The young British rock star, Winston Marshall (for his remarkable story, start with his famous open letter from last summer), interviews Ignat Solzhenitsyn on a variety of topics, Live Not by Lies prominent among them.
An unexpected parallel drawn between Solzhenitsyn and Charlton Heston, who gave the commencement address at Harvard in 1978 and 1999, respectively.
“Life really does imitate art in the case of two men who visited Harvard: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet novelist, and Charlton Heston, the actor.
As it turns out, these two men spoke to Harvard during the birth years of the millennial generation and what they had to say was nothing less than prophetic.”
A new book thoughtfully illuminates the respective treatments of the Gulag in the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov, even if the editors and contributors generally approach camp literature and testimony from a literary, moral, and philosophical perspective closer to Shalamov than Solzhenitsyn. Two essays stand out: Michael N. Nicholson's lucid and informative account of the genesis of both the Kolyma Tales and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; and Luba Jurgenson's suggestive account of why Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov ended up not collaborating on The Gulag Archipelago.
Happy New Year, dear readers!
Young composer Austin Hamilton writes us: “Last year, I read The Gulag Archipelago and was so moved by his story that I dedicated part of my musical studies in my senior year of college to writing a symphony based off of the book. It was performed and recorded as a part of my senior recital. If nothing else, I'm writing to share my art in memory of Solzhenitsyn and the message he left us with.”
We are touched by Mr Hamilton’s sincerity and talent, and are pleased to share his video below, followed by his own program note.
00:00 Background
02:38 Movement I
10:12 Movement II
18:36 Movement III
The Symphony for the Zeki is written to remember and educate about the systems of gulags in the Soviet Union and their millions of prisoners, known as the zeki. Gulags were labor and death camps run by the government to imprison their own citizens, usually political prisoners. The inspiration for this symphony is rooted in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago, which recounts his own eleven years in labor camps and exile, along with stories from some two-hundred survivors. This book played a pivotal role in the downfall of the Soviet Union and shed light on what was behind the Iron Curtain. Each movement is titled after a chapter from the book.
Movement I: The History of Our Sewage Disposal System opens with La Internationale, which for many years was the Soviet national anthem, and is still used by many socialist and communist parties today. This movement depicts the waves of arrests, interrogations, and transfers of prisoners by train into the Gulag, never to see their families again. Many remember “the sharp nighttime ring or the rude knock at the door.” Many of those who were arrested were later tortured into giving forced confessions.
Movement II: The Archipelago Rises from the Sea describes the time spent within the Gulag. The prisoners experienced unimaginable working conditions, but somehow found the will to continue until the end of their sentence. Yet when prisoners were released, some would quickly pass away, having fought for so long. The prisoners were not the only victims of the Gulag—the torturers’ souls departed “downward from humanity” according to their grievous actions. And that underworld of Russian thieves held the credo: “you today; me tomorrow,” which was their constant reminder of how quickly things could change.
Movement III: The Ascent portrays the rise of the soul of the prisoner within the camp. Solzhenitsyn met Dr. Boris Nikolayevich Kornfeld after an operation on his malignant tumor in the camp hospital. Dr. Kornfeld kept Solzhenitsyn company that night and recounted the story of his conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Before departing, he left this final thought with Solzhenitsyn, which happened to be his final words as he was murdered the next morning: “I have become convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in this life on earth which is undeserved. Superficially it can have nothing to do with what we are guilty of in actual fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and ponder it deeply, you will always be able to hunt down that transgression of yours for which you have now received this blow.” It was this that allowed Solzhenitsyn to accept the atrocities in his life and ascend high above the suffering and pain that surrounded him in the physical world.
Here is an appreciative review of Between Two Millstones, Book 2, that appeared at the University Bookman a few days ago. It approaches things from a rather different angle than previous reviews.
