In the oncoming conjunction of a world political crisis with the present changes in a humanity exhausted and choked by a false hierarchy of values, you or your successors on Capitol Hill will have to confront—you are already facing—problems of overwhelming difficulty, incomparably greater than the short-term calculations of diplomacy, of interparty struggles, or of the clash between President and Congress. There is but one choice: to rise to the tasks of the age.
Very soon, only too soon, your country will stand in need of not just exceptional men but of great men. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hearts. Find them in the depths of your country.
This speech was delivered by Mr. Solzhenitsyn to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
Speeches to the British
[MARCH 1, 1976]
MICHAEL CHARLTON: Alexander Isaevich, when Mr. Brezhnev and the Politburo decided to exile you abroad rather than send you once more to a concentration camp, they must have believed that you would do less damage to the Communist state outside the Soviet Union than inside it. So I wonder if you believe that time will prove that judgment to be correct?
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN:
IN THE WAY you put that question there is a certain false assumption. If one puts the question in this way we assume that the Politburo is all-powerful and independent in the decisions it makes, that it is free to decide one way or another. I must say that at the time of my exile the situation was very unusual. I wrote about this some time ago. In the autumn of 1973 the support of Western public opinion for Sakharov and myself in our head-on confrontation, as I have called it, was so powerful, so unyielding, firm, steadfast, support such as the West had not demonstrated for a long time, that the Soviet Politburo simply took fright. It did not have complete freedom of choice either to keep me in prison or to exile me; they simply took fright at this anger, this storm of indignation in the West, and were forced to give way. This was a forced concession. For that reason, I think that now, even if they regret it—and I imagine they do regret it—we must remember that they, in effect, had no choice. That was a rare moment when the West demonstrated unprecedented firmness and forced them to retreat.
On the other hand, they would be right, wouldn’t they, if you felt that your warnings, or your beliefs, fell upon deaf ears in the West. You would then cease to be relevant, and that presumably is what they hope for?
Yes, if one looks at it from this point of view, you are right. My warnings, the warnings of others, Sakharov’s very grave warning directly from the Soviet Union, these warnings go unheeded; most of them fall, as it were, on the ears of the deaf, people who do not want to hear them. Once I used to hope that experience of life could be handed on from nation to nation, and from one person to another, but now I am beginning to have doubts about this. Perhaps everyone is fated to live through every experience himself in order to understand.
Well, you are now in the unique position to watch a debate in both East and West which to a large extent has been inspired, or has been focused, by your own experiences and writings. How important is the experience of the Russian people for the West?
In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word “Russian” I always differentiate it from the word “Soviet”—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutionary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a rather strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves.
Give me an example of what you mean by the Russian experience being repeated in the West.
You know, one could quote here many examples; for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well-known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one’s counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom. Let us take the press, writers, journalists, who enjoy great freedom (incidentally Russia also enjoyed great freedom; the West has a completely false view of Russia before the Revolution) and meanwhile lose their sense of responsibility before history, before their own people. There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists. And then the paralysis of government power. I could give you many more analogies.
But, as you say, it is the West which has made it possible for people like you to survive. In view of what you have just said, how would you say that your two years in the West have reshaped your views? You are obviously more pessimistic now than you were when you came.
I must say that in relation to the West my generation—I am not going to speak only about myself personally, and when I say my generation, I have in mind people who shared my fate, that is to say, the soldiers of the Second World War and then the prisoners, this was after all the common fate of so many. As I was saying, my generation went through several stages. In the fifties, after the end of the war, we literally worshipped the West. We looked upon the West as being the sun of freedom, a fortress of the spirit, our hope, our ally. We all thought that it would be difficult to liberate ourselves, but that the West would help us to rise from slavery. Gradually, in the course of decades and years, this faith began to waver and to fade. We received information about the West only with difficulty, but we learned to listen even through the fiercest jamming, for example, to your BBC. We realized with bewilderment that the West was not showing that firmness and that interest in freedom in our country as well; it was as if the West was separating its freedom from our fate. Before I was exiled, I already had strong doubts as to whether it was realistic to look to the West for help. It is precisely on this that my opinions differ from those of Sakharov; Sakharov considers that help from the West is of decisive importance for our liberation, while I believe that we can obtain freedom only by relying upon ourselves, and that one can place practically no hopes on the West. Unfortunately, when I came here, my doubts increased very rapidly. But the point is, of course, that during these two years the West itself has gone through a good deal. During these two years the West has become much weaker in relation to the East. The West has made so many concessions that now a repetition of the angry campaign which got me out of prison is practically impossible. I would say that the campaign to get Sakharov to Stockholm was almost as strong, yet it didn’t help, because the West itself has become weak over this period. Its position has become weaker. Moscow now takes infinitely less note of the West.
