Solzhenitsyn: Prospects for Russia and the West

Another detailed examination by Will Morrisey of Solzhenitsyn’s essays, this time about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Igor Shafarevich, eds.: . From Under the Rubble. Translations under the direction of Michael Scammell. Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1981 [1974] —

and

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Warning to the West. Harris L. Coulter and Nataly Martin translation. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976.

For Morrisey’s earlier post examining Rebuilding Russia and The Russian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century, see here.

Learn more about Solzhenitsyn’s essays here.

Warning to the West will soon be re-issued in paperback by Vintage/Penguin. UK/Commonwealth readers will be able to buy paperback or e-book from Penguin or wherever books are sold. For USA readers, paperback will be most easily obtained from Amazon.

Touchstone review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

A new review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1 by James Altena at Touchstone (subscription required).

Solzhenitsyn on the Future of Russia

Will Morrisey has posted an extensive and careful recapitulation of two of Solzhenitsyn’s essays on the future of Russia: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals. Alexis Klimoff translation. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991; and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Russian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century. Yermolai Solzhenitsyn translation. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.

These two essays might be said to be part of a quartet of pieces examining Russia’s place in the world and potential paths to the future:

• Letter to the Soviet Leaders (1973)

• Rebuilding Russia (1990)

• The Russian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century (1994)

• Russia in Collapse (1998)

Learn more here.

Claremont Review on Between Two Millstones, Book 1

A thoughful review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1 by James Pontuso for the Claremont Review of Books.

“Far from being a political extremist, Solzhenitsyn showed extraordinary prescience when analyzing what later would be called the post-Communist world. He predicted that Sakharov’s dream of establishing a peaceful global community was not feasible and that globalization would eventually create nationalist movements. He worried that the collapse of Communism would rekindle ethnic hatreds long kept in check under Communist tyranny. He feared that the collapse of the Soviet Union might result in a war between Ukraine and Russia. He foresaw that nations emerging from Communist rule would have long, difficult transitions to functioning civil societies. Free and democratic government depends on citizens’ voluntarily obeying the rule of law, but citizens did nothing freely under Communism.”

— James F. Pontuso

Voegelin View on Between Two Millstones

There are two recent items of interest at VoegelinView: Lee Trepanier’s review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1, and his interview about the book with Prof. Daniel J. Mahoney.

“Between Two Milestones is a testament not only to the courage and clear-sightedness of Solzhenitsyn but also to the evils of the Soviet Union and the pathologies that still plague the West. For those who wish to know about the man and his writing, this book is a critical book to consult and read. Insightful, surprisingly humorous at places, and always focused on those things that make life worth living – family, God, culture, and one’s own country – Between Two Milestones illuminates the struggles one faces when living in the West and what one can make of it in this free but empty civilization.”

— Lee Trepanier

“I was particularly impressed that Solzhenitsyn already saw in the mid-to-late 1970’s that many in America and the West hated “true Russia” more than they opposed its Bolshevik oppressors. His mission remained the same: he called “for a fight to the death against Communism, yet without in any way targeting Russia.” How little this position—and imperative—remains understood in America today! Even among those who admire Solzhenitsyn, there are many who are deeply suspicious of a Russia where patriotism and religion truly flourish (I am not speaking of imperialism or religious extremism).”

— Daniel J. Mahoney

SF BOOK REVIEW: BETWEEN TWO MILLSTONES, BOOK 1

A review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1 from San Francisco Book Review on 7 February.

“In the Soviet Union, he spoke out against the government. As an exile, he no longer has a reason or motivation to speak out. He is more of his country than of the western world, and yet he is endlessly pursued by a ravenous press corps eager for the latest statement by a famous defector. He wants to make a home for his family, and he has an obligation to order his life and papers. He is a writer with a necessarily solitary occupation, yet he is put upon by outside forces that feel to him as inexorable as Soviet oppression. He does not yearn for a western life. He aches for freedoms in his country. He is a man between worlds, without a country. This will be enjoyed by serious readers of this author.”

