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Hero of a Dark Century Digital Commons @ Assumption University Political Science Department Faculty Works Political Science Department 2008 Hero of a Dark Century Daniel J. Mahoney Assumption College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/political-science-faculty Part of the Political History Commons, Political Science Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons Recommended Citation Mahoney, Daniel J. "Hero of a Dark Century." National Review vol. 60 no. 16 (Sept. 1, 2008). Pages 47-50. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science Department at Digital Commons @ Assumption University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Department Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Assumption University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. books9-1.qxp 8/12/2008 5:38 PM Page 47 books, arts & manners the West, to defeat violence and lies, the Semite,” “a new Russian Ayatollah”) for twin pillars of 20th-century totalitarian- the first and last time in a masterful 1983 Hero of a ism. And he was right. The Gulag Archi- essay called “Our Pluralists.” He was pelago, his monumental three-volume above his critics’ pettiness and, in any “experiment in literary investigation,” as case, preoccupied with his two great moral Dark he suggestively subtitled that remarkable and literary “missions.” work, did more than any other piece of writing or political act in the 20th century I. Century to delegitimize the entire Communist The first mission was to tell the truth enterprise. about Communism and all its works, as he Solzhenitsyn traced the origins of did in The Gulag Archipelago and so DANIEL J. MAHONEY totalitarian repression and the gulag many of his speeches and writings until concentration-camp system to Lenin him- the day he finally left this earth. The other ITH the death of Aleksandr self. He showed beyond doubt that Lenin- mission was to recover the full truth about Solzhenitsyn the world ist Communism was beyond redemption Russia’s past, a past that had been distort- has lost one of the great and that the distinction between ed beyond all recognition by the Soviet W souls of this or any age. a “good” Lenin and a “bad” Stalin propaganda machine. This His story was beyond improbable: A for- was untenable on both moral and Solzhenitsyn attempted to mer prisoner or “zek” in the vast system historical grounds. In a voice that do particularly in his great of Soviet prisons and labor camps who was at once sardonic and grace- multi-volume chef d’oeuvre had also miraculously survived a bout ful, the former zek mocked The Red Wheel, consisting of with abdominal cancer, an “underground the “Progressive Doctrine” four “knots”—August 1914, writer” who never expected a single word (Marxism-Leninism) and November 1916, March 1917, of his to be published in his own lifetime, showed that it did not contain and April 1917—in ten vol- Solzhenitsyn was catapulted to world a single truth about the nature umes. That work, coming in at fame with the November 1962 publica- of man, society, or the hu- no fewer than 6,000 pages in tion of his novella One Day in the Life of man soul. Russian, combined fiction, dra- Ivan Denisovich. Nikita Khrushchev, the The publication of The matized history, and a full array most “humane” of Soviet leaders, mis- Gulag Archipelago in Paris of modernistic literary devices took Solzhenitsyn for a Soviet loyalist on December 28, 1973, led to (including innovative “screen whose movingly understated account of a Solzhenitsyn’s forced exile sequences” and newspaper single day in the life of a simple peasant from the Soviet Union, an ex- and newsreel reports). Its unjustly incarcerated in a Soviet labor ile he neither sought nor wel- thesis was that there was camp would be useful to his own efforts comed. In the West he faced a nothing inevitable about the at “de-Stalinization.” Khrushchev, who new set of challenges, including Bolshevik Revolution, that never completely lost touch with his own the incomprehension of Western human action, agency, and peasant roots, was undoubtedly also elites who mistook this brave if statesmanship could have genuinely moved by this powerful testa- sometimes prickly anti-totalitarian put Russia on the path to ment to the human spirit. The soon-to-be- writer and moral witness as an rational and humane liberty. deposed Soviet leader may have been the advocate for new forms of authori- But absent such efforts, the revolution first to misunderstand and underestimate tarianism. His return to Russia brought a took on the character of a profound and Solzhenitsyn. different set of challenges and burdens as unstoppable movement, a “gigantic cos- Solzhenitsyn was a writer in the grand Solzhenitsyn faced the initial apathy of a mic wheel” in