“There are countless takeaways from Book 2 of Between Two Millstones, as well as its predecessor. The set forms the intellectual autobiography of one of the truly great men of the twentieth century, a man whose absence in history would have resulted in much darker and more dire outcomes for all people of this good earth. As with the prophets of old, he was mocked and derided in his own time, and as with those prophets, the passage of time provides the greatest testimony to his importance. It is imperative to study men like Solzhenitsyn, to learn the lessons of their lives and life’s work lest we doom ourselves to tread those same lonely vales. We must remember them, that we may stoke the smoldering fires of our human potential.”
Solzhenitsyn in exile at Kok-Terek, Kazakhstan, 1954–55
On the great author’s birthday, we share with you today one of his perfect, profound “miniatures”, Reflection in Water. Take a moment to read these few lines slowly, and you will be much rewarded.
“On the surface of swift-running water you cannot make out the reflections of objects near or distant. Even if it is not muddy, even if it is free of foam, reflections in the ceaselessly wavering ripples, the boisterously shifting race are deceptive, vague, incomprehensible.
Only when, from stream to stream, the current has reached a placid estuary, or in still backwaters, or in small lakes with never a tremulous wave, can we see in the mirror-smooth surface the smallest leaf of a tree on the bank, every fiber of a fine-combed cloud, and the intense blue depths of the sky.
So it is with you and me. If, try as we may, we never have been and never shall be able to see, to reflect the truth in all its eternal fresh-minted clarity, is it not because we are still in motion, still living?…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Marissa Moss reviews March 1917, Book 3 at the New York Journal of Books.
“This kind of writing shows Solzhenitsyn’s impressive novelistic skills at creating characters, including those based on real people. This mix of styles makes for gripping reading, placing us in the midst of this whirlwind of confusion. Revolutions aren’t simple and there isn’t a single person in charge. By revealing the history through a range of different characters’ experiences, the events feel personal, many small “nodes” converging into a momentous wave.”
The first review of the newly-published March 1917, Book 3 (“March-3”) is already out! A comprehensive piece by Dan Mahoney, summing up all the key action and situation. The book is available now, both as hardcover and as e-book, wherever books are sold, including on the publisher’s website and on Amazon.
“The reader once again finds himself or herself in medias res, caught up in dramatic revolutionary events which have now spread out from Petrograd the capital to the whole of the Russian empire. Russian “society,” as it had called itself for more than a half century to distinguish itself from an allegedly repellent Tsarist state order, is at once hypnotized and inebriated by a revolutionary spirit that sees no good in the passing order, confuses freedom with the absence of all hierarchy, authority, and order, and that above all sees no enemies to the Left. If wild and reckless street scenes dominated the first two books of March 1917, the revolutionary self-enslavement of civil society is the dominant note in the third book which covers the days from March 16th to March 22nd, 1917, although the streets do remain restless and chaotic. What Freud called “the reality principle” is almost nowhere to be found in the consciousness of the principal actors under discussion. Revolutionary inebriation abounds.
”
The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 3 is available today for the first time in English from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold.
The action of Book 3 (out of four) is set during March 16–22, 1917. In Book 3, the Romanov dynasty ends and the revolution starts to roll out from Petrograd toward Moscow and the Russian provinces. The dethroned Emperor Nikolai II makes his farewell to the Army and is kept under guard with his family. In Petrograd, the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies continue to exercise power in parallel. The war hero Lavr Kornilov is appointed military chief of Petrograd. But the Soviet’s “Order No. 1” reaches every soldier, undermining the officer corps and shaking the Army to its foundations. Many officers, including the head of the Baltic Fleet, the progressive Admiral Nepenin, are murdered. Black Sea Fleet Admiral Kolchak holds the revolution at bay; meanwhile, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the emperor’s uncle, makes his way to military headquarters, naïvely thinking he will be allowed to take the Supreme Command.
