Rereading Solzhenitsyn, Thirty Years Later

“The Ukrainian question is among the most dangerous  issues for our future.

How can you make a truce with the Devil? He will hardly abide by his word anyway.

The next war may well bury Western civilization for ever.

I wrote my books too early. They will reach readers too late. And there is nothing I can do about it.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

To understand today’s Russia, it is useful to turn to Solzhenitsyn, the great writer who brought the Gulag to the world’s attention, while remaining a Russian patriot who idealized the Russian people, dreamed of reconstituting the Slavic part of the USSR, and detested the West. Solzhenitsyn’s greatness, as well as the weaknesses of his vision of Russian history, take on new meaning in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

It was a strange, zigzagging destiny: from admiration to criticism and rejection, from avid reading, not without risk (in samizdat in the USSR), to disdain and refusal to read and listen (after the end of the regime). In the 1980s, when you visited Russia, people asked you to “tell” them about The Red Wheel as the volumes were published. But now the work is beginning to be published there—and almost no one cares.

The same goes for public statements. From the moment he arrived in the West in 1974, Solzhenitsyn was at the center of countless controversies, but their intensity varied: while in the 1970s and 1980s his every word was eagerly listened to and widely commented on, later this interest waned, and after his return to Russia (even though he had access to television from 1995 onwards), his series of programs on the ORT channel ended after a few months: no one was interested, either in his own country or abroad.

How can these ups and downs be explained? He himself was aware of this, and discusses it in detail in Between Two Millstones. Perhaps it is time to reread this book—published in the journal Novy Mir between 1998 and 2003¹—which covers his twenty years in the West, from 1974 to 1994, until his return to Russia. The book is presented as a journal of exile and unfolds on three levels: family life, work on The Red Wheel—his great epic about the revolution—and a chronicle of the controversies he was involved in.

The title of the book is eloquent: it refers to two millstones, blocks that seek to annihilate the message the author carries. “The KGB millstone never tired of trying to crush me, I’m used to that, but now there is another one, that of the West, which has come to stand right next to the first and is working on its own […].” [2] Thus, an equivalence is established between the two: the Soviet power that pursues him by all possible means, especially by seeking to discredit him, and the Western media, frustrated by his refusal to play by their rules. Both sides primarily use intellectuals, Russian and Western, the famous “educated tribe.” This is discussed in the essays that mark his career: American Discourse (1975), The Decline of Courage (1978), Message from Exile (1979), Our Pluralists (1983) and in several interviews.

This equivalence has serious consequences: from being an ally, the West becomes at best a neutral zone where he can settle while waiting to return to a Russia freed from communism, or even an adversary playing the Soviets’ game.

Russia and the West

During his twenty years in the West, Solzhenitsyn was driven by an almost mystical conviction that he would one day be able to return to his country: “And although my reason cannot see how this could happen, I believe with all my intuition that this return will take place during my lifetime.”

His rejection of the West is evident at all levels: personal, cultural, and political. For him, it is nothing more than a backdrop, whether on one side of the Atlantic or the other. It could be described as a kind of mental isolationism, an indifference to anything that has no connection with Russia, its history, and its situation.

First in Europe, then in the United States, his own existence, that of his family, and his work are organized around this goal: to serve Russia from afar, through his pen and his voice, since he cannot do so on the ground and while waiting for that to become possible.