Can I suggest that perhaps one of the difficulties in your own case is that you’ve become a controversial figure in the West. You are no longer the quiet tourist in the West. You are in some respects an impassioned critic. And I think that the people in the West who criticize you—and, of course, not all do—believe that you are asking for a return to something in Russia that is plainly impossible, a return to a patriarchal kind of Russia, a return to Orthodoxy. Are those criticisms that you accept?
You know, that is one of the consequences of the weak sense of responsibility of the press. The press does not feel responsibility for its j
udgments, it makes judgments and attaches labels with the greatest of ease. Mediocre journalists simply make headlines of their conclusions, which suddenly become generally accepted. You have just enumerated several propositions and practically all of them are not true. First, I am not a critic of the West. I repeat that for nearly all our lives we worshipped the West—note the word “worshipped.” We did not admire it, we worshipped it. I am not a critic of the West. I am a critic of the weakness of the West. I am a critic of a fact which we can’t comprehend: how one can lose one’s spiritual strength, one’s will power and, possessing freedom, not value it, not be willing to make sacrifices for it. A second label—just as common—was pinned on me: that I wanted to return to a patriarchal way of life. Well, as I see it, apart from the half-witted, no normal person could ever propose a return to the past, because it’s clear to any normal person that one can only move forward. That means that choice lies only between those movements which go forward and not backward. It is quite easy to imagine that some journalist writing mostly about women’s fashions thought up this headline, and so the story gets around that I am calling for a patriarchal way of life. I’ll just cite one more example: take the word “nationalist”—it has become almost meaningless. It is used constantly. Everyone flings it around, but what is a “nationalist”? If someone suggests that his country should have a large army, conquer the countries which surround it, should go on expanding its empire, that sort of person is a nationalist. But if, on the contrary, I suggest that my country should free all the peoples it has conquered, should disband the army, should stop all aggressive actions—who am I? A nationalist! If you love England, what are you? A nationalist! And when are you not a nationalist? When you hate England, then you are not a nationalist.
Well, you make the point very eloquently that you’re not going back in the sense of a return to the old Russian imperialism, but I’m not sure how you go forward as you claim you would. What is the way out of this world of tensions and oppression in the Soviet Union that you so eloquently describe? If the West cannot help, what is the way forward for the Russian people? What will happen?
You have just used the expression “for the Russian people,” by which you mean the Soviet Union—do I understand you correctly? You know, two and three years ago this question was topical. That is to say, it was possible to believe that we inhabitants of the Soviet Union could sit down and consider our future. The Soviet leadership was experiencing so many difficulties, so many failures, that it had to seek some way out, and indeed I thought that the way out was to seek the path of evolution, certainly not the path of revolution, not an explosion. On this, Sakharov and I agree: an evolutionary, smooth path which would offer a way out of this terrible system. However, today, all these suggested solutions have lost their practical value. Over the last two years, terrible things have happened. The West has given up not only four, five, or six countries; the West has given up all its world positions. The West has given everything away so impetuously, has done so much to strengthen the tyranny in our country, that today all these questions are no longer relevant in the Soviet Union. Opposition has remained, but I have already said many times that our movement of opposition and spiritual revival, like any spiritual process, is slow. But your capitulations, like all political processes, move very quickly. The speed of your capitulations has so rapidly overtaken the pace of our moral regeneration that at the moment the Soviet Union can only move along one path: the flourishing of totalitarianism. It would be more appropriate if it were not you asking me which way Russia—or rather, the Soviet Union (let us not get the two mixed)—will go, but if I were to ask you which way the West is going. Because at the moment the question is not how the Soviet Union will find a way out of totalitarianism but how the West will be able to avoid the same fate. How will the West be able to withstand the unprecedented force of totalitarianism? That is the problem.
Why do you think that people in the West have begun to feel uneasy with you? This brings me, in view of what you’ve just said, to the question of spiritual regeneration, moral regeneration: what is the central point for which you stand? After this enormously varied experience that you’ve had—you’ve been a teacher, a decorated war hero, an officer in the Soviet Army, a cancer patient, a political prisoner in concentration camps—what is the central point, in all that you say, that you stand for?
