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Home , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, November 1916 (novel), The Gulag Archipelago

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Political Science Department Faculty Works Political Science Department

2008

Hero of a Dark Century

Daniel J. Mahoney Assumption College, [email protected]

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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

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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 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 and all its works, as he Solzhenitsyn traced the origins of did in 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 ’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 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”—, ” who never expected a single word (-Leninism) and , 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 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. , 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 sequences” and newspaper single day in the life of a simple peasant from the , 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 , 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 : 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-

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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 ” 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 , 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. chapter edition of The First Circle (fin- pelago will already be familiar with the The story is told with luminous clarity ished in 1962 and to be published in a broad outlines of Solzhenitsyn’s remark- in the fourth of the seven parts of The complete English translation, at long last, able odyssey from Marxism to what Gulag Archipelago, “The Soul and by HarperCollins in 2009) are indispens- might fittingly be called “philosophical Barbed Wire,” from which the previous able for understanding how the Russian ” (Solzhenitsyn was an ad- quotation is taken. writer arrived at his mature intellectual herent of Orthodox Christianity but his In that section of Gulag Solzhenitsyn and spiritual convictions. The rejection of religious affirmations were more philo- highlights the spiritual “ascent” that is Marxism came early, and the return to sophical and less narrowly sectarian than made possible by rejecting the pernicious, Christianity rather later, in the process of many of his admirers and critics appreci- soul-destroying idea of “survival at any self-discovery and spiritual ascent. The ate). Paradoxically, it was only as a result price.” Only fidelity to conscience and to autobiographical Gleb Nerzhin of The of his time in prison and the camps that the wellsprings of goodness within the First Circle is best described as a skeptic the scales completely fell from Sol- soul allows one to affirm the true good- (in the Socratic and not the modern, rel- zhenitsyn’s eyes concerning the crimes ness of life and the essentially moral char- ativistic sense) and an adherent of the of Communism. Before his arrest in acter of human existence. These spiritual moral law. In a heated exchange with the February 1945 he had been a “true believ- and philosophical insights never led to Marxist Rubin in chapter 47 of The er” in Marxism-Leninism. From time to “quietism” on Solzhenitsyn’s part. He First Circle, Nerzhin rejects the idea that time he felt doubts stirring in his soul, but believed that evil must be resisted, espe- phrases like “inviolability of the person” he always found a way to retain his under- cially an inhuman totalitarianism that and “moral self-limitation” are merely lying confidence in the justice and neces- mutilates the soul and demands active “class-conditioned ideas.” In a liberating sity of the revolutionary project. participation in the “lie.” Solzhenitsyn affirmation, he proclaims that “justice is In an unfinished semi-autobiographical himself participated in major camp the cornerstone, the foundation of the , Love the Revolution, dating from revolts in the early 1950s (those at Kengir universe. . . . are born with a sense of the late 1940s, Solzhenitsyn’s alter ego and are powerfully recounted justice in our souls; we can’t and don’t Gleb Nerzhin hears an account of the in the third volume of The Gulag Arch- want to live without it!” Nerzhin has no horrific conditions in slave-labor camps ipelago). In that same volume he paid time for “blasted fanatics” who sacrifice

