Solzhenitsyn

by Joseph Pearce

  SOLZHENITSYN

  JOSEPH PEARCE

  SOLZHENITSYN

  A SOUL IN EXILE

  Revised and Updated Edition

  IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

  Original edition published in 1999 by HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd.

  © 1999 by Joseph Pearce

  Second edition published in 2001 by Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  Cover photograph:

  Solzhenitsyn

  February 26, 1974© Hulton Archive / Getty Images

  Except as otherwise stated,

  all interior photographs supplied to the author by

  Natalya Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyn

  Cover design: Roxanne Mei Lum

  © 2011 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-58617-496-5

  Library of Congress Control Number 2010931420

  Printed in the United States of America

  FOR AIDAN AND DORENE MACKEY

  IN GRATITUDE AND FRIENDSHIP

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  1. CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION

  2. BLISSFUL IGNORANCE

  3. MAN AND WIFE

  4. MAN OF WAR

  5. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

  6. HELL INTO PURGATORY

  7. PROFIT FROM LOSS

  8. LIFE AND DEATH

  9. BEAUTIFUL EXILE

  10. IVAN THE TERRIBLE

  11. TOO HOT TO HANDLE

  12. OLD ENEMIES AND NEW FRIENDS

  13. “I FEEL SORRY FOR RUSSIA”

  14. OUT IN THE COLD

  15. COLD-SHOULDERED

  16. CHAMPION OF ORTHODOXY

  17. RUSSIA REBORN

  18. REBUILDING ON GREEN FOUNDATIONS

  19. A PROPHET AT HOME

  20. SOLZHENITSYN AT EIGHTY

  21. TROUBLOUS TIMES

  22. PESSIMISTIC OPTIMIST

  23. “I AM NOT AFRAID OF DEATH”

  24. Consummatum Est

  Photographs

  Notes

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, I must acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the subject of this book. Without the full and generous cooperation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, my efforts would have floundered in an ocean of secondary sources. That is not to say that I have not made use of an extensive array of such sources. I have, of course, and the principal published sources have been acknowledged in the Notes, but without Solzhenitsyn’s personal involvement I would not have had the benefit of the insight into his life and work that, I hope and trust, is conveyed in this volume. I am acutely conscious of the privileged nature of my access, not least because of the Russian writer’s well-known distrust of Western biographers and journalists, and this only serves to accentuate my feelings of gratitude. I am mindful, for instance, that a previous biographer met with no success whatsoever in securing Solzhenitsyn’s aid, to the extent that even his letters were not answered. (It was a tribute to that particular biographer’s powers as a writer that the book he produced was still of exceptional quality.) I don’t know why Solzhenitsyn broke his boycott of Western writers in my case, and this is not the place to conjecture, but I am nonetheless delighted to be the beneficiary of his assistance.

  During my visit to Russia, I was the recipient of Alya Solzhenitsyn’s warm hospitality as well as being the eager and hungry recipient of her traditional Russian cuisine. Subsequently, she has helped me considerably with details of her own life and that of her husband. I am grateful also to Yermolai Solzhenitsyn, not only for his patient and grueling work as simultaneous translator during the interview with his father, but also for the impromptu guided tour of Moscow which followed. Yermolai continued to help me in the following months, replying to my questions at length and sharing his childhood memories of life in Vermont and in England, and his impressions of his father’s return to Russia and subsequent reception by the Russian people.

  Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Yermolai’s brother, was tireless in his assistance throughout the months that the book was in preparation. In spite of his own busy schedule in the United States, where he is a highly accomplished and much sought-after concert pianist, he never failed to respond to my pleas for help, replying by phone, fax, e-mail, and even, on occasion, by the old-fashioned postal service. Without his help in arranging my visit to Moscow, in acting as go-between and translator for his father and mother, and in offering his own memories and opinions, this biography would scarcely have been possible. I am, indeed, deeply indebted.

