Yet another Solzhenitsyn Blog

The Englishman Solzhenitsyn made famous

2008-10-19T05:52:00.003-04:00

I was visiting England last week, going through Trinity College at Cambridge. The last thing I expected was a Solzhenitsyn link, but there it was. Francis Bacon's memorial statue.

Solzhenitsyn devotes much of a chapter (Idols of the Market Place) in Cancer Ward to talking about Francis Bacon's analysis of mistaken ideas coming in four types: idols of the tribe, cave, theater and market place. This is a major part of the discussion between Shulubin and Kostoglotov. And if it hadn't been for this chapter, I probably would have never read anything by Bacon.

Another thing this reminds me of. Some people call Solzhenitsyn a narrow-minded Slavophile who rejects European culture. But Solzhenitsyn's treatment of Bacon shows he was aware of broader culture outside of Russia. What English or American novelist has devoted a chapter to the thought of Francis Bacon?

Solzhenitsyn and John McCain

2008-10-04T11:36:00.002-04:00

Here the comparison is more obvious. (I wrote last week about the comparison between Solzhenitsyn and Obama). John McCain spent time in a Communist prison, and his life was changed because of it. In his acceptance speech McCain said

Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love.

. This is a close echo to Solzhenitsyn saying about his Gulag experience (in the "Soul and Barbed Wire" chapter of Gulag)

Bless you prison, for being in my life.

I can't believe I did that!

2008-10-04T09:37:00.002-04:00

I've had this blog going for over a year and a half, and all this time I've had the Great Man's name mispelled in the blog title! Arggh! Fixed it now.

I've done that before more than once. Typed 'Solzhenitysn' (wrong) rather than 'Solzhenitsyn'. At least once I've done it in a Google search, and Google says "don't you mean Solzhenitsyn" and I say "that is what I typed" until I look closer.

Paradoxically, the name is harder to spell in the Latin alphabet than in the Cyrillic. There are two hard parts. Solzhenitsyn or Solhzenitsyn; and Solzhenitsyn or Solzhenitysn. But both of those involve two letters in our alphabet where the Cyrillic only has one. ж is 'zh' and ц is 'ts'.

I wonder if Solzhenitsyn might have sold more books if he'd picked a pseudonym. He used 'Gleb Nerzhin' as the pseudonym of his autobiographical character in First Circle and in the lesser known Prussian Nights. Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, even Lermontov and Turgenev had shorter names than Solzhenitsyn. Dostoyevsky is almost as long, but it seems easier to spell. (And you have two chances to get it right, Dostoyevsky and Dostoevsky are both accepted). But Solzhenitsyn did well enough with his name as it was.

Solzhenitsyn and Barack Obama

2008-09-27T15:33:00.002-04:00

What? This has to be the mother of all non-sequiturs, right? Not so.

Surprisingly, the early years of the two men were markedly similar. Everyone knows about Obama’s childhood, the absent Kenyan father and being raised by his white mother and grandparents. Solzhenitsyn never knew his father. Isaaki Solzhenitsyn died in a hunting before Aleksandr was born. Apparently father to be Isaaki was riding in a cart, laid his loaded shotgun down, the cart bumped, the shotgun fell pointing towards the man and went off. Aleksandr’s parents were not both Russians. Isaaki was Russian, his mother was Ukrainian. For us Americans, the difference between Russian and Ukrainian seems insignificant compared to the gulf between black and white. While it likely isn’t as significant, it is different enough, there have been wars and riots and bad blood between Russians and Ukrainians throughout history. And as great as the chasm between black and white is in America, Hawaii has to be the place where this chasm was the smallest.

I wasn’t fully aware of this parallel between the lives of the two men until I read Obama’s Dreams From My Father. For all the book length biographies of Solzhenitsyn I’ve read, my mental map of his life was shaped by the one sentence biography everyone knows about Solzhenitsyn, he was arrested, survived the Gulag, and was later exiled to the West.

Dreams From My Father is a startlingly vivid tale. Obama may be the best writer for a famous politician since Winston Churchill. But while the writing was vivid, I disliked the philosophy. Obama seemed to be showing that he was marked for life by the absence of his father and by the racial divide in America, and he would never get over what had happened to him. (In Obama’s defense, by the end of the book he narrates how he does come to forgive his father).

One thing I most admire in Solzhenitsyn’s work is the optimism, how in the most horrible of situations he and his characters retain hope and nonetheless resolve to keep living as a human being who respects the truth, rather than yielding to rage or to the pressure to survive at all costs (no matter what it meant to your fellow victims). I was tempted to criticize Obama. “You think missing your father and being black in white culture was tough? How could you have survived the Gulag?” And then it dawned on me, Solzhenitsyn had never known his father either. The central drama of Obama’s life had also happened to Solzhenitsyn. But Solzhenitsyn’s trials kept on after adolescence, there came World War II, then the Gulag, then cancer. So he never had the luxury of writing a book on the absent father or how he had to figure out what it meant to be Russian.

One section in Dreams From My Father highlights this. Obama was starting as a community organizer, and met a Black Muslim nationalist. He was appalled how Black Muslim ideology demonized whites, but then he thinks it might be necessary. Encouraging blacks to change how they lived might fail, because it sounded like the white recitations of black inferiority. Maybe blacks needed a solid diet of anti-white propaganda to be ballast for their souls so they could handle messages asking them to change. (Dreams From My Father p 197ff ).
Solzhenitsyn always emphasizes truth. While he unsparingly describes the crimes of the Soviets, he does not divide his world into black hearted Communists and victims. One of his most famous quotes is that the dividing line between good and evil goes right through every human heart. The idea that zeks might need to exaggerate how bad Communism was to keep their spirits up as they coped with life after prison is foreign to his thinking. I love (in the abstract) the depth of Solzhenitsyn’s viewpoint on his Gulag experiences, that he writes in the chapter “The Soul and Barbed Wire”. He knows in human terms he was innocent and should not have been arrested. But he understands that before God he is not innocent (of other evils) and the arrest was in some sense deserved. So he concludes “Bless you prison, for being in my life.”

I say ‘in the abstract’ because I am not always calm and impervious in the face of stress and difficulty. Who am I to criticize Obama for not being more heroic like Solzhenitsyn, when I have known neither prison nor the absence of a father? So I offer this as an evaluation, I think Solzhenitsyn’s views on suffering are truer than Obama’s (and Obama’s may have changed after the period he describes in his book). May we each strive to react to adversity more like Solzhenitsyn and less like the young Obama.