We remind Solzhenitsyn readers of the overall sequence of the 10-volume Red Wheel:
Node I: August 1914, Books 1 & 2 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published in one volume)
Node II: November 1916, Books 1 & 2 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published in one volume)
Node III: March 1917, Book 1 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 2 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 3 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 4 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node IV: April 1917, Book 1 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node IV: April 1917, Book 2 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
To inform readers about Solzhenitsyn’s system of “Nodes”, and also to explain the definitive term “Node” (instead of the older “Knot”), here is a portion of the Publisher’s Note that accompanies each of the Notre Dame volumes:
The English translations by H.T. Willetts of August 1914 and November 1916, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1989 and 1999, respectively, appeared as Knot I and Knot II. The present translation, in accordance with the wishes of the Solzhenitsyn estate, has chosen the term “Node” as more faithful to the author’s intent. Both terms refer, as in mathematics, to discrete points on a continuous line. In a 1983 interview with Bernard Pivot, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described his narrative concept as follows: “The Red Wheel is the narrative of revolution in Russia, its movement through the whirlwind of revolution. This is an immense scope of material, and . . . it would be impossible to describe this many events and this many characters over such a lengthy stretch of time. That is why I have chosen the method of nodal points, or Nodes. I select short segments of time, of two or three weeks’ duration, where the most vivid events unfold, or else where the decisive causes of future events are formed. And I describe in detail only these short segments. These are the Nodes. Through these nodal points I convey the general vector, the overall shape of this complex curve.”
Concluding today, National Review publishes three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s about-to-be-released , The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 3, translated by Marian Schwartz, available Friday, for the first time in English, from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold. (For Tuesday’s excerpt, go here. For yesterday’s, here.) Today’s selection—the closing chapter of Book 3—shows Emperor Nikolai II, just hours after his careless abdication on March 15, 1917, preoccupied with the health of his children rather than the fate of his abandoned people. He is roused by his Empress just enough to be force-paraded in front of a “Soviet” commissar whose overt malice portends the ruin to come.
Click here to read the full chapter at National Review.
“Starker yet were his snake eyes, they burned with hatred. The commissar’s face twisted, and he was shaking feverishly.
In front of this vivid appearance of malice, the Emperor stopped, woke up—and felt it. On his face, puffy with weariness, the meaning became apparent—as did his exhaustion.
He swayed a little from foot to foot. He jerked one shoulder. And was about to turn and go—but couldn’t, out of politeness, not nod to the group in parting.
He nodded.
And walked away, his step unsteady—but rather than go very far forward, in the direction he had been heading, he went back to from whence he had come.”
Beginning yesterday, National Review publishes three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s about-to-be-released , The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 3, translated by Marian Schwartz, available Friday, for the first time in English, from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold. (For yesterday’s excerpt, go here.) Today’s selection depicts the first meeting, on March 17, 1917, of the helpless Council of Ministers of the new Provisional Government headed by sundry liberals and socialists. In a matter of hours, they heedlessly sweep away much of the state and police apparatus of a vast empire while Prime Minister Georgi Lvov, a soft and ineffectual left-liberal, muses about how a truly free society shouldn’t need hierarchy or authority.
Click here to read the full chapter at National Review.
“They all realized they had to begin with major issues of principle and then everything else would come clear. But not in a single head, dusted with the fuss, patchiness, and jerkiness of these past few days, did a single issue become clear—not even how to formulate it. Besides, today was just the first night they’d slept, and they weren’t over their exhaustion.
Surely there must have been something, though. Oh, there was.
They sat around the big table, stretching significance over their faces.
Yes, apparently there was a big question, much bigger? The Constituent Assembly!
Specifically: in which building would we convene it?”
Beginning today, National Review publishes three excerpts in three days from Solzhenitsyn’s about-to-be-released , The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 3, translated by Marian Schwartz, available Friday, for the first time in English, from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold. Today’s selection presents a riveting account of the arrest of Admiral Adrian Nepenin, a progressive admiral who had welcomed the February Revolution that led to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime, but who now finds himself the victim of an insurrection by revolutionary sailors. All military authority has broken down even as Russia is still a belligerent in the First World War. In a subsequent chapter, Nepenin will be cruelly murdered.
