The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center's blog for following the latest developments related to the author, his writings, and his legacy.
Over at Jeremy Beer’s Philanthropy Daily, in their continuing series “Readings for Troubled Times”, Robert George considers the prophetic aspects of the Harvard Address, while Ryan Hanning recommends Matryona’s Home “and the enduring beauty of virtue”.
Over at Law and Liberty, Scott Yenor has another take on Solzhenitsyn’s great Archipelago chapter, “Our Muzzled Freedom”. (Attentive readers will recall that we mentioned another paraphrase of that chapter’s famous list a few weeks ago.
“In the style and language of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, then, it is worth considering the attributes of America’s new, “muzzled freedom.”*”
The new mural, at 29, Radishchev Boulevard in Tver.
In the city of Tver, about 100 miles northwest of Moscow, street painter Viktor Lebedev adorned the side wall of an apartment building at 32, Smolensky Lane with a large mural on the occasion of Solzhenitsyn’s 100th anniversary in 2018. Next to the author’s portrait were the words: “Live Not by Lies. A.I. Solzhenitsyn”.
The mural immediately caused division, with some angry voices decrying Solzhenitsyn as a traitor who helped destroy the USSR. One of those opposed is a building resident, and he filed a complaint to stop the mural, since a municipal permit had not been granted. As the case wound its way through the legal system, Communist activists painted over the “not” (thus: “Live by Lies.”). On 4 July 2020, they painted over the mural entirely.
On 11 July 2020, at the behest of the governor of Tver oblast, Igor Rudenya, it was announced that another location had been found; that the artist, Viktor Lebedev, had agreed to put the work up again; and that the new mural at 29, Radishchev Boulevard, “has already become a notable spot, frequently photographed by passersby.”
It appears that the Communist activists have become the latest victims of the age-old rule, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Read a machine translation of the story here.
The old mural, at 32, Smolensky Lane in Tver.
Leona Toker of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a brief review of MARCH-2 in the Summer issue of Russian Review.
“If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago presented a mindset-changing view of the history of the USSR, the historical novels that make up his epopee The Red Wheel are a counterweight to the heroics of the October Revolution. Solzhenitsyn considers the February Revolution of 1917 not just a prelude to the October Bolshevik usurpation of power but a seminal event—the catastrophe of the Russian Empire, which, despite the idealistic dreams of liberals and social democrats, led to a new form of tyranny, incalculable suffering and mortality of the population, and waste of the country’s talents and resources.”
Here is a very substantial review of MARCH-2 by the Canadian novelist Jeff Bursey.
“It’s the style, the story, the characters, the form, the way with words, the invention, the humor, the ideas, and the attitude the work contains that appeal, plus such things as escapism, confirmation of beliefs, upending of positions, expression of inchoate feelings, and the desire to be astonished and informed.”
An impressive and smart review of March 1917, Book 2, also taking into account its precursors—August 1914 and October 1916, as well as Book 1 of March.
““Revolutionary truths,” Solzhenitsyn writes, “have a great quality: even hearing them with their own ears, the doomed don’t understand.” There’s a moment in the revelry, after the soldiers have all donned red, after every policeman has been shot or bayoneted, when intellectuals who called loudest for revolution realize there are no patrols to fend off drunken gangs, nor courts to repudiate armed students arresting whomever they please for “crimes against the people.” In this brave new world, rule of law has been displaced by the rule of gun-toting loudmouths. It’s too late for them, and for the millions who will be subjected to lifelong suffering because ideologically enthralled intellectuals hammered away at society’s foundation until it collapsed. After Lenin comes Stalin. He always does.”
