Literary Treasures | A Conversation on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn with Ralph Wood

An interesting discussion of Eastern Orthodox faith, as reflected in Solzhenitsyn’s characters and writings.

Ralph C. Wood, Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University, explores the Orthodox character of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s literary imagination. Almost all accounts of Solzhenitsyn’s faith cast it in generically religious terms. Even when critics attend to his Christianity, they usually fail to note that he was a confessing Russian Orthodox believer. This may be due to academic ignorance about the distinctive character of Orthodoxy, as if it were but an Eastern version of Roman Catholicism. To correct this mistake, Dr. Wood will show how Eastern Christianity often dwells in tension, even in occasional conflict, with its Western counterpart. Though Solzhenitsyn never turned his poetry and fiction into apologetics, he tapped the deep veins of his native Russian Orthodoxy in his imaginative work. Its liturgical phrases and rites may have risen to the surface without his awareness. This makes them even more remarkable when they flower in his most carefully crafted story, “Matryona’s Home.”

German Radio on Solzhenitsyn and the Nobel

Germany’s Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) has a reflection by Irene Dänzer-Vanotti on Solzhenitsyn’s life and the awarding of the Nobel Prize 50 years ago this past Thursday. Listen below or read transcript.

TRANSCRIPT:

WDR Zeitzeichen.

Stichtag heute, 10. Dezember 1970. Alexander Solschenizyn erhält den Literaturnobelpreis.

"Um fünf Uhr früh erscholl wie immer der Weckruf: Ein Schlag mit dem Hammer auf eine Eisenschiene an der Stabsbaracke. [00:00:30] Schwach drang der unterbrochene Ton durch die zwei Finger dick gefrorenen Scheiben <…> hinter dem Fenster war alles so wie in der Nacht, als Schuchow die Stubenlatrine aufgesucht hatte, duster und finster."

Sibirien. Ein Sträflings– und Zwangsarbeitslager. Mit dem Weckruf beginnt der Tag im Leben des Iwan Denissowitsch Schuchow den der russische Schriftsteller Alexander Solschenizyn hier beschreibt. Der Tag droht schwierig zu werden. Schuchow fühlt sich nicht gesund.

Erhöhte Temperatur, [00:01:00] meint der Lagerarzt. Das Fieberthermometer zeigt dieselbe Ziffer wie das Thermometer am Fenster.

Mit einem Unterschied. "27 Grad Kälte draußenб in Schuchow 37 Grad Wärme."

Seit sechs Jahren, seit 1945, seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs, ist Schuchow Häftling dieses Lagers.

"Das neue Jahr, 1951, hatte begonnen, und Schuchow stand in diesem Jahr das Recht zu, zwei Briefe zu schreiben."

Lagerhaft [00:01:30] in Sibirien hat auch Schuchows Erfinder erlebt, erlitten. Alexander Solschenizyn. Er wird ebenfalls 1945 als Hauptmann der Roten Armee auf deren Vormarsch Richtung Deutschland auf einem der Schlachtfelder in Ostpreußen verhaftet. Der Grund? Er hatte in Briefen an einen Schulfreund, den mächtigsten Mann im Staat, Generalsekretär und Heerführer Josef Stalin kritisiert. Dabei war Solschenizyn als Kommunist besorgt, sagt im Rückblick [00:02:00] sein Sohn Ignat Solzhenitsyn.

In den Briefen kritisierte er nicht das Regime, sondern Stalin. Er bezweifelte, dass Stalins Politik Lenins Erbe gerecht wurde.

Alexander Solschenizyn in den 1960er und 70er Jahren wird der Autor für das kommunistische Regime in Moskau Staatsfeind Nummer eins. Kritiker der sowjetischen Staatsführung sehen in [00:02:30] ihm einen Helden, und für Intellektuelle, für Leserinnen und Leser gilt er als der Beweis, dass Worte die Welt verändern können.

"Sein größtes Verdienst ist, dass er die literarische Aufarbeitung der stalinistischen Gewaltherrschaft durchgeführt hat." Der russische Philosoph Nikolai Plotnikow: "Das er zum ersten Mal den Opfern dieses Regimes das menschliche Gesicht verliehen hat, den Namen gegeben [00:03:00] hat. Und damit hat er gezeigt, wie unmenschlich dieses System an sich ist."