Dosvedanya, Aleksandr Isayevich

2008-08-03T17:57:00.002-04:00

"MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian writer and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn died late Sunday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported, citing his son Stepan. He was 89."

Goodbye Aleksandr Isayevitch. You were indeed a tiny particle of your own people, more than a tiny particle. And more than just your own people, a great particle of all of us. Thanks so much for your work.

Remembering Jesse Helms

2008-07-05T08:26:00.002-04:00

My first reaction when I heard about the of Jesse Helms yesterday was mistrust of what the man stood for. I had a vague image of someone who probably supported segregation. I remember some years ago asking a North Carolina native (humorously) if there was a state dinosaur, and he answered "Jesse Helms".

But on the vital issue of supporting Solzhenitsyn and understanding the truth of the USSR, Helms was on the right side. National Review reposted this in an article yesterday:

"I think you can get a clearer picture of what made Helms unique — and how he came to be respected by millions both inside and outside his home state, often to their surprise — by considering the story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s visit to the United States in 1975. Solzhenitsyn was a hero to Helms. After just one year of service in the Senate, Helms introduced a resolution to make Solzhenitsyn an honorary American citizen. It failed in the House. Then Helms helped to arrange a Washington visit for the exiled Soviet dissident the following year. At every turn, he faced obstruction by key figures in the Ford administration, led by secretary of state Henry Kissinger. When, thanks to the diligent work of Helms’s staff, Solzhenitsyn was indeed brought to the country, Helms tried to set up a meeting for him with President Ford.

Not only was he rebuffed, but the State Department even forbade its employees to attend Solzhenitsyn’s major speech (to the AFL-CIO). So what did the freshman senator from North Carolina do? He went to the floor of the Senate, called it a “sad day for our country,” and accused Ford of “cowering timidity for fear of offending Communists.” It was a public-relations disaster for the White House. Among the conservatives angered by the administration’s parade of limp-noodle lickspittles was Ronald Reagan, who lambasted Ford in his newspaper column. Trying to rectify the situation, the White House approached Helms about a meeting with Solzhenitsyn, but refused to issue a written invitation for fear of supplying tangible evidence of caving in. Lacking such an invitation, Solzhenitsyn refused."

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZGRmNTYxOWI0NTQ1ZDc4NWI2YmQzZTA3OGZlNGRkNGU=

And re segregation: Helms did support it. In the early 60's, he opposed movements to pass laws forbidding segregation in restaurants, in the name of private property rights. The author of the NR article says Helms, like many others failed the test. But this shouldn't invalidate his good record in the 70s and later, on "the issues he got right — the Cold War, excessive government, personal responsibility, the benefits of expanding capitalism at home and abroad, and the need to reform entitlements and the tax code".

Remembering William F. Buckley

2008-02-28T05:48:00.002-05:00

William F. Buckley died yesterday.

When I was growing up, liberal by default (because everyone I knew was liberal), William F. Buckley was a figure of ridicule. What I knew of him came from the impressionist David Frye, who imagined him speaking of Apollo 11 landing on the "Mare Tranquillitate" (Latin) rather than the Sea of Tranquillity, because Latin sounded so much more erudite.

In the 70's, after I had discovered Solzhenitsyn, I came across an issue of National Review. To my surprise this publication wasn't foolishly spouting idiocy in Latin. What won my regard was this issue had excerpted a whole chapter (perhaps two) from First Circle, the passage where Stalin is alone pondering that it isn't egocentric for him to become Emperor of the World, and pondering how he has to control everything. Buckley introduced this excerpt saying we needed to remember this is how totalitarians thought.

In this decade, when I began looking for political commentary on the Internet, I remembered National Review quoting Solzhenitsyn, and looked it up. I haven't seen them run more excerpts from Solzhenitysn since, but they do mention him from time to time. And the NRO (National Review Online) has become one of my Internet favorites.

Whatever happened to the Sharansky-Bush doctrine?

2008-02-16T11:39:00.002-05:00

The Sharansky-Bush doctrine??

Let me explain. In late fall 2004 I was reading on National Review Online how George W Bush, recently re-elected, was reading a book called The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky. My wife alertly ordered the book for me as a Christmas gift, and we both enjoyed it. It was an eloquent appeal to stand up for human rights around the world, to no longer ignore the abuses of dictatorships in the name of "diplomacy" or "stability".
Then in January 2005 George W Bush made the principles in the book the theme of his second inaugural address.

"We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This resounded in my heart because this was what was missing all those years in our relationships with the Soviet Union, we never fully acknowledged the evil that was happening because we wanted to be at peace.

In our world now, the Soviet Union is gone but tyranny still exists.

Another quote from Bush's second inaugural:
"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

But what does this mean? Are we obligated to invade other countries to keep this doctrine? We ended one tyrant's rule in Iraq, should we invade Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe? No I don't think so. I think the promise above commits us to noticing what goes on in other countries, to lobbying for freedom and to try to remember those who are imprisoned. Maybe there ought to be a US government website that tells the stories of people around the world who are in prison or oppressed by their governments.

As George W Bush's term nears its end, it seems like the vision he laid out in the second inaugural hasn't been implemented much at all. I read on National Review Online excerpts of news from Iran, with stories such as this one "Yaqoub Mehr-Nahad, journalist and civil-society activist, condemned to death. Mehr-Nahad was arrested after participating in a seminar called "Questioning Youth, Responsible Authorities" in Zahedan, the capital of the Sistan va Baluchestan province of Iran. His family reports that he bore “signs of severe torture” and believes the execution seeks to silence any revelations about torture in prisons of the Islamic Republic." I'm not aware of anything the US govt is doing to stand with people such as this in Iran.

Whatever happened to the Sharansky-Bush doctrine?

2008-02-16T11:08:00.004-05:00

The Sharansky-Bush doctrine??

Let me explain. In late fall 2004 I was reading on National Review Online how George W Bush, recently re-elected, was reading a book called The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky. My wife alertly ordered the book for me as a Christmas gift, and we both enjoyed it. It was an eloquent appeal to stand up for human rights around the world, to no longer ignore the abuses of dictatorships in the name of "diplomacy" or "stability".
Then in January 2005 George W Bush made the principles in the book the theme of his second inaugural address.

"We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This resounded in my heart because this was what was missing all those years in our relationships with the Soviet Union, we never fully acknowledged the evil that was happening because we wanted to be at peace.

In our world now, the Soviet Union is gone but tyranny still exists.

