Ivan Denisovich and COVID-19

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Over at the Cavendish Historical Society, Margo Caulfield has a fresh take on One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, suggesting it can be seen as a precursor to the emerging field of positive psychology and the modern understanding of “mindfulness”.

“As it turns out, a very successful and highly practiced form of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), has its roots in Stoic philosophy. Since one of the most famous Stoics was Epictetus, who was born into slavery, it’s not surprising that Solzhenitsyn would have drawn some similar conclusions. We may not have control over our circumstances, but we can control how we interpret them and how we respond to them.

In the midst of our “stay-at-home” order, “One Day in the Life” is definitely worth a read. It’s short, can be read in one sitting, and can help reframe this time of Covid-19 by reminding us that we do have control over how we respond as well as that there are positive things happening all around us that we can be grateful for.”
— Margo Caulfield

New Richard Tempest book on Solzhenitsyn

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Solzhenitsyn scholar Richard Tempest has just published Overwriting Chaos: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Fictive Worlds (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019), a welcome new study examining Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s evolution as a literary artist from his early autobiographical novel Love the Revolution to the experimental mega-saga The Red Wheel, and beyond. Tempest shows how this author gives his characters a presence so textured that we can readily imagine them as figures of flesh and blood and thought and feeling. The study discusses Solzhenitsyn’s treatment of Lenin, Stalin, and the Russian Revolution; surprising predilection for textual puzzles and games à la Nabokov or even Borges; exploration of erotic themes; and his polemical interactions with Russian and Western modernism. Also included is new information about the writer’s life and art provided by his family, as well as Tempest’s interviews with him in 2003-7.

Mr. Tempest’s book is available directly from the publisher, in hardcover or e-book from Amazon, or wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
A Note on Translations and Transliterations
Preface
Timeline of Solzhenitsyn’s Life and Works

Part One: The Writer In Situ

1. The Quilted Jerkin: Solzhenitsyn’s Life and Art
2. Ice, Squared: “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
3. “Turgenev Never Knew”: The Shorter Fictions of the 1950s and 1960s
4. Meteor Man: Love the Revolution
5. Helots and Heroes: In the First Circle
6. Rebel versus Rabble: Cancer Ward

Part Two: The Writer Ex Situ

7. Twilight of All the Russias: The Red Wheel
8. Return: The Shorter Fictions of the 1990s
9: Modernist?

Appendix. Three Interviews with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (2003–7)

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

On Solzhenitsyn's 101st birthday: never-published-before autobiography

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Today, on 11 December 2019, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 101st birthday, Rossiskaya Gazeta [Russian-language] publishes an excerpt from Chapter 2, “School”, of Solzhenitsyn’s never-published-before autobiography. Chapter 1 appeared last year in Studying Solzhenitsyn, vol. 6, while this Chapter 2 will appear in full in the forthcoming vol. 7.

Solzhenitsyn books on Christmas list

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“Magisterial depiction of the long, slow collapse of the Tsarist regime in which everybody gets a voice, but nobody feels that he or she can prevent the worst of it. Eerily prescient for the binary confusions of the present. The main character is Petrograd itself.”
— Nathan Harter, recommending March 1917, Book 2

Natalia Solzhenitsyn interview with Le Figaro

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Natalia Solzhenitsyn, the writer’s widow, has given a wide-ranging interview to Le Figaro (subscription required) on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. She addresses questions about historical memory, justice, and possible paths forward for Russia and the West. Here is one exchange:

“- On his return, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wanted to face the past, to open the archives. Why?

- He wanted to inform the younger generations, because he knew that otherwise they would forget as the witnesses disappeared. Fortunately, many people in Russia today are trying to erect monuments to the victims of repression in the provinces. Some suffer as the historian Yuri Dmitriev in Karelia, who finds himself in prison for his fight. I speak a lot publicly to support it. In his case, it was the local FSB intelligence services that sued him in court [on false accusations—editor’s note] because they were furious that the memorial he defends has become a highly frequented place of pilgrimage, with 20,000 people who go there every year. And the top-level FSB does nothing, not wanting to go against its own structures.”
— Natalia Solzhenitsyn