"Es gab eigentlich keine einzige große Familie, wo es keine Opfer gab, nur wusste man vielleicht nicht so wirklichwas dann mit ihnen passiert ist", sagt die Menschenrechtsaktivistin Irina Scherbakowa in Moskau. Wir interviewen sie per Videokonferenz. Iwan Denissowitsch, die Figur mit realen Vorbildern wird zu [00:03:30] dem politischen Häftling der sibirischen Lager. Solschenizyn erreicht aber bald noch mehr. Er wird zum Chronisten von Terror und Gewalt, die Tausende Männer und Frauen vom Moment ihrer meist grundlosen Verhaftung bis zu ihrem Tod in den Lagern ertragen müssen. Solschenizyn gibt diesem System einen Namen und setzt es auf die politische Weltkarte.

Der Archipel Gulag.

Geboren wird Alexander Issajewitsch Solschenizyn 1918 [00:04:00] im Nordkaukasus. Sein Vater stirbt schon vor seiner Geburt. Und so wächst Alexander in ärmlichen Verhältnissen auf. Zunächst wird er ein überzeugter Kommunist. Studiert Physik und Mathematik, beschäftigt sich aber auch mit Literatur, Geschichte und Philosophie. Im Oktober 1941, wenige Monate nach dem Überfall der deutschen Wehrmacht auf die Sowjetunion, wird der Soldat ihm, wie es in seiner Heimat heißt, Großen Vaterländischen Krieg. [00:04:30] Solschenizyn sieht, wie Stalin als Heerführer Tausende russische Soldaten in den Tod treibt und beklagt dies noch Jahre später:

" 'Um jeden Preis vordringen', das war Stalins Devise. Den Generälen wurden dafür goldene Orden an die Brust geheftet. Aber sie vergaßen, was eigentlich im Krieg gilt. Der Erfolg soll so wenig Opfer wie möglich kosten. Bei uns aber gab es ein Maximum an [00:05:00] Opfern.

Kritik an Stalin, und sei es in privaten Briefen, wird unterdessen Herrschaft hart bestraft. Solschenizyn erhält, was er im Roman einen Zehner nennen wird.

"Sie wurden alle über einen Kamm geschoren und zu zehn Jahren verknackt. Aber ab 1949 wurden die Haftzeit länger, alle erhielten unterschiedslos 25 Jahre. Zehn Jahre kann man auf irgendeine Weise noch durchstehen, aber 25 überleben?!"

Iwan Denissowitsch Schuchow [00:05:30] hat an dem Tag, den der Roman schildert, eigentlich Glück. Beim Frühstück, dem so genannten Frühstück, kann er heimlich ein bißchen vereist das Brot einstecken.

"Schuchows Portion war <…> verputzt, er ließ jedoch ein angeknabbertes Stückchen von der halbrunden oberen Brotkruste übrig. Denn mit keinem Löffel kann man den Brei so sauber aus der Schüssel herausputzen wie mit Brot. Er wickelte die armselige Brotrinde wieder in das weiße Läppchen [00:06:00] für die Mittagsration ein."

Dann geht es bei minus 37 Grad hinaus zur Arbeit als Maurer.

"Die Kolonne <…> marschierte in die Steppe hinaus, gegen den Wind und auf die aufsteigende, rotglühende Sonne zu. Der nackte weiße Schnee zog sich links und rechts bis zum Horizont, und in der ganzen Steppe stand kein einziges Bäumchen."

"Das ist der Alltag des stalinistischen Systems. Und das ist das Leben in der Sowjetunion unter den Bedingungen des stalinistischen [00:06:30] Regimes. Das ist ein ganz gewöhnlicher Tag."

Mit zehn Jahren Lagerhaft ist Kritik an Stalin aber noch nicht abgebüßt. Solschenizyn wird danach zu ewiger Verbannung verurteilt in einem gottverlassenen Ort in Kasachstan. Sein Sohn Ignat beschreibt diese Strafe sarkastisch.

"Ewige Verbannung, war einer der beschönigenden Ausdrücke des sowjetischen Systems und meinte tatsächlich Verbannung bist du stirbst oder die Welt untergeht, was auch immer [00:07:00] zuerst passiert."