— Julia McMichael

Richard Reinsch reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1

Over at Law & Liberty, Richard Reinsch reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“Solzhenitsyn remained a Russian patriot. His literary mission was the restoration of his homeland to a condition of liberty and flourishing that Leninist-Stalinism destroyed. This is the ultimate truth of the recently released English edition of Book 1 of Between Two Milestones, which is Solzhenitsyn’s account of his forced exile in the West in 1974.

And by noting that atheism is the animating core of Marxism and its persecution of Christians in Russia, Solzhenitsyn touched a different nerve: that of the unofficial atheism in the chattering classes of Western capitals.

His opposition to a full tilt capitalist industrial economy should have earned him at least style points with his detractors. Except that he didn’t exactly frame it in the messianic environmental language they preferred. Solzhenitsyn spoke of self-limitation and curbing appetites and desires as much as he spoke of ecological harm. The environmental and human devastation wrought by Soviet industrial policy must have played a role in his thinking. How could it not?

From his adopted home in Cavendish he wrote prodigiously, and upcoming editions of the Notre Dame Press catalog will bear witness to it, including Book II of his exile memoirs. Upon returning to a fledgling post-communist Russia in 1994, he thanked the people of Cavendish at, where else, their town assembly. There is genuine gratitude expressed by Solzhenitsyn in this short address for the freedoms and flourishing enjoyed in the Green Mountain State. His children had grown up strong. The Solzhenitsyn’s had found their measure in Vermont, in America. Perhaps the Russian patriot touched the best of our own country while here.
”

Wall Street Journal review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

Bertrand M. Patenaude in today’s Wall Street Journal reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“From the moment he leaves the Soviet Union and takes residence in Europe, the famous exile feels overwhelmed by unwanted attention and demands on his time, including beckoning letters from Sens. Jesse Helms and Henry Jackson. “America, the consumer of everything new and sensational, was awaiting me with open arms,” he writes. He feels torn between his urge to withdraw from public view in order to write and his desire to speak out about the dangers posed to the unwary West by détente. He is besieged by reporters hounding him for a quote and photographing his every move. “You are worse than the KGB!” he explodes.”

First Things: Review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

Ryszard Legutko in the forthcoming January 2019 issue of First Things reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“It is to Solzhenitsyn’s credit that he was able to look at Western society with a sharp eye, unaffected by the homegrown clichés that lulled many Westerners into complacency. He took none of those clichés for granted—that truth and goodness are authoritarian, that we must distinguish between morality and legality, that a modern society is inherently pluralistic, and several others—and having confronted them with an elementary experience, he discovered not only that they were wrong, but also that the opposite may be closer to the truth.”

New Yorker notice of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

The New Yorker “briefly noted” the publication of Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“In 1974, Solzhenitsyn, the novelist, dissident, and former political prisoner, was deported from the Soviet Union and stripped of his citizenship. In that moment, he was the most famous writer in the world, celebrated—and despised—for his great “literary experiment” chronicling the Gulag Archipelago and for his independence of mind. This first volume of his memoirs covers the next four years, when he lived first in Frankfurt, then in Vermont. It is distinguished mostly by Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of the initial pain of exile, his bristling reactions to Western mores, and his search for a quiet place to finish his work and live out his life.”

TLS review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

A reflection and review by Stephen Kotkin in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) of Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“Many – perhaps most – of Solzhenitsyn’s critics viewed him as an arch-reactionary, a nineteenth-century mind in the twentieth. But in his turn away from Western universalism to nativism and traditional values, in his revolt against liberal condescension, he appears to have foreseen the twenty-first. ”

Gary Saul Morson reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1

The eminent Russian scholar Gary Saul Morson reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1 in the Winter 2019 issue of The American Scholar.

