PUBLISHED TODAY: Solzhenitsyn and American Culture

/
DeavelWilson-REV.jpg

For many Americans of both right and left political persuasions, the Russian bear is more of a bugbear. On the right, the country is still mentally represented by Soviet domination. For those on the left, it is a harbor for reactionary values and neo-imperial visions. The reality, however, is that, despite Russia’s political failures, its rich history of culture, religion, and philosophical reflection—even during the darkest days of the Gulag—have been a deposit of wisdom for American artists, religious thinkers, and political philosophers probing what it means to be human in America.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stands out as the key figure in this conversation, as both a Russian literary giant and an exile from Russia living in America for two decades. This anthology reconsiders Solzhenitsyn’s work from a variety of perspectives—his faith, his politics, and the influences and context of his literature—to provide a prophetic vision for our current national confusion over universal ideals. In Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson have collected essays from the foremost scholars and thinkers of comparative studies who have been tracking what Americans have borrowed and learned from Solzhenitsyn as well as his fellow Russians. The book offers a consideration of what we have in common—the truth, goodness, and beauty America has drawn from Russian culture and from masters such as Solzhenitsyn—and will suggest to readers what we can still learn and what we must preserve. The book will interest fans of Solzhenitsyn and scholars across the disciplines, and it can be used in courses on Solzhenitsyn or Russian literature more broadly.

Contributors: David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Nathan Nielson, Eugene Vodolazkin, David Walsh, Matthew Lee Miller, Ralph C. Wood, Gary Saul Morson, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Micah Mattix, Joseph Pearce, James F. Pontuso, Daniel J. Mahoney, William Jason Wallace, Lee Trepanier, Peter Leithart, Dale Peterson, Julianna Leachman, Walter G. Moss, and Jacob Howland.

Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address

/
Quillette.png

Over at Quillette, Romanian-born Princeton mathematics professor Sergiu Klainerman considers the enduring relevance of the seminal Harvard Address to today’s world.


“A lot has been written lately about the Woke phenomenon, with excellent accounts of its ideology, genesis, and, though not yet complete, its long march through the institutions.

But I have still found myself at a loss to understand how this simplistic, tribalist, intellectually confused, petty, and terribly divisive ideology appears on the verge of displacing our old, magnificent worldview, anchored in the universal “unalienable Rights endowed by our Creator and secured by the Laws of Nature.”

I wrote this essay in the hope that revisiting what Solzhenitsyn had to say in 1978 may provide a clue to why we find ourselves so vulnerable today. I take from his text two important themes which I believe are relevant for this task. One is the growing imbalance between rights and individual obligations, the second is the loss of faith.”

Russia and the USSR: Solzhenitsyn Knew the Difference

/
Wall Street Journal.png

In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Solzhenitsyn’s son, the conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, examines the “historical roots of Russian-Western mistrust” through the lens of his father’s ruminations on these questions, especially in the crucial Chapter 6, “Russian Pain”, which opens the forthcoming Book 2 of Between Two Millstones.

“After the fall of communism, Solzhenitsyn’s call for repentance, for a historical reckoning on the model of Germany’s post-Nazi Vergangenheitsbewältigung, went unheeded. And so official government support for memorials of communist repression and the incorporation of “The Gulag Archipelago” into high-school curricula paradoxically coexists in some quarters today with a noxious strain of thought that Joseph Stalin —the chief butcher of Russians—was a Russian patriot, while Solzhenitsyn—the chief enemy of Russia’s oppressors—was a traitor.

No wonder, then, that the West has blurred any meaningful distinction between the totalitarian jackboot of the U.S.S.R. and the soft authoritarianism of a comparatively free Russia, and confused “Russian” and “Soviet,” misunderstanding three centuries of Russian history and the antinational essence of communism. “ ‘Russian’ is to ‘Soviet’ as ‘man’ is to ‘disease,’ ” wrote Solzhenitsyn. An unintended consequence: the unprecedented Russian consensus of liberal society and illiberal government, who agree on little, except that the West won’t like Russia no matter what she does.

If Western policy makers’ objective remains to bring Russia into the community of free nations, they might heed Solzhenitsyn’s plea and engage with Russia equitably, according to the virtues or failings of current policy, rather than judge her reflexively by a fictitious, maleficent historical narrative that bars any path forward.”