Hence the distance, always maintained and sometimes displayed, from the Western world. The trips he takes are characteristic: he travels through countries at a rapid pace, he talks about them, of course, but these passages are irresistibly reminiscent of tourist guides: lists of cities, landscapes, monuments. Like all Soviets of his generation (and not only his), he was brought up on Western literature: Jack London, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens. These are memories that do not fade and resurface during his travels, but anything that is not rooted in these readings remains unheeded. Thus, his description of England is not very different from his description of Japan: equally exotic and, ultimately, equally foreign. On the other hand, anything that reminds him of Russia—landscape, behavior, architecture—immediately takes on additional value. It can also be a contrast, an antithesis, as during his visit to the Vendée in 1993 at the invitation of Philippe de Villiers. He describes it in detail—and always with Russia in mind: “It was a poignant impression that will never fade. Could anyone in Russia ever have recreated similar scenes of popular resistance to Bolshevism—from the junkers and young students of the Volunteer Army to the bearded muzhiks mad with despair, with pitchforks in their hands?“ A few years earlier, he had the same reaction during a visit to the Skansen open-air ethnographic museum in Stockholm, where he went on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize: “It was perhaps the most vivid impression of all my days in Stockholm. Those unusual hours of celebration and joy. A joy mixed with envy, because without the accursed Bolshevism we could have reserves of popular civilization worth that, but everything that made us unique has been eradicated, and no doubt forever.” A curious passage. Skansen is certainly a pleasant place, but it is not the source of Sweden’s peaceful and prosperous society, at most a consequence, a beautiful showcase—but what lies behind it? Why has respect for historical memory and heritage, which is possible in France or Sweden, not been possible in Russia? Can this be attributed solely to the Soviet regime? Solzhenitsyn does not provide an answer.The same attitude colors his reading. During his years of work on The Red Wheel, he did not have time to read anything else, “just read.” And when it became possible, he turned to Russian literature: Melnikov-Petcherski, Mamine-Sibiriak, Bielov, Astafiev, etc. Even this reading was not entirely gratuitous: the writer drew on it for material for his Expanded Dictionary of the Russian Language (1988). Western authors had no place in it, and when asked at the time about Thomas Mann, for example, he replied that he had never read him. He accepted this: “In any case, an artist has no need for an overly detailed study of their predecessors. […] If I had read The Magic Mountain […], it might have hindered me in writing Cancer Ward.”Solzhenitsyn was aware of this kind of intellectual isolationism: “It is not for me to judge the West. I have not studied it with the necessary attention, and I have not seen enough things thoroughly and with my own eyes. That is why my judgments about it also attract serious objections.” But his temperament and what he perceives as a critical situation, namely the moral disarmament of the West, push him toward polemics.

Of course, what could be more understandable for a writer who sees himself as having a mission: to restore Russian history, to understand the origins of the catastrophe of 1917, in the hope—he believes—of preventing it from happening again: “I was a bridge, I had to carry the memory of Russia’s past into Russia’s future.” Solzhenitsyn devoted himself body and soul to this mission. The amount of work he accomplished (with the constant and heroic help of his wife) is breathtaking. The Red Wheel, even unfinished, remains an unsurpassable monument, both in terms of its blending of historical material and the majesty of its construction. However, the bias found in it—that the Russian people were a healthy body contaminated by Western theories poorly digested by the educated strata of society—colors his judgments on the contemporary period.

The idealization of Russia and the Russian people, eternal victims of evil forces, inevitably leads to a refusal to identify Russia with the USSR, an identification he accuses Westerners and third wave Russian émigrés of making. He fights it relentlessly throughout  Between Two Millstones, thereby absolving—whether he likes it or not—the population of the regime’s crimes. No collective guilt. This position may not always have been his, if we recall his Nobel Prize speech: “A writer is not an indifferent judge of their compatriots and contemporaries. They are an accomplice to all the evil committed in their country or by their compatriots. If their country’s tanks have flooded the streets of a foreign capital with blood, then brown stains will mark their face forever.” And yet: a writer, an individual—not the entire people.

But who are the good Russian people? Certainly, Matriona, Ivan Denisovich, Spiridon from In The First Circle, and a few others are part of it, but they seem to be exceptions, like Platon Karataev in Tolstoy (while in Turgenev, Chekhov, and Bunin, we find a less hagiographic gallery). And what about the millions of informers, torturers, and executioners—do they have nothing to do with the “Russian people”? In The Red Wheel, there is the peasant Blagodarev, the ‘positive’ embodiment of the people, but there are also, increasingly frequently as the pages turn, “masses ,“ the frenzied crowds, emblems of savagery and destruction.

