Solzhenitsyn Reconsidered I

...Do your duty...

...It is on this "seemingly fantastic violation of the law of the conservation of mass and energy" that he has based all the activities on behalf of his old Zek comrades he so movingly describes in The Oak and the Calf In the course of describing them he tells more about hims e l f than has been revealed in his other writings, and more about the Soviet regime, its inner reality, than any other book I know of in the vast literature dealing with the October Revolution and its consequences...

...He neither expounds nor stresses it, but the The big break came for Solzhenitsyn $%'c" als,~ Vladimir Bukovsky's article, "Critical ,Ma-.'.es...

...Some years ago I had a glimpse of its members when I was standing in front of its headquarters-located in the house Tolstoy chose as the model for the Rostov residence in War and Peace--beside a huge statue of Tolstoy, and holding forth about him for a TV program...

...When, as a veteran free-lance practitioner, I think of the difficulty of producing commissioned copy to meet a deadline, I marvel at the books he produced in this manner, so brilliantly, so conscientiously, and so nobly disinterested in their purpose...

...Old media hands like myself get to know the signs--the casual innuendo, the throwaway line ("not the liberal we would like him to be"), the tone more in sorrow than in anger, the barking in unison as the consensus pack moves collcctively towards the kill...

...Delba Winthrop SOLZHENITSYN RECONSIDERED II...

...It was in the Harvard a d d r e s s that he deviated most drastically from the basic liberal orthodoxy that freedom consists in being allowed and provided with the means to do whatever anyone has a mind to, and that a free society is one in which this is possible and the means readily available, the supreme example of such a society being, of course, the United States...

...Delba Winthrop is a lecturer at Harvard University...

...What magnified his offense from the consensus point of view, making it quite intolerable, was that, on his own admission, Soizhenitsyn derived his view of freedom from the New Testament rather than from such impeccable sources as the American Declaration of Independence apd the judgments of the U.S...

...and steadily growing in output and influence...

...This Victor Louis is altogether an odd figure...

...Malcolm Muggeridge is completing the third volume of/sis autobiography, Chronicles of Wasted Time...

...Supreme Court, in effect repeating to his Harvard audience what he had already written in his " L e t t e r to the Soviet Leaders": "I myself see Christianity today as the only living spiritual force capable of undertaking the spiritual healing of Russia...

...One might shed some light tSolzhenitsyn has not publicly rued his choice, but he has recently acknowledged a misjudgment: He thought Americans desired and appreciated criticism...

...In moments of weakness and distress," he writes, "it is good to tread closely in God's footsteps...

...Ever since Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address the changed attitude of the media pundits in the West towards him has become manifest...

...In the second Gulag book, in the wonderful c h a p t e r called "The A s c e n t , " he even refers thankfully to his time in the labor camps as having brought him this illumination, and I truly believe that he would have found it more congenial to resume his old Zek existence rather than to watch, as he has had to do in his compulsory exile, the continuing surrender to "them" of whatever power, authority, and influence still pertains to what we go on calling Western civilization...

...Tile Commencement speech, we may assume, was altogether his choice.t He undoubtedly chose to examine the fundamental principles of liberalism at Harvard because Harvard is the symbol and bastion of liberalism's noblest aspirations...

...In fact, they savor criticism only from the Left...

...Take the case of the Gulag books, very dear to his heart, and not just a literary feat of the highest order, but, as well, an integral part of the history of our time, and for that reason alone forever memorable...

...When he completed the first draft of The Oak and the Calf in the spring of 1967 he entertained a hope that he might be released from the agonizing role he had chosen for himself of being the Zeks' champion...

...Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC...

...Tvardovsky was torn between joy in his own literary talent and genuine appreciation of literature and of Solzhenitsyn's genius, and his satisfaction at finding himself a member of the top Soviet elite, with all...

...He does not speak with haste or waste...

...How amazed and incredulous I should have been as a young journalist in Moscow in the early thirties, given to pottering about the anti-God museums which then proliferated in the USSR, if someone had told me that half a century later one of the very finest products of the regime would be writing in this strain...

...In his c a r e e r as an undercover writer Solzhenitsyn was greatly beholden to Samizdat, the clandestine publishing system established in the USSR...

...You are alive...

...The affection between the two men survived all hazards, and when, as a result of a stroke, Tvardovsky became helpless and incoherent, Solzhenitsyn sat patiently and lovingly at his bedside...

...9.50/$5.00...

...Some notion of the gap between what Samizdat publishes and the officially produced volumes displayed in the bookshops, may be deduced from the recent award of the Lenin Prize for Literature to Brezhnev, whose flat-footed sentences in his speeches and addresses can scarcely be considered prize-worthy...

...The recently published book, Solzhenitsyn at Harvard," is at once too much and too little...

...Nonetheless, the book was duly published and widely acclaimed, so that Solzhenitsyn became a celebrity at home and abroad...

...To the extent that they have failed to appreciate or to understand Solzhenitsyn's argument they lend credence to his thesis: Liberalism cannot sustain liberalism's noblest aspirations, and liberalism is consequently not enough...

