Solzhenitsyn

by Joseph Pearce

  For about three months after the KGB raid, he suffered intermittent bouts of hopelessness which, at their most extreme, bordered on despair. It was during this period, possibly the unhappiest in his life, that he contemplated suicide for the first and last time. He woke up every day in the expectation that it would be his last day of freedom. Arrest was inevitable, he thought, and could come at any moment. Desperately and hastily, Solzhenitsyn dispersed his notes and unfinished drafts of The Gulag Archipelago to secret locations and wrote to the editor of Pravda requesting the return of the only copy of The First Circle not in the hands of the KGB. To his great relief, his novel was returned to him, but he was disappointed to learn that Tvardovsky was no longer prepared to consider it for Novy Mir. Solzhenitsyn was now unpublishable; any association with him could carry the risk of arrest. Even Tvardovsky, his greatest ally, was careful to keep him at arm’s length.

  The pressures of persecution were also having a detrimental effect on Solzhenitsyn’s marriage, which was once again nearing breaking point. For some time, Natalya had resented Solzhenitsyn’s long absences at the various hiding places where he worked in secrecy and in constant fear of discovery. Solzhenitsyn wrote that his wife had come to hate The Gulag Archipelago, blaming it as the cause of their problems, the bane of their marriage. “She would not have been afraid of typing it if she had been with me, but if I departed for its sake and could not even write home, then it could go to hell, this Archipelago!”25 Natalya’s frustrations came to a head in a bitter row during which she told her husband that she would rather see him arrested than hiding away and deliberately neglecting her. “From that instant,” Solzhenitsyn wrote, “I knew I could no longer depend on her. What was worse, I would have to keep up the arrangements that she was party to, while at the same time establishing a whole new secret system that would have to be kept hidden from her as from a hostile outsider.”26

  After almost thirty years, their crisis-bound tragedy of a romance was fading to an ignominious conclusion. Over the next few years, the marriage stalled and stuttered to a halt, before sputtering into a series of claims and counter-claims concerning who was ultimately responsible for the breakdown. “I could not have imagined into whose clutches our divorce would drive my wife,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in 1974, “nor that she was on the verge of becoming (or had already become) more dangerous to me than any spy, both because she was ready to collaborate with anyone against me and because she knew so many of my secret allies.”27

  Such an accusation might have appeared unreasonable. No one other than Solzhenitsyn himself had suffered more for his art than his wife. Yet she was unable to appreciate the importance of her husband’s work, either to the world or to Solzhenitsyn himself, and could not share in the sense of mission that motivated him. Particularly in the later stages of their marriage, every sacrifice she was called upon to make on the altar of her husband’s art became irksome, breeding resentment. Solzhenitsyn was not prepared to compromise. He approached his work with a vocational zeal compared with which his very life, and that of his wife, were of little importance. He was a man possessed and, as such, could not and would not be possessed by his wife.

  Yet Solzhenitsyn’s accusation is not as unreasonable as it seems. Natalya’s memoir of her life with him, published in the West in 1975, contained many bitter distortions of the truth, designed apparently to cause her former husband as much harm and hurt as possible. Solzhenitsyn became convinced that she was working in league with the Soviet authorities, with the KGB itself. It is tempting to treat such a view with incredulity; it seems too much like the seedy scenario for a Cold War espionage novel. The spurned woman manipulated by the unscrupulous secret police. “The spy who loved me”.

  Natalya did her utmost to refute Solzhenitsyn’s published accusations of her treachery. She wrote an open letter to him in 1980, denying that she had collaborated with the KGB, and stating that she had been outraged by the way the original text of her memoirs had been cut by a quarter and grossly distorted. It was only in 1996, when she was seriously ill, that the full and secret truth emerged. On being transferred from one hospital to another, she was told that the new hospital required her internal passport. She asked a female relative to collect it for her, and the woman was astounded to discover that the document listed Natalya as the widow of Konstantin Semyonov, the journalist assigned by the publishers to edit her first memoir. She had been married to him from 1974 until his death in 1981. Since Semyonov was the KGB agent responsible for the gross distortions she had complained of in her open letter, it was surprising to discover that she had been married to him at the time the letter was written. Understandably, Natalya had done everything in her power to keep the marriage secret and was thunderstruck when she realized that her secret was out: “Is that known about? That’s—my secret, my secret marriage.” She was horrified at the prospect of Solzhenitsyn discovering the truth and pleaded in mitigation that marriage to Semyonov had saved her after Solzhenitsyn’s exile. “I was without a job, without everything. Marrying him allowed me to live in Moscow. He was my closest friend. . . . All that time we concealed our marriage. I was never a KGB agent, I swear it!”28