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living, breathing human beings to inhu- Solzhenitsyn hated Communism and vince my fellow citizens by citing the man abstractions. When Rubin shouts Western democracy equally despite the examples of highly effective local self- back that Nerzhin was never a Marxist, fact that he had repeatedly praised the government systems in and Nerzhin ruefully responds, “Alas, I was.” civic experience of the West. This is to .” This theme has been That sad acknowledgment, laden with confuse his critique of the deeply trou- developed at great length in all his politi- self-knowledge, is crucial for under- bling subjectivist and relativistic trends cal writings over the last 20 years. But the standing Solzhenitsyn’s own remarkable in its cultural, moral, and intellectual life legend of Solzhenitsyn’s opposition to metanoia. with a total critique of the West. As democracy—and penchant for authori- Justice, conscience, and self-limitation Solzhenitsyn put it in a fascinating July tarianism—is endlessly recycled in even are the great pillars of Solzhenitsyn’s 2007 interview with , “I otherwise friendly accounts of his life and moral vision from the late 1940s onward. have always insisted on the need for local legacy. In the beautiful camp poem “Prisoner’s self-government for Russia, but I never Solzhenitsyn repeatedly affirmed three Right,” written at Ekibastuz in 1951, opposed this model to Western democra- broad moral and political desiderata after Solzhenitsyn is content to invoke the cy. On the contrary I have tried to con- returning to Russia in May 1994: the fatalistic view that “all will go as ’t will importance of patiently building democ- go.” The prisoner can find solace in an ratic self-government from the bottom up, “illumined interior suffering core” and NIGHT WIND the need for repentance for the crimes and fidelity to “all those fallen, extinguished, lies of the Communist period, and the without guilt or trace.” His only “right” What the heart believes is never lost: need to put the “preservation of the is to be a “rancorless” son “of our luck- though sometimes people” (wracked by seven decades of less and sad Russian land.” Shortly to give it up Communist totalitarianism and a decade thereafter, in February 1952, Sol- seems the relief of rapacious oligarchic corruption and zhenitsyn made the decisive spiritual for which we would be manipulation) above all ideological con- most grateful. turn. In his great poem “Acathistus,” he siderations. Solzhenitsyn did, it is true, proclaimed his renewed faith in “purpose- welcome a certain “social” restoration And as time passes by, from-High’s steady fire / Not made plain one belief, under the Putin regime. He believed that to me till afterward.” or another, the very existence of Russia was threat- Having succumbed to false “bookish and still another, ened, not by a market economy but by a wisdom” (he clearly has in mind and the pain of the loss criminal kleptocracy that promoted spuri- Marxism), Solzhenitsyn now looks back intensifies, ous “reforms” in the top-down spirit of with “gratitude, trembling / On the mean- then diminishes; Bolshevism. After his return to Russia, the ingless life I have led.” He proclaims his the sense that author of The Gulag Archipelago contin- faith in the Living God, and draws sus- there is something more ued to speak out for the “humiliated and tenance once again from the “water of arrives from the stillness injured.” He was pained that so many in being.” But it should never be forgotten that centers the suffering, the West mistakenly saw the Yeltsin years that Solzhenitsyn’s Christian affirmation as it recasts identity. as a model of true “democratic” and “cap- builds upon and deepens but never repu- italist” reform. But as he told German diates the previous moral and philosoph- And somewhere television in 2005, the task of building ical turns at the heart of his rejection the seeds self-government in Russia still lies in of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Solzhen- from the dead flowers the future. Solzhenitsyn never confused itsyn’s vision is first and foremost a moral have been cradled Putin’s Russia with a liberal or democrat- on the wind, vision available to thinking and acting ic regime. And he argued that it was as we can feel— man on the basis of reason and experi- unhealthy for Russia to have no real oppo- without knowing. ence. In Solzhenitsyn’s view, Christianity sition to speak of, except for the shame- gives the most compelling and self- And that awareness lessly unrepentant Communists. conscious account of the drama of good is followed through, To his last breath the greatest Russian and evil in the human soul that the depre- even across writer of the 20th century remained a dations of totalitarianism brought to the the open car critic of the false patriots who “preferred forefront. that passes by— a small-minded alliance with our Com- munist destroyers,” as he strikingly put it III. And its music in 1998’s Russia in Collapse. In the same The tributes and reflections that have that extends work he excoriated radical nationalists been published on Solzhenitsyn in the far beyond, who elevated “one’s nationality above our Western press since his death have gener- in the way of aspirations higher spiritual plank, above our humble ally been respectful, and many have been of which no one stance before Heaven.” Contrary to leg- evenhanded. But quite a few obituaries may yet be aware. end, he also despised those on the lunatic and retrospectives have repeated hoary fringe who blamed Russia’s troubles on distortions that just won’t go away. —WILLIAM W. RUNYEON “Jews” and “Freemasons.” He believed It has been repeatedly asserted that it was “quite wrong to say that the Jews