Diese ewige Verbannung allerdings findet ein Ende nach Stalins Tod 1953. Nikita Chruschtschow wird sein Nachfolger, prangert manche Verbrechen von Josef Stalin an und Alexander Solschenizyn wird, wie viele andere, rehabilitiert. Damit beginnt eine ruhigere Phase in seinem Leben. Er unterrichtet an einer Schule Mathematik und Physik und beginnt über die Lager zu schreiben. Noch ist er eines von Millionen Opfern, [00:07:30] die weder seine Landsleute noch die Welt kennen. Er fühlt sich berufen, die Wahrheit zu schreiben, sagt Nikolai Plotnikow vom Slawistik Institut der Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

"Solschenizyn ist ja auch eine ganz authentische Persönlichkeit, auch im Tigger, in dem Sinne, dass er praktizierte das, was seinen Ansichten entsprach. Das ist natürlich auch für ihn als Dissident eine sehr große Rolle gespielt, dass diese klare Position [00:08:00] bezogen hat, nicht mit der Lüge zu leben."

"Der Mensch hat nur ein Leben, aber auch nur ein Gewissen."

Im Jahr 1962, in der vergleichsweise freien Phase, erscheint der Roman in der Sowjetunion, "Ein Tag im Leben des Iwan Denissowitsch". Das Werk wird ein Welterfolg macht die sibirischen Lager berüchtigt und den Autor berühmt.

"Das ist natürlich auch seine [00:08:30] große literarische Leistung. Überhaupt dass er ja eine literarische Aufarbeitung des stalinistischen Terrors, des Gulags und dieses gewallt Systems angefangen hat."

Am 10. Dezember 1970, heute vor 50 Jahren, erhält Alexander Solschenizyn dafür den Nobelpreis für Literatur. Allerdings, zu jener Zeit für sowjetische Preisträger üblich, wagte es nicht, nach Stockholm zu reisen. [00:09:00] Seine Heimat könnte ihm die Rückkehr verwehren.

"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, my dear friend, with these few words I commit you the warm congratulations…"

Erst vier Jahre später, 1974, nimmt der russische Autor den Preis entgegen und hört die Lobrede auf sich. In der Zwischenzeit war viel passiert. Solschenizyn hat sein Hauptwerk veröffentlicht, und zwar zunächst im Westen. Das Manuskript hatten Freunde [00:09:30] aus der Sowjetunion geschmuggelt.

"Archipel Gulag all jenen gewidmet, die nicht genug Leben hatten, um dies zu erzählen."

Weder genau klar beschreibt er Verhaftungen, Deportationen und die Qualen des Lager Lebens im Gulag.

Das Wort ist eine Abkürzung für "Hauptverwaltung der Besserungen, Arbeitslager und Colonien". "Die Eindringlichkeit mit der Solschenizyn das beschreibt.

Es geht hier nicht nur um die Schrecken an sich, [00:10:00] dieses Terrors, sondern diese Gewöhnlichkeit, um diese Alltäglichkeit, dieses Terrors.

Das ist das vielleicht, was am stärksten betroffen macht."

"Dieses Buch war eine Zäsur.

Die Menschenrechtsaktivistin Irena Scherbakowa gehört zu den ersten, die es von Hand zu Hand reichen.

"Das Buch gang ja auch in der Sowjetunion deportieren.

Nur, es war die gefährlichste Lektüre" und der Autor wird am 12. Februar 74 erneut [00:10:30] festgenommen. Er kommt zunächst für einige Stunden ins Gefängnis und wird noch am selben Tag aus der Sowjetunion ausgewiesen. Er fliegt nach Deutschland, fährt in die Eifel zu seinem Freund, dem Schriftsteller Heinrich Böll.

"Sie verstehen, ich bin sehr müde und ich bin besorgt wegen meiner Familie. Ich muße telefonieren nach Moskau. Nur heute am morgen gefällt."

Für Solschenizyn, [00:11:00] seine Frau und seine drei Söhne Sie sind noch klein. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt beginnen 20 Jahre Exil, in denen sich die Welt, gerade auch seine Welt verändert. Die Mauer wird eingerissen, der Kalte Krieg beendet. Der Kommunismus für gescheitert erklärt. Die Sowjetunion zerfällt. 1994 kehrt Solschenizyn nach Russland zurück, als Bekenner zum Landleben, aber auch als Skeptiker gegenüber Kapitalismus und sogar Demokratie. [00:11:30] Das wird für den nächsten russischen Präsidenten Wladimir Putin eine Steilvorlage werden.

"Die Idee des starken Staates, die Idee des ein russischen Volkes, zu dem auch Ukrainer und Belarussen und alle gehören, das ist also für ihn das eine und homogene russische Volk. Und das ist natürlich sehr stark aufgegriffen worden durch das Putin-Regime.