Critical remarks on this subject are rare in Solzhenitsyn’s work and remain fairly circumspect: “A salutary, life-saving, moderate patriotism will have to—if given the opportunity—build itself on completely virgin ground and on new foundations. But how? I do not yet understand this myself, but it is clear that a) it will come from the provinces; b) it will start from this unavoidable fact: that our national character lacks clarity and consistency, that it has difficulty understanding responsibility and lends itself poorly to self-organization.” Where would this capacity for self-organization come from? Solzhenitsyn rarely mentions the centuries of serfdom that profoundly shaped this ‘national character’, perhaps even more so than the decades of Bolshevism. His refusal to recognize the continuity between the USSR and Russia is probably the writer’s most tragic mistake, a mistake that is also responsible for the gap that exists, he claims, between Russia and the West.

Yet recent history has shown that Russia generates deadly ideologies—or, if you will, gives deadly form to imported ideologies. The USSR was therefore not a parenthesis, but an isomorphism.

The country or the state?

In discussing the events that led to the fall of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn draws on the historical investigations that form the subject matter of The Red Wheel. Above all, he fears a repeat of 1917: “To save the country, an authoritarian transition period was the right path. I had before my eyes the collapse of Russia in 1917, the crazy attempt to make it leap into democracy, and the chaos that immediately ensued.”

It is through this lens that he views the transformations of the 1990s. One gets the impression that the writer rejoices less at the end of the despised regime than he fears the disintegration of the country—or perhaps that of the state? This determines his view of Gorbachev and his indulgence, especially at the beginning, toward Yeltsin: one went too fast and caused chaos, the other, it seems to him, is trying to avoid too abrupt changes.

This is where another confusion arises, that between the country and the state. In particular, the fact that the borders of the republics dating from the Soviet era had been respected – instead of being renegotiated: “There can be no question of forcibly maintaining any peripheral nation within the borders of our country. A program is necessary, I thought, and it would be a shame if we were to lose the North Caucasus or the southern provinces of Russia bordering the Black Sea.” The quote, taken from the Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union, is reproduced in Between Two Millstones.

His reaction to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha meeting that marked the end of the USSR was virulent: he recounts that he wanted to write to Yeltsin immediately to ask him “not to recognize the administrative borders between the republics as if they were state borders! to reserve the right to reconsider them! and not to accept emergency aid from the International Monetary Fund!” He did not do so, and later he “regretted missing the opportunity,” because the consequences of this decision proved, in his view, even more catastrophic.

One question inevitably arises: ‘negotiate’ on what basis? The borders of the Russian Empire? At what point in time? In that case, what about Poland and Finland? According to the current Kremlin leader, “Russia has no borders”—we now know where that has led.

This confusion between the state and the country becomes glaringly obvious when Solzhenitsyn discusses the results of the breakup of the USSR: “Russian nerves had faltered in the face of Ukrainian patriots and Asian authorities. (What is this story about Crimea? It was never Ukrainian! And Sevastopol? As for the Black Sea fleet, it had been completely forgotten.)” Or again: “The Black Sea […] for which Russia had fought eight wars over two centuries in order to gain access, [Yeltsin] cheerfully offered to Ukraine, along with the Sea of Azov and 11-12 million Russians.”

The Ukrainian question

Published in 1974, his Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union earned the writer much criticism from Russian liberals. Yet, written in order to “reach and penetrate the darkened consciousness of our sad leaders,” it contains proposals that are difficult to dispute, which he repeats at the beginning of Between Two Millstones: 

