Solzhenitsyn: A Biography [1 ed.]

Citation preview

'LIAISON

IRAN CHAZAUD

i)^AP IN

SOLZHENITSYN'S RUSSIA

E S

VV

T E R N

^S

I

B

Novosibirsk

**^^*y

. •

«#

N^

S^ ^r

x"^

// '

F,

R

I

A

BAC K

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2010

http://www.archive.org/details/solzhenitsynbi6g00scam

SOLZHENITSYN

Solzhenitsyn during his

first

months

as a prisoner (Sc\

il)

SOLZHENITSYN A BIOGRAPHY vi

Michael Scammell

WW-

NORTON New

York

•

&

COMPANY

London

The

following works by Alexander Solzhenits\n have been consulted in the preparation of this

biography: August 1914. Translated by Michael Glenny. Copyright 1972. Farrar, Straus

& Giroux.

Cancer

Ward. Translated bv Nicholas Bethell and David Burg. Copyright 1969. Farrar, Straux The First Circle. Translated by Thomas Whitney. Copyright 1968. Harper Giroux.

Row

.

The Gulag Archipelago, Vol.

1.

& &

Thomas Whitney. Copyright 1975. HarTranslated by Thomas Whitney. Copyright 1975.

Translated by

The Gulag Archipelago, \'ol. 2. & Row. The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 3. Translated by Harry Willetts. Copyright Harper & Row The Oak ami the Calf. Translated by Harry Willetts. Copyright 1979. 1978. Harper & Row Prussian Sights. Translated bv Robert Conquest. Copyright 1977. P^arrar, Harper & Row Stories and Prose Poems. Translated by Michael Glenny. Copyright 1971. Straux & Giroux.

per

.

.

Farrar, Straus

The works

&

Giroux.

published bv Harper

tk

Row

Publishers, Inc. have been quoted with their permis-

sion.

Copyright

©

1984 by Michael Scammell

.\11

Published simultaneously

rights reserved. in

Canada by Stoddart,

General Publishing Co. Ltd,

Don

.Mills,

a subsidiary

of

Ontario

Printed in the United States of America.

First Edition

The

te.xt

of this hook

is

composed in Janson,

"^'ith

display type set in Centaur.

Composition and manufacturing by The .Vlaple-Vail Book .Manufacturing Group.

Book design by .\ntonina Krass

Librar\' of

Congress Cataloging

in Publication

Data

Scammell, .Michael. Solzhenitsyn

:

a

biography.

Bibliography; p. Includes index. I.

Solzhenitsyn, .\leksandr Isaevich, 1918-

— Biography.

2.

Authors, Russian

Biography.

PG3488.04Z873

I.

— 20th century

Title.

891.73'44[B]

1984

83-42647

ISBN D-m-DlflDE-M W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 37 Great Russell Street, London WClB 3NU

12

3

4

5

6

7

8 9

SCAnriELL

LK memory of my father and my mother, Frederick and (Constance Scammell,

In

who

did

not live to see

this book completed

Solzhenits\n speaks from another tradition and is

impressive: his voiee

is

aneientness tempered in the is

that of the old Russian Christianity hut

ity that

centur\' tion

test.

me,

it is

Christian-

a

has passed through the central experience of our

— the dehumanization of the — and has emerged

camps

history

this, for

modern but aneient. It is an modern world. His ancientness

not

is

totalitarian concentra-

intact

and strengthened.

If

the testing ground, Solzhenitsxn has passed the

His example

not intellectual or political or even, in

is

the current sense of the word, moral. \\ e have to use an

even older word, tone

—

a hint

a

word

that

still

of death and sacrifice:

false testimonies, a

w

riter

—

retains a religious overn-itiiess.

becomes the w

()cta\

ic)

In a century of

itness to

man.

Paz, "Pol\ os de aquellos lodos"

(Dust after Mud), Plural, no. 30 (March 1974)

Rien ne vous tue un senter

homme comme

d'etre oblige

de repre-

un pays.

—Jacques \ ache,

letter to

Andre Breton

CONTENTS Preface

1

Acknoii^ledgements

1

1 ]

Out

3

Farewell to the Old World

of Chaos and Suffering

Childhood

2] ]

Marriage

5]

25

39

Writer and Communist

4]

60

73

93

Fighting for the Fatherland

6]

7]

8]

2

Arrest

i

i

2

126

An Enemy of the Toiling Masses 144 Two Are AN Organization 160 9] First Steps in the Archipelago

10]

To THE New Jerusalem

11]

203

Special-assignment Prisoner

13]

In

14] 1

190

among the Trusties

Life

12]

5]

THE First Circle

176

220

239

The Parting of the Ways 255 Not Quite Siberia 270 16] 17]

18]

A Son

of

Gulag

289

Exiled "in Perpetuity" 19]

20]

Cancer Ward

314

334

Matryona's Place

356

[

I

Contents

2]

2

The Schoolmaster from Ryazan

1 ]

On

2 2]

Breakthrough

2 3]

A True

24] 2 5

First

26]

2

Enter the

9]

450

480

KGB

5

496

1

528

Period of Adjustment

The Best Form

]

427

464

The Turning-point

A

3 1]

542

of Defence

563

Letter to the Writers' Congress

3 3]

Playing the Western Card

34]

3

Wave

Doubts

Not Another Pasternak

30]

3

391

Lenin Prize Candidate

]

2 8]

3 2

of the

372

410

Helper of the Party

The Crest

]

2 7

THE Threshold

Portrait of the Artist at Fifty

5]

6]

585

612 63

Expulsion from the Writers' Union 3

The Taming of Now Mir 678 The Nobel Prize 697 8] The Start of a Vast Enterprise

653

7]

3

39]

Death OF A Poet

40] 4

Whose

1 ]

42] 4

3]

44

Anyway?

Is It

Divorce

750

770

The Gllag Archipelago

Deported

45] First

Months

in

the West

Clarifications

48] 49]

On

787 8

THE Move

1 ]

The Sage 5 2

]

of

882

904

Vermont

Epilogue Notes

931

950

974

995

Select Bibliography

Index

847

864

Talking TO THE Europeans

50]

1

829

Taking Positions

47]

5

737

Coming into the Open

]

46]

Life

719

1019

1025

Photographs follow pages 336 and 644

PREFACE

Writing the hiographx of ing as to call for

a living

man

some explanation.

is

sufficiently

hazardous an undertak-

Ihe very word "biography" provokes

expectations of candour and disclosure that are often precluded

w hen one

simply not feasible to exercise that close scrutin\ of private emotions, subconscious desires, and deep-seated motives

writes about a contcmporarv.

It is

that are the stock-in-trade of the post-i'reudian biographer. to inspect

anv but

a tin\- fraction

Nor

throw light into obscure corners of the subject's continuing and therefore incomplete: there

is

life.

It is

mav

possible

a story that is still

always the possibility that some

new event, some new w ork, or some new revelation will occur perhaps transform our perception of w hat has gone before. Or ject

is it

of the letters and private papers that can

to

modify or

that the sub-

turn, in old age, to reveal a facet of his character that had been

till then. For these reasons, the present work aspires more than a biographical chronicle, a portrait "from the outreiving less on psychological analysis than on an examination of the

completely unremarked to being little

side,"

biographical and historical facts available to me.

This simple caveat would apply to the biography of any contemporary, and the adjustment the reader needed to make would not be very great. But there are special problems encountered in writing about a person who has lived the greater part of his life in the Soviet Union that immensely complicate the task of the biographer and that the reader needs to understand to avoid certain types of frustration.

Though

these problems are general, they

take on an extra dimension in the case of such a controversial figure as Alex-

ander Solzhenitsvn.

The

first

great difficulty to be contended 13

w

ith

is

that for sixty-five years

Preface

[14]

the Soviet government has laboured systematically to destrov

all

notions of

nowhere and at no time have governments been addicted to the truth. But nowhere in the modern world has such a prolonged and determined assault been carried out bv so powerful a government, and now here is the divorce between observable reality and the picture of that reality presented by the authorities greater and more striking than in the Soviet Union. The ferocity of this assault has a dual

objective truth. This

is

not at

first

sight surprising:

purpose: to distort or destroy the individual's perception of realitv, and to

conquer that perception and remould

it

according to the government's wishes.

But since the exigencies of politics are inevitably short-term and changeable, whereas reality and our perception of it are (or should be) long-term and more or less durable, there is a permanent conflict between observable reality and the need to distort it, which leads to such demonstrable Soviet absurdities as doctored photographs of the changing leadership, where faces are erased one bv one, or the distribution of substitute pages for the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, to be pasted in over articles about individuals w ho have fallen into

disgrace.

One w work today,

not find Solzhenitsvn in that or anv other Soviet reference

ill

for in his case, the Soxiet

mania

for rewriting history has reached

absurd heights. At the time of his literary debut (with Khrushchev's express appro\al), he

w as

hailed as "a true helper of the Party" and "a writer

w ith

a

rare talent" in the tradition of Tolstoy. In printing the bare facts of his biog-

raphy, the newspapers emphasized his distinguished war record and played

down

the facts of his imprisonment and exile, pointing out that he had suf-

fered from "groundless political accusations" from

exculpated.

A

tigious literary it.

When

which he had since been

year later he w as nominated for the Soviet Union's most pres-

aw ard, the Lenin Prize, and only narrowly missed w inning

the attitude of the authorities began to change, so did "history."

Solzhenitsvn became "a mediocre writer with an exaggerated view of his ow n

importance," w ho had "abandoned his conscience" and w as socially dangerous.

and

This later escalated to "corrupt self-seeker" and "internal emigre, alien

and culminated in accuhad "surrendered to the Ciermans," had "fought with Vlasov against Soxiet forces," and had even "worked for the Gestapo." More recently, since being expelled from the USSR, he has been accused of ha\'ing worked (from the beginning of his career) for the CL\. Much of this is patently absurd and can be dismissed as the inevitable consequence of the fluctuations of the Part\ line. But it also presents some special problems, not all of w hich can be overcome bv even the most assiduous biographer, especially if he is working in the West. For example, one is obliged to resort to Soviet sources, while knowing that little credence can be given to printed information without a careful verification of the facts. But they cannot be simply discounted or "reversed" either, for they quite often turn out to be correct, or correct in part. Generally speaking, working in a subject area affected by Soviet propaganda is like working in a mighty blast hostile to the entire life of the Soviet people,"

sations that he

Preface of wind,

learn to lean into

^'oii

it

[15]

order to sta\ upright, but there

in

ever-present danger that you will lean too far

blow ing for

moment,

a

fall flat

on vour

— and,

if

the

is

an

wind should stop

face.

.\nother problem that cannot be v\ished awa\-

the difhcultx' of access

is

and sources. The Soviet Union, as Solzhenitsvn has graphicallv shown, is still run more or less along the lines of a giant concentration camp. The borders are sealed, foreign visitors are grudgingK admitted under the most stringent conditions, and travel is restricted to a tin\- proportion of the country. 1 o understand what this means for the foreign biographer, one to places

should

to

tr\

imagine w riting the biograph\- of

Greene while restricted to travelling

w ithin

w hich thev

the capital cities of the countries in

a

Hemingwav

a radius

lived

or a Ciraham

of twentv-five miles of

and along rigidlv defined w ith no access to their

corridors to specified resorts and places of interest, but birthplaces and the various

brought up, or to the people ative years.

closed to

me

my own

In

since 1973,

towns or villages in w hich thev lived and were who might have know n them during their form-

case,

even these restricted

when

I

on dissident writers confiscated

was detained as

at

possibilities

Moscow

contraband, and

mv

w riter Lvdia Chukovskava. Unfortunately, the problem of access to sources that be resolved simply by staving awa\' and communicating

have been

mv

airport,

activities

notes

used as

a

pretext to vilify the Soviet

cannot

this creates

at a distance.

Soviet mails are closeh' watched, and telephones are often tapped:

it

The takes

more than ordinary courage and ingenuity for a Soviet citizen to communiWorse still, manv of Solzhenitsvn's friends and relatives in the Soviet Union or even those who simplv supplied him w ith

cate with a foreigner.

information for his books

and

their lives

made

— — have

unbearable.

nitsvn has also scored

been subjected to svstematic harassment official campaign to discredit Solzhe-

The

some notable

successes.

Two

of the closest friends of

childhood and youth, Nikolai V'itkevich and the now deceased Kirill Simonyan, were induced to speak out against him after his expulsion. His aged

his

was persuaded to part w ith some of her memoirs and make disparaging remarks about Solzhenitsvn's familv in her dotage. And the natural grief and resentment of his first w ife, Natalia Reshetovskava,

aunt, Irina Shcherbak,

after her

acrimonious divorce from her husband, were exploited bv the

w hen they obtained her memoirs, carefullv edited them, and pubthem in a tendentious and distorted form.

authorities lished

—and partlv because — Solzhenitsvn made

Partlv as a result of this unremitting pressure

answered while

it

in the Soviet Union, to maintain an almost complete silence about and w hen he did release certain facts, to do so onK w hen he regarded "safe" or w hen the\ furthered his struggle with the authorities. In

as

this sense, the facts of his

biographv became

described or passed over depending on

w here

a

weapon

in that struggle, to

the ad\antage lay.

I

his

The Oak and

the Calj\

w here one w as struck bv the abundance of

be

emerged

with great claritv from Solzhenitsvn's revealing (but also misleading) oir.

it

a rule,

still

his past,

them

to certain psychological imperatives

mem-

military

Preface

[i6]

metaphors employed in the narrative. His life was described in terms of constant attack and retreat, bridgeheads, flanking movements, cavalry charges, and artillery bombardments. There was little room (or desire) for objective analysis and dispassionate debate, and the biographer who tries to follow him is in danger of being swept off his feet. After his expulsion to the West, Solzhenitsyn did not significantly change his attitude to these matters and still

attempted to exercise some control over discussion of his biography; but,

of course, the immediate danger to himself had receded and the intensity of his

concern w as somewhat diminished. In the light of these obstacles,

it is

natural to ask

\\

hether the attempt

is

and w hat the attitude of Solzhenitsyn himself is to such an enterprise. 1 here have been a number of attempts to w rite his biography before, most notably by David Burg and George Feifer in 1970. At that time Solzhenitsyn was still in the Soviet Union, and his struggle to manage the facts of his biography was at its height. After initially seeming to favour their plan, he turned against them and denounced them, pronouncing an anathema on biographies of him generally that has maintained its force to this day. Burg and Feifer went ahead and published their book in 1972. It was an adequate summary of w hat was know n at that time and certainly did not cause Solzhenitsyn any harm, but it suffered from the crippling limitations that applied to anyone writing about Solzhenitsyn's past as early as 1972, and inevitably was padded w ith speculation and superfluous detail. Since then, the situation has changed considerably. In 1971 Solzhenitsyn published August I9M, with much information about his mother and his mother's family, and rather less about his father's family. After this came an attempt by the Soviet authorities to exploit this information for their own ends, to w hich Solzhenitsyn replied with further details in a series of interviews w ith Western correspondents. 1 hen came the three volumes of 7 he Gulag Archipelago, containing many pages and even chapters of autobiography; The Oak and the Calf, which is all autobiography; and more recently the publication of Solzhenitsyn's early pla\s in Russian, in w hich there is again a significant autobiographical element. Meanwhile, two of his closest associates from his labour-camp years, Lev Kopelev and Dimitri Panin, have emigrated to the West and published memoirs that cover their time spent with Solzhenitsyn; and Natalia Reshetovskaya's memoirs, though captured and doctored by the Soviet authorities, contain a mass of valuable information, \\

orth making at

especially

when

There

is

all

juxtaposed with some of the other sources just mentioned.

thus no comparison

Solzhenitsyn w as

now with

the situation as

it

obtained

when

Union, but the key to writing a successful biography has nevertheless lain, all along, in his attitude and his willingness to co-operate. Without that willingness, many key sources, even in the West, would still refuse to talk. Fortunately, Solzhenitsyn's attitude to a biography did change after his arrival in the West, though not at once, not without still

in the Soviet

considerable misgivings and hesitations, and not without regrets after the

work had

started.

Prf.facf. I

here.

he dc'tailctl reasons w In this happened would take too long to describe SutHce it to sa\ that my interest in \\ riting Sol/.henitsyn's biography

dates back to 1970, that theirs.

I

is,

make

did in tact

to the time

when

liurg

beginning but, owing to

a

ran into serious difficulties and abandoned

rial,

nits\

Dr

[17]

n w

as expelled,

I

w as

in regular contact

at

1

By

1974,

when

mate-

Solzhe-

two

little

seryices for Sol-

Heeb's request. In February 1974, when Solzhenitsyn's expul-

was

New

York reyising the .\merican translation of me w hat racing fans an inside track with Solzhenitsyn. VVe did not meet until the mentioned the idea of a biograph\' and 1974, and when we did,

sion took place,

\()lume

were writing

l-eifer

with Solzhenitsyn's Swiss law yer,

Ileeb, and had been able to carr\- out one or

zhenitsyn

it.

and

a lack ot tirst-hand

I

in

of The Gulag Archipelago. This naturalh gaye

would call autumn ot

I

requested his co-operation.

His response was affable but guarded. An early draft I showed him reminded him, he w rote, of looking at his reflection in a puddle across which "a strong breeze was blowing." I lis likeness was there, but almost unrecognizable. 1 urged that the best v\ ay to put an end to (mostly Soyiet) misrepresentations of his life was to allow a reliable and accurate biograph\- to appear, and pointed out that this could be done onK' w ith his appnnal and help. Solzhenitsyn telt that it was possible only if it were to be an authorized biograph\-, but authorization would require unstinted attention and concentration on his part, and he w as not prepared to diyert time from other projects that were precious to him. The discussion, mainly by letter, extended o\er many months. I was unhappy with the concept of authorization, since it implied a degree of superyision to which I was unwilling to commit myself and w hich would compromise the book's independence. On the other hand, I understood that it w as difficult for Solzhenitsyn to abandon his all-or-nothing position, because

Union and

it

expressed the logic of his entire career

in the Soyiet

reflected psychological driyes that could not lightly be set aside.

we agreed on a compromise more English than Russian: I was w hat questions I liked, and Solzhenitsyn would repl\ at w hateyer length and in w hatexer detail he thought fit. In practice, this meant a yisit to his house in X'ermont (in the strictest secrecx) in the summer of 1977, and a stay there of one week, during which time I questioned him for one to three hours each day after his w riting w as finished. Solzhenitsyn showed me his juyenilia and some early works, placed certain letters and documents at m\' disposal, and allowed me to browse through and question him on his photograph albums. He allowed me to interyiew his second w ife, Natalia Syetloya, and authorized me to interyiew one or tw o close friends and a relatiye by marriage, X'eronica Stein (a cousin of his first w ife). After our initial interyiews, I continued to send Solzhenitsyn supplementar\- questions by letter, and he would send brief answers, but this procedure did not suit Solzhenits\n's temperament or w ork habits, and he cut it short in 1979. The termination of relations was friendly but final and is important to an understanding of some of w hat follows. OccaEyentually,

free to ask

Preface

[i8]

most precise and detailed data w ill be accompanied bv speculawhich produces an unfortunate impression of imprecision. This stems from the impossibilit\', since 1979, of obtaining direct answ ers from Solzhenitsyn to even the simplest questions of fact, often sionallv, the

tion about the surrounding events,

in cases I

\\

here alternative sources of information are not available. (Perhaps

me

should add that 95 per cent of the information Solzhenitsvn gave

when he

Fortunatelv, this impediment w as mitigated at a late stage in

mv work

returned to central Russia from

bv

con-

to the age of thirty-seven,

cerned his ancestry and early

up

life

exile.)

most unexpected development. In 1982

a

I

received a message that Sol-

who lives in Moscow had learned w as w riting and w as anxious for me to hear her side of the storv of her relations w ith Solzhenitsvn. She felt that she had been unfairlv maligned by Solzhenitsyn in his memoir and in certain of his public statements and wished to vindicate herself and rehabilitate her reputation. Moreover, she now realized and regretted, it seems, the wav in w hich the Soviet zhenits\n's

first

wife, Natalia Reshetovska\a,

of the biography

authorities

,

I

had manipulated her memoirs, and therefore had

reason for w ishing to set the record straight.

As

a result,

respondence with her, and between March 1982 and a series

I

Mav

this additional

entered into cor1983 she sent

me

of letters touching upon her relationship w ith her former husband,

some excerpts from her rewritten memoirs. She willinglv answered the various questions I put to her, including manv concerning together with

uncontroversial aspects of her earlv not

mv

to trv

how

and give this

actions.

life

with Solzhenitsyn.

It

was not and

is

intention to take sides in the often bitter quarrel between them, but a fair

account of their joint

life

and

their parting

and

to

show

important relationship affected Solzhenitsvn's work and public In the perhaps controversial

and undoubtedlv painful matter of

Resheto\ska\a's attempted suicide in 1970,

I

should make

it

clear that

I

received

a circumstantial account of this episode from "both sides" (first from Solzhenitsvn's side via his cousin-in-law, and then from Reshetovskaya) and that the accounts matched in everv important detail. do not expect mv biographv to be anvthing other than controversial, at least among those in w hom Solzhenitsvn's w ork evokes strong emotions. In a Hash of insight concerning m\ possible treatment of her problems w ith her former husband, Reshetovskava once wrote that "vou w ill probably end up pleasing neither side" w hich is all too likelv an outcome (and w ill probabl\- extend to political matters no less than personal ones). Solzhenitsyn's is a personalitv that is w rit uncommonlv large. It w ould be idle to deny that he is a man w ith substantial faults, as well as w ith some towering virtues. Some I

—

have called him

a saint, a

prophet,

a political visionarv, a living literary clas-

Others think him a megalomaniac, a monster of egotism, and a literary mediocritw At one time one almost never heard a word against him; he w as lionized and idolized. Since then the pendulum has sw ung back again, and

sic.

he

is

now more often denounced as embittered or ignored as irrelevant. pendulum has been a reaction against exces-

Insofar as the sw ing of the

Preface

[ i

9]

and often insincere adulation, it is health\ and to be welcomed, and it is no part of mv intention to "redress the balance." M\- aim has been not to act as advocate or judge, but to illuminate and explain a (]uintessential Russian and a major figure ot our era. This hgure indisputablx" merits close stud\ in in m\' his own right, but there is mf)re to it than that. It would be a pit\ view, if controvers\- o\er Sol/.henits\n's personalitx' and opinions w ere to cloud our understanding of that societ\ and that political order from w hich he sprang, for it has definitely been part of my plan to examine that societx through the prism of one exceptional man's life and career. That is important for two reasons. In the first place, it is impcjssible to understand Solzhenitsyn without grasping the nature of the societv in w hich he was born and lived, and the price he paid for achiexing what he did. Secondly, that society also merits study. One is aware that millions of words have been spilled already on the subject of the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik putsch, the Leninist experiment, and the societ\" that resulted from them. Solzhenitsyn himself has added significantly and invaluabh' to their volume, and he continues to do so. Yet the debate is far from concluded. B\ its restitution of medieval and in some respects barbarous social and political sive

,

forms and their continuance into the fourth quarter of the twentieth century,

temporarv aberration of European temporarv than the similar phenomenon of nazism) or the beginning of the end, the start of a general collapse of our civilization into barbarism? Whatever the case, it seems to me of vital importance to come to grips the Soviet state defies

much

culture (though

all

logic. Is this a

less

with this phenomenon and understand

matized it

it

in 1917.

with

To

a

it.

It is

the question of the age.

And

and career, w ith all his faults and failings, has draforce and consistencv unprecedented since Lenin first posed

Solzhenitsyn, in his

life

studv this

life,

therefore,

is

also to studv the question.

Leonia,

New

Jersev

July 1983

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The

writing of this biography would not have been possible witiiout the co-

operation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in

Zurich

Vermont

in

who first discussed the me to spend a week am extremelv grateful

1974 and kindly invited

in the

summer

of 1977.

I

unique indulgence and for the wise tolerance of sight of the finished product. for

I

am

project with at his

to

b\' letter until

him

me in

for this

his decision not to require a

similarly grateful to Natalia Solzhenitsyn

consenting to be interviewed and for generously answering

mentary questions

house

our correspondence ended

my

in 1979.

supple-

Another

on Solzhenitsyn's life between his return from West w as Solzhenitsyn's cousin by marriage, \ eronica Stein (together with her husband, Yuri), for w hose selfless assistance I am also grateful; and in the final stages of w riting this book, I received invaluable assistance, by letter, from Solzhenitsyn's first w ife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, who showed me some chapters from her revised memoirs and willingly answered every question I put to her. Among the many people who have been friends or associates of Solzhenitsyn at one time or another and who answered questions or supplied me with information, I would particularly like to thank Irina Alberti, Heinrich Boll, Claude Durand, Efim Etkind, Alexander Gorlov, Dr Fritz Heeb, Per Hegge, Peretz Hertzenberg, Lev Kopelev, Naum Korzhavin, Madimir Maximov, Zhores Medvedev, Victor Nekrasov, Raisa Orlova, Dimitri Panin, Maria Rozanova, the late Janis Sapiets, the late Father Alexander Schmemann, Andrei Sinyavsky, Nikita Struve, and Sigmund Widmer. Others who contributed to this book with help or information and w hom I would like to thank include Mikhail Agursky, Bayara Aroutunova, Mark rich source of information

internal exile

and

his expulsion to the

— Acknowledgements

[22]

Bonham Fritz,

Carter, Nicholas Bethell, Vladimir Bukovsky, Valeri Chalidze, Paul

Alexander Ginzburg, the

late

Evgenia Ginzburg, Michael Glenny, Xenia

Edward

Winthrop Knowlton, Oskar Luboshitz, Dr Eva Martin, Galina Nekrasova, Petr Pasek, Boris Sachs, Raissa Scriabine, Maria Slonim, Victor Sparre, Dieter Steiner, Vladimir Voinovich, Anna Voloshina, Thomas Whitney, Irina Zholkovskaya, and Ilya Zilberberg.

Howard Johnson,

Alexis Klimoff,

Krause, Frances Lindley, Pavel Litvinov,

Kline,

Dr Emil

acknowledge the patient assistance and encouragement over this book William \\'eatherb\' (whose idea it was), Philippa Harrison, James Cochrane, and Starling Lawrence and especially the unobtrusive erudition of my copy editor, Otto Sonntag, whose innumerable improvements are invisible to anvone but myself. My thanks also go to Dr Michael Nicholson, formerly of the University of Lancaster and now at Oxford University, the most selfless and encyclopaedically informed of Solzhenitsyn scholars, who read the entire book in manuscript form and offered me all kinds of invaluable advice and information; to the eagle-eyed and similarly well informed Dr Martin Dewhirst of Glasgow University, who also read the manuscript; and to Tatyana Litvinova, who read and commented on most of that part of the book that deals with Solzhenitsyn's life inside the Soviet Union. I am indebted more than I can say to Natalia Lusin of Columbia University, New York, for reading and commenting on the entire manuscript, for compiling the source notes and bibliography, and for helping to see the book through the final stages of its I

should

like to

of the various editors

—

who watched

preparation for the press.

The many

typists

who worked on

wanderings include Jean Dick,

Anne

Christopher Packard, and Batya Harlow.

and the

rest of the staff at the

cheerful assistance in tracking to

quote from an unpublished

Khan

for assistance in

the manuscript during

Pattinson, I

should

Radio Liberty

down article

Nancy Boensch, like to

library, in

information; Alan

on Solzhenitsvn's

me

solvent as

I

author's

thank Sara Hassan

New Lew

York, for their for permission

stay in Zurich;

reproducing some photographs; and

ager, Geoffrey Clark, for keeping

its

Patrick Merla,

my

Anwar

bank man-

overran deadline after dead-

line. I

am

grateful to the

W.

Averell Harriman Institute for the

Study of the Soviet Union (formerly the Russian Institute),

at

Advanced Columbia

University, for an appointment as a senior visiting fellow in 1981-83; to the

New

York Institute for the Humanities for making me a visiting scholar in 1981-82 and a fellow in 1982-84; and to the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York, and the Arts Council of Great Britain, for financial assistance while I was writing this book. I cannot omit the customary, and in this case richly deserved, thanks to my patient and understanding wife, Erika, for her unswerving support over an unduly long period of literary gestation (not to speak of her assistance with typing and other chores); and to my long-suffering children, Catherine, Stephen, Lesley, and Ingrid, who will now have to find a new subject for their unfilial jokes.

SOLZHENITSYN

I

OUT OF CHAOS AND SUFFERING IF GOD with

PRESIDED ovcf the birth of Alexander Solzhenitsvn, he w appropriate omens, for the ehild

\\

as

as lavish

born into an atmosphere of

chaos and suffering that rivalled anything he was to experience

in his later

months before his birth his voung father had died in excruciating pain from wounds received in a hunting accident. I lis griet-stricken, pregnant mother had rejoined her family in a nearby summer resort, only to find herself in the thick of the pitched battle that w as then raging betw een Reds life.

Six

W hites

Lenin and his in Russia's C^ivil \\ ar. In Petrograd and Moscow band of Bolsheviks w ere fighting ferociously to consolidate their coup d'etat, and the w hole of Russia w as awash with blood. December 1918 in his uncle's \illa in KisSolzhenits\n was born on lovodsk, a fashionable spa in the Caucasus Mountains, in southern Russia. His dead father, Isaaki Solzhenitsvn, would have been twenty-seven years old at the time of his son's birth. His mother, Taissia Solzhenitsyn, was

and

,

small

1

1

twentv-three.

The

its

Solzhenitsvn familv w as not special enough to have kept track of ancestrv. A supposed forebear, Philip Solzhenits\n, is known to have

colony of peasants outside the tow n of Bobrov, in the central Russian province of Voronezh, at the time of Peter the Great. In 1698, enraged b\' some routine act of rebelliousness, Peter had ordered the

been living

in a free

colony to be burnt to the ground and had forced its inhabitants to move elsewhere. About a hundred years later another Solzhenitsyn, Alexander's

was con\icted of ha\ ing participated in another peasant \'oronezh and was exiled to the just conquered virgin lands in

great-great-grandfather, rebellion in

the south

—

a traditional

method of colonizing new 25

territory at that time.

SOLZHENITSYN

[26]

There was thus a tradition of stubbornness and independence in the which was to stand them in good stead when they were sent to the new ly created province of Stavropol, a wedge of territory on a low plateau betw een the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Plain. To the north and south were the two major "hosts," as they were called, of the Kuban and family,

Terek Cossacks,* who had helped conquer these territories and been installed here by Catherine the Great to secure the new frontiers. There were some Cossacks in Stavropol, too, but not many, for this area had been reserved by the crown.

The

chief colonists were the so-called inogorodniye or "outsiders," ,

somewhat contemptuous name applied by Cossacks to non-Cossack Russians and subsequently adopted by the latter as a normal mode of descripthe

tion.

lush

The Solzhenitsyns were non-Cossack Russians, or "outsiders." The land they found in Stavropol Province was less fertile than valleys of the Kuban and Terek rivers, but there was plenty

According to Solzhenitsxn himself, the Solzhenitsyns and let

loose in the wild steppe country

lived in it

up

harmony,

v\'ith

beyond the

Kuma

their fellows

River,

in the

of

it.

"were

where they

land in such abundance that they didn't have to divide

They sowed where they ploughed, sheared sheep where their down roots."' next generation of Solzhenitsyns we know nothing, except the

in strips.

carts took

Of

them, and put

the

the Voronezh rebel's son and Solzhenitsvn's great-grandfather, Efim, which survives in the patronymic of Solzhenitsvn's grandfather, Semyon Efimovich. But with Grandfather Semyon we enter the second half of the nineteenth century and the era of photography. A sole surviving faded snapshot shows him standing, tall and self-consciously erect, in a field of corn, gazing firmly into the camera lens. Balding, with bristling Victorian mustaches and a full beard, and wearing a striped shirt, cravat, waistcoat, and jacket, he

name of

looks the very picture of a self-confident

The

yeoman

farmer.

was know n kxallv as Sablia, after the man\'branched shallow stream that flowed through it in winter (in summer it was usually dry), though it is now marked on the map as Sablinskoye. It was a typical south Russian settlement, consisting of a single main street lined w ith adobe houses, each with its ow n yard and kitchen garden at the back and outbuildings for the livestock. By the 1880s it had a parish church and a parish school and w as a posting stage on the broad, muddy road that wound its way from the town of Stavropol, the provincial capital, to Georgievsk, forty miles away, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. There was little to distinguish this place, except perhaps the view of the distant mountains, which had so captivated Lev Tolstoy when he drove through here in 1851 on his w ay to join the Terek Cossacks. Early one morning, he writes, he was stunned by these "gleaming white colossi w ith their delicate silhouettes and village

where they

li\ed

the distinct contours of their

summits etched against the distant sky."- It is model and hero passing this way

pleasant to think of Solzhenitsyn's literary

*The Cossacks of southern Russia generally took their name from the river along w hich they settled. The Kuban and the Terek were the principal rivers of the North Caucasus.

— t

Out some 70 years

of

Chaos and Suffering

l)efore his disciple's birth,

when

the Solzhenitsvns

[27] still

toiled

Did Sol/.henitsyn think of that when, 120 vears later, he devoted the opening pages of August 1914 to an evocation of that same mountain scenery (and was there an element of competition in that opening)? The Solzhenitsyn farm was about six miles east of Sablia and consisted of a low clay farmhouse and a cluster of outbuildings standing in the midst of the open steppe, surrounded by fields. This isolation was a distinctive feature of the Russian South, hi the North, the vast majorit\- of the peasants were serfs or share-croppers, living on their ow ners' land and pa\ ing tribute in the form of goods, taxes, or labour. 1 here the land w as managed collectively, divided into strips and allocated on a familv basis, under a feudal system whose inicjuities were to provide much of the fuel for the Re\()lution when it eventually came. In the South, with land available in such abundance, independence w as the rule, the peasants either ow ning or leasing lartje parcels of land and working as individual farmers, ihis bred an entirely different spirit from that pre\ailing in the North and was to leave its mark at

the plough.

on Solzhenitsyn,

Semyon, his elder sons.

too.

Solzhenitsyn's grandfather, worked the farm with the help of

He

married twice. By his

first

wife, Pelageya, he had three

sons and two daughters, and by his second, Marfa, a son and a daughter. The gap between their ages w as considerable. Konstantin, the eldest of the first three sons, was over twenty w hen the youngest, Isaaki, w as born. The middle son was \'asil)', and in between came the two daughters, Evdokia and Anastasia. .Vlarfa's two children, considerably younger than Isaaki, were Ilya

and Maria.' Solzhenitsyn maintains that his paternal grandfather was not particu-

and that several pairs of oxen and horses for ploughing, a dozen a couple of hundred sheep were the sum total of his disposable wealth. And it seems that he employed no hired labourers, so that his land could not ha\ e been particularly extensive. But after Semvon's remarriage to Marfa, a rift appears to have opened up between Semyon and the two older sons. Marfa, according to Solzhenitsyn, was "energetic and greed\-," anxious to take over the family property for herself and her two children, and Konstantin and Vasily w ere sufficiently well off to move away and bu\' farms of their own. Meanwhile, the two daughters, Evdokia and Anastasia, were married and moved to the neighbouring villages of Kursavka and Nagutskoye.* Solzhenitsyn's father, Isaaki, who was born on 6june 1891 (Old Style), had been just a child when his mother died and was replaced by an unwelcome stepmother. Solzhenitsyn believes that he felt his orphanhood keenly, but he was set apart from his older brothers and sisters in another way, too larly rich

cows, and

*Coincidentally the birthplace of Yuri Andropov. t Until the Revolution, Russia

adhered to the Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind

the Gregorian calendar, used in Europe and most of the rest of the world. Isaaki was born on 19

May

according to the Gregorian calendar.

SOLZHENITSYN

[28]

first and only one of the family to receive a proper education. Whereas the others had merely attended the local parish school, before joining their father on the farm, Isaaki had gone on to secondary school and then

he was the

to the

unheard-of heights of a gymnasium

in Pyatigorsk, the biggest

of the

Caucasian mountain spas. It had not been accomplished without a struggle. Semvon saw no reason why his third son shouldn't do exactly as the first two join him on the land. For a whole year he had refused to yield demands for a proper schooling, while Isaaki marked time on the farm. But in the end Isaaki's stubbornness had w on through, and he w ent to Pvatigorsk. After four years at the gymnasium the whole process was repeated, and another year passed before Isaaki was allowed bv his disgruntled and sceptical father to go on to university. 1 his was in 1911, when Isaaki was

had done and to Isaaki's

twenty.

He went

first

to the University of

1914 Solzhenitsvn

tells a

Kharkov,

in the

Ukraine. In August

story of Isaaki's being refused admission because

name, the Orthodox Christian "Isaaki," was confused with the Jewwhich would have made him subject to the limitations on universitN' admissions for the Jews. Solzhenitsvn heard this story from a distant relative, but he now believes it to be mistaken. It seems to be true, however, that Isaaki's peasant name, which he had been given in honour of the obscure saint Isaac the Dalmatian, on w hose name-day he was born, struck university ears as outlandish and quaint and w as already old-fashioned in the central parts of Russia. But Kharkov, in any case, did not suit Isaaki very well. The gymnasium in P)'atigorsk had been of a \er\' high intellectual standard, whereas this new ly opened provincial university, whose only virtue was that it w as cheap and fairly close to home, was mediocre. The following year, in 1912, overcoming any residual opposition from his father, Isaaki transferred to the his first

ish "Isaak,"

University of le

I

Moscow.

was now

at

the top of the educational ladder and began to enter fully

into the intellectual life of the time. In the short period of ten years, he

made Yet

the leap from peasant to

it

Isaaki

membership

in the

had

metropolitan intelligentsia.

was not plain sailing. Sensitive to his origins and loyal to his roots, torn by the conflict betw een the pull of his peasant past and his

w as

hopes for a brilliant future. His ambition,

like that

of generations of schol-

was somehow to link these two worlds ot past and future, to be a bridge betw een them and perhaps to narrow the gap for future generations. But the task was uphill, and human nature, as he found it in himself and others, unregenerate. According to Solzhenitsvn's description of his father in August 1914, Isaaki was very attached to his native village and always returned to work on the family farm during his vacations. But he grew increasingly estranged from his roots as his education progressed, and he w as teased bv the villagers arship boys before and since,

for his city clothes

*The their

and

his luinuhiik, or "populist,"* opinions.

Russian populists were Utopian

name from

188()s.

the Russian narod,

Herzen was

a

socialists

who

He

regarded

took their inspiration from Proudht)n and

meaning "people." Ihev were

influential in the 187()s

forerunner and Mikhailovskv their chief theoretician.

and

Out

of

Chaos and Suffering

[29]

himself as "someone w ho had received an education in order to use benefit of the people

the word, and

\\

The two

and

\\

ho would go back

to the people

w

ith

it

for the

the book,

ith l()\e."

intellectual

movements

that appear to ha\e influenced the

most (and that were to be not w ithout influence on Solzhenits\ n himself) were populism and lolstox anism,* both of w hich were well past their peak by 1912 and would have been regarded as distinctly oldfashioned in Moscow. The populists had long since been supplanted in the public esteem bv the anarchists, the anarchists bv the Socialist Revolutionaries and increasingly by the Social Democrats, which was the innocuoussounding official name of w hat was in effect the (Communist Party. Karlicr that same year, in fact, in Prague, a then obscure law\er bv the name of Vladimir Ulyanov (alias Lenin) had taken over the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and was laving the foundations of a tightiv knit conspiratorial group that had taken the name of Bolsheviks. .And shortlv afterw ards the Party was joined bv a lapsed seminarist named losif Dzhugashx ili (alias Stalin), whose views on revolutionary development far outstripped, in their ruthlessness, the theories of the fierce-sounding Socialist Revolutionaries and idealistic Isaaki the

anarchists.

When war

broke out between Russia and Germany, on

August 1914, on the family farm in the south and helping his father in the fields. Two manifestos declaring war on Germany and .\ustria were read aloud in the Sablia village church and then posted in the church square. A commission of local worthies w as appointed to deal w ith requisitions. Sablia's horses were rounded up and handed over to the district centre for use as remounts bv local detachments of the Cossack cavalry. But w hen the time came for the villagers to be recruited, they were sent to the infantr\ for Russian "outsiders" could not be admitted to the exclusive Cossack regi1

Isaaki vxas holidaving

,

ments.

The

Solzhenitsyn brothers escaped the recruiters' attention completely.

Konstantin was too old. X'asilv was passed over because he had several gers missing

And

from one hand.

their stepbrother, Ilya,

Isaaki

was excused because he was

w as too young. Rather

a

fin-

student.

surprisingly, in the light

of his Tolstoy an and pacifist views, Isaaki decided to enlist.

Whether

this

was the fruit of impulse, reinforced by the w ave of patriotic feeling that swept the country after the declaration of war, or w hether it w as in response to some deeper imperative in Isaaki's nature, we do not know. But his decision was to make a lasting impression on Solzhenitsyn when he subsequcntl) learned of it, and it was with the story of his father's enlistment that Solzhenitsyn opened August 1914 and his epic on the fate of twentieth-century Russia.

Within

a

month

of the declaration of war, Isaaki was in

Moscow. HavHeavx

ing completed an officer-training course at the Sergiev School of Artillery,

he was dispatched to the front to commence his service with Field

*Tolstovanism was an

ill-defined philosophico-religious

about nonresistance to violence and the need for

a

movement

inspired by Tolstoy's ideas

kind of agrarian socialism

in Russia.

[30]

SOLZHENITSYN

Marshal Bryusov's First Grenadier Artillery Brigade. Little is known of his wartime career, except that he served for part of the time as an artillery lookout and was mentioned in dispatches for having personally rescued several boxes of ammunition from a fire started by enemy shells. He ended the w ar w ith three medals, including the George and Anna crosses."^ There \\ as also the episode of his election to the Brigade Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies. In February 1917 the February Revolution had led not onlv

and the setting up of a provisional government and elect a constitutent assembly but also to the establishment of a popular assembly known as the Petrograd Soviet (the word soviet in Russian simply means "council," but it had acquired new meaning during the abortive revolution of 1905, when a famous workers' "soviet" had arisen spontaneously in St Petersburg out of the general strike committee and temporarily wielded power). The most significant single act of the Petrograd Soviet was the handing down, in March 1917, of "Order No. 1," which stipulated that soldiers should be allowed to keep possession of their arms when not on active service, that they should form their own councils, or "Soviets," to elect delegates to the national Soviet in Petrograd, and that they should carry out only those orders that had been issued or approved by the Petrograd Soviet (except while on duty). 1 he main thrust of Order No. 1 w as against the traditional draconian discipline of the tsarist army and the despotic privileges of an entrenched officer caste. These had already led to widespread demoralization and mass desertions, which Order No. 1 merely intensified. But the situation was complicated by the fact that the Russian army in wartime had hundreds of thousands of volunteer officers (of whom Isaaki was one) who were remote from the career officers and their code. Isaaki Solzhenitsvn apparently sympathized with his soldiers and the introduction of the Soviets and allow ed himself to be elected as a deputy.' It was at about this time that he made the acquaintance of Taissia Zakharovna Shcherbak in Moscow. Taissia, the daughter of a wealthy landowner of Ukrainian origin, was also from the South. Her father's estate was near in the same region of the North Caucasus as the Solzhenitsyn farm Armavir, in the Cossack Kuban, just north of Stavropol. Like Isaaki, Taissia had attended boarding-school in P\atigorsk and must even have been there at the same time as he, though the two had never met. Later she studied at the exclusive Andreyeva Gymnasium, in Rostov-on-Don, and in 1912 had moved to the Golitsyn Academy of Agriculture, in Moscov\'. Isaaki had gone on a brief leave to Moscow in the spring of 1917 and met Taissia at some kind of student celebration. It seems to have been a genuine instance of that time-honoured romantic formula of lo\e at first sight. Isaaki was able to remain in the capital for only a few days, and it is not clear whether he made any further visits to Moscow, yet a mere four months later, in August 1917, the pair w ere married at the Belorussian front, in a special ceremony conducted by the brigade chaplain. Taissia returned to Moscow and Isaaki continued to the abdication of the tsar to call a general election

—

his service.

C) U T

()

F

(

]

H A () S A N D S U

FFK

October 1917* the Bolsheviks carried out

In

R NG I

|

to hold a

second congress

at

On

the end of October.

congress opened, Lenin ordered a coup

d'etat, t(K)k

I |

The i\'trograd

their coup.

Soviet had called the First All-Kussian (Congress of So\iets in June and

due

3

was

the night before the

over the congress, announced

the dissolution of the Provisional (lovernnient, and established the Bolshe-

—

vik-dominated Council of People's Commissars to rule the countr\ ostensibly until the Constituent Assembly could be elected. In November, w hen the eagerly awaited elections took place (the

and

first

in the entire history of Russia), the Bolsheviks

last fullv free elections

came out

They had no however, and when the

the second-largest

party, with 24 per cent of the vote.

intention of listening to the

wishes of the electorate,

C>)nstituent

the following January, they failed, it.

first

attempted to dominate

it

Assemblv met

and then, having

ordered the executive committee of the Congress of Soviets to dissolve

The assembh' never met

An

again.

important aim of Lenin's was to sign

a separate peace treatv w ith the Germans, but the German demands were so exorbitant that not even he could s\\ allow them at the time. The war therefore dragged on through the winter of 1917. Russian morale was at an all-time low with revolution raging not only behind the lines but w ithin the armed forces as well, and with mass desertions, the Russian armv w as in no condition to fight back. The Germans easily advanced to the Black Sea in the south and almost to Petrograd in the ,

north. In February 1918 the Russians sued for peace and in

March signed

the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding Finland, the Baltic states, and large areas

of the Ukraine to the enemy. Isaaki

remained

at his post to the bitter

end, setting an example of patri-

otism and devotion to duty that subsequently became

a

bvword

in the Sol-

zhenitsyn family and deeply influenced his son's attitudes tw entv years

when

abandoned

Moscow in the

his unit

and made

his

shortly after the October

way

south to join Taissia. She had

coup and w

as

now

staying

left

w ith her family

Caucasian resort of Kislovodsk.

Kislovodsk aims and style

was

later,

faced with another world war. But in March, after Brest-Litovsk, Isaaki

a typical

at this

time was also under

sat rather

a

Soviet administration,

whose

oddly with the character of the place. Kislovodsk

nineteenth-century spa, famous for

its

Narzan mineral waters,

luxuriant vegetation and associations with high society. Perched in a narrow glen, the

summer

most romantic, inaccessible, and exclusive of that cluster of elegant Caucasus .Mountains, it frankly

resorts at the northern tip of the

proclaimed in the

its

dedication to the epicurean delights of taking the waters, strolling

shade of

its

gossiping in the

celebrated poplar avenue, gaming in the casino, or simpl)'

pump room

the idle pleasures of the rich,

of the Narzan Gallery.

whose sumptuous

villas

It

was

w ere

a

monument

to

scattered pictur-

esquely on the lower slopes of the mountainside, and the new tow n "Soviet"

was hard put *

to find a role for itself.

During the early months of 1917

According to the Old Style Russian calendar

lution. Since the calendar

each year.

(see note p. 27),

it

chose

hence the name October Revo-

reform of 1918, the Revolution has been celebrated on

7

November

SOLZHENITSYN

[32] to adopt a

more or

less neutral posture, neither

condoning the old ways nor,

other than in rhetoric, condemning them, w hile the struggle for power in the

country raged elsew here.

was staying with her wealthy elder brother, Roman Shcherbak, summer villa on Sheremetvev Street. Life here was still luxurious, and Isaaki was made doubly welcome as an officer and Taissia's husband. He was introduced to Taissia's parents, Zakhar and Evdokia Shcherbak, who had recently been forced off their estate near Armavir bv a local Bolshevik rising and had come to Kislovodsk to await events. Here also was Taissia's elder sister, Maria, who lived nearby in Tolstoy Street with her husband, a landowner named Afanasy Karpushin, w ith whom Zakhar and Evdokia were staying."^ Taissia

and

his wife, Irina, in their

Isaaki did not

remain there long.