...And, let it be remembered, he could perfectly well have settled, as, for instance, Maxim Gorky did, for being a distinguished Soviet author, free to travel abroad, well provided with foreign currency, and honored at home and abroad...

...in the August issue of The American 5,/,e'r THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 1', r e a d e r is conscious of it all the t i m e - - acquired in the Gulag Archipelago, where, being totally deprived of freedom in earthly terms, he came to understand what c o n s t i t u t e d true freedom, the glorious liberty of the children of God about which the Apostle Paul speaks so eloquently...

...In ordinary circumstances the procedure would have been to submit his work to some local or national publication or publishing setup...

...In all that fie has written and spoken and done he has been true to this duty...

...Nonetheless, the books were completed while he was still living in the USSR, and in due course a copy of the manuscript was sent abroad, so that whatever might happen to him, the peoples of the West would know what the Gulag Archipelago was like and what it signified to Russians and others forcibly absorbed into the Soviet sphere of influence...

...In the early thirties, as I well remember, on important occasions Gorky used to be brought on to the platform along with Stalin and the Politburo, looking for all the world like a performing seal--a role that would never have suited Solzhenitsyn even though Gorky's reward was a commodious villa in Italy and a visa to come and go there...

...I prayed...

...Likewise Tvardovsky, despite the essential nobility of his character...

...when none other than Nikita Khrushchev, while still the head man in the Kremlin, praised his book, One Day in the Life of 1van Denisovich, about life in the labor camps, and authorized its publication in the USSR...

...Then, in his autobiographical work, The Oak and the Calf," he deals with "~;cc l u l i a n a Gcran P i l o n ' ~ review in t h c Augu-i p~'.uc of The Amcrtcan Spectator...

...In Solzhenitsyn's case, however, we have some license to make the attempt, for he has informed us in his writings that his every action is deliberate...

...As the struggle to silence Solzhenitsyn went on, he fought back single-handedly, and managed to hold his own for a time, until his expulsion abroad--which he half dreaded and half wanted--settled matters...

...Thenceforth, thanks to him, apologists for the Soviet regime will have to take due account of the Gulag Archipelago rather than, as heretofore, seeking to deny its existence, or, like the ineffable Eleanor Roosevelt, dishing it up as part of an essentially humane penal system...

...He goes on: Where would I be, in a few days t i m e - - in jail or happily working at my novel...

...At his funeral he mourned his passing, both for Russia's sake, and on his own account...

...Even now, in r e t r o s p e c t , it is hard to make any sense of the vacillations of Soviet policy in dealing with Solzhenitsyn...

...the privileges that went therewith, including a dacha in a restricted area--an inner conflict that led him, like so many of his fellowcountrymen, to resort increasingly to vodka...

...I can't, however, see them doing this...

...Now it has spread through the whole country, and its productions are p r i n t e d , not handwritten or cyclo-styled as in the early days.t All Solzhenitsyn's forbidden works have been circulated by Samizdat, and have reached tens of thousands of readers despite the KGB's efforts to stop it...

...It consists of a t r a n s l a t i o n of Solzhenitsyn's June, 1978 Harvard Commencement address ("A World Split A p a r t " ) , a dozen early reactions and responses to the address, and several f u r t h e r reflections...

...To treat one speech as if it revealed the heart and mind of a man is always a questionable endeavor...

...Most of the contributors implicitly dismiss James Reston's contention that the speech is "the wanderings of a mind split a p a r t , " but they acknowledge that "A World Split Apart" is complex and in need of explication...

...All that would.be required of him would be to keep off a few sensitive themes, but this was just what he was in no circumstances prepared to do...

...After the fame he acquired from the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtcb, be soon found himself once again being trailed by the KGB, as well as excluded from Novy Mir and expelled from the W r i t e r ' s Union, an organization wholly controlled by the authorities...

...t h e Kremlin...

...That it remains so was eloquently reaffirmed by Harvard's President Derek Bok that same day...

...From the array we learn more about the foibles and follies of liberal intellectuals than we do about Solzhenitsyn...

...Many of the early pieces exhibit unreasoned outrage, and most of the later ones are displays of academic expertise...

...I could have enjoyed myself so much, breathing the fresh air, resting, stretching my cramped limbs, but my duty to the dead permitted no such selfindulgence They are dead...

...In Solzhenitsyn's case this was precluded because the subject of his writings has been precisely the terrorism and mental chicanery whereby a Marxist oligarchy has ruthlessly imposed its will and ideology on a subservient population...

...his real name, it seems, is Vitaly Levin, and besides being a legman for the KGB, he has acted as Moscow correspondent for the London Evening News--a combination of duties which supports the saying that, journalistically speaking, a dateline, like ripeness, is all...

...I n a sense, of course, all serious writers are in some degree dissidents...

...The contributors to Solzhenitsyn at Harvard, even the ones without Harvard pedigrees, are all respected representatives of that tradition...

...emphasis added...

