A reader of her column would never learn about Solzhenitsyn’s condemnation of “scandalous restrictions” against Jews under the Russian old regime, his criticisms of the Russian state for its “impardonable inaction” in anticipation and responding to brutal anti-Jewish pogroms, his admiration for Pyotr Stolypin’s efforts to end the Jewish disabilities, or his criticism of the White forces during the Russian Civil War for their inexcusable toleration of anti-Semitic violence and propaganda in territories under their control.
Nor would a reader learn anything about Solzhenitsyn’s principled rejection of fascism and all its works, or his moving and somber discussion in Chapter 21 of Dveti Let Vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together) of the Holocaust unleashed against Jews on Soviet territory.
Nor would one come across anything about Solzhenitsyn’s admiration for Jews such as D. O. Linski, Iosif Bikerman, Michel Heller, Mikhail Agurski, Aleksandr Ginzburg, and Dora Sturman, nor about his highlighting of the “disproportionate” role played by Jews in the anti-Communist resistance of the 1960s and ’70s.23
Richard Pipes, in his review of Two Hundred Years Together for the New Republic, stressed that Solzhenitsyn “makes a conscious effort to show empathy for both sides, calling on Jews and Russians to display ‘patient mutual understanding and an acknowledgment of their share of sin’—the ultimate sin being the 1917 revolution that brought Russia untold miseries”.24 Pipes also noted that he felt that the book was an attempt by Solzhenitsyn to rid himself “of the reputation for anti-Semitism” and concluded his review by stating that he had succeeded in doing so.
Such was the controversy surrounding the publication of the book in Russia that Solzhenitsyn gave a rare press interview in December 2002 to clarify his motives in writing it. He stressed that he was motivated by a desire that the Russians come to terms with the Stalinist and revolutionary pogroms against the Jews, and also that the Jews come to terms with the fact that they should be as offended by their own role in the Soviet purges as they are, rightfully, by the persecution they suffered under the Soviets. “My book was directed to empathise with the thoughts, feelings and psychology of the Jews—their spiritual component”, he told reporters in Moscow. “I have never made general conclusions about a people. I will always differentiate between layers of Jews. One layer rushed headfirst to the revolution. Another, to the contrary, was trying to stand back.”25
Even as the controversy surrounding his latest book continued to simmer, memories of a previous controversy were being resurrected. In May 2003, Harvard University staged a conference to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Solzhenitsyn’s commencement address. In 1978, Solzhenitsyn had attacked the materialism, consumerism, and hedonism of the West, insisting that it offered no alternative to communism. Twenty-five years later, Jay Nordlinger, managing editor of National Review, described his words as “more relevant than ever”. Nordlinger, one of the speakers at the twenty-fifth anniversary conference, alongside Solzhenitsyn’s sons Ignat and Stephan, called the Harvard address “one of the most controversial and notorious speeches in modern history”: “I confess that, as I went back over this speech, I was astonished at how true it was. . . . I kept writing in the margins, ‘True’. ‘So true’. ‘Blindingly true’.”26
At the end of 2003, Solzhenitsyn and his family were interviewed for a film documentary about his life and work.27 Approaching his eighty-fifth birthday, the aging writer responded to questions with an air of sagacious serenity, the fruits of self-imposed solitude. “The city makes me feel fatigue”, he remarked. “I hate its humdrum, those unending visits and phone calls. I long for a secluded place. . . . I managed to live this wise for some time before my exile, then in Vermont and now here.” He spoke of his faith and his belief that Russia’s destiny is interwoven with Christian Orthodoxy. “Orthodox people believe firmly that God keeps in mind some special purpose for Russia. But we mustn’t think, if there is some divine plan, that God will fulfill this plan. We have our own free will, and we can misunderstand this plan, stray from it. Over the centuries we have made many mistakes.”
Asked why he had brought his own children up within the Russian Orthodox faith, he waxed lyrical over the importance of Christianity in his life, and the life of his family: “A child is born: God sends into your palms a soul which you should rear. How can you conceal this soul from Him, steal it?”
He waxed wistful over the fate of young people in modern Russia, lamenting that they “live amidst many a temptation”: “The creed of social Darwinism has been proclaimed: survive those who can, strive for success, accrue your wealth, move forward! This temptation is the worst of all, gripping young people and spoiling them.” The antidote to this self-spoliation was self-limitation; one should “work at oneself, try to put oneself within moral limits and to improve oneself”.
Turning to the subject of art, he insisted on the centrality of Christianity to any understanding of the nature, or supernature, of artistic creativity:
Artists are often categorized according to “isms”, [but] these differences are not so principal . . . when compared to the divide between believers and non-believers. Non-believers are free from some supreme will. No one commands them. They say, “I don’t believe, I’m the creator of the Universe; I will write a novel, I’m a demiurge who created the world.” They feel high and vain, [but] such artists usually break down; they can’t rise high. The artist who believes in God, who has this awareness that there exists some superior force, such a person behaves himself naturally like God’s apprentice.
