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

Wall Street Journal review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

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Bertrand M. Patenaude in today’s Wall Street Journal reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“From the moment he leaves the Soviet Union and takes residence in Europe, the famous exile feels overwhelmed by unwanted attention and demands on his time, including beckoning letters from Sens. Jesse Helms and Henry Jackson. “America, the consumer of everything new and sensational, was awaiting me with open arms,” he writes. He feels torn between his urge to withdraw from public view in order to write and his desire to speak out about the dangers posed to the unwary West by détente. He is besieged by reporters hounding him for a quote and photographing his every move. “You are worse than the KGB!” he explodes.”

First Things: Review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

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Ryszard Legutko in the forthcoming January 2019 issue of First Things reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“It is to Solzhenitsyn’s credit that he was able to look at Western society with a sharp eye, unaffected by the homegrown clichés that lulled many Westerners into complacency. He took none of those clichés for granted—that truth and goodness are authoritarian, that we must distinguish between morality and legality, that a modern society is inherently pluralistic, and several others—and having confronted them with an elementary experience, he discovered not only that they were wrong, but also that the opposite may be closer to the truth.”

Monument to Solzhenitsyn unveiled in the city of his birth

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On 19 December, a new monument to Solzhenitsyn, authored by renowned sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, was unveiled in Kislovodsk, the city of his birth, by the Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko. News report from rg.ru (in Russian), and video clips below.

В Кисловодске после масштабной реконструкции открыли главные Нарзанные ванны. Теперь это - современный санаторий. В церемонии открытия здравницы приняла участие спикер Совета Федерации Валентина Матвиенко. В рамках рабочей поездки в город-курорт она посетила ещё несколько ключевых объектов.

Спикер Совета Федерации Валентина Матвиенко приехала с рабочим визитом в Кисловодск. Поездка оказалась насыщенной. Она увидела и Нарзанную галерею, и новый интерактивный музей. Успела поговорить и о перспективах развития города. А началось все с Александра Солженицына. Где и как, расскажут корреспонденты ГТРК "Ставрополье".

"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.”
— from the publisher

"Remembering – and still learning from – Solzhenitsyn"

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Douglas Kries at The Catholic Thing with an appreciation of Solzhenitsyn.

“Marxism not only misunderstood the origin of evil, but likewise misunderstood what is to be done with its effects – with suffering. Solzhenitsyn came to realize that while there was no correlation between what he and the other political prisoners in the camps were charged with and what they were made to suffer, the Christians within the archipelago – at least the best of them – learned how to make suffering redemptive. That is, they knew how to turn their suffering into a continuous penance stemming from a continuous confession.”
— Douglas Kries

Fearless Prophets: Martin Luther King Jr. & Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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A few days ago Princeton University hosted a panel discussion entitled Fearless Prophets: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of King's Death and the Centenary of Solzhenitsyn's Birth, and featuring:

Daniel Mahoney, Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship, Assumption College;
Eugene F. Rivers, III, Founding Director, Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies;
David L. Tubbs *01, Associate Professor of Politics, The King's College.

It was moderated by Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University.

See the video of the event here.

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.”

BBC Russian Service on Solzhenitsyn's Centennial

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Chloe Arnold of the BBC Russian Service interviews Richard Tempest, Alexander Strokanov and Margo Caulfield for a story on Solzhenitsyn's centennial.

““Солженицын - прекрасный пример того, как можно ненавидеть коммунизм, ужасно относиться к СССР, но в то же время любить Россию, быть русским патриотом. Те, кто положительно относится к коммунизму, не могут принять его, потому что Солженицын - антисоветский писатель. Пожалуй, самый заметный и сильный среди всех антикоммунистических писателей. Живущие ностальгией по советскому прошлому воспринимают его сложно. Но те, кто не связывают Россию и СССР в целое, кто критически или объективно относятся к коммунизму, они понимают ценность Солженицына. И, думаю, что его ценность только растет”, - считает Строканов.”

At long last, the complete "Trilogy" available to stream with English subtitles!

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We have heard you, our patient (but demanding!) readers, and are delighted to present to you today, on Solzhenitsyn’s 100th birthday, newly uploaded versions of the complete Trilogy of films about Solzhenitsyn by Sergei Miroshnichenko. All of these come with excellent English subtitles. Happy watching!

New York Times: The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire

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Michael Scammell’s op-ed piece in today’s New York Times.

“Solzhenitsyn should be remembered for his role as a truth-teller. He risked his all to drive a stake through the heart of Soviet communism and did more than any other single human being to undermine its credibility and bring the Soviet state to its knees.”
— New York Times

PRESIDENT PUTIN UNVEILS SOLZHENITSYN MONUMENT

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At a ceremony today on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Street in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new monument of Solzhenitsyn. (Scroll down for video.)

11 December 2018. Russian President Vladimir Putin lays flowers at the new Moscow monument to Solzhenitsyn.

11 December 2018. Russian President Vladimir Putin lays flowers at the new Moscow monument to Solzhenitsyn.

“Aleksandr Isayevich believed that, without understanding our country’s past, there could be no sensible path toward its future. And so he trained his thought and words onto her future, in an attempt to identify possible ways of rebuilding Russia, so that the dramatic and profoundly difficult trials that fell to her would never again repeat, so that our multinational people could live in dignity and justice. That is how he saw his mission, his goal, the point of his service.”
— Vladimir Putin, 11 December 2018

Leonid Parfenov on Solzhenitsyn's centennial

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The celebrated filmmaker Leonid Parfenov reflects on Solzhenitsyn in his popular video log, Parthenon:

"Парфенон" - про то, что со мной было за это время, что видел, про что думал, что почему-то вспомнилось. Разговоры под вино недели, выбранное в соответствии с обстоятельствами - потому "18". Подписывайтесь на канал!

A "Centennial Tribute" by Daniel J. Mahoney

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City Journal has posted a centennial tribute by Dan Mahoney to Solzhenitsyn and his thought.

“Solzhenitsyn spoke in the name of an older Western and Christian civilization, still connected to the “deep reserves of mercy and sacrifice” at the heart of ordered liberty. It is a mark of the erosion of that rich tradition that its voice is so hard to hear in our late modern world, more—and more single-mindedly—devoted to what Solzhenitsyn called “anthropocentricity,” an incoherent and self-destructive atheistic humanism. Solzhenitsyn asks no special privileges for biblical religion (and classical philosophy), just a place at the table and a serious consideration within our souls. ”
— Daniel J. Mahoney