  This new, revised edition has been the beneficiary of Ignat Solzhenitsyn’s translations of several Russian sources into English, and is enriched by recent photographs supplied by Natalya Solzhenitsyn. Apart from my indebtedness to Mrs. Solzhenitsyn for her generosity in supplying these new photographs, I am also grateful to Ignat and Stephan Solzhenitsyn for their assistance in getting them to me expeditiously, via cyber-space, in time for their inclusion.

  I am grateful to Michael Nicholson for the help he has given me during the writing and researching of the book, both at University College, Oxford, and during numerous telephone conversations. He was also kind enough to translate twenty-four lines of Solzhenitsyn’s verse from the Russian edition of The Gulag Archipelago, volume two.

  I must express my thanks to Sarah Hollingsworth for her invaluable critical appraisal of the original manuscript; to the late Alfred Simmonds for his tireless encouragement; to Katrina White for help with translation; and to James Catford, Elspeth Taylor, and Kathy Dyke at HarperCollins UK, who labored to bring the original edition of this work to fruition. In similar vein, I owe a debt of gratitude to Father Joseph Fessio, Mark Brumley, Tony Ryan, Carolyn Lemon, Diane Eriksen, and the rest of the people at Ignatius Press for their work on this second and revised edition.

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  My meeting with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at his home in Moscow in 1998 ranks as perhaps the greatest honor of my life. At the time, the great Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner was approaching his eightieth birthday. My biography, therefore, was a timely tribute to a life well-lived, a life of courage in the face of tyranny, a life of true heroism. It was, however, a life that was still being lived, a life that still had a good deal of life in it. Solzhenitsyn would live for a further ten years, a full decade, in which he resolutely refused to retire and in which he remained a controversial figure in Russia, and indeed throughout the world.

  Since Solzhenitsyn’s life was far from finished when I wrote about it, my “life” of him was also, ipso facto, an unfinished work. This second edition is, therefore, the final version of a biography of which the first edition was only a precursor. Containing four additional chapters and some important revisions, the present volume offers a panoramic perspective of the whole of Solzhenitsyn’s life, all eighty-nine years of it, and a testimony and tribute to his achievement and his legacy.

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  If any twentieth-century literary figure has been the victim of media typecasting, it is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Whenever his name is mentioned, it is almost invariably accompanied by the same stereotypical characterization. He is, we are reliably informed, a prophet of doom, an arch-pessimist, a stern Jeremiah-like figure who is out of touch, out of date, and, worst of all in our novelty-crazed sub-culture, out of fashion. He is also, we are told, irrelevant to the modern world in general and modern Russia in particular.

  Perhaps this attitude to the Russian Nobel Prize winner was epitomized by George Trefgarne in an article entitled “Solzhenitsyn Loses the Russian Plot” in the business section of the Daily Telegraph on June 6, 1998. “Alexander Solzhenitsyn proved again that he is neve
r happier than when he is thoroughly miserable”, Trefgarne wrote. “His impassioned critique of the new Russia displays the sense of doom, disaster and history you would expect from a survivor of the Soviet Union and a Nobel prizewinner. Solzhenitsyn believes Russia has overthrown the evils of communism only to replace them with the evils of capitalism.”

  Mr. Trefgarne’s article ended with the statement: “Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a better writer than he is an economist.” Yet why, one is tempted to ask, should this disqualify the writer from commenting on his country’s problems? Did Dickens have nothing of importance to say about the squalor of Victorian England? Did George Orwell have nothing to say about the dangers of totalitarianism? Compared with the literary light which these writers were able to throw on controversial issues, the weakness of much of the analysis in the business sections of newspapers is only too apparent. Indeed, Mr. Trefgarne’s own article was a case in point. He stated that “Solzhenitsyn and the doom-mongers could have exaggerated their case” because the new and dynamic Russian prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, was revitalizing the ailing Russian economy with a “decisive package of measures”. With an ingenious use of statistical data, Trefgarne xii painted a rose-tinted picture of Russia’s future, which reminded one of Solzhenitsyn’s complaints that his country’s troubles were forever being “covered up . . . by mendacious statistics”.