...Now with the consensus pack after him, and with his Western readers, to sustain their interest, requiring variety, and the crazed expectations of an illusory kingdom of heaven on earth such as he cannot possibly provide, his immediate worldly prospects must be considered uncertain, Yet there is no sign of his own courage and determination faltering...

...he had to collect in the greatest secrecy the testimonies on which the books are based, at the same time scrupulously protecting his sources in the knowledge that the consequences for them would be ruinous if it came out that they had provided him with information...

...but whereas in the so-called free world their concern is to earn a living in a society in which porn is a mighty industry and literature a campus waste-product, in the USSR conformity with the party line is obligatory, and to deviate from it in word or even in thought can involve, not just penury and obscurity, but a one-way ticket to the Gulag Archipelago as well...

...In a particularly venomous attack on Solzhenitsyn in Harper's magazine, George Feller alleges that in his account of his transactions with Novy Mir and Tvardovsky, Solzhenitsyn has vilified both...

...They were no mere exercise in writing...

...In the circumstances in which he was ! 2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 placed on his release from the labor camps he had no choice but to hide away his writings as he completed them, in the expectation that they would one day be published and fulfil their purpose...

...I f o n l y , " he writes, "'I could go away from it all, go away many years to the back of beyond with nothing but fields and open skies and woods and horses in sight, and nothing to do but write mv novel at my own p a c e . " Now, in enforced exile, he has the additional anguish of observing how, in the West, where the means to be f r e e ' s t i l l exist, people have wearied of freedom, findi~ng it an intolerable burden, and are all unconsciously sleep-walking into the very servitude Solzhenitsyn has so valiantly and faithfully resisted and denounced...

...the pains and penalties of a writer in the USSR, describing his own experiences as a dissidcnt writer between his release from the labor camps and his expulsion abroad in 1974...

...Also--which was more important for him--he came into contact with Novy Mir, the leading literary magazine in the USSR, and its editor, Tvardovsky...

...So, on his r e l e a s e , he worked as a teacher of mathematics in the provinces, devoting all his spare time and energies to writing...

...How exactly this came about remains obscure, and anyway shortly afterwards Khrushchev reverted to the worst kind of Stalinist censorship...

...God alone knows...

...Malcolm Muggeridge SOLZHENITSYN RECONSIDERED I. S o l z h e n i t s y n vs...

...It is one man against the Kremlin, which might seem hopeless odds, but when that one man is Solzhenitsyn, against all the odds he must win, since, as he concludes his splendid Nobel Prize lecture: "One word o f truth outweighs the world...

...Solzhenitsyn has the honesty to admit that his self-imposed duty has proved arduous and often frustrating...

...What Solzhenitsyn does show--and I am sure justly--is that Novy Mir, despite its good record in Soviet terms, has no choice when it comes to the crunch but to obey its political masters...

...As a sometime political prisoner, or, in Soviet slang, a Zek, Soizhenitsyn was not allowed to come to Moscow...

...the American Establishment...

...See Solzhenitsyn's "The Courage to See" in the Fall 1980 issue of Foreign Affairs...

...In every moment away from his teaching, he tells us, he wrote and wrote, diligently~ day after day, and sometimes night after night...

...With one or two notable exceptions--latterly n o n e - - i t can be taken for granted that whatever serious literature is being produced by the so-gifted Russian people bears the Samizdat imprint...

...In his Gulag books Solzhenitsyn established once and for all the role and extent of forced labor camps as an instrument of terrorism in the USSR...

...While I was speaking members were coming and going, and may well have been voting on the infamous motion to expel Solzhenitsyn from the Union, which would account for the hangdog air they all seemed to have...

...Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, and Six Later Reflecttons, edited by Ronald Berman...

...Running through everything Solzhenitsvn has written about his struggle to stand t,p to "them," the present masters and manipulators of the Russian people, there is the a~sumption of his Christian faith...

...At one point it became known that a certain Victor Louis had taken a copy of Solzhenitsyn's Cancer F~ard to the West to dispose of" it on behalf of the KGB, having previously performed a similar service for the KGBwith amanuscript by Stalin's daughter Alliluyeva...

...When he cannot choose his audience, he can still choose what to say to it...

...The world must know all about it...

...Solzhenitsyn's account of this truly remarkable man, and of the relationship between them, with all its ups and downs, makes fascinating reading...

...If Western publishers wanted to retaliate for the fiasco of their efforts to hold a bookfair in Moscow, a good idea would be to mount a Samizdat exhibition in London or New York and ask Solzhenitsyn to open it...

...Being a Zek himself, Solzhenitsyn felt a duty to the others he had left behind in the Gulag Archipelago to speak up for them, telling his fellow countrymen and the world about their suffering and privations and the monstrous injustice of their treatment...

...14 THE AMERICANSPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980...

...Six years later when he prepared the text for publication he asked himself more urgently than ever when the din of battle would cease for him...

...Well, thanks largely to Solzhenitsyn, the world now does know all about it, but his battle with "them" goes on...