  This confession was Natalya’s last public comment on her long and tragic relationship with Solzhenitsyn. It was the final bitter twist in a complicated tale. Perhaps the closing words should belong to Solzhenitsyn:

  As always, every family story is incredibly complicated and confused. Each side can marshal a thousand arguments, and each person is unavoidably guilty—it’s always that way. That’s why it is the sort of thing that doesn’t allow of a simple solution or a simple paraphrase. All that can be said in the most general terms, when you take a bird’s-eye view of it . . . is that we were both wrong to get married, especially the second time; we should never have done it twice. . . . But of course, so many feelings and memories are invested in any joint life together. And it’s terribly painful when it breaks up.29

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  OLD ENEMIES AND NEW FRIENDS

  In spring 1966, Solzhenitsyn was working away from home at the dacha of his friend Kornei Chukovsky in Peredelkino, the writers’ colony just outside Moscow, where he was putting the finishing touches to his novel Cancer Ward. On the night of Holy Saturday, April 9, he wandered down to the patriarchal Church of the Transfiguration to watch the Easter procession at midnight. What he observed upon his arrival inspired one of his most evocative essays. Instead of pious groups of believers, he was greeted outside the church by rowdy youths dressed in the latest fashions, who, oblivious to the fact that they were on consecrated ground, were shrieking and cavorting to the sound of pop music from transistor radios. “About one in four has been drinking, one in ten is drunk, and half of them are smoking—in that repulsive way with the cigarette stuck to the lower lip. There is no incense yet, but instead of it swathes of grey-blue cigarette smoke rise towards the Easter sky under the electric light of the churchyard in dense, hovering clouds.” Solzhenitsyn looked on in disgust as the youths spat on the asphalt path, whistled loudly, and shouted obscenities at each other. The boys kissed their girlfriends, who were then pulled from one boy to another.

  These youths are not breaking the law; although they are doing violence, it is bloodless. Their lips twisted into a gangsterish leer, their brazen talk, their loud laughter, their flirting and snide jokes, their smoking and spitting—it all amounts to an insult to the Passion of Christ, which is being celebrated a few yards away from them. It is expressed in the arrogant, derisory look worn by these snotty hooligans as they come to watch how the old folk still practise the rites of their forefathers.1

  This behavior was in marked contrast to that of the participants in the procession. Some were clearly intimidated by the contemptuous attitude of the onlookers, huddling close together for mutual comfort, but a group of ten women, walking in pairs and holding thick, lighted candles, offered a vision of heroic virtue: “elderly women with faces set in an unworldly gaze, prepared for death if
they are attacked”.

  Two out of the ten are young girls of the same age as those crowding round with the boys, yet how pure and bright their faces are. The ten women, walking in close formation, are singing and looking as solemn as though the people around them were crossing themselves, praying and falling to their knees in repentance. They do not breathe the cigarette smoke; their ears are deaf to the vile language; the soles of their feet do not feel how the churchyard has been turned into a dance-floor.2

  Gripped with the poignancy of the moment, Solzhenitsyn prophetically transformed this insignificant incident so that the characters became archetypes of the future, turning the Easter procession at Peredelkino into a parable: “These millions we have bred and reared—what will become of them? Where have the enlightened efforts and the inspiring visions of great thinkers led us? What good can we expect of our future generations? The truth is that one day they will turn and trample on us all. And as for those who urged them on to this, they will trample on them too.”3 Back in his creative hideaway, Solzhenitsyn wrote the essay describing the vision he had just witnessed. Having done so, he returned to work on the final chapters of Cancer Ward, completing a preliminary draft a few weeks later. As soon as it was ready, he dispatched the novel to Novy Mir, where it was discussed at the editorial meeting on June 18. Opinions were divided, as they had been during the earlier discussion on The First Circle, some being strongly in favor of its publication and others as strongly opposed. At first, Tvardovsky spoke vehemently in the novel’s defense, declaring that “art does not exist in this world to be a weapon in the class struggle”. Furthermore, it was “topical in that it presents a moral reckoning on behalf of a newly awakened people”. He assured Solzhenitsyn that he wanted to publish and that “we will launch it and fight for it to the limit of our powers”.4

