Solzhenitsyn's Resistance to Militant Atheism

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Over at the Christian Post, Bill Connor writes about the continuing relevance of Solzhenitsyn’s Christian message and quotes this passage from the Templeton Lecture:

“It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that ‘revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.’ That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. To achieve its diabolical ends. Communism needs to control a population devoid of religious and national feeling, and this entails the destruction of faith and nationhood.”

The Meaning of an Oath

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The American Conservative, in addition to the ”Stop the Presses” excerpt in its September/October issue we’ve already noted, has also posted an online-only excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, recount how defenseless the stateless Solzhenitsyn felt in the mid-80s, his ill-considered plan to take on US citizenship, and his dramatic change of heart when faced with the words, and the implications, of the citizenship oath.

“Some weeks went by—Alya and I were summoned to that same immigration branch office. An obligatory interview took place, with each of us separately. We had to answer some very simple questions about the constitution. We’d brushed up. But the clerk asked me more, about myself. From lack of practice (I hadn’t conversed in English for years) I listened intently to understand what she was saying. Again, please. —“Are you willing to bear arms on behalf of the United States?” Absolutely not! I hadn’t even been expecting the question. I replied: “But I’m sixty-six.” —“But, still, in principle?” What is this principle? You’ve got young men here of an age to be drafted; they burn their draft cards and get away with it, whereas I, at more than sixty years of age, could be called up? I expressed bewilderment. Then she said that, on the form, I’d already confirmed and signed that I was willing. Wha-a-a-t? (DiLisio had filled it in without the slightest hesitation, and hadn’t told me.) I felt sick. . . . All I could do was mumble, “Well, in principle, not literally . . .””





Stop the Presses

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The American Conservative, in its September/October issue, also has an excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1994 but published here for the first time in English, recount, with vivid flair, the dramatic tale of how The Gulag Archipelago was almost published in the USSR in January 1989, but was ultimately vetoed by Gorbachev himself, who literally stamped his feet at the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir and ordered half a million covers announcing Archipelago to be torn off at the last minute.

“Then someone informed the Central Committee that Zalygin had dared put one line of advance publicity on the cover of the October issue of Novy Mir: it said that in 1989 the journal would publish something (unnamed) by Solzhenitsyn. Zalygin was called to the CC and sternly informed that his escapades were intolerable and that he was smuggling an “enemy” into print. And they gave the printers a direct order: stop the presses! pull the covers off the copies already finished (and there were now almost 500,000 of these)—and shred them. A truly Bolshevik-scale exercise!”