It

seems that he found the idleness and

luxurv of Kislovodsk irksome after the rigours of the front. against his belief in the simple

life.

And

it

is

Thev offended

possible that there were also

between them. His father- and mother-in-law were shocked and embittered bv the violent sequestration of their estate. Roman, Irina, and the Karpushins must have been of like mind (presumablv Karpushin had lost his estate as well), but Isaaki, with strong sympathies for the new Soviet political differences

regime,

may

well have taken a different view, or at the very least have remained

uncommitted

until the situation

the necessary formalities, he

grew

made

clearer.

At

all

events, after observing

an

his excuses, left Kislovodsk, taking

already pregnant Taissia with him, and travelled the sixty-odd miles east-

wards

to his father's

farm

in Sablia. It

bare three months of married

life

was

there, a

few weeks

later, after a

with Taissia, that he suffered his tragic

accident.'

The exact circumstances of the accident are shrouded in obscurit\ It seems that on 8 June 1918 Isaaki went hunting for small game with a friend on the flat, prairie-like steppe around the farm. Thev were travelling in a horse-drawn cart. At one point Isaaki stood up in the stationary cart to disembowel a freshly shot hare, and in a moment of carelessness leaned his cocked shotgun against the cart's side. The horse started, as if bitten bv a fly. Ihe cart gave a jerk, and the shotgun fell and exploded, peppering Isaaki's chest and abdomen with shot. The\' immediately returned to the farm, and from there Isaaki was dri\en, .

tow n of Georgievsk, some forty miles southwas that same dirt road that Tolstoy had once travelled, and it w as not much changed either, being pitted with those ruts and potholes that have

still

in the cart, via Sablia to the

west.

It

been the hallmark of Russian provincial roads since time immemorial.

unsprung

cart

was obliged

wounded man's

sufferings

pain coursing through his

The

minimize the spasm of agonizing

to proceed at a funereal pace to

—every body—and

lurch, every it

jolt,

sent a

took them tw enty-four hours to cover

the forty miles to Georgievsk. Isaaki

w as admitted

to the hospital

without delay and speedily operated

on. But conditions in Cieorgievsk at this time were already beginning to suf-

Out

OK (^HAOS AND SUFFKRING

I33I

War. Fsscntial services were breaking down. were poor. The operation v\as hastv and slapdash, not all the shot was removed (nor the wad, vv hich had entered his chest as well), and the after-care was perfunctory. The wounds turned septic, and within a week Isaaki was dead. The date was 15 |unc 191 S. Isaaki was four days short of his twenty-eighth birthda\-. Taissia, who had accompanied her husband in the cart and w atched him die, was ill-equipped to bear the shock of this sudden widowhood. V'ivacious, sensitive, and delicate, she had led a life that till now was cossetted and carefree, shielded by the great w ealth of her father and the loving attention that had been her birthright as the youngest and most gifted of his three children. Pour happy years at boarding-school had been followed b\- four more at Moscow University, a romantic w hirlwind marriage to a handsome young officer, and finally the promise of a child to bless their union. But now, her voung officer was dead, and the child would be born fatherless at a moment when Russia was in the throes of an unprecedented catacKsm. Fortunately, she was not entirely alone she had alreadv summoned her brother, Roman, and her sister-in-law, Irina, from Kislovodsk. Irina was Taissia's closest female relative. Onlv seventeen when married off bv a sick and dving father to the wealthy Roman Shcherbak, Irina was eleven years younger than her husband and only six years older than Taissia, to whom she felt draw n at once. Her marriage had not been a great success, and she had taken refuge in the consolations of religion and art. She w as a woman of firm principles and strongh' held convictions, tenacious and dedicated, the ideal companion in a crisis; and she and Roman had answered I aissia's call fer

from the

cttccts ot the (>i\il

Professional standards and disciphne

—

with alacrity.

She had arrived was

failing,

son.

I

am

spoken Isaaki

is

in

time to see Isaaki die, and in old age, w hen

memory

she claimed to recall his dving words to her: "Take care of

sure

I

am going to have a

—there seems

not clear

w as convinced

his child

to

have been

would be

mv

Whether these words w ere actualh

son.'"^

a

son

a tradition in the

—and

family that

they were, they w ere

if

more probably addressed to Taissia than to her sister-in-law However, Irina was to take as passionate an interest in her nephew 's upbringing as she had earlier in Taissia's, and her subsequent influence on Solzhenitsvn was to be both permanent and deep. Her recollection (uttered long years after Taissia's .

death) therefore has a certain retrospective logic to

it,

but cannot be taken

literally.

Georgievsk was only

fifty

miles from Kislovodsk, and after burying Isaaki

town cemetery, Taissia returned with Roman and Irina to the treeshaded villa on Sheremetvev Street. By now the residents of Kislovodsk had in the

little

stomach for the pleasures of spa

life,

for the situation in the tow n, as in

the rest of Russia, had deteriorated dramatically. tion in central Russia, the Bolsheviks

Having secured

had launched

a

south, immediately after the signing of the peace treaty with tov had been recaptured

their posi-

major offensive

in the

Germany. Ros-

from the White X'olunteer Army, and Bolshevik

SOLZHEMTSVN

[34]

Don

forces overran both the

Cossack

capital ot

No\ocherkassk and the Kuban

Cossack capital of Ekaterinodar, the main centres of White resistance.

The

seemed, was about to be incorporated into the freshlv proclaimed Soviet state. At the same time, a new and harsher form of Bolshevik power was returning to those parts of the Caucasus alreadv in pro-

North Caucasus,

it

Bolshevik hands, including the mountain resorts. Nikolai Zernov, w ho was living in the neighbouring resort of Essentuki at

the time, tw elve miles from Kislovodsk, has described the second Bolshe-

vik takeover in his reminiscences.

On

10

March

1918, he writes, a battered

main square and ground to motlev assortment of armed men but none of them local, who leapt

old lorrx living the red flag had crawled into the

was

a halt. It

overflow ing w ith

tilled to

a

"of indeterminate origin and nationalitv,"

out and proclaimed the resort "an inalienable part of the Soviet Socialist

Republic." after which thev repaired to the Metropole Hotel, expelled residents,

and

A

settled in.

its

small group of curious onlookers, including Zer-

nov, had "listened to this declaration in silence before dispersing to their

homes.

'"^

On the surface,

life

had not changed much

at flrst.

The shops had

staved

open, the schools had continued to teach, and people had gone about their

much

But the Civil U'ar and the struggle for power, combv both sides on an all-or-nothing policv in everv aspect of the struggle, had opened a Pandora's box of bitterness, resentments, hatreds, and revenge, so that, beneath the surface, changes had begun at once. The first sign had been the institution of sw eeping searches business

bined w

of

all

as before.

ith the ruthless insistence

weapons

the houses of the better-off inhabitants, ostensiblv in quest of

but in realitv extending

much w ider

than that. According to Zernov, "gangs

of rampaging and frequentlv drunk Bolsheviks went round bursting into

w capons, confiscating gold and valuables, and looking This was followed b\- the imposition of compulsorv financial levies, w hich frequentlv took no account of the victim's abilitv to pav and were backed bv threats of arrest if the monev was not forthcoming. Finallv, to reinforce these methods, the new authorities rounded up the most prominent local citizens and announced that thev w ould be held as hostages against the good conduct of the town's inhabitants and the pavment of the levies. These hostages were removed to the administrative centre ot Pyatigorsk, and it w as assumed that thev would return to their homes w hen sufficient monev had been collected. Suddenlv, however, the walls of the town w ere festooned w ith ill-printed proclamations declaring that all the hostages houses,

demanding

all

for supplies of food."

had been "liquidated" of the people."

It is \\

difficult to

ho

falls

for

consequence of the

convcv

to

class struggle

and

as

"enemies

the populace, writes Zernov, was indescribable.

anvone who hasn't experienced it the feelings of a man earmarked for liquidation in the inter-

into the categorv of individuals

ests of achieving

ment

as a

The shock to

some

.

.

.

the

Communist

particular action.

Utopia. In such cases death

It is

is

not

a

punish-

an inevitable consequence of the victim's

Out

Chaos AND Suffering

OF

[35]

... In times to come the systematic destruction of "parasites" and as a daily occurrence in the Communist countries uas blunt the conscience of mankind, but in 1918 these "sacramental" murders,

social origin.

"enemies of the people" to

w hich were meant

to signify "a leap

from the world of necessity into the realm phenomenon and had a

of freedom," according to .Marx, were a totally new shattering impact on us.'"

In Kislovodsk the situation was, for

it

if anything, worse than in Essentuki, had become the temporary headquarters of the commander-in-chief of

the Revolutionary

Army

of the North (Caucasus, Avtonomov,

who installed The large

himself in a luxurious armoured train at the Kislovodsk terminus.

Bolshevik garrison behaved pretty

rounding

district.

The

garrison

much

as

it

commander,

pleased in the town and sura

former coach driver named

Sorokin, was aided in his terrorization of the populace bv the chairman of the Kislovodsk

Tow n

Soviet, Tulenev, a former

fitter,

w ho not

onl\' loathed

the local bourgeoisie but was also at daggers draw n w ith the moderate Avto-

nomov and opposed him at every turn. After a few weeks in Kislovodsk, x^vtonomov moved north and w as recalled to Moscow on charges of plotting against the Soviet regime,

w

hile the

tow n was virtuallv taken over bv two

new commissars, Axelrode and Gay. The latter had a strikingly beautiful wife, Xenia, a former singer and dancer who was particularly fond of throwing grand parties, at

which she would appear decked out

in the

extravagant

jewellery extorted from hostages in exchange for sparing their lives.

who

refused, or couldn't pay,

were executed

Those

in the cellars of a neighbourincr

villa."

This w

which the pregnant Taissia was plunged at She had little choice of where to go. She had known her husband's family for onl\- a few w eeks, and there w as no question of staying on the somewhat primitive Solzhenitsyn farm in the later stages of her pregnancy. Her father's estate near Armavir was still occupied bv revolutionar\- forces, and her entire famil\- w as still holed up in Kisloxxxlsk. Because of their great wealth, they were naturally in a precarious position. Together with Kislovodsk's other prominent families, they went in daily fear of their lives, staying indoors as much as possible and making the sign of the cross over their closed shutters each night in the hope that this might w ard off the search parties. But it didn't. One night a gang of armed men burst into the house and took Roman aw av as a hostage. There w as a certain irony in this, since of all the Shcherbaks, Roman was the most liberal and most sympaas the situation into

the beginning of June 1918.

A lifelong admirer of the later Tolstoy and of Maxim Gorky, he w as, despite his conspicuous wealth, a fervent opponent of tsarism and a firm advocate of social and political change. For his captors this was irrelevant he was the class enemy, whatever his political views. He was taken immediately to Pyatigorsk, throw n into a cell, and condemned to death. The intrepid Irina refused to be cowed by this blow Gathering together thetic to the Revolution.

—

.

as

much

jew ellerv

and money

as she could, she followed him to the Bolshevik

SOLZHENITSYN

[36]

headquarters in Pyatigorsk. For

a

young woman

this

\\

as

no easy thing to

summer in Pyarunning the gauntlet of jeering, undisciplined guards and confrontvoung commissar who not only had the pow er of life and death over

do. Zernov's sister Sophia had gone on a similar errand that tigorsk,

ing a

her but was also

known

was able

to

young women. She had emerged Combining eloquence with bribery, she

for his taste for

unscathed, as did Irina in her turn.

'purchase Roman's release. events in Kislovodsk were being watched from

Meanw hile,

a different

vantage point by Colonel A. G. Shkuro, a retired Cossack officer

who had

onlv recently returned from fighting in the First World War. Shkuro was

a

prominent Kuban Cossack who had distinguished himself in the war by his bravery and his uncharacteristically democratic handling of his subordinates. Unlike most Cossack officers, he had no monarchist sympathies and was wholeheartedly in favour of the February Revolution, the Provisional Government, and the Constituent Assembly. He had even welcomed the establishment of Soviet power, and at one point had been invited to join the Bolsheviks by Avtonomov, but had declined (it is possible that their meeting had something to do with Avtonomov's subsequent recall to Moscow and fall from grace). He preferred for the moment to sit on the sidelines. By the early summer of 1918 the situation all over the North Caucasus was chaotic.'"* The high tide of enthusiasm for Soviet power that had engulfed '"^

most of the Kuban, Stavropol Province, and the mountain resorts in early 1918 was already receding. In the South, whatever the position might have been in central Russia, the proportion of political idealists and convinced socialists to thugs and adventurers in the Bolshevik ranks was very small, and the latter's terroristic policies had disgusted and alienated nine-tenths of the population, especially after Lenin's proclamation of the "Red Terror." Shkuro was well aware of the mutinous feelings these policies had engendered among the Cossacks, for he had a wide network of friends and informants in the villages on the strength of his wartime reputation. In Mav 1918 he formed a guerrilla army and raised a Cossack rebellion. Soon the entire region \v as ablaze with civil war. The rebellion centred at first on the mainly Cossack village of Soldatsko-Alexandrovskoye, about a dozen miles east of the Solzhenitsyn farm at Sablia, before spreading to other areas. Around Sablia itself, however, the villages were more mixed, with Russian colonists outnumbering the Cossacks. These, though not siding with the Soviets, appear to have remained neutral and uncommitted. Meanwhile, the tide was turning against the Soviets in the rest of the North Caucasus. Rostov had fallen to the Volunteer Army in May. In June there had been a White officers' rising in Stavropol that led to bloody street fighting but ended in failure. In July, the town finally fell to the Volunteers, and a White administration was installed. In the same month Red forces abandoned Armavir, where the Shcherbaks had their estate, and in August they were forced out of the Kuban capital of Ekaterinodar. During the next three months the fighting raged back and forth over the countryside, many

Out

of (^IhAOS and SuKKKRINti

villages being repeatedly taken ant! retaken

towns and

1)\

[37

I

either side, lor the

long-suffering civilian populace, the consequences were catastrophic. Kach side,

upon occupying

a fresh \illage

or town,

adversaries there, rel\ ing on denunciations for ringleaders

would be shot or hanged, causing

would attempt its

to identify

its

information. The supposed

ripples of hatred

and \engeful-

would be imposed until the next battle. \\ hen the opposing side pre\ailed, the w hole sequence would be repeated in reverse. On top of this, both sides fought for

ness to run through their families and friends, and an uneasx' calm

much

of the time in guerrilla st\le, with all the gratuitous violence that that form of warfare brings in the form of ambushes, lightning raids, recjuisitions, and the taking of hostages. Unfortunately, we ha\e no information about the Solzhenitsvn family during this violent period. We may speculate that Sennon and his sons, as reasonably prosperous and successful peasants, would not have been attracted to the doctrines of the Bolsheviks, w ho deliberately espoused the cause of the landless labourers

brethren.

On

and the poorest peasants and incited them against

not exclusively, Cossack led, so

Cossacks, found themselves ries

their

the other hand, the White opposition was primarily, though it is

possible that the Solzhenitsyns, as non-

somew here

in the

middle. In the existing histo-

of the period, the village of Sablia figures neither as

a

Bolshevik nor as

a

White stronghold and was the site of no notable battles. In September 1918 Shkuro's Cossack partisans invaded Kisloxodsk, took three thousand prisoners, and executed the local Bolshevik leaders, including Alexander Gay and his wife, Xenia. Xenia, according to Zernov, demanded permission to smoke a last cigarette before coolly ascending the gallow s. Her defiant last words were "Us today, you tomorrow!"'-* The truth of these words was already being illustrated in neighbouring Pyatigorsk, which still had not fallen to the Whites. On the night of 18 September, while Shkuro was executing Red prisoners in Kislovodsk, a Polish Bolshevik named Andziewski cut off the heads of 155 hostages by the light of specially kindled fires. A few days later, Shkuro was forced to v\ithdraw from Kislovodsk and the Reds took over again, bringing another harvest of executions, but at the end of December Shkuro launched a fresh offensive on the mountain resorts and this time was successful. On 5 January 1919 he captured Pyatigorsk and Essentuki, and one day later, Kislovodsk.

On

6 January

the populace,

I arrived in Kislovodsk and was given a tumultuous welcome by which had suffered grievously under the Bolshevik regime. The

town had also suffered. Many houses had been pillaged, and the celebrated poplar avenue had been cut down. The Red butchers had slaughtered hundreds of the townsfolk w ith sword and bullet. Since it was Epiphany there w as the Blessing of the Waters and a thanksgiving mass, after which I held a parade of my troops.'^ *This slogan, reversed, was to become a favourite saying in Soviet labour camps: "\'ou today, me tomorrow " meaning vou will die todav (or may you die today), and 1 will die tomorrow (or, w ith luck, never).

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[38] Is it

fanciful to

suppose that the Shcherbaks attended that thanksgiving

mass, in the beautiful church of St Panteleimon on the

hill

overlooking Irina's

dacha? Zakhar and Evdokia were outstandinglv pious believers

in the old

Orthodoxy, and Irina had been devout from childhood. As for Taissia, on this occasion she had particular reason to thank the Lord. Less than three \\ eeks previously, on 1 December 1918, amid the chaos and the carnage, she had given birth to a son. She named him Alexander, and he was christened in that selfsame church on the hill. tradition of Russian

1

2

CHILDHOOD

TAissiA

WAS, WITH the possible exception of Roman, the least rehgious of the Shcherbak family. Although raised by her parents in an atmosphere of old-fashioned pietv and devotion (her aunt Ashkelaya was a nun), later to be reinforced bv the arrival of the devout Irina in their household, she seemed to have had all of this knocked out of her by her progressive boarding-school in Rostov. Morning and evening genuflections before the icon in her room had given \\ a\' to amused contempt tor the rituals ot an abandoned cult, and holida\s at home had become an embarrassing bore, involving, as thev did, repeated familv excursions to church and the strict

member

observance of

all

cow, she had

\\

religious fast-davs

illinglv follow

and holidays. Later,

Mos-

as a student in

ed the prevailing university trends of atheism

and anticlericalism, delighted with this opportunitv to slough ott her provincial intellectual baggage. But now, amid the heightened terrors and apocalyptic fears engendered bv the Civil War, she found herself, like so many others, turning back to the church again. "The atmosphere created in the Caucasian resorts," writes Zernov, "encouraged our religious enthusiasm.

...

It

was on the eve of a spiritual renaissance, that would reveal to a penitent people the lineaments of our Saviour, and teach Russians how to found their

seemed

to us that Russia

the church, purified radiant lives

bv her

No

on brotherlv love."

suffering,

doubt, Taissia partook of these emotions

when

she attended church herself. Father Alexei, the resident priest at St Pantelei-

mon's, was famous throughout the region for the fervency of his prayer, his religious

message

a

balm

to the strife-torn

and war-weary inhabitants

ot bat-

tered Kislovodsk.'

The

entire reejion,

and indeed most of the Caucasus, w

39

as for the

time

SOLZHENITSYN

[40]

being firmly in the hands of the Whites. eral

The Volunteer Army,

led

by Gen-

Denikin, soon began to press northwards to Moscow. With Admiral

Kolchak advancing through Siberia, it began to look as if the Red forces ould be rolled back and the Bolsheviks defeated. So, at least, it appeared to the people in southern Russia and also, at last, to Russia's former allies in the \\ ar, w ho belatedly sent expeditionary forces, munitions, and supplies. As a consequence of these changes the Shcherbak family reshuffled itself. Zakhar and Evdokia left Maria's house to return to their estate near Armavir, while Taissia and the infant Solzhenitsvn moved in with Maria to take their place. Maria was less educated than Taissia, having gone straight from boarding-school, at the age of seventeen, to be married to Karpushin. Karpushin had died of tvphus the preceding vear, however, and so Maria w as all alone. A comparatively simple soul, generous and kind-hearted, she welcomed them with open arms, and it was here, on aptly named Tolstov Street, that Solzhenitsvn was to spend the first six vears of his life.Bv the summer of 1919 the \\ hite armies of Denikin and General Wrangel had penetrated as far north as Orel and Saratov and were poised to strike at Moscow a mere two hundred miles awav. The entire South and East were in their grasp, and it seemed onlv a matter of time before the Bolsheviks would be overcome and the old order restored. But appearances were highly deceptive. Just as the old Russia had not so much been conquered as it had simph' collapsed from inertia, incompetence, and corruption, so the Civil War was not so much won by the Reds as lost by the Whites, who had absolutely nothing new to offer. On the contrary, all the vices of the old regime had survixed on their territory and been magnified by them. Shkuro, when he met the leaders of the Volunteer Army, was appalled by their ignorance and dismayed by their blind arrogance and lofty disdain for the comv\

,

mon

people. Denikin and his generals

made no

secret of their

contempt

for

the democratic reforms of the February Revolution and short-lived Constit-

uent Assembly, nor did they hide their determination to restore the tsar and

And in the field their local commanders proved ever\ bit and ferocious as those of the Reds. In the town of Stavropol, for instance. General Uvarov instituted a policy of mass executions of peasants and w orkers as reprisals for former Red successes, w hile in the surrounding countryside General Pokrovsk\ conducted mass hangings in every village he came to, making no attempt to establish or prove the guilt of his victims. In this way the Whites were but a mirror image of the Reds, the extremes overcame the middle, and the stage was set for a war of devastation and attrition that would decimate the innocent population. In purely military terms, too, the Whites proved unequal to their task. By the end of the summer the Red Cossack cavalry, led by Budenny and Dumenko, had stemmed the White advance, blocking their w av to Moscow and driving them south again. This Red offensive continued all through the autumn and winter, and by February 1920 they had reoccupied Rostov and driven the Whites back into the Caucasus, onto the territory whence they had started out. the tsarist regime.

as savage

(Childhood (vonditions in the South during these

were appaUing.

One

of the

many

|

last, hitter

phases of the

English officers fighting

\\

ith

(>ivil

the

4

i |

War

liritisli

II. N. II. Wilhamson, later descril)ed in hook how the whole c()inur\side had been laid waste hv the see-saw fighting and how the stations and the villages grew shabbier with every visit he made to them. Windows were boarded up, the hammer anti sickle had been scraw led on some of the houses and the doors daubed w ith red j^aint during the last Red occupation, and machine-gun bullets had marked the applicable to both Retls and Whites, facades. "I'he posters w ith their slogans 'War to the Finish' and 'Death Is Better Than Slavery' grew more tattered everv time I saw them.'" Williamson noted the breakdown of agriculture, the shortage of food owing to the harsh requisitions policv of both Reds and Whites, and the ever-growing menace of typhus, w hich raged unchecked over thousands of square miles of southern Russia. " I'he disease had spread like wildfire and whole trainloads of people perished unattended or froze to death because thev were too weak to help themselves. Iheir bodies, fro/.en stiff like logs, were dumped alongside the track, stripped of boots and clothing, which onlv passed on the disease to the healthv who removed them.""* This epidemic took a heavy toll of the Solzhenitsvn familv, carrving aw av both of Solzhenitsvn's paternal grandparents, Semvon and Marfa, his uncle

I\xpecUlionary Fu)rce there, C^aptain

his

—

—

Vasilv, and his aunt Anastasia.** In

March 1920

Volunteer

the

White

resistance finally collapsed, and the

rump

of

Army was

evacuated from Novorossiisk bv the British. Throughout the Caucasus there was a wave of revenge killing, and in Armathe

vir there

was

a veritable

pogrom by

the Reds. Zakhar and FA'dokia were

obliged to abandon their estate for the second and

Kislovodsk, taking with them a few sticks bles they could transport. sia,

last

time and

back to

flee

rniture and whatever

Ihere they moved inlWce more w

ith

mova-

Maria, Tais-

and the infant Solzhenitsyn. Bolshevik rule

of

of^''

now came

"War Communism"

to the

Caucasus

to stav,

and with

it

the policy

that had already been instituted in the rest ot Russia.

In the countryside this

meant the

forcible expropriation of

all

landowners,

the establishment of "committees of poor peasants" to confiscate produce

from the better-off ones, and the unleashing of armed food detachments from the towns to requisition grain and other foodstuffs.

At the same

time,

all

business and industry was nationalized and a system of barter introduced in place of private trade.

The

results, here as elsewhere,

were catastrophic. The

already ravaged and pillaged agricultural system simply collapsed,

and industry came to

a halt,

and only

a flourishing black

all

trade

market and increas-

ingly savage requisitions prevented a famine of epidemic proportions.

Throughout the first year of Bolshevik rule the Shcherbaks remained marooned in their mountain resort of Kislovodsk. In the winter of 1920, like everyone else, they had virtually starved, selling off their furniture and possessions at derisory prices to buy food. The infant Solzhenitsyn was presumably secure and oblivious of these hardships. Many years later he was to recall the reassuring icon that hung in one corner of his room, suspended in

SOLZHENITSYN

[42]

the angle between wall and ceiling and tilted

dow n\\ ards

so that

its

holv face

seemed to be gazing directly at him. At night the candle in front of it would flicker and shudder. And at that magic moment between waking and sleeping, the radiant visage seemed to detach itself and float out over his bed, like a true guardian angel. In the mornings, instructed by his grandmother Evdokia, he would kneel before the icon and recite his pravers.^ Onlv rarely did the outer chaos impinge on his world. His earliest memwhen ory of it comes from one of his regular visits to St Panteleimon in 192 he was nearly three. 1

I

remember

\\

as

with

rupted.

I

mv \\

I

\\

as in

church. There were

of people, candles, vestments.

mother, then something happened: the service

anted a better view, so

my

looked over the heads of the crowd. aisle

lots

I

mother held saw,

filing

me up

\\

as

at

arm's length and

arrogantly

when

the government

was confiscating church property

I

brusquely inter-

dow n the

of the nave, the sugar-loaf "Budennv" hats of Soviet soldiers.

period

,

all

I

central

It \\

as the

over Russia.

most respects, life for the small boy was the same as for any other But not for Taissia. By the winter of 1921 her resources had run out. Maria had just remarried, this time choosing an enormously tall and affable ex-guardsman by the name of Fyodor Garin. Garin had three children of his ow n from a former marriage, tw o girls and a boy, and although he and Maria were happy to have Taissia and Solzhenitsyn stay on, the house w as now somewhat crowded. Zakhar and Evdokia were also living there again and had now here to go. Besides, there was no work for Taissia in Kislovodsk. Judging that Alexander was old enough to stand a temporary separation and In

child.

bv Maria, Taissia moved to the large some difflcult)', she successfully took a coLif,'je in shorthand and typing and found a post as a secretary. Almost at the same time, Roman and Irina abandoned the villa on Sheremetyev Street and moved a short way down the railw av line to the quiet hamlet of Minutka. In their case the move was dictated by prudence. There were too many people in Kislovodsk w ho knew of Roman's former arrest and miraculous release, and the chances were that the new Bolshevik administration might choose to settle old scores. For Roman and Irina, as "socially alien" elements, it w as the first of a long and exhausting series of moves to forestall "revolutionary revenge." Solzhenitsyn spent the next tw o and a half years living w ith his Aunt Alaria (or "Marusia," as he called her), his new uncle, and his three newcousins, with w hom he pla\ed throughout the winter months, spending his summers w ith Irina and Roman ("Auntie Ira and Uncle Romasha") in Minutka. But in 1924 Maria's villa was confiscated. She and Garin decided to move to Georgievsk and w ith what remained of Maria's money bought a small adobe house, which they divided into two. One large, self-contained room w as for the use of Zakhar and Evdokia, and the rest for themselves. The old couple, however, found it difficult to settle. Zakhar, in particular, that he

would be well looked

after

seaport and regional centre pf Rostov-on-Don, where, with

Childhood was drawn back the question for

Armavir, and although

to his old estate near

him

to reoccupv

it,

[4

he and Evdokia moved for

it

a

3

J

was out of

while to the

nearby village of Gulkevichi, where Zakhar had many relations. I here they lived with one of his cousins and were supported bv gifts of food from the familv and from some of Zakhar's former employees.

now five, did not go with his aunt Maria to Georgievsk. were also moving to Novocherkassk, the Don Cossack couple of hundred miles to the north, not far from Rostov. Having

Solzhenitsvn,

Roman and capital, a

—

Irina

established themselves there in the

autumn

of 1924, they returned to collect

bov and take him back with them bv train on the eve of his sixth birthday. In some later verse, he was to recall this first journev of his, the long train ride, the mvsterious drive after dark dow n the snowbound Kreshchenskv Boulevard in Novocherkassk, and the strange sights and sounds of a large town. He also wrote vividlv of a church procession at midnight being jeered the

bv

hostile students,

an interesting prefiguration of his story "The Easter

Procession," describing a similar scene in Peredelkino fortv years

few davs

after his arrival in

Novocherkassk, he was taken

to

later.

A

Rostov to be

reunited with his mother.*^

There

is

a

posed picture of him

at the

age of

six,

taken just atter his

showing a stockv bov in a striped smock holding a toy popgun in the "present arms" position. The face is broad, round, and intelligent, w ith a high forehead and closely cropped hair, but what most captures the attention is the alert gaze of the eves and the expressive mobility of the brows above them. Yet the studied smartness of this studio photograph is also a little misleading, for apparenth- there was much of the unlicked urchin about him w hen he first arrived from Kislovodsk. Preoccupied w ith the greater cares of her new familv and difficult living conditions. Aunt Maria had given him a free rein in Kislovodsk, while his troubled grandparents had had distractions of their own. From Grandfather Zakhar, a Ukrainian peasant by birth (despite his later wealth), and from Maria, he had acquired a distinct Ukrainian accent that has remained with him to the present day. Even now he speaks with a soft, guttural southern^ "like Brezhnev," as he jokingly remarked on one occasion*^ and tends to slip dialect w ords into his speech when he is not paving attention. The Ukrainian dimension has remained arrival in Rostov,

—

—

important to him: "Ukrainian and Russian are intermingled in my blood, in heart, and in mv thoughts," he was to write in volume 3 of The Gulag

mv

Archipelago.^^'

Somewhat because

it

surprisingly, he took to the city of Rostov at once, perhaps

displayed some of the colour, variety, and liveliness that were

missing from Kislovodsk.

*The New Economic

Bv now

the

New

Policy was introduced by Lenin in

Economic March

Polic\

still

(NEP)* had

1921 to cope with a disastrous

popularity of the Bolshevik go\ernment and with a rising tension in the country, symbolized bv the Kronstadt Rebellion in Petrograd the preceding month. The policy allowed for the controlled and limited admission of market forces into the economy and w as designed

drop

in the

above

all

to placate a hostile peasantry.

SOLZHENITSYN

[44]

in force for nearly three years

been

conditions of everyday Hfe.

As

and

in that

the rigours of

time had transformed the

War Communism

receded and

normal trade relations were resumed, food became more plentiful in the shops, consumer goods began to reappear, and everyday life reverted to a simula-

crum

of what

it

had been before the Revolution. felt and noticed in Rostov. Throughout

This was particularly the city had been noted as

a

its

history

prosperous trading centre, important both as an

produce of southern Russia and

outlet for the rich agricultural

as a

magnet

goods and investment from the v\ealthy countries of western Europe. The English writer Stephen Graham has written that in 1911 the main street of for

Rostov was "an 'emporium' of steam-ploughs, harvesting machines, threshing machines, cranes, fire engines, butter factory machinery and the rest,

imported from abroad."

And

all

every other kind of import was on display,

from "Tottenham Court Road furniture, Sheffield cutlery," English and clothes to "Persian rugs, Caucasian silks, and Turkish fruits and sweetmeats."" The picturesqueness of its position on the steep right bank of the Don, with its crowded terraces tumbling down the hill to the broad, shallow harbour, was also a great attraction. Another English writer, Rhoda Power, w ho \\ as there as a governess during the First World War, wrote that it reminded her of a Cubist picture: "It seemed to be all higgledy-piggledy, a jumble of vivid colours, domes and oddly shaped houses."'" Visitors noted

German

the cosmopolitan population characteristic of a flourishing southern port,

its

communities of Cossacks, Jews, Greeks, and, above all, Armenians, who had been settled here by Catherine the Great and had built their distinctive quarter of Nakhichevan, on the eastern outskirts of the city. The spirit of Rostov was spontaneous, independent, democratic, mercantile, competitive, and pleasure-loving. No wonder it had become the centre of southern resistance to the Boshevik coup and had earned itself the nickname of "White Guard City" during the Civil War. Of course, there could be no return to those halcyon pre-war days, but the memory of them was still fresh, and hopes had been raised by the liberal policies of the NEP. In his unpublished autobiographical poem. The VV^-y,* Solzhenitsyn uas later to evoke the atmosphere of these early childhood years. Old Rostov, he \v rote, seemed to be coming back to life. There were Greek and Italian ships in the harbour, and a brisk trade revived in grain, cattle, wool, and fish. Horse cabbies vied with motor cars on the roads, church bells continued to ring out each morning, the streets and parks had not yet been renamed for revolutionary leaders, and "all that seemed to have happened" large

*l'hc siasts'

title

of this

poem seems

Highivay (Shosse

High Road, famous to

to

eiitiiziastov),

Dorozhenka, meaning

now

in

literalU'

a

new

title

was

originally called Enthu-

Moscow

"The VVav," but

once more.

for convicts being transported to Siberia,

(convictless) era. Solzhenitsvn then

an English translation. Judging bv

prefer the original

It

an ironic reference to the Soviet renaming of the old Vladimir

as the starting-point in

symbolize the inauguration of

conveyed

have undergone some changes.

\\

a

ith derisive

changed the

title to

overtones that cannot be compactly

note in Vestnik, no. 117,

it

appears that he

may

C]

w

H

1 1.

DHoon

as that the pre-revolutionary sign of

new one

[45]

"Duma"* had been exchanged

tor a

sa\ ing "Soxiets."''

Solzhcnitsxn has sometimes gi\en the impression that he did not care for Rostov. In a

number of

interviews he has plaved

down

his association

partly, perhaps, because of his later estrangement

from it and and familv friends who still live there. It is true that he does not much care for the people, whom he has said he finds too boisterous and volatile for his o\\ n conservative tastes. Nor does he care for their colourful southern dialect, w hich holds no charms for him as a writer. But of the city itself he was exceedinglv fond, as he later showed in his descriptions of it in The Way and above all in the scene in August 1914, in which Xenia Tomchak's heart is said "alwavs to beat faster" whenever she returned to Rostov. "Sadovava Street was fresh and clean in the deep shade of the trees as it climbed the hill tow ards Dolomanovskw had long arms w ith runners instead of hoop-shaped pick-ups, The trams there were special cars for summertime with airy, open sides. T\ pical, too, w ere the special mobile lattice-work bridges, arc-shaped w ith handrails, which were placed across flooded streets in the southern rainstorms and were kept on the pavements when the weather was drv. From Xikolskv Street onwards the Bolshaxa Sadovava straightened out and ran like a mile-long with the partly,

cit\

,

one suspects,

to divert attention

from

relatives

.

.

.

.

arrow to the city limits

at

later said,

"To

Taissia's motives for

w as by

.

.

.

the suburb of Nakhichevan."'"^ In writing these

pages, Solzhenitsyn had had the sights and sounds of his

mind, and he

.

.

verv day

this

moving

I

love

its

ow n childhood

in

stones."''

Rostov must have been mixed. Since it North Caucasus, it was simply an easier was also easier for her, as a "social alien" to

far the largest city in the

place in

which

to find a job.

under the new system,

It

to melt into the multitude

and not stand out too

much, which was impossible in the small provincial town of Kislovodsk. Thirdly, it was still not too far from Kislovodsk, w hich meant that she was able to stay in touch with her familv and her son until he w as able to rejoin her. The alternative of Moscow which was the onlv other citv in w hich she had friends, was too remote and forbidding, and in the still-chaotic condi,

tions of 1921, threatened a

permanent,

if

involuntary, separation. Fortu-

nately, the happiest years of her childhood

had been spent

at a

boarding

school in Rostov, and the family of the headmistress of the school that she

had attended w

The

as in

many w avs

dearer to her than her

family in question v\ere the Andreyevs,

described in some detail in August 1914 under the

ow n.

whom

name

Solzhenitsyn has

of Kharitonov.

The

had been a school inspector, but the real power in the family w as his wife, Alexandra Fyodorovna, v\ho had owned and run an exclusive gymnasium for young ladies on the corner ot Staro-

mild-mannered

*The name

Duma w as

father, Nikolai,

of one of two assemblies forming the Russian parliament from 1905 to 1917.

The

elected under a limited franchise and had severely restricted powers until February

1917 (Old Stvle). After the February Revolution until the Bolshevik takeover in

October.

it

acted as the effective go\ernment of Russia

SOLZHENITSYN

[46]

pochtovava and Nikolayevsky streets behind the cathedral in the old quarter of Rostov. Taissia had come there in exactly the same circumstances as described for Xenia Tomchak in August I9M, brought by her wealthy father Zakhar, and virtually she be taken

in.

dumped on

the headmistress's doorstep with a plea that

In those days Taissia had been a

pious and naive, but

Mme

homespun country

girl,

Andreyeva's progressive school and household poised and sophisticated young lady, showing

had transformed her into a hardlv a trace of her former awkwardness. Solzhenitsyn still possesses one of those charming old composite photographs that schools used to distribute in the tranquil days before the First World War, showing Taissia's graduation class of 1911-12. Two medallions at the top enclose portraits of Mme Audrey eva and her husband, followed by thirteen rectangular photographs of the teachers, including a priest wearing a surplice and a heavv cross. Then come thirtv-six oval portraits of thirtysix well-groomed young ladies, wearing high-buttoned black school dresses with wide starched lace collars resting on their shoulders. A few of them are wearing cloaks, including Taissia, who is turned three-quarters to face the camera, a mischiexous half-smile on her round face, her hair hanging in unruly ringlets, hi another year, as a student in Moscow, her transformation was to be complete. A touch of superciliousness hovers about the pretty plump face that regards us from another photograph, a confident self-possession perfectly expressed by the ostrich feather in the showy hat and the expensive tailored coat.

Mme Andreveva on the graduation photograph depicts and severe-looking elderly lady wearing an intimidating pincenez, whose formidable personality is barely confined bv the constricting cirThe

portrait of

a grev-haired

cle

of girlish faces. Despite her liberal political views

—allowing among when anti-Semitism Rostov— she ruled her her,

other things, freely to admit Jews to her school at a time

was

at its

height and activelv encouraged in a citv like

establishment like an absolute monarch. Taissia had been admitted to her

home sia

as a

paying guest, and there, too, Andreveva was unbending. P or TaisTo the end of her days she

she "was not 'Mama' but 'the headmistress.'

would be the headmistress meeting her was alwavs slightly awe-inspiring and one could never argue with her or contradict anything she said.'""^ Taissia had done extremelv well in Mme Andreveva's school, coming out at the top of the class in her final year and winning the annual gold medal for the best pupil. From there she had gone straight to Moscow and had become a close friend of Mme Andreveva's daughter, Fvgenia Zhenia for short. Zhenia was four years older than Taissia and had gone to study in Moscow in the same year that Taissia arrived in Rostov laissia had taken Zhenia's room. And \\ hen she went to Moscow herself, she became enmeshed in the drama of Zhenia's marriage to an "unsuitable" husband, a young engineer by the name of Vladimir Fedorovsky The truth of the matter was that Zhenia had fallen head over heels in love with Fedorovskv, become pregnant by him, and married him in a cloud of disapproval from her imperious mother. .

.

.

—

—

.

— (;niLi)}i()()i)

who

I47I

deplored not only the indecent circumstances of the betrothal hut also

w ith the fortunes of an unknow n The whole thing is described with some humour in August 1914, where Fedorovsky appears as Filomatinskv. laissia's role as a go-between during her frecjuent visits to Mme Andreveva in Rostov is also portrayed the social disgrace of linking her ancient family upstart.

there, as

is

the ultimate reconciliation brought about

World War, the Revolution, and the By 1921, when laissia arrived

l)v

the upheavals of the

(>ivil VV ar.

in Rostov from Kislovodsk, the school had been confiscated and closed down by the new Soviet authorities, and the Andreyevs were under a cloud as "social aliens," like Taissia herself. Mme Andreyeva's two sons had fought for the White Volunteer Army during the

War and had never returned. But the situation was saved by the formerly despised son-in-law who was now a successful engineer working for the new regime. Through him the Andreyevs had managed to retain their Civil

,

large,

comfortable

when

flat

attached to the former school and were

living

still

young Solzhenitsyn arrived in 1924. He can still remember its welcoming rooms and broad balcony overlooking a narrow sidestreet. In 1926 they were deprived of this flat, but moved to equally spacious quarters

there

the

in a solid building adjoining the ornate edifice of

one of Rosto\

's

former

banks on Sredni Prospekt.''^ Faissia herself

managed,

some accommow as nothing like the the extreme, for it was decidedly

after great difficulty, to find

dation close by, in the region of Nikolsky Lane, but

Fedorovskys', and her

life

was hard

in

it

As the daughter of a wealthy landowner (although her inheritance had been confiscated and she was now as penniless as anyone else), she was automatically suspect. 1 he official policy was not to employ such people at all if it could be avoided, or else to assign them to the most menial, poorly paid, and insecure positions possible. difficult for

her to obtain any kind of work.

Taissia did everything she could to conceal her shameful origins.

On

occasion she asked her son to help her bur\' his father's three medals,

one

lest

it

be discovered that he had been an officer during the First World War. Photographs of his father in uniform also had to be concealed, and on the endless

probing questionnaires that had to be completed to describing her husband's

former status

at

every turn, Taissia took

as sluzhashchi, or office

worker, as

from the superior rabochi, or manual worker. The category of "officer" would have cut her off irrevocably not only from work but also from the distinct

all-important ration card.

—

She was enabled to get her first job as a shorthand typist with .\lelbuilding combine specializing in the construction of grain mills thanks to a recommendation from the chief engineer there, Alexander Arkhangorodsky (described under his correct surname in August I9M,), whose daughter, Lyuba, had been I aissia's best friend at the Audrey eva gymnasium. Arkhangorodsky, an assimilated Jew, had been highly successful even before the Revolution, and on the grounds of his former wealth and prestige might equally have fallen into the disgraced category of "social alien." But stroi, a large

SOLZHENITSYN

[48]

was more complicated than that. As a as member of a formerly despised minority Arkhangorodskv counted a Jew, that had identified itself particularly closely with the Revolution and was singled out for preferential treatment. Secondly, he had been known for his liberal and progressive views even before the Revolution. Thirdly and most importantly, he was a skilled engineer, indispensable to the reconstruction and continued smooth running of industry, a member of the professional group that was deliberately being wooed and pampered by the new Soviet authorities. Like Vladimir Fedorovsky, Arkhangorodsky was a member of virtually the only elite to w eather the Revolution with its former status more or less intact, an elite that was particularly numerous and strong in Rostov, with its industrial tradition. It was thanks to their patronage and friendship that Taissia was able to survive at all. Unfortunately, someone who knew Taissia's background informed on her, and she was soon dismissed. Worse still, her papers were officially marked to fix her lowly status, which meant that she was automatically barred from the large number of well-paid and reserved jobs that had been spawned by the early post-revolutionarv situation

the post-revolutionary bureaucracy, together with access to the privileged

food and clothing supplies that usually went with them, and was also looked

upon with suspicion by employers in the non-reserved sectors. Feeling vulnerable and exposed vis-a-vis the vast state apparatus, they were reluctant to hire and embarrassingly eager to fire her, often as the result of a denunciation. What usually happened was that she would be called into the director's office, told of the problem created by the revelation of her social origins, and invited to resign. This happened about half a dozen times in all, and each time Taissia had to trail from office to office in search of new work.*

An

immediate consequence of this

was automatically controlled room or fiat, which,

inability to obtain

an

officially

approved

post was that she

disqualified

cially

since 90 per cent of the housing sector

from applying

for an offi-

had been nationalized, excluded her from normal accommodation. Furthermore, there was a built-in catch, in that rents in the tiny private sector were incomparably higher, so that Taissia was squeezed between the inexorable pressures of an artificially enforced low income and an equally artificially enforced high expenditure.

With

great difficulty she eventually found a rickety, weather-boarded

narrow cul-de-sac in the centre of town. It consisted of a single scullery, measuring about twelve feet by nine, with loose boards and a leaky tin roof through w hich the wind whistled in winter and the water dripped when it rained or snowed. There was no drainage or plumbing. Water had to be fetched from a standpipe about 150 yards away, and all slops had to be carried out and emptied by hand. The shack was one of about half a dozen surrounding a tumbledown yard, which had rubble shack large

*It

is

in a

room and

not clear

how

often Taissia lost her job or for

eventually she seems to haxe obtained sky's help again.

more

how

long she remained without work, but

settled empl()\'ment,

perhaps with Arkhangorod-

e

Childhood heaped

in the corners

and

\\

a handful of stunted trees.

as criss-crossed b\-

Faissia

I49I

w ashing

and Sol/.henits\n

lines

strung betw een

li\ed there for

t\\ el\

from 1924 to 1936. Taissia was obliged to spend extrenieK long hours at her \arious jobs and often brought work home as well to supplement her meagre income. At some point she began to get more or less regular work as a conference stenographer, but since man\- of the conferences took place in the evenings, it meant spending even longer hours awav from home.'^ Her long hours meant that the housework often had to be done late at night. Water for the laundr\' had to be boiled on a tin\- Primus stove in their draughty, unheated scullery, which was freezing cold in winter, and Solzhenitsvn regularlv fell asleep to the sound of his mother scrubbing and splashing at their zinc tub. As soon as he was old enough, he, too, helped with the chores, fetching water, carrying out the slops, and doing the shopping after school. He still has vivid memories of standing in endless queues for bread and other commodities. Taissia was ill-equipped for this strenuous and precarious existence. She was basicallv a soft-hearted person, naive and impractical and unsuited to the tough, scheming world of the voung Soviet republic. She had been raised in luxurv, and was now disoriented and disheartened, in constant doubt about what to do next or what was best for herself and her son, and worn dow n by incessant labour. An internal-passport picture of this period tells the whole story. Gone is the plump, slightlv mocking face of the well-to-do voung lad}' with an ostrich feather in her hat. In its place we find the lined and carew orn face of an exhausted drudge, the forehead corrugated, the brows knitted, the lips tightlv compressed. Her hair (now streaked w ith grey) is badly cut in a

years,

frizzy utilitv style reminiscent of British factory

women

of the

war

years,

suffused with repressed pain and defeat. In

less and her entire expression is than ten vears she had aged twenty. An example of Taissia's characteristic gullibilitv and helplessness was her abortive attempt at this time to acquire a decent home. Although she had sold most of her possessions in Kislovodsk, she had managed to hang on to one precious heirloom her grand piano. In 1927 an order was issued for the demolition of their shack, and she resolved to sell the piano and apply the proceeds to the purchase of a four-roomed co-operative flat. She duly completed the sale and deposited the money with the co-operative, having been

—

would be ready in two years. Two years passed, then three, four, five, and still no flat was offered her. Initially the construction was postponed. Then, when the first lot of flats had been built, someone bribed the co-operative to give them Taissia's flat in her place. She was promised another, at a later date, but nothing came of it, and eventually she requested her money back. More time passed, and by the time the co-operative repaid informed that the

flats

had reduced the money's value to less than half, so that there was no longer any question of buying a flat with it. Her only stroke of good w as that the demolition order was never acted fortune if good fortune it be '^ living in her tumbledow n shack. continue upon and that she was able to

her, inflation

—

—

— SOLZHENITSYN

[50]

might have been \\ iser for Taissia to remarry she was precisely the sort of \\ oman w ho needed a strong companion in hfe. And it seems there was no shortage of suitors. But in this, too, her fastidious and vacillating character told against her. She could never make up her mind. Above all, she feared for the \\ ell-being of her son, in whom she worshipped the image and memor\- of her dead husband. Solzhenitsvn possessed his father's fair hair and blue eves (Taissia's hair and eyes were brown), and she kept In these circumstances

Isaaki's

memorv

name, Sanva

alive

bv

it

calling her son

—or Sanvechka—

vears Solzhenitsvn

came

bv

his father's

instead of the

unconventional nick-

more usual "Sasha."*

to feel that his mother's failure to

In later

remarry had been

and an error, not onlv for her own sake but for his as well: was older and able to grasp the full significance of this sacrifice, I concluded it was a mistake, since I believe no harm is done to children by a needless sacrifice

"When

their

I

having

One

a strict father."-"

orphanhood was to lead the son to idealize his dead him all she knew, especially about Isaaki's heroism during war, but her own know ledge was scant enough. Out of the fifteen months effect of this

father. Taissia told

the

known him, Isaaki had spent twelve on active service, and she had been cut off from Isaaki's familv bv his death and the Civil War. The deaths of Semvon, \ asilv, and Anastasia Solzhenitsvn in 1919 meant that onlv Evdokia and Konstantin were left of Isaaki's immediate family, not counting she had

stepmother and her two children, and that there was thus virno one on that side w ith whom she could communicate anv more. The onlv wav to make it up to the son was to take him to his father's grave, and Taissia and Solzhenitsvn made regular pilgrimages to Georgievsk until 1931. The great void of his father's earlv life had therefore to be filled bv the son's imagination, which appears to have been obsessed bv the subject in childhood and has remained haunted bv it ever since. Today as he labours at his vast epic on the Revolution, in \'ermont, it is his father's portraits that stand guard on his w riting desk. In one of them the vouthful Isaaki, w earing his high-buttoned school uniform, has his peaked cap tilted at a rakish angle, revealing tufts of unrulv hair sticking out to front and sides. The pose and expression are challenging but are belied b\' the soulful eves and irresolute mouth, framed bv a bushv beard. In the second and possibly later photograph the cap has been removed, the long hair is carefully parted on the right side, the beard has shrunk to a neath- trimmed goatee, and the high, broad his estranged

tually

forehead serves to emphasize the tht)ughtful look in those sensiti\e eyes. Here,

nurtured in the author's imagination for half latest series

a

century,

is

the hero of his

of novels, the prototype of his fictional reincarnation as Isaaki

Lazhenitsyn in August 1914.