Solzhenitsyn's Idyll in Vermont

/
The_Wall_Street_Journal_logo_text_wordmark.png

Today’s Review section of the Wall Street Journal features a full-page excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1982 but published here for the first time in English, describe Solzhenitsyn’s joy, after years of tightly constricted time and space, at his newfound opportunity to commune with nature in rural Vermont and to work undisturbed on his magnum opus, The Red Wheel.

“For six months, I revel in my work in a spacious, high-ceilinged office with “arrow” beams—cold in winter, it’s true—with big windows, skylights, and ample tables where I spread out my quantities of little notes. But for the other half of the year, the summer months, I decamp to the little house by the pond and derive a new rush of energy from this change of workplace: Something new flows into me, some kind of expanded creative capacity.

Here, nature is so close all around us that it even becomes a curse: Chipmunks dart in and out under your feet, several of them at a time, little snakes occasionally slip past you through the grass and a raccoon rustles along, heaving a sigh, beneath our floorboards; at dawn every day, squirrels bombard our metal roof with the pine-cones they’ve picked, and red flying squirrels with wings like bats move into the attic of the big house for the winter, and start romping around there at random times of the day and night. But the ones I dearly love are the coyotes: In the winter, they often roam our land, coming right up to the house and emitting their intricate, inimitable cry. I won’t attempt to describe it, but I am very fond of it.”

Solzhenitsyn's Resistance to Militant Atheism

/
Christian Post.png

Over at the Christian Post, Bill Connor writes about the continuing relevance of Solzhenitsyn’s Christian message and quotes this passage from the Templeton Lecture:

“It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that ‘revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.’ That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. To achieve its diabolical ends. Communism needs to control a population devoid of religious and national feeling, and this entails the destruction of faith and nationhood.”

The Meaning of an Oath

/
The American Conservative.png

The American Conservative, in addition to the ”Stop the Presses” excerpt in its September/October issue we’ve already noted, has also posted an online-only excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, recount how defenseless the stateless Solzhenitsyn felt in the mid-80s, his ill-considered plan to take on US citizenship, and his dramatic change of heart when faced with the words, and the implications, of the citizenship oath.

“Some weeks went by—Alya and I were summoned to that same immigration branch office. An obligatory interview took place, with each of us separately. We had to answer some very simple questions about the constitution. We’d brushed up. But the clerk asked me more, about myself. From lack of practice (I hadn’t conversed in English for years) I listened intently to understand what she was saying. Again, please. —“Are you willing to bear arms on behalf of the United States?” Absolutely not! I hadn’t even been expecting the question. I replied: “But I’m sixty-six.” —“But, still, in principle?” What is this principle? You’ve got young men here of an age to be drafted; they burn their draft cards and get away with it, whereas I, at more than sixty years of age, could be called up? I expressed bewilderment. Then she said that, on the form, I’d already confirmed and signed that I was willing. Wha-a-a-t? (DiLisio had filled it in without the slightest hesitation, and hadn’t told me.) I felt sick. . . . All I could do was mumble, “Well, in principle, not literally . . .””





Stop the Presses

/
The American Conservative.png

The American Conservative, in its September/October issue, also has an excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1994 but published here for the first time in English, recount, with vivid flair, the dramatic tale of how The Gulag Archipelago was almost published in the USSR in January 1989, but was ultimately vetoed by Gorbachev himself, who literally stamped his feet at the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir and ordered half a million covers announcing Archipelago to be torn off at the last minute.

“Then someone informed the Central Committee that Zalygin had dared put one line of advance publicity on the cover of the October issue of Novy Mir: it said that in 1989 the journal would publish something (unnamed) by Solzhenitsyn. Zalygin was called to the CC and sternly informed that his escapades were intolerable and that he was smuggling an “enemy” into print. And they gave the printers a direct order: stop the presses! pull the covers off the copies already finished (and there were now almost 500,000 of these)—and shred them. A truly Bolshevik-scale exercise!”