Five Best Books on the Great Terror

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“How is it possible to put two strangers in a room—one an executioner, the other a prisoner—and not only persuade one to kill the other but convince both that this murder serves some higher purpose? During his eight years in the Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn felt the full brunt of Stalin’s police state “on his own hide,” in the Russian phrase. His epic “Gulag Archipelago,” a “literary investigation” of the history of Stalin’s terror, is the most thoroughly researched, deeply felt work ever written on the subject. Yet in all its exhausting and exhaustive detail, from the exact dimensions of the tiny, blacked-out holding cages to the horrors of being transported across the 10 time zones of the U.S.S.R. to frozen hellholes in the Arctic, the central question remains: “Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our own people?” Solzhenitsyn asks of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary, decent Soviet men and women who were ready to justify and even participate in the massacre of their fellows. “Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is ours.” Solzhenitsyn’s explanation is that “the line dividing good from evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?” That has the ring of truth. Still it does not explain, as perhaps nothing can, the enormity of the mass delusion that was Stalinism—one that claimed up to 15 million lives through execution, man-made famine and forced labor.”
— Owen Matthews

Putin congratulates Natalia Solzhenitsyna on her 80th birthday

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Yesterday Russian president Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory message to Natalia Solzhenitsyna, the author’s widow, on the occasion of her 80th birthday. The message reads, in part:

“You have devoted your life, energy, and creative gift to promoting charity and enlightenment; you stood at the origins of important educational and humanitarian projects, such as the Museum of Russia Abroad, which has become the centre for preserving a huge stratum of Russian history and culture, as related to the émigré community, its lifestyles and traditions.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s works are an integral and very important part of Russia’s cultural heritage. You were and still are this great writer’s soulmate as well as closest comrade-in-arms; you are doing a lot to preserve his works and ideas and are handing down to posterity the memory about this outstanding and unique man, about his role in asserting the principles of justice and democracy in this country.”
— President Vladimir Putin

And here is one of several pieces on Russian TV marking Natalia Solzhenitsyn’s 80th birthday:

Voegelin View on Between Two Millstones

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There are two recent items of interest at VoegelinView: Lee Trepanier’s review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1, and his interview about the book with Prof. Daniel J. Mahoney.

“Between Two Milestones is a testament not only to the courage and clear-sightedness of Solzhenitsyn but also to the evils of the Soviet Union and the pathologies that still plague the West. For those who wish to know about the man and his writing, this book is a critical book to consult and read. Insightful, surprisingly humorous at places, and always focused on those things that make life worth living – family, God, culture, and one’s own country – Between Two Milestones illuminates the struggles one faces when living in the West and what one can make of it in this free but empty civilization.”
— Lee Trepanier
“I was particularly impressed that Solzhenitsyn already saw in the mid-to-late 1970’s that many in America and the West hated “true Russia” more than they opposed its Bolshevik oppressors. His mission remained the same: he called “for a fight to the death against Communism, yet without in any way targeting Russia.” How little this position—and imperative—remains understood in America today! Even among those who admire Solzhenitsyn, there are many who are deeply suspicious of a Russia where patriotism and religion truly flourish (I am not speaking of imperialism or religious extremism).”
— Daniel J. Mahoney

Teaching Solzhenitsyn in School

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An interesting perspective yesterday on teaching Solzhenitsyn, from Solzhenitsyn biographer Joseph Pearce.

“In October 2010, it was announced that The Gulag Archipelago would become required reading for all Russian high school students. In a meeting with Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Mr. Putin described The Gulag Archipelago as “essential reading”: “Without the knowledge of that book, we would lack a full understanding of our country and it would be difficult for us to think about the future.” Since it is utterly unthinkable that Solzhenitsyn’s anti-communist classic would ever be adopted as required reading in the socialist-dominated high school system in the United States, we can see that Russian high school students are getting a much better education in the evils of communism than are American high schoolers.”

Stephen Kotkin on Solzhenitsyn

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Historian and author Stephen Kotkin of Princeton University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the historical significance of the life and work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's birth.

“Many people believe the Soviet system had redeeming features. For example, Hitler—Nazism—was absolutely beyond redemption. The Holocaust and what Hitler did made it seem that if you said anything nice about the Nazi system, you were apologizing for it. In the case of the Soviet Union, people imagined that there was a better revolution inside the Stalin regime, somehow. That 1917 was a purer, better form of Socialism that had been usurped or degraded by Stalin’s rule. Solzhenitsyn proved the contrary. Not only did he prove the contrary, but he did it in a way that tens of millions of people were interested to read. So, that’s an incredible accomplishment now on his centenary.”

