Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece

Building on his valuable overview of those volumes of The Red Wheel published in English as of January 2021 (i.e., through March 1917, Book 2), the estimable Robert D. Kaplan continues to engage with the argument and action of Solzhenitsyn’s great work on the Russian Revolution now that Book 3 of March 1917 is out.

“But did it have to happen as it happened? Solzhenitsyn does not say it, but if the royal family had not been executed — and if a quasi-constitutional monarchy had been established — the twentieth century would have been far less bloody. Instead, the abdication and subsequent arrest of Nicholas II and his family led to a vacuum of authority. The worse the anarchy, the worse the solution. Meanwhile, Lenin, brooding in his Zurich exile, had his mind fixed on the mistakes of the Paris Commune (the insurrection that followed France’s defeat by Prussia in the war of 1870-71). As Solzhenitsyn inhabits the thoughts of Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution-yet-to-come condemns all displays of weakness and humanity. We must seize the banks. We must not be magnanimous. Don’t save people in order to re-educate them; conduct cellar executions instead: “The proletariat had to be taught pitiless mass methods!”

And so it happened thus. As each new book in the series appears in translation, Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel is emerging as the ultimate monument to the perils of illusion and disorder.”

— Robert D. Kaplan

The Revolutionary Chaos of March 1917

Lee Congdon has a fine review of March 1917, Book 3 in the latest issue of National Review.

“But perhaps resistance would have been futile. Not so, according to Solzhenitsyn. The revolutionaries were largely untrained and poorly armed. Because of the relative calm then existing at the front, up to a million soldiers would have been available to retake Petrograd. Thirty thousand would have been more than enough, but the Supreme Command thought only of surrender. “It was a panop­­ticum of weak and incapable men.” Those words reflect Solzhenitsyn’s view that history is radically contingent; nothing is inevitable. The revolution resulted from the action (or inaction) of men and women who could have chosen different paths.

Solzhenitsyn’s highly critical account of the March Revolution is of a piece with his hostile attitude toward all revolutions. He was not opposed to change; quite the contrary. He believed strongly and wrote often that czarist Russia had been in need of a reform program of the kind advanced by Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. Had that great leader not been assassinated in 1911, and had the czar not decided for war, Russia would almost certainly have been spared the revolution to come. In the fall of 1993, Solzhenitsyn gave an address in Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne commemorating the bicentennial of the counterrevolutionary Vendée Uprising. He told those gathered that he would not wish a “great revolution” upon any nation. France, he said, had a Thermidorian reaction that overthrew Robespierre, but the revolution in Russia “was not restrained by any Thermidor as it drove our people on the straight path to a bitter end, to an abyss, to the depths of ruin.” Those words, and Solzhenitsyn’s riveting account of the March Revolution, should give Americans pause.”

— Lee Congdon

March-3 reviewed in Asian Review

Francis P. Sempa reviews the newly released March-3 in the Asian Review of Books.

“When historians and writers of historical fiction look back on events and developments they can sometimes portray them with more understanding and order than they deserve. The best historians and novelists—and Solzhenitsyn was first and foremost a novelist—narrate history through the eyes and ears of the participants who don’t know the outcome of the events they are observing and participating in. In March 1917, Solzhenitsyn presents events through the characters’ perspectives and perceptions at the time, not in hindsight or years afterward, lending authenticity to his narrative by putting us in the room (so to speak) with the statesmen, officers, soldiers and citizens who experienced the chaos of war and revolution.”

— Francis P. Sempa

Has America Become ‘A Realm Beyond Words’?

Over at American Thinker, M.E. Boyd recalls Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address, in light of the political and cultural shockwaves rolling through America today.

“Solzhenitsyn warned that if we continued our moral decline and allowed socialism to replace our free-enterprise system that “Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit, and to a leveling of mankind into death.” He warned us that the path we are on will lead to—a realm beyond words. His colleague, Igor Shafarevich, put it this way: Socialism’s goal is to abolish private property, the family as the organic structure of society, and all religion.”

— M. E. Boyd