Solschenizyn ist inzwischen umstritten. Schulen und [00:12:00] Straßen werden nach ihm benannt. Aber sein Plädoyer für den starken Staat, so wie manche antisemitischen Äußerungen, werden kritisiert. In Russland werden bis heute Menschen aus politischen Gründen in Sibirien gefangen genommen. Der bekannteste war der Oligarch Michail Chodorkowskij. Nikolai Plotnikow von der Uni Bochum:

"Der Gulag als System wurde noch von Chruschtschow abgeschafft. Allerdings bleiben bis heute noch die sogenannten Umerziehung [00:12:30] Colonien Bestrafung Anstalten, die sogar aus dieser Zeit des Gulags noch stammen."

Die Verbrechen, die unter Stalin in diesen Lagern begangen wurden, werden inzwischen der Große Terror genannt. Gerichte gehen ihnen soweit bekannt, bislang nicht nach. Aber am Tag des Häftlings, dem 30. Oktober, werden jedes Jahr Namen von Opfern verlesen.  [00:13:00]Irina Scherbakowa ist eine der Initiatorinnen dieser und weiterer Aktionen.

"An diese kleinen Schilder, die Stolpersteine wir immer mehr in Russland an die Häuser angeheftet, wo Opfer gelebt haben."

Der Schriftsteller Alexander Solschenizyn stirbt 2008 mit fast 80 Jahren in Moskau. Sein Sohn Ignat, der in den USA aufwuchs und Dirigent ist, bewundert die Haltung seines [00:13:30] Vaters:

"Wir haben immer die Wahl, sogar in Lagern, wo alles für dich bestimmt wird, was du anziehst, was du zu essen, essen in Anführungszeichen bekommst. Selbst da kann der Mensch wählen, seine innere Freiheit und Würde zu behalten oder nicht. 

Iwan Denissowitsch, Solschenizyns Romanfigur, hat das jedenfalls beherzigt.

"Der Tag war vergangen, durch nichts getrübt, nahezu glücklich. Solcher Tage waren [00:14:00] es in seiner Haftzeit vom Wecken bis zum Zapfenstreich drei tausend sechs hundert drei und fünfzig. Drei Tage zusätzlich — wegen der Schaltjahre...

Im Zeitzeichen erinnerte Irene Dänzer-Vanotti an Alexander Solschenizyn, der heute vor 50 Jahren den Literaturnobelpreis erhielt. [00:14:30] Redaktion Christoph Tiegel.

Zeitzeichen Morgen über Prinzessin Viktoria Luise von Preußen. Zeitzeichen täglich morgens um viertel vor zehn auf WDR5 und abends um viertel vor sechs auf WDR 3 und jederzeit hier im Netz WDR.de.

HAPPY 102nd BIRTHDAY, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would be 102 today. As is our custom on this day, we share with you a quote from the great writer:

“You should put your heart and soul into everything you do, or else not bother.”

— Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, Chapter 9

WATCH BTM-2 BOOK LAUNCH AT KENNAN INSTITUTE

Earlier today:

In Book 2 of Between Two Millstones, just released by the University of Notre Dame Press, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn details his final years of exile in America from 1978 until his return to post-Communist Russia in 1994. During this time, while completing his masterwork The Red Wheel, Solzhenitsyn was both confronted by the propaganda machine of the Soviet state and the commercial mainstream media in the West. In this book talk, Ignat Solzhenitsyn and Daniel J. Mahoney will discuss Solzhenitsyn’s fight against the communist regime while defending the honor of Russia’s historic past. They will also consider how he watched as Russia came out from under the rubble of the Soviet system into a deeply flawed transition.

Jeff Bursey review of BTM-2

Over at the Big Other, the Canadian novelist Jeff Bursey offers a substantive review of BTM-2, including its treatment of The Red Wheel.

“The pages spent discussing The Red Wheel’s aesthetics and objectives, as well as the labour behind it, are likely to be identifiable and fascinating to many writers. Always present is the struggle to shape the immense number of ideas, real-life personages, and incidents into a cogent narrative while resisting demands from the outside world:

_________________________________________

Fortunately, fate has decreed that, while following my basic inclination, I also have to remain silent; to take The Red Wheel on further. These many years of silence, of inaction, of less action—even if I’d tried I couldn’t have planned it better. It’s also the best position tactically, given the current distribution of forces: for I am almost alone, but my adversaries are legion.