Click here to read the full chapter at National Review.
“Nepenin sat in total shock. Up until the day before yesterday, only the Emperor could have removed him. But now the Emperor had removed himself. Nepenin couldn’t immediately picture to whom the Commander of the Baltic Fleet now reported. There was no such thing as reporting to the government or even the Minister of the Navy. The new government didn’t even have a Minister of the Navy. Guchkov held both positions. Guchkov was generally of like mind with all the Young Turks, but there was no way right now to verify and support like-mindedness by telegraph.
But something had to be decided.
What could be decided, though, if the Emperor Paul I, where everything had begun yesterday, had already sent a wireless message to all ships to carry out only Maksimov’s orders and not Nepenin’s?
The Emperor Paul had a “central committee of ships’ deputies.”
No, Nepenin could not surrender his power—this was now the competence of . . . the Provisional Government?
But how could he prevent it?
No matter what Nepenin thought, he no longer had the authority.
”
Here below is the webcast of the March-3 book launch that took place this past Thursday, 7th October, with panelists Daniel Mahoney, Marian Schwartz, and Stepan Solzhenitsyn, moderated by Kennan Institute director Matthew Rojansky, discussing the new book.
Roger Kimball—man of letters extraordinaire—has published The Critical Temper, an anthology of the finest writing to appear in the New Criterion over its first 40 years. Included is the marvelous excerpt from Chapter 1 of Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones, Book 1, depicting the Swiss half-canton Appenzell and its ancient voting rituals that Solzhenitsyn witnessed just before his first journey to North America in April 1975.
Hear Roger Kimball discuss the anthology below, and scroll further down for a quote from Solzhenitsyn’s memoir.
“So no, this was definitely not the least bit like back home. Having unanimously re-elected their beloved Landamann, entrusting him with the formation of the kind of government he wanted, they immediately rejected all his major proposals. And now he is to govern! I had never seen or heard of such a democracy, and was filled with respect (especially after Landamann Broger’s speech). This is the kind of democracy we could do with. (Were not perhaps our medieval town assemblies—the veche—very much like these?)
The Swiss Confederation, established in 1291, is in fact now the oldest democracy in the world. It did not spring from the ideas of the Enlightenment, but directly from the ancient forms of communal life. The rich, industrial, crowded cantons, however, have lost all this, conforming to Europe for many years now (and have adopted everything European from miniskirts to sexual poses plastiques). But in Appenzell, on the other hand, much has been kept as of old.
How great is the diversity of the Earth, and how many unknown, unseen possibilities it offers us! There is so much for us to think about for a Russia of the future—if we are only given the chance to think.”
This Thursday, 7th October, at 2pm New York (7pm London, 9pm Moscow), watch the live webcast with panelists Daniel Mahoney, Marian Schwartz, and Stepan Solzhenitsyn discussing the new book. Send your questions by email to kennan@wilsoncenter.org, or tweet @KennanInstitute.
In the Summer 2021 issue of Modern Age, Emina Melonic offers an especially thoughtful and discerning review of Between Two Millstones, Book 2 (BTM-2).
“Solzhenitsyn’s life in America was attended by sorrow and fatigue but also by displays of great strength. He appears in this volume as a man afraid of running out of time to make a contribution to Russia’s rebirth. He has immense gratitude for small corners of Vermont, but his soul aches because he knows that he “had to get to Russia in time to die there.” This memoir exemplifies the difficult question of belonging. Without slipping into clichés, Solzhenitsyn challenges both émigré and American alike to seek the truth, not only of one’s own existence, but also that of a nation.”
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The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center supports explorations into the life and writings of the Nobel Laureate and Russian writer and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