*

I

he usual diminutives of Alexander are Sasha or Shura. Taissia seems to have preferred San-

vechka to Sanya his

in addressing her son. It w as she w ho, \\ hen registering his birth, decided that patronymic should be Isavevich rather than the more clumsv (but literallv correct) Isaaki-

vevich.

Childhood Another

[51]

effect of Solzhenitsyn's fatherlessness

was

to

encourage precoc-

As the onlv male in the household, Hving alone with a doting mother, he grew to early independence and maturity, a process that was hastened bv his ity.

increasing assumption of responsibility for household and other chores. Tais-

developed

sia's vacillations

exercised

all

the

more

in

him

a

strong and imperious will, which was

fully in the absence of paternal authority. Indeed,

impatience of authority, whether

in the

shape of parent, teachers, senior

guards, the Writers' Union, the Soviet government, or of

officers, prison

anyone but God Himself, was to become a leitmotiv of his career and determine his adult life. And with it went a rare practical energy, in which he differed as much as could possibly be from his own father and mother and which,

like his

will-power, harked back a generation, to his maternal grand-

father.

Grandfather Zakhar was grandfather I

didn't visit

was

a

somehow them

woman

all

in effect the onlv

took his place.

I

man

that often, but they weren't remote

and had

my

I

character.

got

all

a drastic

So

from

my

temper. In certain respects

had no

my

father, so

me I

at all.

a

man

Grandma of excep-

take after

him

energv from him, for example, because papa was

completely different sort of person. Papa was soft.

I

of rare goodness and kindness. But granddad was

tional energy,

very

in the family.

loved them dearly, Zakhar and P'vdokia.

energy comes from

mv

a soft, lyrical, philosophical

in a

man,

grandfather.^'

Solzhenitsyn's earlv independence and self-sufficiencv often tfxjk the form

Though happy enough to play adventure games and hide-and-seek with the other boys in the yard, he w as inclined to retire early from the fray and seek refuge in a book. Similarly, he spent his first two summer holidays from school away from Rostov with Zakhar and Evdokia in Gulkevichi, and whereas he has the fondest memories of scampering among the houses with the village children, still more fondly does he recall the strange peace of the countryside and the delights of communing with nature. Whatever the company and whatever the game, he invariably withdrew after a certain period in order to be alone, occupying himself w ith childhood hobbies and personal projects or pottering about the house. His solitariness was fostered by frequent long visits to other relatives as well. For his mother it was both a financial and a psychological relief to be able to send him to stay with other members of the family. After the two holidays with his grandparents, he went most of the time to Roman and Irina, who in 1927 left Novocherkassk and bought a house in Yeisk, a small fishing town about forty miles from Rostov on the shores of the Sea of Azov. In Yeisk, Solzhenitsyn used to wander round the harbour or go swimming on his own and was able to indulge his increasingly voracious appetite for reading. Irina had a first-class library, w hich she had miraculously preserved throughout all her peregrinations. Here Solzhenitsyn read Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, and most of the Russian classics. Many of of solitariness and self-absorption.

SOLZHENITSYN

[52]

the books he read again and again, starting at an unusually early age.

claims to have read reread

War and Peace,

several times in the course of ensuing

it

been during

He

and to have seems to have

for example, at the age often,

this period that the figure of

summers.

It

Tolstoy became embedded in his

imagination as the archetypal Russian writer. Irina also presented him with

copy of \ ladimir Dahl's famous collection of Russian proverbs, though it much later that Dahl came to occupy as prominent a place in Solzhenitsyn's literary pantheon as Tolstoy himself. Other authors who made an impression on him at this time were Shakespeare, Schiller, and particularly Dickens. Another favourite was Jack London, an enormously popular author in Russia both before and after the Revolution, whom Solzhenitsyn first discovered in the supplement to one of the Rostov newspapers. Half a lifetime later, on his first visit to the United States, he was to pay homage to his childhood hero by seeking out London's home in California and making a

wasn't until

a brief pilgrimage.

Irina

encouraged him in his reading and did her best to foster his love From the very day of his birth, it seems, in her house in Kislo-

of literature.

him as being somehow in her special charge. Childhim all the love and affection that might otherwise own children, and he in turn came to love his "Auntie Ira" have gone to her loyalty that fully reciprocated her own. Uncle Roman, with a tenderness and on the other hand, though familiar to him from early childhood, struck him vodsk, she had regarded less herself,

she bestowed on

remote and unattractive figure." In every writer's biography it is possible to pick out one or tu o Individ-^ \\ uals ho had a decisive influence on the writer's imagination, particularly at an early age, either by virtue of their own adventures, which they then recounted to the child, or by the tales they told of others, whether real or invented. In Solzhenitsyn's case we can point to Aunt Irina as such an influ-

as

being

a

ence.* Profoundly conservative and patriotic, with her imagination forcibly turned to the past by the catacl)'sm of the Re\'olution, she regaled her nephew

during the long

summer

stories of his

v\'ith

The

tale

holidays with stories of olden times, and especially immediate forebears. tell v\ as redolent of a bygone era, like those faded from an Edwardian snapshot album in which we find

she had to

sepia photographs

overdressed people frozen in

stiff

poses, sitting bolt upright in outlandish

motor cars, or grouped in the foreground of milky landscapes at a season that seems always to have been high summer. It was a vanished age, never to return, but its features sank deep into the boy's imagination, to be re-created in his mature works half a century later. The family she told him of was his mother's family, the Shcherbaks. Like the Solzhenitsvns, they were of peasant stock and knew even less of their origins. Above all it was the story of Solzhenitsyn's grandfather, the *

Solzhenitsyn's

first

wife, Natalia Reshetovskava, disputes this and

is

of the opinion that Sol-

zhenitsyn inyented Irina's influence on his childhood after meeting her again in the 1950s and 1960s.

CH

1 1,

D H O () 1)

[53)

Zakhar Shcherbak, who seems to have been one of the most men in southern Russia. Zakhar had been born in 1S5S in Tavria, in the southern Ukraine. After a mere vear and a haH' of sehoohng, he had worked as a shepherd boy until about 1870, when his entire family migrated to the North (Caucasus in search of work. Thev settled just south of the Kuban, not far from the Sol/.henits\n farm, and worked as hired labourers. After ten years or so, Zakhar was given a dozen sheep, a cow and a handful of piglets by a grateful employer and urged to make a start on his own. He cjuickly showed imcommon energy and industr\ B\- dint of hard work and shrew d dealing, he built up a substantial holding and amassed a fair sum of capital. Me also met and married F.vdokia Ilvinichna, the daughter of a village blacksmith. She appears to have been a pious woman, w ho insisted on a strict observance of all the religious holidays, and she bore Zakhar nine children, of whom six died in a single w eek from an epidemic of scarlet fever. 1 his act of God only served to intensify her religious devotion. energetic

extraordinary

,

.

Zakhar's success as a farmer led to the rapid accumulation of real wealth, and sometime during the 188()s he moxed 50 miles north-w est to the district of Armavir in the Kuban, among Ukrainians like himself. About ten miles from Armavir, at a place called Kubanskaya Stantsia between the Vladikavkaz RaiK\ay line and the river Kuban, he bought a large piece of land, which he transformed into a sumptuous estate with a luxurious house and an elaborate park. A grand two-storey mansion was erected, with a wrought-iron balcony running around the entire first floor, and the w indow s w ere equipped with shutters and Venetian blinds against the heat. Piped w ater v\'as supplied through four separate systems from four separate sources, and electricity was provided by a diesel generator. After the house came the park, which Sol1

zhenitsyn later described

in August 1914, with its avenues of balsam and pyramid poplars, its pond for swimming in, its orchard, its vineyard, its Moorish garden, herb garden, and rose garden, "and a law n of emerald-green English rye-grass alongside the drive, which was cut with law n-mowers."-' In the central provinces of Russia, country estates like this were a familiar part of the scene, but they were mostly hereditary, going back, in many cases, for centuries, and were often dilapidated. Down here in the Kuban, by contrast, there were few hereditary estates, and those that existed had been there for less than a hundred years. The Cossacks, who owned most of the land, were by temperament restless and disinclined to dig deep roots. Their stanitsas, even when they grew to twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, remained overgrown villages, with unpaved streets and a bare mini-

mum

of public buildings.

When

the richer Cossacks built estates, they

had an informal, impermanent air about them. And in almost all cases their organization and appearance reflected the prevailing Russian taste for disorder and cheerful anarchism in their surroundings. In August 1914 Solzhenitsyn has drawn an affectionate portrait of his uncouth and unlettered, yet dynamic and remarkable, grandfather. By the turn of the present century, Shcherbak was farming fifty-five hundred acres traditionally

SOLZHENITSYN

[54]

and had twenty thousand sheep. The home farm alone, with its outbuildings and kitchen gardens, took up fifty acres. And on this land he liked to use the most modern "progressive" methods, modelling himself on the German colonists who were particularly numerous in the North Caucasus and were famous for their industry, efficiency, and unbelievably high productivity. As a result he was spectacularly successful. And yet he could not escape his origins. His life was an exotic mixture of ostentatious consumption and patriarchal custom. The interior of the big house was lavishly decorated to match the exterior, with imitation-walnut panelling, a \\ ealth of heavy Victorian furniture, and all the appurtenances of gracious living. There were ten indoor and ten outdoor servants, including

a butler, cooks, serving

maids, a chauffeur

(at

Zakhar purchased in a fit of enthusiasm for the latest technology, later for his Mercedes), and a coachman for his more conventional horse-drawn carriages. There were dozens of other employees a bailiff, an accountant, clerks, stewards, foremen, storekeepers, grooms, herdsmen, mechanics, gardeners, labourers, and, after the disturbances occasioned by the 1905 re\'olution, four armed Cossacks to guard the estate. Vet domestically his life remained little touched by his wealth. Scorning his modern bedroom, he had constructed a special room leading off his wife's, without a door to the outside because he was terrified of draughts and insisted on sleeping warm. To this end he also installed a tiled bunk beside a traditional upright stove in his room and slept there in winter in the first

for the "Russo-Baltic carriage" that

—

fashion of generations of Russian peasants before him.

and more Irina must have told her nephew, widening his eyes wealth and luxury. She herself had married into the family as a rich woman in her ow n right. Her father, an ex-soldier, was also a selfmade man. Childless for most of his life, he had fallen madly in love with a younger w oman when already old and had taken the unorthodox and scandalous step of bribing the bishop of Stavropol with forty thousand rubles for permission to divorce and remarry. Irina was the only child of this second union, and at the age of seventeen, when her father was already dying, had been married off to Roman Shcherbak straight from boarding-school. It was not a love match. Her ow n opinion had never been asked. But she had been too obedient a child, and the patriarchal traditions of the Kuban were too All this

with her

tales of

strong, for her to think of resisting.

Roman Shcherbak, Zakhar's only son, was by far the eldest of the three children who survived the scarlet-fever epidemic. He affected the style of an English country gentleman, complete

w

ith

tweeds and patent-leather boots,

and sometime after his marriage acquired that ultimate in English status symbols, a white Rolls-Royce, said to be one of only nine Rolls-Royces in the whole of Russia. He cultivated an P.nglish sang-froid, maintaining a cold reserve in

company and

striving for a pedantic meticulousness in questions

of honour and financial probity. Like Solzhenitsvn's father, Isaaki, he was

something of for a rich

a

lolstoyan

in

domestic

politics and,

man, an admirer of Maxim Gorky and

somewhat incongruously

his

woolly brand of natural

(^Ihildhood socialism, preferring

it

[55J

to the "Knglish" party of the (Constitutional

Demo-

crats.

was finer-spun than her husband and in-laws, with interests in and the arts that they were unable to share, and had sought solace in helping to plan the furnishings of the big house and introducing some style and taste into her immediate surroundings. She had an aristocratic hobbv: Irina

literature

handbag she carried a small Browning automatic, and an English-made lady's shotgun hung on the wall of her room. But more impor-

shooting. In her

tant to her than these pursuits

was her devotion

to religion. C>hristianitv,

particularly the mysteries of the Gospels, appealed to her imagination,

the stately rituals of the

Orthodox

liturgy, rich in sight

affected her appreciation of beauty. In this deyotion she

common ground

and and

and sound, strongly was fortunate to find

with her pious mother-in-law, Evdokia, so that the multiple

and acts of worship indulged in by the elder Shcherbaks did not cause her any of the hardship that they caused the worldly Roman. She found it comforting to have an icon in virtually every room, and reassuring to go down on her knees before her bed each night. Moreover, there was another dimension to her faith that took her, strictly speaking, beyond the bounds of Christianity. According to Solzhenitsyn, she was a firm believer in the transmigration of souls and felt that certain concepts of Eastern religion were a beautiful complement to Christian beliefs. She did not find them in any way contradictory; they were merely alternative manifestations of beautv.""^ Solzhenitsyn appears to have come deeply under the spell of his intrepid and romantic aunt. By the time she had moved to Yeisk, the anti-religious fanaticism of the immediate post-revolutionary years had begun to abate, and she was once again an avid communicant at the local church. Solzhenitsyn, at a loose end for much of his time in this sleepy little town, generally accompanied her during the holidays and was much thrown into his aunt's company. She taught him the true beauty and meaning of the rituals of the Russian Orthodox church, emphasizing its ancient traditions and continuity. She showed him its importance for Russian history, demonstrating how the history of the church was inextricably intertwined with the history of the nation; and she instilled into the boy a patriotic love of the past and a firm faith in the greatness and sacred destiny of the Russian people. Irina thus supplied him with a sense of tradition, of family, and of roots that was otherwise severely attenuated. Freudians would say that one of the most serious effects of fatherlessness is the production of a sense of disorientation and an early identity crisis, particularly in the case of an only child and a son. The search for a masculine model is frustrated, and the boy is obliged to cast about for a substitute. It v\as no wonder, perhaps, that Solzhenitsyn was so attracted by the example of his virile grandfather, and his imagination fired by the stories of his colourful aunt. Consciousness of a glorious family past was an essential source of pride to him, one that could be freely indulged in and enjoyed in the backwater of Yeisk, whereas in Rostov it had to be treated as a shameful secret and a stigma to be concealed. fasts

— SOLZHENITSYN

[56] Irina's

simultaneous and eloquent praise of the Russian past must also have

forged a link between these things in the bov's mind: his family's former

w ith Russia's greatness. Patriotic pride fused with famih' \\ ounded sense of self. Irina \\ as not alone in staunching the wound: there were also the Fedorovskvs. Zhenia and X'ladimir Fedorovsky were 1 aissia's oldest and closest friends in Rostov. It \\ as w ith them that she habitually spent most of her free time and to \\ hom she turned for assistance and advice, and it was to them that she appealed to keep an eve on her son \\ hen she \\ as unavoidably absent from home. Since she \\ as aw ay at w ork most of the day and often collecting or delivering additional w ork in the evenings, Solzhenitsyn would generally go there after school and wait for his mother to arrive."' Apart from the loss of the school and the disappearance of Zhenia's two brothers during the Civil War, the Andreyevs and Fedorovskvs had come through the Revolution quite well. Their new flat, on Sredni Prospekt, w ith its spacious, high-ceilinged rooms and w ide balcon\- overlooking a secluded courtyard, w as as big and solid and comfortable as the one thev had been evicted from. For Solzhenitsyn it w as a home from home. The Fedorovsky family, especially in the early years, was his ow n family too, and the entire bustling establishment offered a striking and welcome contrast to the forbidsuccess had coincided

pride in repairing his

ding and lonely hovel off Nikolskv Lane. Solzhenitsyn's playmates were Zhenia's tw o children, Mikhail and Irina

Misha and

Lialia, to their friends.

Misha was about

zhenitsyn and Lialia four years older, but

in

a

year older than Sol-

childhood the three of them

were inseparable, playing endless games together. A particular interest w hen the boys were about ten and eleven was the composition of their own illustrated new spapers and journals, w hich became a positive craze and drew in

some of

Lialia's friends as

w ell.

Taissia's old headmistress,

Mme

Andreyeva, was

still

alive

when

Sol-

zhenitsyn started going there, and he remembers her, in her seventies, sitting

and aloof in one corner of the draw ing room, playing games of patience. But the person w ho made the deepest impression on him was her once-despised stern

son-in-law and Misha's father, \ ladimir Fedorovsky. Fedorovsky was the

epitome of w hat w

as in early Soviet times called a spets, a technical specialist

whose field was some aspect of technology or engineering. His own speciality was mining engineering, and his particular subject was the relatively new field of underground combustion, a technique whereby coal was to be ignited directly underground, w ithout excavation, and the resulting gas piped off automatically. Such a technique naturally held potent attractions for Soviet technocrats still dazzled by the vision of speedy industrialization,

or expert

and Fedorovsky benefited enormously from the industrial mystique of those years. He also had a teaching post in the Facult\- of Steam Engineering at the University of Rostov, as a result of

which

his circle included not only

practising engineers and mining consultants but also teachers, theoreticians,

students, and

young graduates.

— (Childhood

[57)

and hard-working man. A phositting at his draw ing hoard, thin and dapper, his hair parted almost in the middle, his sinewy hands resting in front of him, with a thoughtful, slightly melancholy expression on his face. I le had a habitual stoop, carrying one shoulder higher than the other as he walked, and used a pince-nez for reading. On normal exenings he would disappear after dinner through the frosted-glass door of his study and continue working until late into the night, but on Saturdays and holidays the

Fedorovsky was

tograph

tremendousK-

a

in Sol/.hcnitsyn's

l)us\-

possession shows

Pedoroyskys would throw

him

w here he would be the life and would be card games, charades, someone would play the piano for dancing, and there was lots to eat and drink. On other occasions there v\ere late dinner parties at w hich Fedoroysky and his friends would discuss politics and international affairs, art and litera family party,

soul as a host. Plenty of visitors came, there

ature, as well as engineering

to stay

and business matters. The children were allowed

up on these occasions, and Solzhenitsyn has

tried to re-create

thing of their atmosphere in the closing chapters of August 1914.

some-

He would

much conversation as he could, but the moment ineyitabh' came when he and the Fedoroysky children w ould be banished to bed and would

drink in as

have to

listen to the

sounds of continuing merriment through the closed door

of their room.

Solzhenitsyn later recalled these happ\ times graphical

in

chapter

Now

it

That

friendly, liberal

Where Where

And

seems

of his autobio-

a fairy tale

home

friend and stranger all

ate

of theirs.

w ere

at ease,

took part in nois\ table talk

and drank whatever they pleased.

Their house was alw ays open to him, and he spent "half like a

1

poem, The Way:

"second son," acquiring

his childhood" there,

brother and a sister in the process.

a

In later years Solzhenitsyn himself opted for physics and mathematics as a

the

and

means of making

a living,

company of scientists and his books, articles,

and he w

engineers.

as to

spend

Some

a large part

of his

life

in

of them became close friends,

and interviews are studded with expressions of w armth immediate circle there were three engineers:

for their calling. In his mother's

Vladimir Fedorovsky, Alexander Arkhangorodskv, and Boris Ostrovskv (whose son, Misha, was also a playmate of Solzhenitsyn's). But it was above all the Fedorovskvs who kindled this glow in him, and it was childhood memories of those convivial conversations around the dinner table that stood behind the moving tribute he paid in volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago: Engineer!

It

so

happens that

I

was brought up

in

an engineering milieu, and

can remember the engineers of the tw enties perfectK intellect, that

—

that candidly

I

luminous

unrestrained and inoffensive humour, that freedom and breadth of

thought, the ease with which the\'

moved from one

field

of engineering to another,

SOLZHENITSVN

[58]

or in general from technical subjects to current affairs and well educated, with such good taste. Their Russian

was

art.

And

they

\\

ere so

excellent, rhythmical

and correct, and devoid of popular slang. Some played an instrument, others painted, and one and all had the stamp of spiritual nobility on their faces.-''

A notable feature of these conversations w as the political freedom with which everybody spoke. At that point in the t\\ enties, after the introduction of the New Economic Policy, the ideological rigours of War Communism had been considerably relaxed and there was a definite lightening of the atmosphere. To many it began to seem as if the harsh years of the Civil War and its aftermath had been nothing but a bad dream. Soviet society was reverting to more and more of the practices of the past, and the rupture of the Revolution began to seem less drastic than it had formerly appeared. Time was to show that this relaxation was an illusion, that it was basically a question of consolidating before making the next leap forward. But in the twenties this w as not at all clear, and the mood among people like the Fedorovskys w as one of private optimism and confidence. Solzhenitsyn recalls that members of his o\\ n family, too, used to express themselves \\ ith complete freedom in his presence. He was never sent out of the

room when

the conversation turned to "difficult" subjects, nor

kept from the truth about the difficulties of the immediate past.

On

\\

as

he

the con-

mother and Irina frequently dwelt on the horrors of the Civil War and the way the family had suffered. He knew all about the family friends who had been arrested or killed, of his uncle Roman's temporary detention and death sentence and Irina's bold intervention, of the confiscation of his trary, his

grandfather's estate, the searches and reprisals in Kislovodsk, Irina's enforced

flight

and subsequent peregrinations

Roman and

in search of a refuge.

"Everyone, of course, was anti-Bolshevik

in the circle in which I grew up," had important psychological consequences: "The political, religious, and social upbringing I received at home differed tremendously from the surrounding Soviet world. And for that reason I was slow-

remarked, and

he

later

in

coming

to terms

w

this

ith that Soviet

world.

"-'^

Discussing the same subject on another occasion Solzhenitsyn com-

mented:

The

fact that the\-

used to say everything

at

home and never

shielded

me from

my destiny. Generally speaking ... if you want to know the of mv life, you have to understand that received such a charge of

anything decided pivotal point

I

social tension in

ished

...

it.

myself.

I

I

childhood that

it

pushed everything

even constructed out of

else to

one side and dimin-

this a totallv false picture

used to maintain, for example, that

a

man's personal

life

of

life

for

was on the

whole secondary and of little importance to him. Whether it was this way or that, good or bad, was not important. The main thing was how he created his public life. I had to live through dozens of years before I discovered that this was false \nd for this I have been frequentlv and cruellv punished in life. But on the that's the w av I am and w as, because inside me I bore this social tension

—

I

Childhood

[59]

one hand thev used to tell me everything at home, and on the other the\ used to work on our minds at school. Those were militant times, not like toda\ And we used to listen w ith such wide eyes to the exploits of the Reds, u ave .

flags,

beat drums, blow trumpets.

And me that

so this collision betw een it

Even now

somehow defined it is

that

same

t\\

.

.

"We'll c(jmplete the Revolution."

.

.

.

.

.

o w orlds gave birth to such social tension w ithin

the path

.social

.

.

I

was

to follow for the rest of

tension that dri\es

me

on.-**

my

lite.

.

.

.

3

FAREWELL TO

THE OLD WORLD THE a

COLLISION BETWEEN the two worlds of familv and society came to

head

w

of childhood and his

ties

Writing of

hen he was between the ages of eleven and He was at that stage when the bonds to the past were in anv case certain to be loosened.

for Solzhenitsyn

fourteen, coinciding

ith his

\\

puberty.

this period later in

The Gulag Archipelago, with reference to the

Fedorovskvs and their friends, he recalled that "from the beginning of the thirties I started to lose touch with this circle' V and in a whole variety of

ways he began years.

It

was, in

to

move awav from

fact, a

the scenes and influences of his early

time of rapid change, both for Solzhenitsyn and for

which he lived. ow n case, the situation w as complicated by

the society in In his

The

his particular

psycho-

compensated for by a deep love of family and tradition, internalized in the form of loyalt\' to the past and its values. \\ ith the onset of puberty, normal feelings of rebellion and disenchantment compelled him to seek alternative role models, but so great was his attachment to the past that the process of adaptation w as of necessity painful and intense. At the same time there was the hitherto unnological needs.

lack of a father

ambivalence of his relations w

ticed

upon

to play the roles of

had been

partially

ith his lonely

mother. Unconsciously called

both son and husband, he needed

now

to assert his

independence of her and break away. He was therefore ripe for new experiences, and it was only natural that he should begin to reach out from the family circle and involve himself more in societ\' at large. The forms and direction that this involvement assumed were, of course, influenced by the general development of Soviet society as a whole, which at this

time was experiencing

its

own

crisis.

60

The end

of the tw enties and the

Farewell to the Old World

[6r|

marked a watershed in Soviet historv, after w hieh same again. Indeed, this "third revolution," as it has sometimes been called, wrought a transformation in Russia almost as great as that \\ rought by the October Revolution itself. None of this w as apparent at the outset. The honevmoon of the New Economic Polic\- had created the illusion of a return to pre-revolutionarv ways society seemed to be growing both more prosperous and more relaxed. But beneath the surface political developments w ere moving in the opposite direction. By 1928 Stalin had emerged the clear victor in the power struggle beginning of the

thirties

things were never the

—

that

had broken out

in

the Partv after the death of Lenin.

Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev as

rivals

He

and intimidated

had eliminated

all

the rest, and

pow er. The numerically tiny Communist Party had meanwhile strengthened its grip on the country. At the time of Lenin's death, it had had less than half a million members. By 1928 this figure had more than doubled, and it continued to grow rapidly in the early thirties. These new members were young was readv

to assert his

and malleable, dependent on Stalin and the Partv Secretariat for favours and advancement. They were also poorly educated less than per cent had received any higher education and were dependent on specialists like Fedorovsky to run go\emment and industry. But the Partv held all political power firmly in its hands and created tw o special instruments to assist its rule. One was psychological and propagandistic: the cult of Lenin, inaugurated bv Stalin w ith the construction of the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square and the

—

—

installation in traits

it

Stalin ordered millions of por-

of Lenin to be printed, together with booklets of his savings,

which were distributed to foundations of a new faith prayer-books of the

more

embalmed bodv.

of Lenin's

1

new

a superstitious, semi-literate

to replace the old.

"church."

These w ere

The second

practical: the secret police. Secret-police forces

up by Lenin

as a

of

to

be the icons and

instrument was older and

had existed before, of

course, notably in tsarist Russia, but there had been nothing

equal the Soviet Cheka,* set

all

population to lav the

anvw here

"temporary" measure

to

in the

Endowed with the essential power of summary Cheka had been the chief instrument of Lenin's "Red Terror," itself an innovation in European history. At the end of the Civil War this fearsome body was renamed the GPU ("State Political Directorate"), and in 1923 it became the OGPL ("Unified State Political Directorate") and was brought under closer Party control, but it remained a virtual state within a state and proved itself indispensable to continuing Communist

early days of the Revolution.

execution without

trial,

the

rule. By the mid-twenties the OGPU had established an efficient nationwide network of organized terror, while the concentration or "labour" camps, first opened in 1919 to house the victims of that terror, were fast becoming

an integral part of the economy. In 1928

*An

came

Stalin's "third revolution."

With

it

he abolished the

New

abbreviation of Chrezvychainaya kommissiya (Extraordinary Commission for Combating

Counter-revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation).

SOLZHENITSYN

[62]

Economic Policy and

called for an almost total forcible collectivization of the

peasantry, with the aim of extorting sufficient funds to finance a vast expan-

At the same time the

kulaks, or rich peasants, were and all private trading, on however small a scale, abolished. The consequences of this draconian policy were not immediately apparent, and it was only in the early thirties that they were eventually worked out in terms of mass purges, famine, deportations, the mushrooming of the labour camps, and the mobilization of the entire population for Stalin's "great

sion of heavy industry. to

be "liquidated" as a

class,

leap forward."

The voung

Solzhenitsyn could have been no more than dimly aware of

these developments in his early years, except insofar as they were palely reflected in the life of the school

become

—only

later

did the true pattern of events

The school he attended was the former Pokrovsky Colgymnasium in Soborny Lane not far from the Bolshaya

clear to him.

lege, a high-class

Sadovava, the main street that ran through the centre of town. After the

War

Civil

it

had been renamed for Zinoviev, but

referred to as the "Malevich

Gymnasium,"

master, Vladimir Malevich, tion

and was able

to

directed the school before the Revolu-

remain for several years afteruards. In the general opinion

was the best school

it

who had

in Rostov.

Solzhenitsyn arrived there in 1926,

round

at the

age of seven,

still

wearing

neck the cross that he had worn since infancy, and became an

his

instant favourite with his to

was still and talented head-

for a long while

for the popular

have icons hanging

tseva taught

all

in

first

teacher, Elena Belgorodtseva

(who was known

her home, as did Solzhenitsyn's mother). Belgorod-

subjects to the junior classes. Solzhenitsyn adored her,* despite

her reputation for old-fashioned strictness, and soon went to the top of the class.

But higher up

in the school

he ran into some

difficulties. It

of great educational upheaval and experimentation,

when

was

a

period

the schools were

being repeatedly reorganized, and the students had to adjust as best they could. at the head of the school, was an outstanding were most of the other instructors who had survived the Revolution, but they were not considered politically "reliable" by the Soviet authorities, and by about 1930 the majority of them had been removed. A typical case was that of the mathematics teacher, Nikolai Chefranov, an inspiring pedagogue who was eased out for political reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with mathematics but who managed to obtain an alternative post at the technical college, where the rules were less strictly applied. He even managed to get reinstated at the Malevich school much later, but after a term w as obliged to leave once more. He vv as one of the Solzhenitsyn's favourite teachers and deeply influenced him. It was because of Chefranov, said Solzhenitsyn, that he later decided to take up mathematics. Malevich himself

Malevich, for instance,

teacher, as

*

According to

information

\\

a reliable

source that does not v\ish to be identified, Solzhenitsyn later collected

ith a \ie\\' to

w

riting a story

about her, but the storv has ne\er appeared.

Farewell to the Old World was forced out of the school

One

of the

first

[63]

1930."*

in

school reforms to be introduced after the end of the

(^ivil

War had been the abolition of examinations. This \\ as done partly tor ideo examinations v\ ere an expression of bourgeois elitism and logical reasons partly for practical ones: it w as easier for the hornv-handed sons of toil and Party favourites to get their certificates if there was no independent verification of results. Soon after Solzhenitsyn arrived in school, this practice \\ as replaced bv the "brigade svstem" of education. "Brigades" of seven to ten pupils were formed to studv together and pass the examinations collectively, each pupil in the brigade being responsible for a good performance in a particular subject. But this, too, led to chaos and "complete idling, just as in American schools today, "^ as Solzhenitsyn later remarked. Another problem was textbooks. The old books were regarded as ideologically harmful, but it

—

—

was

a

long time before suitable

new ones

could be produced.

was in the middle classes, we didn't have any standard textbooks at all. We were taught from random newspaper articles or specially printed brochures and pamphlets. And then, one day, a decision was taken to establish regular textbooks that would be used on a permanent basis and remain the same from

When

I

year to year.

Bv

the time of

strengthened and had

settled

my

last

three years at school, the system had been

dow n, and

the teaching

was very

good."^

Another feature of the schools after the Revolution w as the virtual aboof history as a subject and the increasing attention paid to propaganda and ideological training in its stead. The Bolsheviks had been pioneers in the imaginative and effective use of propaganda, and they quickly perceived the advantages of catching people young and of commencing their indoctrination at a tender age. It was particularl\- important for a revolutionary government that demanded a complete and apocalyptic rupture with the past, in the name of building a new societw In such circumstances their hopes w ere pinned on the youth, for the adult population was past "re-education" in an\- fundamental sense. And this w as an additional reason why the old teachers and textbooks had to be withdraw n and replaced by "revolutionary" ones. In the case of the schoolchildren of the twenties and early thirties, the new policies were on the whole successful. The myth of the Revolution lition

triumphant, of the

fierce,

ultimately successful struggle of the underprivi-

leged to throw off the yoke of their cruel oppressors, had tremendous appeal

young. It w as Robin Hood on a mass scale and happy ending. As Solzhenitsyn has noted, those were militant times. It was tremendous fun to parade through the streets, waving red fiags, beating drums, and singing revolutionary songs to whip up emotions and stir the and to distract questionmasses. Here was a new opium to replace the old ing minds from the drabness and misery of everyday life.

for the imaginations of the

with

a

—

*It seems that Malevich was eventually arrested in 1937 or 1938 and sent to the labour camps, and that Solzhenitsyn mav have sought him out and interviewed him when he u as collecting material for The Gulag Archipelago.

SOLZHENITSYN

[64]

Solzhenitsvn was as stirred as most of his schoolfellows bv this revolutionary rhetoric, and at the age of twelve, in 1930, he took a decisive step

awav from his earlv training and beliefs by joining the Young Pioneers. The Young Pioneers were the junior wing of the C.ommunist Partv's vouth movement, the Komsomol, founded in 1918. In a sense thev were a sort of Soviet equivalent of the Bov Scouts, except that they had no independence and were financed and controlled by the Party. They were also ubiquitous an

—

official, integral

tion.

part of every school, and a potent instrument of indoctrina-

Joining them was not complicated.

On

the contrary,

genius of the builders of the Soviet system to take over so

it

was part of the

manv

of the para-

phernalia and simulacra of normal "bourgeois" society, and onlv behind the scenes to link

them with an imperceptible but unbreakable web of hidden by the Party. This

controls, so that every lever could ultimately be pulled

was gradually accomplished with the trade unions, professional associations, and eventually even with sports clubs, as well as with the vouth organizations, and always with great success. From the point of view of the children, you joinetl the Y Oung Pioneers in order to be with your friends, go to camp, learn to tie knots, sing rousing songs, parade on public holidays and to have the right to wear the Pioneer's red tie and red

cultural groups, social clubs,

badge, with

its five

logs (representing the five continents) ablaze in the fire of

world re\'olution. As another writer has pointed out more recently, there was nothing to it: "When you were old enough you became a \'oung Pioneer, then a member of the Komsomol, and then a member of the Party. It was as simple as that. That was what happened to everybody, just as you

moved

from class to class."' But the songs you sang, the occasions you marched on, and the speeches you listened to were carefully selected and

regularly

prepared

—very much

as in the

Boy

Scouts, except that the organization pre-

paring and controlling these events controlled everything else as well.

Solzhenitsvn had

come

to the idea of joining the Y

oung Pioneers

rather

and only under a certain amount of pressure. At the age often he had had the cross ripped from his neck by jeering Pioneers, and for over a year he was held up to ridicule at school meetings and told that he ought to join."^ He was used to regarding himself as "different" from the other children and to standing somew hat apart, but eventually the need to conform proved greater than his urge for a difficult independence. But it was not a simple matter, for the cross-currents in the school were rather complex. It would appear that the principal activists in the Pioneer and Komsomol movements, at least in Rostov, were Jewish children, whose parents had been systematically discriminated against under the tsarist regime. They were naturally enthusiastic about the nev\' order, but the fact of their nationality reluctantly at

endowed emerged

first,

their hostility to Solzhenitsvn's cross with a certain ambiguity. in

another incident that Solzhenitsyn became involved

in

This

soon after

he had joined the Pioneers.

A

routine scuffie took place one day between

two boys

in his class,

Valeri Nikolsky and Dimitri Shtitelman, in the course of which they exchanged

I

Old World

Farewk.li. to thk

[65

J

and Nikolsky called Shtitclman a "Russkv sloh."* Solzhenitsvn, sitw hen Shtitelnian accused Nikoiskv of anti-Semitism, Soizhenitsyn refused to support him, on the grounds that "everybody has the right to sav what he likes." After this he, t(K), was accused of anti-Semitism and arraigned before a special meeting of the \'oung Pioneers. The incident must have rankled w ith Solzhenitss n, for vears later he introduced it into The First Circle in the form of a flashback in the mind of Adam Roitman, a major in the MVI),t w ho recalls a scene from his childhood. In this scene the Soizhenitsyn hgure is called Oleg Rozhdest\ enskv, a "pale thin boy who was top of his class, never talked about politics and had joined the Pioneers with obvious reluctance." Rozhdestvensky has been observed attending church with his mother and w earing a cross round his neck, but his principal crime is to declare in the class-room one dav that "evervbodv has the right to say what he thinks," and when a Jewish bov challenges him insults

ting nearby, witnessed the scene, hut

("Nikola called

body has the

me

a 'dirty Yid'

right to say

w

—

is

that

all

hat he likes."

right too.'") to replv that "every-

As

a result,

he

is

denounced

at a

Pioneers' meeting (one after another "the tw elve-vear-old Robespierres got

w hole school and denounced this accomplice of anti-Semand expelled from the Pioneers, w hich could possibly lead to his expulsion from the school. Roitman, one of the Jewish bo\s who made up "about half of the class in that southern tov\'n," is portrayed in the novel as Rozhup

in front of the

ites")

destvensky 's "social accuser," responsible for reading out the charges.** Six months before these painful events, there had occurred another dent that would have sunk into oblivion, had

inci-

on the one hand, resulted in a lifelong and highly visible ph\ sical scar and, on the other, later become the subject of ingenious and scurrilous inventions on the part of his enemies. The incident occurred on 9 September 1930, when Soizhenitsyn was eleven. He and another bov, Alexander Kagan, were wrestling in the classroom for possession of a sheath knife w hen Kagan snatched it from Soizhenitsyn and accidentally pricked a nerve in the latter's hand. Soizhenitsyn felt dizzy, and started out for the cloakroom in order to put his hand under the tap. After a step or two, he fainted and fell, striking his brow on the stone doorpost and inflicting a deep gash. His companions picked him up and carried him to the cloakroom, where they bathed his forehead in cold water. They then took him to the out-patients' department of the local hospital to have his wound stitched and dressed, but the cut on his forehead w as crudely cobbled, turned septic, and had to be reopened and restitched. Soizhenitsyn was obliged to spend over a month in bed before it w as completeK' healed.^ One result of this boyish prank w as the scar on his right temple that has remained prominent to the present day. Another w as a henceforth recurrent tendency to faint when experiencing physical pain a peculiarit\- that w as to prove highly embarrassing in the army: on at least one occasion he was to it

not,

—

*An

approximate translation

ot the original insult,

which

used by Ukrainians about Russians. t Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del (the Ministr\' of the Interior).

v\as

based on

a

popular term of abuse

SOLZHENITSYN

[66]

while being vaccinated. Perhaps the most curious consequence of this

faint

which it was put by the Soviet authorities campaign to discredit Solzhenitsyn. In 1975, after the appearance in the West of The Gulag Archipelago, a series of publications appeared in which the acquisition of the scar was attributed to all episode, however,

was the use

nearly half a century later in

sorts of character deficiencies.

in a

fit

to

its

According to one version, Solzhenitsyn fainted

of rage after having been reprimanded by his class teacher Alexander

Bershadsky, and thus cut his forehead. According to another, the scar was caused by Solzhenitsyn's anti-Semitism. Instead of having wrestled for the knife, Solzhenitsyn fallen against the

was

doorpost as

said to have called

a result

Kagan

a

\\'ith

Kagan

"Yid" and to have

of being punched.*

The latter version obviously owed something to the Shtitelman incident (and may even have been inspired by Solzhenitsyn's description of the incident in The First

ishment for

incorporated expulsion as the probable pun-

Circle). It also

this crime,

but according to Solzhenitsyn, the only

some two years

real threat of

when

he, Kagan, and Solzhenitsyn subsequently hid the class register behind a cupboard to conceal from the director of studies the number of black marks he had against his name. On this occasion it was Bershadsky who threatened Solzhenitsyn with expulsion, and

expulsion he ever experienced occurred

and

a third

boy skipped

later,

classes to play soccer,

only the entreaties of the rest of the class (especially the

girls)

persuaded him

to relent.'"

During the early

thirties a

loosening of Solzhenitsyn's

ties

number

of other events contributed to the

with his family and the world of his child-

it were, the larger changes that were takaround him. In 1930 Roman and Irina ran out of the possessions and money that had sustained them since the Civil War, and they were obliged to give up their comfortable house in Yeisk and move to a flat. At the same time Roman took his first jol) as a driver for a local enterprise. That summer, instead of going to Irina and Roman as usual during the holidays, Solzhenitsyn went with his mother to Georgievsk to visit Aunt Maria and her family. Grandfather Zakhar and Grandmother Evdokia were there, having recently moved back from Gulkevichi, and their situation was pitiful. Za-

hood, symbolically underlining, as ing place

all

—

khar, with no his

former

money, no work, and no prospects, was but

self,

though

still

a pale

shadow of

capable of violent rages against the present regime

whereas Evdokia was silent and resigned. and Solzhenitsyn made their last visit to his father's grave in the little churchyard there. Afterwards, Taissia took him for his first and only childhood trip to his father's birthplace, Sablia, forty miles to the east. Grandfather Semyon was no longer there, of course. Two aunts and an uncle had died (his step-aunt, Maria, at the end of the twenties

and

their confiscation of his property,

While

*

in

Georgievsk, 1

These versions were published

first

(after Solzhenitsyn's

wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya,

being Rezac,

at

aissia

by

his

expulsion from the Soviet Union) by his

former school friend

Kirill

Simonxan (who, despite

the same school, had not witnessed the incident), and by the Czech writer

who

wrote

a

scurrilous "biography" of Solzhenits\n in 1978.

Tomas

'

Farewell TO THE Old WOrld after a long illness).

[67]

Another aunt, Evdokia, had mo\ed a\\a\ and onK Uncle a, w ere lett in the \ illage. Kon,

Konstantin and Solzhenitsvn's step-uncle, IK stantin

had inherited

a part of the famil\- farm,

and Solzhenits\n

travelling across the wide, dusty plain to get there.

The

later recalled

simple farmhouse

was made of reddish-brow n adobe and consisted of a single spacious livingroom and one somew hat smaller bedroom, w ith various barns, stables, and outbuildings attached to it. His uncle's sheep, as he recalled, simpK wandered over the open steppe, although there were special pens for them in winter.

Mother and son's visit w as brief, as much a farew ell as greeting, leaving no strong impressions on the \oung Solzhenitsx n. W ithin a few months both Konstantin and Ilva were to be declared kulaks* and deported to Siberia under Stalin's forced collectivization policies. A few years later, in 1933 or 1934, the cemeter\ in (ieorgiexsk where his father la\- buried was flattened to make wav for a sports stadium. It was to be nearlv thirtv years, atter his own deportation to Siberia and spell in the labour camps, before Solzhenits\'n w as able to return to these parts, and bv then the already tenuous links with his father's familv had been stretched almost to vanishing-point.' That same winter of 1930, not long after their trip to Georgievsk and Sablia, Taissia and Solzhenitsvn had a visit from Grandfather Zakhar. Such visits were a rare occurrence, for their hovel was too cramped to accommodate guests, and anyone who stayed was obliged to sleep on the floor. Zakhar, though now seventv-two, was not deterred bv this. Despite the tribulations he had endured since the confiscation of his estate, w hich included recurrent harassment and repeated questioning bv the Soviet authorities, he remained an imposing figure of a man, and had clung defianth' to the old customs and manner of dress. With his shaven head, big purple nose, and luxuriant moustaches, and clad in riding boots and an old-fashioned hipan anachronism in the nowlength w aisted coat, he looked w hat he w as drab and down-at-heel citv of Rostov. On this occasion, after stamping into Taissia's tiny shack, he sank down in one corner and began to leaf through the pages of the bible he was carr\'ing, loudlv bewailing his useless existence and cursing the new regime that had deprived him not only of his possessions

—

—

but also of

all

clung to the

purpose in life. Like many of the older generation, he still twelve vears after the Revolution, that the Bolsheviks

belief,

would one dav be defeated or disappear and that life would return to normal. Above all he was deepiv concerned about the fate of his estate and anxious that it should be properlv cared for, so that he could hand it on, he said, to the voung Solzhenitsvn, his onl\- grandchild, to carry on his work. Roman, Zakhar's son and natural heir, had no children of his own, and Zakhar regarded

Roman

as unfit to

run

a large estate.

As the old man continued *The name

applied

pendent peasants "fist."

first to rich,

who showed

to

maunder on

in this fashion, talking halt to

then to moderatelv well-off, and eventually to almost

hostilit\

to collectivization. Kulak

is

also the Russian

all

inde-

word

tor

SOLZHENITSVN

[68]

himself and half to his daughter and grandson, Solzhenitsvn \\ ent over to commiserate with him and comfort him. He had been taught at school about the evils of property, and he assured his grandfather that there was no cause for distress. "Don't worry about it, granddad. I don't want vour estate anv-

w av.

would have refused

I

it

on

principle."'-

and Solzhenitsyn \\ ere still sleeping, Zakhar crept away to go to church. Soon afterwards mother and son were aw akened bv the thunderous kicking of boots against the door. Two OGPU agents in sugar-loaf hats and sheepskin coats burst into the room and demanded to see Zakhar. He was w anted for questioning, thev said, in connection with the hoarding of gold. They were there as a result of Stalin's celebrated campaign to extort gold from private businessmen and traders from those w ho had been in business before the Revolution and from those who had been active onlv during the New Economic Policv. Apparentlv, the OGPU agents had follow ed Zakhar from Georgievsk, w here he had been twice detained and questioned on the subject of gold, and were astonished not to find him at home. 1 hev turned on Taissia, abusing her as a "class enemy" and demanding that she hand over any money, gold, or other valuables that she had in her possession. She said she had none, whereupon they threatened her v\ith imprisonment and asked her to sign a statement sw earing that she had no gold in the house, on pain of immediate arrest if their search proved Earlv next morning,

\\

hile Taissia

—

she had

The

lied.

I

asked w hether the statement included vxedding rings.

aissia

agents nodded.

When

she handed them her

own

having her dead husband's ring too. Taissia fetched

on and then signed the

ring, they insisted it

statement.

At at

that

moment Zakhar

returned from church.

The

police agents jeered

him, and said that they had come for his gold. Ignoring them, Zakhar

fell

and commenced to pray. The agents cursed him, hauled him to his feet, and conducted a thorough bod\ search, but found nothing. After a further stream of curses they stamped out, threatto his knees before the icon in the corner

ening to catch him on some future occasion.

Zakhar returned his wife,

to Georgievsk.

