The importance of the film dramatization was not lost on Steven Lee Myers, writing in the New York Times. Describing Solzhenitsyn as being in “the twilight of an immeasurably influential career”, Myers wrote: “Solzhenitsyn has been called the conscience of the nation, but his reputation has risen and fallen as tumultuously as Russia itself since the collapse of the Soviet Union. First Circle has once again placed him on the national stage, reaching an audience that would have been inconceivable to him four decades ago, when he smuggled the book out of the Soviet Union.”7
Reading such an appraisal of Solzhenitsyn’s importance reminded me of my own interview with him almost eight years earlier. Then he had quipped that, as an eighty-year-old, he did not have time to retire. If anything, he seemed to have gone from strength to strength. Remembering my time with him, I recalled the concluding moments of our interview. My audience was drawing to a close, but there was time, perhaps, for one final question. How, I asked, would Solzhenitsyn like to be remembered to posterity? “That’s a complex question”, he responded, pausing a moment before commencing.
I would hope that which has been lied about me, slandered about me, in the course of decades, would, like mud, dry up and fall off. It is amazing how much gibberish has been talked about me, more so in the West than in the USSR. In the USSR, it was all one-directional propaganda, and everyone knew that it was just communist propaganda. But in the West anyone can lie; some person can say something in a little article, and thirty people start reproducing it. It is the fashion to imitate.8
The complaint about media distortion was not new. Solzhenitsyn had been making the same plaintive pleas for objectivity and fairness for many years. I had read similar words by him on several occasions, and on the dry page, they sounded stern, possibly even bitter. Now, however, as he spoke them across the table to me, there was the softened countenance, punctuated periodically with smiles which transformed regularly into laughter. The complaint against the media was real enough, and certainly heartfelt, but his contempt was tempered by contentment. He was happy and could shrug off the lies with apparent ease.
“But you are still smiling?” I asked.
“Of course. I am indifferent to all this because I was always occupied with my work, and I wasn’t listening to what they were saying, or reading what they were writing. But when you ask, ‘after my death’, it is then that I will not be able to justify myself, and that is why I hope that it would, like mud, fall off of its own accord.”9
As our interview reached its conclusion, I was addressed by Alya in faltering English. She told me with evident pleasure that her husband was again writing prose poetry, something he had been unable to do during the years in exile. The poems were, she intimated, evidence that he was once more at peace with life. Some were directly inspired by events in their own garden, such as a storm, which he had taken as allegorical inspiration for aspects of human behavior. Solzhenitsyn had finally come home, artistically as well as physically.
Michael Nicholson, on reading these prose poems, was particularly struck by the resonant use of the imagery attached to bells and bell-towers in two of them.
The most typical in its “spiritual optimism” is “Kolo-kol’nia”, in which a lone bell-tower is seen protruding high above the waves of the Volga, while what survives of the half-flooded town of Kaliazan has the air of a ghost-town populated by deceived, abandoned souls. Though Kaliazan suggests a gloomy pars pro toto, the bell-tower stands nevertheless: “As our hope. As our prayer: no, the Lord will not permit all of Russia to be drowned beneath the waves.” The link with the homes, churches and bell-towers of Solzhenitsyn’s earlier fiction does not need further elaboration.10
Nicholson compares the spiritual optimism of these poems with what he perceives to be Solzhenitsyn’s underlying pessimism about the future:
Now back in Russia, he finds that the muddied waters of freedom have silted up the space once occupied by communism, or, to use another of his images, an evil prince still casts his spell over Lake Segden, and the people still scuttle about in his shadow denied access to the healing lucidity of its waters. As for Solzhenitsyn, he finds himself sounding a tocsin that has pealed through centuries of Russian history and grappling in his declining years with the fear that perhaps he rings in vain.11
It is crucial to any understanding of Solzhenitsyn’s life and work to understand that this combination of pessimism and optimism is a paradox and not a contradiction.
At the conclusion of my time with him, I asked Solzhenitsyn whether there was anything else of particular importance he would like me to cover in the proposed biography. “That’s an unexpected question”, he responded. “I’ll have to think that one over.” Eventually, he expressed the desire that the charge of pessimism be confronted.