I’ve plunged into The Red Wheel and I’m up to my ears in it: all my time is filled with it, except when I sleep (and even at night I’m woken by ideas, which I note down). I stay up late reading the old men’s memoirs and am already nearing the end of a complete read-through of what they’ve sent. Over their many pages, the writing sometimes shaky, scratchy now, my heart gives a lurch: what spirit, in someone approaching eighty—some of them ninety—years of age, unbroken by sixty years of humiliation and poverty in emigration—and that after their excruciating defeat in the Civil War. Real warrior heroes! And how much priceless material is preserved in their memories, how many episodes they’ve given me, bits and pieces for the “fragments” chapters—without them, where would I have found this? It would all have vanished without trace.

When I had, in the first draft, assembled the material and made sure I had what was needed for the vast mass of the four-volume March—that is, of the February Revolution itself—I went backwards, to August and October, to fine-tune them into their definitive form. This was also no minor task, for over the last four or so years of rummaging through archives and memoirs, how many new depths I’d encountered in the weave of events, and many places demanded more and more work—changing and rewriting. And yes, I do understand that I am overloading the Wheel with detailed historical material—but it is that very material that’s needed for categorical proof; and I’d never taken a vow of fidelity to the novel form.
__________________________________________

The steadfastness required to finish a novel is often stated but not so often expressed in a way that makes you feel the effort required or that’s as encouraging for one’s own resolve. Reading this volume on that topic one sees, even more than in the first volume, how this series of novels is about ensuring that history is not left to moulder or to be forgotten. I won’t say The Red Wheel is an essential work, as nothing is unless a reader deems it so; but it is essential for me.”

The Wing That Saved Me

Today LitHub publishes an excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s just-released memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. This selection, written in the mid-’80s but published here for the first time in English, relates the formidable challenges Solzhenitsyn faced, in rural Vermont, in accomplishing the ambitious literary and social goals he had set for himself, and the unique gifts and temperament that his wife, “Alya” (Natalia)—“the wing that saved me” from the book’s dedication—had brought to bear upon their joint mission.

“No, neither the electronic typesetting machine with its large memory nor my own zeal and perseverance would have achieved my goal without a wife equal to the task. I doubt whether any other Russian writer ever had at his side such a co-worker and such an astute and sensitive critic and adviser. As for me, I have never in my life met anyone with such an acute lexical feel for the specific word needed, for the hidden rhythm of a prose sentence, with such taste in matters of design, as my wife, sent to me—and now irreplaceable—in my insular seclusion, where the brain of one author with his unvarying perceptions is not enough. Close attention to the text was needed, a keen eye, a sensitivity to the slightest break in the phonetic or rhythmic form and to the falseness or truthfulness of a tone, a touch, an item of syntax, a sensitivity to everything in a work of literature—from the large structural elements and the believability of characters down to the nuances of images and expressions, their ordering, to interjections and punctuation. Alya helped me, as no one else could, with her criticism, her advice, her challenges, and did a lot to help me improve the clarity of my texts as well.”

What Will Russia Be?

Will Morrisey with an in-depth review of BTM-2.

“In Between Two Millstones Solzhenitsyn blends several literary genres—autobiography, essay, and a touch of diary. Volume I consists of his memories from his first years of exile, following his departure from the Soviet Union in 1974, years in which he lived for a time in Western Europe before settling in Vermont. There, as Daniel J. Mahoney observes in his excellent Forward to this volume, “above all, he found a place to work” and “a serene and welcome home for his family.” His main work consisted of researching and writing The Red Wheel, a vast historical novel tracing the origins of first the Russian and then the Bolshevik Revolutions, beginning in 1914. His subsidiary work consisted of fending off both the blandishments and irritations of life in the great Western democracy, from speaking invitations to polemics to lawsuits—all swirling around him like mosquitoes in a Siberian summer. Whether great or petty, all of these activities centered on a central theme of his life: What will Russia be? What moral, spiritual, and political regime will replace the sordid rule of the Communists, by now in welcome but dangerous decline? These are the ruling questions of Volume II, which consists of Millstones parts two, three, and four.”

Truth in Exile

Richard Reinsch reviews BTM-2 in the November/December issue of American Conservative.

“The memoir title alone bears meaning here. Solzhenitsyn reports that he lived between two millstones, painfully grinding him. His perennial “Bolshevik enemies are now joined by the hostile pseudo-intellectuals of both East and West and, it appears, even more powerful circles.” So constant and aggressive were the harangues and slanders, that Solzhenitsyn observes they colored American freedom in a dark light: “here, in America, I am not genuinely free, but again caged.” He didn’t face imprisonment or official persecution, but Solzhenitsyn definitely experienced ideological resistance and a systematic misrepresentation of his writings.

