In the 19th century two books changed the lives of millions of people: Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which played an enormous role in
ending slavery in the United States ,and Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be
Done?, which set thousands of Russians on the path toward revolution.
In the 20th century, there was only one such book - Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The
Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn died this week at the age of 89.
After reading it, some said: "That's it. Time to leave the country." Others
said, "This cannot happen again - we need to rebuild this country." And still
others said, "It's scary and dangerous to live
here - let's keep our heads down and we'll survive."
The 1973 book also shook - although not as dramatically - people living outside
the Soviet Union. It struck a hard blow against the idealized convictions of
the socialist crowd.
That is, millions of people read The Gulag Archipelago and changed their
lives. After Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, all ideologies fell to pieces. And
suddenly, a book like this appears. This is a victory of literature, the
equivalent of which is hard to find in the entire history of world culture.
Solzhenitsyn - it is often forgotten by those who focus on his role in society
- was foremost a writer. A great Russian master of prose. In addition, we can
be sure that he arrived at his later role as a publicist and prophet by means
of his literary strivings.
Solzhenitsyn spent years experimenting with various styles and genres -
something else that is often forgotten. All you have to do is scan through the
titles of his works - One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, The
Love-Girl And The Innocent, An Incident At Krechetovka Station, Matryona's
Home, For The Good Of The Cause - to see how variously he wrote
- various styles, genres, manners. Thus, when Solzhenitsyn tried out an archaic
style and found that it suited him, he arrived at the role of a sort of
Biblical prophet. It didn't happen the other way around.
We all know how he was read in the past - like truth against a background of
lies. But now another life has arrived and, alas, Solzhenitsyn is already being
used in the interests of the state. Last year, when he was awarded a state
prize, The Gulag Archipelago was not even mentioned among his
achievements. And when his old musings on the February 1917 Revolution were
printed recently in enormous press runs, it was only to highlight the
importance he attributed to having a firm hand rule the state.
Such gestures are incorrect and incompetent both in terms of politics and
style. Solzhenitsyn was never a tool in a struggle - he is as great as Russia
itself.
The fact that in his later years he turned into a sort of image - more like a
portrait than a real author - was not his misfortune. It was the misfortune of
a Russia that did not want to face squarely something in its present or to
repent of its past.
The time of Solzhenitsyn as a writer, as prose master, will come again.
Literary genius does not fade with the years; it only burns brighter. Such is
the ending of his famed story One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich:
"There were 3,653 days just like this one in his sentence, from beginning to
end. The three extra ones are on account of leap years ..."
A life-long struggle
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Solzhenitsyn had been frail in
recent years, and his son Stepan said he succumbed to heart failure on August 3
at his residence outside Moscow.
"He died suddenly, relatively suddenly, at home, as he had always hoped would
happen," Stepan Solzhenitsyn said. "He hoped he would not be dragged to
hospitals, and he did not suffer very long. By midnight, he had passed away."
His short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, based on his
eight years as a political prisoner, is the first literary work to
unequivocally denounce the gulag, the Soviet Union's infamous network of labor
camps that Solzhenitsyn described as "the human meat grinder".
The novel's publication in 1962 was made possible largely because Nikita
Khrushchev, who had brought to light some of the crimes of dictator Josef
Stalin in his famous secret speech six years earlier, hoped the novel would
undermine neo-Stalinist support in the government.
After appearing in the magazine Novy Mir, the novel was republished in two
editions that were immediately sold out.
But the thaw introduced by Khrushchev was short-lived. The hardline Leonid
Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in 1964, and when Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize
in 1970, he refused to travel to Stockholm to accept the award for fear of not
being allowed to return home.
After One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, he worked indefatigably to
open the world's eyes to the brutalities of the Soviet regime. His works were
quick to anger the Kremlin, which branded their distribution a criminal
offense.
In 1968 came The First Circle and Cancer Ward, and in 1973 the
first part of his most famous work, The Gulag Archipelago, an epic
three-volume portrait of Stalin's camps.
Solzhenitsyn was eventually stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1974 and
expelled from the USSR. His second wife Natalia, whom he had just married,
followed him into exile.
In December 1974, Solzhenitsyn was finally able to receive the Nobel Prize for
literature from the hands of Swedish King Carl Gustav.
After a short stay in Switzerland, the Solzhenitsyn couple moved to a remote
village in Vermont, where the writer started work on Red Wheel, a
historical cycle of the events leading up to the 1917 revolution.
But his life in the West proved little more fulfilling than his Soviet
existence as the author quickly became frustrated with what he regarded as the
West's shallowness and vanity.
Returning home
In his home country, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 restored his Soviet citizenship
and dropped treason charges again him. Solzhenitsyn, who had always made clear
he wanted to die in Russia, began to envisage a homecoming.
After 20 years of away from his home country, Solzhenitsyn at last made a
hero's return to Russia in May 1994, more than two years after the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
He arrived in Magadan, an eastern Russian city at the heart of the gulag
network, and bowed down to touch the earth in tribute to the millions who died
in the camps.
Once settled in Moscow, Solzhenitsyn continue to act as his country's
conscience, lamenting Russia's spiritual decay and calling for a moral revival
based on Christian values.