“If only your party would renounce its unrealizable and useless ambitions for world domination”; “May we already have enough strength, intelligence, and heart to put our own house in order without meddling in the affairs of the entire planet”; “The needs of internal development are much more important to us as a people than those of the external expansion of our forces”; […] “The goals of a great empire are incompatible with the moral health of the people. And we have no right to invent international tasks for ourselves as long as our people are in such a state of moral ruin and we consider ourselves their sons.” On the surface, what could be clearer? However, twenty years later, this principled position is coming up against a painful reality: where does the state/empire end and the country begin? As for Yeltsin and his government, this biased referendum on Ukraine did not even raise an eyebrow. Ukraine’s independence opened up like a gaping chasm, and Yeltsin, full of confidence, let Kravchuk lead him by the nose […]. In the same way, Yeltsin gave up another 6-7 million Russians in Kazakhstan. […] Thus, in a few short months, from August to December, Russia, that enormous, heavy body, plunged into what can only be called a new Time of Troubles, the third: after the first, from 1603 to 1613, and the second, from 1917 to 1922. […] Following Belovezh, the leaders of the other republics became agitated, and it was then that the troika of Slavic leaders concocted the puny, illusory CIS to replace the dismembered Soviet Union. For Russia, it was a temporary decoy, a burden, and a way to hide the fact that 25 million compatriots had been left defenseless. “The semantic shift is clear: while in 1974 the Soviet Union was clearly perceived as a danger to the whole world and to its own population (“our people” undoubtedly refers to this), now, in the early 1990s, it was no longer a question of the entire population, but mainly of the Russian people, who, in Solzhenitsyn’s view, were the first victims of the collapse of the USSR. From then on, in his eyes, this became synonymous with the collapse of Russia.The national question—and more specifically the Ukrainian question—became a sensitive issue: “The most serious difficulty was addressing national issues, especially when considering Ukrainian nationalists, who are mainly inhabitants of Galicia, i.e., who have lived for centuries outside Russian history, but who are now actively working to bring the whole of Ukraine over to their side. […] I knew they cursed the ‘moskals’ [Editor’s note: a pejorative nickname for Russians], but I appealed to them as brothers, in a last hope of bringing them to their senses. […] I proposed immediately and unconditionally granting freedom of secession to eleven of the Union’s republics, and making the most amicable efforts to preserve the union of four republics: the three Slavic ones and Kazakhstan.” Thus, instead of congratulating himself on the fact that “for centuries” part of the Ukrainian people had escaped Russification, Solzhenitsyn sees it as a flaw that makes his position almost illegitimate.

More specifically, on the subject of Ukraine, we read: “The Ukrainian question is one of the most dangerous for our future; it risks dealing us a bloody blow at the very moment of our liberation, and our minds, on both sides, are ill-prepared for it. […] Just as it is futile to try to convince Ukrainians that, in spirit and lineage, we all come from Kiev, so Russians refuse to accept the idea that another people lives on the banks of the Dnieper. Many offenses and sources of discord have been sown by the Bolsheviks: these murderers have only irritated and tormented the wounds, and when they leave, they will leave us in a state of decay. It will be very difficult to bring the dialogue back to reason. But I will put all my voice and weight behind this cause. In any case, there is one thing I know and will proclaim in due course: if, God forbid, a Russian-Ukrainian war were to break out, I myself would not take part in it and I would not let my sons go.”

Here too, the fault lies “precisely” with the Bolsheviks, and the Russian people are victims. Solzhenitsyn feels all the more entitled to make these statements because he claims to be Russian-Ukrainian: “I feel that it is my lifelong task to bring about friendship between Ukrainians and Russians. A lot of Ukrainian has flowed into me, coming from my grandfather Shcherbak; who, incidentally, never spoke very pure Russian, but what a warm language! My maternal grandmother was half Ukrainian, and I have known and understood Ukrainian songs since my childhood.” This reference comes up several times in his writing, as if to defuse any potential criticism: “My heart is with Ukraine. I love their country, their customs, their language, their songs.” He reiterates that neither he nor his sons will “ever take part in a Russian-Ukrainian war.” He understands the difficulty of such a mission of pacification: “Oh, this ‘Ukrainian question’ will cause us much torment yet! (We would have to study all the ins and outs of ancient and recent history, and that would take time…)”

But time was running out. In October 1991, a referendum on Ukrainian independence was announced for December 1. Solzhenitsyn was horrified: “How dishonestly the question was asked […]: do you want an independent, democratic, prosperous Ukraine, where human rights are respected – or not? (That is to say, a Ukraine that is not prosperous, not democratic, where human rights would be violated, etc.)”. He felt compelled to intervene and published an article in the newspaper Trud, “the most widely read among the working classes; miners in Donetsk would read it, as would people in Crimea.” “I proposed a vote count by region: perhaps at least some of the Russian-speaking regions would be drawn to Russia’s side? But no, they voted for separation. […] We had been duped. That is how we lost 12 million Russians and another 23 million who recognize Russian as their mother tongue. What a terrible break, what an amputation—and for centuries to come? Disappointed, he adds: “And Bush, before the referendum, had no qualms about intervening: he was, you see, in favor of Ukraine’s secession.” A statement that requires no comment. [Editor’s note: Bush had traveled to Kyiv in 1991 to convince the Ukrainians not to secede.]