But he wouldn’t be muzzled. In Between Two Millstones, he condemns both communism and the Soviet Union outright, while defending the Russian nation as a fundamentally good and decent civilization, seized and pillaged by a savage regime. We learn in the memoir that even at the end of the Soviet regime, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev refused permission to publishers to print and distribute his writings. Gorbachev knew that Solzhenitsyn’s writings existentially indicted the Soviet Union. As the Central Committee’s head of Ideology, Vadim Medvedev, remarked, “To publish Solzhenitsyn is to undermine the foundations on which our present life rests.” Truer words…

He is also frank. Solzhenitsyn never hesitated to reveal to his readers the truth of things, including his own soul. Many of the western thinkers and journalists who pilloried Solzhenitsyn did not think that the Soviet Union promised the best future for mankind. But they did put their trust in an evolutionary progressiveness, which contained no space for traditional faith, patriotism, family, and decentralized conceptions of democracy. In short, Solzhenitsyn’s basic loves and principles were inconceivable to them, save as irrational despotic longings. They rushed to the worst judgments, refusing to consider context, depth of history, or that political liberty may not simply be a product of the rationalist Enlightenment project. Most of Solzhenitsyn’s enemies, communist and otherwise, were in thrall to ideology and literary politics.”

Clayton Trutor Reviews BTM-2

Clayton Trutor reviews BTM-2 in The American Spectator.

“In 1978, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn settled into a writerly life of unprecedented focus, four years removed from his expulsion from the Soviet Union. In this second volume of Solzhenitsyn’s exile memoirs, he covers the decade-and-a-half between his iconoclastic Harvard commencement address and his return to Russia. This long-awaited translation does not disappoint, offering insights into his work on The Red Wheel, his family life in Vermont, and his responses to the rapidly evolving political circumstances of what proved to be Soviet Communism’s waning years. The tone of Book 2: Exile in America, 1978-1994 is significantly different from his previous memoirs. The first volume of Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974-1978, is a fast-moving narrative focused on the author’s expulsion, seclusion, and subsequent international stardom. The Oak and the Calf, published in the West soon after his 1974 expulsion, details Solzhenitsyn’s struggles with the Soviet state. Book 2 is, to a much greater extent, a story about the practice of everyday life.”

Yearning for Home

Today National Review publishes the third of three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s just-released memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. Today’s selection, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, relays Solzhenitsyn’s attempt, in his Vermont exile, to make sense of the conflicting signals—the “warm breeze”—wafting over from a USSR embarking on perestroika and glasnost, and his yearning to return home in time to be of service to a free Russia.

“Will God allow us to return to our homeland, allow us to serve? And will it be at a time of its new collapse, or of a sublime reordering?

Twice already it was sent me to do the impossible, the unpredictable, in my country: ushering a tale of the camps into print under Communist censorship, and publishing Archipelago while in the Dragon’s maw. When publishing Ivan Denisovich and when banished to the West, I was raised up by two explosions of the kind where immeasurable forces hoist you up to an unexpected height. (And on both occasions I made plenty of mistakes.) If I have twice pushed my way through a concrete wall, will something similar suddenly be asked of me a third time? (And how not to make mistakes then?) Should the war-horn sound — my hearing is still keen, and I still have strength. Old steed, fresh speed.

Even if it is only to be a living presence at future events, even without playing a direct part in them? and might that presence itself become a form of action? and help transmit to future generations the worldview I have built up. Perhaps the task can be completed not through risk and drive, as before, but simply by living longer: could longevity itself become the key to fruition?”

An Encounter Sabotaged

Beginning yesterday, National Review is publishing three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s just-released memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. Today’s selection, written in 1982 but published here for the first time in English, relates the inside story of President Reagan’s invitation for Solzhenitsyn to visit the White House in May 1982, and the circumstances surrounding the scuttling of that meeting by then–White House advisor Richard Pipes. NR is also posting a companion piece, Solzhenitsyn’s letter to Ronald Reagan.

“We availed ourselves of the kind mediation of Edward Bennett Williams, who had access to the White House — and he managed both to hand my letter to the president and to explain how basely Pipes had tricked him. And on May 7, Williams phoned us: the president had “understood everything” and “not been offended.” Thank God for that.

For us in Cavendish, it was a great relief.

But not in the White House.

If they themselves had not leaked the news that Solzhenitsyn was to be received by the president, it would have been quietly swept under the carpet by now, and that would have been the end of it. But now — they’d have to explain my absence somehow, wouldn’t they? And within a very few days.

