Solzhenitsyn in new Roger Kimball anthology
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Roger Kimball—man of letters extraordinaire—has published The Critical Temper, an anthology of the finest writing to appear in the New Criterion over its first 40 years. Included is the marvelous excerpt from Chapter 1 of Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones, Book 1, depicting the Swiss half-canton Appenzell and its ancient voting rituals that Solzhenitsyn witnessed just before his first journey to North America in April 1975.
Hear Roger Kimball discuss the anthology below, and scroll further down for a quote from Solzhenitsyn’s memoir.
“So no, this was definitely not the least bit like back home. Having unanimously re-elected their beloved Landamann, entrusting him with the formation of the kind of government he wanted, they immediately rejected all his major proposals. And now he is to govern! I had never seen or heard of such a democracy, and was filled with respect (especially after Landamann Broger’s speech). This is the kind of democracy we could do with. (Were not perhaps our medieval town assemblies—the veche—very much like these?)
The Swiss Confederation, established in 1291, is in fact now the oldest democracy in the world. It did not spring from the ideas of the Enlightenment, but directly from the ancient forms of communal life. The rich, industrial, crowded cantons, however, have lost all this, conforming to Europe for many years now (and have adopted everything European from miniskirts to sexual poses plastiques). But in Appenzell, on the other hand, much has been kept as of old.
How great is the diversity of the Earth, and how many unknown, unseen possibilities it offers us! There is so much for us to think about for a Russia of the future—if we are only given the chance to think.”