Another Review of March 1917, Book 2

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Leona Toker of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a brief review of MARCH-2 in the Summer issue of Russian Review.

“If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago presented a mindset-changing view of the history of the USSR, the historical novels that make up his epopee The Red Wheel are a counterweight to the heroics of the October Revolution. Solzhenitsyn considers the February Revolution of 1917 not just a prelude to the October Bolshevik usurpation of power but a seminal event—the catastrophe of the Russian Empire, which, despite the idealistic dreams of liberals and social democrats, led to a new form of tyranny, incalculable suffering and mortality of the population, and waste of the country’s talents and resources.”

Three Days in March 1917

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Here is a very substantial review of MARCH-2 by the Canadian novelist Jeff Bursey.

“It’s the style, the story, the characters, the form, the way with words, the invention, the humor, the ideas, and the attitude the work contains that appeal, plus such things as escapism, confirmation of beliefs, upending of positions, expression of inchoate feelings, and the desire to be astonished and informed.”

Tony Woodlief reviews March 1917, Book 2

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An impressive and smart review of March 1917, Book 2, also taking into account its precursors—August 1914 and October 1916, as well as Book 1 of March.

““Revolutionary truths,” Solzhenitsyn writes, “have a great quality: even hearing them with their own ears, the doomed don’t understand.” There’s a moment in the revelry, after the soldiers have all donned red, after every policeman has been shot or bayoneted, when intellectuals who called loudest for revolution realize there are no patrols to fend off drunken gangs, nor courts to repudiate armed students arresting whomever they please for “crimes against the people.” In this brave new world, rule of law has been displaced by the rule of gun-toting loudmouths. It’s too late for them, and for the millions who will be subjected to lifelong suffering because ideologically enthralled intellectuals hammered away at society’s foundation until it collapsed. After Lenin comes Stalin. He always does.”

Readings for Troubled Times: Live Not by Lies

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Over at Jeremy Beer’s Philanthropy Daily, Rod Dreher reminds us to read Live Not by Lies.

“What you should read: “Live Not By Lies,” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Why: How does a good man resist evil when he is powerless? The final communiqué Solzhenitsyn issued to the Soviet people on the eve of his 1974 arrest and expulsion to the West was a short essay explaining how to do it: Live not by lies! The Soviet system was built on lies, and on the willingness of the people to pretend that these lies were true. But the one thing that even the most demoralized person can do to fight the system is to refuse its lies, no matter the personal cost. Don’t write or say what you know is untrue. Don’t allow yourself to be seen doing anything that gives the official liars reason to think you are on their side.

“There are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be honest,” said Solzhenitsyn. “On any given day any one of us will be confronted with [a choice]. Either truth or falsehood: Toward spiritual independence or toward spiritual servitude. And he who is not sufficiently courageous even to defend his soul—don’t let him be proud of his “progressive” views, don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a merited figure, or a general—let him say to himself: I am in the herd, and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and warm.”

We live in a time of ideological madness, with commissars and scoundrels demanding allegiance to lies, and testimonies to untruth. If, out of fear, you give them what they want, they will own you forever. Solzhenitsyn knew. So had we better.”

Solzhenitsyn "Quote" on Police a Fake

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We have learned that a meme is making the rounds concerning an alleged quote about attacks against police, purportedly from Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together.  (That book has not yet appeared in English, except in illegal, pirated, unauthorized, tendentious hatchet jobs in dark corners of the web. Learn more here.) We have checked the original Russian and do not find anything resembling this quote. In any case, we object to thoughtlessly enlisting a great writer to score political points on burning issues of the moment.

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CHOICE review of March 1917, Book 2

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From the May issue of CHOICE magazine:

“Most readers know the name Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but few have heard of—and even fewer have read—The Red Wheel, the author’s longest and most challenging novel, which comprises ten volumes in total. The present volume is book 2 of the March 1917 node, which dramatizes the tumultuous events of the March Revolution—a workers’ strike in Petrograd; abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and house arrest of the Romanov family; establishment of a provisional government to rule over Russia. Although The Red Wheel is fiction, Solzhenitsyn prided himself on the historical accuracy of his work. He spent ten years writing the March 1917 node, adding psychological depth, descriptive details, and, occasionally, his own views to bring well-known personalities and events to life. Solzhenitsyn’s decision to write the novel in vignettes, ranging from several pages to several lines, opens the book to a variety of readers and approaches to reading. Occasionally Solzhenitsyn advances the plot through authentic genres from the period, including telegrams, correspondence, slogans, and official reports. Schwartz’s translation is lively and contemporary. The appendix provides four maps and a helpful index of names that can serve as a reader’s guide through Solzhenitsyn’s maze of embellished historical encounters, which capture the events of March 1917 from many perspectives.”
— A. J. DeBlasio, Dickinson College

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

Interview with Richard Tempest on his new Solzhenitsyn book

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Slavic languages and literatures professor Richard Tempest has written a new book, Overwriting Chaos, about the literary artistry of Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Read his interview about it here.

“Every story, every novel is a complete imagined world unto itself, with a humankind, geography, climate, flora and its own logic. It can be very playful and magical. That’s the way I look at him,” Tempest said. “As an artist, he had tremendous fun writing. He liked all kinds of tricks and in-jokes and private witticisms.”

Solzhenitsyn's Warning

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“In our eagerness to do business with China, we have self-servingly overlooked the lies and dishonesty endemic in totalitarian societies. The Covid-19 virus – so renamed to conceal its origins in Wuhan, China – reminds us of the fatal dangers of the one-party state. In reviewing The Solzhenitsyn Reader, Colin May illuminates how the great Russian dissident and author warned the West.”