1

wo months

later, in

Evdokia, died. Unable to attend the funeral,

memorial mass

for her

mother

in

February 1931,

Taissia arranged a

Rostov Cathedral. This called for considnow regularly spied on and denounced

erable courage, for church-goers were

Often enough, they lost their jobs as well. For Taissia, however, the death of her mother w as an exceptional event, and she duly held the service and attended w ith her son. Fortunately, she escaped retri-

to the authorities.

was reported to the headmaster by one of his schooland w as reprimanded for conduct unbecoming to a Young Pioneer. The following year, in 1932, Zakhar died too. 1 he circumstances of his death were somewhat mysterious, and 1 aissia and Solzhenitsyn remained unaw are of it for some time afterw ards. It seems that, grief-stricken after the death of his wife, Zakhar had w andered back to the district w here his estate was, in the vicinity of Armavir. He continued to be pursued by the OGPU, who were convinced he had a secret hoard of s^old, and finally, halt-madbution, but Solzhenits\n fellow

s

— to thk Old World

Farf.vvf.ll

I69I

dencd b\' their taunts and hulK ing, he is said to ha\e hung a rough wooden cross round his neck, like a beggar, and gone to the OGPU headquarters in Armavir. "You have stolen all m\- monev and possessions," he said, "so now you can take me into vour jail and keep me." W hether the\ put him into the cells or not, whether he collapsed or died in some other way, nobody seemed to know. The news took a long time to filter through to Taissia, and all she w as able to do upon hearing it w as conduct another memorial ser\ ice at Rostov Cathedral.''

w

Solzhenits\n's connections in other

wavs

One

too.

evening

ith

childhood were being

in

March

irre\'ocabl\'

snapped

1932, with the thaw ing slush

still

on the ground, he ran round on one of his usual visits to the Fedorovskys. He w as brought up short at the gate bv an unusual sight. I'hin, tight-lipped, stooping Madimir Fedoro\sk\', the nearest thing he had had to a father, was being escorted through the yard by two strangers to a w aiting saloon car. In his hand he held a small w hite parcel tied up with string. He got into the car and was driven awav. Solzhenits\ n rushed into the fiat and was met with a scene of utter devastation. Drawers and cupboards had been violently tied

onto the

floor,

emp-

rugs and carpets had been torn up and tossed aside, books

and ornaments had been scattered ever\w here. The w hole fiat had been turned '^ upside down in a search b\' OGPU agents that had lasted twenty-four hours. This was Solzhenitsvn's first direct encounter with the brutalities of an

He was

aware, in a generalized w av, of some of the activities and had experienced their summary treatment of his mother and grandfather. But never, till now, had he seen the claws so nakedly unsheathed. 1 he memorv of w hat he w itnessed on that grey March evening actual arrest.

OGPU

of the

surelv informs the vivid description of opening pages of The Gulag Archipelago.

[.\rrest]

a

is

The

door.

sharp ringing

h

of the secret police, in.

.

.

in the

insolent entrance of is

the

appears in the

a typical arrest that

middle of the night or

a

rude knocking

at the

unw iped jackboots w orn by the unsleeping agents cowed and frightened w itness w ho follow s them

.

The

up by trembling hands of change of underwear, and something to eat

traditional arrest also includes the gathering

soap and towel for the victim,

nobodv know

The

w hat

s

is

a

needed or w hat is allow ed, or w hat it is best to w ear. means ... an alien, brutal crushing force raging .

.

.

traditional arrest also

for hours and hours. It means a smashing, a ripping and a pulling down from the w alls, a hurling onto the floor of the contents of desks and drawers, an emptying out, a scattering and a ripping and a piling of mountains of possessions on the floor and their crunch beneath jack-

unchecked open,

boots.

.

And upside

from

vour home

.

—

.

for those left

down and

ing back at

The

in

a tearing

behind

gutted.

after the arrest,

And

vou through the

grilles:

scene depicted in that

a different source.

To

it is

the long

tail

attempts to deliver food parcels.

last

"No one

of a

And

life

turned

voices bark-

here by that name!""

paragraph was familiar to Solzhenitsyn

get to his

home from

school, he

w as obliged

to

SOLZHENITSYN

[7o]

walk

down Nikolsky

Lane, which ran along one side of the enormous build-

ing that had been taken over as the

OGPU

prison in the centre of Rostov.

The back entrance to the prison was situated in the lane and was permanentlv marked by a long and dismal line of silent women waiting to make inquiries or to hand in food parcels.''^ One of the four massive wings that made up the prison faced the main boulevard, the Bolshaya Sadovaya (later Engels Street the OGPU prison was at No. 33) next to the university, its ironclad gates patrolled bv sentries in kepis, who chased awav anv idlers. In a later poem Solzhenitsvn described how its basements used to run out under the pavement, lit by opaque pavement lights set into the asphalt. These basements contained dungeons, so that passers-by were actuallv walking over the heads of the prisoners incarcerated there. He also described how one day a man appeared in one of the

—

windows of

the top floor of the prison block, clambered out and hurtled onto the roadway below, where he smashed to pieces. His body w as hastily removed by the sentries and the blood washed away with hose-pipes, but everyone knew what had happened.''^ There were also the columns of prisoners marched through the streets from time to time under armed guard, accompanied by the chilling shouts of the escort commander: "One step out of line and I'll give the order to shoot or sabre vou down!" As a bov, Solzhenitsvn saw and knew these things too, and vet he could not grasp their meaning. He was not old enough; he did not have the necessarv experience to interpret what he saw around him, and he went w ith the crowd. Onh' much later, after his odvssey through Soviet prisons and camps, did he appreciate the true significance of this prison and these columns. Only then could he write, in The Gulag Archipelago, his brilliant evocation of that secret "fourth dimension" of prison, lurking behind the usual three, of which not only children but also so many adults w ere '^ blissfully unaware until they discovered it for themselves. It turned out that Vladimir Fedorovskv was a late victim of the campaign against the "wrecker-engineers," who had been condemned at the Shakhty trial in 1928 and in the trial of the "Industrial Party" two years later.* These trials, coinciding with the end of the New Economic Policy, had signalled the ending of the ten-vear alliance between the Communist Party and the non-Communist specialists, and the inauguration of an era of rigid Partv discipline. Throughout the twenties the Party had needed the specialists in order to survive, although the specialists were free-thinking and usually blank

onto the

sill,

*Shakhtv was

leapt,

a city in the

Caucasus not too

to have uncovered a vast sabotage

far

from Rostov, where the secret poHce claimed No evidence was pro-

network run by veteran engineers.

duced, other than confessions extracted under torture, but eleven people were sentenced to death, of whom five were executed. It was the first Stalinist show trial. The "Industrial Party" trial

was centred on the

city of

Kuibyshev;

it

alleged the existence of a similar

network of

saboteurs organized into a party led by Professor Ramzin. Again the only evidence was that of forced confessions, and again death sentences v\ere passed dov\n, although this time none were carried out (on the other hand, forty-eight officials trial

began).

The

"Industrial Partv"

was

were said tt) have been executed before the working for Western capitalist interests.

also accused of

Fare\vp:i.i.

hard to control.

Now,

to

ith the rising

\\

Old WO kid

thf.

of

a

[71]

new generation of C>ommunist-

educated engineers more amenable to taking orders, the "bourgeois specialists" had become expendable and could be dealt with. The pretext was the

Manv

introduction of Stalin's First I'ive-Ycar Flan.

were impossibly high. The "bourgeois advised the Party that the plan ble.

w as

But instead of being listened

of the targets in this plan

specialists," as responsible experts,

too ambitious and the targets unattaina-

w ere accused of sabotage and put

to, the\

show trials, which forced confessions and rigged evidence were employed to secure conviction. Professor L. K. Kamzin, for instance, a former Bolshevik and on

trial for

treason.

These were the

first

of Stalin's great series of

in

star witness at the "Industrial Party" trial,

opposition party

among

the conclusion of the

claimed to have established an

the engineers with over two thousand members.

trial,

terms of imprisonment, leaving behind

to long

.\t

he and seven alleged accomplices were sentenced a fertile soil for the

tion of investigations to find the remaining 1,992.

continua-

Ihese continued for some

years in an atmosphere of increasing mistrust, even after

Ramzin himself had

been released and rehabilitated follow ing a suspiciously short time in jail. Vladimir Fedorovsky's crime, it transpired, w as to have among his pos-

w hich both he and Ramzin up by the tw ent\-four-hour search. It was not sufficient for him to be put on trial, and he was released after a year's detention and interrogation, but he was completel\' broken in health and spirits and never got his old job back again. He lived on more or sessions a photograph of an engineers' congress in

appeared.

less

I

his

was the

sole evidence turned

aimlessly for another ten years and died in 1943 in Tashkent.

Meanw hile,

fresh disasters struck the F>dorovskys after Vladimir's arrest.

Literally within days his mother-in-law

Taissia's old headmistress,

,

Mme

Andreyeva, was struck by paralysis and died after a short illness. Soon afterwards Solzhenitsyn's childhood friend Misha was involved in a skating accident, in which he fell and banged his head. He contracted meningitis and within

a short

time was also dead.

A

Solzhenitsvn and Taissia continued to

pall

of grief settled over the household.

call,

but Solzhenitsyn fancied he could

read a silent reproach in Zhenia's eyes for his survival, while her cious son

was dead. And

that his childhood a

in truth there

playmate had gone.

was

The

place

own

pre-

do there now of happy refuge had become

little

for

him

to

house of mourning.

was four years older than Solzhenitsyn them w as most marked. The longlegged blonde with the tousled hair, who had shared all his games and secrets, was now a young w oman. There had been a brief period w hen he w as infatuated with her, hanging round the desk where she painted w atercolours,

As

and

at

for Lialia, Misha's sister, she

an age

when

the difference betw een

little vase of lilies of the valley and three ornamental elephants. He had been intoxicated by her scent, the rustle of her dresses and her femininity. But with increasing maturity Lialia had tired of their games and Solzhenitsyn's dogged chivalry. At school she had heeded the siren voices of Party propaganda and rejected her upbringing and early ties. Soon her pas-

with her

SOLZHENITSYN

[72] sionate idealism

and she married

would transform her into an equally passionate Communist, a man who was to become one of the leading Party officials

of the city of Rostov.

'"^

Bv about 1934 Solzhenitsyn had more or less broken out of his childhood environment and entered upon a new phase of existence, in which he would take a greater and alwavs eager part in the larger life of his school and his circle of adolescent friends. Paradoxically, his active engagement with social questions and with official Soviet ideology came just at the time when the last drops of idealism were being squeezed out of the Party and when Stalin \\ as feeling his way towards establishing the most complete police state the world had yet known. But this development was masked not only from the outside world but also from the bulk of the population of the Soviet Union itself, let alone from its young people. For the moment their idealism remained intact, and it was to be a full twenty years before the truth became clear to more than a few, bv which time Solzhenitsvn would have discovered it for himself bv the hardest possible path. Meanwhile, he shared the optimism and hopes of those around him.

-

4

WRITER AND COMMUNIST ONE

OF THE abiding images that has come down to us of Solzhenitsvn's youth is that of deprivation and poverty. Lev Kopelev, his close friend in later life, once pointed out that the origin of Ivan Denisoxich's celebrated thrift in Solzhenitsvn's first published story was to be sought not simply in the author's labour-camp experiences but also in his straitened and

hungrv childhood, w hich had left an indelible mark on his character. Thrift, economy, modesty of material demands, and indifference to comfort came naturalh' to him and have remained a permanent feature of his way of life even in his present affluence. Soizhenitsvn once had occasion to confirm this when asked by a French interviewer, "What sensations are rekindled in \our mind when you think of your childhood?" He replied: '

Hardships. I'm afraid the w ord

\\

on't

mean much

of the war and the Nazis, especially as

Things were no better when

I

to

you

for

doesn't apply to

it

became an

your experience

all

my

childhood alone.

adult.

Up

From

the end of 1918, the year

to the age of forty

I

knew

I was know what a house was. We lived in huts which v\ere constantly assailed by the cold. Never enough fuel to keep us warm. No water in the room w here we lived we had to go out and fetch it some distance away. A pair of shoes or a suit of clothes had to last for several years. As for the food,

nothing but

a

kind of dignified destitution.

born, until 1941,

I

didn't

—

After the starvation of the 1930s, ordinary shortages were a

don't mention

it.

minor

some mysterious way,

evil.

In

all

these things struck

me

as

more or

less

normal.

This perception of "normality" was quite natural. All children accept it and regard their childhood as normal, at least until

the world as the\' find

73

— .

SOLZHEMTSVN

[74]

experience teaches them otherwise.

And

in

one sense

this

poverty and hun-

ger i^as normal in the Soviet thirties, for Stahn's First Five- Year Plan, its

forced collectivization of the peasantry and

w ith

forced industrialization,

its

ensured that the bulk of the population would go hungry throughout most of their

lives.

was the

Collectivization a principal

result of a tangle of motives

w inding up

cause had been the

on

but

Stalin's part,

New Economic

of the

Policy in

1928 and the replacement of a free market for foodstuffs by requisitions and coercion.

The

by

peasants, deprived of anv economic incentives, responded

cutting production, and

it

w as

tins that

persuaded Stalin to push through his

"revolution from above" and take over the land.

Not unexpectedly,

force

was

necessarv nearly everywhere, for the peasants fought tooth and nail to defend their holdings.

had been bought by and forced turn placed the mark of "counter-revolution" on

Their very support

promises of land; now

,

tw ehe years

for the Revolution

later,

—

they were being asked

up again. Stalin in the kulaks and stretched the meaning of the word to include not only rich peasants but any peasant who w as moderately successful or well-to-do, while other innocent victims were accused of being "kulak-minded" (podkulachtiiki) In the end it made little difference, for all w ho opposed the collectivization in anv w av w ere herded off to Siberia, either to swell the growing numbers in the labour camps or simply to be let loose in the Arctic tundra to fend tor to give

it

themselves or die.

The terrible

full

consequences are incalculable, but the immediate result w

famine

—"the only case

in history of a

Robert Conquest has pointed out ror.^

Estimates of the

figure of three

and

number

in his

purely

book on

this period.

of Soviet citizens

a half million

as a

man-made famine,"

who

as

The Great Ter-

died vary from the

submitted to Stalin bv the

OGPU

at

the

computed b\' a League of Nations report in 1946. An almost equal number were deported to Siberia. It w as an event unique in the annals of Europe, the greatest catastrophe of modern times apart from the Nazi Holocaust, to w hich it fully bears comparison. At the same time, it w as Stalin's first major exercise in large-scale deception, time to an estimate of five to

six million

both at home and abroad. The few contemporary reports that leaked out were quickly denounced and mainly disbelieved. At home a frightened population was kept in ignorance, while those in the cities knew only that there was a serious, inexplicable famine, without drought and without war, and that the w ise course was not to inquire into it too closely. The inhabitants of Rostov could not fail to be aw are of w hat w as happening. As the commercial centre for a rich agricultural region, and as a leading producer of tractors and agricultural machinerx for that region, Rostov had numerous links with the countryside, and new s was bound to filter through. The Cossacks of the Kuban, where Zakhar's estate had been, rebelled so violently that they had to be put dow n through the personal intervention of Lazar Kaganovich, head of the Party's Central Control Commission. A correspondent of the London Times, Iverach .McDonald, the

North Caucasus

at this time, later

described

how

who

tra\elled

through

w ere

untilled;

"the fields

I

Writer AND Communist

men had been

[75]

taken aw a\ after resisting the collectivization drive; children

came w himpering

to the train for bread.

""^

was instantly ready with plausible explanations for They were the work of "over-zealous" officials, or the result of "wrecking" on the part of the kulaks and other "class enemies," or the machinations of foreign powers and the supporters of counter-revolution of anvthing, in fact, other than the policies that had caused them. Methods might sometimes be wrong, but policies nexer. The press was under total Party control and thoroughly censored, and all links w ith foreign sources of information were deliberately broken off, for this was the vear in w hich the Iron Curtain v\'as first lowered. Not even the adult population w as aw are of the enormity of what was happening to them. To Taissia and Solzhenitsyn's endemic difficulties of tr\ ing to li\ e on one small salary was now added a general situation of w idespread shortages and hunger. Long queues for bread and other necessities of life became more prevalent than they had ever been before. Private hardship w as paralleled b\public hardship, private suffering by general suffering. Another resident of Rostov at this time recalls the enormous difficulty one had in buying any sort of clothing. To get a pair of shoes, for instance, could mean queuing for up to si.x months. The normal method was to go to the shop w here the arrival of a consignment of shoes was announced and to queue for a number, which lasted for one day. If the queue lasted longer, you were obliged to return every day and get a new number, and if you missed a day, you w ere struck off the list. \\ hen the consignment arrived (usually w ithout w arning), \'ou queued again in numerical order until you w ere able, if luck\', to bu\' your Stalin, for his part,

the abuses.

—

shoes.

person remembers another typical Rosto\" incident. A barrel two wheels was being pulled through the streets one day, and word got about that it was for sale. People rushed to fetch cans and pails and

The same

of paraffin on

fell in

behind

it,

or turned in their tracks and followed

it

just to

keep their

no time the man w ith the barrel found himself at the head of a vast procession that grew longer and longer as it twisted and turned from street to street. Nobody knew whether the paraffin was really for sale or not, and the delivery man either could not or would not say. And so the crowd followed him, a latter-day Piper of Hamelin, in silent hope. It places in the queue. In next to

was no longer icons and sacred relics that attracted processions in the streets, but barrels of paraffin on w heels.' Solzhenitsyn's penury merged with the public penury, and had both practical and psychological consequences. Practically, the biggest problem was clothing. Apart from having to queue all the time, he could scarcely afford what w as available, and his clothes, though neat, were often shabby and threadbare. Unforeseen accidents could occur to make the situation worse. On one occasion he sat on some ink on a chair and came aw ay w ith a spot on the seat of his trousers. The ink resolutely resisted all attempts to wash it out, and he w as obliged to continue wearing the trousers for two more years before he could afford another pair.

SOLZHENITSYN

[76]

Psychologically, the effects were

more impalpable. As the top educa-

Malevich school had a number of children from families suddenly impoverished and now suffering discrimination, like the Solzhenitsyns, the "exes," as they were picturesquely called, meaning tional establishment in Rostov, the

the ex-professional people and ex-bourgeoisie. But thev were the exception, rather than the rule. The majority came from families that had sur\ived scx:iall\' and economically, like the Fedorovskys, or from those of the new Party functionaries and proletarian elite. These latter were the new Soviet aristocracy, already beginning to be well dressed and well fed. Shortages meant nothing to them, for they had their own, reserved commissaries w here thev could entry being carefully restricted to those obtain virtually anything they liked with the right Party cards. Those who suffered w orst under this system were the genuine v\orkers and minor office employees, because members of the former bourgeoisie and intelligentsia could at least sell their possessions the new aristocrats were the eager buyers. And until they ran out, there w as at least a cushion against the general austerity. But apart from her grand piano, Taissia soon had nothing left. Solzhenitsvn was therefore excluded from popular pastimes like skating, because he could never afford the blades or the special boots to go with them. Another sport he longed to try was tennis, and he recalls how he used to press his nose to the w ire in his youth, watching those unattainable white-clad figures leaping about the court, and yearn to be able to join them. Neither the special clothes nor the racquets were remotely within his means, let alone the opportunity to join the club.*^ These social tensions, combined with a sensitivity about his fatherlessness and a simmering sense of shame over his class origins, seem to have fuelled a driving ambition and a rage to excel that showed themselves in Solzhenitsxn from an exceptionally early age. As a \'oung child he had decided that he w anted to become one of three things: a general, a priest, or a w riter. At school he was always an outstanding pupil, equally good at arts and at science subjects; like his mother before him, he was invariably top of his class. And his mother, indeed, played no small role in his education, constantly encouraging him with her love and devotion, admiring his progress,

—

—

and helping him w quence, he shone

ith his school

at just

work

in

every

way

she could.

As

a

conse-

about everything he touched. Natalia Reshetovskaya

was once told by a former classmate of Solzhenitsyn's that the one thing he seemed to be poor at w as draw ing, but by stubbornh applying himself to the problem over many months, he overcame his deficiency and began to obtain excellent marks in that subject as well. Fortunately, Solzhenitsyn's scholastic excellence did not turn him into a prig or cut him off from the other pupils. He was one of a number of outstandingly clever children attracted to the school by its reputation (it w as well known as the favourite school of the "exes"), and he became close friends w ith three of the most talented pupils in his class: Nikolai \ itkevich, Kirill Simony an, and Lydia Ezherets. He and the two other boys soon referred to themselves jokingly as "The Three Musketeers" and were inseparable throughout most of their school years and at university.

Writer and (Communist

[77]

Simonyan, an Armenian from Nakhichevan, arrived in Solzhehad been a \veahh\ businessman who had extensi\e Hnks abroad, especiailv in Persia, and who spoke man\' languages. Apparently, he had been able to continue with his business activities until the end of the New Economic Policy, in 1928, but had then fled to Persia to escape persecution, crossing the border on foot and leaving Kirill, nine, his sister, Nadezhda, five, and their mother to look after themselves. His mother was summoned by the CIPU for questioning, but nothing worse followed and she \\ as allowed to return to her familw Mrs Simonvan \\ as throw n back aissia, for she sufon her own resources and was even more helpless than fered from emphxsema and her health was too fragile to permit her to w ork. rhe Armenian community, however, was very close-knit. Friends and relations rallied round, and the family w as ultimately able to manage reasonably Kirill

nits\n's school in 1930. His father

I

well for those times.

Many

things

drew the two boys

together: the secret

pasts, their present fatherlessness, their

lived in a single

poverty

room on Dmitrievskava

overhanging iron balconies and an iron

shame of their

(Kirill, his sister,

fathers'

and mother

Street; their courtyard, with

staircase,,

its

looked even grimmer and

more run-down than the Solzhenitsyns' cul-de-sac). And they had a common interest in the arts. Kirill was a sensitive, dreamy boy with a passion for music. Indeed, his w hole family was gifted musically. His sister, Nadezhda, went on to become a well-known composer (she wrote the score for that exquisite Soviet period film The Lady with the Little Dog, based on the Chekhov story), and Kirill himself, despite a hearing defect, was a pianist of some accomplishment. In the summers, he insisted on taking Solzhenitsyn to free concerts in the park, and explained the principles of music to him. Kirill was also interested in the occult and, w hen his mother was out, used to organize seances, which seemed to Solzhenitsyn to establish genuine contact with the other world. He recounted his dreams to Solzhenitsyn, discussed their meana m\'stical bent that intrigued and fascinated Solzhenits\'n, much mysticism had fascinated him earlier. But w ith such interests and with his dark-skinned, soulful good looks, he struck the other boys as effeminate. His mane of black hair, heavy black brows, dark eyes, prominent ing,

and had

as Irina's

Armenian nose, and wide mobile mouth made him almost his

own

good, and he had

a

way

too

handsome

tor

of carrying a handkerchief in his hand or of

grimacing theatrically that inevitably led to

much

teasing.

He w as dubbed

ice.

"Kirochka" and sometimes imitated, but apparently without malIn early adolescence, when he suddenly grew much taller than the oth-

ers,

he earned the nickname of "Ostrich,"

"Kirilla" or

a

w ith him

into

the "Walrus," given to

him

name

that stuck

manhood.*^ Solzhenitsyn also had

a

nickname

at school:

because of his love of the cold. A preference for winter and cold weather was to become an enduring trait. The autobiographical Gleb Nerzhin in The First

midwinter before sawing some firewood: "Picking up handfuls [of snow], he rubbed it vigorously over his chest, back, and ."^ sides. All through winter he rubbed himself down to the waist with snow Circle strips to the waist in

SOLZHENITSYN

[78]

And

Solzhenitsyn's later choice of

Vermont

United

as a place to settle in the

was dictated by its climate and by his preference for cold w inters and cool summers. "Walrus" is a common Russian nickname for such lovers of States

cold weather.

As Musketeers,

was "Aramis" and Solzhenitsyn "Athos." was Nikolai V'itkevich Koka to his friends. Like Solzhenitsyn, Nikolai was an orphan. His father, a civil servant in tsarist times, had died during the Civil War, and Nikolai w as an only son. Nikolai's mother, Antonina V'itkevich, was a tough, resilient woman, determined to make her way in the world. She had joined the Party, remaining a staunch member of it till the end of her days, and this had enabled her, as a shorthand typist, to work for "sensitive" Party and government institutions, where the pay was better and some privileges were available. She had also tried re-marrying. In 1930 her second husband, a Daghestanian Moslem, had taken her and Nikolai to Daghestan with him, where they had lived in semi-oriental fashion and Nikolai had attended a Moslem school. But in 1934 the stepfather had died, and Nikolai and his mother had returned to

The

Kirill

evidently

—

third musketeer, "Porthos,"

Rostov. Nikolai

\\

as Solzhenitsyn's oldest

at school as early as 1928,

and

w hen both w ere

closest friend.

nine, but

it

w

as

The two had met only after Nikolai

returned from Daghestan that their friendship really blossomed. If

Kirill's

character was lyrical and unstable, Nikolai's seems to have been the opposite:

dour,

down

to earth, determined, independent.

Photographs of him reveal

stocky, broad-shouldered youth with a short neck and bullet-like head.

mouth

is

set in

abstracted as

an obstinate

w ell,

as if his

line,

a

The

the eyes look stubborn and somehov\

thoughts w ere turned

in

on himself.

He was far own

extroverted than Solzhenitsyn or Kirill, but seems to have held his

less

in their

common

The

pursuits.

other close school friend

who

deserves mention at this stage

is

Lydia

Ezherets (known to her friends as Lida). Lydia came from a highly cultivated

Jew

ish

family that was very prominent in Rostov during the inter-war years.

Dr Alexander Ezherets, was head of the main Rostov polyclinic and director of the Regional Health Board for the Black Sea coast, an exceedingly popular and influential man. Lydia seems to have resembled him in that she, too, was popular and was esteemed for her outstandingly generous Her

father,

and unselfish character. Solzhenitsyn remembers her as a kind, gentle, loveable girl who was never known to lose her temper or quarrel with anyone. Others, w ho met her in later life, invariably recall her intelligence, sensitivity, and willingness to help. The principal bond that drew these friends together was their common love of literature. Neither Kirill, in later life, nor Natalia Reshetovskaya (in is an entirely reliable witness in these matters, but Kiwords, as quoted by Reshetovskaya, on the subject of their enthusiasm and their relations w ith their literature teacher, Anastasia Griinau, have the ring of truth to them.

her edited memoirs) rill's

Writer and Communist

We wrote essays on

[79]

Shakespeare, Bvron, and l^ushkin, consulting

of-school sources and each trying to outdo the other. Gradually

it

a

mass of outbecame clear

first

v\e

were Lida Ezherets, Sanya Solzhenitsyn, and myself. wrote very had, very imitative poetrv, until Anastasia Serge\evna

suggested

we

try

that the best at this

At

\\

At the same time we started pr(iducwe wrote poems, epigrams on one another and

riting a novel together.

ing a satirical magazine in which

even on the teachers, which thev then marked

as "witty," "not wittv," "wittv

but tactless," and so on. In the ninth

We

organized

We

Rostand.

and tenth

classes,

v\

e

added

to this

an infatuation w

ith

the theatre.

drama club and rehearsed plavs bv Ostrovskv, (Jiekhov, and had ready-made characters in our class for all possible roles.'" a

This picture of the friends'

u as

later

con-

the Calf.

The

joint

literary activities at school

firmed by Solzhenitsyn in a supplement to The Oak and

dubbed "the novel of the three madmen" and w as written rather manner of the old parlour game of truth and consequences: each person

novel was in the

would take

it

in

turn to write a chapter, starting from whatever had gone

before but without indicating

zhenitsyn retained

when

how

the plot should develop further." Sol-

a great affection for .Xnastasia

already famous,

made

a point

Griinau and

of visiting her in

in later life,

Moscow.

It

appears

that he never forgot her lessons in his favourite subject and the love for

erature that she helped

instil in

lit-

him.''

was as passionate about literature as Solzhenitsyn, and while still two of them wrote reams of verse that thev dispatched to various vv Titers for comment. Usual! v their letters went unanswered, but on one occasion Leonid Timofeyev wrote back with a detailed and verv negative criticism of their efforts. .A.fter that thev approached a local poet called Cato for instruction and \\ ere encouraged to submit their w (jrk to a Rostov literarv magazine, The Hammer, but nothing came of that either. Solzhenitsvn later felt that Kirill had had it in him to develop into a capable and perhaps outstanding writer (Anastasia Griinau actually thought him the more talented of the two), but Kirill gradually lost heart, and after taking a medical degree he abandoned writing altogether (except for medical books). Lvdia, too, had literary ambitions, and it was usually to her flat (her father being comparatively wealthy and their flat sumptuous by Soviet standards) that the friends went to read and discuss their works. Of the entire group, she was the onlv one to take a degree in literature and end up teaching it, becoming a specialist in German literature and writing a certain amount of academic criticism. Nikolai Vitkevich was more interested in politics and philosophy than in literature proper and took little part in these exercises. Soizhenitsyn's love of amateur theatricals led to his toying at one stage with the idea of becoming a professional actor. Rostov w as particularly w ell Kirill

at school the

'"^

off for theatres at this time.

moved

into a

by the celebrated

Mausoleum

in

The

city's

Bolshoi Theatre

company had

just

sumptuous new glass-and-concrete theatre complex designed architect A.

V. Shchuko, the man responsible

Red Square. The huge

central block, flanked

for the

by two

Lenin

satellite

SOLZHENITSYN

[8o]

wings, had so enraged Rostov's citizens w ith

its

modernity and expense that

dubbed "the tractor," in honour of Rostov's best-known manufacture, but it was a vital centre of theatrical life, particularly after the arrival there of the Moscow director Yuri Zavadsky. Zavadsky, a famous actor-manager who had worked with Stanislavsky and NemirovichDanchenko, w as formerly the director of the Red Army Theatre in Moscow, but in 1936, as a result of a routine artistic purge, he was accused of "an it

had been

ironically

excessive preoccupation with aestheticism," of pursuing "falsely understood

and innovation" (though some

ideas of novelty

said that

Nemirovich-Dan-

chenko's jealousy was at the root of the matter), and banished to Rostov.

Perhaps

fascinated

by Zavadsky's reputation,

attending his youth studio, which was

jammed with

Solzhenitsyn

began

enthusiastic applicants

in. He passed most of the two-part entrance examination without and was praised by Zavadsky for his comic talent, but Zavadsky tested his voice by the simple expedient of getting him to call out to Kirill some distance away and pronounced his vocal cords too weak. He retained a lifelong fascination with the theatre that was subsequently to issue in four stage plays, two film scripts, and a decidedly dramatic approach to prose fiction. He also conceived a passion for recitation, which in later life took the form of reading from his works. At the height of his fame in Moscow, he liked nothing better than to read to a private gathering of admirers and friends, always with gusto and verve, if not always with the requisite dramatic effect. Later, after his deportation to the West, in 1974, one of his first acts was to

eager to get difficulty

issue a

poem

gramophone recording of himself reading the

text of his long narrative

Prussian Nights.

Even had

his voice not failed,

zhenitsyn would have taken the

it is

doubtful, in retrospect, whether Sol-

final step

of entering the theatre, for his

overriding passion was literature, and of his three possible choices for a vocation, that of

becoming

first stirrings

very statement of written childish

them

dismiss juvenilia

a writer

quickly became uppermost in his mind.

of this ambition had occurred as early as the age of nine. it

invites a sceptical response.

poems and

later,

even

stories

if

when

How many

The The

people have

they were nine, only to forget and

they returned to writing? But Solzhenitsyn's

have survived intact and confirm beyond doubt that he did begin to

write systematically and at unusual length from the age of nine and that he

continued writing single-mindedly, without youth, and early

manhood

into

\\

hat

a break,

we now know

through adolescence,

as his literary maturity.

Throughout these early years the qualities that stand out in his writing, apart from a natural but not unduly precocious talent, are application, energy, and stamina

—not unimportant

attributes of a writer possessed of such vaulting

ambition.'"*

1 he

first series

of juvenilia dates from the winter of 1928-29.

The

first

rounded handwriting on the backs of invoices and other blanks from Melstroi, where his mother had worked. This is followed by "The Blue Arrow" (alternatively titled story in

it,

begun

in 1928,

is

"Pirates," written in large,

Writer and (Communist

[8i]

"V.V.," for the initials of the main hero) on tinv sheets of office paper antl by the astonishingly long "Science Fiction Story," both written in 1929. The science fiction \\ as eyidently intended for some journal that Sol/.henitsyn was planning at the time, either on his own or jointly with Misha and Lialia Fedoroyskaya. The first journal to haye suryiyed intact, howeyer, is the ambitiously named Twentieth Century, \v ith its no less ambitious subtitle: "On the Meaning of the Twentieth Century." The journal was neatly printed in handwritten capital letters, contained illustrations, yersc, jokes, and stories, all by Solzhenitsyn, and featured a long serial, "Fhe Last Pirate," whose subject matter hardly fitted the journal's grandiose aspirations but which ran in no fewer than twenty separate numbers. There seems then to haye been a slight pause until January 1932, when the thirteen-year-old tyro launched a new journal. The Literary Gazette. This one was in school exercise books (paper no longer being in such short supply), ran for two years, and deyoted much of its space to a long play. The Banquet, a comedy in two acts. It also contained another science-fiction adyenture entitled "Rays." Meanwhile Solzhenitsyn \yas trying nevy genres outside his journals. In 1934 he vyrote Mikhail Snegov, described as "a noyel"

on the exercise book coyer and "a tale" (povest) inside. Not surprisingly, its eponymous hero was an actor. Simultaneously, he wrote a great deal of verse, collected in one volume as Verse 1932-36 and later as Juvenile Verse, a miscellany of jokes, epigrams, and "especially intimate poems," some of them the fruit, no doubt, of those class activities referred to by Kirill Simonyan. Solzhenitsyn also collected a number of his early stories together under the com-

mon

title

of The Fateful Tragedy.

and omens stories,

the

(of

whom

An

Solzhenitsyn

interesting detail, for lo\ers of coincidence is

one),

"The Money Box," was named

surname but

also the affectionate

is

that the heroine of

one of the

Alia Svetlova, prefiguring not only

nickname of Solzhenitsyn's second and

present wife, Natalia Svetlova.

known w ithin the family and led on one occasion to his being drawn to the attention of Maxim Gorky. It happened as follows. His uncle Roman worshipped Gorky as an even greater writer than Tolstoy. There was a certain irony in this, for Roman himself was a Solzhenitsvn's efforts were well

typical

Gorky

—

anti-hero

a rich

merchant's son attracted by progressi\e ideas,

odds with contemporary society. Gorky repeatedly reviled and lampooned such characters in his endless novels devoted to merchant families, and was repaid by their applause but with patriarchal ways that were hopelessly

at

and adoration. At the end of the twenties, Gorky developed a theory that anyone at all could become a w titer, if only he w as given the right amount of encouragement and opportunity. As a result, people started sending him things to read from all over Russia. At about this time, in 1932 or 1933, Solzhenitsyn sent Roman and Irina a long letter about a trip he had made to the Black Sea coast with the Young Pioneers, describing the sights he had seen and his impressions. His uncle and aunt were so impressed that they sent a copy to Maxim Gorky. Some time later a reply duly arrived signed by

SOLZHEMTSYN

[82]

one of Gorky's

secretaries voicing approval

author definitely had

Of a somewhat

it

in

him

to

become

different character

and encouragement: a writer.

yes, the

young

'^

from the early

stories

and verse, and

of more interest for his biography, are what Solzhenitsyn called his Cycling Notes,

composed

in the

autumn of 1937

to describe a

month's tour of the

July and August in the companv of six friends. Solzhenitsyn had acquired his bicycle in somewhat unorthodox fashion.

Caucasus

in

In 1936, during his last year at school, he had been nominated

master for some sort of civic prize for outstanding pupils.

was usually

by the head-

The award

of the

once the nominations were in, but for some reason Solzhenitsyn's name was missing from the published list, and his school went without a prize-winner. His nomination had been blocked on account prize

a formality

The headmaster was incensed and kicked up a tredemanding that the injustice be righted. The officials conwas too late to alter the prize-winners, but consented to award

of his social background.

mendous

fuss,

cerned said

it

Solzhenitsyn a bicycle as an extraordinary consolation prize.

The headmaster

was supplied with a sum of money for Solzhenitsyn and a letter to be presented to the main city sports shop. In return for the letter and the money, a bicycle would be provided. For Solzhenitsyn this was better than a normal prize. Bicycles were a rare luxury in those days, and he would never have been able to afford one on his own. WTien he arrived at the sports shop v\'ith the letter, he was informed that there was a terrible shortage but that they would tip him off before the next consignment arrived so that he could come to the shop the night before and be first in the queue. When the tip-off came, Solzhenitsyn informed Kirill and Nikolai, and all three of them went to the shop at closing time the night before. During the evening and night they were joined by dozens of others, until a crowd of about 150 people was waiting outside the shop. Some policemen tried to disperse it, but without success. The following morning the three musketeers w

i

I

swaniplike sogg\ tlough,

I

made haH

of potato flour was our crutch and the main e\ent of the dav. Life had heguni

The day had begun problems: it

w

ith a

Wait

Had

—

was when

thread?

Or

greedily break

for the tea or pile in straight

lunch?

it

Each of us had nn riad dav before? Should he cut

really began! his ration the

into lumps? Or nip off pieces bit in bit? away? Leave some for supper or onlv for

it

And how much?-

At the 9 a.m.

make complaints

each of the cells was visited bv the dut\was the moment when the prisoners had a

roll-call,

ant. IVaditionaliy, this

were

this

he correctly apportioned

lieuten-

right to

or requests. Solzhenits\n quickh found out that complaints

—they were

hand and never went further like were almost equallv useless. Ihe medical treatment available in the Lub\ anka w as primitive, brutal, and hard to obtain. As often as not, it left you worse than before, for its purpose w as not to mitigate the effects of sleeplessness, o\era

waste of time

rejected out of

than the lieutenant. Requests for medical treatment and the

exhaustion, starvation, or beatings, but simplv to reassure the prison authorities

that the prisoner

was

for a

man

unheated punishment "All right,

was

still

not in danger of dving.

A common experience

recovering consciousness after a beating or incarceration in an the prison doctor bending over him, sa\ing,

cell to tind

you can continue."

And

it

was these same doctors w ho signed the

death certificates with false diagnoses of the causes of death.

Another formal

right

was

that of twice a

month writing

petitions are a peculiar feature of the Soviet penal system

petitions.

and appear

These to

be

a

custom of allowing prisoners to appeal to the higher powers for merc\-, w hen it w as both a safetv valve and a tacit admission of the injustice of much penal practice. In the Soviet period this right became as vestigial as the emu's wings and serves no useful purpose, vet it persisted throughout Stalin's time and continues to the present dav. \\ hen vou made a petition vou w ere taken out of vour cell and locked in a box, w here \ou were given a tinv piece of poor-qualitv paper measuring four inches bv three, a wooden pen w ith a broken nib, and an ink-w ell containing w atered-dow n ink. 1 he pen w ould barely write, the paper w as as porous as blotting paper, and there was little chance of producing anvthing legible (nor w as there room to write a proper message). Nevertheless, most prisoners, including Solzhenitsyn, went through with this farcical procedure, especiallv in the early vestige of the old tsarist

stages of their investigation,

when

thev belie\ed

in

pardons and did not accept

or realize that their fate had been determined in advance, or suspect that these petitions invariably ended

up on the desk of their

investigator.

For the

latter thev were useful evidence of the prisoner's state of mind, his hopes and

and made a valuable addition to his dossier. The day's activities began after the nine o'clock inspection. Sometimes the prisoners were called for interrogation at this time, particularly if their case v\as going smoothlv. If it wasn't, thev would be kept up all night or transferred to Lefortovo for harsher treatment, which is what happened to Leonid Z when he became stubborn and refused to sign the investigator's perhaps his

fears,

SOLZHENITSYN

[i62]

versions of his depositions. Otheru^'ise, the prisoners could play chess, indulge

and the telling of anecdotes that Solzhenitsyn so from the Lubyanka library, which turned out to be a

in the endless conversations

loved, or read books

great surprise.

The Lubyanka

library

was unique.

of confiscated private libraries.

In

The

all

probability

bibliophiles

it

had been assembled out

who had

collected these books

had already rendered up their souls to God. But the main thing was that while the security service had been busy censoring and emasculating all the nation's libraries for decades,

it

had forgotten

to dig in

its

own bosom, and

here, in the

one could read Zamvatin, Pilnvak, Panteleimon Romanov, and any all of the complete works of xVlerezhkovskv.'*

beast's lair,

volume

The

at

prisoners were allowed to order one book every ten days.

They

frequently failed to get the book of their choice, for the librarian doled out the books like so

many hunks

of bread, concerned only to see that they

got one book apiece, regardless of

its title

all

or contents. Nevertheless, they

received plenty to interest them, and by swapping around had enough, in a cell

of

five, to

keep themselves more or

until the next order

became

less

continuously in reading matter

possible.

Immediately before lunch the prisoners were

let

out for their twenty

minutes of exercise. Those on the fourth and fifth floors, where Solzhenitsyn was, were taken up onto the roof of the Lubyanka and allowed to walk in a concrete yard surrounded by high concrete walls. They 'uere accompanied by an unarmed warder, and an armed guard manned the watch-tower that

The prisoners were ordered to line up in pairs, keep hands behind their backs, and stay silent, but they usually contrived to talk among themselves in whispers. It was here that Solzhenitsyn learned about Estonian democracy from Susi, and here that he spent some of his happiest moments in the Lubyanka, out in the fresh air and away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cell, with its constant reminders of his helplessness and humiliation. Here, too, he could see the sun for the first time since his arrival in Moscow and hear the distant honking of the traffic overlooked the yard. their

below on Dzerzhinsky Square, a reminder that somewhere out there life proceeded normally. At one o'clock they were served lunch a ladle of soup and a ladle of thin, fatless gruel, each dumped onto a flat aluminium plate. If they had saved some of their bread ration, it could now be eaten with the soup. If not, the soup and the gruel were gone in a trice, so that in the early days they were hardly aware that they had eaten anything. But "then, if you managed to get it under control, your stomach shrank and adapted itself to this meagreness, and the miserable Lubyanka slops became just right.'"* There followed a two-hour rest period during which, if they were not called out for

far

still

—

*I.e., censored authors. It

(once

condemned

was also in the Lubvanka that Solzhenitsyn Union for decadent formalism).

in the Soviet

first

read

Dos Passos

— Two A REAN Organization

|i'')3]

were allowed to lie on their bunks and read. was still forbidden to sleep, but thev usually contrived to doze with a book propped in front o( them. "Supper" was at 4 p.m. and then there were six hours to lights out, which another ladle of gruel was the favourite period for discussions, arguments, stories, debates. In mid-March a sixth prisoner was added to the hve in (IcW 67, and since it was now too small for them, all six were transferred to a larger cell in another wing: Cell No. 53. Here the ceiling was enormously high sixteen and a half feet and an almost full-length window was set in one wall, although four-fifths of it w ere blocked on the outside by a riveted steel sheet known colloquially as a muzzle. Muzzles were (and still are) a standard fitting in Soviet jails, blocking off all but a tiny patch of w indow and sky and serving to make electric light necessary day and night. interrogation, the prisoners Strictly speaking,

it

—

—

—

The new arrival in the cell, Yuri Y, turned out to be a Soviet officer who had spent two years in captivity in a German death camp and had survived by becoming the camp artist. He told Solzhenitsyn that while there he had learnt the reason for the particularly inhuman treatment of Russian prisas opposed to the Poles, Yugoslavs, Norwegians, and English-

oners of war

men

—

saw

that he

had refused

—

German camps. It was because the Soviet Union Hague Convention on war prisoners and thereany obligations in its treatment of enemy prisoners nor

in the

to recognize the

fore neither accepted

own. In Stalin's eyes a prisoner of war was a were expected to fight on or die, but never to surrender. Nor did the USSR recognize the International Red Cross. Therefore, while the prisoners of other nationalities were more or less decently fed and allowed to receive food parcels, the Russians starved and were allowed to die like dogs. Yuri Y had been transformed bv his experiences from a Soviet patriot (his father had been a high-ranking officer in the revolutionary imposed any traitor:

to protect

Red Army

forces) into

its

soldiers

an ardent anti-Communist and had allow ed himself to be recruited

into the Vlasov

army, thinking,

like

many

of

to be allowed to fight for the liberation of his

its members, that he was going homeland from the Communist

Germans had deceived and cheated the Russians who joined Touards the end of the war, Yuri was contacted by a Soviet agent who promised him a free pardon if he would go over to the Soviet side and give them information about a spy school that he had helped to organize. yoke. But the their side.

After

much

Yuri accepted, crossed the lines, and told Soviet he knew, only to be cheated once again and flung into

vacillating,

counter-intelligence

all

the Lubyanka.

Yuri was almost the same age as Solzhenitsyn, and Solzhenitsyn was attracted by his frank and open personality. Their education and mil-

much

itary experiences

had

in

many ways been

similar,

and they spoke the same

language. But Solzhenitsyn's patriotism and his burning conviction that the

war

against the

Germans was

utterly right could not be reconciled with Yuri's

apparent treachery. Here was leaflets

had so disgusted him

a living at

example of those \

lasovites

whose

the front, and although Solzhenitsyn was

SOLZHENITSYN

[164]

beginning dimly to understand something of their motives and although he

found Yuri personally In

all,

I

cell.

said that our Revolution

1929 distortion was horrible. I

I argued with him throughout those was magnificent and just, that onlv its looked at me pitvinglv and compressed his lips.

Yuri spent three weeks in our

three weeks.

...

he was nonetheless alienated by his views.

attractive,

said that there

He

had been

a

long period in our country

when

all

our major

were conducted exclusively bv utterly dedicated men of high principle. He said thev were all cut from the same cloth as Stalin from the very beginning. (We agreed that Stalin was a bandit.) I praised Gorkv to the skies: what a genius, what a wonderfully correct point of view, what an artist! Yuri parried: a pathetic, boring creature who had invented himself and all his characters his books were complete fairv tales. Lev Tolstoy was the tsar of our literature.' affairs

—

Yuri soon departed and was replaced by another newcomer, whose story

up

eclipsed anything Solzhenitsyn had heard thin

voung man with

suit

and blue cap, quietly announced,

to

now. The new prisoner,

answer

in

to questions, that

been arrested for writing a proclamation to the Russian people.

why

he had written

it,

a

innocent-looking face, dressed in a cheap blue

a pale,

he had

When

asked

he confided shyly that he was none other than the

Emperor Mikhail Romanov. Solzhenitsyn was

electrified

—he

had never

expected to meet an emperor in the Lubyanka. Victor Alexeyevich Belov, which was his real name, was a former chauf-

who had worked at the Kremlin for a while and had been a driver to Khrushchev* as well as to Marshal Blyukher and other bigwigs. Solzhenit-

feur

syn listened raptly to his

tales of life at the top, his descriptions

the Kremlin leaders led a closed, secret lavishly at private banquets, reserv

ed shops

filled

moving

life

in a

of the

way

of their own, eating and drinking

magic

circle of

government dachas,

uith every kind of delicacy and modern consumer goods,

limousines, being cradled in the lap of luxury and privilege. Only Khrushchev, said Victor, had any sort of egalitarian principles and treated his chauffeur as a friend. But the key event in Victor's life had occurred in 1943 when a venerable old man with a white beard had visited him and his mother at home, had crossed himself before their icon, and had said to Victor gravely, "Hail, Mikhail, God gives you his blessing!" The old man, it turned out, had visited Victor's mother once before, in 1916, when Victor was a year old, and had predicted a great and mysterious future for him, saying also that he would return. And here he was back again. V ictor's mother had official

almost fainted with the shock, while the old for his destiny. In 1953 there

become emperor of

all

would be

a

man

rule,

and Victor would

the Russians.

