Oninions & Views Let Us Listen to the Silence of the Dead Aleksander I. Solzhenitsyn: The Order told him. in a past we wish away, that Stalin is a Gulag Archipelago, Volume Ill, Parts In some sense Gulag is the child of part of our world, of us in a way Hitler V-VII; Harper & Row; New York. Ivan Denisovich. The publication of that (whom Solzhenitsyn calls Stalin's dis book put Solzhenitsyn in correspondence ciple) is not. Hitler destroyed in war is in by Leo Raditsa with individuals from all over Russia, the past- we are conscious of him; he with former zeks (prisoners), with jailors, haunts us. But the crimes of Stalin's time warders, convoy guards and zeks still in are still so much a part of us that we do We have to learn we do not know the camps who pleaded and demanded not know them. They are in our minds how to read. This is a good book to start that he speak out for them too. Because even if we do not know them-especially with. It is hard to read. It has to be read he had started to put the continued exis if we do not know them. at its own pace like Nadezhda tence of the camps out of his mind, these Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope or not pleas surprised and embarrassed him: In this final volume, Solzhenitsyn at all. You cannot lose yourself in it and "Just as they (the former prisoners) used speaks both like a zek and like himself so forget. You keep asking yourself ques to think that everyone was inside, they his voice is more living and quickening tions when you read it-it asks you ques now think that no one is inside." For the than in the other volumes. In the other tions: What kind of person are you? Are camps during the time he was outside volumes he tends to speak either as a zek you a person at all? It is a long book and writing this book, Solzhenitsyn uses these or a.s a person on the outside but never finishes not because the author has said letters from zeks and accounts from so deeply for himself as he does in the all there is to say, but because he has survivors of the camps in the sixties like third volume (and the last chapters of said enough. It breaks off but what it Anatoly Marchenko's My Testimony the second). But even in the strength of writes of still continues. According to (London, 1969 ). He also gives an impor Solzhenitsyn's voice the work maintains Sakharov there are at present a million tant account of the strike in Novocher its choral character. Towards the end and a half prisoners in the Soviet camps kassk where Soviet soldiers murdered the dialogue between Solzhenitsyn and (reported by Solzhenitsyn on French something like seventy or eighty people himself as a zek and the reader deepens television on March 9, 1976). In fact on June 2, 1962. but there are still other voices. There is the problem for Solzhenitsyn in the third And for us, too, keeping the Soviet no problem in this work with the narrator volume of The Gulag Archipelago is to camps in our minds is a problem. The (that is, with his narcissism); he is there, end the book without inspiring the illu world it describes has only just begun to you can hear his voice- but he does not sion that because the book ends and he is live in our consciousness and even that get in the way of other voices which outside, the camps have disappeared into has taken a long time. Before The Gulag speak for themselves. (Sinyavsky in A the past. Archipelago, there were something like Voice from the Chorus [New York, Like the other volumes of Gulag, this thirty books on the Soviet concentration 1976 ] uses the same form, even more volume (finished in 1968) was written camps (one was published in English in sparingly; he has no narrative, only in the period after the publication of One 1934) but they did not succeed in putting voices.) Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the knowledge of the camps in our breasts It is just these different voices, speaking 1962 when government officials tried where we cannot deny it. And how one freely for themselves which allow you to to tell Solzhenitsyn his experiences were wishes to deny this book, desires to hear the absence of the voices of the out of date. "You are confused, or else destroy it when one reads it, wishes it millions of dead in the camps who did your own experiences have given you a had never been thought or written or not speak, because they could not or who peculiar way of looking at things," the published! spoke and were not heard. Solzhenitsyn's Minister for the Protection of Public Why has Solzhenitsyn succeeded in ability to make you hear the silence of making us know in a way we cannot the dead, of the unmourned, unburied Dr. Raditsa studied at Harvard and deny? I do not know. Perhaps, because dead, explains why this book excites fright Columbi4 and published in various schol he wrote the book in Russia and for but not guilt, why it strengthens rather arly publications. Currently, he is Russians, because he did not write in than weakens, why it spurs you to take National Fellow and National Endow exile. He never intended it to be published more responsibility for your life rather ment for the Humanities Fellow at the while he lived. But the author lives and than to blame others for it. Surviving Hoover Institution in Stanford, Californ the book is published-not in the Soviet zeks-and by that he means zeks who ia. His recent book on Wilhelm Reich Union, though it must circulate there survived without doing others in-do was reviewed in the Chronicles of too (of this I have no definite informa not pity themselves. This book teaches Culture. tion ). It teaches that we are still entangled you something of that kind of self-respect.