Richard Tempest Online Book Presentation coming up on 9 Apr

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On Thursday, April 9 from 4:30–5:30 p.m., the Russian and East European Studies Programand the Department of Historyare inviting Seton Hall students and guests to participate in an online book presentation by one of the world's preeminent Solzhenitsyn scholars, Prof. Richard Tempest (University of Illinois). Professor Tempest will discuss his latest book, Overwriting Chaos: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Fictive Words (Academic Press, 2019).

Cavendish’s Best Known Social Distancer: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Over at the Cavendish Historical Society, Margo Caulfield points out that Solzhenitsyn sought the quiet of a small Vermont town in order to deepen and advance his art.

“However, even with our mountains and fresh air, as everything has been shutting down, people are expressing how they feel the world is closing in on them. I find myself turning to one of my favorite Solzhenitsyn quotes for comfort, “We are creatures born with inner freedom of will, freedom of choice-the most part of freedom is a gift to us at birth. External, or social freedom is very desirable for the sake of undistorted growth, but it is no more than a condition, a medium, and to regard it as the object of our existence is nonsense. We can firmly assert our freedom even in external conditions of unfreedom.” —From Under the Rubble”
— Margo Caulfield

Tempest review of March 1917, Book 2

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Richard Tempest reviews the newly-appeared March 1917, Book 2 in the current issue of National Review.

“Contrary to Tolstoy in War and Peace, Solzhenitsyn means to demonstrate that, at the decisive “nodal” moments of history, the action or inaction of a single individual may have a decisive impact on the course of events. In March 1917, for example, Nicholas II, Aleksandr Kerensky, the future head of the provisional government, and Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, are the most important characters, though plenty of attention is paid to the doings and sayings of other prominent personalities from the theaters of war, politics, and culture, such as General Mikhail Alekseev, chief of the imperial GHQ; Pavel Milyukov, the foreign minister of the provisional government; and Maxim Gorky, the allegedly proletarian writer who supported the Bolshevik cause.”

Morson review of March 1917, Book 2

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Gary Saul Morson reviews the newly-appeared March 1917, Book 2 at the American Scholar.

“To capture such confusion as it was experienced, Solzhenitsyn divides nearly 700 pages into 182 brief chapters jolting among countless narrative threads. We witness decisions taken on the basis of rumors later revealed to be false. We see that Petrograd (as St. Petersburg became known after 1914) was not overrun by an organized group of class-conscious revolutionary workers, as Soviet historians later claimed, but by a rabble of drunkards, released criminals, and soldiers who murdered their officers. “That’s what’s freedom’s for,” one rioter explains. “I shoot wherever I want.” The result is a world reminiscent of Hobbes’s struggle of all against all: “In all the city, each person could protect only himself and expect an attack from anyone and everyone. … It was as if the capital itself were drunk.”

Only intellectuals who have read too many romanticized accounts of the French Revolution could celebrate this violence and expect anything good to come from it. With his trademark irony, reminiscent of Edward Gibbon, Solzhenitsyn describes the puzzlement of one government official unable to recognize in this mob “the noble Face of the People” idealized by thinkers across the political spectrum.”

Video of Harvard Address now available with English subtitles

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Ever since we uploaded, in 2013, the complete video of Solzhenitsyn’s seminal Harvard Address, it has generated over 170,000 views, hundreds of positive comments, and a few negative ones. But also—a persistent clamor amongst viewers for a solution to the dual Russian/English audio that makes it difficult to make out individually the Russian-speaking voice of Solzhenitsyn and the English-speaking voice of his translator, Irina Alberti. While isolating these audio streams is a task beyond our technical means, we are delighted to offer readers/viewers, as a New Year’s gift, an excellent alternative: carefully arranged subtitles that allow English speakers to follow the address much more easily. We are immensely grateful to Mr James Hooghkirk, who generously volunteered his time and expertise to bring this improvement to fruition. Happy watching!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Commencement Address at Harvard University-8 June 1978. {Russian audio with English-translation audio overlay; and English subtitles.} Full Russian text here: http://antology.igrunov.ru/authors/solzh/1121759601.html Full English text here: www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart

Just published: No. 7 of "Studying Solzhenitsyn"

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The 7th issue of Studying Solzhenitsyn is out.

Studying Solzhenitsyn, No. 7 (2019)   360 pp.
This issue presents, for the first time, Solzhenitsyn’s recollections of his school years; archival documents pertaining to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Solzhenitsyn 50 years ago; the author’s correspondence with Heinrich Böll (1968–82); photographic materials relating to Solzhenitsyn’s military career; and the reflections of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the author’s son, on Aleksandr Chaikovsky’s opera “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. Sections detailing current goings-on in the Solzhenitsyn space include information on the latest editions of Solzhenitsyn’s works, on new scholarly studies or conferences focused on Solzhenitsyn, on special exhibits or permanent museum installations bearing on the writer, on new or imminent theatrical, cinematic, or musical interpretations of his works, and on the latest (2017 and 2018) awards of the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Prize in Literature. The issue is rounded out by reproductions of handwritten manuscripts and by photographs.

Contents & Summary (English) 

Law & Liberty review of March 1917, Book 2

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Over at Law & Liberty, Will Morrisey reviews March 1917, Book 2.

“Although in one sense a historical novel—most of the characters are real people, and Solzhenitsyn deploys them not as mere cameos but as men and women in full—of all his novels so far, this one feels the most immediate, the most current. The freneticism, violence, confusion, and disorientation of Russians in Petrograd from March 13 through March 15 of 1917 can also be seen in minds and actions of Chinese in Hong Kong, right now. No one knows exactly what to do, although many suppose they do. And even if we didn’t know how the revolution did end, we can see it won’t end well. No one surpasses Solzhenitsyn in conveying a sense of what it feels to live at and near the center of this kind of vortex.”
— Will Morrisey