Inevitably, the interview took a retrospective look over Solzhenitsyn’s eventful life. Alya Solzhenitsyn recalled her feelings when she first heard the news that her husband had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Never before and never thereafter had I felt simultaneously two feelings, two equally strong emotions, which made me feel so aflutter. One was a feeling of absolute joy, of triumph, for him and for all of us, because the award was given to his “Ivan Denisovich”, according to their wording. It was a victory for all of us, the victory of Russia and “Ivan Denisovich”. On the other hand, I felt despair. . . . I was expecting our first son, Yermolai, [and] it was out of the question for me that Alexander Isayevich would not go to that ceremony. I felt at that moment it was a must with him and that he couldn’t act otherwise. It was clear he would go to that ceremony, and it was clear they wouldn’t let him return to Russia. That meant we would part forever.
Solzhenitsyn was asked about his relationship with Andrei Sakharov. “There were two big figures—you and Sakharov—who challenged the state. What were the contradictions between you?” Solzhenitsyn’s response, as candid and eloquent as ever, was nonetheless conciliatory in tone. He “did not agree” with aspects of Sakharov’s Thoughts about Progress and Peaceful Coexistence, published in 1978, explaining that it “was too delicate about the communist regime”.
He was using the term “Stalinism”. It was fashionable at the time to blame Stalin for everything, and to leave alone the communist regime and its ideology. . . . Then he said “world government”. He said it would be most sensible to form a world government of intelligent people who would rule the Earth. This was scary! Even governments of large countries can’t handle their big spaces, the variety within the country. He also said science should rule over art. What a tyranny: science telling art what to do. For him, Russia and its pre-revolutionary history appeared not to exist at all. He never mentioned it. I would speak about our millennium-long history, and he’d look at me in amazement and say, “It smacks of nationalism.” We had differences, but well-meant ones: we were simply different.
I didn’t expect such a reaction on his part to my Letter to Leaders, which was published after my banishment. He answered publicly, as quick as lightning, dictating by phone to the New York Times his article opposing my Letter. He said there were such sentiments in my Letter fraught with the danger of a future Russian nationalism. Western voices chimed in, and they would kee
p talking about this for decades—that Solzhenitsyn’s Russian nationalism was more dangerous than communism, the most dangerous thing ever. They called me an Ayatollah Khomeini; they said, “He’ll shed no end of blood!” This label stuck to me. But we remained good acquaintances till our last phone conversation one year before his death. One should know patriots from extreme nationalists, which are belligerently in favor of an empire, of an offensive against others. I have never been in favor of an imperial mentality, that the state should prevail in the world and almost rule other countries like America does today. America now acquires the traits of an empire. I disapprove of this. . . . It will bring no good to the USA.
In the light of the more recent controversy surrounding Two Hundred Years Together, which had led many people to add the tag of “anti-Semitism” to that of “nationalist”, Solzhenitsyn was at pains to defend his decision to write the book. Reminding his interviewer that “almost every writer wrote about the Jews and Russians”, he listed the illustrissimi of Russian writers to illustrate his point: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Schedrin, and Gorky. He was merely following in a noble literary tradition. The book itself was the fruit of the “huge amount of historical materials” he had accumulated in his research for his historical epic, The Red Wheel. He had not used the material on the Jews in Russian society in his series of novels so decided to write a separate volume on the subject. Originally intended as one volume, the book burgeoned into two. “It was a bestseller; everyone goes on reading it.” It had received “very different reactions”. Many had read it with “great interest” and had thanked him for writing it; “others, the so-called Russian nationalists . . . reproached me for not criticizing the Jewish religion”. As for the reaction from the Jews who had read the book, he had been greatly encouraged by the generally positive response: “And I had marvelous letters from Jews too; from prominent rabbis, from highly intellectual Jews. They were quite understanding. They appreciated the balance of my book, the tone of it. They accepted it.” There were, however, “many minor individual Jews” who rejected the book. “They were so malicious” and wrote “some spiteful reviews”.
Moving onto the subject of contemporary politics in post-communist Russia, Solzhenitsyn lamented the lack of repentance on the part of former communists. “Repentance is a national Russian trait which developed under Orthodoxy.” It was necessary for an individual to “regret things and feel repentance”.
With all people this repentance should be their integral trait. I thought that in quitting Bolshevism some of the liars and torturers would repent, at least some of them. Not one of them did this. They simply converted into other beliefs and stepped into a new century scot-free, discarding or hiding their Party membership cards. And now they belong to a political class who know very well what is going on, what outrageous things. They do nothing about it. I can only see parties fighting with parties.