Solzhenitsyn and his cell-mates barely

when they heard

instructed Victor to prepare

change of

knew whether

to laugh or cry

Victor's breathless tale, but his patent simplicity, guileless-

*This was presumabh' between 1935 and 1938, when Khrushchev was secretary of the Moscow District Party Committee. .Marshal Blyukher, commander of the Soviet .\rmy of the Far East after the Revolution, was executed by Stalin in 1939.

Two Are an Organization

1

165]

and conviction commanded respect and forebade mockery. Victor had been instructed to start gathering his forces in 1948, but, fired bv the old man's words, he had been impatient to begin earher. He was then working ness,

in the People's

Commissariat

autumn of 1943 he wrote

for the Oil Industry in

Moscow, and in the he showed to four

his first proclamation, \\hich

fellow workers. A year later, when working as a mechanic in a car depot, he wrote another proclamation and showed it to ten fellow workers, and also to two girls. The workers apparently approved of it, and, like the first four,

they kept his secret. But the two girls informed on him, and soon afterw ards he was picked up by the police and brought to the Lubxanka. Victor's story got a mixed reception from the members of ilcW 53 (a number that gave \ ictor a distinct //vVyo;; it was the year of his predicted

—

accession to the throne). Kramarenko, the

cell

stool-pigeon, at once found a

denounce the w orkers who had failed to inform on \'ictor. Fastenko, though far from a monarchist, seized on the workers' approval as evidence of mutinous feelings among the proletariat. Leonid Z, the engineer, found the w hole thing preposterous and took great delight in teasing Victor, just as the investigators began to do w hen new s of Victor's claim spread through the Lubyanka. Solzhenitsvn also found the story far-fetched, but he was much impressed by \ ictor's stories of high life in the Kremlin and the wretched conditions of his fellow workers. He wasn't sure how much to believe, but here was material on Soviet life such as he had never dreamed of acquiring, or had had any chance to acquire, up till now His sense that his real education was only now beginning w as strengthened. And he also began to get a feel for that Arabian Nights quality of prison life, and the endless stories that the prisoners told about themselves and others, like so many Scheherazades, to w hile awa\' the time. Not even the most fantastic tales could be neglected or dismissed out of hand, and in many cases, as in that of the "Emperor Mikhail," the fantastic stories were the ones that told him most. What fascinating adventures they heard, what wonderful conversations they conducted on their causes and meaning: pretext to visit his investigator and

.

the weightless Lubyanka evenings!. What light, free thoughts! It was though we had been lifted up to the heights of Sinai, and there the truth manifested itself to us from out of the fire. Was it not of this that Pushkin dreamed? "I want to live so as to think and suffer." And there we suffered, and we thought,

Oh,

.

.

.

as

and there was nothing

else in

our

lives.

'^

Solzhenitsyn had been released from solitary confinement and allowed into a

communal

cell as a

mark of favour

the investigator's initial assault, but

it

for his co-operative attitude

during

transpired that Captain Ezepov was

far from finished with him. The charge against him under Article 58, paragraph 10 (anti-Soviet agitation), was, it seems, taken as proved, but there remained the question of paragraph 1 1 (forming an anti-Soviet organization), and Ezepov now turned to the various letters that had passed between Sol-

SOLZHENITSYN

[i66]

zhenitsvn and Nikolai, and between the two of them and XataHa, Lvdia and '

Kirill.

Phrases that had seemed quite innocent the jocular tone they had adopted

nance

war

when

now

when dashed

off at the front in

acquired an entirely different reso-

issuing from Ezepov's mouth: "conference of the big two," "the

after the

war," the need for

a

"new organization,"

a "party of five plus

two." Ezepov had also gone through the papers found in Solzhenitsyn's suitcase, read copies of the war stories that he had sent to Lydia (that had failed to appeal to

Znamya because of their unorthodow), and come

across the postage-

stamp-size portraits that Solzhenitsyn had cut from the Prussian miller's book

about the First World War. Putting aside the Hindenburgs and Ludendorffs, Ezepov had retained only two: "Tell me, Solzhenitsyn, why were you car-

and Trotsky in your suitcase?" ow n guilt was not enough, it seemed, to satisfy the suspicions aroused in Ezepov by the picture Ezepov had conjured up of a hardened counter-revolutionary with secret dreams of sabotage. His friends must have been deeply involved as w ell. If this w as what they wrote about in their letters, w hat did they talk about when they met? And what happened at the meetings referred to in the letters? He insisted that in giving his answers, Solzhenitsyn should go back as far as 1940, to the time when the friends were still at the university in Rostov. • Solzhenitsyn's first thought had been to say that he had forgotten everything, but this threw the investigator into a rage and brought forth dark threats of shooting or physical ill-treatment. Besides, Ezepov had the letters in front of him, so that the pretext of forgetfulness didn't seem very convincing. Solzhenitsyn pretended that he and his friends had discussed nothing but the weather and sport and similar trivialities, but again the letters contradicted him: they were too serious, too circumstantial, and too specific to allow him to wriggle off the hook in that way. He would have to think ot something else. But w hat? His dilemma in approaching this problem was threefold. In the first place, he had no idea whether the others had been arrested, and if they had, he had no idea what they might be saying. In Nikolai's case he was fairly sure that arrest must have taken place, but the fates of Kirill, Lydia, and Natalia were completely unknown. Ezepov deliberately kept him in suspense, implying that the others were bound to be arrested and that confrontations would be arranged, at w hich his evidence would be compared with theirs for its veracity. Secondly, of the three others, Kirill was most at risk: his father had fled the country illegally, and he had generally been the most rying portraits of Nicholas

II

Solzhenitsyn's confession of his

in his student criticisms of Soviet society, although in his letters he had been more reticent than either Solzhenitsyn or Nikolai. Thirdly, and

outspoken

most importantly, Solzhenitsyn was worried about

his front-line diaries

and

crammed with him by men in his

notebooks. These, too, were in Ezepov's possession and were stories

unit or

and descriptions of life at the by others he had happened

front,

to

many

meet

told to

in the course of his military

Two Are an Organization The

service.*

describing

it

were

stories

about military

totally frank

with unvarnished directness and

and response that were

far

["^7] at the

front,

illustrating complexities of

motive

life

removed from the stereotypes of

Stalinist

propa-

ganda. With his zeal for completeness and accuracy, Solzhenitsvn had not

only noted them told

him these

down

in

voluminous

stories, the dates

incidents had occurred.

He

detail

when they

had

named the people who him and the dates when the

but had

told

also noted

down

stories of collectivization

and famine in the villages, of shortages and miserable living conditions in the towns, each time with the name of his informant. These diaries lav like a time bomb ticking aw ay among the documents and papers h ing on Ezepov's desk, and he could hear

it

mind

ticking in his

They were a permanent reminder among his innocent army comrades

as

he duelled with

gator.

of the havoc that could

ated

if

their stories

his investi-

be cre-

still

w ere discovered and

read.

From Ezepov's

lines of questioning,

Solzhenitsvn deduced that the

investigator had not yet read the diaries. This was parth- because thev w eren't

necessary to the main case against little

him

—they looked

to the charge of starting an organization,

of Ezepov's questions

—and partly the

part: the diaries consisted of four

pencil in the tiny,

order to cram a

which was now the main object on Ezepov's

result of sheer laziness

notebooks of small format, written in faded

cramped handwriting

maximum

they w ould add

as if

had developed

that Solzhenitsvn

of information onto every page.

them demanded the

pled and moisture stained, and to read

in

They were crumsort of effort

and

concentration that Ezepov was loth to apply, particularly in such an easy case. Congenitally idle, it

he was quite content to do

botched job so long

a

as

served the immediate purpose, and he was corrupted by his knowledge of

the protection that the security service enjoved.

He

it

was

whom

Solzheni-

tsyn later described in The Gulag Archipelago as ringing his wife to apologize that he

would not be returning home

for the night, since he

had an important would

interrogation to carry out, and then ringing his mistress to say he

come

in

an hour or so

—

all

this in the

presence of the despised prisoner.

Solzhenitsvn could not be sure that Ezepov wouldn't take

it

into his

head to investigate the diaries, and he still did not know what the others might be saying. For that was the whole point of the investigation to keep him in suspense, to remind him of his solitariness, to deceive him, and to

—

unwary admissions. Finding pure negation no use, he resolved must be to draw all suspicion and attention aw ay from his war diaries and to interpret the letters and conversations that interested the investigator in such a way as to make them seem innocent and harmless, the inconsequential babbling of callow students. It seemed a good idea at the time. that you ought to come as close "The idea flashes through your mind of course rounding off the as you can to the truth of what was actually said sharp edges and skipping the dangerous parts. After all, people say that when trap

him

into

that his task

.

.

.

—

*One that

of these was the storv that Leonid \'lasov had told him in the became the nucleus of "Incident at Krechetovka Station."

train to

Rostov

in

1944 and

SOLZHENITSYN

[i68]

you

you should always stay

lie

as close to the truth as possible." Later,

tem-

pered bv long years in prison and camps and hardened by his encounters

KGB,

with the

"You wanted

Solzhenitsvn realized that this had not been such

to

outsmart your investigator! You have

mind. You are an

intellectual.

And you

a

good

a quick,

idea:

ingenious

outsmarted yourself!"^ Solzhenitsyn

likened his psychological reactions to those of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment:

Out

of

mv

"I

—

—

and who was there to teach us otherwise? I repeated bv Dostovevskv. Porfirv Petrovich savs to Raskolnikov,

inexperience

the mistake described

don't need to bother mvself

\\

an explanation for

ith finding

all this.

You're an

whole thing to me neativ yourself, so that it all adds up." And he was quite right. I was amazed when I read it afterwards in jail. All thev need to say to you if you're an intellectual is, "All right, explain to me yourself where vou got your views from." And vou start to think, "How can I explain it all so that he believes me and leaves me alone?" And off vou go w ith your explanations."^ intellectual

Keeping

and

vou'll explain the

he could to their actual conversations, Solzhenitsyn attempted to portray everything in the letters as if he and his friends had been completely loyal. For instance, on one occasion they had complained as close as

about the introduction of tuition fees for higher education.* Yes, said Solzhenitsyn,

it

was true they had been discontented, but only because this away from egalitarianism and Communist ideals. Were

represented a step

they also dissatisfied with the reduction in piece-work rates? Yes, they were,

because they

measure was unfair

felt this

Well, yes, but they had criticized

more

successful than hitherto.

On

it

to the workers. Collectivization?

only because they wanted

it

to

be even

other occasions he attributed their discon-

and insufficient understanding of the was of little avail, because the investigator was

tent to youthful inexperience, egotism,

intentions of the Party.

But

it

interested only in evidence that confirmed the group's guilt, not in testimony that contradicted

guage:

".

.

.

it,

and he wrote everything dow n

tried to create

an

illegal

organization.

he conducted systematic anti-Soviet agitation effecting a forcible

change

.

in his

.

.

.

.

.

own

special lan-

F'rom 1940 onwards

worked out plans for and state, and mali-

in the policy of the Party

ciously slandered Stalin."'^ It

was

a typical "beginner's" mistake, as Solzhenitsyn ruefully

in later years, yet rill,

admitted

he succeeded in his immediate aims. Neither Natalia, Ki-

nor Lvdia was arrested or even called

in for questioning,

and no case

month of his investigation "all my notebooks were cast into the hellish maw of the Lubvanka furnace, where they burst into flames the red pyre of one more novel that had perished in Russia and flew out of the highest chimney in black butterwas

started against them.

As

—

*

This was

a quite

common theme who

former student called Anechka of fees and v\Tites that

many

for the diaries, in the fourth

—

in those days.

Panin, in his memoirs,

v\as jailed for allegedly

tells

the story of a

complaining about the introduction

innocent people w ent to the camps on similar charges.

Two Are of soot."" In this \\a\

flies

,

he

an Organization

[I'jyJ

later said, 'i lost ni\ novel

about the war."'-

Soon afterwards he was requested to sign a document conhrmintj that the notebooks had been burnt as being of no relevance to the case against him. For once he did so gladlv.

The

war were both drawing to a close. Shortlv was removed from the exposed corner of the window in their high-ceilinged cell. That evening it v\'as uncannilv quiet in the Lubyanka. 1 he investigators all seemed to be out and no one was taken for interrogation. The only sign of normalitv was the sound of a prisoner being taken from his cell and into a nearby box, where for some reason he was noisily beaten up bv the warders. On 2 Mav the prisoners heard a thirty-gun salute being fired. That signalled the capture of Berlin, if only they had known it. On 9 May there was another thirt\ -gun salute followed later by a fortv-gun salute. That meant the capture of Prague and the end of the war in Europe. Again the investigators were all awa\, joining in the wild celebrations that engulfed the Moscow streets that da v. A Western before

investigation and the

Mav

1

1945, the black-out shade

eyewitness has described the scene as follows.

Mav

Moscow. The spontaneous jox of the two or w ho thronged the Red Square that evening and the Moscow River embankments, and Gorki Street, all the wav up to the Beiorussian was of a quality and a depth I had never vet seen in Moscow before. Station They danced and sang in the streets; everv soldier and officer was hugged and kissed; outside the US Embassv the crowds shouted "Hurrav for Rooseveltl" (even though he had died a month before); thev were so happv thev did not even have to get drunk, and under the tolerant gaze of the militia, voung men even urinated against the walls of the Moskva Hotel, flooding the wide pavement. Nothing like this had ever happened in Moscow before. For once, Moscow had thrown all reserve and restraint to the winds. The fireworks displav that evening was the most spectacular I have ever seen.'' 9 was an unforgettable dav in

—

three million people

—

Solzhenitsyn saw the fireworks through the bars fought his

way

three battle-filled years before his arrest,

Orel

when

his cell.

who had been on

Stalin decreed the first victory salute,

the thought of final victory. soldiers

(jf

He who

had

across the Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland, and East Prussia for

filled

active service in

w

ith

emotion

at

The Uubvanka, however, though packed with

and ex-prisoners of w

silent as the grave. All

was

ar

w ho had been

arrested at the front,

was

as

they could see were snatches of the firew orks and the

beams in the sky, just visible above the muzzle that covered their window The only other sign that something unusual had occurred was the simultaneous delivery of lunch and supper: two ladles of gruel instead of one, searchlight .

and

a ladle of soup,

idays. In

all

something that generally occurred only on national hol-

other respects the day w as absolutely normal; the security police

and the Lubyanka continued to function faultlesslw The prisoners were allowed their

turn to urinate

A

week

or

two

at

—

as usual

later,

—precisely 6 p.m.

Solzhenitsyn was

summoned

to see Lieutenant-

SOLZHENITSYN

[lyo]

Colonel Kotov, the prosecutor in charge of supervising his case. According

was supposed to review the investigation as it it was being conducted correctly. He was also required to ask the prisoner what complaints he had about the investigation and whether his legal rights had in any way been infringed. But the prosecutors held their appointments onlv on the approval of the security police, whose performance they were supposed to be assessing, and therefore the interview was a pure formalitv. to the law, the prosecutor

proceeded and to check that

Kotov,

calm, well-fed, impersonal blond man, neither malevolent nor benevo-

a

lent but entirely neutral, sat for the first time.

watched. asked

if

I

.

.

He

behind

his

desk and yawningly examined

my dossier

spent fifteen minutes acquainting himself with

it

while

I

Finally he raised his indifferent eyes to look at the wall and lazily

.

had anvthing

I

wanted

to

add

to

mv

testimony.'"*

Solzhenitsyn sensed the hopelessness of trying to influence this

man

in

any way. Nonetheless, he raised the question of his charge under paragraph 11 of Article 58, in addition to paragraph 10, that is, of setting up an antiSoviet group or organization. After all, only two of them were involved, and this hardly constituted an organization. Kotov listened to him in silence, leafed through the dossier again, weighing up the consequences of causing a hitch in the procedure at this late stage of the case, then sighed, spread his hands, and said, "What is there to say? One person is a person, but two persons are

.

Not long

.

.

people."'^

after this,

for a final session

Solzhenitsyn was

summoned

to the

same room again

with his investigator. According to Article 206 of the crim-

inal-procedure code, the prisoner was required to read through his earlier depositions, and any other testimony in the case, and sign to the effect that

he had read and agreed them. Captain Ezepov pushed the thick the desk to Solzhenitsyn and invited

on the printed

him

to

open

it.

Almost

at

file

across

once Solzheni-

According to the had never known about, including the right to complain about the conduct of the interrogation and to have his complaints recorded and included with the documents in his case. His gorge rose and his indignation boiled when he saw copies of his letters accompanied by wildly slanted interpretations of their meaning, together with the depositions in Ezepov's handwriting, with their distorting language and tendentious implications. Finally, there was the tsyn's eyes

fell

text inside the front cover.

criminal-procedure code, he had had

all

sorts of rights that he

preposterous accusation of forming an organization.

Solzhenitsyn said hesitantly that he would refuse to sign because the investigation

had been conducted improperly. Ezepov was unmoved and over again. He uttered some where collaborators were held But that didn't seem to be the right

suggested that in that case thev should begin

all

threat about sending Solzhenitsyn to the place

and made

as if to reach for the

solution either.

file.

TwoAreanOrganization Begin

all

over again?

Ahead of me was about that place

annoy him,

It

seemed

to

me

easier to die than to begin

the promise of at least

\\

some

sort of

here they kept the collaborators?

for that

would

[171]

affect the tone in

life.

.

.

.

Anyway,

all

And I

over again. then,

what

had better not

which he phrased the

final indict-

ment.

And

so

I

signed.

I

signed

didn't then understand.

.\11

it

complete with paragraph

thev said was that

it

1

1,

whose

wouldn't add to

significance

mv

I

sentence.'*^

With the investigation completed, Solzhenitsxn was at last removed from Lubyanka and transferred to another Moscow prison, Butvrki, to aw ait the pleasure of the "organs." It was a wrench to leave his friends in Cell 53. As he had discovered from his first arrival in a communal cell, no one could be closer or dearer to you than a cell-mate, a comrade in the extremes of

the

adversity like yourself. x\t the back of his mind, behind

all

the misery, the

scorching humiliation, the indignation, and the resentment that occupied most

of his waking thoughts, there had also been kindled a tiny glow of pride that at least

he had been here in the Soviet Union's most celebrated and most

own eves and walked with his and bo.xes and corridors and investigation rooms of the world-famous Lubyanka, which had swallowed and consigned to oblivion so many outstanding Soviet citizens. It was true that he was as vet only dimly aware of the significance of what he had seen, but the memories w ould stay with him forever. When he arrived in Butvrki, at the end of June 1945, Solzhenitsvn regarded himself as a veteran, yet his education was only just beginning. His cell was three times as large as the one he had left in the Lubyanka, w ith important political prison, had seen with his

own

feet the cells

more than three times

as

many

inmates in

it.

The

vast majority turned out

w ar, Russian peasants and w orkers w ho had been carried off to Germany to work as labourers there, or members of the \ lasov forces. The stories that Yuri Y had told him about life in the German camps or about fighting alongside the Germans were now repeated in a hundred variations. Solzhenitsvn was stunned. He recalled the tattered X'lasov leaflets to be returned prisoners of

he had read

at Orel and in Belorussia, the collaborator he had seen being horsewhippped through the streets near Bobruisk, the last-ditch stand of the Vlasovites in East Prussia, and the distaste and disdain he had felt for these contemptible traitors. He also remembered the returning columns of prisoners of war, obediently lined up and submissive to their Smersh guards, and the six w ith the letters SU on their backs w ho had marched with him for two days and a night to Brodnitz immediately after his arrest. Was it because he himself had been taken for a Vlasovite by the jeering cart-drivers that he now felt such an urge to identify w ith them and to understand them? Once again he heard how the Soviet prisoners of w ar had been renounced bv their rulers and how some of them had allowed themselves to be recruited into a so-called Russian army fighting on the side of the Germans, while others had stuck it out as prisoners of war only to find themselves equally rejected upon

— SOLZHENITSYN

[172]

home. The truth was that StaHn made almost no distinction between them. Anyone who had had real experience of Western Europe, \\ hether inside a camp or out of it, was regarded as a potential danger and a security risk, for Stalin feared the comparisons that would be made with home. He also feared that free-thinking officers and men who had mixed with the British, American, and French forces might bring home the Decembrist virus that the victorious Russians had returned with from Paris a hundred years beforehand, after the Napoleonic Wars. If a poor, benighted soldier had spent his entire time in a death camp and by a miracle survived, that, too, was nourishment for Stalin's paranoia: if you survived the death camps, there must be something fishy about you; you must have collaborated. All this and more, Solzhenitsvn heard from the men around him in Butyrki, and he now came to realize the justice of Yuri Y's strictures, so much so that when an elderly Russian worker whom he otherwise admired began to curse the "traitors" in their cell, it was he, together with two other young lads, who defended them from the old man's ire. Another world that opened up to Solzhenitsyn's fascinated gaze in Butyrki was that of the Russian emigres, thousands of whom had been overrun by Soviet troops in Western Europe or had been unjustifiably handed over to Stalin by the Allies on the pretext that they were traitors. Now they were in their return

Soviet

It

awaiting sentence.

jails

was

dream, the resurrection of buried history. The weighty tomes

just like a

on the Civil War had long since been completed and their covers shut tight. The causes for which people fought in it had been decided. The chronology of its events had been set down in textbooks. The leaders of the White movement were,

it

appeared, no longer our contemporaries on earth, but mere ghosts of

past that had melted away.

The

a

Russian emigres had been more cruelly dispersed

And, in our Soviet imagination, if they were still dragsomewhere, it was as pianists in stinking little restaurants, as lackeys, laundresses, beggars, morphine and cocaine addicts, and as virtual

than the tribes of ging out their

Israel.

lives

corpses.''

Yet now Solzhenitsyn went to a medical examination with Captain Borshch and Colonel Mariushkin, both veterans of that same tsarist army in which his father had fought in the First World War. Later these men had fought on the side of the Whites and left with the retreating Volunteer Army; since then they had lived out their lives peacefully in Western Europe, only to be cruelly and unjustly returned. Among the other prisoners in his cell was a Colonel Yasevich, also a veteran of the Civil War, and a young emigre, Igor Tronko, who was Solzhenitsyn's peer but had left Russia with his parents while

still

a

baby.

From

these

men

Solzhenitsyn obtained a picture of the

Russian emigration totally different from that prevailing in the Soviet Union a picture

of decent, sober, self-disciplined, and for the most part impover-

ished people, clinging with dignity to their language, culture, and customs

and imbued with

a

spontaneous love of the motherland that was

all

the

more

— Two Are

AN Organization

['73]

touching in the face of the hatred with w hich the motherland regarded them. Nor were they all dyed-in-the wool reactionaries, especially not the young people

like Igor,

who had

reacted against the conservative view

s

of their

parents and were eager to give the Soviet government the benefit of everv

doubt.

Through

the

window

s

of Butyrki Prison they could

still

hear the sound

of the post-war celebrations. Brass bands seemed to be parading the streets

almost every other day, and on 22 June 1945, the fourth anniversarv of the beginning of the war, there was an enormous victorv parade in Red Square.

The

prisoners heard about

feelings.

They

it

on the grape-vine, and heard

w

it

shared the pride and relief of their countrvmen

at

ith

mixed

the victorv

over the Germans, but they were prevented from show ing

it and were excluded from the celebrations. Yet they desperatelv wanted to join in, to belong and to be released from their misery, almost at anv price. Some of this longing took the form of a craving to knov\ their sentences. If only it were all over and they at least had the certainty of know ing what lay in store for them. They dreamed of being sent to the wide-open spaces of southern Siberia, where the climate was mild and thev could lose themselves in nature. "In the end, that spring, even the most stubborn of us wanted forgiveness and were ready to yield a great deal in return for just a little more life." Or, more poignantly, they dreamed of an amnesty.

sounded a summons to mercv. It \\ as the spring that marked enormous war! We saw that millions of us prisoners w ere flowing in and knew that millions more would greet us in the camps. It just couldn't be that so many people were to be held in prison after the greatest victory in the world. Thev were onlv holding us now to teach us a lesson, so we wouldn't forget. Of course, there was bound to be a great amnesty, and we

The

spring

itself

the ending of such an

would soon be

The

prison was

predicted.

One

released.'^

rife

day,

with rumours of amnesty. Even the date was repeatedly

upon entering

the lavender vestibule of the Butyrki baths,

Solzhenitsyn and his cell-mates read, high on the wall and written in soap, a

announcing what they had all been waiting for: "Hurray! Amnesty on July 17!" In fact the anonymous scribe was ten days off the amnesty came early, on 7 July 1945. But not as expected. It was to apply only to criminal prisoners, to deserters, and to just a small number of political prisoners to that tiny percentage of those charged under Article 58 w ho had been sentenced to less than three vears. But nobody had seen the text yet, graffito

—

—

and so the prison remained thick with rumours. Three weeks later, on 27 July 1945, Solzhenitsyn and a prisoner named Valentin, from Kiev, were called out of their cell after breakfast. Their cellmates noisily ribbed them and assured them they were being amnestied. They were even asked to take out messages and to send in food parcels. Of course it was all nonsense. "Perhaps you honestly didn't believe it, perhaps you wouldn't allow vourself to believe it, you tried to brush it aside w ith

SOLZHENITSYN

[174]

jokes, but flaming pincers hotter

your

heart:

What

Thev were led

than anything else on earth suddenly seized

were true?"

if it

taken with about twenty other

through Butyrki's interior courtyard with

men

its

to the bath-house, then

emerald garden.

The

green

my

eyes

seen the green of the leaves with such intensity as they did that spring!

And

of the trees seemed unbearably bright to Solzhenitsyn. "Never had

my

never in

life

had

seen anything closer to God's paradise than that

I

little

Butyrki garden, which took no more than thirty seconds to cross on the asphalt path."'*^

The

departures, and

left

known

col-

for prisoners' arrivals

and

prisoners were locked into a spacious box

loquiallv as "the station," since

it

was used mainly

By now they were on

without explanation.

tenterhooks,

but did not dare voice their hopes aloud. It turned out that none of them had done anvthing very serious and that they were all cases for the so-called Special Board of the NKVD. After three hours of suspense the door was suddenlv opened and the first prisoner summoned, a thirty-five-year-old bookkeeper. Within minutes he was back again, and the next one was called. What was the verdict? The bookkeeper looked crushed: five years. Then the next prisoner returned, a hysterical giggle on his lips: fifteen years. Eventually it was Solzhenitsyn's turn. He was led into an equally large box next door. It was the famous "frisking box," where all new prisoners were searched on arrival. It had a number of emptv rough-hewn tables in it and space for up to twentv prisoners to be searched at a time, but now the major sitting at a small only person there was a neat, black-haired table on the far side with a table lamp on it. There was no one else and no "board," just this one solitary officer. The major gestured to Solzhenitsyn to sit down, asked his name, then leafed through a pile of typed documents on one side of the table and pulled out a sheet about half the size of a normal

NKVD

piece of typing paper. In a bored voice he read out the bureaucratic formula

of Solzhenitsvn's sentence, then turned the paper over and write a statement on the back confirming that

it

at once began to had been read to the defen-

dant. Solzhenitsyn understood that he had been sentenced to eight years, but it

was

it

in.

flat and boring and all over so quickly that he could barely take had he been sentenced? When? By whom? Was there to be no hearing, no trial, no "due process"? It was a crucial turning-point in his life, vet no one seemed to be interested. He writes that he wanted to linger over it, to savour the gravity of the moment, and when the major pushed the sheet face down to him to sign, he said, "No, I have to read it for myself." "Do you reallv think I would deceive you?" retorted the major lazily, but noneall

so

How

theless invited

nal,

him

to

go ahead and read

it.

The

small piece of paper in Solzhenitsyn's hand

but

carbon copy.

a

that did not affect

waste words.

and place of

On

him the

birth)."

—

left

On

w asn't even the

origi-

July 1945, the very day of the amnesty the date of his official "trial." The document did not

It

was dated it

said,

7

"Heard:

the right

it

The

charges against

said, "Resolved:

—(name, date —(name)

To award

for

Two Are

an Organization

['75]

anti-Soviet agitation and attempting to found an anti-Soviet organization 8

camps." And at the bottom it said, "Copy Ihe blanks had been filled in with Solzhenitsyn's personal details, and that was all. It looked like an invoice or a chit for obtaining office supplies. Solzhenitsyn says that he looked at it and tried to summon up an air of solemnity. For form's sake he said, "But this is terrible. Eight years! What for?" But his words sounded unconvincing both he and the major could hear their falsity. Ihe major was now in a hurry. "Sign there," (eight) years in corrective labour verified. Secretary."

—

he said, pointing to the paper. Solzhenitsyn signed but case, allow

me

to write

The major ntxlded: "When hurried him out.-"

the time comes,

still

said, "In that

The sentence is unjust." you can." And the waiting warder

an appeal here and now.

lO

FIRST STEPS IN

THE ARCHIPELAGO THE his

TIME w OLLD never come for Solzhenitsvn to lodge an appeal against sentence bv the Special Board.

Xo

appeal was possible,

because the board figured neither in the Soviet criminal code nor

if

only

in the

con-

was as if, from the point of view of criminal procedure, it didn't all, and since it was not part of the \isible judicial s\stem and had no organs above or below it, there w as simplv no mechanism for appeal-

stitution. It

exist at judicial

ing against

its

In part

1

sentences.

of The Gulag Archipelago, for which Solzhenitsvn drew exten-

months in prison, he traces the concept of w av back to Catherine the Great and points out that there w as a regular tradition in Russia of condemning individuals to exile or imprisonment on the w him of the tsar or powerful officials. Like many tsarist injustices, these instances of extra-judicial repression were random and capricious, affecting numerous individuals in an arbitrarv w a\', but they siveh'

such

on

his

memories of

a special

board

his first

the

all

had not been erected into a svstem affecting millions. This occurred only with the "troikas'' of the GPU, established after the Rexolution expressly to bvpass the courts and carrv on the w ork of the revolutionary tribunals.

And

these in turn gave wa\" to the Special Board, which Stalin set up in 1934, immediatelv after the Kirov murder.* Ironicalh', its establishment coincided w ith the abolition of the old OGPU and the latter's replacement by the NKV'D, a move intended to signifv a liberalization of political conditions and the reform of the secret police. The OGPU had become so svnonymous w ith

December 1934 was murdered on w as responsible because he feared storv has never been told in the Soviet Union and Stalin's

* Sergei Kirov, first secretary of the Partv in Leningrad, \\

hile

w orking

in his office. It

Kirov's popularity, but the

is

generally believed that Stalin

full

involvement never admitted.

176

1

First Steps in the Archipelago

['7?]

and the unprecedented brutality of collectivization that it was to replace it w ith something else. A thorough reorganization of the Soviet judicial structure was also carried through, u ith the avowed and of providing, it aim of unifving the system of justice under the police terror

deemed prudent

NKVD

was

alleged, greater guarantees for the rights of the individual. In the midst

of this reforming zeal the setting

overlooked and seemed to

There were no fanfares

at

come

the time, and

for Soviet political practice,

vations that

up of the

made nonsense

it

of

Special Board

practically

little \\

as said

about

it.

But typically

turned out to be one of those Stalinist innoall

the pretty paper guarantees in the Soviet

criminal code and completelv contradicted

its

ostensible intentions.

the verv beginning the board's powers had been

From

w as

as a kind of administrative afterthought.

ill

The

defined.

main proviso was that the Special Board could try "socially dangerous persons" without recourse to the courts, w hich meant that, after the investigation had been completed, cases were invariably heard in absentia, the accused having no right either to appear in person or to be represented by a law yer. In other w ords, it was a purelv administrative procedure. Exactly who these socially dangerous persons were was left up to the secret police to decide, and this was the source of the abuses. In The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenits\'n lists the main categories of "crime" dealt with by the Special Board (they were known colloquially as "alphabet articles," to distinguish them from the numbered articles of the criminal code): ASA, AntiSoviet Agitation; CRA, Counter-revolutionary Activities; SE, Suspicion of Espionage; CLSE, Contacts Leading to Suspicion of Espionage; and so on, right down to SDE (Socially Dangerous Element) and even MF (Member of Family of an accused person). The punishments handed out by the board consisted mainly of terms in the labour camps and internal exile, and these ranged from periods of five to ten, twenty, and even tw enty-five years, with execution a possibility during the latter part of the w ar. As the wave of purges mounted throughout the thirties, the Special Board had increased in importance and expanded its work, until, under the pressure of numbers, it turned

—

into a simple rubber-stamping machine.

ations

and

its

The

sheer arbitrariness of

true character were revealed in 1965,

been abolished,

when

a

some time

its

after

operit

had

Soviet legal journal admitted that the Special Board

had usually dealt with the cases for which there w as insufficient evidence to secure a conviction even in a Soviet court.' Two other peculiarities of the Special Board should be mentioned. Whereas men and women who had been sentenced by the courts w ere generally (although not invariably) released at the conclusion of their sentences,

w ere usually re-sentenced by administrative decree to period of imprisonment, or else to internal exile under police sur-

Special Board victims a further

veillance.

Secondly, the Special Board operated

of internal affairs and to Stalin

was no

in

complete secrecy.

Its

was responsible only to the minister (w hich was an additional reason w hy there

membership w as never divulged, and

it

appeal).

When

he returned to the "station" after being told his punishment, Sol-

SOLZHENITSYN

[ijS]

a sense of suppressed hysteria was beginning to spread w ho already knew their fate. Not only could they not muster the solemnity that seemed appropriate to the moment but they were like chastised schoolboys returning one by one from the headmaster's study, only to break into giggles when the worst w as oyer and they were all together

zhenitsyn found that

among

prisoners

again. Prisoners departed

how the

and returned, departed and returned, and somewas trans-

entire absurdity of this mechanical bureaucratic routine

Only

lated into tension-releasing laughter.

the bookkeeper remained subdued,

The

next lightest sentence was Solmost of the others got ten years. Here and there some of the prisoners still talked of amnesty and said that Stalin was just trying to scare them. But the yoices were less confident than before, and in their heart of hearts most of the prisoners knew that their reckoning had come. The laughter w as simply a way of purging the emotions and preparing themselves yet he had the lightest sentence of

all.

zhenitsyn's, while

for the ordeals ahead.

Before the next step, they w ere it

was only

a

all

made

to take another bath, although

matter of hours since they had had one. Solzhenitsyn's compan-

ion \ alentin, cheerful and

neyer mind, we're

still

making the best of

young and

it,

tried to

we'll survive.

be reassuring: "Well,

The main

thing

is

not to

camp, we'll keep mum with everybody, so they don't slap another sentence on us. We'll work honestly and keep our mouths shut."- When they had all dried themselves and dressed, they were led to the Butyrki church. But their purpose was not to pray. The church had been converted to more practical uses. Its great height had been divided into three storeys, and each storey contained several cells. Solzhenitsyn w as pushed into the south-east cell, an enormous square room holding two hundred prisoners. There were bunks for less than half this number, and the rest slept on the tiled floor, either directly beneath the bunks or in the aisles, in a great, seething mass of arms, legs, kitbags, cases, sacks, and other receptacles. There were no books or chess sets in this cell, the muzzles on the w indows were makeshift, cobbled together out of unplaned boards, and the dented aluminum bowls and splintered wooden spoons w ere handed out before each meal and collected up again afterwards. All this was because the church cells were only temporary prisoners came here in transit, after being sentenced and before space could be found for them at their next port

make any more

mistakes.

When we

get to the

—

of

call.

The church

cells

had their

own

special atmosphere:

it

trembled from the

first

draughts of future transit prisons, from the distant breeze of the Arctic camps. In the church cells

you celebrated the

sentence had been pronounced and

how

And

rite

as

of adjustment

no

—

to the fact that

your

and to the fact that no matter be, your brain had to digest and

joke,

new era of vour life w as going to This was very hard to do. here there were no permanent cell-mates, such

cruel this

accept

it v\

it.

as vou had had in the and \\ho became like a family to you. Day and night, people and taken aw av singly and by tens, and as a result the prisoners

investigation cells

were brought

in

First Steps in the Archipelago

['79]

were kept constantly on the move along the floor and the bunks, and to lie next to any one neighbour for more than two nights.^

it

u as

rare

Solzhenitsyn was made extremely uncomfortable bv this constant movement and missed the camaraderie of his first five months of imprisonment. His only friends were two voung Moscow intellectuals. He had met one of

them, Boris Gammerov, \\

him on

ith

many

Butyrki before, and had had

in

and

politics

literature.

Gammerov's

discussions

father had been killed in the

Gammero\- himself had joined an anti-tank unit during World War while he \\ as still very young, had been \\ ounded in the lung and had been inyalided out of the army with TB. After that he had enrolled in the biology department of Moscow University, begun to write poetry, and joined a students' discussion circle, which is what got him into trouble and led to his arrest. The other man, Georgi Ingal, was from the same discussion group. Ingal was evidentl)' a gifted w riter, a pupil of the influential historical novelist and critic Yuri Tynyanov, and already a candidate member of the Writers' Union despite his comparative youth. He had almost finished a novel about Debussy. But Tynyanov, a former member of great purge of 1937.*

the Second

the controversial "Formalist" school of criticism, t had undergone considerable persecution in his time and at his funeral in 1943, Ingal had

grave-side speech in

w hich he

referred to

Tynyanov's tribulations

biguous terms. This had contributed to his ultimate dow

nfall, in

made a unam-

in

the spring

of 1945, and to his sentence of eight years.

At earlier meetings Gammerov had surprised Solzhenitsyn by vehemently expressing his belief in God and taking Solzhenitsyn to task for some disdainful remarks on the subject of religious belief. Solzhenitsyn had been startled that one so young, born in 1923, could be a Christian when he himborn and baptized a Christian when Christianity was

still

universal in

Russia, had long since lost his faith and declared his atheism.

Now Gam-

self,

merov and

Ingal assailed Solzhenitsyn together.

This conflict w

very hard for me.

as

view of the world that

any new opinion

until

is it

I

was extremely attached

incapable of admitting anv

new

at the

time to that

fact or of appraising

can find some readv-made label for

it,

whether

it is

the

"vacillating hypocrisy of the petty bourgeoisie" or the "militant nihilism of the declassified intelligentsia.""*

*The great purge is the name usually given to Stalin's mass murders and the mass terror inflicted on the Soviet population in the vears 1937-39. Its origins go back to 1934 (and even to the collectivization of 1929-30), but

1937. Robert Conquest's

it is

generally agreed to have reached

book The Great Terror

is

devoted to

its

height during and after

this subject, as

is,

in large part,

Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

tThe

Formalists were prominent in Russia from just before the First World

they were so

named because

concentrated on

its

work.

War

until the 1930s;

denied the importance of social content in literature and

formal and aesthetic qualities.

victimized after about 1930, their

the\'

when many

Thev were

lost their jobs

heavily criticized and extensively

and were prevented from publishing

a

SOLZHENITSYN

[i8o]

Thev

didn't attack

Marx

as such,

Lev Tolstoy. Tolstoy, they

idol,

of church and

but they did attack Solzhenitsyn's Hterary totally

wrong

in his rejection

he had been foolish to preach that every individual should

state,

combine mental and physical work stood history

had been

said,

when

claiming that

it

in equal

measure, and he had misunder-

could not be influenced and directed by

how could one account for Stalin? on Tolstoy was hard for Solzhenitsyn to accept, but bolstered by the ghastly example of Stalin, it was equally difficult to resist, and Solzhenitsyn was forced to reconsider his former ideas. There were other surprises too. They praised Pasternak to the skies, reciting his verse by heart. Solzhenitsyn had read only one volume of Pasternak's verse. My Sister, Life, and had disliked it, finding it "precious, arcane, and far removed from simple human concerns.'"' But when the two voung men recited Lieutenant Schmidt's strong individuals. If that were the case,

The

last

attack

at his trial (from Pasternak's long poem "Lieutenant new side of him and conceded his admiration.* What struck him most of all about these young men was

speech

he saw

Schmidt"),

a

their fierce

disdain for Stalin's regime and their cool, even proud, acceptance of their

seemed that emotionally they had completely cut themselves off and somehow found their presence here inevitable. For Solzhenitsyn such detachment was impossible. Try as he might, he felt bound

sentences.

from

It

Stalin's Russia

even responsible for it in certain ways. The best years of his youth had been dedicated to it. Society itself had recently thrust him away, had rejected and crushed him, and he was learning new aspects of its character every day, but still it wasn't enough. The umbilical cord still bound him not only to Mother Russia, which he had always adored, but also to Soviet Russia and the paternal Party, whose ultimate magnanimity and justto this society,

ness he

still

did not doubt.

was one source of enormous relief to him that on the conclusion of his investigation and his move to Butyrki he had been given the right to receive parcels. In the harsh conditions of Soviet jails, this right was invaluable regular supply of basic foodstuffs and a few items of warm clothing could make all the difference between near-death from starvation or hypothermia and an existence that was just tolerable. More important, it gave him an It

—

opportunity to inform his family of the bare facts of his survival and whereabouts.

Solzhenitsyn could only guess

at the

appearance must have caused. Natalia's

had not come

until

March

1945, a

consternation that his sudden dis-

first

inkling that something

whole month

after

her postcards was returned marked, "Addressee has that

mean? Natalia immediately wrote again and

was wrong

his arrest, when one of left unit." What could

sent separate letters to Pash-

kin and Sergeant Solomin. Lydia Ezherets also wrote to Pashkin and to tain

*My

Melnikov. Their Sister, Life,

first

Pasternak's third book

ot"

poetry, had appeared in 1922 and immediately con-

solidated his reputation as one of post-revolutionary Russia's best

Schmidt" was published

Cap-

thought was that Solzhenitsyn must have been

in 1927 in Pasternak's

book The Year 1905.

young

poets. "Lieutenant

First Stf.ps in thk Archipfi.ago killed in action,

but

Kirill,

now

a

[iHi]

captain in the medical corps and recently

posted to East Prussia himself, had disabused them ot that idea: "Our army is

not so delicately trained as to conceal from families the truth ab(nit the

fallen.

anything had happened to Sanva, the situation would have been

If

—

—

'wounded r^r killed on such and such a date.' "^ A month passed, during which Natalia did not know whether to hope or to mourn. Neither she, nor her mother and aunts, nor L\dia and the two Veronicas in Moscow could explain this total silence. In the second week of April, Solomin had replied to her letter w ith a guarded note not to Natalia written on the

letter:

but to Natalia's mother: Circumstances are

now

such that

w hv he

I

must write

to vou.

You

are interested, of

vou and w hat has happened to him. He has been recalled from our unit. Where and for what reason I cannot tell you now. All I know is that he is alive and well, but nothing more, and also that nothing bad will happen to him. Please do not worry and help course, in Sanya's fate, .

.

hasn't

\\

rittcn to

.

.

.

.

Natasha.'

This reassured them that Solzhenitsyn was not dead, but why had Solomin written to Natalia's mother, whom he had met onlv cmce, rather than to Natalia herself, whom he had escorted to the front in 1944 and w hom he knew much better? And why should Natalia's mother have to "help her? All this only deepened the mvsterv. Soon afterwards Antonina \'itkevich began to complain that she, too, was not receiving any letters from Nikolai, and Nikolai's letters to Natalia also ceased. "Why both of them?" asked Nikolai's grandmother one da\-, on "

learning of the

new s.

After another Ilya Solomin.

month of

His departure was sudden that's

why you

don't

.

.

a little

.

we

letters

make anv

more

explicit.

didn't have a chance to talk to one another,

shouldn't be surprised

Don't expect any

And

waiting, Natalia received a second letter from

This time he was

if

tell you anything. no position to write to you.

he wasn't able to

from him, because

inquiries either, at best

he's in it's

hopeless.

.

.

.

.

.

.*

Solomin was still unable to say anything directly for fear that the censors might be reading his letters, and since he had no idea of the reason for Solzhenitsyn's arrest, he, too, might be in danger. It took considerable courage to write to Natalia at

all.

Solzhenitsyn's superior officers didn't reply to her

letters.

Permission to receive parcels was granted to Solzhenitsyn in late June. being asked to give the name and address of the person to whom noti-

Upon

fication

most

should be sent, he decided that Natalia's aunt \'eronica would be the Moscow. Veronica received a printed card

practical, since she lived in

informing her, out of the blue, that "permission has been granted to you to deliver parcels to the Prisoner Solzhenitsyn, A.I." This

was the

first

news

SOLZHENITSYN

[i82]

months of the fact of Solzhenitsyn's arrest, and was Butyrki Prison. Veronica at once dispatched a telegram to Natalia in Rostov: "Sanya alive well details later." Two days later, on 27 June, she sent another telegram, asking Natalia to come to Moscow or to book a long-distance telephone call. Natalia booked the call and endured agonies during the several hours she was obliged to wait for a line. Finally, she heard Veronica's voice on the other end of the telephone: "I took him a parcel today." At last she knew for sure. After the first telegram she had hoped that perhaps he had been sent on some sort of secret assignment. But now she knew without a doubt: her husband had been arrested and was the family had received in six

the address on the card

in

jail

in

Moscow.*^

was not possible for Natalia to pack her bags and leave for iVIoscow instant. She still had her job in the Rostov University laboratory, and on the she was studving to take the entrance examinations for admission to a postgraduate degree course in chemistry. But the summer term was drav^ing to an end, and a stroke of luck came her way. Her post-graduate supervisor. Professor Trifonov, was moving to the University of Kazan to become chairman of the department there, and he offered her three choices: to go to Kazan with him, to move to the Polytechnical Institute in her home town of Novocherkassk, where she would have a suitable supervisor, or to take on the more It

difficult task

unknown

of gaining entrance to

Moscow

Universitv. For reasons then

and immebegan preparations to go to Moscow and be interviewed for admission. The head of the Department of Physical Chemistry in Moscow, Professor Frost, had taught one of Natalia's Rostov professors when he had studied there, and her chances seemed reasonably good. To be near her husband and, if possible, to visit him in jail was the immediate goal that beckoned her, but there were subsidiary reasons why the move to Moscow was attractive. Solzhenitsyn and Natalia were quite well known in university and Partv circles in Rostov. He had been an outstanding student and Komsomol member, and she had worked in two differto Professor Trifonov, Natalia took the third possibility

diately

ent universitv departments,

acquiring

many

friends

among

the faculty

members. During the war she had eagerly responded to friendly inquiries about his progress, had boasted of his battle experiences and medals, and had even read extracts from his letters to some of her friends and colleagues. Everyone knew of his disappearance, and throughout the spring and early summer she had been bombarded with sympathetic requests for news of him. But now the situation looked entirely different. The war was almost won, onlv Japan still held out against the allies, and it was clear that, contrary to the universal hopes and the half-made promises, an era of ideological rigour was on the way again. Prisoners of war were failing to return to Rostov from captivity, many front-line soldiers were also missing, not all of them and the press gave great prominence to official reprisals being inflicted collaborated with the German occupiers and to the need for vigilance in the reclaimed territories. Rostov itself had been occupied by in action,

on those

who had

First Steps in the Archipelago

[1H3]

Germans for a while, and Rostov's citizens knew w hat turmoil that had So Natalia realized that to be know n as the w ife of a political prisoner would almost certainK' put an end to her career in Rostow Not only the

created.

would she not be able to continue w ith her post-graduate studies but she would also be condemned t(j the life of a third-class citizen (fortunately, she was oblivious of the fact that she also ran the risk of arrest under the "MP" member of the family of a convicted man). There w as no reason to article jeopardize her entire career unnecessarilv. She informed her colleagues that

—

Solzhenitsyn had been reported missing in action, and after pa\ing three times the normal price for an air ticket, she flew to

Moscow

at the

end of

June. In three weeks Natalia visited Professor Frost in the chemistrv depart-

ment, was refused admission and was recommended to

tr\' Professor Kobozev, works, went to the Ministry of Higher Education to investigate the procedures for a transfer, applied to the assistant dean of

Kobozev, read

visited

his

the Chemistry Faculty, and finally, on 18 July, got Kobozev's permission to transfer

and be supervised bv him. She had won her

be coming to Moscow.