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books, arts & manners greatly misunderstood, and seemed to be at greater odds than ever before: “What I did Staying not know then and could not foresee was ‘organized’ the revolutions of 1905 and that even after the Soviet Union collapsed, 1917.” In his best-selling two-volume this tension would remain. I could not historical work on Russia’s “Jewish ques- Power imagine that these two forces, identity and tion,” Two Hundred Years Together freedom, which were allies in the struggle (2001–02), Solzhenitsyn pleaded for to resist the world of fear that the Soviets mutual understanding between ethnic had built, would become the bitterest of and Jews. Both must take enemies in the free world.” responsibility for their “renegades” who In this sequel to The Case for Dem- broke with the faith of their fathers and ocracy (2004), Sharansky revisits his promoted violent, nihilistic revolution imprisonment in the Soviet Union and and totalitarian tyranny. recounts his subsequent political career in Israel, attempting to explain why his own IV. maverick stances so often have angered his How can we who live in a post- former supporters in the liberal West, who totalitarian age begin to honor Solzhen- have turned on him as much as they once itsyn’s legacy? A good starting point did on the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. would be to move beyond reducing Sol- He argues that his opposition to Yasser zhenitsyn to the level of an opiner on cur- Arafat’s primordial Palestinian Authority rent events, the habitual approach of Defending Identity: Its Indispensable is perfectly consistent with his fight against almost all journalistic commentaries on Role in Protecting Democracy, the shapeless, valueless uniformity of his work. Now that his life and work are by the Soviet Union: Democracy can be complete we are called to confront him with Shira Wolosky Weiss destroyed when subjected to tribalism of openly, honestly, critically, as a writer, (PublicAffairs, 304 pp., $26.95) the Middle Eastern sort, just as it cannot historian, and moral and political philoso- survive unless human beings transcend pher (in the highest, non-academic sense VICTOR DAVIS HANSON their own place and time and believe in of that term). Solzhenitsyn is a writer of freedom as a universal virtue. Sharansky considerable talent, skill, and grace, a HAT kept Natan Sharansky defines identity as “a sense of life beyond historian who has helped recover the alive in the Soviet gulag, the physical and material, beyond mere memory of Russia and the sources of the he tells us in his moving, personal existence. It is the sense of a totalitarian temptation, as well as the great W against-the-grain new common world that stretches before and analyst—and scourge—of the ideological meditation on democracy, were two con- beyond the self, of belonging to something manipulation of the bodies and souls of stants. One was his Jewishness: his notion greater than the self, that gives strength not human beings. Solzhenitsyn the philoso- of spiritual transcendence that he shared only to community but to the individual as pher teaches us never to confuse techno- with other Jewish dissidents, his family, well.” logical progress—however necessary and and his ancestors. Such distinctions made For all the political punditry about what welcome—with the definitive transforma- Sharansky a unique, rooted, and confident went wrong over the last decade in the tion of the moral constitution of human individual—a man with responsibilities to Middle East, Sharansky sees this antithesis beings. There can never be an “end to his- family and community beyond himself, a of identity and democracy as fundamental tory,” only the slow and patient moral man capable of withstanding torture. But to the conflict and a key to fathoming the growth of the human soul. More provoca- the other touchstone was his belief that dimensions of the struggle. The Israelis are tively, the zek turned writer and historian there is a shared human desire for liberty: increasingly giving up on their distinct has deepened our self-understanding by his intuition that in every man rests an Western-Israeli-Jewish identity that makes showing that the ultimate roots of totali- innate need to express himself freely, pro- them endure and sacrifice for their princi- tarian repression lie in “anthropocentric- tected by democratic institutions and con- ples, while the Palestinians cannot evolve ity,” the mad illusion that human beings stitutional government. beyond loyalty to the tribe, and thus peren- can take the place of God. In a thousand With the fall of the Soviet Union, nially fail to channel their ethnic, religious, ways his writings show that the effort to Sharansky became a member of the Israeli and national pride into a shared commit- deify man leads to nothing less than self- Knesset and sometimes a government min- ment to democratic government: enslavement. Far from being yesterday’s ister—but he also became increasingly news, Solzhenitsyn remains a teacher and depressed at the course of contemporary The so-called Oslo peace process took place between two societies moving in moral witness for today and tomorrow. Western society. Identity and democratic directly opposite directions in terms of His writings will continue to speak to the freedom, far from being complementary in identity. Israeli society was being pushed hearts, souls, and minds of all those who serving universal human aspirations, were in the direction of cosmopolitanism. Pal- cherish human liberty and dignity, as we estinians, under Arafat’s corrupt dictator- work to free ourselves from contem- Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow at the ship, were going through a crash course porary if milder versions of the “lie.” . in hatred of Jews, Israel, and Zionism and

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