Another quote from Bush's second inaugural:
"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

But what does this mean? Are we obligated to invade other countries to keep this doctrine? We ended one tyrant's rule in Iraq, should we invade Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe? No I don't think so. I think the promise above commits us to noticing what goes on in other countries, to lobbying for freedom and to try to remember those who are imprisoned. Maybe there ought to be a US government website that tells the stories of people around the world who are in prison or oppressed by their governments.

As George W Bush's term nears its end, it seems like the vision he laid out in the second inaugural hasn't been implemented much at all (since the invasion of Iraq had already happened).

The Oak and the Calf

2007-06-26T15:12:00.000-04:00

It is an interesting story. (If you've never read it, it is not a novel but a memoir of the years he was a famous writer and dissident in the USSR, basically from the time Ivan Denisovich was prepared for publishing until he was expelled in 1974. I find myself thinking as some critics say, that AIS sounds too proud of himself in parts. As I said earlier, I'm not sure why recounting Tvardovsky's alcoholism needed to be in this story. (Tvardovsky was the magazine editor who decided to publish Ivan Denisovich). Although perhaps Solzhenitsyn wanted to portray Tvardovsky as a tragedy, the man for years edited the best (most truthful) magazine in the USSR, but had to make so many compromises with the authorities, and I think Solzhenitsyn wants us to see it was those compromises that drove him to drink.

And as I worried that he had been to proud, I was relieved to find this quote in his description of what he did when he found out about winning the Nobel prize.
"Perhaps in Saratov or Irkutsk our next Nobel Prize winner was writhing in shame for that wretched Solzhenitsyn. Why doesn't he bellow like a calving cow? Why doesn't he get out there and do a bit of tub thumping?"

The background of this, when he first heard he had won the Nobel, he told a foreign reporter that if the decision was up to him, he'd go to Sweden for the ceremony, and he was in good health. But in the end he decided not to apply to leave the USSR, because he sensed the Nobel prize organization didn't want him to make a 'political' speech, and he also thought the USSR might well refuse to let him back in, and his first son was just about to be born. So he found himself unable to make the kind of bold statement he as a younger man had wished Pasternak had made.

Back in the USA

2007-06-23T08:16:00.000-04:00

Our year back in Niger ended last week, we're now back in the USA. And to my surprise, our local library actually has Scammell's biography of Solzhenitsyn and The Oak and the Calf. Funny thing though, the computerized card catalog has no record of The Oak and the Calf. Does this mean I could keep it and not turn it back? (grin).

I remember reading The Oak and the Calf almost twenty years ago, now I'm reading it again. Its good, the story of Solzhenitsyn revisiting the Mavrino sharashka site just at the time he submits Ivan Denisovich for publication is fascinating. But I can understand why relatives of Tvardovsky don't like the book, I myself wonder if AIS really needed to say that Tvardovsky was an alcoholic, it doesn't seem essential to the narrative.

Learning the Cyrillic alphabet

2007-05-12T03:27:00.000-04:00

As I've said, I discovered Solzhenitsyn when I was in college. Our university library had most of his books, both in English translation and in Russian. At some point browsing the shelves or the card catalog, I began to think one could figure out the Russian alphabet by comparing "Solzhenitsyn". I'm sure I knew already that "C" stood for "S", since I knew from James Bond movies that "CCCP" was "USSR". And the "o" and the "e" that didn't change were also clues. I'm not sure how I got the idea that "zh" was only one letter in Russian, but that was the only tricky part to figuring out how it works. And then the first name wasn't that hard either -- "x" seemed to be represented by two letters, but then I remembered that it usually wasn't spelled "Alexander" in English but "Aleksandr".

One amusing story, once I had a class that met in one corner of the library (not a common occurrence for an entomology major). Opposite me was a series of volumes in Russian. So I started trying to decode the alphabet. "D", "A", "H", "L". I was awestruck. This must be Dahl's dictionary that Nerzhin and Rubin were so fond of. I was in rapture looking at those books. The woman sitting between me and Dahl's dictionary must have thought I had a crush on her. Of course, I did have a crush on her, and sometimes I was looking at her, not the books, but not all the time.

Characteristics of Solzhenitsyn as a writer

2007-05-12T03:07:00.000-04:00

A while back I made the distinction between Solzhenitsyn the prophet, writing to expose to the world the evils of the Gulag and the Communist system, and Solzhenitysn the writer. I don't mean that these aspects are in contradiction with each other, maybe another way to look at it is the kinds of stories Solzhenitsyn tells, (Solzhenitsyn the prophet) and the way he tells his stories (Solzhenitysn the writer).

What do I notice as the way he tells a story? Here are a few ideas.
1) He tells the story from several different viewpoints. Cancer Ward, First Circle, and the narrative parts of Red Wheel have lots of different characters. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is different, but then Solzhenitsyn doesn't actually consider this a novel, (I forget the exact term).
2) The story does not all take place inside the character's minds, but the story is not all outward events either.
3) Despite facing very grim and difficult problems, the characters are not all overcome by the futility of life, and everything doesn't go wrong. Stories don't have universally happy endings, neither do they have universally sad endings.
4) A significant part of the story involves the characters reading books, thinking about books and commenting on them.

Solzhenitsyn's effect on the English language

2007-04-20T02:30:00.000-04:00

What effect has Solzhenitsyn's writings had on the English language?

I can think of two examples.
1) He introduced "Gulag" as a proper noun. This probably never would have happened except for Gulag Archipelago.
2) I also think he introduced "A day in the life of ..." or "One day in the life of ..." as a somewhat common title.
Any others, I wonder?

Heat as cold

2007-04-17T02:48:00.000-04:00

One of the constant themes of Gulag Archipelago, and also Ivan Denisovich, is the intense cold weather. This Solzhenitsyn fan was raised in California and has lived much of his adult life in west Africa, the few days I've experienced intense cold it has been mostly exotic rather than oppressive. A cartoon I remember seeing years ago has two Eskimos in a polar landscape asking a missionary "Can you tell us again about the endless fires that never go out?" I've sometimes daydreamed about reading Ivan Denisovich on a really hot day (it hit 109 F (43 C) here yesterday) wondering if it would be refreshing.

But living in Africa, one could write books about coping with the extreme heat. I remember one of my first days in Niger, my bedroom had a window mounted air conditioner right above the bed, and when I lay or sat on the bed, it felt tolerable. Getting off the bed and standing up felt at least ten degrees hotter. So there I was, huddling next to the AC, just like a Russian peasant sleeping on his stove in the winter.

A paradox, is evil necessary to remember good?

2007-04-10T02:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I re-read My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, about a Hasidic Jew born with a genius for painting, and the struggles he has between his art and how it is misunderstood by his community.