6 Chronicles of Culture and state laws that outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex, reason, we may be losing a crucial tool which, since man·s not to mention an entire library of interpretative regulations dawn, has warranted his very existence. daily enforced in every nook and cranny of the American The Chicago Tribune, a chameleon of a newspaper, flannel actuality. grey on its editorial pages and liberal-pinkish in its cultural Is this a matter of intellectual and ethical fairness? Far from sections, not long ago ran another of its advertisements for it. And this unfairness is at the heart of the liberal concept of pro-communist books in the form of a review of The Great American pluralism. America is now more than ever a Fear, examined by Mr. Levine in this journal. As in its reports pluralistic society. But a dangerous myth has been deceptively on Mitford and Gornick, the Chicago Tribune reviewer stated sustained that the American ls.ulture is still open to the diversity that the clear-cut anti-communism of the '40s and '50s was of philosophical and ideologic I propositions, and that they all sinful, calamitous, repulsive, and, basically, an assault on have an equal chance of being rgued for and listened to. In innocent people and socially valuable organizations. It thus point of fact, the more society, h oring its initial promise of represented an ugly treason of American humanism and equal human rights and opportu ·ties, opens up to various pluralism1 1he review was entitled: "A Painful Record that ethnic groups, their traditions and fo ~oric paraphernalia, the Illuminates a Dark Age." Why an epoch that brought America more pluralism is expelled from the cu ure. American culture, socia;/stability, economic prosperity, flourishing of arts and once the haven of free consciences an eligious variety, has era (s, and all-out progress in social mores, all of which became become monopolized by one ideological f mation-"enlight t e entire planet's envy, can be called a "dark age" remains a ened·' and "progressive" liberalism. ystery. Why the galactic American civilization should be characterized solely by its vigorous rejection of communism is * * * another puzzle. The Chicago Tribunes review says that "the Liberalism's perennial merit is that it earl nd forceful! period was characterized by, abo"e all, a suspension of due endorsed human rights and privileges, and was ady t~p· k process of law," but does not mention the Rosenberg trial, any fight in their defense. However, at some point, · con£ sed considered even by America's foes a model of judiciary propriety the necessities of moral order grounded in reason, opted unattainable even by the oldest European democracies. "Was for social order structured on speculative theories. there a viable Communist Party in America during the '30s Professor Irving Howe, a distinguished liberal jut l:>y no and '40s? Did it present a legitimate threat to U.S. security?" means a libcultist, who is not shy to call himtfAa s ial asks the Chicago Tribune reviewer. democrat, wrote not long ago that the foundation of Ameri n liberalism is reason. To my mind, the foundati~ of America Wen, I am from Eastern Europe. Whenever I read liberalism, at least over the last 30 years of itlclizzying career, about the tribulations of Mr. Hiss and his adversaries, who is the blatant abuse of reason. It fought foJ"a welfare state as still do not believe what he has been repeating for 30 years, I the economic solution to the ills of a capitalistic economy. It find them peculiarly irrelevant. If he lied, or passed state propagated Big Government as the defe:6der of freedoms and ~ecrets, which it seems he did, it is not very nice, and he 1 civil rights-a rather unreasonable pposition. In foreign should have been punished for it. But what matters to me is policy, since World War II, liberalis has informed America the,Jact that, according to quite reliable Polish intelligence that it has no right, and even less raJ title, to tell the rest of sourc~inLondon (during six years of war, it saved the allied the world how it should behave; ntil a few years ago, every comma d a lot of trouble), Mr. Hiss had telephone extension staunch liberal insistingly dema Sed an attitude of reverence No. 3 wi in the American delegation at Yalta. No. 1 was toward Russia-toward the sa e Russia that emerged from Roosevelt, No. 2 was Harry Hopkins. Mr. Hiss instructed the last war as the only im?$'rialistic power, enslaving free them both in how to negotiate with Stalin. nations and enlarging its te7'itory at others' expense. At the All the Soviet objectives for the post-war global order were same time, the West bega!!? disassemble colonialism under attained at Yalta. Entire populations were slaughtered in America's pressure. Every objection to unconditional love for Gulags. Old nations with flourishing cultures went into slavery. Russia has been branded by American liberalism as Cold War This is why Mr. Alger Hiss, in keeping with my sense of tactics and American leaders of all stripes were burdened with reason and conscience, deserves a life term, if not more. the blame. Even now this is taking place as Russia begins to colonize Africa. If this is proof of the liberal obedience to -Leopold Ty rmand
