The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center's blog for following the latest developments related to the author, his writings, and his legacy.
Solzhenitsyn appreciated the privacy that settling in the woods of rural Vermont afforded him. On Vermont Public Radio, Mary McCallum ponders if that level of privacy would be possible in this 24/7 online era.
In the May/June 2018 issue of Touchstone, L. Joseph Letendre reflects on the legacy of Solzhenitsyn's commencement address, "A World Split Apart", to Harvard graduates in 1978.
“Solzhenitsyn’s passing remark… that universities were becoming as much a slave to intellectual/political fashion as the press had become has only grown more pertinent.”
From September 6-9, 2018, the Institute of Russian Language, History, and Culture of Lyndon State College and Northern Vermont University will host a conference welcoming Solzhenitsyn researchers, including members of the academic community, writers, and museum officers. This International Scientific Conference is titled "Reading Solzhenitsyn" and it seeks to commemorate the contributions of the author, who would have turned 100 this year.
The official languages of the conference will be English and Russian. Presented papers will be included in a book to be published after the conference. The organizing committee is accepting applications currently.
Professor Kevin J. McKenna, a professor in the Department of German and Russian at the University of Vermont, plans to teach a semester-long course devoted to the fiction writing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The course description, provided by the department:
"Often compared both to Fyodor Dostoevsky as well as Leo Tolstoy, the fiction of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. His works remain to this day so central to Russian literary culture that in 2006 Russian national television named them, along with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, as the major national literary achievements in Russian fiction. In 2011, Time Magazine described Solzhenitsyn’s literary works as the main artistic achievements of the 20th century. To this day Solzhenitsyn’s writings are credited with exposing and “bringing down” the Soviet Union.
The primary goal of this World Lit. 018/118 course will be to derive an understanding of the interplay between 20th-century history, society, and art as depicted in the fictional universe of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novels, Cancer Ward) and In the First Circle). Closely related in theme, style and substance to the novels, his short story “Matryona’s House” and novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich will complete the reading list for this course. At all points of contact with Solzhenitsyn’s fiction one cannot help but pose one of Tolstoy’s original questions: “By what do we [humans] live/ Чем мы живём” and the 20th-century Soviet-era correlation “how does one survive with his/her conscience intact?” To better understand why a literary giant like Solzhenitsyn could not publish his fiction in his own country, this course will also consider the major philosophical, ethical and political constructs of Soviet “socialist realism” as practiced in the USSR in the 20th century."
Foreword Reviews recently announced their 2017 Indie Finalists; they have named March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1 as a finalist in the History category. Foreword Reviews highlights the best of the indie book publishing industry, including independent publishers and university presses. University of Note Dame Press published Book 1 of March 1917 in November 2017 as the first volume in its ongoing The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series.
“Histories tend to collapse events into a single narrative; Solzhenitsyn insists on plurality. He explodes the Russian Revolution back into myriad voices and parts, disarrayed and chaotic, detailed and tumultuous. Combining historical research with newspaper headlines, street action, cinematic screenplay, and fictional characterization, the book is as immersive as binge-worthy television, no little thanks to this excellent translation that renders its prose as masterful in English as it was in Russian.”
A review of March 1917, Book 1 by Lee Trepanier was recently published at VoegelinView.
“Although it too can be distorted, literature has the unique capacity to persuade us of its truth when our own experience of life confirms it: it “bears within itself its own verification.”... March 1917 accomplishes this feat by concretely portraying the chaos, confusion, and tumult of the February Revolution. Solzhenitsyn’s depiction of the bread riots is an example where literature can portray more accurately–and more beautifully–than a historical analysis.”