Part of the story in the beginning deals with Jews in Stalin's USSR, as Asher's father works for a famous rabbi and tries to help Soviet Jews to emigrate. One emigrant in the US says to Asher "Stalin, may his name and memory be forgotten". My reaction to this phrase was "No, you don't want to burn all copies of Gulag Archipelago, do you?"

Without Stalin, would there have been a Solzhenitsyn? Solzhenitysn pondered this paradox once, in commenting on the beautiful buildings of St Petersburg, and remembering how they were built by serf labor, in suffering. And then he asks if the suffering of Soviet times will also produce beauty.

St. Paul addresses this paradox, in Romans chapter 3:5-8"
5 But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? 8 And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

God can produce beauty out of evil, but that is not a justification for evil. I think the theme of these verses is that God does not need evil to create beauty.

Solzhenitsyn's sense of humor

2007-04-07T04:50:00.000-04:00

Obviously, Gulag Archipelago is never going to get on anyone's list of books full of belly laughs. But there is a joke in it, and it took me years to get it. At the end of the chapter on different occupations the zeks were given in the camps, he says that there were only two trades they were never assigned to, the making of sausages and the making of confectionary goods. Years later, I finally realized he must have been kidding.

And he must have a sense of humor, to have come up with the Buddha's Smile chapter in First Circle, (Eleanor Roosevelt's imaginary visit to the Lubyanka), or the trial of Prince Igor for being captured by the enemy.

Also I think related to humor is his strong sense of irony. As when he describes the silly things that people were arrested for (using newspaper for scratch paper hence writing on a picture of Stalin, or carrying a bust of Stalin by tying a rope around the bust's neck), then he says "and only the invincible social structure of Socialism survived all these assaults". I think another great ironical statement is what he says about Stalin in First Circle, how he only trusted one man in his life, Adolf Hitler. (Probably in truth, Stalin didn't trust Hitler, what he trusted in was his own ability to know what was going on and to outwit Hitler, so he refused to believe the warnings of the coming invasion).

November 1916

2007-04-07T04:43:00.000-04:00

For much of this novel, I was tempted to think you can after all have too much of a good thing. The historical details about the Kadet party was getting a bit much.

Then, we see Vorotyntsev having an affair. And this was disappointing to me as well, being the social conservative that I am. But then, Solzhenitsyn comes back, with a vivid portrayal of how devastated Vorotyntsev's wife is, when he confesses the affair to her. Its as powerful as the ending of Anna Karenina, and very appealing to a social conservative. You dream of 'life' with this romantic other that you've suddenly met? Look what it leads to, the despair of your life long partner (November 1916) and your own destruction into possessiveness and jealousy (Anna Karenina).

Lewis and Solzhenitsyn, a convergence

2007-03-27T14:18:00.000-04:00

This morning on The Wardrobe [the C.S. Lewis fan page] someone had a long and good quote from Ivan Denisovich.

I briefly wondered if I had died and gone to heaven, then imagined Rubin saying "No, you are not in heaven, but still in hell. But you are in its First Circle."

The quote was the passage about Ivan Denisovich enjoying his two bowls of soup, "This was it! This was good! This was the brief moment for which a zek lives. " The poster added that this passage had a strong impact on him learning to appreciate even the barest threads of beauty in God's creation, and he even occasionally has Ivan Denisovich soup, clear broth with only a few herbs and bit of vegetable, to try to imagine savoring it as the zeks would.

Here is a passage from Lewis about learning to rejoice in the ordinary and common. Obviously Lewis never suffered like Solzhenitsyn suffered in Gulag (but Lewis did have some months in the human hell of WW I trenches), but I think the idea is still present, to rejoice in what goodness is available.

"[A.K. Hamilton Jenkin] continued … my education as a seeing, listening, smelling, receptive creature. …. [He] seemed to be able to enjoy everything; even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge [with] a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was." (Surprised by Joy, Harvest Book HB 102 edition, p. 199)

And I think this was the same thing I remember rereading Gulag, and how the sky over my morning commute was brighter the morning after I'd read about AIS rejoicing in the glimpse of the bit of sky condemned to float over the Lubyanka.

Geographic overlap

2007-03-25T11:39:00.000-04:00

As I've said in the profile, I don't know any of the places Solzhenitsyn writes about, never having been further east in Europe than Switzerland. But there is that one spot -- I've visited Zurich twice, which is the scene of the Lenin chapters in the Red Wheel. I don't remember any of the landmarks mentioned in Lenin's life though.

The other bit of overlap is that Solzhenitsyn has been to my home area. He's made several visits (at least two from what I can gather) to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in Palo Alto, California. He is an honorary fellow there, according to WIkipedia. I didn't grow up in Palo Alto, but in the next community south, Los Altos. And when I was a kid (years before the Santa Clara valley became rebaptized Silicon Valley) about the only tall building around was Hoover Tower.

Funny, when I look at Hoover tower now, it looks rather ugly to me. It looks like a 1930's cement attempt at something European. I wonder if Solzhenitysn noticed the architecture. He might well have been in a hurry to get to the archives.

See this link from Flikr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/busterken/149480602/

Lewis vs Solzhenitsyn, the debate

2007-03-18T02:44:00.000-04:00

My two great literary heroes, C.S. Lewis and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, had almost a published debate, even though as far as I know neither was aware of the other's existence. But each wrote an essay on national repentance, and while Solzhenitsyn favored the idea, Lewis saw dangers in it. I think the opinions of each can be largely reconciled.

Solzhenitsyn's essay asserts that the modern assumption that moral criteria cannot be applied to nation-state actions is false. I think Lewis would have agreed with this. Solzhenitsyn goes on to say that when a nation has done wrong, the people ought to acknowledge and repent of it. I think Lewis would have agreed with this as well.

But what Lewis wrote in his essay "Dangers of National Repentance", was that what he saw in English culture labeled 'national repentance', was really self righteousness. It was predominately leftist intellectuals condemning English tradition, denouncing the sins of others.

Lewis does say that the church should preach national repentance. But it should be something done with reluctance, not with eagerness. He makes the analogy of someone criticizing their mother, saying it could be virtue 'only if we are quite sure that he has been a good son and that in his rebuke, spiritual zeal is triumphing, not without agony, over strong natural affection.'

Solzhenitsyn does acknowledge that national repentance can have negative effects, he mentions the mood of the Russian intelligentsia at the end of the Czarist period having counterproductive consequences. I wish in this essay he developed this thought further, but he certainly did develop the thought in the Red Wheel novels. He shows the belief of liberal society that the Russian state was always wrong opened the door to the Bolshevik revolution.