  Only two months after Trefgarne’s article had predicted that Russia would soon live happily ever after, Sergei Kiriyenko was sacked, his “decisive package of measures” was abandoned, and the whole Russian economy collapsed cataclysmically, sending shockwaves around the world. George Trefgarne had become only the latest in a long line of critics who had discovered to their own cost that it was perilous to dismiss Solzhenitsyn so lightly.

  Yet even if Solzhenitsyn is right, the critics insist, he is still irrelevant because nobody is listening to him. “It is little consolation that his prophecies of catastrophe are fulfilled”, wrote Daniel Johnson in the Daily Telegraph on December 12, 1998. “He is unheard.” These words, written the day after Solzhenitsyn’s eightieth birthday, were not completely true. To commemorate his birthday, two documentaries were shown on Russian television, one of which was broadcast in hourly installments on three consecutive nights. A third documentary was blocked at the last moment, after Solzhenitsyn complained that it included unauthorized footage of his private life. In the same week, the celebrated cellist and composer Mstislav Rostropovich conducted a concert in Solzhenitsyn’s honor at the Moscow Conservatory, and a dramatized version of Solzhenitsyn’s novel The First Circle was being staged at one of Russia’s leading theaters. Finally, when, as part of the birthday celebrations, President Yeltsin sought to award Solzhenitsyn the Order of St. Andrew for his cultural achievements, the writer controversially refused to accept the honor in protest of Yeltsin’s role in Russia’s collapse. “In today’s conditions,” he said, “when people are starving and striking just to get their wages, I cannot accept this reward.” He added that perhaps, in many years’ time when Russia had overcome its seemingly insurmountable difficulties, one of his sons would be able to collect it for him posthumously.1 Clearly, Solzhenitsyn, even as an octogenarian, was still capable of causing a great deal of controversy. Furthermore, the intense interest which his eightieth birthday aroused both in his homeland and in the media around the world contradicts the claims that he is either forgotten or irrelevant. On the contrary, seldom has a writer attracted so much publicity, both good and bad, throughout his life. Vilified or vindicated, loved or hated, Solzhenitsyn remains a provocative figure. Now, as he approaches the twilight of his life, it would seem timely to look back over the past eighty years. With the added insight provided by a recent in-depth interview with the writer himself, it is hoped that this book will help unravel Solzhenitsyn in a way that gets beyond the facts to the underlying truths underpinning his life, his work, and his beliefs.

  Exactly who is Alexander Solzhenitsyn? The following pages will not only address this beguiling question but will, I hope, provide the beginnings of the answer.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION

  The ninety-three years that have elapsed since the murder of Tsar Nicholas, the Empress Alexandra, three of their children, and four servants have been the bloodiest in Russia’s troubled history. It was the destiny of Alexander Solzhenitsyn to live through almost all of them. Lenin ordered the execution of the imperial family in July 1918; just five months later, Solzhenitsyn was born, and even while he nestled innocently in his mother’s womb, the world which he was about to enter was itself pregnant with change. In the nine months up to his birth on December 11, 1918, Russia was transformed beyond recognition. In March, the Bolshevik government, still consolidating its power after the October Revolution in the previous year, had fled from St. Petersburg beyond reach of the German artillery, which had advanced to within range of the city. Proclaiming Moscow as the new capital of the fledgling Soviet state, Lenin moved into the Kremlin, while the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, took over the Rossiya Insurance Company building on Lubyanka Square. In August, a month after the tsar and his family were murdered, the Bolsheviks destroyed their socialist rivals in a wave of repression known as the Red Terror, during which thousands of hostages were imprisoned and shot.