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5 Chronicles of Culture I feel like an intruder when I read just lived through the thirties-and we camps. No longer kept apart from each ' this book. This has to do with its might as well not have been alive in that other by criminals who robbed them they "secrecy," with the fact that Solzhenitsyn decade at all." "And young men are so began to experience something like com wrote it without intending to publish it. eager to believe that all is well." munity. They began to realize that they It is also because in some important sense This doubt that you can know anything were not merely a collection of individ it is written not for the whole world, but before it hits you runs through the whole uals and became in some sense a whole. for Russians and th~ other nationalities work, but in the last volume it grows They realized that there were things more subjected to the Soviet regime. When overwhelming and turns into a question, important than survival if the price was he wrote this work, Solzhenitsyn did not a terrible question: did the zeks not resist the life of another. This awareness in think of audiences living in freedom enough, were they in some sense com spired defiance-not violence. beyond Soviet frontiers. In this his work plicit with their tormentors? Reviews of There was a strike in which prisoners contrasts with Nadezhda Mandelstam's Ivan Denisovich in the Soviet press which refused to go to work and refused to take Hope Against Hope and perhaps also in reckless arrogance argued Denisovich's food from the camp administration with Andre Amalrik's Involuntary docility spurred Solzhenitsyn to ask this (something he later came to consider a mistake). Even prisoners who were near Voyage to Siberia. Mandelstam somehow question of himself and his reader. death, "goners;' refused food. The people writes for the whole world. As a result Were the zeks submissive? Yes, gener when you read her you do not doubt that ally. Solzhenitsyn speaks in baffled admir in charge were baffled. her story is part of Western history, not ation and with something like envy of . For the first time they treated the prisoners with some regard and asked merely of Soviet history-and the moral those rare individuals in the camps who them politely to return to work. The sense is deeper. It is deeper because she were naturally independent, who prisoners continued to strike. They did knows what goes on within the Soviet breathed an inner confidence and never Union is a part of Western history. It suffered any abuse. But why was there not ask to be released because they were innocent-but they asked for better treat might be, in fact, merely "an internal almost no protest or defiance? Because ment, for no bars on the windows, for a affair" as the Soviet regime asserts if in contrast to the late nineteenth and review of cases. In this defiance even there were agreed upon frontiers in early twentieth century under the Tsars, though they were starving even more Europe and a peace treaty. But the point in Soviet Russia there is no longer any public opinion. "The prolonged absence than usual there was energy and even a about history in the twentieth century is kind of joy. They were no longer ashamed I that it neither respects frontier, nor the of any free exchange of information I within a country opens up a gulf of because they knew they would no longer distinction between foreign and domestic undergo any humiliation to survive. They affairs: if it would, the KGB would do incomprehension between whole groups I also fashioned a kind of government. abroad exactly what it does at home. of the population, between millions and millions. We simply cease to be a single (More than the other two this volume But there is another, perhaps deeper people, for we speak, indeed, different meditates on what distinguishes society reason, for the sense of intrusion I languages." from a crowd. More than once it experienced in reading Gulag. Solzhenit reminded me of Hobbes, except that syn really doubts whether anybody who S olzhenitsyn rightly considers his Solzhenitsyn is less afraid chan has not been in the camps can under work and action and the work and action Hobbes-and he does not write of human stand. In part he doubts anybody can of the other "dissidents" the rebirth of beings but of Russians and not of society understand, because he himself did not public opinion in Russia. And new groups but of prison camps in a country which understand until he was arrested at the and new individuals keep springing up is in the state of nature but denies front in Prussia in February 1945 and and works keep appearing in self it-something Hobbes did not dream of sent to the camps. Only then did he publication-even though in the free in his philosophy.) Their leaders made it discover the other Russia. As a youth in West some observers somehow expect clear to the stool pigeons that they would the late thirties, he had seen through the things to stop. kill them if they continued to inform on trials of 1937 and 1938 (he was inter In the fifties, before the death of Stalin, them. Some innocent men were killed ested in politics). But he had not under however, something happened in the (and Solzhenitsyn does not take any of stood their relation to everything else camps. Those who were in the camps the killing lightly) but their readiness to going on before his eyes, to the students for no special reason (he calls them politi rid themselves of the prisoners who and teachers disappearing from the uni cals but in the second volume he has betrayed them made it possible for them versity. He saw them go but he did not made it clear that they were not political to trust each other, to experience some wonder where they went; he had contin prisoners in any "legal" sense but simply thing like community for the first time. ued dancing and having loving affairs, prisoners who had not committed But they did not know what to ask for as if nothing had happened. He says of crimes) were separated from the thieves (beyond their few demands.) That is, they himself and his wife in 1941: "We had and murderers and put into special did not ask for freedom. When the people