So I think in the end, the two agree, national repentance can be good, but can be badly done.

Zoya, Vega or neither?

2007-03-10T05:27:00.000-05:00

I just finished rereading Cancer Ward, and I decided to try to grapple with exactly what Oleg does at the end, when he ignores both Zoya's and Vega's invitations and goes off alone back to Kok Terek. Actually some time ago, it occurred to me that there wasn't anything really surprising about this, it is like the cliche in American culture that holiday romances never last. Both the relationship with Zoya and with Vega were hospital romances, and when outside the hospital, they suddenly made a lot less sense than before.

Although I think Oleg was more tempted by the relationship with Vega than the one with Zoya. They had a valuable friendship, more than just the sexual desire element behind the relationship with Zoya. Note well, I am not saying Zoya was merely a desirable body, but that Oleg's view of their relationship was predominately of her as a desirable body. As proof, there is the passage about the unusual tightness in his chest when he's thinking of Vega, and he thinks that the attraction to Zoya is a completely different part of the body altogether. I do think Solzhenitysn wants us to have a respect for Zoya, the description of her thinking of her future and what it ought to mean midway through the book shows her as a person of intelligence.

But besides the hospital romance no longer being compelling after leaving the hospital, Oleg is constrained in thinking of a relationship with Vega, in worrying about what the hormones have done to his sex drive. A very understandable reaction. But I'm tempted to think if I was there, that I'd ask Oleg to reconsider. In leaving, is he not making Vega's choice for her? Maybe something would be possible after all?

Aleksandr Isayevich among the prophets

2007-03-09T01:59:00.000-05:00

If Solzhenitsyn is a prophet, how does he compare with the Biblical prophets? I remember in the late 70s when I was discovering Solzhenitsyn, I was also discovering Isaiah in the Bible. Isaiah brought home to me the dynamic of a truly theistic world view, that God is the Real Thing and nothing else can compare or compete with Him. For example, from chapter 40:
12 "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?"
13 "Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
or what man shows him his counsel?"
14 "Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding? "
15 "Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. "

And then I realized that Solzhenitsyn's patronymic was Isayevich, which made it sound like his father was named Isaiah. (Actually his father's name was Isaak, the family chose to drop the 'k' was dropped from his patronymic, but I only realized that much later). For a while I had a fanciful notion that Aleksandr son of Isaiah had a similar writing style to Isaiah the prophet, but I think now this is dubious. Both have the theme of the foolishness of human vanity, the foolishness of thinking a kingdom or a political system is really eternal, but I suppose that is where the resemblance ends.

Another prophet that I recently thought of identifying with Solzhenitsyn is Habakkuk. Not nearly as well known as Isaiah, Jeremiah or Daniel, but a very interesting book. And it is only three chapters. The chapter begins with Habakkuk asking God what is happening, that the nation of Israel, God's chosen nation, is not doing well.
1:4; "So the law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted."
Why isn't God doing something about it?
God's response is, He will. He will bring the Babylonian empire and conquer Israel, to punish them. And Habakkuk is completely confused -- Israel is in a corrupt state, but Babylon is much worse!
1:13 "You who are of purer eyes than to see evil
and cannot look at wrong,
why do you idly look at traitors
and are silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than he? "

God says to Habakkuk that He will in turn punish Babylon as well. And most of chapter 3 is a vision of God's great power, then followed by Habakkuk's surprising declaration, that he now believes and will not despair whatever goes wrong in the future:
3:17 "Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,"
18 "yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation."
19 "GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places."

I see Habakkuk's spiritual journey as like Solzhenitsyn's, both saw an evil political system totally dominant for a while, but came to a strong faith in God as good, and as all powerful.

Solzhenitsyn's catch phrases

2007-03-03T03:16:00.000-05:00

I find certain phrases from Solzhenitsyn frequently running through my mind. These aren't his famous quotes, that get cited on quotation lists, but little comments that stick in my mind.

Here are some of them:
1) the unnamed Pushkin who comes up with names of concentration camps (First Circle)
2) Beethoven's four chords of fate (Cancer Ward). But somehow I misremembered this as 'Beethoven's twin chords of fate', until I reread it in CW yesterday.
3) one Ehrenburg wide or one Ehrenburg tall. (First Circle).
4) First Cell, First Love (chapter title in Gulag Archipelago)
5) Morning of the execution of the Streltsy (chapter title in First Circle)

An interesting thought from Time magazine, 1968

2007-02-27T03:28:00.000-05:00

Their original review of Cancer Ward says this:
"Solzhenitsyn ... uncompromisingly asserts that modern man can arm himself against the fear of death only with life itself. He must do so by reducing life to complete simplicity, seeing it with unblinking honesty but loving and prizing it nevertheless. If Solzhenitsyn is against cruelty, hypocrisy and loss of freedom, he is also against the distracting things that freedom—with its consequent financial inequality—engenders. Snobbery, status seeking, self importance, the acquisition of consumer goods, materialism —everything, in short, that tends to repress the natural piety of men.
Like those of pure revolutionaries, saints and some hippies, Solzhenitsyn's views are not political, except where they concern (as they inevitably do) a hostile, worldly society. Like saints and pure revolutionaries, but unlike most hippies, Solzhenitsyn's heroes have spent a lifetime learning the absolute value of simplicity."

A good summation of Solzhenitsyn's philosophy, I think.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902542,00.html
From the Nov 8, 1968 issue, I don't see who the reviewer is.

Solzhenitsyn's Psalm

2007-02-25T06:53:00.000-05:00

Its Sunday, so I'm thinking of highlighting one of Solzhenitsyn's religious poems. This one is called A Prayer and was written shortly after he became famous publishing One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

How easy for me to live with you, Lord!
How easy to believe in you!
When my mind casts about
or flags in bewilderment,
when the cleverest among us
cannot see past the present evening,
not knowing what to do tomorrow --
you send me the clarity to know
that you exist
and will take care
that not all paths of goodness should be barred.
At the crest of earthly fame
I look back in wonderment
at the journey beyond hope--to this place,
from which I was able to send mankind
a reflection of your rays.
And however long the time
that I must yet reflect them
you will give it to me.
And whatever I fail to accomplish
you surely have allotted unto others.

I appreciate the awareness at the end, that God has given him certain things to accomplish, but has given others things to accomplish as well. Or in more "churchy" terms, respect for one's one vocation, but also respect for the vocations of others.