  Meanwhile, a bloody civil war was raging across Russia. The newly formed Red Army, set up by the Bolsheviks, and the various anti-Soviet forces, known collectively as the Whites, were evenly matched in terms of numbers. Crucially, however, the Bolsheviks had control of the railways emanating from Moscow, which enabled them to switch resources from one battlefront to another. The Red Army also drew upon the experience of ex-Tsarist officers forced to serve under the vigilant eye of regimental commissars. Similar force was used throughout the country as Trotsky traveled round Russia shooting commanders who failed to hold their ground at all costs. By contrast, the Whites lacked the ideological fervor that was the basis of Bolshevik unity, encompassing within their ranks a wide range of political ideologies, from monarchists to anti-Soviet socialists. They had neither a unified command nor centralized lines of communication. Such factors were to contribute significantly to the eventual Soviet victory, although the war was still at its fiercest at the time of Solzhenitsyn’s birth.

  Success in the economic sphere was not so simple for the post-revolutionary government. Soviet policies were causing chaos. Since money was almost worthless, the rural peasantry had no incentive to sell their scarce produce in the cities. The Bolshevik response was to send Red Guards into the countryside to seize food and to set up “committees of the poor”, which in turn incited class war against the wealthier peasants, or kulaks. In the cities, a form of labor discipline was introduced under the guise of “War Communism”, which differed little in its harshness from the pre-trade union days under the tsar. This was a reflection of Lenin’s demands, voiced in the first months after the October Revolution, for “the most decisive, draconic measures to tighten up discipline”.1 In December 1917, he suggested several means by which discipline could be imposed: “confiscation of all property . . . confinement in prison, dispatch to the front and forced labor for all who disobey the existing law”.2

  On July 23, 1918, the Bolshevik government passed legislation stipulating that “those deprived of freedom who are capable of labor must be recruited for physical work on a compulsory basis”. Writing half a century later, Solzhenitsyn affirmed that “the camps originated and the Archipelago was born from this particular instruction of July 23, 1918.”3 On September 5, 1918, the Decree on the Red Terror, in addition to a call for mass executions, authorized the Soviet Republic to defend itself “against its class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps”.4

  “At that time,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “the authorities used to love to set up their concentration camps in former monasteries: they were enclosed by strong walls, had good solid buildings, and they were empty. (After all, monk
s are not human beings and could be tossed out at will.) Thus in Moscow there were concentration camps in Andronnikov, Novospassky, and Ivanovsky monasteries.”5 Neither were monks the only victims. Nuns also warranted eviction. The Krasnaya Gazeta of September 6, 1918, reported that the first camp in St. Petersburg “will be set up in Nizhni Novgorod in an empty nunnery”, adding that “initially it was planned to send five thousand persons to the concentration camp”.

  Thus it was that Alexander Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago were born within weeks of each other, children of the same revolution.

  The turbulent and tyrannical world Solzhenitsyn entered in the winter of 1918 was made even less hospitable by the absence of his father, killed in a hunting accident six months before his son’s birth. Consequently, Solzhenitsyn could remember his father “only from snapshots, and the accounts of my mother and people who knew him”.6 From these accounts, Solzhenitsyn had gleaned that his father, Isaaki Solzhenitsyn, had gone from the university to the front as a volunteer and had served in the Grenadier Artillery Brigade. He recounts with pride the story of his father’s bravery in pulling ammunition boxes away from a fire which had been started by enemy shells. For this act of heroism, he was mentioned in dispatches. When almost the entire front had collapsed in the face of the German advance, the battery in which his father served remained in the front lines right up until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. He and Taissia Shcherbak, Solzhenitsyn’s mother, were married at the front by the brigade chaplain. He ended the war with three officers’ decorations, including the George and Anna crosses, but died soon after his return home in spring 1918. If he had lived, Isaaki Solzhenitsyn would have been twenty-seven years old at the time of his son’s birth at Kislovodsk, a fashionable Caucasian resort. His wife was twenty-three.