We received feverish phone calls, seeking our agreement. First of all the White House proposed as its wording for the press: “Solzhenitsyn’s schedule prevented his attendance.”

We rejected it.

Then, at the crack of dawn on the 10th — the day before the lunch — Williams passed on an insistent message from the president’s chief adviser and friend: think again! — do come!

No, impossible.

Around midday, a call with a new formulation: “He was unable to accept the invitation right now, but the president is expecting to meet Solzhenitsyn later.”

Agreed.

But I doubted that Pipes would allow that through to the press.

And indeed, that afternoon of the 10th, already aware of my refusal, they were still prevaricating in the State Department, that Solzhenitsyn would be attending the following day. But then they probably decided not to release any official explanation at all from the White House, just to allow a “leak.”

And, just as before, the “leak” went to Kaiser, and from him into the Washington Post, which offered this pathetic twist: Solzhenitsyn “was displeased that news of the invitation appeared in the press before he received it.” It was not enough — not strong enough. So they offered another little scrap: he felt it inappropriate to count him among the dissidents.

That was instead of any of the substance of my arguments.

That was forcing us to make public the essence of the matter, that is, my whole letter.”

Wolves and Ephemerality

Beginning today, National Review publishes three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s just-released memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. Today’s selection, written in 1982 but published here for the first time in English, evocatively describes Solzhenitsyn’s silent encounter, in his Vermont seclusion, with a pair of Canadian wolves, and his sense of the transience of earthly life, especially for an exile.

“And how I loved that spot! At my dugout desk, densely surrounded by the trunks of five birches, it was like sitting in an arbor. To one side, a little higher up, was the terrace outside the cottage, evenly laid with flat stones of varying shapes (when they were playing, the children used to say that one was Australia, another Greenland), and you could get a quick bit of exercise there next to the pond, racing up and down these flagstones. On hot days, I would take several plunges into the pond. To the other side, where those wolves had gone, was the only meadow on our entire property, 150 paces of it, and the only view open to the sky, where I took the boys to study the constellations. And on moonlit summer nights when I couldn’t sleep, I would sometimes wander slowly from the cottage by the pond through that meadow, knee-deep in grass, gazing in wonder at the towering poplars, and, through a chain-link gate that was never used, at the empty byway; and beyond lay the same distinctly defined and silent moonlit world, with only the sound of the three brooks playing as they came together — right there, near a dark dip in the ground. This exile world is still our familiar terrestrial one, but at the same time somehow extraterrestrial.

And — why am I here? and — is it for long? . . . I always feel that: no, I am here temporarily; and, because of that, everything feels even more ephemeral than for others on Earth.”

Francis Sempa review of BTM-2

Francis P. Sempa reviews BTM-2 at NYJB.

“Solzhenitsyn concludes Between Two Millstones by recalling his farewell to his neighbors in Cavendish, Vermont. The Russian prosecutor’s office had informed him that the charge of treason had been dismissed. He was now free to return home to Russia. “Farewell, blessed Vermont,” he wrote. “[T]o stay here would rob my destiny of its thrust, its spirit.”

He was anxious to get involved in Russian events to help shape the future of his country. His goal was to educate his countrymen about Russia’s true interests based on a “profound analysis of the historical process.” They must learn, he wrote, that [t]he deep furrows that History has plowed across Russia are unswerving.” Russia has never had a greater, more devoted patriot than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.”

Watch BTM-2 book launch

Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Daniel Mahoney, and Carter Snead discuss the second part of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs of exile in the West, "Between Two Millstones, Book 2" and the importance of Solzhenitsyn's work today.

John Wilson review of Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West

At First Things, John Wilson reviews the new Deavel/Wilson anthology.

“The editors have cast their net wide, so that it will be useful both to those who have read little of Solzhenitsyn (yet are looking for points of entry and orientation before plunging in) and for longtime students of his work—not only scholars (though there is plenty here for them to chew on), but also those blessed souls who read widely on their own dime. Some readers will immediately zero in on the two essays by the Russian-born Orthodox writer Eugene Vodolazkin (author of the novel Laurus, among other books). He’s not my cup of tea, but I have good friends who greatly admire both his fiction and his essays. His pieces in this volume are not about Solzhenitsyn, but rather offer sweeping historical-theological perspectives ranging from the Middle Ages to the present, hence in dialogue (if not explicitly) with Solzhenitsyn’s sense of Russia’s history and destiny.”