World War II: the standard narrative

2007-02-24T02:58:00.000-05:00

Growing up in the 60's, I saw many movies and documentaries and read many books about World War II. There was a standard narrative running through them all, that went something like this:

In the 1930's an evil man came to power in Germany. The rest of the world was blind far too long to his evil, and allowed him to come close to conquering the world. Finally there was courageous leadership in Great Britain and in the US, who refused to give up, mobilized the population, and the democratic forces progressed from staving off defeat, to taking the offensive, to finally crushing the evil dictator. And if we remember the history of World War II, we will remember not to make this mistake again of appeasing a murderous dictator.

One of the ways that Solzhenitsyn changed my world view forever, was by showing that this standard narrative contains a lot of myth. The standard narrative implies that the English speaking nations had learned not to appease murderous dictators, yet Solzhenitsyn shows how the English speaking nations continued to appease Joseph Stalin, and never stopped. We handed over Soviet refugees to Stalin at the end of the war against their will, we even handed over to Stalin refugees who had never been Soviet citizens.

And in portraying the dilemma of the Vlasov men, Solzhenitsyn highlights a savage truth. For the whole eastern half of Europe, World War II presented a cruel dilemma, do you fight for Adolf Hitler, or for Josef Stalin? When any person with a heart would vote "neither".

But I should add here that these comments don't mean that I think the British and American forces did not wage an effective and serious war effort against Nazi Germany. I believe they did. Conducting an amphibious invasion against a hostile shore takes an immense amount of organization, and this was the bulk of the British-American war effort up into 1943, and during this time Hitler chose not to sit still and organize devastatingly effective Atlantic defenses, but plunged his army into a life and death battle against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union might have gone under without the supplies sent by Britain and America, and also the North African campaign and the bombing campaigns over Germany diverted a significant amount of German strength away from the eastern front. And the 1943 invasion of Italy knocked out Italy as a German ally.

Solzhenitsyn the prophet, Solzhenitsyn the writer

2007-02-19T14:06:00.000-05:00

There are two facets to Solzhenitsyn. I was thinking of this when I started my post on Cancer Ward, but I've been thinking more about it. There are two aspects of Solzhenitsyn that I like. First there is Solzhenitsyn the moral prophet, revealing the truth of what the Soviet system really did to people. Second, there is Solzhenitsyn the writer, who writes stories of realistic characters in real situations.

If you like Solzhenitsyn the moral prophet first and foremost, your favorite books would be Gulag Archipelago, second perhaps Ivan Denisovich, or perhaps some of the essays.

If you like Solzhenitsyn the writer first and foremost, your favorite books would be Cancer Ward or First Circle.

If you like both, you might like just about everything the man wrote. I think this fits me, although I'm thinking my appreciation of Solzhenitsyn the writer is greater than Solzhenitsyn the prophet, since I've read First Circle and Cancer Ward more often than any of the others.

But only two facets? What about Solzhenitsyn the poet? Not nearly as well known in English, (and poetry is always the hardest to translate).

The uncut First Circle

2007-02-17T03:48:00.000-05:00

When after opening my Solzhenitsyn Reader, one of the first sections I looked at was the excerpts from First CIrcle. And I got a real shock. It turns out that the First Circle, as I have known and loved it for years, was not what Solzhenitsyn originally wrote. He shortened it by several chapters, and made two major plot changes to make it more likely for Soviet censorship to approve its publication (which it never did). I think I must have been aware of this fact, but it hadn't fully registered, at any rate I had no idea of the extent of the change.

The big plot change is right at the beginning of the story. Innokenty Volodin, a young Soviet diplomat makes a phone call to warn an old family doctor of his impending arrest, is later arrested himself. This is the cut version. In the uncut version, Volodin has learned specifics of a Soviet plot to get US atomic secrets, and calls the US embassy to warn them (and doesn't get an intelligent response from the Americans). Immensely different.

My first reaction was just like any book fan when the Hollywood version changes a key plot point -- dismay and shock. The problem with this reaction, is the change wasn't from some sappy director, it was from Solzhenitsyn himself, and the familiar version was actually not the original.

As I thought about it further, I could see that this alternate version could possibly work, but I'm still not totally convinced. What works better in the uncut version, is Rubin is a more sympathetic character. He is now cooperating with the MGB in trying to find someone betraying real Soviet secrets to a foreign power, not someone helping a friend avoid arrest. Also, in the uncut chapter 1, Solzhenitsyn develops the image of the Lubyanka as a battleship further, with Volodin imagining himself sending a torpedo to sink the battleship.

But here's why I think its implausible. First, even if Volodin is MGB instead of foreign service (as the uncut excerpts make clear), I think it would be highly unlikely he'd know details of getting US atomic secrets. Surely the operation would be more compartmentalized than that. Second, the timing doesn't really work. First Circle is set in December 1949, and the Soviet Union already had their first sucessful atomic bomb test earlier that year. So for Volodin to think of warning the US about Soviets getting their atomic secrets, thinking to himself 'If the communists got the atom bomb, the planet was doomed', doesn't quite fit. Soviet espionage into western bomb secrets obviously did continue after the first successful Soviet bomb, but it would be unlikely for someone to think of saving humanity by denying the USSR those later atomic secrets, I would think.

"But implausible or not, that's what really happened" is one counterargument to my objections. Both D.M. Thomas in his biography, and someone on the Solzhenitsyn Yahoo list pointed out the same thing -- this is factual. Kopelev (the basis for Rubin) was assigned to analyzed voice prints to track down someone who called the US and Canadian embassies to warn about Soviet attempts to get atomic secrets. But a novel with an incident truly based on fact can still appear implausible, and could still be a weakness in the novel. Although in consideration, maybe I will limit my objection to this. It comes across as unrealistic for Volodin to be thinking 'If the communists got the atom bomb, the planet was doomed' in December 1949 when the Soviets had already had a successful bomb test. But if he had thought 'If the communists got the atom bomb, the planet was doomed. Maybe it was already too late, but maybe that first test was luck and they couldn't build another', my objection about the chronology would be answered.

Tom Clancy and Solzhenitsyn

2007-02-17T03:33:00.000-05:00

When I first realized Solzhenitsyn's original intention for Innokenty Volodin in the original version First Circle, I expressed my surprise by commenting "who was he trying to be, Tom Clancy?". But as I think about it, there are a certain number of parallels between the two. Yet obviously a lot of differences too, let me be clear. Tom Clancy wrote thrillers, where the action revolves around spies, plots to blow things up and start a nuclear war. Even the uncut version of First Circle, where Volodin wants to warn the Americans about Soviet spies getting their atomic secrets, is not at all a thriller.