Perhaps, if one speaks of my life experience, then I would say that my outlook on life has been formed largely in concentration camps—that part of my life which is reflected in The Gulag Archipelago. I don’t know whether Western listeners would find my words embarrassing—it is difficult for me to judge this kind of reaction—but I would put it this way: those people who have lived in the most terrible conditions, on the frontier between life and death, be it people from the West or from the East, all understand that between good and evil there is an irreconcilable contradiction, that it is not one and the same thing—good or evil—that one cannot build one’s life without regard to this distinction. I am surprised that pragmatic philosophy consistently scorns moral considerations; and nowadays in the Western press we read a candid declaration of the principle that moral considerations have nothing to do with politics. I would remind you that in 1939 England thought differently. If moral considerations were not applicable to politics, then it would be incomprehensible why England went to war with Hitler’s Germany. Pragmatically, you could have gotten out of the situation, but England chose the moral course, and experienced and demonstrated to the world perhaps the most brilliant and heroic period in its history. But today we have forgotten this; today the English political leaders state quite frankly that they not only recognize any power over any territory regardless of its moral character but they even hasten to recognize it, even try to be the first to do so. Somewhere, in some place, freedom has been lost in Laos, China, or Angola. Tyrants, bandits, puppets have come to power, and pragmatic philosophy says: That doesn’t matter, we have to recognize them. What is more, one should not consider that the great principles of freedom end at your own frontiers, that as long as you have freedom, let the rest have pragmatism. No! Freedom is indivisible and one has to take a moral attitude toward it. Perhaps this is one of the main points of disagreement.
You mention The Gulag Archipelago, your famous document of life in Stalin’s prison camps, which is so full of an overwhelming anger and bitterness. Is the aim of the book simply the destruction of Communist ideology, the destruction of at least its myths; or is it meant to be something more than that?
A work of art always consists of many parts, many facets and sides, and that means many aims. The artist cannot set himself political aims, the aims of changing a political regime; it may come as a by-product of it, but to fight against untruth and falsehood, to fight against myths, or to fight against an ideology which is hostile to mankind, to fight for our memory, for our memory of what things were like—that is the task of the artist. A people which no longer remembers has lost its history and its soul. Yes, the main thing is to re-create. When I sit down to write, my only task is to re-create everything as it happened. And naturally many deductions follow. If today the three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago were widely published in the Soviet Union and were freely available to all, then in a very short space of time no Communist ideology would be left. For people who read and understood all this would simply have no more room in their minds for Communist ideology.
In one of your most recent books, you paint a portrait of Lenin in Zurich. Many people, I think, have noted perhaps a similarity between the two of you. The portrait of a powerful character, Lenin, powerless to influence events inside Russia, cut off, isolated, impatient—that does sound rather like you, a powerful figure, living in the same city today, in the West, perhaps powerless to intervene, cut off from your friends in the Soviet Union. Would you be surprised, as Lenin was, at a profound change in the Soviet Union taking place in your lifetime?
You know, I have been working on the image
of Lenin for forty years. From the moment I conceived this series of books, I thought of Lenin as one of the central characters—if not the central character. I gathered every grain of information that I could, every detail, and my only aim was to re-create him alive, as he was.
But in attacking Lenin, of course, you attack the legitimacy of the whole Soviet government, of the Bolsheviks themselves. So I just ask you whether you feel yourself that you, in turn, will become a focus for this moral, spiritual regeneration inside the Soviet Union. Are you saying that there will be this kind of spiritual revival, which will in time overthrow the Communist system?
I don’t attack Lenin. I describe him as he was and for what he is worth. So much incense has been kindled around him, in your country as well, and he has been raised to such summits. I show how he was often shortsighted, how he treated his allies, collaborators, how weak his ties were with his own country. I don’t attack him, but this ideology. The spiritual renaissance of our country lies in our liberation from this deadening, killing ideology.
I’m trying to say: Is it valid to suggest a strong comparison between yourself and Lenin? There he was, waiting in Zurich, unable to do anything about the internal situation and surprised when the change came—he, the great revolutionary. Would you be surprised if the change came?
He was surprised because of his shortsightedness. You can see from my book that because of the narrowness of his party view he had lost sight of the simplest facts, he didn’t know that the war was about to start, he was taken unawares by the world war and in the same way by the Revolution. Two years ago I didn’t expect any explosion in the Soviet Union; I expected a slow process and it was already taking place. Today, yes, I would be surprised, but I wouldn’t be surprised at something else: I wouldn’t be surprised at the sudden and imminent fall of the West. I would like to make myself clear: the situation at the moment is such that the Soviet Union’s economy is at a war level, that even if it were the unanimous opinion of all the members of the Politburo not to start a war, this would no longer be in their power. To avoid this would require an agonizing change from a monstrous war economy to a normal peace economy. The situation now is such that one must think not of what might happen unexpectedly in the Soviet Union, because in the Soviet Union nothing will happen unexpectedly. One must think of what might happen unexpectedly in the West. The West is on the verge of a collapse created by its own hands. This quite naturally makes the question one for you and not for us.
Warning to the West Page 7