The Joy of Reading

The Hudson Review, in its Autumn issue, has published two intriguing excerpts from Solzhenitsyn’s just-released memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. “The Joy of Reading”, written in 1987, reflects Solzhenitsyn’s joy at his newfound opportunity to read for pleasure after forty years of fighting at the front, incarceration in Soviet prisons and camps, and unrelenting harassment. Then in the second excerpt, “Delving into The Red Wheel”, he looks for methods to grapple with the enormous literary-historical task of shaping his revolutionary epic The Red Wheel.

“I still have my full strength—it must have been given me for a reason. And I’m young at heart. I’ll study in old age, at least—and what a shame so few years are left. All the strands I began at some time—I must not let them go to waste but guide them to completion. In my constant haste, burrowing forward via tunnels of intuition, how many, many mountains I’ve left behind me, never conquered! But, of course: Tantum possumus, quantum scimus. (The more we know, the more we can do.) I’d like to climb up to an observation platform with a view of the centuries behind us and a half century ahead.”

---

“In my case, enormous help has come from old people, the elderly émigrés of the revolutionary years. They have gifted me both with anecdotes and with the spirit of the time itself, which can only be conveyed by “non-historical,” ordinary people. How very many evenings I have spent warming myself with their recollections in my spacious study that is always poorly heated in winter. For me, each of those evenings was a refreshing encounter with contemporaries of the events—with “my” contemporaries in spirit, the living characters of my tale. In the evenings they strengthened me for the next day’s work. A table lamp shone down onto the pages while all the dark expanse of the high-ceilinged study was as if filled with a living, sympathetic, amiable throng of these “White Guards.” I certainly wasn’t lonely for even a minute.

I felt I was a bridge stretching from prerevolutionary Russia to the post-Soviet Russia of the future, a bridge over which the heavily laden wagon train of History is lugged over, across the entire abyss of the Soviet years, so that its priceless load would not be lost to the future.”

Appreciation of Ed Ericson

David Deavel, editor (with Jessica Wilson) of the just-released Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, has posted a beautiful appreciation of his teacher, the late Solzhenitsyn scholar Edward E. Ericson Jr., who himself authored two books on Solzhenitsyn and co-edited the Solzhenitsyn Reader.

For a sense of what Ericson was like, watch this lovely snippet:

Edward E. Ericson, Jr. was Professor Emeritus of English at Calvin College. He is the author of "Solzhenitsyn and the Modern World", and he also served as th...

WATCH DEAVEL/WILSON BOOK LAUNCH

The Murphy Institute sponsored book launch event for the text Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West due to be released on October 31.

Here is video of the 3 November 2020 book launch for Solzhenitsyn and American Culture with David Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Gary Saul Morson, and Daniel J. Mahoney.

Monica Carter review of BTM-2

Monica Carter reviews BTM-2 at Foreword Reviews.

“Solzhenitsyn’s sketches are intricate and complex historical accounts of the many distractions that plagued him as he attempted to withdraw from society and focus on his work. They include presidential luncheon invitations, speaking engagements in Asia, constant assaults in the press, and tea with Margaret Thatcher; each provides context for his life. Solzhenitsyn covers Russian history, corruption in the Soviet Union, and the vacuity of Western culture alongside humorous anecdotes about friends and acquaintances. Each page pulses with intellectual rigor and life energy. It becomes difficult to imagine how Russian literature, and the world’s view of life inside of the Soviet Union, would be without the undying devotion and work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Complete with helpful and extensive endnotes, Between Two Millstones is an absorbing historical work that conveys Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s love of his country and, above all, the truth.”

Interview with Translators Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore

The Notre Dame blog features a fascinating interview with Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore, the translators of Between Two Millstones, Book 2.

“How is Between Two Millstones, Book 2, an important source for anyone seeking to understand the historical currents driving Russian-American relations? What sections do you think resonate especially with contemporary conversations or events?

Melanie Moore: Solzhenitsyn was deeply, deeply shocked to discover that he could be pilloried for his views in the West, where he had imagined he would be able to speak his mind with impunity. He can be seen, perhaps, as an early example of cancel culture, with senior politicians declining to meet with him because of the views he’d expressed, raising issues of the extent of freedom of speech and who establishes it. The West wanted a Solzhenitsyn who fitted its preconceived ideas and served its purposes, a reminder in these polarized times to examine our own biases and not to be satisfied with surface impressions. Similarly, Solzhenitsyn’s constant frustration with the West’s conflation of Russia and the USSR prompts us to be sure to listen deeply to our conversation partners, not simply to hear what we expect to hear.”