which “everybody, includ- 19th-century Russian literary tradition public that did not want to come to terms ing those who turn it, becomes a helpless who was supremely confident in the with the crimes of the Communist past atom.” power of literature, rooted in truth and and the rise of a new “oligarchy” (as he Solzhenitsyn’s beau ideal of a states- the best ethical traditions of Russia and was the first to call it in his speech to man was Pyotr Stolypin, the remarkably the Duma in October 1994) disguising capable prime minister of Russia between Mr. Mahoney is professor of political itself as a democracy. In the West (and 1906 and 1911. Before he was assassinat- science at Assumption College. He is the in Russia, too, at least among the Left- ed in the Kiev opera house in the fall of author of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: liberal Muscovite intellectuals) Solzhe- 1911, Stolypin worked assiduously to The Ascent from Ideology and editor nitsyn continued to be lied about as no create a regime of citizen-proprietors in (with Edward E. Ericson Jr.) of The great writer or public figure has been lied Russia, one that would hew to a “middle Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential about in modern times. He responded to line” between reaction and nihilistic revo- Writings, 1947–2005. these terrible distortions (“theocrat,” “anti- lution. But as Solzhenitsyn wrote mem- N ATIONAL R EVIEW/SEPTEMBER 1, 2008 47 books9-1.qxp 8/12/2008 5:39 PM Page 48 books, arts & manners and copper mines of the Russian North- tribute to all those who resisted Bolshevik east. A momentary chill comes over tyranny. These lovers of liberty redeemed Nerzhin/Solzhenitsyn as he is confronted the honor of the Russian people by de- orably in November 1916 (with Stolypin’s by the “icy wind” of this “incomprehensi- fending the right of the human soul to “greatness” clearly in mind), “nothing is ble world.” “But thanks to a sort of inter- breathe freely. more difficult than drawing a middle line nal flexibility” his convictions are never All of this reveals the multiple ways in for social development. The loud mouth, definitively shaken by these revelations. which Solzhenitsyn embodied, in thought the big fist, the bomb, the prison bars, He is still able to shunt to the side dis- as well as deed, the two great moral well- are of no help to you, as they are comfiting truths that reveal the Marxist springs of European civilization: humility to those at the two extremes. Fol- appeal to “historical neces- and magnanimity, humble deference to an lowing the middle path demands sity” to be the monstrous “order of things” and the spirited defense the utmost self-control, the most chimera that it is. of human liberty and dignity. Sol- inflexible courage, the most pa- Solzhenitsyn’s arrest and zhenitsyn told the German novelist Daniel tient calculation, the most pre- incarceration changed every- Kehlmann in an interview that was pub- cise knowledge.” Contrary thing. Lying on “rotting prison lished in Le Figaro in December 2006 that to legend, Solzhenitsyn saw straw,” he felt “the first stir- while he had deep sympathy and ad- himself as a “true liberal” rings of good” within his soul. miration for simple, decent souls such who saw through the “false In the famous words of The as Matryona of his 1959 short story liberals” who persisted in Gulag Archipelago, it was “gra- “Matryona’s House” and the peasant hero seeing no enemies to the dually disclosed” to him “that Ivan Denisovich, his greatest admiration left. In literature and pol- the line separating good and was reserved for those noble souls who itics, he defended what he evil passes not through states, stood up to “radical evil.” Solzhenitsyn’s called in a January 19, 1993, nor between classes, nor soul was sufficiently capacious to do jus- address to the National Arts between political parties tice both to “the ascent of the soul”— Club in New York a “healthy either—but right though which finally transcends the political conservatism” that was “equal- every human heart—and sphere—and the pressing requirements of ly sensitive to the old and the through all human hearts.” resisting political evil. new, to venerable and worthy But Solzhenitsyn’s was not Solzhenitsyn’s poems from prison, traditions, and to the freedom to a simple or unmediated camp, and exile that were published in explore without which no future return to the faith of his Russian in 1999 (three of them, expertly can ever be born.” childhood. His recovery translated by his son Ignat Solzhenitsyn, of belief was above all made can be found in 2006’s The Solzhenitsyn II. possible by rational reflection on his Reader) and the original, uncut, 96- Serious readers of The Gulag Archi- experience of human nature in extremis.
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