For the most part, however, his message was lost on his compatriots. State
television axed his talk show due to lack of viewers, and demand for his books
dwindled.
Russian president Boris Yeltsin tried in vain to gain his sympathy -
Solzhenitsyn snubbed his attempt to award him the Order of St Andrew, Russia's
highest honor, in 1998.
Speaking to the State Duma (parliament) in October 1994, Solzhenitsyn blasted
the new capitalist Russia. "What we have today could in no way be described as
democracy," he said. "Today, we have an oligarchy, power limited to a closed
circle."
But Stepan Solzhenitsyn says his father never regretted moving back to Russia.
"He was always very happy that he had returned," he said. "There is only one
home for him. This is his home, and I think that it is a great loss for our
family, but I think also, it is a loss for the country."
When Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the author was initially wary of the
former intelligence officer. But he soon warmed to the new president as the
latter moved against oligarchs and reclaimed state control over some of
Russia's vast energy resources.
In June 2007, Putin awarded him the prestigious State Prize for his
"humanitarian" contribution at a lavish Kremlin ceremony. Solzhenitsyn this
time accepted the award. Too frail to attend, he was represented by his wife
Natalia.
But he retained an ambiguous relationship with the Kremlin, praising Putin for
Russia's revival but denouncing his crackdown on democratic freedoms.
Putin, now prime minister, has called his death "a heavy loss for the whole of
Russia".
Solzhenitsyn's legacy
Russian human-rights activist Lev Ponomaryov discusses the legacy of
Solzhenitsyn in an interview conducted by Yevgenia Nazarets of RFE/RL's Russian
Service.
RFE/RL: Tell us what Alexander Solzhenitsyn meant for you.
Lev Ponomaryov: For me personally, Solzhenitsyn played a major
role. When I was still a schoolboy, I remember thinking of ways to travel to
Ryazan, where he worked as a teacher, in order to meet him. Even back then I
had heard about him - I knew that he had returned from the camps. I knew that
he had written his first works, and I knew that they were being published. For
me then, he was a leader of resistance to the regime - already in the 10th
grade, I was an anti-communist. However, I was never able to make that trip,
but his books formed my entire life. Solzhenitsyn is one of those bright
examples of a person who stood up to the regime. And he was lucky enough to
survive, to show others that it is not only possible to stand up, but to
survive as well. For this reason, to me, he was a leader of the resistance.
But he was also a great writer. It is rare for someone to be both the one and
the other. That's why we will remember him and mourn him.
And he was also a social figure. And here I must take pause, sigh, and say that
I did not always agree with him. I did not always agree with his social
positions. But all the same, he was a powerful thinker and a great social
figure. He had a different point of view that did not overlap with mine. But he
always stirred up the minds both of those who agreed with him and of those who
did not. And for that, one must take off one's hat, bow one's head, and say,
"Ashes to ashes".
RFE/RL: How important is Solzhenitsyn's experience of resisting
the regime for Russia today?
Ponomaryov: Resistance is always useful. A person who has the
courage to speak, to write (you will recall that he wrote a letter to a friend
in which he criticized the regime), to resist in the camps and survive - that
person is always extremely useful. He is simply a symbol - that person becomes
a symbol for everyone who follows the path of resisting a political regime.
When a person does not make compromises, that is always important, that is
always ... I am not a young man and I do not want to speak in overblown words
like "beacon" or "symbol." Maybe this isn't correct, but it is true. There are
names that become exactly that - symbols. And Solzhenitsyn is a symbol of
resistance.
RFE/RL: You became interested in Solzhenitsyn where you were
still a young person. What do you think - when should people become acquainted
with this writer, with this public figure, with this leader of the resistance?
Ponomaryov: I suspect that young people today do not know that he
is a symbol of resistance. I think that little has been said of this in recent
time. And, naturally, he was an old man and he himself moved somewhat into the
shadows, occupied himself with his literary works. His relationship with
[Vladimir] Putin was impossible to understand, but this is not important. It
was all just a crust that will fall away. It might be of interest to us right
now, but it will pass into history. He will enter history as a great Russian
writer, as a person who stood up to the totalitarian Soviet regime.
RFE/RL: At different times, the circle of people who read
Solzhenitsyn has changed. In the dissident years, in Soviet times - they were
certain people. When perestroika began, mass interest in his works was
observed. And what role do his literary works play now?
Ponomaryov: I am not a big expert in this area. But all the same,
his The Gulag Archipelago will be known to all generations. It will be
read and quoted. He has various works. There is One Day In The Life Of Ivan
Denisovich, which many people know virtually by heart and which was one
of the first literary works - one might say a small masterpiece - about the
Soviet camps. On the other hand, he has the almost scholarly book The Gulag
Archipelago, which is simultaneously literary, where he spent many
years of his life collecting an enormous amount of facts, where he laid bare
the gulag, enabled the West to understand what the Soviet regime was, its full
criminality. I think that, at the very least, these two masterpieces will
remain for the ages. And, of course, many others.
Peter Vail is the managing editor of RFE/RL's Russian Service. The views
expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not necessarily
reflect those of RFE/RL.
Copyright (c) 2007, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
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