  Although initially encouraged by this positive response, Solzhenitsyn soon became irritated by what seemed to be a change of heart, or mind, on Tvardovsky’s part. Novy Mir’s editor appeared to be less enthusiastic, demanded many cuts and alterations, and started to equivocate over his plans for publication. Angered by the straitjacket of censorship with which Tvardovsky was now attempting to constrain him, and frustrated by the uncertainty surrounding prospects for publication, Solzhenitsyn decided to allow Cancer Ward to circulate in samizdat. He still recalled with pain and bitterness the farcical failure of Novy Mir to publish The First Circle, and he was determined that the same fate should not meet his latest offering. Tvardovsky was furious when he learned that copies of the novel were circulating in samizdat, and the ensuing disagreement led to a temporary parting of the ways between Solzhenitsyn and Novy Mir.

  Determined to do everything in his power to get Cancer Ward published, Solzhenitsyn managed to arrange a discussion of his novel at a meeting of the Central Writers’ Club in Moscow on November 17, 1966. News of the debate spread rapidly in literary circles, and tickets for the event soon became hard to come by. The attendance was far higher than normal for meetings of the club, with fifty-two writers present. Debate was largely sympathetic and constructive, though it became heated when Zoya Kedrina stood up to address the meeting. Kedrina had gained notoriety during the recent show trial of the dissident writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel for her role as “social accuser” on behalf of the Soviet prosecutors. During her speech to the meeting, she was heckled angrily, and some sections of the audience staged a walk-out in protest. Overall, however, Solzhenitsyn’s novel was praised by his peers and compared favorably with several key works of Russian literature, most notably Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. At the meeting’s conclusion, Solzhenitsyn expressed his gratitude for the hearing he had been given and must have been delighted by the passing of a resolution that the club would take steps to bring about the publication of Cancer Ward. As the first step, it was proposed by Lev Kopelev that a transcript of their discussion be sent to Zvesda and Prostor, two reviews to which Solzhenitsyn had submitted the manuscript of Cancer Ward following its formal rejection by Novy Mir. The meeting had been a personal and practical triumph for Solzhenitsyn, ending on an appropriately optimistic note as the poet Bella Akhmadulina rushed up to the platform and, turning to Solzhenitsyn, shouted: “Wonderful man! Let us pray to God to grant good health to Alexander Solzhenitsyn!”5

  Encouraged by his success at this meeting, Solzhenitsyn began a tactical war of nerves with the Soviet authorities. Contrary to all regulations, he granted an interview in November 1966 to a Japanese news correspondent, in the course of which he mentioned the existence ofThe First Circle, stated that its publication had been blocked, and referred to his two unpublished plays, The Love Girl and the Innocent and Candle in the Wind. As the world was gripped in the clutches of the Cold War, it was common for interviewers to ask writers to offer their views on “the writer’s duties in defense of peace”. Solzhenitsyn, however, did not offer the Japanese journalist the usual trite response:

  I shall broaden the scope of this question. The fight for peace is only part of the writer’s duties to society. Not one little bit less important is the fight for social justice and for the strengthening of spiritual values in his contemporaries. This, and nowhere else, is where the effective defence of peace must begin—with the defence of spiritual values in the soul of every human being. I was brought up in the traditions of Russian literature, and I cannot imagine myself working as a writer without such aims.6