Yermolai, the eldest of Solzhenitsyn’s sons, commented toward the end of the documentary that his father was “clearly aware of the end of his life”: “It doesn’t mean he feels he is about to die; it’s simply an objective awareness. He is turning eighty-five soon. I have the impression that during the last several years his mental outlook, the scope of his thinking, has increased and that he has approached very, very deep insight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PESSIMISTIC OPTIMIST
In November 2004, Solzhenitsyn received the highest award of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Order of St. Sava of the First Degree. It was presented, with the blessing of His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Pavle, by the Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro, who traveled to Solzhenitsyn’s home outside Moscow to make the presentation in person. In his remarks to Solzhenitsyn, Metropolitan Amfilohije stated that the award expressed the deepest respect of the church and the Serbian people to the Russian writer for his “uninterrupted witness to truth, repentance and calm as the only path to salvation”.1 Thanking Metropolitan Amfilohije, Solzhenitsyn stressed that he interpreted the honor bestowed upon him “as a visible sign of the centuries-old shared spirituality of the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Churches, which sprang from the same spiritual roots”. He added that the “communality” of the Russian and Serbian churches was “the source of the mutual love of our two peoples”. Looking back to the bombing of Serbia in spring 1999, he told Metropolitan Amfilohije that he was with the Serbian people “wholeheartedly”, sharing their fears and sorrows. “Our two peoples have passed through difficult challenges, and a time of spiritual confusion; that is why it is important that we endure and preserve our spirit”, he concluded.
In April 2005, following the death of Pope John Paul II, Solzhenitsyn paid his own personal tribute: “Pope John Paul II was a great man. In the centuries-long line of Roman popes, he stands out markedly. He influenced the course of world history; and, on his tireless pastoral visits across the world, he carried the warmth of Christianity to all.”2 Two months later, during his first interview for almost three years, broadcast on Russia’s Channel Two, Solzhenitsyn spoke of the nature of democracy in terms that the late Pope would have wholeheartedly endorsed. In speaking of the necessity of grassroots democracy, Solzhenitsyn was echoing the line of reasoning adopted by John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus annus, published in 1991, as well as reiterating the argument pursued in his own earlier work, Rebuilding Russia, published in 1990. Having stated emphatically that “we do not have democracy in this country”, Solzhenitsyn differentiated between real grassroots democracy and the pseudo-democracy imposed by the state. “Democracy cannot be imposed from above. . . . It cannot be capped on society. Democracy can only grow—as everything that grows, as plants—from the roots upward. First, there has to be a small scale democracy, local self-government—all of this is the beginning of democracy. It is only afterward that democracy can begin to develop.”3
In order to illustrate his point, he chose to give some practical examples, offering the Swiss model of democracy as a good example of a country in which the power of the individual’s vote and the use of referenda works “very smoothly and effectively”. He was also encouraged by the example of the referendum in France on the proposed European Constitution. “Their political class has been shaping this Constitution, being fully confident about it, and yet the people said no. They voted no, and that’s the end of the deal. That was the people’s will, and that is a wonderful result.” Having expressed his pleasure at the defeat of the EU Constitution, he lamented that Russia did not employ similar referenda to decide crucial national issues.
In our country, referenda are quite indispensable. And yet the Duma has practically outlawed them by introducing such stumbling blocks and such limitations that it is impossible to hold a referendum. . . . A referendum concerning national issues is still possible. So why do they hinder the practice of voting here? Well, it’s because they are afraid of people’s opinion, not because organizing referenda is difficult. They are simply afraid to hear the people’s indisputable opinion.4
The extent to which the eighty-seven-year-old was still considered a voice of authority can be gauged by the international media response to the television interview. “Writer Solzhenitsyn Criticizes Russia’s Political System and US Policy” was the headline in a news release by Novosti, the Russian News and Information Agency; “Russia Ripe for a People’s Uprising, Solzhenitsyn Says” was the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia; “Russia Is Now Ripe for Freedom Revolution, Warns Solzhenitsyn” was the headline in the Times of London.
In July, it was announced that Solzhenitsyn’s complete works were to be published in Russian for the first time. The publishing house, Vremia, had decided to undertake the thirty-volume project in response to “a wellspring of interest in the once-banned and exiled author”. Boris Pasternak, Vremia’s editor-in-chief, emphasized Solzhenitsyn’s enduring importance and relevance: “Russia is going through a decisive period in its history, and those looking for landmarks find them in
Solzhenitsyn.”5
In January 2006, billboards featuring Solzhenitsyn’s bearded and benignly beaming face appeared all over Moscow, advertising the forthcoming broadcast on state television of a film adaptation of his novel The First Circle. As his grandfatherly features looked out across the Moscow streets, it seemed that the face of sanity and sagacity had finally replaced the ominous portrait of Big Brother: the face of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Putin, et cetera ad nauseam, had finally made way for the irrepressible survivor of the Gulag.
The First Circle premiered on January 29 and ran for ten nights. The first episode was the most watched program in the entire nation, narrowly edging out Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 3. Fifteen million viewers watched each of the ten episodes, seven and a half hours of viewing, shown without commercial breaks. Solzhenitsyn, now eighty-seven, had written the screenplay and narrated long passages. He was also a consultant during the filming, advising the crew on how to recreate the claustrophobic environment of the Gulag. He was pleased with the result, especially with the lead actor’s portrayal of the character of Nerzhin, and the film’s director, Gleb Panfilov, reported that Solzhenitsyn had tears in his eyes when he saw the edited version.6 Following the concluding episode of the ten-part series, there was a live roundtable discussion of the series, featuring Evgeny Mironov, a well-known actor; Vladimir Lukin, the former Russian Ambassador to the United States; Sergei Kapitsa, a professor of physics; and, last but not least, Alya Solzhenitsyn.
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