Meanw hile

from Aunt Veronica, w

ith

whom

of a parcel to Butyrki, and self.

she would

she was staying, about Veronica's delivery

made arrangements

This meant making inquiries

first battle;

she extracted w hat meagre news she could

at the

one her-

to deliver a second

information department of the

NKVD

on Kuznetsky Most, then going in person to the prison on Novoslobodskava Street and queuing up with the other w ives and mothers. She had become like those women whom the young Solzhenitsxn had passed and bareh* noticed fifteen years

ago outside the

OGPU

prison in Rostov.

Natalia also found time to go and see Lydia and compare notes about

Nikolai and Solzhenits\n and their correspondence. Lvdia had achieved her

ambition of marrying her childhood sweetheart, taken place in 1944, just before he again.

The two

left for

the front

Kirill

—and

—the wedding had Kirill

been the cause of Solzhenitsyn's and Nikolai's

Lydia

arrest.

also

her to the grim fortress of Butyrki, helped her prepare the parcels,

and

was now back

of them shared Natalia's grief and discussed what might have

tried to assuage her anxieties.

Then

it

was time

first

went w

ith

couple of

for Natalia to

dash back to Rosto\- to take her post-graduate examinations before the autumn

term began.

On

these depended success or failure in her plan to

Moscow. Before she

left,

Dear Mamochkal Nothing new. Maybe Yesterday

I

that's

w hat

I'll

sent off the second parcel. In addition to

return to Rostov

some

food,

I

to

my work

w

ith.

sent under-

wear, a towel, socks, and some handkerchiefs. Don't forget to register

canteen and hand in

move

she jotted a quick note to her mother.

me

at

the

card to the university."^

She paid a last visit to the information department on Kuznetsky Most, where they told her that Solzhenitsyn had been sentenced to eight years. Would she be able to write letters? Yes. Unlike vast numbers of political

SOLZHENITSYN

[184]

had the right

prisoners, he

each vear, but onlv

when

it

to write and receive a hmited number of letters had been resolved what labour camp to send him

to.

A

decision on this

as Natalia travelled

was now imminent, and

in the first

days of August,

south to take her examinations, Solzhenitsyn was trans-

ferred to the Krasnaya Presnva transit prison in another part of

Moscow.

Krasnaya Presnva is another jail that has been much described in the annals of the Gulag.* A vast overcrowded warren of a building whose cells seem to have been permanentlv bursting at the seams, Krasnava Presnva was at the verv hub of of the labour-camp system, a hive that not only served as the launching point for almost ers but

being

was

all

new

also the central terminus

moved

recruits to the Gulag's

through which they

army of labourall

passed

when

from one part of the archipelago to another. Just as the Soviet

empire's railway lines

lead to

all

of the Gulag Archipelago

all

Moscow,

so

do the communication channels few ex-

lead to Krasnaya Presnya; and there are

labour-camp prisoners w ho have not been there

Krasnava Presnya differed from Butvrki

in

at

one time or another.

fundamental ways and con-

tributed greatlv to Solzhenitsyn's education. In Butvrki

all

the inmates had

been political prisoners charged with disloyalty to the Soviet regime. They were neither thieves, nor embezzlers, nor thugs, nor murderers, but had been jailed for their thoughts, their words, or on the simple presumption of unreliabilitv. Thev were comparatively fresh from the outside world and had

come and

trailing habits of courtesv, consideration,

a sense of responsibilitv.

Upon

decency, respect for others,

finding themselves together in

communal

cells, the politicals had quickly struck up friendships and a sense of solidarwarders, ity. Similarlv, the "enemy" had been easy to spot and identify stool-pigeons stood officials. Within the cells, onlv the investigators, police But were easily recognized. other side, and they, too, out as belonging to the of priswere all kinds was entirelv different. Here there Krasnava Presnva oners, from timid, newlv convicted, political "rabbits," still wet behind the ears, to hardened criminals with fifteen or twenty years of jail behind them,

—

for

whom Gulag

politicals

mav

was

their life

have been

and

their element.

When

a majority, especially in the

first

taken together, the years after the war,

but thev were demoralized, shocked, naive, and inexperienced in the ways of the criminal world, and above

all

they were new arrivals and in transit,

whereas the criminals were permanent, occupied

all

the positions of petty

was to stumble transit prison steps in the your very first them very quickly. "From across of the warders or of officers not in the hands notice that here you are you with stars on their shoulders, who at least minimally observe some kind of "'' written law. Here vou are in the hands of the prison 'trusties.' The trusties made no secret of their corruption and their greed for the

power

*

in the prison,

Gulag stands

and

virtuallv ran the place. Solzhenitsyn

for Glavnoye upravkniye lagerei

appears to have been the

first

to use

it

as

{Mzm

Administration of the Camps). Solzhenitsyn

an independent noun.

— First Steps in the Archipelago prisoners'

and

meagre possessions, which was

his fellou- politicals,

dispiriting

[185]

enough

to Solzhenitsyn

but other unpleasant surprises were to follow. Hav-

which thev had been transported from Butvrki, they were ordered to squat on the ground in the prison \ ard, beneath the cell windows. The windows were barred with muzzles, which prevented them from seeing in, but from inside thev heard hoarse, friendlv voices shouting to them: "Hey, fellows! 1 here's a rule here that w hen thev ing been unloaded from the prison van in

away everything

search you, they take

got any, toss

it

in

loose, like tea

through the window and

These friendly voices

and tobacco. So

we'll give

it

back to vou

if

vou've

later."'^

ere in such stark contrast to the curses and shouting

\v

new arrivals enthusiasticallv gave up their tobacco pouches and packets of sugar, only to discover, much later, that thev had been fooled. Their neu "friends" denied all knowledge of tobacco or sugar, and of the invitations to leave it with them.

of the armed guards that the

A

sign of the special status that awaited politicals

prisons and

camps was the

was derogatory because

it

from now on

in the

insulting designation of "Mister Fascist." "Mister"

harked back to a pre-revolutionary form of address,

"Comrade" was applied not onlv to anvone who accepted or, more importanth', was accepted by the Soviet system. It meant you were a "Soviet man," one of us, one of ours, whereas "mister" indicated that vou were sociallv alien either a throwback to the pre-revolutionarv bourgeoisie, or a class enemv (or both). "Comrade" w as not allowed to be used as a form of address to political prisoners (nor to any other prisoners, for that matter), nor were the politicals allowed to use this hallowed word in addressing others. Thev were invariably known mockingly as "mister" or more formally as "citizen." The very utterance of either word bv a securitv officer was equivalent to saving, "You are under arrest." From the very moment that Solzhenitsyn's epaulettes had been torn off, he had been no longer "comrade" but "mister" or "citizen." Similarly, prisoners were obliged to address members of the NK\'D and the pre-dating the revolutionarv "comrade."

Partv

members but

—

to

—

prison administration as "citizen" but never as "comrade." "Fascist"

was

a reference to the large

and returned prisoners of war

numbers of

who were now

filling

alleged collaborators

the

jails.

No

one could

be presumed to be more sociallv alien or hostile to the Soviet system than

a

—

was judged particularlv appropriate and humiliating to call all political prisoners bv this name. The criminal prisoners were actually encouraged to employ this terminologv and were repeatedly assured by the prison authorities that thev were the superior and more favoured class. They were still "comrades" in all but name and were therefore to be given positions of privilege and trust. This not only coincided w ith Soviet theories of criminalitv, according to which political nonconformity was a graver crime Fascist,

and therefore

it

—

than social deviancv, but convenientlv enabled the authorities to additional

punishment on the

politicals

by placing them

inflict

an

at the criminals'

mercy. Solzhenitsvn was onlv dimlv aware of these ramifications

when he

arrived

SOLZHENITSYN

[i86]

were immediately apparent not only in upon his assignment to a cell. He and Valentin were thrust into a cell that was smaller than the Butyrki church cells, yet had over a hundred prisoners in it. All the two-tiered bunks were full, but most of the asphalt floor beneath the bunks was free, and so were the aisles between the bunks. The normal procedure in cells of this kind was for the newcomers to start on the floor next to the stinking latrine tank, then work their way round the cell beneath the bunks before graduating to the lower tier and working their wav round again, until finally, if they were lucky, they got to the privileged top tier and reached the windows. The speed and manner in which thev moved depended on the numbers that were taken out and put in each dav, for the prisoners in a transit prison were constantly on the move. Solzhenitsvn and Valentin, in

Krasnaya Presnya, but

its

effects

the episode of the tobacco and the reception procedures but also

among their fellow prisioners at last, crawled under two bunks where the floor was free. The bunks were very low, and they had to inch in on their bellies. Luckily, their personal belongings had been handed to the prison store for safe-keeping until their destination was decided, and they had with them only knapsacks containing lard, sugar, and bread that they had received in parcels from their families. These, however, were more than enough to cause their undoing. thankful for having arrived

We

were going

to

lie

there quietly and talk quietly.

darkness, with a wordless rustling,

from

sides

all

and on

all

some

Not

chance! In the semi-

a

"juveniles" started to creep

Thev were

fours, like big rats.

still

up on us

bovs, some no more

than twelve years old, but the criminal code accepted them too.

They had

alreadv

been "processed" under the thieves' law and were continuing their apprenticeship with the thieves here.

from all

and

sides,

all

They had been unleashed on

six pairs of

us.

Thev

leapt

on us

hands wrenched from under us and stripped us of

And all this took place in total silence, to the sound of sinister And we were trapped we couldn't get up, we couldn't move. It took

our wealth.

sniffing.

—

no more than

a

minute

lay there feeling stupid.

to seize our bundles. Thev were gone. We We had given up our food without a fight. And we could

for

them

.

.

.

go on lying there now, but that was utterly impossible. Creeping out awkwardly, backsides first, we got up from under the bunks. '^

The young

criminals had been sent bv their gang-leader, a hardened

professional crook

cronies

on

who

occupied the top bunk next to the window, with his

either side of him. Solzhenitsyn's stolen victuals

bunk before him. Resenting

his humiliation, Solzhenitsyn

the thief sat looking triumphantly

down

at

now

lay

went over

to

on the where

him. His instinct, as he

later

described the scene in The Gulag Archipelago was to leap up and grab his food ,

back, or

punch the

urchins and punish

thief

on the nose, or

at least

grab one of those grinning

him

for the brazen robbery.

But he did not dare. The

gang-leader was both bigger and stronger than he and had plenty of friends

From

and deformed face it was obvious he would was unclear who made up the grey mass of prisoners lying motionless on the lower bunks. To save face and preserve

to help him.

show no mercy

his scarred

in a fight.

And

it

First Steps in the Archipelago

[187]

some sense of honour, Solzhenitsvn protested indignantlv that if the thieves were going to take their food, thev might at least give him and \ alentin a place on the bunks in exchange. It w as a lame response and an ignoble one, as Solzhenitsvn later realized ("for

time

remembered

I

acknow ledging

The

their

it"),'"^

for

it

many

years thereafter

I

blushed everv

pla\ed directK' into the thieves' hands,

power over him and acquiescing

in their lawless rule.

gang-leader readily agreed to Solzhenitsyn's request and ordered two

other prisoners to vacate the low er bunks bv the w indow and

move onto

the

floor.

Solzhenitsvn and \ alentin thus accelerated their progress round the

cell at

the expense of

t\\

o other politicals, and were bitterlv reproached for

it

later that night.

Krasnava Presn\a marked

a

new

stage in Solzhenitsvn's education. In

East Prussia he had thought there could be nothing worse than huddling four abreast in a freezing-cold concrete cellar, or marching for tw o davs through icy winds and rain. In the Lubvanka he had discovered solitarv confinement and the mental agonies of interrogation. In Butvrki he had had his hopes raised and dashed by false rumours of an amnestv, had heard himself finallv condemned to eight years in the camps, and had slept on the floor in a cell with two hundred people in it. At each stage he had been stunned bv the ferocity of the blows and the unexpected direction from w hich thev had come, and at each stage his numbed brain had told him that the w orst w as now over and that things w ere bound to get better. And at each stage he had been deceived. \\ as there a logic to it, or was there none? Perhaps it was Solzhenits\n's optimism that made the blows seem progressivelv w orse: his irrepressible hopes invariablv rose after each new trial, onlv to be cut down again b\- the follow ing one, and then to bob back again, until the next blowcame and telled them once more. And vet even here, in retrospect, he came to look upon the bright side of his vicissitudes. "Even for the greenhorn," he later wrote, "w horn the transit prison cracks open and shells, like a nut, it is

verv, very necessary.

camps. Such

It

gives

him some gradual preparation

for the labour

one leap would be more than the heart could bear. His consciousness would be incapable of orienting itself in that murk. It has to be done graduallv."'' Krasnava Presnva, however, was qualitativelv different from anvthing he had experienced before. In leaving Butvrki, he had cast off from the mainland and was alreadv on one of the subsidiarv islands of the archipelago. Here the distant draughts from the labour camps, w hich had barely ruffled the air of the Butvrki church cells, began to blow in a stiff breeze, one that a transition in

struck a distinct chill into the heart despite the It

was from Krasnava Presnva

his first letter to Natalia, a

Archipelago. It

summer

that Solzhenitsvn

procedure he w as

heat.

was

allow ed to

later to describe in

w rite

The Gulag

was

w ords home of a man who had been thoroughly ploughed by At home thev still remembered him as he had been before, but he would never be the same again and suddenlv this w ould flash out from one

the

first

unfamiliar

the investigation.

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[i88]

of the crooked lines. Crooked because, although letters were allowed from the

and there was a post-box in the yard, it was impossible to lav hands on paper or pencil, and vou had no means of sharpening it anyway. However, you could alwavs smooth out a tobacco wrapper or a sugar packet, and someone in the cell was bound to have a pencil, and so the lines would go down in an indecipherable scrawl, determining the family's future in harmony or discord.'^ transit prison

Solzhenitsvn had already exchanged brief ing the delivery of her

first

parcel.

Above

all

letters

with Veronica follow-

he was desperate for news of

Where were Kirill and Lydia, what did she know of Nikolai? "Reply to me, if only briefly, telling me the essential points. For ten days I've been impatiently w aiting for new s ... I pray from the bottom of my heart that Nikolai and Kirill avoided my fate." He had also received Natalia's first letter written to Krasnaya Presnya after being informed of the address from Moscow by Lydia. "What indescribable joy I derived from the sheets of paper written in your own hand," he wrote to Natalia; "in this way To this day I don't know I learned that you are alive, healthy and free. whether or not 'sir' has shared my fate."'' "Sir" was a transparent reference to Nikolai. Throughout his investigation Solzhenitsvn had half expected to be confronted with Nikolai, or at least with Nikolai's evidence, and perhaps with the others too, but it seemed that no confrontations had been necesthe case was not serious enough and Ezepov not thorough enough for sary that. As a result Solzhenitsvn still did not know what had happened to his friends. He was overjoyed to learn that his wife was well and unharmed; and from the absence of any hints to the contrary in her letter, he deduced that the same was true of Kirill and Lydia. Judging from the letters to Natalia that she later quoted in her book, he now regretted the last, irritable letters he had written her from East Prussia, and felt exaggeratedly repentant and ashamed. How could he have behaved that way towards her? She was his "beautiful wife," who from the depths of his present degradation seemed infinitely alluring and desirable. He mentioned to her the rumours of an amnesty, still persistent enough to be believed, and wrote with characteristic optimism that he was confident he wouldn't have to serve his full eight years. But if by chance he was proved wrong, he would feel bound to grant her "complete personal freedom" throughout the time he was away. In theory, at least, he shared the sentiments he later put into the mouth of the autobiographical Gleb Nerzhin in The First Circle: "My don't curse that you waited darling, for four years of war you waited for me in vain: now it will be ten more years. All my life I will remember our brief happiness like a shaft of sunlight. But vou should feel free from now on. There is no need for your life to be ruined as well. Marry again. "'^ The future looked dark and uncertain from his Krasnaya Presnya cell, but still he experienced an irrepressible urge to discuss it, just as he had liked to do in his letters from the front. Only now the picture had changed. Instead of a life in the thick of politics and literature in Moscow or Leningrad, he dreamed of getting away from it all. Those conversations in the Butyrki church the others:

.

.

.

—

—

.

.

.

First Steps in the Archipelago cell

about the joys of

a quiet

country

life

somew here

[189]

in Siberia reflected a

whole new approach to life. After his return, he w rote Natalia, thev would go to live in some "remote, but thriving, well-provisioned, and picturesque village," perhaps in Siberia, perhaps down in the Kuban where his grandfather had lived, or on the river I>)n or the Volga. The\' would both take up teaching again, and in the summer holidav s make tourist visits to Moscow, to Leningrad, to Rostov. Above all, it seemed, he now craved a peaceful life, close to nature, far from places where "accidents" might happen, like the one that had got him into his present mess. Si.\ months of prison had knocked the stuffing out of him. He wanted nothing more than to crawl into a quiet corner where he could lick his wounds and be left alone. ''^

II

TO THE NEW JERUSALEM THERE WAS UTTLE chancc of Solzhcnitsyn's realizing within the confines of Krasnaya Presnya.

life

his

dream of

a quiet

Not only was he being

Gulag but the occupants of the cell were down, subtracted from, added to, stirred and new combinations. There was the same assortment of interesting

subjected to the

first

rigours of the

constantly being turned upside

mixed

in

individuals as before, with fascinating lives and unbelievable stories to

know them he had bumped into

tell,

but there was no time to get to

properly or hear them out. In the

Butyrki church

a

cell

co-defendant of the "Emperor

Mikhail"; into a participant in the Austrian Schutzbund rebellion of 1934, most

of

whose members, he learned, had,

been sent to the labour camps Lieutenant Vladimirescu, spy.

It

was not

as

it

who

had been

after taking refuge in the Soviet

Union,

purge of 1937; and into a certain calmly announced that he was a Rumanian

in the great

in the investigation cells,

had time to get to know the other prisoners. In the

however, where you

you had

transit cells

to

snatch what information you could, before vou or vour companion were

moved

on.

On

the other hand,

openness with which everyone put

it

in The

Gulag Archipelago,

you gained from the desperate candour and As Solzhenitsyn "You were refreshed and aired by the incesin the transit prison spoke.

by the comings and goings of dozens and hundreds and you became more lucid, vou began to understand better what was happening to you, to your people and even to the world. One eccentric in the cell could open up worlds to you that you would never be able to read about in any sant traffic back

and

forth,

of people, bv the frankness of their stories and conversations

.

.

.

book."' In Krasnaya Presnya there

were dozens of such 190

eccentrics, but the pris-

-

ToTHE New who made

oner

who

neighbouring bunk. 1

spent only two nights there and by chance slept his prisoner

son of Gulag," as veterans were called,

He owed

parts of the archipelago. officially

was

a

labour-camp veteran, a "true served years and years in all

who had

had been

his status to the fact that he

designated a construction specialist and had a chit in his dossier

indicating that he status

[>9i1

the deepest impression on Solzhenitsyn was a "special-

assignment prisoner" in a

Jerusalem

was

a great

w as

to be used on no other form of work. 1 o obtain this achievement in the labour camps and meant that he was

exonerated from "general duties,"

a

term that Solzhenitsvn

still

did not

understand. But the price of that achievement was written on his face, whose

dominant expression was one of cruelty and determination. "I did not then realize," Solzhenitsvn later wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, "that this precise expression was a national characteristic of the denizens of the Gulag islands. Persons with soft, accommodating expressions quickly died out on the islands." The veteran, like a re\ered professor, was quickly surrounded bv a group of novices demanding to know what awaited them in the camps. And, like a professor, he read them a lecture.

From your first step in the camp, everyone will trv to deceive and rob vou. Trust The law there is the law of the jungle. There never w as no one but yourself. \nd above all, avoid "general duties" and never will be any justice in Gulag like the plague. Avoid them from the verv outset. If you land up on general duties on vour first day, vou're lost, lost forever! .

There

it

.

.

was again, "general duties." What did

it

mean? The professor

patiently explained that general duties referred to the basic labouring in each

camp, at w hich 80 to 90 percent of the prisoners slogged aw ay. The work was so gruelling, the norms set so high, and the food so meagre that the vast majority of prisoners on general duties sooner or later subsided into scavenging and died of exhaustion and malnutrition. That was the reason the professional thieves did their utmost not to leave Krasnava Presnva or, if they did, to get for themselves the trusties' jobs assisting the administration.

above

all

knew what awaited them

in the

camps. But could

general duties be squared with Valentin's

vow

to

this

They

concept of

"work honestly"

in the

camps? Solzhenitsyn was to try a form of general duties rather sooner than he had anticipated: the heat and stench in his Krasnava Presnva cell were unbearable. Its two w indows faced south, and the sheet-metal muzzles, preventing the entry of all except a trickle of fresh air, heated up in the August sun and roasted the people inside. Stripped to their underw ear, braving the unbiquitous bedbugs, the hundred-odd prisoners sweltered and writhed in helpless immobility, praying to be called out and sent on to their next assignment. For this reason, when the call came for volunteers to go down to the Moscow River and unload timber, Solzhenitsvn was among them, grateful for the chance to spend the day in the fresh air. The w ork consisted of shift-

SOLZHENITSYN

[192]

ing balks of timber from one spot to another on one of the wharves, and

Solzhenitsvn was appalled to discover that none of them had the strength

left

do the work verv quicklv. Nevertheless, thev earned an extra three and a half ounces of bread per day and barely noticed the watch-towers with armed guards and the high fence that surrounded the wharf. Evidently a proper camp was in formation here, and the Krasnava Presnva prisoners were just a temporary expedient. It was while they u ere being marched back from the wharf that Veronica Turkina caught a glimpse of Solzhenitsvn in one of the columns, the first sight that anv of the familv had had of him since his arrest. She wrote at once to Natalia, disguising her message by feminizing Solzhenitsyn's name and striking an exaggeratedlv cheerful note to dispel Natalia's gloom. "Saw Shurochka* just once. She was returning \\ ith friends from her job of unloading timber on the Moscow River. She looks marvellous. She is suntanned, energetic, cheerful, smiling from ear to ear, teeth sparkling! I'm verv glad she's in good spirits.'" Solzhenitsyn was later to use this incident in The First Circle, attributing the chance encounter to Gleb Nerzhin's wife, Nadia, instead of her aunt, and describing his own appearance as "sallow and emaciated," to

of the other skinny prisoners in the column.^ Meanwhile, Natalia had received Solzhenitsyn's

like that

crammed pages

Presnva, four tightlv

letter

from Krasnaya

written in hard pencil in the minuscule

handwriting that Solzhenitsvn had perfected for his notes

at

the front, and

She had completed her summer chemistry examinations in Rostov and was preparing to go to Moscow in the hope of seeing him. But getting there was no easy matter, for first she had to show good

folded into a tiny triangle.

reason

why

she needed to travel, so that she could get a permit to leave her

place of residence, and then she had to obtain a ticket,

which meant joining

endless queues or offering a bribe.

While she was making these preparations she received another letter from Veronica, dated 24 August. Her aunt wrote that the last time she had tried to deliver a parcel to Solzhenitsvn she had been informed by the Krasnaya Presnya office that he v\'as no longer there. They refused at first to inform her of where he had been moved, and it was only several days later that thev It's

had consented to reveal

the absolute truth that

ling, hov\

many

his destination.

you were born under

Everv Sundav vou

will

be going

spot set in wonderful countrvside. land."

There vou

a

lucky

star!

Natasha,

will

It

used to be called the "Russian Switzer-

—

—

place for the fledgeling convicts to take their

der.

dar-

be able to see him.'

Novy lerusalim "New Jerusalem," a pregnant name for a labour camp and set in the "Russian Switzerland." What more *The

my

me yesterday. You can rest easy. from Moscow to Novy lerusalim. It's a holiday

envious eyes were fixed on

usual diminutive of Alexandra

—

in this case a

first

faltering steps

corrective

promising

on an

island

device for not referring directly to Alexan-

'1

THE Nf.w Jerusalfm

()

I

'93

I

of the archipelago? Solzhenitsyn and sixty other politicals were transported there on 14

August 1945,

floor so as to

found the

in the

back of two open

be invisible to inquisitive onlookers.

streets

and houses decked with War had

over Japan. Ihe Second World

Within

"The

a short

time they arrived

flags

—

at last

it

lorries,

To

squatting on the

their surprise, they

was the day of final victory

come

to an end.

at their destination in

New Jerusalem.

Ihe Fascists have arrived!" was the cr\ that greeted them as they climbed down from the backs of the lorries and stretched their stiff limbs. 1 he district of Zvenigorod, where the camp was situated, was only thirty miles west ot Moscow, and the ride had taken no more than an hour, but thanks to the long-windedness of the Krasnaya Presnya disFascists have arrived!

charge procedures, the endless formalities and the inefficiency of the transit was nearly sunset by the time they arrived, rhev were once surrounded by inquisitive prisoners and asked the usual questions about where they were from, whether they were "Fascists" (political pris-

port arrangements,

at

oners) or criminals, and so on, before being

left

alone to go through the

seemingly interminable admission procedures.

At

first

glance the

camp

struck

them

as attractive

and even cosy.

The

freshness and greenness of the surrounding landscape dazzled their eyes,

accustomed for so many months to the drabness of a city prison. Ihrough the loosely interwoven strands of barbed wire, they could see the gentle hills of Zvenigorod, dotted with unkempt cottages and tumbledown hamlets; the spraw ling informality of the Russian countryside seemed to extend right through the wire to the ramshackle barns and sheds that housed the camp canteen, bath-house, stores, latrines, and other services. Fven the white, two-

storey brickworks, with its tall chimney, which was the centre-piece of the camp, the stone barracks for the men, and the wooden barrack, with an attic perched on the top, for the women, were momentarily perceived by them as endearingly familiar and normal. They were led to the living compound, an area about two hundred yards square and fenced off from the work compound by barbed wire, with a guardhouse between the two. It was late. They still had to queue up to hand in their belongings to the stores. Solzhenitsyn waited obediently, handed in his suitcase, and remained w ith only what he stood up in. Then they were

taken to the stone barracks to see their

new

quarters,

w here

the impression

of cosiness was quickly dissipated.

The cavernous barrack rooms were totally devoid of furniture, row upon row of some curious sleeping structures known in camp as "wagonettes." Fach wagonette consisted of two vertical steel posts ing about six feet apart on shaky legs, with two crossbars sticking for

either side like a double

T, one

at

knee height and the other

at

except jargon stand-

out to

about the

w hole thing form four narrow bunks, two above and

height of a man's shoulders. Across these bars and holding the

together were bare boards fixed to two below. There was no bedding of any kind, not even a straw mattress (let alone a pillow). Each prisoner was obliged to lie directly on the bare boards

SOLZHENITSYN

[194] in

—

He dared not remove his boots or morning they w ould be gone; and in any case

whatever clothes he was wearing.

—

anvthing else there

for the next

was nowhere

out, the barrack

to put them. In the mornings,

room was

left as

when the prisoners filed Not a rag, not even a

clean as a whistle.

fluff, was left to show that any humans had been there. But the feature of the wagonettes that was to upset Solzhenitsvn the most, and make his life on them a misery, was their chronic instability. Every time a prisoner climbed onto one of the four bunks, or climbed down again, or turned over, the whole structure wobbled and trembled, so that the other three occupants would be shaken out of their sleep. Solzhenitsvn detested them, for they left him with no control over the most precious hours in a prisoner's dav and deprived him of his last vestige of privacy.^ Not surprisinglv, he slept badly that first night. The boards were excruciatinglv narrow and uncomfortable, he could not get used to the itchy feeling of sleeping in his clothes and boots, and he was painfullv conscious of the other three bodies tossing and turning on their joint wagonette. His mind was also full of apprehension. He recalled the insistent words of the specialassignment veteran: whatever you do, keep off general duties! Yet how was it to be done? Barely an hour had gone by before one member of their transport entered and announced that he had been put in charge of maintenance work in the compound. Another had been given permission to open a barber's shop for the free workers at the brickworks. A third had run into an old friend who had fixed him up in the planning section. All good jobs, but there was a limited number of them available. What should he do? To whom should he turn? Did it require bribes, or was there some other wav? What was for

piece of

the best?

The

next morning he was

ringing of

a bell

woken

at a

quarter past four bv the loud

and the shouts of the guards.

up. Stiff and shivering,

still

drunk with

Time

sleep, not

for the first shift to get

wishing to wash and not

needing to dress, Solzhenitsvn stumbled blindlv to the canteen. "Evervone

was pushing and shoving and knew exactlv what he wanted. Some were racing to get their bread, others to collect their gruel. And you staggered about like a lunatic, unable to make out under the dim lights and in the steam from the gruel where to go for the one or the other."'' At length he obtained his pound and a quarter of soggy bread and dipped his spoon into his bowl, onlv to discover

a meatless, saltless, fatless, evil-smelling nettle

soup that made

stomach heave and his head swim. Lifting his eves to the wall opposite, saw through the gloom a big red slogan so beloved of Soviet administrahe his

tion:

"Whoever does not work does not

eat!"

After breakfast the newcomers were lined up, counted, and marched to

work compound, escorted by armed guards and trained Alsatians baying at the leash. It was 6 a.m. and just beginning to get light. To keep them busv, thev w ere ordered to move a pile of rubbish from one spot to another by wheel- and hand-barrow The work was obviously meaningthe

and straining

.

less,

and Solzhenitsyn took every opportunity to stop and chat with Boris

TO Gammerov and Georgi

T H F.

Ingal.

N EW

J E

RUSALKM

1

To take their minds off their

•

9

5

I

work, the\ talked

—

about their favourite subject hterature. Ingal described I \nyano\'s funeral to Solzhenitsvn and informed him that he regarded himself as Tynyanov's pupil in the v\Titing of historical novels. This led to an interesting clash of

opinion, which Solzhenitsvn later described in Ihe Gulag Archipelago.

—

We

argued about historical novels ought people to write them? After all, a with things the author never saw. Burdened bv remoteness

historical novel deals

and the ripeness of his own era, the author can trv to convince himself as much as he likes that he has thoroughly comprehended, but nonetheless he is never able to enter into

it

properly, which means, surely, that a historical novel

is

an inven-

tion?*

That question mark presumably indicates the gap through which Solzhenitsvn squeezed when he came to start on his own series of historical novels. He would later argue that he lived close enough in time, and knew enough eyewitnesses, to make August 1914 and its successors different in kind from the usual run of historical novels, and in this there is some truth. On the other hand, the break between tsarist and Soviet Russia was so radical and so complete that he could never recapture that pre-revolutionarv w orld with the same authoritv as he has the Soviet one, a circumstance that later led to

some

fierce

polemics concerning the authenticitv of August 1914.

One bv one

the

new

arrivals

v\

ere called in to be given their

permanent

assignments. Ingal had already met someone with influence and been given

Gammerov,

true to his disdain for the authorities and any way, proudlv accepted general duties. Soon it was Solzhenitsvn's turn. He had already thought about how to make an impression and keep off the dreaded general duties, and had carefully put on his full officer's uniform (minus the epaulettes): tunic buttoned up to the neck; broad officer's belt; riding breeches; and patent-leather riding boots. When he entered the director's office, according to Solzhenitsvn's account of the meeting, his clothes had the desired effect.

bookkeeper.

a job as a

refusal to treat

with them

in

"Officer?" guessed the director.

"Yes,

sir!"

"Anv

experience with men?"

"Yes."

"What unit did you command?" "An artillerv battalion." (I lied on impulse,

a batterv seemed too small me, half-trusting and half-doubting. "But can vou manage here? h's hard here." "I think I'll manage," I said. He frowned and thought for a moment "All right. You can be shift foreman in the clav-pit.'"'

He

.

looked

.

.

.

Solzhenitsyn was triumphant. outset.

to me.)

at

Another former

officer,

He

.

.

had avoided general duties

named Akimov, was

at

the very

also appointed shift

SOLZHENITSYN

[196]

foreman, and the two of them strolled off together.

They

agreed that the

had seemed undulv hesitant in giving them the job and could not fathom why. After all, there were only twenty men in each shift and both had commanded larger numbers than that in the army. Work in the camp was carried out round the clock, in three shifts. The morning shift began at six and ended at two, the afternoon shift ran from two to ten, and the night shift from ten to six. Solzhenitsyn was assigned the morning shift, and during the first day or so seemed to be getting into the swing of it. But after a day or two he was confronted, shortly before his shift was due to end, with a new brigade of workers, a punishment brigade, consisting entirely of professional crooks who had just been released from the camp lock-up after threatening to cut the camp commandant's throat. They had been brought to the clay-pit because it was the heaviest and most difficult work, but instead of picking up their shovels and bending their backs, they simplv sprawled on the ground and commenced sunbathing. Solzhenitsyn went over to them and curtly ordered them to start work. He was met with laughter and a volley of obscenities. He would have liked to stand his ground, but his experiences in Krasnaya Presnya had already taught him that it was dangerous to meddle with criminals. Enraged and confused, he beat a prudent retreat. Soon afterwards his shift came to an end, and he was replaced by Akimov; and later that day he learned of the sequel to his encounter. Akimov had started by approaching the thieves in exactly the same way as Solzhenitsyn. He had more to lose, however, with a whole shift ahead of him, and had therefore pressed the thieves much harder. When they still refused, he had reported them to the supervisor, an engineer by the name of Olga Matronina, but she had simply ordered Akimov to force the thieves to work. Akimov had returned to the clay-pit and tried again, and on this occasion the crooks had chased him into a distant corner, knocked him down, and smashed his kidnevs with a crowbar. Akimov was carried off to hospital director

and never seen again. Fortunatelv, there were no more confrontations between Solzhenitsyn and the thieves, but his life was little the better for that, for he immediately came into conflict with the brigade leader on his shift, a prisoner who was neither a political nor a professional criminal, but a man convicted of a civil a Muscovite named Barinov, a veteran of the clay-pit who work through and through and whose main aim in life was to shield his men from the worst rigours of the camp and fulfil the norms as efficiently and painlessly as possible. Later in his camp career Solzhenitsyn came to

offence.

knew

He was

the

admire such far-sighted brigade leaders and later still immortalized one of them in the person of Tiurin in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. But in New Jerusalem he still identified with authority and insisted on his right to give Barinov orders, just as he would have done in the army. Barinov did not try to resist Solzhenitsyn or to beat him up; he simply made a complete and utter fool of him.

The work

in the clay-pit consisted of digging the

from the ground with shovels,

filling

wagons with

it,

and

raw clay wagons

rolling the

TO to the wet-pressing plant,

THE

N EW

where the

clay

J E

RU

u as

S

ALEM

['971

pressed into bricks.

The w agons

had to be pushed on tracks that ran along the floor of shallow ravines w here the clay had already been dug out, then hauled out of the pit w ith the help of a mechanized winch and pushed again over flat ground to the plant. These wagons proved to be Barinov's weapon. Whenever something went wrong with one of them, Barinov w ould ostentatiouslv

call

Solzhenits\n over and

him for instructions on how to put it right. Or he would ask for guidance on where to lav the tracks next, or on how to repair the w inch if it broke down, all the time aware that he knew the answers perfectly well and Solask

zhenitsyn didn't. Alternatively, to

if

Solzhenitsyn gave orders for certain things

be done, Barinov would invariablv discover reasons

whv

the\' couldn't

and would demonstrate them to Solzhenitsyn in front of the other men. In the end Solzhenitsyn was forced to abandon the unequal struggle. His spirit was numbed; he felt utterlv bewildered and helpless. Krasnava Presnya, Butyrki even the Lubyanka had been nothing like this. It was still true, it seemed, that every new step he took was worse than the one before. How

—

long would

—

it

go on?

He was

soon grateful to

let

Barinov have his

way

in

everything, and every morning as he entered the clav-pit, dreading the dav

ahead, he would pray only to be

left

alone and not to be bothered bv Barinov.

Unfortunately for Solzhenitsyn, another pair of eves was watching him

—

Olga Matronina. Matronina, although technicallv a political member, had been shot during the thirties, and she had got eight years as a member of the familv), was an even more fiercely loyal Communist than Solzhenitsyn, and absolutelv dedicated to the system. Her consuming goal in life was to maximize brick production just as in anv normal enterprise, regardless of the fact that the work-force consisted of half-starved convicts working in abominable conditions with out-of-date equipment (or, in some cases, with none at all). As she had recentlv written in a petition to Kalinin, the president of the Soviet Union, "mv long sentence has not broken my will in the struggle on behalf of Soviet power and Soviet as well

that of

prisoner (her husband, a Partv

"

industrv.

Matronina was chief of the wet-pressing plant, to which the clav-pit was announced that the number of wagon-loads per shift was to be doubled just like that. Solzhenitsvn regarded himself as essentially on her side but on this occasion made no attempt to comply. He simplv did not see how his starving and exhausted men could possibly double attached, and one day she

—

a

production

norm

that

was alreadv bevond

their strength,

and he did not

understand that the task of a foreman was precisely to make them double

That

it

on the side of the camp authorities, and of his better rations, which he now received from a different hatch in the canteen. And that was the promise that his Soviet officer's uniform had seemed to make to the director and Matronina when he had pleaded for the job. Confronted bv his failure, Matronina was implacable and roasted him in front of Barinov and the men to Barinov's vast satisfaction. A dav or two later, Solzhenitsyn seized the opportunity to go to Matronina at all costs.

v\as the price of his privileged position

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[198]

and humbly beg to be taken on as a ledger clerk in the plant, but she roasted him again. If she needed a ledger-clerk, she said, she had plenty of girls available for the job. What were needed were "production commanders," and she sent him back to the clay-pit. The following day Solzhenitsyn was informed that the post of foreman had been abolished. Barinov was to be placed in charge of the morning shift, and Solzhenitsyn was to be put on general duties, under Barinov, digging clay. "Give him a crow bar and don't take your eyes off him. See he loads six wagons a shift. Make him sweat! '^ was Matronina's parting shot to Barinov. Solzhenitsyn's rise and fall had been uncommonly swift, in the best tradition of the labour camps. Either you adapted quickly and were saved, or you failed to adapt and were subjected to all the rigours that the labour-

camp regime had

to offer, which could quickly end in your demise if vou were unlucky. But besides the physical privations, there was the mental

anguish.

One

of the things that stands out in Solzhenitsyn's descriptions of

New Jerusalem

in

The Gulag Archipelago

is

the vivid recollection of his white-

hot indignation and outrage over the sheer bovine stupidity of the

arrangements. For instance,

members

camp

of the three shifts at the brickworks

were mixed together in the barrack rooms. This meant that there was continual noise and movement. No sooner had the morning shift had supper and returned to their rooms for the night than the members of the night shift began to get up from their bunks and prepare to go outside. Soon after they left, the afternoon shift would return and crowd into the rooms, boisterous and talkative now that work was over. Finally, well after midnight, it would fall quiet at last, but at four-fifteen it was time to get up again, and it was the morning shift's turn to disturb the others. Worse still, at each changeover the wagonettes would be set creaking and shaking, and the bright electric light was kept on all the time. The day was also organized in such a way that the prisoners were kept constantly at the beck and call of their overseers, yet at the same time forced to stand around unoccupied for long periods at a stretch. In addition to performing the cumbersome rituals of washing and eating, thev had to queue twice a day at the stores, once to hand in their belongings in the morning and once to get them out again in the early evening. There was also the daily roll-call.

Everyone in the compound had to form up in ranks while an illiterate guard with plywood board in his hand went round, continually licking his pencil, corrugating his forehead with mental strain and whispering to himself. He counted the ranks several times over, then went round every building to check, leaving the prisoners standing there. Sometimes he made a mistake in his sums or got mixed up over how many were in the lock-up. And this senseless waste of time went on, if you were lucky, for an hour and sometimes for an hour and a half." a

What

is

interesting here

burned so deeply

is

the sense of outrage and frustration that

in Solzhenitsyn

still

twenty years afterwards, when he was

— TO

THE

writing The Gulag Archipelago.

It

NE

V\'

w as

J ER

USALEM

['99]

partly the irritation of an intellectual

confronted by the mindless procedures of any cumbersome control

s\

stem

—

anvone who has done military service will recognize his frustration but the level of intolerance of it was highly personal to him. As he v\ rites in The is not very highly developed in the Russian labour-camp prisoners; but to anvone who possessed it (Solzhenitsyn was one of the very, verv few) these endless delays were agonizing. Ingal and Gammerov got round them bv standing on parade with closed eyes and composing verse or prose, or letters home, in their

Gulag Archipelago, a sense of time people

—and was

heads.

And

totally alien to

in general

they coped better with the pressures of

although they were younger and had

less front-line

camp

life,

experience than Solzhe-

whose phxsical work was easv, insisted on underlining freedom and independence bv refusing to sleep during the first half of each night and sitting up on his bunk w riting. Boris Gammerov, whose independence had been expressed in his willing acceptance of general duties, was too exhausted to emulate him but still led an active mental life, debating with the other two and composing verse. But Solzhenitsyn was too confused and depressed to keep up w ith them. He did write to Natalia asking her to send him paper, pencils, pens, ink, and some English textbooks, since he had resolved to revise and improve his English as an antidote to camp depression, but he found the obscenities of the morning parade and the din of the barrack room too intrusive to contemplate any creative w ork, and the effort of composition w as totally beyond him. His will-power had been sapped by his ambivalence about the camp authorities, his instinctive urge still to "belong" and be accepted as "one of them." He was bewildered and disoriented. When he wrote to Natalia, he complained of "spiritual fatigue" and a head clogged with a "viscous jumble of dullness." He had no clear idea of what was for the best or w hat he should trv to do next. His vacillation became even more marked after he was summoned one day for an interview with a voung NK\'D lieutenant. In fact, the lieutenant nitsyn. Georgi Ingal, his creative

did not interview

him but simply

invited Solzhenitsyn to write his autobiog-

raphy.

After the investigation depositions, in which after the humiliation of the prison vans

and

I

had only spat

all

transit cells, after the

over myself,

armed guards

and prison warders, after the thieves and trusties had refused to see in me a former captain of our glorious Red Armv, here I sat behind a desk, not being pressed by anvone at all, beneath the benign gaze of this friendly lieutenant, and wrote at just the right length and in thick ink on excellent smooth paper, such as

you did not get in the camps, that I had been a captain, that I had commanded a batterv, and that I had been awarded such and such medals. And thanks to the very fact of writing, it seemed to me that I was getting back my own personality,

mv

mv epistemological subjective "I"! mv autobiographv, was completely

"I." (Yes,

man,

is

to rise

.

.

.)

And

the lieutenant, read-

"So you're a Soviet was right, why not? How agreeable it was from the dust and ashes and become a Soviet man again it was one half

ing through

that right?" Yes, of course

of freedom!''

satisfied.

it

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[2oo]

That dream of freedom and he was still hoping

burned bright in Solzhenitsyn's imaginaan amnesty. The 7 July amnesty had been only slowly put into operation, and it was not until his arrival in New Jerusalem that he discovered its terms and saw how it was working. Releases tion,

from the

New Jerusalem

still

for

had begun only with the

new work-force was needed

arrival of the "Fascists," for

to take the place of the old. Solzhenitsyn

it was onlv professional thieves and civil offenders who from the July amnesty he himself witnessed dozens of them being released from New Jerusalem and returning to Moscow. Nevertheless, it did not seem possible that the amnesty would or could stop there. Rumour said that now that the war was well and truly finished with the victory over Japan, Stalin would "take account of the victory" and declare a second amnesty expresslv for political prisoners. It was even said that the amnesty had been prepared and lay on Stalin's desk ready for his signature but that he was away on holiday (Solzhenitsyn later incorporated this rumour into his play The Tenderfoot and the Tart). "The basic hope," wrote Solzhenitsyn to Natalia, "is for an amnesty for those convicted under Article 58. I still think that this

then discovered that

were

—

to benefit

will

happen. "''

the

camp

One

result of this farcically partial

amnesty was the appearance

of giant slogans: "For this broad amnesty

all

over

us thank our dear

let

Party and government by doubling productivity." Another was a shortage of

manpower with which

to achieve this doubling. Solzhenitsyn

was switched

for a time from the clay-pit to Matronina's pressing plant. There he was able to observe

Matronina queening

who worked

it

over the several dozen

eight-hour shifts (without a break)

at

women

conveyor

prisoners

belts carrying

the newly pressed clay bricks. Solzhenitsyn's job was to manhandle

loaded

v\'ith

1

wagons

20 wet bricks stacked on shelves from one end of the conveyor

where thev were loaded by two girls, along rails to the drying chamThe wagons were top-heavy and the wooden kiln floors were rotting and full of holes. Solzhenitsyn frequently stumbled and fell while trying to line up the wagons and drop the shelves onto racks in the chambers. "There was probably supposed to be some kind of ventilation in the chambers, but it was no longer working, and while I struggled with my mistakes in positioning the shelves (I used to get them crooked, they got stuck, wouldn't settle on the racks, and wet bricks would rain down on my head), I gulped in carbon fumes which burned my windpipe."'"* He was almost relieved when ordered back to the clav-pit again, where he teamed up with Boris Gammerov. They had been transferred because the amnesty was reducing the ranks of the digging brigades once more. The shift norm for each worker was six wagons of clay (eight cubic yards) filled and pushed by hand to the winch sixteen cubic yards for two people. But the most they could manage was six and a half yards between them: less than half the norm. And that was in dry weather. Boris still had shrapnel in his lung, and his TB was getting worse. Solzhenitsyn's arms felt as if they were dropping off. "The work-loads of an unskilled labourer are beyond my belt,

bers.

—

NEU

rO THE

J

F.

RUSA

I.

E

M

[

2

O

I

]

Strength," he wrote to NataHa. "I curse m\' physical underdevelopment."''

A few dav'S later it began to rain, .\utumn was setting in, and the rain went on and on, neither turning into a dow npour nor completely stopping. "In New Jerusalem for some reason they did not even issue us w ith padded jackets, and there in the red clay-pit, beneath that monotonous drizzle, we wallowed and caked our army greatcoats, which b\ the end of the third day had already absorbed a pail of w ater each. Nor did the camp issue any footwe were rotting our last front-line boots in the wet clav."'^ Solzhenitsyn resolved to get rid of his tunic and cavalr\' trousers for a while and wear, and

packed them away

in his suitcase in the store,

applying to the quartermaster

—

some patched and faded camp rags in their place oblivious, for the moment, of the symbolic importance of this change. But it still didn't help. He and Gammerov tried to keep up their spirits by talking about Chekhov and Vladimir Solovyov* (whom Solzhenitsvn had not then read) and by telling jokes, but the norm became even more unattainable in the squelching mud. They were put on punishment rations: three ladles of nettle broth and one of thin gruel a day, and less than a pound of bread. And still the rain for

fell.

The

had become drenched, and we were well and trulv stuck

clay-pit

much

in

it.

No

you picked up on vour shovel and no matter how much vou banged it on the side of the w agon, the clav w ould not drop off. Each time we had to reach over and push the clay off the shovel into the car. And then we realized that we had merely been doing extra work. We put aside our shovels and began simplv to scoop up the squelching clav from beneath our feet and toss matter how

it

clay

into the wagon.'