  Within days of his unauthorized interview with the Japanese journalist, Solzhenitsyn accepted an invitation to speak at the Kurchatov Institute of Physics in Moscow. Six hundred people were present, and his readings from Cancer Ward, Candle in the Wind, and the ostensibly “forbidden” The First Circle were received with warmth and enthusiasm. News of his appearance spread quickly, and he was inundated with similar invitations from all over Moscow. He accepted as many as he could, nine in all, but at the last moment each lecture was mysteriously canceled. At the Karpov Institute, Solzhenitsyn actually arrived in the car that had been sent for him only to find a notice pinned to the door: “Cancelled owing to the author’s indisposition”.7 The reason for these cancellations soon became apparent. The Moscow City Party Committee had telephoned the organizers of each of the meetings, threatening reprisals if they went ahead. In spite of this, Solzhenitsyn was invited to speak at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Studies on November 30, although whether this was in open defiance of the Party’s ban or merely because the less than omniscient Party had failed to detect that one particular meeting is not clear.

  Five hundred people listened intently as Solzhenitsyn read two chapters from Cancer Ward, but they were not prepared for the open show of defiance that followed. In response to a question from the audience, Solzhenitsyn openly declared war on the power of the Party, boldly testing its alleged omnipotence. “I must explain why, although I used to refuse to talk to reporters or make public appearances, I have now started giving interviews and am standing here before you.” Explaining that circumstances had dictated the necessity that he defend himself, he launched into an outright attack on the KGB:

  There is a certain organization that has no obvious claim to tutelage over the arts, that you may think has no business at all supervising literature—but that does these things. This organization took away my novel and my archive. . . . Even so, I said nothing, but went on working quietly. However, they then made use of excerpts from my papers, taken out of context, to launch a campaign of defamation against me. . . . What can I do about it? Only defend myself! So here I am!8

  The audience was at first stunned by the apparently suicidal courage of the speaker in front of them. It was unheard of for anyone to attack the KGB in such terms from a public platform in the Soviet Union. It simply wasn’t done. It was courage beyond the call of duty and beyond the bounds of safety, courage that the faint-hearted would call foolhardy. Yet Solzhenitsyn had just said these words in front of their disbelieving ears. With a growing sense of exhilaration, the audience listened as Solzhen
itsyn began to read from The First Circle, the “forbidden” novel that the KGB had confiscated. This time, unlike the readings from the novel he had given at the Kurchatov Institute, which had been tame by comparison, he deliberately read the most provocative chapters, the most political ones. Solzhenitsyn was intoxicated by the freedom of expression and would always look back with pleasure to “that hour of free speech from a platform with an audience of five hundred people, also intoxicated with freedom”.9

  Within days, the five hundred people had set off a chain reaction of gossip around Moscow that set the city buzzing with the news of Solzhenitsyn’s daring defiance of the KGB. The legend of Solzhenitsyn was being born.

  Yet at the beginning of December, even as his escapades were being discussed in countless homes around Russia’s capital, Solzhenitsyn shaved off his beard so that he would be more difficult to recognize and slipped out of the city to one of his hideaways to continue work on The Gulag Archipelago. Commenting on the legend that was beginning to surround Solzhenitsyn, Michael Scammell writes that he was “not so much a musketeer as a pimpernel” who was “beginning to live a life . . . that far surpassed, in excitement and danger, the lives of his fictional heroes”.10

  Between December 1966 and February 1967, Solzhenitsyn worked on the second draft of the first six parts of The Gulag Archipelago, revising and retyping over fifteen hundred pages in only two and a half months. To achieve this superhuman task, he worked sixteen hours a day in two eight-hour shifts and completed the work on February 22. On that day, he penned the afterword that appeared at the end of the third volume of the published edition in which he expressed his surprise that he had managed to finish it safely: “I have several times thought they would not let me.” Indeed, if the communist authorities had realized he was working on such a devastating expose of the Soviet prison system, it is certain they would not have let him. As it was, the fact that he had completed the work safely was a tribute to his own cautious and secretive endeavor and that of the small handful of people who had helped him. “I am finishing it”, Solzhenitsyn wrote, “in the year of a double anniversary (and the two anniversaries are connected): it is fifty years since the revolution which created Gulag, and a hundred since the invention of barbed wire (1867). This second anniversary will no doubt pass unnoticed.”11