The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center's blog for following the latest developments related to the author, his writings, and his legacy.
Learn more about the forthcoming English publication of March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3, due out for the first time in English, translated by Marian Schwartz, 15 October from University of Notre Dame Press.
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Available October 15, 2021, wherever books are sold. Published by University of Notre Dame Press at undpress.nd.edu
In the August issue of Chronicles, Lee Congdon well captures Solzhenitsyn’s profound opposition to the modern “religion of revolution.”
“Solzhenitsyn maintained that such “experiments” had finally undercut the romantic appeal of revolution. People had learned that “revolutions demolish the organic structures of society, disrupt the natural flow of life, destroy the best elements of the population, and give free rein to the worst.” That the lesson has been learned by all may, however, be doubted: Witness the new wave of revolution in American streets. The revolutionaries of the Sixties failed to do what the Bolsheviks did—seize power—and so they had to settle for an incremental revolution, the “long march through the institutions.” The spirit and myth of revolution lived on in the academy and in governmental bureaucracies; it has now been passed on to yet another generation.”
David Deavel, co-editor of Solzhenitsyn and American Culture, reviews BTM-2 in City Journal.
“Today, as America seems more fractured than ever before, Solzhenitsyn’s reflections on how to restore Russia to a state of ordered liberty seem especially pertinent. No theocrat, he did believe, as he said in the Templeton Address, that the modern problem was that “Men have forgotten God.” But he also believed that piety was no substitute for hard thought, spiritual substance, and practical action. His reflections on the need for something more than “the Market” for “a nation’s life” are accompanied by an understanding of the kind of plurality of authorities that can ensure that government stays a servant of the people and not the reverse. Summarizing his booklet Rebuilding Russia, he noted that his principled proposals involved: “‘A Combined System of Government,’ consisting of a rigid vertical to run the state from the top down and a creative zemstvo [smaller local authority] vertical, working from the bottom up—various electoral systems (proportionality, plurality, and absolute majority)—and how to avoid the nation becoming exhausted, their lives in turmoil from these elections.””