Just before tw o o'clock and the end of the

shift,

Matronina appeared on

the edge of the clav-pit and could be seen gesturing to the brigade leader as

she walked around and pointed out certain spots: she was giving orders for

norms had been fulfilled. The "Our hands had grow n numb from the cold claw and

the prisoners to be kept in the pit until their

afternoon dragged on.

by

this

futile

time

we

couldn't even throw anything into the wagon.

occupation, climbed up to the grass, sat

down

We

left this

there, bent our heads,

our coats up over the backs of our necks. From the two reddish stones in a field. "'^ Soon everyone had left the pit, and the w agons stood abandoned, some of them turned on their sides. Gammerov and Solzhenitsvn picked up their shovels and dragged their way over to the foot of Matronina's pressing plant, where they huddled in the dust beneath a brick vault. Not far aw ay some other prisoners were digging into a heap of coal, picking out some greyish black lumps and eating

and pulled the side

*A

we

looked

collars of like

religious philosopher

the union of

all

and poet of the

Christian churches and

latter halt

belief in the importance of mystical revelation. intellectuals

opposed to the Soviet

of the nineteenth centurv

who combined

political

He

system.

liberal political

has recently

views

who propounded \\

ith a

profound

become popular with Russian

SOLZHENITSYN

[202]

them. Solzhenitsyn asked what they were. He was told it was "sea-clay." It had no nutritional value, but it didn't do any harm either. It simply made

men

a good meal. were kept at the clay-pit, but no one fulfilled Right up Matronina cursed and ordered that they be kept out all night. But his norm. work lights in the compound and it was too big a risk. Someno were there one might escape. The men were rounded up and herded back to the living compound by armed guards and baying dogs. They gulped down their two one for lunch and one for supper to the dim light ladles of nettle soup from two paraffin lamps flickering in the canteen, then lay down as they were, soaking wet and muddy, on their polished wooden boards. For three nights now thev had slept in sopping-wet clothing. There were no facilities for drying anything, and it was cold from the draughts. Solzhenitsyn felt at a lower ebb than he could ever remember: exhausted, rain-sodden, cold, drained of all hope. And tomorrow would be the same, and every day after that: Six wagons of red clay, three scoops of black gruel. "We had felt that we were growing weaker in prison, but here it went much quicker. There was already a sort of ringing in our heads. We were on the brink of that pleasant lassitude when it would be easier to yield than to fight

the

feel full, as if

they had eaten

to nightfall they

—

—

back."'^

He realized,

understood that the archipelago was more brutal than he had ever more merciless even than the special-assignment prisoner had pre-

He had made his bid to escape general duties and had failed. He still had nearly eight years to serve, yet he alreadv felt he had one foot in the grave, and the future seemed an utter blank to him. He had completed exactly three weeks of his sentence. dicted.

12

LIFE

AxMONG

THE TRUSTIES REPRIEVE FROM THE clay-pits ofNcw Jerusalem came suddenly and unexcollect their

was

to

on 9 September 1945, when all the prisoners were told to belongings from the store and to stand by for transfer: the camp

pectedlv,

k^

be emptied to make

wav

for a contingent of

German

prisoners of war.

To his great relief, Solzhenitsyn was not sent on one of the distant convoys to the Urals, Central Asia, or Siberia that he had heard so much about, but was transferred back to Moscow to Kaluga Gate, on the south side of the

—

city.

As

usual, the parading

and

roll-calls at either

end seemed interminable,

was night before the Kaluga Gate contingent arrived at their destination. Shocked and frightened by his experiences on general duties at New Jerusalem, and with the words of the Krasnava Presnya veteran still ringing in his ears, Solzhenitsyn was determined to avoid a repetition of his recent ordeal at all costs. The commander of Kaluga Gate, Lieutenant Xevezhin, was on hand at the guardhouse to inspect and question new arrivals. When he came to Solzhenitsyn, who had specially dressed up in his cavalry and again

it

breeches and officer's topcoat for the occasion, Solzhenitsyn announced boldly

was a "norm setter." It was a word he had first come across in the camp, and he had no idea what it meant, but he hoped it had something to do with mathematics. Nevezhin asked Solzhenitsyn a few questions; he appears to have been impressed by his willingness to please, because the following day Solzhenitsvn's name was missing from the list of those sent out to do general duties, and two days later he found himself appointed to the unimathat he

ginably exalted post of production superintendent, a ated for him, that placed him in charge of

203

all

new

job specially cre-

the brigade leaders, the

work

SOLZHENITSYN

[204]

and most of the trusties in the camp. This was higher than he had dared dream, and it carried with it the privilege of sleeping in one of two special rooms set aside for the production trusties. This room, on the third floor, was for six people onlv. It had single bunks instead of shuddering wagonettes, bedside tables shared between two allocator,

people, and a hotplate on

room was

ing the day the

day

at the stores,

and

life

which

in from outside. Durwas no necessity to queue twice a was more comfortable than anything he had known

to

cook food brought

locked, so there

since his arrest.

The company tor,

room was

in the

also rather special:

two

generals, a doc-

—and only one peasant, though even he had once been

an engineer

man

chair-

of a village Soviet. Solzhenitsyn looked and listened and learned

—

his

education was continuing.

Of the

t\\

much

o generals,

Alexander Beliavev,

\\

the grander was the air-force major-general

ho w orked

as assistant to the

was senior in camp, he

norm

setter.

tion superintendent, Solzhenitsyn

to Beliayev in the

archy, but, like everybody else

still

called

him "general"

deferred to Beliayev and

(an almost unique instance of a man's informally retain-

ing his former rank in the labour camps) and treated

ated respect that

seemed

to

on

insisted

it.

for the first time in the construction office for a light, thinking that the latter

But not

at all.

him with the exagger-

be universally accorded him

was because Beliayev himself

sive lighter

As produccamp hier-

\\

at

Kaluga Gate. This

Solzhenitsyn encountered him

when he approached

the general

ould offer him his cigarette to light from.

Beliayev removed his cigarette from his mouth, took an expen-

from

his pocket,

and placed

it

ostentatiously on the desk for Sol-

zhenitsyn to use. Subsequently, Solzhenitsyn noticed that this was typical of Beliavev's whole attitude:

"He

stood out from the grey-black, lice-ridden

and handsome figure but also by his Even when lined up with all the others and \\ ithout moving a muscle, he was able to demonstrate that he had no connection \\ hatever with the teeming camp rabble around him and that until his dying day he would never understand how he had come to find prisoners' ranks not only

bv

his height

particular air of not being present.

himself

among them."'

Beliayev never entered the

camp

canteen, boasting that he didn't

know

where the door was. Every day at 1 p.m., when the prisoners returned to their living quarters from the work compound, Beliayev's wife would punctually present herself at the camp guardhouse and hand over a freshly cooked

vacuum container. This he ate in room every day, together with a portion of his bread ration, which was brought to him by the peasant, Prokhorov. Even then he could not resist hot meal for him, stored in an expensive

their

cutting a thin slice off

mouth touched nothing

all

six sides

of his piece of bread to ensure that his

had been handled by the other prisoners. The other general, Pavel Zinoviev, had been a general in the MVD, which meant he had once been responsible for administering the prisons and camps. Indeed he still wore the same bluish grey uniform of his captors, with that

Life

among the Irusties

1205]

and detested by, the other prisoners, and it clear that in the past he had personally w prisoners orking on construction supervised projects. He, too, shunned the camp canteen and had all his food brought to him bv his wife and daughter, who lived not far from the camp, but they \\ ere poorer than Beliavev's wife, and therefore, in addition to the bread, he made Prokhorov bring him his soup and gruel from the canteen, which he reheated over the hotplate. Zinoviev was milder mannered than the blustering Beliayev, but he had sharp tongue and felt his present humiliation much more keenlv than the a air-force general did. Both had been jailed for corruption and embezzlement, but whereas Beliayev had not had his personal propertv confiscated, Zinoviev had lost half of his, and this, too, filled him with resentment. Solzhenitsyn observed the two of them with fascination and not without a certain sympathv, though their arrogance and obvious contempt for everv'one around them precluded real friendship. He was also happv to tolerate their mild its

azure piping so familiar

to,

remarks that he dropped made

despotism after the bruising rigours of

New Jerusalem.

The doctor in the room, Dr Pravdin, a neuropathologist in his former and now chief of the camp medical section, had been imprisoned, like Solzhenitsyn, under Article 58, for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and like Solzhenitsyn had been sentenced to eight years. He was a big, distinguished-looking man of about seventy, with a mop of silvery hair that he had been able to preserve from shaving by a special dispensation. Yet he seemed to Solzhenitsyn to be as timid as a rabbit and to have "the naivety of He believed that we had all been imprisoned only a backward child. temporarily, as a kind of joke, and that a magnificent and generous amnesty was being prepared so that we would value freedom all the more and be eternally grateful to the Organs for this lesson."- Not surprisingly, Pravdin was diligent in his efforts to please the camp administration and consequently not in the least concerned for the medical standards by which he had lived all his life. The medical section's task, as he saw it, was simply to rubberstamp the administration's neglect of the prisoners. The two remaining inhabitants of the room were most unpopular \\ ith the generals, who did everything in their power to get rid of them. One of them, Orachevsky, had been an engineering instructor and had been jailed for five years for "smiling" while reading Pravda and for passing a negative comment when asked to fill in a political report on someone. Orachevsky was taciturn and seldom joined the endless conversations in the room, \\hich were invariably led by the generals, but what fascinated Solzhenitsyn about him was his passionate devotion to his work. The other odd man out was the peasant Prokhorov, who was unacceptable to the generals because of his coarseness and rude simplicity, although formally speaking he was the leader of the production trusties' brigade and had to deal with the camp authorities on their behalf. He was a peasant of vast experience and had been jailed for doling out too many ration coupons to his starving villagers when re-elected chairman of the village Soviet (havlife

.

.

.

SOLZHENITSYN

[2o6]

German occupation and retreat. many independent-minded peasant figures that Sol-

ing held this position before the war) after the

He was

also the

of

first

zhenitsyn came to admire in the camps, and Solzhenitsyn opposed the generals'

request for his removal.

What

I

immediately liked about him was

this: in

bringing Zinoviev his mess tins

and Beliayev his bread, Prokhorov was never servile and never produced a false He needed a great deal of food to nourish his big smile or an empty word. worker's body. For the sake of the general's gruel and broth, he patiently endured .

his humiliating position.

to

them

either.

time had not

He

come at

.

He knew

they despised him here, but did not suck up

could see through the

to voice his opinion.

on bedrock, that much hurry to smile

.

in

our people

I

lot

felt

rests

of us as

if

we were

naked, but the

about Prokhorov that he was founded

on shoulders

like his.

He was

anyone, his gaze was sullen, but he wouldn't stab you

in

no

in the

back either.^

Solzhenitsyn's reign as production superintendent at Kaluga Gate was brief. Less than a week after his appointment, Lieutenant Nevezhin was removed from the post of commandant, for stealing building materials. In itself, such stealing was neither unusual nor exceptionable among the officers and administrative staff it went on constantly. And the prisoners were bribed and blackmailed into helping too. But Nevezhin was insatiable, so that in the end his superior could ignore it no longer. He was replaced by a Lieutenant Mironov, who quickly found Solzhenitsyn too naive to supervise the other prisoners. Instead of increasing their quotas and extracting maximum labour for minimum reward, he had been too much on their side, insisting on the observation of the safety regulations and the supply of proper tools and materials, and had only hindered those who were determined to "get things done" at any price. From production superintendent he was kicked all the way down to general duties, but even now he retained a modicum of luck. As a mark of indulgence he was put into the painting brigade, which was one of the easier brigades, and he was allowed to retain his place in the trusties' room, since his replacement as superintendent already had a bunk in the other room set aside for trusties. It was about now that he had his first, long-a\\'aited meeting with Natalia. It had taken her some weeks to settle her affairs in Rostov, obtain the necessary permission to change her place of residence, get a permit to travel, and buv a train ticket, and she was quite surprised, on arrival in Moscow, to be met bv Veronica with news of her husband's move to Kaluga Gate she had imagined him to be still in New Jerusalem. The following day she made her way to the camp, whose situation Solzhenitsyn later described in The First

ignominiously

—

—

Circle.

Kaluga Street was occasionally

v\

ith

a

broad, busy thoroughfare with a steady flow of limousines,

diplomatic number-plates. Buses and trolleybuses stopped by

the end of the railings enclosing

Neskuchnv

Park,

where the camp guardhouse

Life

among the Trusties

stood, looking like the entrance to a normal building

swarmed some people

ished structure

workers looked

like that

site.

[207]

High up on

in dirty, tattered clothing,

but

the unfin-

all

building

and none of the passers-bv guessed that these were

convicts."*

Unfortunately, neither Solzhenitsyn nor Natalia has described their

meeting

in

any

detail.

quickly, recording

how

memoirs Natalia passes over

In her edited

ver\'

it

she entered the guardhouse and waited alone in an

empty low-ceilinged room, with wooden benches around the walls, for Solzhenitsyn to be summoned. "I heard the sound of steps. There in the doorway stood my husband smiling at me! He held his cap in his hands, revealing his shaven head." They were not alone a guard was present throughout the meeting

—

—but

it

must

ha\'e

been

a highh*

emotional occasion for both of them.

Natalia indicates that Solzhenitsyn was

contrite about his last letters

still

from East Prussia and again asked her forgiveness for the harshness of some of his expressions. "The former Sanya had not know n how to stop to consider the pain he might be causing others," she writes in her memoirs, "but there was something about the new Sanva that alreadv made him more sensitive to the beat

of another's heart.

He w anted

to cross out the lines in his

old letters that had offended me."'' Solzhenitsyn has confirmed that this

how

he

and

felt,

in

was

The First Circle he shows Gleb Nerzhin similarly chas-

tened and softened by his experiences:

"He had become

gentler, he kissed

his wife's

hand, he watched for the glint in her eves; while with her he was

no longer

in

jail.

The

ruthlessness of

camp

had altered him."'' at Kaluga Gate separation between husband and wife, life

In the novel, Solzhenitsyn conflates their

and and

raises the

theme of a possible

legal

.

.

.

many meetings

seems that he did on several occasions repeat the assurances first given in his letter to Natalia from Krasnaya Presnya that she should feel free to divorce him and seek her happiness elsewhere. But she interpreted this at first as a desire, on his part, to get rid of her, and so, on the heels of the East Prussian misunderstanding, came a new misunderstanding to muddy their relationship and lead to endless self-doubt and questioning. It was all exaggerated, of course, by their artificial separation, but Natalia soon made it it

—

clear that she

still

loved her husband and had not the slightest intention of

taking advantage of his offer, while he at

made no

secret of his

immense

relief

her decision. His arrest and imprisonment, and the grief and despair inflicted

on both of them, had brought them closer together than at any other time since their wedding. Natalia swore to remain faithful and to wait for him all the eight years of his sentence, and he, filled with confusion, guilt, and foreboding, fervently prayed that he, too, would be able to keep faith and that it would be less than eight years until the day of their reunion.

To

the truth, despite his retrospective disdain for Dr Pravdin, he hoping for an amnesty. At first the prisoners thought it would come the time of the November holidays, on the anniversary of the Revolution, an act of clemency by Stalin to mark the complete end of the w ar and the

was at

as

also

tell

SOLZHENITSYN

[2o8]

victory over Japan. But November 1945 came and went, and nothing happened. In December, Matyushin, the camp artist, was released as a result of the July amnesty. Matyushin had originally been sentenced to only three years,

had served four and

a half years,

and had secured

his release only as

the result of a long-drawn-out campaign of petitioning. Nevertheless, like

an omen. His charge had been

a political

one

—and the July amnesty was being put

—Article

58,

it

seemed

paragraph

into effect so slowly and haphazhoped against hope that it might somehow be extended to all politicals. One day during this period Solzhenitsyn climbed to the top of the block of flats they were building, to the eighth floor, and

IB

ardly that the prisoners

looked out over

Over

to

Moscow

still

.

one side were the Sparrow Hills, still open and clear. The future Lenin still in the planning stage and hadn't yet been built. Kanatchikova

Prospekt w as

[the lunatic asvlum] could be seen in

Dacha

pristine original state.

its

On

the

other side could be seen the cupolas of the Novodevichi Nunnery, the hulk of the Frunze streets, the

—

Academy, and Kremlin, where

been prepared for

To

us, the

our

Remembering some

refuge in

all

away,

in a violet

haze beyond the bustling

thev had to do was sign the amnesty that had

us.

doomed,

lav virtually at

far, far

this

feet,

world appeared tempting

in its riches

and glory

as

it

vet forever unattainable.'

his earlier

dream of

getting

away from

it all

and seeking

distant corner of the country, Solzhenitsyn turned his thoughts

amnesty and petitioned the Supreme Soviet to imprisonment to exile for life to any part of the

to exile as an alternative to

commute country

his eight years'

chose (he didn't then realize that his sentence included exile any-

it

way). But no reply came, and by

am

again. "I

March 1946 he was dreaming of an amnesty

100 per cent sure," he wrote to Natalia, "and

am

still

convinced

amnesty was prepared in the autumn of 1945, and that it was approved in principle by our government. But then for some reason it was postponed." As late as May 1946 he and his comrades were still hoping that an amnesty

that the

would be proclaimed to mark the first anniversary of victory over the Germans, as emerged in another letter to Natalia. "Today we were full of expectation. Although there were conflicting rumours about the ninth, still there is a possibility during the week or two following the ninth. Such weariness has descended upon us all as if the newspapers had actually promised it for today.

"^

Not

long after Solzhenitsyn's demotion to the painting brigade. General

moved to Butyrki and Solzhenitsyn was able to slip into his job norm setter. Once more he was a legitimate occupant of the trusties'

Beliayev was as assistant

room and needed no longer opportunity to revert to his boots,

all

go

in fear of expulsion.

He

clothing and

He was

pleased to be

made

more anxious than ever

to

also took this

and patent-leather

of which he had earlier put aside for ragged overalls

the painter's brigade. officer's

to

officer's tunic, cavalry breeches,

when

a trusty again,

make

a

joining

proud of

his

good impression on

AMONG THK TrUSTIFS

LlFK

And onee

the authorities.

[209]

again he succeeded better than he had imagined.

Proof of his success came with a

bv one of the camp guards, year student the

MV'D

Moscow

at

visit to the trusties' room one evening young man named Senin. Senin was a fourth-

a

University

in his spare time.

pation, for he invariably arrived

the guardhouse.

And

unusual in Senin's the trusties' literature.

room

On

\\

He was

ho earned extra money by working

for

apparently ashamed of his secret occu-

and

left in civilian

clothes and changed in

"Senin" was not his proper name. There was nothing

visits.

He

fancied himself an intellectual and liked to

to discuss the latest films he

however,

this occasion,

had seen or

to talk

visit

about

after chatting inconsequentially for a

A few minutes Senin followed him out and instructed him to go to the securitv offi-

while, he secretly signalled Solzhenitsyn to leave the room. later,

cer's

room. This seemed

like

new

bad news. Being summoned

to see the securitv officer

was being prepared against you, or that you were called to give evidence being in someone else's case. Either wav it was an unpleasant business. But his immediate fears were quickly put to rest. The security officer had a small, cosilv furnished room "that didn't seem to be a part of Gulag at all." It contained a desk, a sofa, and a radio playing some familiar classical music. As Solzhenitsyn later described it in The Gulag Archipelago: "I instantly softened: somewhere life still went on! My God, we had already got used to the idea of taking our own life for normal, vet somewhere ."^ Instead of barking at him, the security it still went on, out there. officer was courteousness itself. How was Solzhenitsvn feeling.' What did he think of camp life? Was he comfortable in the trusties' room? Solzhenitsvn answered briefly and non-committally, until they came to the crucial quesusually meant

a

case

.

.

tion.

"Well, after everything that has happened to you, after evervthing vou

have experienced, have you remained Solzhenitsyn

mean "Russian"

knew what

lay

a Soviet

man?"

behind those words. "Soviet" didn't

just

or a citizen of the Soviet Union. "Soviet" in this context

meant you supported the Soviet system. He hesitated and replied that the Special Board had itself pronounced him "anti-Soviet" with its sentence. But the security officer waved that aside. Everybody knew the Special Board was a rubber stamp. Its verdict didn't count in what they were discussing now. The main thing was: How did Solzhenitsyn feel? Had he changed or become embittered? After all, he had been Soviet in his youth, the officer knew from

why he had been asked to had led to nothing at the time, but had found its way into his dossier, had accompanied him to Kaluga Gate, and was being taken up again by the ever-vigilant "organs.") He had been a Soviet officer, and was still proud to wear his uniform around the camp. He was also desperately keen for an amnesty, and had petitioned the authorities for exile, so he still believed in the justice and mercy of the system, still had his

autobiography. (Solzhenitsyn

write his autobiography in

faith in the authorities

now

understood

New Jerusalem.

—did he not?

It

SOLZHENITSYN

[2io]

Sensing

a threat

behind

this

smooth

recitation of his former virtue, Sol-

zhenitsvn hastened to assure the officer that he was not embittered and was

and of course he was still Soviet. This was evidently what the waiting to hear. They could talk as two Soviet people. They been officer had ideology and had common goals. "We must act in unity. same the shared You help us and we w ill help vou." still

a socialist;

Solzhenitsyn

The

felt

trapped by this and wondered where

no time

officer lost

in explaining. Solzhenitsyn

w as the

it

was

ideal

leading.

person to

as going on in the camp. He could choose and report their contents to him. Solzhenitsyn demurred and claimed to suffer from a bad memory, but the officer became threatening. Did Solzhenitsyn \\ ant to go back to general duties or be sent to Siberia? For two hours and more, according to Solzhenitsyn's account of the matter, the\' circled back and forth around this central point, the security officer striving to convince him that it was in his own interests, while Solzhenitsyn stonewalled and tried to find a way of retreating from his commitment to behave like a "Soviet man." It was well past the time for lights out in the rooms when the officer switched his attack. He had heard from Senin, he said, that Solzhenitsyn w as hostile to the professional crooks and thieves. Was that so? Solzhenitsyn confirmed that it was. He had hated them from the day he first set eyes on them and had already had several serious clashes with them. Well then, said the officer, surely Solzhenitsyn was not in favour of criminals' escaping from the camp? What if a bunch of them got out and robbed or raped his wife on the street while she was making her way home from her institute? She w as

help

him keep

in

touch

\\

ith

what

\\

to overhear certain conversations

young and pretty, wasn't she, and the camps? Surely she, and others things? Solzhenitsyn writes that he

all

alone with her husband locked up in

like her, still

should be protected from such

wondered what the

security officer

was leading up to, but felt a sense of relief at having found some common ground at last. Yes, they should be protected from thugs, and he could agree to that

with

a clear conscience. In that case, said the security officer, surely

him any plans he heard

Solzhenitsv n wouldn't refuse to report to thieves to escape? Solzhenitsyn hesitated. rity officer

criminals.

was repugnant

As

he agreed to the if

And

the threat

for the

any secu-

applied only to the hated

it

was most unlikely he would of Siberia would be lifted. Relucso

it

officer's suggestion.

by magic the security

zhenitsyn to sign: "Pledge. securit\' officer an\'

idea of reporting to

at least

He hardly ever mixed with them,

have anything to report. tantly,

him but

to

The

I

officer

produced

a sheet

of paper for Sol-

the undersigned pledge to report to the

escapes planned

b\- prisoners.

..." Solzhenitsyn

camp

resisted.

He

had not said all prisoners, only the crooks. And he preferred not to sign name. But the securitx' officer was adamant. What difference did it make if Solzhenitsyn \\ as truly "one of us"? They both knew that it really meant only the criminals. In the end, he had to sign the pledge, as well as another his

pledge never to disclose the contents of this

first

pledge.

And

as a final

humil-

among the Trusties

Life

iation, the security officer insisted that

for

all

informers had to have a

essential part of the system. failed it

him, and

was

left to

Solzhenits\n choose

pseudonym

a

pseudonvm, it was an

for their denunciations;

For once, Solzhenitsvn's

literary inventiveness

the security officer to suggest "V'etrov." \'etrov

became, and Solzhenitsyn duly signed the form with his new name. This episode marked the nadir of Solzhenitsyn's camp career and indeed

the nadir of his to

it

[211]

endure

life.

He was

to

know

worse physical deprivations, he was and he was to come within an occasions, but never was he to sink morally far

far greater psychological pressures,

ace of death on at least

two

later

or spiritually lower than in this confrontation with the security officer at

Kaluga Gate. Yet, as he has shown tation

w as almost

in The

Gulag Archipelago, such

a

confron-

inevitable in the light of his early behaviour in the camps.

New Jerusalem and at Kaluga Gate (and Krasnaya Presnya) had been to "get on," to rise to the top, to become a part of the camps' ruling elite and occupy a position of trust, just as he had strained every nerve to become an officer. And he had been prepared to do almost anything to keep away from the dreaded general duties, which the benighted mass of the prisoners ended up performing, thus hastening the day when they went to the wall. To this end he had flaunted his uniform, his ability to command, and his loyalty to the system, showing himself pathetically eager to please; and at the same time, nursing his bruised ego and sense of personal outrage over his ill-fortune, he had pleaded and petitioned for mercy. On the other hand, we can salute his courage in confessing this ignominy nearly thirty years later. As he said after publishing volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago, he had revealed in it worse things about himself than his enemies could have ever dreamt he would do. Indeed, we owe most of what we know of his inglorious first years in the camps to his ow n revelations scattered through the various parts of The Gulag Archipelago and a few other works. It is possible that he has even darkened the image in places, for The The

entire thrust of his ambition in

also at

Gulag Archipelago

is,

among

other things, a

summons

to the

Russian people

and Solzhenitsyn attempted to lead the w av bv conspicuously displaying some of his own. In his rage to atone, he may have exaggerated at times. On balance, however, the picture does not seem overdraw n. The self-portrait that Solzhenitsyn sketches is essentially confirmed by w hat Natalia Reshetovskaya has told us of him at this period, and by w hat we know of his later psychology and development. to repent their sins,

In the short term,

He

it

would appear, Solzhenitsvn's pledge made

continued to work as assistant norm

little

and Senin periodically pumped him for information. Since Solzhenitsyn never seemed to have anything to report, Senin urged him to give information on his workmates or anything else that he knew, but Solzhenitsyn fell back on the narrow terms of his commitment and said that it applied only to thieves and

difference to him.

setter,

escapes, and nothing more. xVIeanw hile, he

was becoming more

closely acquainted

w ith other

aspects

— SOLZHENITSYN

[212] of

camp

life

and the complexity of the hierarchy that governed

it.

In effect,

camp guards and adminpersonnel supervising the construction work

there were three hierarchies, one consisting of the istration,

another of the free

none of whom was

—and

a prisoner

a third

of the trusties and other prisoners

with positions of responsibility in the day-to-day running of the camp. These hierarchies did not mix at the upper and lower ends of the three scales, but in the middle, the free personnel and the prisoners worked very closely together and were virtually indistinguishable, with the crucial difference, of course, that the free workers went home at the end of the working day. At the top of the heap was the camp commandant, first Lieutenant Nevezhin and later Lieutenant Mironov, answerable to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Beneath him came the armed guards, who looked after the physical security of the camp, and the w arders, responsible for the day-today supervision of the prisoners, both of whom also worked for the MVD. Somewhat to one side and in many ways more powerful than the comman-

dant was the security officer,

who was

responsible for security matters, for

the behaviour of the political prisoners, and for ensuring ideological confor-

mity. a

He worked

for the secret police

law unto himself. Parallel with

(now known

this hierarchy

as the

NKGB)*

and subordinate

to

it

and was

was the

construction hierarchy, consisting of the chief engineer, responsible for overseeing the entire building project and guaranteeing that the architect's plans

were carried out, the \\ orks manager in charge of all the construction workand specialist foremen for all the main building trades: bricklaying, joinery, plumbing, electrical work, and plastering. There was also a group of individual free workers who worked as tractor drivers, excavator drivers, dispatch clerks, firemen, and so on. The prisoners' hierarchy was headed by the so-called compound trusties, those who worked most closely with the construction personnel and held the most confidential positions: chief bookkeeper, stock-room clerk, work allocator. Their job was to assist the works manager in making the project pay its way. Since they controlled the quotas and the deployment of the prisoners' labour, they played a key role in determining how and by whom the ers,

camp

v\

as run.

against the

Of

course, the

commandant and

cer, or against the

compound

his

trusties could not

MVD personnel,

move openly

against the security offi-

works manager and chief engineer, but they could

influ-

ence them heavily in their decisions and sometimes, by virtue of their control over output, could effectively dictate some of those decisions insofar as they affected the other prisoners. For instance. Lieutenant

Mironov had dismissed

Solzhenitsyn from his job as production superintendent without their intervention, but

it

was the compound

trusties

who,

a short

time afterwards,

ousted Solzhenitsyn's successor, Vasily Pavlov, and installed

own

preferred nominee, Alexander K.

Solzhenitsyn from his job as assistant

in the post their

Shortly after that they removed

norm

setter

and got him put back onto

*Sarod)iy komniissariat gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (People's C^ommissariat for State Security). security apparatus had been separated from the

NKV'D once more

and renamed

in 1941.

The

— Life

among the

I'rusties

[213I

w as expelled from the production trusroom and consigned to the \\ agonettes in the big barrack room. 1 here was one other privilege, particularK' xaluable in a camp where men and women mixed, that the compound trusties exercised to the full, and that v\ as control over the women. The life of a woman could quicklv be made insupportable in the camps: she was more vulnerable than a man to the hard general duties, with the result that he ties'

phvsical labour of general duties and to such humiliations as the intimate

bodv searches, the shaving of pubic lies, all

of

hair, the

bathing

w hich oppressed her psvchologically and

deprivation. Furthermore,

women

\\

in front

of male order-

intensified her phvsical

ere in short supplv, so that the pressure

show them favours and ultimatelv to climb into bed w ith them was intense and unavoidable. There was at Kaluga Gate one girl in particular who made an impression on Solzhenitsvn. She was a former lieufrom

trusties to

tenant and a sniper in the armv, and according to Solzhenitsvn she w as "like a princess in a fairytale:

The

crimson

lips,

chief bookkeeper, a fat Jew

hardlv bear to look

at,

the bearing of a swan, jet-black locks."

named

Isaak Bershader,

whom

she could

resolved to have her for his mistress. For weeks he

made sure she was kept on the heaviest forms of general persuaded the warders to victimize her on pettv charges, and threatened her with a transport to Siberia, all the while making no secret of his laid siege to her,

duties,

end she capitulated: "One evening," writes Solzhenitsvn, from the snow and the sky, I mvself saw how she flitted like a shadow from the women's barracks and with lowered head knocked on the greedy Bershader's store-room door. After that she was well taken care of in the camp compound."'^ 1 he production trusties were a rung lower on the prisoners' ladder, although the most senior of them, the production superintendent, had a great deal of power if he chose to wield it. Alexander K, the energetic thirt\-fivevear-old engineer who succeeded V asilv Pavlov in the job, was verv fond of tyrannizing those under his control. "He was one of those prisoners whose actions put more fear into the inmates than the Archipelago's inveterate bosses: once he had got vou bv the throat, he would never let go or relax his grip. He got the rations reduced visits banned and transports increased objective. In the

"in a twilight pale

.

.

.

anvthing to squeeze more out of the prisoners.

And

both the camp

dant and the construction chiefs were equally pleased with him.""

norm setter and most importantlv, the brigade

duction trusties included the office staff, and,

As

at

New Jerusalem,

oners' point of view, these

the ones

who

commanThe pro-

his assistant, various

minor

leaders.

Solzhenitsvn noticed that from the ordinary pris-

were the key

figures.

The

brigade leaders were

haggled over the quotas with their various superiors.

If

they

were good, thev attempted at all costs to shield their men from the worst rigours of the camp, to protect them from the arbitrary punishments of the commandant and his warders, the exorbitant demands of the production trusties, and the even worse corruption and tyrannv of the compound trusties. Their role was a heroic one, and the well-being of the majority of the pris-

SOLZHEXITSYN

[214]

oners absolutely depended on them. Fortunately, they had considerable

room

manoeuyre, because in a sense the rest of the camp depended on them. Solzhenitsyn had experienced this at New Jerusalem with Barinoy. It was Barinoy \\ ho decided how man)' wagons the prisoners should load and who saw that they obtained what little pay they vyere due,* and there had been for

little

that Solzhenitsyn could do, as foreman, to shift him.

After his relegation from

norm

setting to general duties, Solzhenitsyn

was able to obserye the relations between the prisoners and the foremen from below. Fyodor Murayyoy, the joinery foreman, was a drunkard and a fool. He would sign almost any vyork youcher the brigade leader put in front of him and w as incapable of distinuishing good work from bad, which of course was yery much to the prisoners' adyantage it was often impossible to fulfil the quotas if the work w as done properly (and if the quotas were not fulfilled, their already skimpy rations would be cut still further). The brigade leader, as the one responsible for the quotas and therefore for how much the prisoners receiyed to eat, was thus the only trusty who was able to carry out his work without detriment to the ordinary labourers. the storekeeper, clerks, nurses, Lastly, there were the "seryice trusties" cooks, breadcutters, canteen staff, bath attendants, cleaners, and the doctor, dentist, and barber. All these were prisoners too, but since their work was priyileged and much easier than that in the construction brigades, it was apportioned by either the compound trusties or the production superintendent, who naturally reseryed it for their fayourites and for those prisoners prepared to pay for it in some way or another. Many of them were women, and the form of payment \yas explicit, as with the woman lieutenant subjugated by Bershader. In other instances it meant willingness to pay bribes, usually in the form of tea, tobacco, or clothing, or to conniye at and take an actiye part in the widespread stealing that w as endemic to the camps. Solzhenitsyn was too naiVe and inexperienced to make much headway in the complex web of pow er bargaining and corruption that preyailed in the camp. While not deyoid of ruthlessness when his innermost goals were at stake, he did not possess that naked driye for power at all costs that was the recipe for success in the camps, and so he was a failure as a production superyisor, a failure as an assistant norm setter, and eyen, from the authorities' point of yiew a failure as an informer as well. If he was to survive in the camps, it would have to be by cunning, and it was here at Kaluga Gate that he began to develop a talent for craftiness that w as to become second nature in the years ahead. In a sense, his deal with the security officer had marked

—

—

,

the self

first

step along this road.

By

agreeing to inform, he had ingratiated him-

with the authorities, but seems never to have intended to act on the

agreement.

He was

*The remuneration

also

determined to stay on the side of power

if

he could,

of labour-camp prisoners varied according to place and time. Generally

u as impossible, in the forties, to earn more than about twenty-five rubles a month, but that depended on 100 per cent fulfilment of the "norm," or quota, w hich was generally set too high. Most prisoners earned at best a handful of rubles, at w orst nothing at all. speaking,

it

LiFK

AMONG THE TrUSTIES

and indeed, throughout his stay

at

[2

I

5]

Kaluga Gate, was able to remain on the from the produc-

fringes of the trusty aristocracy even after being expelled

tion trusties'

One

room.

aspect of this drive for social acceptability was his participation in

the amateur theatricals staged in the camp's cultural and educational section

(CES). 7 hese cultural and educational sections were post-revolutionarv times, just a threat,

u hen

"corrective labour"

and they had been intended to

a

was

throwback still

to earlv

an ideal and not

assist in the "correction"

of

criminals through propaganda and ideologicallv approved cultural activities.

During the thirties the early idealism had been stripped awav, but the sechad remained and continued to exist as a sort of shadow of their former selves. This was the place, for instance, v\here you obtained pen and paper with which to write letters home or petitions to the government for clemency. The CES was also responsible for censoring and distributing incoming letters to the prisoners and for emptving the brown boxes into which the petitions were posted. The CES housed the library, if one existed, or the few books that were allowed in the camp, as well as whatever newspapers were allowed. It was the place where artists could go to get materials and paint their pictures artists were much prized in the camps and occupied a highly pri\ ileged position, since they could provide the officers and guards with pictures to take home. At Kaluga Gate thev also stencilled rugs,* w hich the guards paid for in commodities and sold outside. And the CES organized periodic concerts and theatrical performances, most of which were staged in tions

—

the

camp canteen

after supper.

Solzhenitsyn gravitated to this section soon after his arrival

at Kaluga Gate it was the one place where he could go in the evenings to get awav from the endless, boring conversations of Beliavev and Zinoviev and talk about something more elevated and interesting. It was also the one place where the men prisoners were allowed to mix w ith the w omen prisoners on equal terms, where thev could rehearse together and put on concerts and

—

plays.

There w ere speciallv printed collections of plavs labelled "for performance only in Gulag" plays that were ideologically innocuous but so ill-

—

written and ridiculous that thev

\v

ould have been laughed off the stage else-

where. Solzhenitsyn managed, after great difficultv

in finding a

stage a performance of Chekhov's The Proposal, and he gave a

dramatic readings, just as he had done as the

w hole thing w as reminiscent of

his

a

copy, to

number

of

schoolbov and student (indeed,

Komsomol

activities in Rostov).

On

one occasion he accidentallv aroused the ire of the officer in charge by reading a monologue of Chatskv's from Gribovedov's celebrated play. Woe from Wit. It had been a favourite of Solzhenitsvn's for a long time, and he writes that in his enthusiasm he overlooked its topical satirical content. Here in the *This ma\' ha\e been the inspiration Ivan Denisovich learns

w

for the scene in

ith distaste that his

craft pursuits for stencilling

and

selling

A Day

in the Life of Ivan Denisoiich in

u hich

fellow villagers have abandoned agricultural and

cheap rugs.

SOLZHENITSYN

[2i6]

it took on quite a different resonance. "Who are the judges?" it began, and included the line "Their hostility to a free life was implacable." When Solzhenitsyn reached the couplet "Where, oh where are the fatherland's fathers? Is it not these men loaded with plunder?" the section chief exploded and

camp

ordered him off the stage.'' Solzhenitsyn was soothed and diverted by his theatrical

activities. Not camp compound couple of hours in the evenings but they also offered him an refuge from the repellent world of everydav camp life. Having

only did they give him the opportunity to freely for a

imaginative

move around

the

been convicted partly on the grounds of what he had written, he dared not have many books in his room or show an overt interest in literature. If he took a book to read while waiting for the endless

took care to see that

it

was

a

roll-calls to

textbook on physics.

The

be finished, he

cultural

and educa-

was therefore an oasis, and the books and plays that he was able to handle there gave him the strength to carry on at his general duties. At some point during these activities, he heard of the existence of whole theatrical troupes of prisoners in Gulag, whose members were freed from general duties in order to rehearse and perform their plays full-time, and he clutched at this straw as yet another possible means of ensuring his survival. Gulag actors were trusties of a sort, but at least their privileges did not depend on deceiving or persecuting others. As it happened, there was a long tradition tional section

of theatre companies in Gulag. In the thirties already, senior

MVD officers

had indulged themselves by forming such groups and had vied with one another to collect the best actors and actresses from various prisons and camps and outshine one another, much as nineteenth-century Russian landowners had done with their serf theatres. Now, in the post-war period, every Gulag region had its own "professional" theatre troupe, and the Moscow region had several, one of which unexpectedlv came to Kaluga Gate.* Solzhenitsyn was fascinated. "What a strange sensation! To watch a performance of professional convict actors singing, white dresses, black frock coats.

elderly Latvian couple

formed

during the

camp ."'^

.

.

canteen! Laughter, smiles,

He

quickly got to

know an

played leading parts in the troupe, Oswald and

Oswald had been

Isolde Glazunov. in Riga

who

in a

a pupil of

German

Vakhtangov and had

later per-

occupation, together with his wife, a

dancer. For this they had been charged with treason and sentenced to ten years. Isolde also

danced

at

Kaluga Gate, despite her advanced years, but

Solzhenitsyn heard that soon afterwards she was separated from her husband

and sent away on a camp transport, while he was forced to stay behind. Such were the immutable, cruel laws of the Gulag: not even membership in a theatre group was a guarantee against sudden transfers, punishment cells, reduced rations, or any of the thousand shocks to which the prisoner was arbitrarily subjected.

Solzhenitsyn also became friendly with Glazunov's "spiritual daughter," *

Varlam Shalamov,

actor in one of the

in his

camp

Kolyma Tales (New York and London, 1980), has

theatres ("Esperanto").

a story

about an

— among the Trusties

Life

[217]

Nina, the leading actress in the troupe, \v ho turned out, Hke Solzhenitsyn, have attended the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and His-

to

tory and to have studied under the to

what degree Solzhenitsyn w

had

a lover in

same

art historv professor. It

as attracted to

is

not clear

her physically but she already

the troupe, a former dancer from the Bolshoi ballet. Solzhe-

nitsyn was desperatelv keen to join the troupe as well, but his hopes were in vain. all my efforts, I did not succeed in becoming a member of the ensemble. Soon afterwards they left Kaluga Gate and I lost sight of them. ... I remained there in the modest little amateur group u ith Anechka Breslavskava, Shurochka Ostretsova, and Lvova. I now look back upon mv participation in it as a mark of

Despite

mv if

immaturity and

spiritual

camp

the

The

a humiliation.

he found no other distractions in

Moscow

tipsy and give the orders: "I

want

of a

worthless Lieutenant Mironov,

Sunday evening, could

a concert in ten minutes!"

arrive at

And

and

in a trice

brilliantlv

.

stage before an

lit

the

from bed or dragged awa\- from the camp hotplate we would be singing and prancing about and performing on

actors could be roused

emptv

hall,

\\

ith

.

.

a

onlv the arrogant, doltish lieuten-

ant and a trio of guards for an audience.'"*

was sweetened for Solzhenitsvn by the chance it gave Breslavskaya, w ith w horn, it appears, he fell in love at Kaluga Gate. He later informed Natalia that this was the onlv time he w as unfaithful to her throughout the fourteen years of his army service, imprisonment, and exile.''' Anya is portrayed as Lvuba Negnevitskaya in The Tenderfoot and the Tart, which, in its first variant (as The Republic of Labour), was Perhaps the

him

pill

Anya

to be near

dedicated to her.*

As spring gave way to summer, life at Kaluga Gate became somewhat There was no longer the biting cold of the Russian winter to

pleasanter.

contend with, and the prisoners no longer needed to tear

down

partitions

and joists with which to stoke up their fires. Solzhenitsyn laboured ten hours a day at laying parquet floors and found himself reasonably able to cope with his moderate form of general duties, but the rations were meagre, and not even Natalia's twice-weekly parcels could stave off his growing hunger and lassitude. Meanwhile, the threat of a sudden transport to a harsher climate and harder work still hung over him. Suddenly, on the morning of 18 July 1946, he was summoned from the ranks at morning roll-call and told not to go to work with the others. All the guard could tell him in answer to his questions was that he should report to and plunder

*The 0/f«'

rafters

question of what to /

sbalashoz'ka

shalashovka (derived

prisoner

who

call this

based on

is

from

plav in English

camp

shalash,

slang. Olen

meaning

a

is

problematical. Solzhenitsyn's Russian

(literallv

"deer")

means

a

camp

title

novice, and

rough hunter's cabin or bivouac) means

a

woman

agrees to sleep with a trusty or with trusties in exchange for food and privileges

not quite a whore, more a tart or a tramp. Innocent seems to

me

to catch

none of

The

published English

this raciness. Alternative titles

title

The Love-girl and

the

proposed, besides mine,

include The Paragon and the Paramour, The Greenhorn and the Camp-zi'hore, The Greenhorn and the Shackereen,

and e\en The Reindeer and

the Little Tent.

— SOLZHENITSYN

[2i8]

the guardhouse "with his belongings" and that he was being

Kaluga Gate on special instructions from the Ministry of the

moved from As his

Interior.

brigade disappeared into the

work compound, Solzhenitsyn was surrounded

by the compound

who

Some

predicted a

opposite soared.

—

that he

Was

it

trusties,

new

animatedly discussed

case against

him and

a

would be amnestied and

new

this

unusual event.

sentence. Others said the

set free.

Solzhenitsyn's hopes

possible that his petitions had been answered at

last,

that his

optimism had not been unfounded? Or was he destined to have his sentence doubled and to spend the rest of his life in the camps, as had happened to several prisoners he knew?'^ He had almost forgotten that six months earlier all the prisoners at Kaluga Gate had been required to fill out Gulag registration forms under a new ordinance. Among other things, the form had asked for the prisoner's profession. Solzhenitsyn had realized that in the camps the answer to this question could be decisive. Many of the cons had gone for the main Gulag specialities, putting themselves down as "bakers," "barbers," "cooks," and "tailors," regardless of their occupations in real

life

outside. Solzhenitsyn followed the

same principle but built instead on his training in mathematics and physics. He had recently acquired a book on the exploding of the first American atom bomb a translation of an American government report on the subject which he had been able to keep and read for a few davs, and he knew that atomic energv was a top priority in Soviet science. He had therefore listed his occupation as "atomic physicist" in the hope that it would catch some official's eve. He had heard rumours that in some part of the Gulag there existed special camps where prisoners who had been engineers, technologists, and scientists were put to work in their own specialities and led a privileged life, with easier conditions, better living quarters, and decent rations. Like the other prisoners at Kaluga Gate, he had never met a former resident

—

of one of these fabled institutions, but the legend persisted and he had thought

would be no harm in trving. Perhaps it had worked and his luck had still did not know the details or where he w ould be going, but w hen he reported to the guardhouse, he discovered that he w as being summoned on "special assignment" bv the Ministry of the Interior. He had become a "special-assignment prisoner" after all, just like the Gulag veteran who had made such an impression on him and warned him off general duties in Krasnava Presnya. The future, though still obscure, suddenly seemed full of there held.

He

promise.

Much later, Solzhenitsvn was to look back on his nine months at Kaluga Gate with repugnance and to describe it as a low point in his life and a period of spiritual failure. This it certainlv was, but it had also added significantly to his education. In Krasnaya Presnya and New Jerusalem he had glimpsed the murderous machine that kept the convevor belts of the Gulag in motion. Here he had learned about the labour relations that made the machine necessary. And he had discovered that the land of Gulag lav not only in the distant outposts of the empire, in the far north, bevond the Arctic Circle, in

— Life

among the Trusties

I^k;]

the tundra and taiga of the Siberian Kast, in the sandy deserts and mines of Mosthe Central Asian South, but also at the very centre of the empire, in

cow, beside Neskuchnv Park and overlooking one of Moscow's famous boulevards. In short it was evervwhere, like an invisible fourth dimension "invisible," that is, to the other inhabitants of the Soviet Union.

13

SPECIAL-ASSIGNMENT

PRISONER SOLZHENiTSYN

LEFT KALUGA Gate in the early afternoon of 18 July 1946 and was taken straight to Butyrki, the prison where he had spent a

month

summer. Passing the church

cells, with their memories and anxious conversations about the future, Solzhenitsvn \\ as led into the reception \\ ing. If the prison had seemed crowded a year ago, now it was bursting at the seams. It took eleven hours for him to complete the immutable admission procedures of search, bath, fumigation, and the endless repetition of name, date of birth, place of birth, charge, and sentence. After each short burst of activity, he was obliged to wait for hours in solitarv boxes. But he no longer felt himself to be the wavering and impatient greenhorn of the preceding vear, and it was almost with nonchalance that, at three o'clock in the morning, he finallv entered Cell 75 and called out in a low but cheerful voice, "Who's last?" A hoarse voice replied that his place \\ as beneath the lowest tier of bunks next to the latrine tank. Apart from this solitarv replv, there wasn't a sound in the cell.

of

the preceding

Gammerov and

Ingal

Lit bv two bright w as spraw led fast

suspended beneath two domes, the entire

cell

asleep, tossing in the stuffy atmosphere: the hot July air

was

electric bulbs

not able to circulate through the windows, which were blocked by "muzzles." Tireless

flies

buzzed and

Some had covered

flitted

from sleeper

—

light. There was an acrid stink from the latrine tank up by the heat. About eighty men had been stuffed five, and there was still room for more.'

The and

making them twitch. them from the blinding

to sleeper,

their eves with hankerchiefs to shield its

putrefaction

into a cell

meant

was speeded for

twenty-

next morning, the extra boards between the bunks were dismantled

a chest

pushed from the

latrine tank to a position

beneath the window.

Special-assignment Prisoner

As

new comer, Solzhenitsyn had

[221]

and answer was one of many "special-assignment prisoners" in Cell 75. It turned out that the inmates consisted of two main categories: in the first were ex-prisoners of war and men repatriated from the occupied countries of Eastern Europe, all of whom had recently been investigated and sentenced for "treason" and were now waiting to learn their destinations, just as Solzhenitsyn had had to do a year earlier; the second comprised physicists, chemists, mathematia large group of scientists like himself draughtsmen who had been gathered from all over the cians, engineers, in readiness for transfer to special prison institutes w here they Soviet Union able work their own would be to at subjects. Solzhenitsyn was relieved to have this confirmation that he was indeed destined for a prison institute. Not man\ minutes had passed before he was approached by a tall, middleaged man with a hooked nose and a grave expression on his face, who obviously a

questions, after

w hich he

to give an account of himself

learned that he

—

possessed considerable authority in the

—

cell.

