Description
Book SynopsisThe great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is widely recognized as one of the most consequential human beings of the twentieth century. Through his writings and moral witness, he illumined the nature of totalitarianism and helped bring down an ‘evil empire.’ His courage and tenacity are acknowledged even by his fiercest critics. Yet the world-class novelist, historian, and philosopher (one uses the latter term in its capacious Russian sense) has largely been eclipsed by a caricature that has transformed a measured and self-critical patriot into a ferocious nationalist, a partisan of local self-government into a quasi-authoritarian, a man of faith and reason into a narrow-minded defender of Orthodoxy. The caricature, widely dispensed in the press, and too often taken for granted, gets in the way of a thoughtful and humane confrontation with the “other” Solzhenitsyn, the true Solzhenitsyn, who is a writer and thinker of the first rank and whose spirited defense of liberty is never divorced from moderation. It is to the recovery of this Solzhenitsyn that this book is dedicated.
This book above all explores philosophical, political, and moral themes in Solzhenitsyn’s two masterworks, The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel, as well as in his great European novel In the First Circle. We see Solzhenitsyn as analyst of revolution, defender of the moral law, phenomenologist of ideological despotism, and advocate of “resisting evil with force.” Other chapters carefully explore Solzhenitsyn’s conception of patriotism, his dissection of ideological mendacity, and his controversial, but thoughtful and humane discussion of the “Jewish Question” in the Russian – and Soviet twentieth century. Some of Solzhenitsyn’s later writings, such as the “binary tales” that he wrote in the 1990s, are subject to critically appreciative analysis. And a long final chapter comments on Solzhenitsyn’s July 2007 Der Spiegel interview, his last word to Russia and the West. He is revealed to be a man of faith and freedom, a patriot but not a nationalist, and a principled advocate of self-government for Russia and the West.
A final Appendix reproduces the beautiful Introduction (“The Gift of Incarnation”) that the author’s widow, Natalia Solzhenitsyn, wrote to the 2009 Russian abridgment of The Gulag Archipelago, a work that is now taught in Russian high schools.
Table of ContentsForeword
Chapter 1
An Anguished’ Love of Country: Solzhenitsyn’s Paradoxical Middle Path
The Ideological Deformation of Reality
Recovering Truth and Memory
A False Consensus
A “Lucid” Love of Country
An Exacting Patriotism
A War on Two Fronts
A New Mission
Self–Inflicted Wounds
The Pathologies of the Russian Right
Orthodox Universalism: The Other Extreme
The Question of Tone
A Theorist of Self–Government
Beyond Tired Polemics
Chapter 2
“The Active Struggle Against Evil”: Reflections on a Theme in Solzhenitsyn
Vorotyntsev and Stolypin
A Pusillanimous Monarch
Moral Freedom and Political Liberty
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
The Camp Revolts
Resisting Evil With Force
Chapter 3
Nicholas II and the Coming of Revolution
Conclusion
Chapter 4
The Artist as Thinker: Reflections In the First Circle
The Three Pillars
The Two Versions
“But We Are Only Given One Conscience, Too”
A Crucial Encounter
The Decisive Metanoia
Beyond Fanaticism and Skepticism
The Remarkable Continuities of Sotzhenitsyn’s Reflection
Chapter 5
A Phenomenology of Ideological Despotism: Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s “Our Muzzled Freedom”
An Introduction: Theorizing Totalitarianism
The Soul and Barbed Wire
“Free Life” in a Totalitarian Regime
Constant Fear
Secrecy and Mistrust Complicity in the Web of Repression
Betrayal as a Form of Existence
Corruption versus Nobility
The Lie as a Form of Existence
Class Cruelty
Slave Psychology
Conclusion: Remembering Everything
Chapter 6
Two Critics of the Ideological “Lie”: Raymond Aron’s Encounter with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Letter to the Soviet Leaders
A Parisian Encounter
Solzhenitsyn and Sartre
Misconceptions About Russia
Two Spiritual Families?
Chapter 7
Solzhenitsyn, Russia, and the Jews Revisited
From Belligerence to Understanding
Rejecting the Temptation to Blame
Renegades and Revolutionaries
The Fortunes of Soviet Jewry 131 Repentance and Responsibility
Solzhenitsyn’s Moral Challenge
The Holocaust
Solzhenitsyn’s Non Possum
Chapter 8 The Binary Tales: The Soul of Man in the Soviet –and Russian–Twentieth Century
Chapter 9 Freedom, Faith and the Moral Foundations of Self–Government: Solzhenitsyn’s Final Word to Russia and the West
A Life Rooted in Conscience
A State Prize
The Prospects for Repentance
An Archival Revolution
Two Revolutions
Two Hundred Years Together
Learning About the Past
Three Leaders
Building Democracy From the Bottom Up
A Meaningful Opposition
Parties and Popular Representation
Making Room for Small Businesses
A “National Idea”?
Russia and the West
The Future of Russian Literature
The Church in Russia Today
A Man of Faith and Reason
Three Prayers
An Encounter With the Polish Pope 1
Orthodoxy and the Neo–Pagan Temptation
A Calm and Balanced Attitude Toward Death
Notes
Appendix 1
“Really Existing Socialism” and the Archival Revolution
Wooden Words
Red Holocaust
Black Book
Gulag Memoirs
Testaments to Violence and Lies
History and the Totalitarian Temptation
Appendix 2
Introduction: Returning to ‘The Gulag’
The Gift of Incarnation
Index