An assessment?

Few writers have reflected as deeply on Russia’s recent history. Few know it as well. And yet… Historical knowledge certainly helps us to understand, but it does not enable us to predict; history is unpredictable. At a time when he had already lost his belief in the redemptive power of literature – “In truth, I had already lost my illusions, ceased to believe it was possible to convince people with my voice and to convey my experience through words. My Nobel Prize speech was still based on this conviction […]. Now I doubt that literature can help people become aware of the experiences of others. Clearly, every nation (and each individual) has been given the opportunity to walk the entire path of mistakes and suffering from beginning to end.” Solzhenitsyn continues to believe in the usefulness of historical knowledge: “To prevent the horrors that humanity inflicted on itself in the 20th Century, all forms of political and ethnic genocide, from ever happening again, we must study history as it unfolded, subject to only one requirement, that of historical truth, without regard for the censorship that may be exercised at the present time, the ‘what will people say’ and ‘how will this be received’ of today.”

This appeal is addressed first and foremost to those in power in Russia, to the decision-makers: “It is not fine articles in the Constitution that give strength to a state structure, but the quality of the forces on which it is based. We will do democracy a disservice by electing weak men as leaders. On the contrary, the democratic system requires a strong hand, capable of keeping the state on a clear course. The crisis facing society is not the fault of the people, it is a matter for the government.” But, in his view, the West suffers from similar flaws—and, from his perspective, it is precisely by trying to transpose the Western model of democracy that Russia has plunged into crisis.

His diagnosis in this area was already formulated in the 1970s, during the Cold War. “We are horrified by the fate of the South Vietnamese people fleeing en masse from their communist ‘liberators’ – and, seeing this tragedy, we wonder with concern whether America will remain faithful to its alliance with Europe. With Europe unable to resist Soviet aggression on its own and waiting for American help as if it were guaranteed. […] We must assume that, from now on, America will no longer undertake to defend any state if that state is not willing to defend itself. Europe will have to prove in a short time that it is prepared to make great sacrifices and to unite effectively.” He castigates “the fatal error of the West”, which “had been to rely on the ‘nuclear shield’”, when “the real solution lay in conventional weapons”. An astonishing foresight, a prophecy that, half a century later, is coming true.

As for nuclear apocalypse, he does not believe in it: “I must say that I have never shared the general fear of atomic war. During the Second World War, everyone waited with trepidation for chemical warfare, and it never happened. In the same way, I have been convinced for twenty years that the Third World War will not be atomic. Without a reliable missile defense system […], the leaders of prosperous America, complacent in their well-being […], will never decide to commit national suicide by launching a first nuclear strike, even if the Soviets were to attack Europe. And the Soviet Union, for its part, has even less need to launch a first strike: even without it, it is already spreading red across the world map by absorbing two countries a year.”

On the other hand, he believes in the doctrine of “balance of terror” both during the Soviet era and afterward, except that when it comes to post-Soviet Russia, he mistakes the enemy: “No one has contributed as much to strengthening this country in the midst of destruction as Sakharov. What he left behind in the nuclear field will continue to support its power for a long time to come, until the debacle. Now the West, fearing that atomic chaos will take hold here, is afraid of Russia’s sudden collapse, which, in general, it nevertheless aspires to.”What would Solzhenitsyn have said about the situation today? Would he have condemned Russia’s aggression against its “Ukrainian brothers”? Would he have attributed the outbreak of war to forces hostile to Russia, that eternal victim? He would have condemned this war, no doubt about that (“If, God forbid, a Russian-Ukrainian war were to break out, I myself would not take part in it and I would not let my sons go”) – yes, but for what reason? We will never know, and besides, the question is not really legitimate: history is unpredictable.

1. Published in French in two volumes by Fayard: in 1998, under the same title, and in 2005, under the title Sketches of Exile; the quotations (except for one, which is absent from the French edition) refer to these translations, by Geneviève & José Johannet for the former, and Françoise Lesourd for the latter.