David Walsh in Voegelin View

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David Walsh with a thoughtful essay at VoegelinView on Solzhenitsyn’s thought and life.

“Yet limitless cruelty could not succeed in its most important goal. It could not kill the human spirit. That is Solzhenitsyn’s legacy to world history.

It surely ranks with the greatest medical or technological breakthroughs of our era. None of the latter succeeded in conquering the mortality that is the fate of every living being. Yet Solzhenitsyn did accomplish just such a remarkable feat. He uncovered what is indestructible in a person. Religion and philosophy had always talked about the immortality of the soul, but few had so clearly lived it or, if they did, articulated it so deeply. For Solzhenitsyn, immortality was not a vague notion of another life but that part of himself that could not be destroyed. ”

Christian Science Monitor on Solzhenitsyn

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A recent editorial in the Christian Science Monitor on Solzhenitsyn’s continued relevance.

“Truth-tellers, or those with “open eyes,” are as needed today in Russia as they were in the Soviet Union of 1917 to 1991. Even a decade after his death, Solzhenitsyn still stands out as an icon of how individuals speaking the simplest truths can bring down a corrupt system.”

BBC Forum: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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The BBC’s flagship discussion program, The Forum, has run a 44-minute episode entitled Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Revealing the Gulag. According to its website:

The Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a towering literary figure whose novels, chronicles and essays have lifted the lid on the horrors of the Soviet gulag network, which over several decades incarcerated millions of often innocent prisoners. Born a hundred years ago, Solzhenitsyn survived the brutal conditions of a gulag in Kazakhstan and it was this harrowing experience that provided the impetus for his best-known works, starting with his novella, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and culminating in The Gulag Archipelago, a multi-volume history of the Soviet forced labour camps from 1918 to 1956. 

Bridget Kendall is joined by two Solzhenitsyn scholars: Professor Daniel Mahoney from Assumption College in the United States and Dr. Elisa Kriza from Bamberg University; and by Professor Leona Toker of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an expert on labour camp literature.

Go here to listen online or download the entire episode. And here below is a 2-minute excerpt:

Jay Nordlinger on Solzhenitsyn: A life and an Example

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Over at National Review, senior editor Jay Nordlinger reflects on Solzhenitsyn’s legacy.

“In 2001, I interviewed a woman named Youqin Wang, a lecturer in Chinese at the University of Chicago. She had a life project: to memorialize the victims of the Cultural Revolution.

She had been inspired by two writers: Anne Frank and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. When she was a girl in Beijing, she read Anne’s diary and started to keep one of her own. She even addressed it “Dear Kitty,” as Anne had.

It was illegal to keep a diary. You could be killed if caught with one. This was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. But Youqin kept a diary — destroying each page, shortly after she wrote it.

At Beijing University, she found a copy of Cancer Ward. She thought she was reading about her own experience. How could this Russian understand her so well? Youqin was so excited, she couldn’t sleep. Later, she read The Gulag Archipelago, and her life was set: She knew she had to commemorate the murdered, just as Solzhenitsyn had. They should not be forgotten.

Little Anne Frank was arguably the foremost witness to Nazism. Solzhenitsyn was arguably the foremost witness to Communism. Those are the twin evils of the 20th century (and lingering, of course). Think of Youqin Wang, with those two people, Anne and Solzhenitsyn, at her back.”
— Jay Nordlinger

Kirk Kolbo: Solzhenitsyn at 100

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Over at Ricochet, Kirk Kolbo looks back on Solzhenitsyn’s life and thought.

“What his critics never understood is that for Solzhenitsyn, politics was never the main thing. Over the course of a lifetime, as he explained to his biographer, he had moved “ever so slowly towards a position … of supporting the primacy of the spiritual over the material,” a philosophy to which all his works are a testament.

As with his literary forebears, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn’s writings are rooted in Russian history and culture, but the themes are universal. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, his speech addressed literature and its relationship to culture and the human spirit: “Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience.” A self-described optimist, Solzhenitsyn was convinced that “[i]n the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! … One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

Historians generally agree that the moral force of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, particularly The Gulag Archipelago, contributed significantly to the fall of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the non-Russian Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, and in the West an end to the idolization by many of Soviet communism. When it occurred, and all his writings were allowed to be published there, Solzhenitsyn returned with his wife to Russia in 1994, where he died in 2008.”