i Chronicles of Culture in charge appeared to yield to their and to be judge in his own case. As a What is innocence-that is the demands, they were crushed with grat result these individuals face only the most subject of this volume. This word inno unsparing judges, themselves. For every itude. They grew gullible. When commis cence is very precious to Solzhenitsyn. body is severest on himself, most of all sions came from the outside to ask them He uses it rarely as if he would not use it where they would like to go upon their those who imagine they are not. up. He leaves it to the reader to pro release, they were astonished but they No regime which commits the murder nounce. And we pronounce it hesitat trusted. They believed things had actually reported in this book can survive unless ingly. How hard it is to say it! The changed. When they grew off their guard, it can bring the governments of the rest prisoners themselves, when they defied the "authorities" turned on them and of the world, especially the free world, the camp "authorities;' did not dare say to assert things that they know are not took their leaders away to punishment it: "In the foul fog of terror that hung true: "Ours is the only country in the cells or to death and brought back the thickly over the land, the cases brought world to pamper perjurers." informers and the thieves and the mur against most of us, and the sentences But our governments do not appear to derers. (Diplomats should study these passed seemed to our judges fully just have realized that something has started negotiations.) Although the defiance ified-and they had almost made us be in the Soviet Union which cannot be failed, it changed the camp lieve it ourselves." permanently: stopped even if the West caves in and In the Tsarist camps there were one thereby prolongs the force of the Soviet or two men who were innocent-in the regime. They think and talk as if the "On the surface, we were prisoners Soviet camps there were millions. Solzhe Soviet regime will last forever. Like most living in a camp just as before, but in nitsyn's story is not of the guilty who of those who think otherwise, Solzhenit repented in prison but of some of the reality we had become free-free be syn knows the changes in Russia are innocent who came to experience their cause for the very first time in our lives, going to have to come slowly from the we had started saying openly and aloud innocence in the camps and to stand alone Russians themselves. That is why he all that we thought! No one who has in their own defense and the defense of criticizes the attack on Stalin and the not experienced this transition can their peers, the other innocents: "And it cult of personality as evasive: it feeds the imagine what it is like!" was only when I lay there on rotting illusion that only "Whiskers" is responsi prison straw that I sensed within myself ble for the murder: the first stirrings of Good." This meant The defiance drew the distinction be also experiencing the evil, the destructive "But let us admit: if under Stalin this whole tween a community and a mob which ness within them. scheme of things did not come into being exists in terror of itself. It also made it In free countries, or in Tsarist Russia, on its own-and if, instead, he himself clear that such a community could not worked it out all for us point by point-he the establishment of innocence depended really was a genius!'' live without courage and that the readi on the perception of others, on public ness to risk one's life did not guarantee opinion, on judges and juries, not on the Just this assumption of their own survival-but that without courage one accused's experience of his innocence responsibilities by Russians makes the could not survive to live a life worth and his guilt. But in the Soviet Union, responsibilities of the West more clear, living. It also taught that a courageous where there is no public opinion only because not limitless: to take actions in death has its own honor. All this seems organized opinion, and where there is foreign policy that will strengthen the like classical patriotism rediscovered in no law (independent of political exped brave individuals in Russia who are fight a concentration camp, but it is not, for iency), every accused and condemned ing for respect for law and constitutional the courage to stand alone of one's own individual is driven to accuse himself liberties-and not to mince words. D choice contrasts with the soldier's courage. In the camps Solzhenitsyn saw to his surprise that officers and soldiers "As to this country's relations with the Communist states, we fear that Mr. who had withstood the terrors of battle Solzhenitsyn does the world no favor by calling up a holy war. The weapons are were often as servile as the other far too formidable, the stakes in human life far too high. But there is something prisoners: else as well. Much as we have been instructed and inspired by Mr. Solzhenitsyn, his willingness to set aside all other values in the crusade against Communism bespeaks an obsession that we are happy to forego in this nation's leaders. A "Oh, how difficult it is, how difficult it certain amount ofself-doubt is a valuable attribute for people who have charge of is, to become a human being! Even if nuclear weapons." you have survived the front and bombing -From an editorial on Solzhenitsyn's Commencement and been blown up by land mines, that's Address at Harvard University still only the very beginning of heroism. The New York Times, June 13, 1978 That is still not the whole thing."
8 Chronicles of Culture