“When Solzhenitsyn called for gradual change to democracy and observed that “it is not authoritarianism that is intolerable, but . . . arbitrariness and illegality,” Western journalists gasped. When he castigated the shallowness of reporters, they accused him of opposing a free press. And when they discovered he had embraced Russian Orthodox Christianity, and hoped for a Russian spiritual rebirth, they called him a dangerous, perhaps fascist, nationalist. This charge particularly mystified Solzhenitsyn, because in his “Letter” he recommend Russia give up its domination over Eastern Europe and let the “peripheral nations” of the Soviet Union go their own way: “Let us find the strength, sense, and courage to put our own house in order before we busy ourselves with the cares of the entire planet.” What sort of nationalist calls for his country to give up its empire?”

— Gary Saul Morson

Spectator review of Between Two Millstones

“Solzhenitsyn, Russian Nobelist and noblest Russian”: The Spectator reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“I don’t know if this is relevant, to use a Sixties word, to the emigres of our own scattering age, though our rulers might profit from this injunction of Solzhenitsyn’s:

‘The aims of a great empire and the moral health of the people are incompatible. We should not presume to invent international tasks and bear the cost of them so long as our people is in such moral disarray.’

The Soviets at whom he directed this were as obdurately indifferent as Bushes and Clintons to the moral health of their countrymen and the corrosive effects of empire.”

— Bill Kauffman, Spectator

Two brief reviews of BTM-1

David Luhrssen at Shepherd Express and Mark Movsesian at Law and Religion Forum with brief reviews of Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“Abruptly released by the KGB and sent to the West, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was like a man who emerged from a dark room into the blinding light of high noon. ”

— David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express

NY Journal of Books review of Between Two Millstones, Book 1

The New York Journal of Books reviews Between Two Millstones, Book 1.

“Between Two Millstones picks up the story of Solzhenitsyn’s remarkable and courageous literary and personal life where The Oak and the Calf and Invisible Allies, his two earlier memoirs, left off. It is a tale of the first stirrings of freedom in the West mixed with the fear of further Soviet retribution, the unceasing demands of celebrity, frustration with the Western elite’s commercialism, secularism, and legalism, and the personal desire to be left alone to complete his most important literary project, The Red Wheel. ”

— Francis P. Sempa

A Reflection on the 40th Anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address

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.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Commencement Address at Harvard University-8 June 1978. {Russian audio with English-translation audio overlay.} . Full Russian text here: http://antology.igrunov.ru/authors/solzh/1121759601.htmlю . Full English text here: www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart

1917: DARKNESS FALLS

Daniel J. Mahoney's review of March 1917, Book 1 (originally appearing in National Review) has been re-published today at VoegelinView.

Claremont Review of Books: MARCH 1917, BOOK 1

Guy Burnett reviews March 1917, Book 1 in tandem with Catherine Merridale's Lenin on the Train.

“There was no shortage of blame, but Solzhenitsyn shows how the most dangerous blunders leading up to October 1917 were the Czar’s. He presents Nicholas II as a naïve but devoted family man, a great neighbor but poor leader, whose faith in the protestors was his undoing.”

The Quarterly Conversation: March 1917, Book 1

The novelist Jeff Bursey reviews March 1917, Book 1, suggesting that it is very much a modernist novel, even as History herself emerges as a "skillfully drawn character in this portrait of Russia on the eve of its transformation".

“What we have, so far, of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s mega-novel The Red Wheel is correspondingly inventive, despairing, sharp, acidic, lyrical, and panoramic, with shafts of insight illuminating murky or forgotten corners.”

Will Morrisey Review of March 1917, Book 1

A probing review of March 1917, Book 1, posted today.

“Solzhenitsyn has made this mob of characters and passions, this kinesis of revolution, intelligible. For this his work deserves to be read not only in Russia but everywhere. The thoughts of the characters, their understandable confusion, their elation or despair, come through without any resort to moral relativism. In scenes that parallel one another, Solzhenitsyn gives us mind after mind, capturing the insights but also the illusions of each. When he intervenes in his own voice he speaks not with narrative omniscience, which he leaves to God, but with narrative judgment, which as a Christian he shares a bit with God, thanks to God.”