest writers of the 20th century".
“For a writer today, at the beginning of the 21st century, when one of the greatest challenges for free societies is to fight against the falsification of history and facts, Solzhenitsyn must be read more than ever.”
Margot Caulfield, director of the Cavendish Historical Society and author of the young adult biography of Solzhenitsyn, The Writer Who Changed History, joins Vermont Edition to discuss the author's time in Cavendish.
Plus, Kevin McKenna, a Russian language and literature professor at the University of Vermont, discusses his research into the Russian writer and his path to fame, exile, and eventual return to his home country.
The University of Notre Dame Press has announced the long-awaited English publication of BETWEEN TWO MILLSTONES, Book 1: Sketches of Exile—Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs of the West. Book 1, covering the years 1974-1978, will appear in October in a first English translation by Peter Constantine. Book 2, covering 1978-1994, is slated for release in autumn 2019.
Solzhenitsyn appreciated the privacy that settling in the woods of rural Vermont afforded him. On Vermont Public Radio, Mary McCallum ponders if that level of privacy would be possible in this 24/7 online era.
Professor Kevin J. McKenna, a professor in the Department of German and Russian at the University of Vermont, plans to teach a semester-long course devoted to the fiction writing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The course description, provided by the department:
"Often compared both to Fyodor Dostoevsky as well as Leo Tolstoy, the fiction of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. His works remain to this day so central to Russian literary culture that in 2006 Russian national television named them, along with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, as the major national literary achievements in Russian fiction. In 2011, Time Magazine described Solzhenitsyn’s literary works as the main artistic achievements of the 20th century. To this day Solzhenitsyn’s writings are credited with exposing and “bringing down” the Soviet Union.
The primary goal of this World Lit. 018/118 course will be to derive an understanding of the interplay between 20th-century history, society, and art as depicted in the fictional universe of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novels, Cancer Ward) and In the First Circle). Closely related in theme, style and substance to the novels, his short story “Matryona’s House” and novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich will complete the reading list for this course. At all points of contact with Solzhenitsyn’s fiction one cannot help but pose one of Tolstoy’s original questions: “By what do we [humans] live/ Чем мы живём” and the 20th-century Soviet-era correlation “how does one survive with his/her conscience intact?” To better understand why a literary giant like Solzhenitsyn could not publish his fiction in his own country, this course will also consider the major philosophical, ethical and political constructs of Soviet “socialist realism” as practiced in the USSR in the 20th century."
Foreword Reviews recently announced their 2017 Indie Finalists; they have named March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1 as a finalist in the History category. Foreword Reviews highlights the best of the indie book publishing industry, including independent publishers and university presses. University of Note Dame Press published Book 1 of March 1917 in November 2017 as the first volume in its ongoing The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series.
“Histories tend to collapse events into a single narrative; Solzhenitsyn insists on plurality. He explodes the Russian Revolution back into myriad voices and parts, disarrayed and chaotic, detailed and tumultuous. Combining historical research with newspaper headlines, street action, cinematic screenplay, and fictional characterization, the book is as immersive as binge-worthy television, no little thanks to this excellent translation that renders its prose as masterful in English as it was in Russian.”
Natalia Solzhenitsyn, the author's widow, who was in Paris for the Paris Book Fair, has given an extended interview to Le Figaro. Read the English translation here, or the original here. Mrs. Solzhenitsyn talks about her life with the author, his love of France, his work on the Russian Revolution, and the current state of relations between Russia and the West.
“Russia is going through a period that no other country has ever been through. It needs help, but not dictatorial and condescending help, as the United States has been doing with the IMF. The great mistake of the U.S. was to think that it had won the Cold War and that Russia would no longer be a player. A catastrophic approach! Because when pressured Russia bounces back like a spring. It felt humiliated, encircled. Much of the support for Putin can be explained by this feeling of humiliation. [One can] be firm with Russia, but issuing ultimatums is totally counterproductive.”
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1 was selected by the Association of University Presses for the 2018 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show. Jeff Miller, a designer with Faceout Studio, and Wendy McMillen, production and design manager of the University of Notre Dame Press, collaborated on the design. The design was one of 53 chosen from a total of 375 submissions. The show is held each year to celebrate the year's best work in design and production in university presses. The show will be exhibited across the U.S. from June 2018 to May 2019; the first show opens June 17th in San Francisco during the 2018 AUPresses Annual Meeting
Since 1965, the Association of University Presses has held the Book, Jacket, and Journal Show each year to highlight achievements in design and production in university presses. The winning books and journals for 2018, selected by jurors in New York City, will be displayed in the annual catalog and the traveling show, which premiers in San Francisco on June 17, and continues throughout North America until May 2019.
As reported by Digital Journal, The Solzhenitsyn Foundation and the Memorial organization have partnered in backing the creation of a new monument by sculptor Georgy Frangulyan, which was unveiled as a part of a memorial for Soviet-era victims of political repression in Central Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at the memorial's dedication and quoted Natalia Solzhenitsyn in his remarks.
“To know, to remember, to condemn and only then to forgive.”
The University of Note Dame Press has announced a major new Solzhenitsyn series, called The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series. March 1917: Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1, the first book in this series, will be published later this month. It is the continuation of Solzhenitsyn's epic Red Wheel novel, which begins with August 1914, then October 1916, and now March 1917.
A new book on Solzhenitsyn is out this month, Solzhenitsyn: The Historical-Spiritual Destinies of Russia and the West. According to Solzhenitsyn scholar Dan Mahoney, “Lee Congdon has succeeded in encapsulating Solzhenitsyn’s intellectual engagement with the twentieth century through an integration of Solzhenitsyn’s corpus into its historical, political, philosophical, and religious context. This is a masterful accomplishment and a major contribution to the field of Solzhenitsyn studies.”
As highlighted in The Guardian this week, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic The Red Wheel will soon be published in English for the first time in its entirety.
“You might say that he caught the last train of departing memory. He was able to interview some of the last living participants of those fateful days in 1917, and of the Russian civil war that followed. His childhood years were the fearsome Soviet 1920s and early 1930s, when the revolution was in fact still ongoing, completely reshaping the old order amidst an atmosphere of terror. Born just a year after the revolution, he breathed its powerful, both terrifying—and for some, edifying—air.”
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