But I think I see similarities. Essentially, Tom Clancy wrote thrillers, but he put realistic characters in them, and the characters thought about and cared about values, not just surviving the mission. To me, it seems that Clancy did a lot of research into Soviet life, and there are a lot of convincing details. (Maybe he made a few boners, that I just don't know about too.) And Clancy narrates his plots in a 'polyphonic' style, telling the tale from one characters perspective for a chapter, then another characters, etc. Also, Clancy, like Solzhenitsyn, likes to have flashbacks to depict his characters' backgrounds, to show how they got to be who they are in the current narrative. And, like Solzhenitsyn depicting Stalin in First Circle, Clancy gives us the portrait of what his villains are thinking and feeling.

And my initial reaction to Volodin in the uncut First Circle still holds up, I think. Clancy, like Solzhenitsyn, shows the USSR as an evil system oppressing common folks, and shows common folks coming to the conclusion that it would be the right thing to do to act against Soviet power. For Marko Ramius (Hunt for Red October), Mikhail Filitov (Cardinal of the Kremlin) and Vasily Zaitzev (Red Rabbit), just like for Innokenty Volodin, betraying the USSR is being loyal to humanity.

Cancer Ward

2007-02-16T00:53:00.000-05:00

Solzhenitsyn isn't as famous in the 00's as he was in the 70's. There is probably an obvious reason for this, in the 70's the Soviet Union was still alive and apparently well. Now it is gone. So a great number of people who aren't especially interested in history now think Solzhenitsyn is no longer "relevant".

But Cancer Ward is a novel that is still "relevant" even years after the end of the USSR. People still have cancer, still go to hospitals, have surgeries and radiation treatment for cancer, hope they'll get better, get caught up in intra-clinic politics, or try to think about what life all means if they don't make it.

Now I suppose the easy reference works theorize that the disease of cancer in Cancer Ward is a metaphor for the evils of Communism. I think Solzhenitsyn wants us to see a parallel between a body being killed by a tumor, and a nation being killed by Communism, but I don't think cancer is just a metaphor for Communism. I think in the story, Communism is a real issue, and cancer is also a real issue, and both are described openly in the story.

Twenty Years Together

2007-02-13T20:33:00.000-05:00

Today (Feb 14-- I'm several time zones ahead of the server) is my twentieth wedding anniversary. My wife isn't as much of a Solzhenitsyn fan as I am, but she did start the process that led to this blog. ISI Books recently came out with an excellent anthology of Solzhenitsyn's writings. When I looked at the list of contents, I thought it interesting, but decided it wouldn't be worth buying for myself, because the amount of new stuff in it didn't seem that large. But my wife encouraged some friends to buy it for me as a gift, and going through it rekindled the embers of my Solzhenitysnophilia (now there's a word for you), and it was in the warmth of that rekindled interest that I started this blog.

One other story about my wife. Our courtship had its tensions, mostly in my own heart. I loved her, but she wasn't my ideal of someone who would share all my interests (such as Solzhenitsyn). I was in love, but another part of me didn't approve of my love. One afternoon we were out together, the two sides of my mind still in conflict. I saw the sun glinting on her hair, and my heart said to my disapproving mind "Let this be, she will be my prison sun". My disapproving mind retorted how horribly I was twisting this Solzhenitsyn image out of context.

Well, in the end I chose my heart and not the disapproving mind. And twenty years later, its pretty obvious my heart was right.

My discovery of Solzhenitsyn

2007-02-12T15:22:00.000-05:00

The actual first contact didn't connect. I think it was sometime in high school, I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I may have finished it, I may not have. Anyway I was not very impressed. Not much happened in the story, and at that time of life I wasn't someone to read behind the lines to see what the story was really about -- a political system that could send millions of ordinary Ivan Denisoviches to those kind of conditions.

I started college in 1972. And in my sophomore year I was in a dorm named after Dag Hammarskjold, with the UN logo painted beside the entrance doors, and part of the internationalist appeals was we had a flag locker with maybe 50 flags of different countries. And being the kind of person who would become a computer geek as soon as technology gave me the chance, I gravitated to the task of putting up the flags in the morning -- it was something I could do by myself that was noticed. There were more flags than we had flag stands, so I could choose different flags for different days -- no one set out a schedule to make sure we flew all the flags an equal amount. And the first time I brought out the USSR flag, there was a thrill of the forbidden about it, a thrill of going beyond the conventional, perhaps also an awareness that the USSR had a revolutionary ideology, so I was a dramatic figure, waving the red banner of Revolution. Oh souls of zeks departed, my silliness was dancing on your graves! I am sorry, I knew it not.

In February of that year was when the KGB found a copy of Gulag Archipelago and Aleksandr Solzhenitysn was expelled from the Soviet Union. He was on the cover of Time magazine, and my buddy on the floor above me cut out the Time coverand pasted it on his wall. This buddy, his roommate and I used to get together to pray for each other every week, so for the last four months of that year, Solzhenitsyn looked at me every week in our prayer times. And as that year ended, the English translation of the first volume of Gulag Archipelago appeared. I went to the bookstore, purchased Gulag, First Circle and Cancer Ward, and read them over the next few months. And while it took a while to understand (when I finished First Circle, I thought the moral was something like "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we all die"). But one thing died forever, the thinking that the USSR was just another country, and right-wingers were paranoid fools for worrying about communism taking over. No, I saw that the USSR was a murderous oppressive system, and in many ways it was being appeased by the west, like the western powers did in the 30's to Nazi Germany.

Why don't more Tolkien fans like Solzhenitsyn?

2007-02-11T01:56:00.000-05:00

An immense multi-volume work full of people with unusual names bravely battling a pervasively evil ruler. Doesn't this describe Gulag Archipelago as much as Lord of the Rings?

What is great about Solzhenitsyn?

2007-02-10T02:48:00.000-05:00

One answer to this question is to tell a story. Just out of grad school, I worked briefly as a lab tech investigating pesticides and how well they worked in artichoke fields. This involved weekly trips down to Castroville California, the center of commercial artichoke production (at least it was in the '70s). One week there were two carloads of us, our carload arrived at the field well ahead of the others. I had brought along Cancer Ward to pass the time on the road, so I go back to the book while waiting for the others to arrive. I'm standing there in my lab coveralls, leaning against the side of the car, my mind completely in Ward 13 of the Tashkent hospital, 1955. The other carload arrives, I put the book down and am startled to find myself back in 1978 at the edge of a field in Castrovillle California.

That is the way the man writes, you can get lost in the story and forget where you are. I've seen several other testimonies like this to his writings, on Amazon review pages or elsewhere. The man can write.