Grey Mists and Ancient Stones

/
The New Criterion.png

The New Criterion, in its September issue, has a beautiful excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, describe portions of Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 trip to the United Kingdom: his visit to the western highlands of Scotland, speech at Eton, and meeting with Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

“We were taken into an empty drawing room. Our escort departed, but immediately, via a small, snug service door so narrow they could barely fit through it, came the even slimmer Prince Charles and Princess Diana—both of them tall, modest, even shy, particularly Diana. The five of us sat around the low drawing-room table and, after a few sentences, the conversation took a turn that saw Diana leave the room: immediately outside, she was handed her first child, the heir to Britain’s royal line, one-year-old William, all ready to go. She brought him in to be introduced to us, and he behaved excellently, in a friendly manner, causing no trouble at all. Diana was radiant (she was pretty as a picture) and Charles was too—in a more measured, manly fashion. And somehow all of it—the loneliness of the parents in the dormant, half-empty palace, their hounding by the vulgar press, Charles’s well-known and steadfast interest in the depths of things, greater than required for today’s pared-down British throne, and the hazy future of that throne itself, created in me (and in Alya too: we compared notes later) a bittersweet sympathy for these young people.”

Forgetting God and Remembering Thatcher

/
Claremont Review of Books.png

The Claremont Review, in its Summer issue, has a powerful excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, describe Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 trip to London to receive the Templeton Prize for progress in religion and his meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“For exactly an hour we sat on sofas around
a low table, an hour of the most substantive
conversation, while Irina Alekseevna translat-
ed accurately and effortlessly. There were no
patches of empty courtesy, and no distraction
at all—just world and British politics today.”

RUSSIAN PURGATORY

/
First Things.png

In the June/July issue of First Things, we read a brilliant essay by Algis Valiunas, on the essential, profound differences between Tsarism and Communism. Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Shalamov, and, especially, Solzhenitsyn are the major players.

“The sentence of hard labor under the czars, ­Solzhenitsyn writes with almost gleeful mordancy, was an idyll compared to Stalin’s crushing prison regimen. In the 1890s at one of the fiercest labor camps, the prescribed workday was eight hours in summer and six in winter, including the long walk to and from the work site. In the 1930s and 1940s in Kolyma, the workday ran from thirteen to sixteen hours, and the three-mile slog back and forth did not figure in the calculation. And whereas the perpetrators of the famed Decembrist conspiracy of the 1820s were required to mine and load 118 pounds of ore per day, the Stalinist work norm was 28,800 pounds per day—though even in the homeland of unprecedented technological marvels, pick and shovel had undergone no startling advances in the interval:

As for Dostoevsky’s hard labor in Omsk, it is clear that in general they simply loafed about, as any reader can establish. The work there was agreeable and went with a swing, and the prison administration there even dressed them up in white linen jackets and trousers! . . . Indeed, the Tsarist censor did not want to pass the manuscript of The House of the Dead for fear that the easiness of the life depicted by Dostoyevsky would fail to deter people from crime. And so, Dostoyevsky added new pages for the censor which demonstrated that life in hard labor was nonetheless hard!”

America’s Muzzled Freedom

/
Law & Liberty.png

Over at Law and Liberty, Scott Yenor has another take on Solzhenitsyn’s great Archipelago chapter, “Our Muzzled Freedom”. (Attentive readers will recall that we mentioned another paraphrase of that chapter’s famous list a few weeks ago.

“In the style and language of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, then, it is worth considering the attributes of America’s new, “muzzled freedom.”*”

New Solzhenitsyn Mural in Tver

/
The new mural, at 29, Radishchev Boulevard in Tver.

The new mural, at 29, Radishchev Boulevard in Tver.

In the city of Tver, about 100 miles northwest of Moscow, street painter Viktor Lebedev adorned the side wall of an apartment building at 32, Smolensky Lane with a large mural on the occasion of Solzhenitsyn’s 100th anniversary in 2018.  Next to the author’s portrait were the words: “Live Not by Lies. A.I. Solzhenitsyn”.

The mural immediately caused division, with some angry voices decrying Solzhenitsyn as a traitor who helped destroy the USSR.  One of those opposed is a building resident, and he filed a complaint to stop the mural, since a municipal permit had not been granted.  As the case wound its way through the legal system, Communist activists painted over the “not” (thus: “Live by Lies.”). On 4 July 2020, they painted over the mural entirely.

On 11 July 2020, at the behest of the governor of Tver oblast, Igor Rudenya, it was announced that another location had been found; that the artist, Viktor Lebedev, had agreed to put the work up again; and that the new mural at 29, Radishchev Boulevard, “has already become a notable spot, frequently photographed by passersby.”

It appears that the Communist activists have become the latest victims of the age-old rule, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Read a machine translation of the story here.

The old mural, at 32, Smolensky Lane in Tver.

The old mural, at 32, Smolensky Lane in Tver.