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2 Putin's reading of
Solzhenitsyn By Dmitry
Shlapentokh
Russian President Vladimir
Putin's recent visit to the Bush family estate in
Maine caused heated discussions in both the
Russian and the US press. Most American observers
have been convinced that this was a mismatched
meeting because, they say, the leader of the free
world should not fraternize with the leader of an
authoritarian country that prosecutes dissent and
makes a mockery of political liberties.
Implied is that Putin's Russia is closer
to an authoritarian/semi-totalitarian China, which
was not invited to the Group of Eight
meeting - nor are its leaders
entertained by US presidents, notwithstanding
China's economic success.
Russian pundits
were also not universally accepting of Putin's
meeting with George W Bush, or of Putin's new
attempt to move Russia closer to the United
States. Their reason, however, was different from
that of the American observers. The point here is
that, in their belief, the US and, implicitly, the
entire Western world are a historically spent
force.
In this respect, one Russian
observer stated that in the lifetime of the
current generation a fundamental change would
happen. The gross national product (GNP) of the
leading Asian nations would soon exceed that of
the leading Western nations and, consequently, the
balance of power would once again shift to Asia as
has never happened since the dawn of the modern
era.
According to this line of thinking,
Russia, with its burgeoning economy, is closer to
the rising Asia than to the decaying US, the
embodiment of the West. From this perspective,
Putin should not look to the US but actually ally
itself more strongly with the prosperous East.
Still, a close analysis indicates that the
Putin/Bush meeting was not mismatched; and, in
fact, Putin's Russia and Bush's US are much closer
to each other than to their neighbors or to (still
officially allies) China and Europe. And Putin
indeed sent a signal that his Russia is closer to
the US than to nearby China. This was done in an
indirect way.
Recently, Putin awarded the
highest national award to Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
a Nobel laureate and one of the most famous
Russian writers of the last century. One could
clearly see that Putin had given this prize, with
reluctance, finally to legitimize Solzhenitsyn.
Indeed, Solzhenitsyn had to wait for seven years
to receive this final blessing from the president
only at the end of Putin's second, and what seems
to be final, term. And, while discussing
Solzhenitsyn's achievements, Putin pointed just to
the writer's contribution to the study of the
Russian language.
His major work, The
Gulag Archipelago, in which Solzhenitsyn
blasted the Soviet system, especially Josef
Stalin's regime, was ignored. Still, in giving the
prize to Solzhenitsyn, Putin implicitly sent a
message: regardless of anything, he would not
follow the Stalinist model. He conveyed the same
message during his recent meetings with
social-science scholars and teachers.
Putin stated to the scholars and educators
that since the beginning of the post-Soviet era,
Westerners had imposed on Russians their vision of
Russian history, seen from their perspective as
nothing but disaster. Russian historians, he said,
should once again look at the past and display not
just the problems but also the great achievements.
Others should not blame the Russians, for other
countries had also committed many atrocities.
Still, he acknowledged that Russia had had its
dark moments, such as a splash of terror in 1937.
Finally, the Russian authorities
declassified a huge number of documents related to
Stalin's terror. All of these send the
unmistakable signal that regardless of all the
authoritarian drive, all the positive nodding
toward Stalin, "Uncle Joe" will never be back.
But the question is whether Russians
should be less apologetic about the past. One
should remember that Stalin's era was not just a
period of bloody purges and millions of slaves in
camps but also one of the quick upgrading of the
country's economic prowess, which transformed
backward Russia into a superpower. At the same
time, Putin's rejection of Stalinism implied not
just that the reign of terror would never be
restored, but also that Russia would never engage
in the rapid industrial/scientific growth of the
past. And from this perspective, it is much closer
to the declining West, or, to be precise, the US,
rather than the rising East.
An observer
comparing the nations often states that Americans
have similarities to Europeans because they have a
political democracy. At the same time, Russia is
closer to China just because they both have
authoritarian regimes. This comparison is wrong.
To the casual observer, sharks and dolphins are
quite close to each other; they look alike and
live in the sea. At the same time, biologists
would tell you that dolphins are closer to
primates than to sharks. The same could be said
about Russia and the US; their social/economic
arrangements and general trends make them quite
similar to each other.
The US regards its
economic might as an essential pillar of its
position as a superpower. Still, its industrial
infrastructure
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