Empress Elizabeth and Prussia

2007-02-09T14:42:00.000-05:00

One thing that startled me in re-reading Gulag Archipelago was Solzhenitysn's praise of the Empress Elizabeth for never having anyone executed during her reign. He says she was the only Russian ruler to do so.

Now in my mind, the Empress Elizabeth has become famous for something else. She tragically died too soon. Not that she died young, but if only she had lived for even another year longer, there would have been no Prussia, and the 20th century might have been a much more peaceful place. Frederick II of Prussia, (commonly called 'Frederick the Great', but I don't think of him as great) was a much more civilized ruler than Hitler, and even more civilized than William II (or the generals who were really determining strategy during William's reign), he had one weakness as a ruler, that his descendants as rulers of Prussia and Prussia dominated Germany shared. Like German generals in the 20th century, he was a good field commander, and usually won his battles. And like German supreme commanders in the 20th century, this didn't do him good, because he found himself in a war with too many enemies at once. The Seven Years war saw Prussia taking on Russia, Austria, and France (plus at least one other small German state), with only Britain as an economic ally (well they were fighting the French in North America, but not in Europe). And despite all the battlefield victories he had won, Frederick and his army were getting overwhelmed in 1762. And then, Elizabeth dies, and her son Peter, the new Tsar, a great personal fan of Prussia, makes peace, and the alliance against Prussia collapses.

And somehow for all the 19th century Prussian elaboration of the science of war, they never codified the obvious principle -- avoid fighting too many enemies at once. And along comes 1914, the only plan the Prussian army (while it was the German empire by then, the heart of the army was all Prussian) is the Schlieffen plan. Not a bad contingency plan in case a two front war is inevitable, it was a terrible plan for the situation when a one front war was still quite possible. If the Germans had stood still, and waited for the war to start before actually wading in to defend Austria, there might have been only the Austro-Serbian war of 1914, or the Austro-German-Russian war of 1914 (both easily won by Austria or Austria and Germany). Would the French have attacked Germany just because Russia had attacked Germany to defend Russia? The history I remember is that the French held their troops back 5 miles from the German border just to avoid an accident that would make war inevitable. But Germany plunged into the two front war, and the Schlieffen plan brought in Great Britain as well, all because Germany was unified around a Prussia, that never had realized what an awful mistake Frederick II had made, only to be delivered by a stroke of luck.

Returning to Gulag

2007-02-09T14:37:00.000-05:00

It’s been years since I have read Gulag Archipelago, years in which the Soviet state has fallen, Russia becomes a real word, not an imprecise synonym of “Soviet”, years in which I felt the essential Solzhenitsyn was in First Circle and Cancer Ward, and Cancer Ward began to have prmacy over First Circle as the greatest novel, for it was the most universal.
So because Thomas lists Gulag as one of Aleksandr Isayevich’s best books, and because I have a paperback copy in the local library, I take it up. It is one of the first English paperback editions, the cover design I well remember, grey with blue letters, the slightly delineated figures standing in a group behind barbed wire (essentially heads ahd shoulders, only a few lines for legs). But the first startling thing, this book I remember so well, somehow in the years since 1974 has acquired quite small print. I can read it, even the footnote, but why did I never notice before how small the letters were?
The narrative grabs as before, although with a difference. The details, the names I don’t know (Levitan, Krylenko, Tambov province, etc. etc.), pour across the pages as before. But in the 70’s I read these names and tried to remember them, for this was important, this was how the Soviet Union began, now I read them and think of ancient history. There was a Soviet Union once, my daughter will be able to say she and it were briefly alive together, it ended three weeks before her second birthday. But Solzhenitsyn’s writing is still as good, the same humanity and delightful ironies flow with the unknown names.
And then I am in the Bluecaps chapter, and the great words “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his heart?” And the next morning I read about the bit of God’s heaven condemned to float above the Lubyanka, and when I put the book down to start the morning commute, I walk outside, and above the sky attracts my eye, the pink glowing cloud glows brighter to my mind because Aleksandr Isayevich has written about how precious sky can be to a prisoner.
Why is the story still great, even though it is no longer immediately relevant? Why is it still precious to me, even though the reality that the USSR as an evil empire is no longer a new idea? One thing, Solzhenitsyn writes in my internal language, the idea that all around are details which can become precious as we examine them. A small patch of sky, a small bowl of food is precious. Another enjoyable thing is Solzhenitsyn’s use of irony. “those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.” (first paragraph of preface).

Why this blog

2007-02-09T01:52:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, the Internet is saturated enough with the ramblings of Solzhenitsyn fans, what with the endless discussions on Into the Sharashka about what really kept Rubin awake at night, or whatever happened to Shulubin, or the flame wars over at CanWard.net about the new movie, whether Britney Spears or Scarlett Johanssen would be best for Zoya, and what on earth the director was thinking about cutting out Shulubin's speech about ethical socialism.

Don't I wish :(

I have two favorite writers, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and C.S. Lewis. When I began to discover the Internet in 1999 (yes I was slow, but I was living in Niger, Africa for most of the 90s), I wanted to find out what was available about my two favorite writers. To my delight, there was oodles of stuff about Lewis, and to this day I hang out at "Into the Wardrobe". But on Solzhenitsyn? Barely anything, other than a few short bios. I have recently found a Yahoo group on Solzhenitsyn, but there isn't a lot of activity in it. Although when they post, there are some very knowlegeable folks there.

I just did a Google blog search and turned up 1) a Soviet patriot who thinks Solzhenitsyn slandered the USSR, 2) an anti-Semitic site which thinks "Two Hundred Years Together" is anti-Semitic and commends it for being so, but on the good side, one literary blog who tells a great story about reading Cancer Ward and another about getting his mother to buy him Gulag Archipelago when he was ten (and he still hasn't finished it 30 years later).

I even tried a Google search on "Solzhenitsyn forum" in Russian (I don't speak it, I used Google's translating service) and I found a couple of forum posts about a recent Solzhenitsyn interview, but they weren't forums that discusses Solzhenitsyn's books.

So I was inspired to try to start this blog to create at least a small bit of the ambiance that could happen if there were as many Solzhenitsyn fans on the Internet as there were Lewis fans. But this blog will not be limited to Solzhenitsyn pure and simple, after all one of the principles of Mavrino sharashka culture (and of Butyrki cell 53) is be interested in everything, and lets take the time to talk about it.

Will anyone ever read this? I don't know, I have no illusions. But at least it won't vanish in smoke over the Lubyanka.