I must tell you that, on the contrary, I am by nature an ineradicable optimist. I’ve always been an optimist. When I was dying of cancer, I was always an optimist. When I was exiled abroad, nobody believed that I would return, but I was convinced that I would return. So no, it’s not full of dark and gloom. There’s always a ray of light. But of course [he added with a broad grin], there may not be enough optimism to last a full eighty years!12
Solzhenitsyn was paradox personified: the pessimistic optimist. His pessimism sprang from the creeping knowledge that human history may be little more than a long defeat in a land of exile. Yet such a defeat, however long, is rooted in time: temporal and therefore temporary. Solzhenitsyn knew that his exile in time, like his exile in the West, must eventually come to an end. Perhaps only then would the fullness of his destiny be revealed. Solzhenitsyn was, for the time being, a temporary pessimist, but he was also, and remained, an eternal optimist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I AM NOT AFRAID OF DEATH”
Following the dramatic success of the television adaptation of The First Circle, it was announced that the “uncut” edition of the novel was soon to be published for the first time in an English translation. Although the complete text had been available in Russian for some time, the only version available in English since its publication in 1968 was an expurgated version that Solzhenitsyn had “lightened” in the vain hope that it would pass muster with the Soviet censors. It was not until 2005 that the full ninety-six-chapter version was finally translated, the work being completed by the translator, Harry Willetts, shortly before his death. Several of the “new” chapters debuted in the autumn of 2006 in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947-2005, edited by Edward E. Ericson, Jr., and Daniel J. Mahoney, but the novel would not be published in its entirety until 2009.
In April 2006, Solzhenitsyn was again making world headlines, this time for attacking NATO. “Solzhenitsyn Warns of NATO Plot” was the headline on the BBC News website; “Solzhenitsyn Accuses NATO of Plotting against Russia”, wrote the Moscow correspondent of Agence France-Presse; “Nobel Laureate Aleksander Solzhenitsyn Accuses US, NATO of Encircling Russia” blazoned the English-language site of Pravda.1 There was no doubt that Solzhenitsyn’s provocative attack on NATO’s expansion was the point of primary interest for the world’s media, but the sound-bite and the spin failed to do justice to the depth and complexity of his words. The context in which they were spoken illustrated that Solzhenitsyn was not the xenophobic slavophile nationalist that the headlines and the spin implied, but that, on the contrary, he remained an astute observer of global politics from a tradition-oriented Christian perspective.
The controversial comments came in an interview with Vitaly Tretyakov, editor-in-chief of Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), in which Tretyakov conflated global politics into a simplistic framework in which “Christian civilization” is seen as being embodied in “the North American Union”, the European Union, and “the East European (Russian) Union”. Tretyakov’s question warrants quoting in full in order to clarify the rationale behind Solzhenitsyn’s words of rebuttal: “I, for one, believe that unless the three principal subjects of Euro-Atlantic (Christian) civ
ilization—specifically, the North American Union, the (Western) European Union, and the East European (Russian) Union—form a strategic alliance (with supra-state bodies), our civilization will disappear sooner or later. Where do you think salvation for the Euro-Atlantic civilization lies?”2
Ever the clear and incisive thinker, Solzhenitsyn replied, “Unfortunately, the global political process is not moving in the direction that you have just outlined”, and that Russia’s acceptance of “the Euro-Atlantic alliance . . . would result not in the expansion but the decline of Christian civilization”. In other words, Solzhenitsyn perceived US foreign policy, and the foreign policy of the European Union, as furthering the cause of global secularism. Far from representing the preservation or strengthening of Christian civilization, the world order envisaged by corporate globalism and its political agencies would herald Christendom’s demise. It is within this context that Solzhenitsyn’s attack on NATO must be understood, a context that placed his words in complete harmony with the criticism of liberal secularism that he had always espoused since his equally controversial Harvard address almost thirty years earlier. Once again, his words were misunderstood or misrepresented by the media in such a way that their real meaning was buried under the rubble of Orwellian Newspeak.
Also overlooked by the world’s media was Solzhenitsyn’s principled stance on the need for “grassroots” democracy. During the interview, he criticized the undemocratic nature of two-party “democracies”, condemning the party system as a form of “collective egoism”, which was parasitical, “living off others, at somebody else’s expense”. As an alternative to these undemocratic macro-“democracies”, Solzhenitsyn posited a subsidiarist approach to democracy: “A healthy democratic system can only evolve on the grassroots level, from local associations, stepwise, through stage-by-stage elections. . . . I believe that a democratic system evolving from local government to Supreme Legislative Assembly is the healthiest for Russia and the most consonant with its traditional spirit.” Considering that Western democracies were “in a serious crisis”, it was foolish to simply model Russian democracy on democratic systems in the West. “The only correct path for us is not to copy other models but, without deviating from democratic principles, work on improving the physical and moral well-being of the people.”
Apart from his advocacy of subsidiarity as the key to true democracy, Solzhenitsyn gave his support to Metropolitan Kirill of the Orthodox Church, specifically with regard to the latter’s insistence that unbridled human rights should not be allowed to jeopardize religious liberty. Insisting that rights must be tempered by responsibilities, Solzhenitsyn reiterated that self-limitation was the key to freedom and prosperity:
We have been hearing all this talk about “human rights” ever since the Enlightenment era; they have been secured in a number of countries, but not always within the bounds of moral values and principles. Yet for some reason no one has ever urged us to defend “human obligations”. Even calling for self-restraint is considered to be ludicrous and absurd. Meanwhile, only self-restraint, self-denial can guarantee a moral and reliable resolution of any conflicts.
Describing Solzhenitsyn as “not a liberal and certainly not a socialist”, Tretyakov dubbed him a “conservative” and asked him to define “modern Russian conservatism”. Solzhenitsyn replied that “conservatism is a striving to preserve and uphold the best, the most humane and reasonable traditions that have justified themselves throughout centuries-old history”. The rise of conservatism in modern Russia was “a natural response to total license” and was “reassuring” though only “embryonic” in its nature.
It was also intriguing considering the tone of the international media’s coverage of the interview that Solzhenitsyn explicitly condemned xenophobia and insisted that Russian nationalism had nothing to do with either “fascism” or “Nazism”. Xenophobia had “never been an inherent quality of the Russian people”, and the rise in the number of racist attacks was alarming. “Firm” and “forceful” measures were needed to stop “these barbaric attacks and murders which are threatening our society”, but it was also necessary “to study in earnest the causes and roots of these aggressive attitudes”. Such attitudes might have been spawned by the systematic ethno-masochism of Soviet communism: “Suppressing ethnic Russians for the benefit of other ethnic groups was one of Lenin’s central, obsessive ideas. . . . It was continued under Stalin despite his hypocritical statements later. (As for our present Constitution, the word ‘Russians’ is not there at all!) Throughout decades, a feeling of bitterness and resentment has built up in Russian consciousness.”
In spite of the huge differences between Russian nationalism and Nazism, which had nothing in common, the term “fascism” was “being used loosely and irresponsibly as a convenient swearword which hinders the rise of Russian identity and Russian national awareness”.3 Later in the year, in an interview with the Austrian novelist Daniel Kehlmann, published in the French newspaper, Le Figaro, Solzhenitsyn lamented that many in the West saw Russia as being synonymous with “communism”, failing to distinguish between Russia and the Soviet Union. Whereas many on the so-called “left” employed the term fascism loosely and irresponsibly, many on the “right” were all too ready to employ the epithet communist or Soviet to decry the threat of a revitalized Russia. The former were stuck in the miasma of the class war, the latter in the myopia of the Cold War; neither was able to come to terms with a reality that their dumbed-down vocabulary prevented them from comprehending. Far from being guilty of a narrow-minded chauvinism, Solzhenitsyn was once again the victim of it.
In April 2007, Solzhenitsyn’s old friend and ally, Mstislav Rostropovich, died after a long battle with cancer. His funeral service was held at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been dynamited on Stalin’s orders in 1931 but had been restored in the 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union.4 It was, therefore, a symbol of, or a metaphor for, the phoenix-like resurrection of Russia from the ashes of the Soviet brand of secular fundamentalism. In the presence of such a resurrection in stone, the promised resurrection of the deceased must have seemed all the more potent. Although Solzhenitsyn had issued a statement following Rostropovich’s death, calling it “a bitter blow for our culture”, he was unable to attend the funeral in person, fueling rumors of his own failing health. Alya, representing the family, made the sign of the cross and bowed before the coffin at the end of the funeral, in accordance with Russian Orthodox custom.5
On June 5, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree honoring Solzhenitsyn “for exemplary achievements in the area of humanitarian activities”. The award was announced by State Hermitage Museum director Mikhail Piotovsky and Yuri Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at a Kremlin news conference. Responding to news of the award on her husband’s behalf, Alya told reporters that Solzhenitsyn viewed it as recognition that his life’s work had been noticed: “It gives a certain hope, and Alexander Isayevich would be glad if this hope really was fulfilled in life, hope that our country will learn from the lessons of destroying itself in the twentieth century and never repeat it.”6 As with the funeral of Rostropovich, Solzhenitsyn’s failing health prevented his being able to attend the pomp and circumstance of the official awards ceremony at a hall in the Kremlin on June 12, his wife once again serving as his representative. Yet, later the same day, as a mark of the respect with which he was now held by Russia’s ruling elite, Putin visited Solzhenitsyn’s residence to present the award in person. According to Russian press reports, the two men discussed Solzhenitsyn’s ideas about the political situation in contemporary Russia at some length.7
Many people in the West seemed confused and bemused by Solzhenitsyn’s evidently comfortable relationship with Putin, and some were quick to sense a hypocritical rapprochement between Solzhenitsyn and what they perceived to be the new totalitarianism in Russia. Such misreadings of the man were put to rest by Alya Solzhenitsyn in mid-June, within days of the award ce
remony in Moscow, during her keynote address at an international Solzhenitsyn conference at the University of Illinois. Among the many aspects of modern Russia with which her husband “by no means agree[d]” were the party-dominated nature of the legislature, the absence of meaningful local self-government, and the rampant corruption that continued to plague Russian society. Most of all, Solzhenitsyn lamented that “there was no process of cleansing” when communism collapsed; “we heard no words of repentance from any of the party bureaucrats”. Without such repentance, Solzhenitsyn believed that Russians had “robbed themselves of the essential experience of historical catharsis”.8
In an endeavor to put the Putin-Solzhenitsyn relationship into perspective, Daniel Mahoney, author of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology and co-editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader, insisted that it was “a terrible mistake to assume that Solzhenitsyn is an uncritical supporter of the status quo in Russia today”. Nonetheless,
[Solzhenitsyn] surely credits Putin for taking on the most unsavoury of the oligarchs, confronting the demographic crisis (it was Solzhenitsyn who first warned in his speech to the Duma in the fall of 1994 that Russians were in the process of dying out), and restoring Russian self-respect (although Solzhenitsyn adamantly opposes every identification of Russian patriotism with Soviet-style imperialism). . . . The point is [Mahoney concluded], that Solzhenitsyn remains his own man, a patriot and a witness to the truth.9
In actual fact, although Solzhenitsyn had certainly come in from the cold since his days as a dissident, he was only pursuing in his discussions with Putin what he had sought to pursue with the Politburo of the Soviet Union thirty-four years earlier, in his Letter to Soviet Leaders. The only difference was that Putin was prepared to listen to Solzhenitsyn’s wisdom, and to discuss it with him in person, whereas the communist old guard had sought to silence him. If Putin was really prepared to listen to Solzhenitsyn’s warnings about the population implosion caused by the culture of death, or about the need to tackle corruption, or the necessity of strong local democracy, or the difference between true nationalism and chauvinistic imperialism, why should Putin be criticized for listening or Solzhenitsyn for speaking his mind?
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