He

introduced himself as Pro-

No. morning under the left window after the bread ration has been served. Would you be prepared to give us a lecture on some scientific topic? And if so, on what subject?"Solzhenitsyn was both charmed and perplexed. Only the preceding morning he had been standing in the open with the carpentry brigade at Kaluga Gate, his stomach empty, his limbs heavy and aching from stooping over parquet floors, his mind dull and numbed by the monotony of the work, and now he was being asked to deliver a scientific lecture. Among these men he was something of an impostor, having had only an undergraduate training in physics and mathematics. Nevertheless, he quick-wittedly recalled the book on the American atom bomb he had read at Kaluga Gate. The chances were that the others had all been in prison too long to have learned much about it, so he offered a lecture on that. It was accepted. He was to become an expert in atomic physics somewhat sooner than he had expected when fessor rimofeyev-Ressovsky, president of the "Scientific Society of Cell 75.

Our

filling

society meets every

out the questionnaire.

much about the and indefatigably filled in the gaps in Solzhenitsyn's knowledge, but the lecture w as judged a success. Solzhenitsyn w as formally admitted to the society and got to know its dozen or so members. Nikolai Timofeyev-Ressovsky, their leader, was a distinguished geneticist. As early as 1922, as a graduate student, he had been singled out to collaborate with the eminent German biologist Vogt, who had founded Moscow's Institute for the Study of the Brain, and he later accompanied Vogt to Berlin to work with him there. In 1937 he had been ordered It

turned out that Timofeyev-Ressovsky knew almost as

subject as Solzhenitsyn did, understood

to return to the Soviet

it

better,

Union, but refused, although he retained

his passport

he had been

and continued one of the founders of the Soviet school of radiation genetics, which was w hy he knew so much about atomic research, and was also a biophysicist, radiobiologist, and zoologist of note. When Soviet troops entered Berlin, he had to regard himself as a Soviet biologist. In fact,

— SOLZHENITSYN

[222]

immediately placed his institute under Soviet protection, but he and another Soviet biologist, Sergei Tsarapkin, had been arrested, sent back to the Soviet

Union, and sentenced to ten years for treason. Among the other members of were a Jewish physicist, Victor Kagan,* a composer and pianist, Vladimir Klempner, an Orthodox priest who had been captured in Europe, Evgeni Divnich, and two engineers, F. F. Karpov and Nikolai Semyonov.

the society

Semyonov had been one of the creators of the famous Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station and Dam, one of the show-pieces of early Soviet technology, and it was he who had called to Solzhenitsyn from beneath the bunks the night Solzhenitsvn arrived. One or two of these men, like TimofeyevRessovskv and Semyonov, were to become lifelong friends, while others quicklv disappeared from view. All, however, made a lasting impression on Solzhenitsvn in that summer of 1946. "What a cell it was!" he later wrote in The Gulag Archipelago. "Was it not the most brilliant in my entire prison career?"^ The cell was also memorable for the opportunity it gave him to rest and to recover his strength after the rigours of

even

if it

meant sleeping on the

New Jerusalem

and Kaluga Gate,

floor.

In the Butvrki cells the arches supporting the bunks are very low:

it

had never

occurred even to the prison authorities that prisoners would be sleeping under

them. Therefore, the

first

thing vou did was throw your greatcoat to your neigh-

it out for vou. Then you lay face-down in the passageway and inched your way underneath. People were constantly walking up and down the passageways, the floors beneath the bunks were swept at best twice a month, you could wash your hands only during the evening latrine call, and even then without soap no one could sav vou experienced vour body as some sort of divine vessel. But I was happv! There, on the asphalt floor, in my dog's hole, where dust and crumbs were scattered from the bunks into our eves, I was absolutely happv, uithout qualification. Epicurus was right: even the absence of variety can be experienced as a satisfaction when it has been preceded by a

bour, so that he could spread

—

which had looked endless, after the and my aching back, what bliss it was to lie there for whole days, to lie there sleeping and yet still get a pound and a half of bread and two hot meals a day of cattle feed or dolphin-meat. They kept me in that cell for two months, and I slept enough for the year just passed and the year to come. During that time I progressed along the floor as far as the \\ indow then went back to the latrine tank and made my w ay back again on the bunks this time as far as the arch.'*

variety of dissatisfactions. After the camps,

ten-hour working day,

\\

ith the cold, the rain,

.

.

.

,

—

He

found himself in a home away from home, surrounded by educated spoke a similar language to himself and saw their prison experiences through similar eyes. It was comforting to exchange reminiscences with veterans of many years' imprisonment and to test his impressions and devel-

men who

* Victor

Kagan

later

published his

own

reminiscences of

number was

(1981).

According to Kagan, the

lecture

on the sound-ranging techniques he had employed

cell

life in this cell in Kontiiieiit,

71 (not 75),

and he

recalls

at the tront.

no. 29

hearing Solzhenitsyn

Special-assignment Prisoner

[223]

oping views against theirs. The scientific society, which met regularly every morning, gave him the sense of belonging to a friendly and exclusive small

where there were games of chess, books (though there were always long lists for the few interesting books that came their way), and, in the evenings, occasional concerts and yet more lectures and discussions. Timofevev-Ressovsky, ever the soul of the company, would give them reminiscences of his travels in America, Italy, and Scandinavia. Emigres spoke of their experiences in France, the Balkans, and other parts of Western Europe, while still others lectured on Gogol, Le Corbusier, and the habits of bees. But not all was sweetness and harmony. Evgeny Divnich, the Orthodox priest, was passionate and convincing in his detailed denunciations of Marxism. Nobody in Western Europe, he said, believed in it anv more. It was dead and buried as a political philosophy. Solzhenitsyn couldn't accept this and sprang to Marx's defence. "After all, I was a Marxist, wasn't I?"^ It was a repeat performance of his arguments a year earlier with Yuri Y and Gammerov and Ingal, and if the flame of his conviction no longer burned quite so steadily, he nevertheless suppressed his doubts and stoutly defended the true club,

waiting

faith.*

An

reminded him queasily of the ignoble He was already to the strange twists and turns of the prisoner's vovaging about the archipelago, of the curious coincidences and criss-crossing of destinies, of the bush telegraph that brought you information about the fates of former cell-mates and the further careers of comrades whose lives vou had briefly shared in a camp or transit prison. In this way he had learned of the one had been fate of one or two cell-mates from his previous stay in Butyrki sent to Karaganda, another shot. But even so he was not prepared to bump into the elderly German civilian w hom he had obliged (on the second night after his arrest) to carry his suitcase on the long march to Brodnitz. Solzhenitsyn blushed at the recollection of it, but the German seemed to have forgiven him and was truly pleased by their meeting. He had been sentenced to ten years' hard labour, and it was clear to Solzhenitsyn that he wouldn't live

way

unexpected meeting

which he had becoming accustomed in

in the cell

started out

on

his convict's career.

—

Germany again. The days flew swiftly

to see

by. Solzhenitsyn soon found that sleep was becoming less necessary, and he joined more and more in the evening discussions and entertainments. He did some of his recitations, including poems bv his favourite, Esenin (Victor Kagan remembers his reading "Letter to a Woman" and "To a Fallen Maple Leaf"). A cell-mate of about the same age, Konstantin Kioula, was writing and reciting his own verses, and for the first *

Kagan suggests that Divnich was not as sincere as he seemed to Solzhenitsyn and that he loved provoke argument for its own sake. Divnich had also, it seems, had links w ith the Frankfurtbased NTS, or Narodtio-trudovoi soyiiz (Popular Labour Alliance), the best-organized and most

to

militant of the anti-Soviet political groups in the emigration; man\' years later, after twenty

years in the camps, he was persuaded to w his

former associates.

rite a

book about the

NTS

in

w hich he denounced

SOLZHENITSYN

[224]

time since his arrest Solzhenitsyn

felt

the urge to write again.

Not

stories

—

now, but poetry poems about life in prison, rather like Kioula's, with their narrow range of subjects that meant so much to the inhabitants of the archipelago:

"The

First Parcel,"

"To

My

Wife," "To

My

Son."

more about the special prison institutes for scientific research that thev were all bound for. Such institutes had originated in the thirties and were the logical culmination of a number of different developments in Soviet society. On the one hand there had been In Cell 75 Solzhenitsyn learned something

the great series of purges of the technical intelligentsia, beginning with the trials

of the "wrecker-engineers," and the Industrial Party, and on the other

growth of Gulag and the system of forced labour resulting from the collectivization and the purges. Initially the tendency was for all the victims to be thrown at random into the labour camps and to be used as fodder for the hard-labour brigades, regardless of whether they were engineers or peasants. But this was terribly wasteful. Moreover, it became apparent that the rooting out of the "bourgeois specialists" was not simply wasteful but was also delivering a death-blow to the nation's plans for industrialization, particularly at the ambitious tempo that Stalin had set for it. The Soviet government was hard put to it to manage without them. But it was ideologically unacceptable, and in terms of crude power politics inexpedient, to release the specialists or admit that an error had been made. And so the special prison institutes came into being, equipped with laboratories, research apparatus, workshops, and in some cases whole factories, which were then filled with prisoners capable of running them and producing results in their the rapid arrests

field

made during

of specialization.

Such prison institutes and factories were directly analogous with the labour camps thrown up to tackle the great construction projects in Siberia and Central Asia. Of course, the process of selection for them was rough and ready. Academics continued to perish digging post holes in the frozen soil of the far north, just as bricklayers continued to die in the salt mines of Siberia

and

fitters

and turners continued to collapse

in the quarries of the Urals,

but

camps as a normal source which had begun in 1929,

the very fact of a conscious orientation towards the

of labour for every conceivable kind of project,

indicated a fundamental shift in the government's attitude towards them, and

was extended

The

to the institutes as well.

and best-known example of a prison institute was that set Leonid Ramzin, the chief defendant in the Industrial Party trial of 1930 (whose appearance on a group photograph had led to the downfall of Solzhenitsyn's adopted "uncle," Vladimir Fedorovsky, in Rostov). Ramzin's case was unusual in that he had enthusiastically collaborated with at his trial and been their star witness, so that he may have been the promised a special reward before his conviction. In any event, he became

up

earliest

for Professor

NKVD

head of an institute for the study of thermal sively

by

electricity staffed almost exclu-

prisoners, and there he invented something

known

as the "single-

pass boiler," an outstanding contribution to the thermal-energy industry that

Special-assignment Prisoner

[225]

was internationally recognized as a scientific breakthrough. Ramzin was awarded a state prize for his efforts and granted a free pardon, an example that \\ as to have a powerful influence on the attitudes of future prisoners committed to these special institutes. appears that a

It

thirties

owed

number

their genesis to

of other Soviet technical developments in the

work bv imprisoned

scientists,

including a series

of railway locomotives and innovations in the fields of artillerv and tank con-

But the best-known and best-documented field in which prisoner was the Soviet aircraft industrv. In the great purge of 1937-38, large numbers of leading aero-engineers and aeroplane designers were arrested and jailed, including the outstanding designer Andrei Tupolev, who was hvstericallv accused of selling aircraft designs to the Germans. Once the arrests had been carried out, the Soviet air industrv virtuallv collapsed, to which the authorities responded by putting all the factories and workshops behind barbed wire and turning them into a prison industrv. Tupolev, who had been sent to a prison institute in Bolshevo, just outside Moscow, was summoned by the and asked to list all the arrested aero-engineers he knew and to head a new research and development institute in aircraft design (later known as TSAGI).* He agreed, and was joined by a number of other outstanding designers, including V. M. Petlyakov and M. Mvasishchov between them thev were responsible for almost the entire Soviet programme of military-aircraft development in the period leading up to the Second World War. Both the Tupolev-5 bomber and the Petlvakov-2 fighter were designed and developed in Bolshevo, and a number of other aircraft were taken through the earlv planning stage. Later the institute was evacuated to Omsk, and in the summer of 1941 Tupolev and about two dozen of his leading engineers and designers were pardoned and released. The following year several more were released, and by the end of the war that particular prison institute was shut down.^ This was not the end of the prison institutes, however. A new one was set up after the war at a place called Bolshino for the development of rocket technology, and it was there that Sergei Korolyov, the "father" of Soviet space travel, invented his liquid-fuel jet engine. He, too, was rewarded \\ith a pardon and a release. In 1946 Bolshino was split into two, one halt going to Rybinsk, on the upper reaches of the Volga, about 160 miles north-east of Moscow, and the other to Taganrog, in the south. Somewhere along the line the prison institutes acquired the nickname of sharashka,i and in September 1946 Solzhenitsyn was dispatched to the Rybinsk sharashka, where jet engines struction.

research plaved a crucial role

NKVD

—

W

*An

abbreviation for TsentraPny aviastroitePny gosiidarstvenny

institut

(Central State Institute for

Aero-construction).

tNo

one seems

known

to

know

as a sharaga (of

ness). Professor

the origin of this term. Before the

which

sharashka

is

war such

—implying

the diminutive form

Georgi Ozerov, an engineer,

later

wrote

a short

a prison institute

book about his experiences w hich circulated

the Tupolev institute called Ttipolevskaya sharaga (The Tupolev Sharaga),

samizdat

in the late sixties

and was published

(in

was

familiarity, not smallin in

Russian) in Frankfurt in 1973 (Possev-\'erlag).

SOLZHENITSYN

[226]

were still being made. His work, however, had nothing to do with engines and seems to have been purely mathematical. He remained there for five months before being moved to another sharashka, in Zagorsk. Once more he was kept awav from production work, but this time was given to understand that he was here only in transit: his final destination v\ as to be yet another sharashka, which was to be opened shortly.

Such a move suited Solzhenitsyn perfectly. Life in the prison institutes was easv compared to that in the labour camps. The hours were long and the prisoners were still surrounded by armed guards, but the work was not arduous and the rations were much better. At Zagorsk, Solzhenitsyn was given the post of librarian. One of the people he met there was the naval lieutenant Victor Trushliakov, the fabulous confidence trickster described in volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago, who had managed to get transferred to the sharashka from a harsher prison by convincing the camp authorities that he was a firstclass inventor. Among his manv inspirations was a device for deflecting radar beams, and Solzhenitsvn was ordered to do all the mathematical calculations and formulae necessarv for a realization of this project. Solzhenitsyn could make neither head nor tail of Trushliakov's fantasies, but no sooner had this project collapsed than Trushliakov invented another one, having to do with the possibility of interplanetary travel. Nothing came of that either, but one of Solzhenitsvn's engineer friends was convinced that Trushliakov was a new Newton, while another friend, Dimitri Panin, was much impressed when and claimed to know the remote control. secret of a device for manoeuvring tanks by Trushliakov's inventions were the fruit of that desperate urge of all the convicts to find a safe niche for themselves and somehow escape the dreadful Trushliakov turned up

general duties.

at

another

Moscow

Not onlv had news

institute

of the "paradise islands" of the sharashkas

percolated through to the other camps but so had the information that a rare genius like Ramzin or Korolyov might buy his freedom \\ ith his brains, which acted as a powerful stimulus to evervone else. these aspirations, of course, for in this

who

wav

The

authorities encouraged

the scientists and engineers revealed

they were and could be directed to more profitable work.

An

attempt

was made to squeeze useful knowledge out of some German prisoners of war as well. In the aftermath of victory in the Second World War and its occupation of East Germany, the Soviet Union had shipped whole factories back to copv German products and belatedlv learn the technology for itself. Soviet technicians learned for the first time how to make mcxlern watches and clocks, sensitive cameras, up-to-date radios and record players, and a host of similar items. About six thousand Germans and their families were arrested and transported to the Soviet Union to work on rocket and space technology.

German expertise, the Soviet German brains by getting their

Later, having discovered the usefulness of authorities thought they could find more

prisoners of

\\

ar to

fill

out lengthy questionnaires on their special

skills

and

These questionnaires were gathered up and sent to on jobs thev had Zagorsk for evaluation, and Solzhenitsvn became the translator for a group held.

Special-assignmknt Prisonkr

[227]

of engineers charged with assessing their worth. But the exercise misfired.

Germans knew enough

If

be useful to their captors, thev either kept quiet about it or shrouded their knowledge in a fog of misleading jargon. And if they seemed to make sense and to be trying to convey something, it usually meant they knew nothing. the

The most

to

Zagorsk was four-volume Russian dictionary of Vladimir Dahl. Dahl

significant event of Solzhenitsyn's brief stay at

his discovery of the

was the nineteenth-centur)- lexicographer who compiled the first (and in many ways still the best) comprehensive dictionary of the Russian language. Although of Danish origin, he was dedicated to the idea of freeing literary Russian from Latin, French, and German influences, and to that end he became a great collector and student of Russian folklore and Russian folk expressions and a champion of the spoken word as a model for literary works. His is still the standard collection of Russian proverbs (a copy of \\ hich Irina had given to Solzhenitsyn in childhcxxi),

became the foundation found

it

on the

and

all

his discovery.

in

one of

He

used to be "a

his letters to Natalia,

What

his dictionary, like

pleased

Dr Johnson's

in English,

Russian dictionaries to follow. Solzhenits\n

library shelf soon after his arrival in

by

him.^

for

flat,

Zagorsk and

\\

as delighted

two-dimensional creature," he w rote

but then "stereometry opened up" before

him most was Dahl's

habit of grouping words according

to root, rather than in conventional alphabetical order,

and the

\\

ide range of

Dahl's vocabulary, as evidenced by the vast store of examples that Dahl had

amassed with which to illustrate his meaning. Alany of these were proverbs that Dahl had collected for his other work, but all his examples seemed to be filled with a lapidary folk wisdom that bordered on the proverbial, and Solzhenitsyn was amazed by their conciseness and precision.

He

resolved to

two of Dahl every day and

the

uncommon

read a page or

to

memorize

all

words and expressions he found there, an exercise he later dubbed his daih "literary gymnastics."*^ His purpose, he said, was not to "collect" these words but rather to immerse himself in the Russian language, to absorb its spirit and refresh himself. Later he started copying them into a series of improvised notebooks that he labelled "Selections from Dahl," which he quickly filled with his spidery handwriting. He has them still, divided into alphabetical sections, each corresponding more or less to a volume of the dictionary. They were later to form the foundation of that uniquely broad, idiosyncratically earthy lexicon that instantly identifies and sets apart Solzhenitsyn's mature literary style from that of all other Russian writers past or present. In early July 1947 Solzhenitsyn was taken from Zagorsk to Butyrki under armed escort to await vet another move in the chess game that the authorities appeared to be playing with him. As

in his previous

journeys since arriving

he and and en route he tried to slip an uncensored postcard to a fellow passenger to post for him, only to discover at the last minute that the man w as a labour-camp guard homeward bound on leave. His fourth stay in Butyrki w as only fleeting. On 9 July he w as shipped in the sharashkas,

gers,

his guards tra\elled in the guise of private passen-

SOLZHEXITSYN

[228]

out again to Marfino, on the northern outskirts of Moscow

next to Ostankino Park (which housed the botanical gardens), to "Special Prison No. 16." This

was the Circle

sharashka that

became the

,

setting for virtualh- the

\\

hole of The First

(Marfino becomes Mavrino in the novel), and in chapter 6 Solzhenitsvn

describes the arrival of

and the w

A

a\-

in

\\

dozen and

Gleb Nerzhin (based on

his

own

experiences) there

hich the prison institute w as established.

a half prisoners

were summoned from the camps and brought to Moscow seminarv, which was duly encircled

the ancient building of this former

The

prisoners looked back to those days as to an age of pashad been possible then to turn on the BBC at full yolume in the prisoners' quarters (they hadn't yet learned how to jam it); to \\ ander about the compound in the evenings as they pleased and to lie in the long, dewy grass, which, contrary to regulations, had not been cut (the grass was supposed to be

with barbed wire.

toral simplicity. It

kept short to prevent the prisoners' crawling up to the barbed wire); and to gaze at the eternal stars

of

.\1\

D

—

or, if

he was on night duty,

them under the barbed w ire

The

at

the mortal, sweating figure

sergeant-major Zhvakun, as he raided the balks of timber and rolled to take

theological seminary in

home

w hich

for firewood.''

the main

body of the

institute

w as

housed was a neo-classical brick building that terminated in a low, hexagonal tower enclosing a vaulted church (quaintly called "Assuage Mv Sorrows"). It was here in the church that the library w as situated and here that Solzhenitsvn worked for the first six months of his stay in the sharashka once again he had been appointed librarian. Beside the church stood a grove of onehundred-vear-old lime trees and a small, vaulted house in which a bishop had formerly' lived, together with a huddle of temporary buildings erected

—

for the administrative staff.

w as even more comfortable than in Solzhenitsyn's previous during the first few months. To begin with, the shathe other half rashka occupied about half the main block of the seminary was still in the process of conversion by ordinary prisoners (another camp was set up next door to house them).'" The sharashka inmates slept in two Life here

sharashkas, especially

—

rooms on the second floor, on double bunks equipped with mattresses, sheets, blankets, and pillows, and each prisoner was allowed a small bedside table for his belongings. At night the blinding light of the prison and labour-camp cells was replaced bv a blue-tinted bulb. Also on the second floor were a medical room and the prison commandant's office, w hile the floor below housed the laboratories, and the ground floor the canteen and various It

w orkshops.

took about six months to get the institute organized, assemble the

equipment, prepare the laboratories for research, and fit out the workshops. .Most of the equipment came from the German company of Lorentz,* w hose furniture and apparatus had been shipped back to the Soviet Union in three train-loads. The work w as carried out bv the engineers, while necessar\'

* KopeIe\ (see below

)

w

rites that the

equipment came from the firm of some from each.

nitsvn and Panin sav Lorentz. Perhaps there was

Philips, but both Solzhe-

— Special-assignmf.nt Frisonkr

I229J

Solzhenitsvn slouly sorted through the mass

ot technical l)ooks and journals had been collected (in Russian anti h.nglish as well as ( Jernian), classified and catalogued them, and continued to do a certain amount of translation. The initial project for \v hich the institute was being prepared was to develop

that

a walkie-talkie radio tor the police.

mcxst interesting thing to happen to Solzhenits\ n durmonths was his meeting, and subsecjuent friendship, with two men who were each in their different ways to inlUience his thinking and Dimitri Fanin and Lev Kopeleave an indelible imprint on his imagination lev. Panin arrived in Marfino first, in October 1947, and in his memoir on

Undoubtedly, the

ing those early

—

described his

this period has

The morning

after

my

meeting with Solzhenitsvn.

first

arrival, as

stairs.

I

I

was drying m\'

man

towel, an impressive figure of a

in

an

face

on

a

govcrnmcnl-issuc

officer's greatcoat

came dow n

the

took an immediate liking to his candid face, the bold blue eves, the It was Alexander Solzhenitsvn. was starved for fresh air, so within There was nobodv about except for several

splendid light-brown hair and aquiline nose. After

my

moments

transport and a I

month

followed him outside.

prisoners conversing beneath

Since ance,

who

was

I

v\

I

in Butyrki,

still

wearing

as quicklv

I

some ancient lime

my camp

trees in the grass-grov\'n yard.

me

rags that gave

surrounded by the old residents

such

a

—except

cut-throat appearfor Solzhenitsvn,

bv himself some vvav off. But when the others had satisfied their curiosity about me, he came over and suggested we take a stroll together. 1 shall never forget the first thing he said to me: "As I was coming dow n the stairs, w hat strolled

should

I

see in the darkness of the hallway but the face of an icon of

Panin was indeed

a strikinglv

handsome man.

Our

Saviour.""

In The First Circle Sol-

zhenitsvn based the character of Dimitri Sologdin on Panin, and in his description of his physical appearance likened

him

to .\le.\ander

Nevsky,

dwelling lovingly on his high, straight forehead, regular features, piercing blue eves, blond moustache and beard, superb physique, and erect bearing the very figure of a medieval knight.

chivalrous

Ihere was something romantic and

—archaic even — about Panin's whole bearing and character,

yet his brain, especially in matters of science,

Panin was in the

six

and

was diamond sharp.

years older than Solzhenitsvn and had witnessed scenes

Revolution and Civil

War

that

had

filled

him with

revulsion for the

Bolshevik regime from childhood on. Later he had become a

civil

engineer

and had been repelled bv the systematic persecution of the engineers in the early thirties, which had nourished in him an ever-fiercer hatred ol the Soviet regime. At one time, it appears, he had contemplated joining a Cossack uprising in the Kuban, but nothing came of this plan. Throughout the thirties he had worked in a variety of engineering jobs, and in July 1940 had been sentenced to five years in the labour camps after being denounced by a fellow engineer. In 1943 he had been given ten more years for "defeatist propaganda," and by the time Solzhenitsyn met him, had spent seven years in a variety of labour camps in the Arctic North. During that time he had endured unbelievable

SOLZHENITSYN

[230] privations and yet had

and, above

all,

come through them with sound

health, a clear

an impressive grasp of moral values and

a fanatical

mind,

devotion

to justice.

Lev Kopelev arrived in the sharashka about a month later than Panin. was older than Solzhenitsyn by five years (he became the inspiration for "Lev Rubin" in The First Circle) and was superficiallv Panin's opposite: a deeplv committed Marxist, long-time Party member, and loval supporter of the regime. He had been arrested on the same front as Solzhenitsyn and convicted on similar charges, yet he believed even more passionately than Solzhenitsyn that the whole thing was a gross error and that any day he would be pardoned. He defended the Soviet regime with even more conviction than Solzhenitsyn was now able to do, and clung to the belief that his arrest and the whole phenomenon of the camps and the purges before and after the war were temporary deviations from the norm, the result of Stalin's inadvertent misunderstandings, and would sooner or later be corrected by He,

—

too,

an all-wise Party.

Both Panin and Kopelev were men of principle, passionately committed to their separate views of the world, and they had every reason to detest one another. Yet they were the best of friends, having already met and liked one another in Butyrki before arriving at the sharashka. In his book on his experiences, Panin writes that he had been won over when Kopelev, a relative novice in the camps, who was still being sent parcels by his family, broke a loaf of white bread in two and handed Panin half. After seven years on starvation rations, Panin had forgotten not only how white bread tasted but how it looked. "If Lev had given me only a tiny bit of it, I would have been rapturously happy. But here was half a loaf! His grand gesture affected me. ... A generous nature and a nobility of spirit distinguished Lev from ordinary men."'^ Kopelev, too, was a handsome man. "I

Of their

first

looked up and saw, in the centre of the gangway,

prime of

life,

with dark eyes and

In the sharashka, Kopelev

grew

a a

hair.

He

beard,

meeting, Panin says, a striking

had the build of

let

his hair

a

man

in the

guardsman."'^

grow long

to conceal an

and looked every inch an Old Testament prophet. It was Panin who had gone to the sharashka commandant to persuade him to summon Kopelev from Butyrki, although Kopelev was a philologist and literary historian and had no technical qualifications at all. Solzhenitsyn had supported Panin's recommendation on faith, disregarding the fact that his own job as librarian might be at risk if Kopelev came, since Kopelev was incipient bald patch,

German and

in several other languages as well. Kopelev's work in where he had reached the rank of major, had been to organize anti-Nazi propaganda behind the German lines and undermine morale, and he had been arrested for opposing the hard policy taken by the Soviet army in the occupied German territories and for resisting the looting and terror carried out under the slogan "Blood for blood, death for death." He had been denounced for being "soft on the Germans" and had narrowly escaped

fluent in

the Soviet army,

Special-assignment Prisoner a

charge of treason. Solzhenitsyn, in The First

Circle,

[231]

sums up the complexity

of Kopelev's feelings and his essential generosity of spirit

when

describing a

by some (lerman prisoners of war at the sharashka to celebrate Christmas, to which Rubin (Kopelev) alone is invited from among the Russians. "For them, this enemy major who had spent the whole war spreading discord and destruction among them was the only man they felt close to and could understand." As for Rubin, he had been "reluctant to come to this celebration, but the others had been so insistent, and he was so sorry for them in their loneliness, that he could not bring himself to cast a shadow on their festivities by staying avxay.'""* What Kopeley later remembered from his first meeting v\ ith Solzhenitsyn were the latter's piercing blue eyes and firm handshake. The two of them established that they had served (and been arrested) on the same Prussian front. They must have fought their way through some of the same towns and villages, and Solzhenitsyn might even have heard Kopelev's voice over the military radio. Finally, they had both been arrested by the same section of Smersh. Kopelev was genuinely delighted by this series of coincidences but noticed a slight frown on Solzhenitsyn's face as they compared their experiences. Solzhenitsyn later told him that the coincidences were so great as to make him suspicious, and he had momentarily wondered whether Kopelev was an informer. But the suspicion quickly faded. Solzhenitsyn was gratified to learn that Kopelev had shared his distaste for Soviet looting and violence in the occupied territories, and was later to incorporate a number of stories that Kopelev told him into his narrative poem Prussian Nights. The two men proved to be close in other ways. Kopelev was the first prisoner in the four months that Solzhenitsyn had been librarian to ask for the newspaper files (the library had a complete run of Pravda and Izvestia). Solzhenitsyn was delighted. "It just had to be," he told Kopelev (according to Kopelev's memoirs). "We were on the same fronts and swept up by the same counter-intelligence. And we've both got the same appetite for new ssmall party held

papers.

It's a

They

sort of kinship.""

Kopelev had been a young and History when correspondence course there. Kopelev was a Ger-

also shared a passion for literature.

lecturer at the

Moscow

Institute of Philosophy, Literature,

Solzhenitsyn had taken his

manist and a polyglot. Solzhenitsyn was chiefly interested ture,

in

Russian

litera-

but Kopelev's passion for philology coincided with Solzhenitsyn's

enthusiasm for Dahl and the history of the Russian language. Learning of Solzhenitsyn's linguistic exercises, Kopelev energetically assisted

obtaining a complete set of Dahl for the Marfino library. Later, zhenitsyn

left

him

when

in

Sol-

w ith him, Kopelev w hen they were reunited in the fifties, he handed Solzhenitsyn to make his set complete once more. the sharashka for Central Asia, taking volume 2

kept the other three; and

them over

to

Last but not least, they were close

politicall\'.

zhenitsyn's Leninist views and valued in larly in the hostile

environment of the

him

Kopelev approved of Sol-

a political supporter, particu-

sharashka, v\'here a clear majority

was

SOLZHENITSYN

[232]

against Party orthodoxy- Both

still identified with the establishment, both had been active members of the Komsomol, both had fought enthusiastically in the Red Army until the dav of their arrest, and both felt that there had

been some awful miscarriage of

justice in their cases; if

it

could only be brought

competent authorities, all would be put right and they would be restored to freedom. Kopelev supported his belief with a veritable bombardment of petitions (to the Central Committee, to the Supreme Court, and even to Stalin personally), which he kept up throughout his time at the sharashka. Solzhenitsyn, having had more experience, was beginning to cool in this respect. But he, too, on ai rival in the sharashka, had continued to hope for an amnesty and had still dreamed of a commutation to exile, although these hopes fairly soon faded. By the end of 1947 he was ready to acknowledge them as a pipe-dream. "Whenever they start talking about an amnesty," he wrote to Natalia, "I smile crookedly and walk away."'^ If Kopelev appealed to the loyalist and politically orthodox side of Solzhenitsyn's temperament, Panin's influence was on the side of scepticism and hostilitv. Kopelev appealed to his desire to believe, Panin to his urge to dissent. Panin was in some ways the engineer par excellence, a cool, rational, analytical thinker whose views had been tested and tempered in the fire of the labour camps. He seemed to have been everywhere in Gulag: in the far east, the far north, the Urals, European Russia. He had travelled in an infinity of prison vans and convict trains, languished in transit jails, been in punishment cells and solitary confinement, done general duties and been a trusty, fought hand to hand with the professional thieves and more than once been close to death. He was a veteran with a wealth of experience and an authority that Solzhenitsyn immediately recognized. His views were harsh and uncompromising, contradicting manv of Solzhenitsyn's favourite notions, but Solzhenitsyn instinctivelv acknowledged their rationality and their grounding in the reality of Gulag. On the subject of amnesties, for instance, Panin was unremittingly pessimistic. "Don't fool yourselves with day-dreams, gentlemen.* They won't let us go. If we were in the camps, maybe they'd let us out into the 'big compound' of exile. But from the sharashka never. They've let us into their secrets here. For all our luxuries our mattresses, sheets, and pudNo, gentlemen, there's no dings we shall have to pay a high price. to the notice of the

.

.

—

.

—

— .

point in counting the days, we're in for

.

.

life."'^

Panin had enormous intellectual and physical passion and was an indimarrow of his bones. He was what the Russians call a chudak.

vidualist to the

An

"eccentric"

is

perhaps the nearest one can get

in English,

but the English

word "gentlemen" was his way of setting himself apart from all forms of Soviet usage. In normal intercourse with one another and members of the administra* Panin's persistent use of the

tion, prisoners (in all the

camps) were forbidden

to say

"comrade" and were obliged

term "citizen." Peretz Hertzenberg, another former inmate, says that prisoners

were invariably of the

polite to

one another and always used the second-person

more common "thou" form.

to use the

at xhe sharashka

plural Vy (you) instead

Special-assignment Prisoner

I233I

much crankiness and inconsequentiahtv, whereas chudak impHes more of the sainted innocent and the inspired inventor. This stood out in, among other things, his invention of, and devotion to, a "hmguage (jf maximum clarity." As it appears in Solzhenitsyn's novel on the sharashka suggests rather too

Sologdin's (Panin's) "language of fictional invention (as

was being

does

much

maximum

entirely faithful to reality. In his

pages to this concept, defining

it

clarity" looks like an inspired

else that Solzhenitsvn describes), vet

memoirs Panin devotes

as a device for refining the

he

several

Russian lan-

words and expressions, and improving its accuracy and precision. At one point, where he talks of founding it on a vocabulary of "a few hundred basic words," he seems to toy with a concept similar to Basic English, but elsewhere comes perilously close to Hitlerian nonsense about the harm done to the purity of a language by foreign borrow-

guage, purging

it

of

all

foreign

ings, advocating a greater Slavonicization of literary Russian that recalls the

German

"Aryanization" of the

was

some ways

thirties.

concept, and Panin thought it might even be applied to scientific language, despite the vast amount of international terminology already present in scientific Russian (as in all scientific languages). His theories evoked an answering chord in Solzhenitsyn, whose study of Dahl had led him to a preoccupation with Slavonic roots and folk language, and in Kopelev, whose philological interest was aroused. But the It

other two

in

a typical engineer's

men were more

professional in their linguistic pursuits and too

well acquainted with the nature of the Russian language, with

its

vast

num-

ber of foreign words and borrowings, to imagine that such a purification

could work. In The First Circle Solzhenitsyn (not unsympathetically) parodies

Panin and his theories.*

few months while the sharashka was being organized was extremely relaxed. Solzhenitsyn, Kopelev, and Panin lived in the larger of the two main cells, laughingly dubbed the "house of commons" (the smaller, engineers' cell was the "house of lords"). Reveille was at 7 a.m. and lights out at 10 p.m., and the working day lasted for no more than eight hours. When off duty, the prisoners could stroll in the compound, and the evenings were largely their own. The food, too, was excellent in comparison with what they had been getting: fourteen and a half ounces of white bread a day, an ounce of butter, wheat-meal porridge for breakfast, a meat course for lunch, and a dessert after lunch. But still the prisoners were often hungry and dreamed daily of the possibility of receiving parcels, which for Solzhenitsyn, Panin, and Kopelev was temporarily excluded: the sharashka' s location was a state secret and couldn't be revealed to the prisoners' families, so that it took some months to set up the mechanism whereby parcels could be sent via a neutral address. Kopelev describes the modest "feast" they organized to celebrate the New Year of 1948. A luckier cell-mate had given them a quarter of a tin of concentrated

During those

first

the prisoners' schedule

* In the revised, ninety-six-chapter version of The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn has strengthened the

element of parody and shows

less

sympathy

to Panin's views.

SOLZHENITSYN

[234]

cocoa from his parcel.

From

breakfast they had saved

supper some bread, and thev obtained kitchen. This

a

some sugar and from

couple of pots of hot water from the

was consumed on Panin's upper bunk

(similar

groups of

pris-

oners were celebrating elsewhere in the room). Panin proposed a character-

"Gentlemen ... word "orator"]. People but what kind of happiness

am

not golden-tongued [he did not want to use

istic toast:

I

the

usually wish one another a 'happy

toast the possible.

to

I

is

possible for us?

.

.

New

Year,'

.1 raise this sober goblet to

drink to our not going hungry in the

new

year.

.

.

.

And

our friendship, gentlemen.'"^

Such evening gatherings of the three friends (a new and adult version of "the three musketeers") became very much the rule that winter, but on other occasions a larger group of prisoners would meet in the library to hold discussions, relate their experiences, stage impromptu concerts, or conduct poetry readings. The prime mover, according to Panin, was usually the boisterous Kopelev, who adored such gatherings. As Solzhenitsyn later noted of Rubin in

The First

them.

Circle,

He found

he "couldn't exist without friends, he suffocated without

solitude so intolerable that he couldn't even wait for his ideas

mature in his head, but hastened to share them with someone while they were still only half formed.'"*^ Kopelev had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Russian literature and could recite the work of dozens of poets from memory, which made him very popular and much in demand.* Solzhenitsyn also shone in these recitals. On one occasion they both read from JVlayakovsky's early works (though neither cared much for the poet any more), and Solzhenitsyn read from Esenin. Kopelev also sang some popular songs by Soviet composto

ers.

Solzhenitsyn seems to have enjoyed these performances during his

months

at

the sharashka and even revived

some of

his set pieces

student days and the concerts at Kaluga Gate. In general he

felt

from

first

his

comfortable

in this all-male society, enjoyed the manly comradeship, the boisterous jokes, and the feeling of oneness that derived from a sense of shared privations and shared pleasures. In a sense it reminded him of the camaraderie of the and in The First Circle he was to liken their cell to an ark or a ship trenches and, by implication, its occupants to sailors afloat on the high seas. But this

—

created problems as well, for he just as strongly interests flict

and of

his puritanical urge to

always present

self-discipline that

in

felt

the tug of his other

work. Panin captures exactly the con-

him between spontaneous gregariousness and the

ascetic

he had cultivated since childhood.

man

Solzhenitsyn

is

seems to get

tired.

a

of exceptional vitality,

He

often put

who

up with our

is

so constituted that he never

society simply out of courtesy,

was wasting on our idle pastimes. On the other hand, good form or allowed himself some time for a little amusement,

regretting the hours he

when he was *

Kopelev

v\'as

in

evidently the originator of the satirical reworking of The Lay of the Host of Igor into "The and the Fox" (see chapters 50 and 49 ot The

Soviet judicial jargon, and of the fable First Circle).

"Buddha's Smile"

Oow

(see chapter 54)

\\

as the vsork of

Solzhenitsyn and Semyonov.

— Special-assignment Prisoner we

i-35J

\\ itticisms, and varns. On such occadeepened and his nose whitened, as if carved was not often one saw this side of him his sense of humour.

got enormous pleasure from his jokes,

sions the flush of Sanya's cheeks

from alabaster. It He had the ability

—

things that usually escaped the rest

audience

artistry that the

mannerisms, gestures, and intonations of us and to reproduce them w ith such

to catch the subtlest

literally

—

rocked w

ith laughter.

himself in this fashion only very occasionally if it

was not

at

among

Unfortunately, he indulged his close friends

—and only

the expense of his work.-"

Kopelev also noticed Solzhenitsvn's need for solitude. They all required from time to time, he writes, especially when walking on occasion in the yard, and then the other two would try to guard the one who had asked to be left alone and preserve his privacy. When it was Solzhenitsvn's turn, he "used to pace up and down our path, tall and thin, in his long greatcoat, w ith the earflaps of his army cap lowered, w hile Panin and I patrolled the exit from the main square in the yard"^' to see that no one interrupted him. On such occasions, another prisoner reports, his face would be set in a mask of it

unapproachability."

The "work"

was engaged upon, apart from his daily with Dahl, was writing, to which he had returned \\ ith

that Solzhenitsvn

linguistic exercises

an eager sense of relief as soon as he had settled

at the sharashka.

His

first

thought had been to continue the big novel about the Revolution that he had

commenced

and he had decided to go back to the beginning and wrote and completed some chapters under the provisional title of Love the Revolution but was dissatisfied with what he produced. His youthful self-confidence had vanished, to be replaced b\- scepticism and selfdoubt. The October Revolution, \\ hich w as to be the focal point of the novel, no longer shone in his mind w ith unclouded glory, and his title now seemed to contain a note of irony that had not been intended \\ hen he first thought start afresh.

of

as a student,

He

it.

Eventually, he was to abandon the project completely, but not his interest in the Revolution. Feeling

inadequate to handle

Kopelev was steeped

for information.

it,

he turned to Kopelev

wanted to know Kopelev, Solzhenitsyn approached him one day and said:

ideal source for the sort of things Solzhenitsyn

to

What

need

I

is

and was an According

in revolutionary history .

the general sequence of events and the characters of the people

want you to do it without embroidery and without omissions, and impartially as you can. I know you're biased. You're a Marxist-Leninist and must keep to the Party line. But I understand that and can Don't exaggerate, don't try to make propamake the necessary allow ances. ganda, and don't hush anything up. Give different versions and different points of view And don't prevent me from making up my own mind and deciding for involved. But

and

I

as objectively

.

.

.

.

myself. Don't pressure me.-'

Most of Kopelev's information was imparted walks in the yard or

sotto voce

in

over cups of strong tea in

w hispers during a

their

corner of the library

SOLZHENITSVX

[236] in the evenings.

On

these occasions Solzhenitsyn

interpretation of the events he

ment would express doubts about Lenin prove, he asked Kopelev, that

\\

was describing, and if

ould challenge Kopelev's for the purposes of argu-

as well as Stalin.

Lenin had remained

W as

it

possible to

would have no famine? Could

alive there

been no campaign against the kulaks, no collectivization, e\er\"thing be blamed on Stalin? And the\ argued o\er Stalin, too, for although Kopelev held Stalin responsible for individual mistakes, he still regarded him as a great leader and genius. Kopelev took up a position that he himself has since described as

Marxism

at all,

China Sea."

He

"Red imperialism," combming Soviet patriotism w ith Rusthis point of view Stalin's main justification wasn't

From

sian nationalism.

,

but rather his conquest of territorv "from the Elbe to the

had made Russia great again.

He told Kopelev that book of memoirs he had read about 1917, a soldiers' meeting had been described at w hich an elderlv veteran had interrupted an orator calling for w arm-w ater ports w ith the exclamation "Screw you and vour seas! \\ hat are we supposed to do, plough them?"-"^ Such peasant common sense appealed to him, and he felt that Stalin had no interest in, and no time for, the common people. Lenin, Bukharin, and perhaps Trotskv had shown some concern, but not Stalin. Stalin and his supporters were interested onlv in more territorv in w hich to trv out their theories. Another argument of Kopelev's that Solzhenitsvn resisted was that of historical determinism. What would have happened, he asked, if Kornilov had displaced Kerenskv, if Krasnov's Cossacks had dispersed the Congress of Soviets and shot Lenin and Trotskv?* Nothing w as predestined or inevitable. He had once believed in the theorv of historical determinism himself, he said, but could no longer bring himself to do so, because he couldn't believe the analvses of those w ho had been proved wrong so many times. Even the greatest of them, Marx and Lenin, had been totally wrong in their Solzhenitsvn had no patience with this argument.

in a

predictions.

When

it

came

to discussing these

same things w

ith Panin,

however,

Solzhenitsvn took a different tack. Panin regarded their heated debates on the truth or

falsit\'

of Marxism-Leninism w ith undisguised contempt.

w

firm Christian, he

as

As

a

convinced that the Bolsheviks were the instruments

of Satan, that the Revolution had been imported into Russia by foreigners

and tion.

aliens,

and that salvation could come onlv

Russia had to purif\ herself of

all

— hence

other things, purifving her language

maximum

claritv."

to Kopelev's side.

Faced with

For

all

as a result of divine interven-

foreign bodies, and that meant,

this sort of

his scepticism,

among

his search for the "language of

argument, Solzhenitsyn switched

he could not disow n the Revolution

completelv, and he would contradict Panin as fiercely as he had his other friend.

*ln September 1917 General Kornilov led an abortive rebellion against the war minister and de of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerenskv. Ataman Petr Krasnov, leader ot the Don Cossacks in the spring of 1918, had attempted, unsuccessfully, to enlist German support for a dri\e north against the new Bolshex ik government in Petrograd.

facto leader

Special-assignment Prisoner At one point he sought

a

way

I237]

out in the teaching of Kastern philoso-

phers. Kopelev notes that one of Solzhenitsyn's favourite books, and one that

he kept most thoroughly hidden from the other prisoners, writings by sages of the ancient

F^ast.

I

le

was

v\'as a

collection of

particularly attracted

by the

teachings of Lao-tse, the Chinese 1 aoist philosopher, and bv such apo-

phthegms

The

as

"Weapons

are the instruments of unhappiness and not nobilitv.

noble person conquers unwillingly.

He

cannot enjoy killing people."

And: "The more prohibitions and restrictions you have, the poorer the people. The more laws and regulations you have, the more thieves and outlaws you will have too.""' Kopelev shared Solzhenitsyn's admiration for this predecessor of Christ (Lao-tse also offered a version of "return good for evil"), but Panin v\ as as implacably opposed to taking the Eastern thinkers seriously as he was to Marx and Engels. It was simply heresy, he said. True faith could not be the fruit of reason but was a gift from God, to be accepted by the heart and not the mind. Only the exact sciences were susceptible to the powers of reason. All else, including the subject matter of the social sciences and the humanities, could be understood only intuitively, and to try to study them led merely to schism and renunciation of the true church. Among the things the three friends debated was the question of nationalism. Solzhenitsvn pointed out to Kopelev that when the war had reached a critical point for Stalin, he had rallied the nation by appealing to its patriotism and invoking not Marx and Lenin but Russian heroes of the past: Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov, Kutuzov.* Marxist internationalism was a sham. Nor was he impressed by Kopelev's assertions that internationalism w as not incompatible with the fulfilment of national aspirations, that "inter" meant "between," not "above" or "without." In this, Solzhenitsvn was closer to Panin, and shared Panin's suspicions about the role of Jews and foreigners in the

Communist

A

Party.

slightly farcical illustration of Solzhenitsyn's prej-

udices occurred, according to Kopelev,

had named leaders that they aries as a

were

to discuss the

like

Gershuni, Gorovits, and Gots, Solzhenitsyn exclaimed

Jews, whereas he had regarded the Socialist Revolutionparty of the peasants. Solzhenitsyn also believed, according to

Kopelev, that all

when Kopelev came

Revolutionary party in the history of the Revolution. After Kopelev

Socialist

all

all

the Trotskyites in the 1920s and 1930s had been Jews, and

Bukharin supporters Russians.

On

the subject of Jewishness and

its

irreconcilability with the Russian

were agreed. Kopelev, they were history and literature than they did, and spoke Russian equally well, yet also knew German and German literature very well, and if he were to live in Germany for ten to fifteen years, he would pass for a German. "But neither I nor Dimitri could do that," said Solzhenitsyn. "And it's not just us. Look at our caretaker, Spiridon. He can national identity, Solzhenitsyn and Panin

willing to admit,

*

knew more about Russian

Alexander Nevskv had defeated and turned back the Swedes

ander Suvorov was hail

a

in the thirteenth

century. Alex-

highly successful general under Catherine the Great. Field Marshal Mik-

Kutuzov was the hero of

Russia's defeat of Napoleon.

SOLZHENITSYN

[238]

All he knows about Pushkin are some dirty jokes. But even if he were to live his whole life in Germany, or even Poland, he would remain a Russian peasant wherever he went."-*^ Kopelev, said Panin, simply didn't want to own up to his true nature and admit that he was a Jew, a member of the chosen race, and not a Russian. Solzhenitsvn greatly admired both his new friends, looked up to them as older and more experienced than he, and was grateful for their company. "It is only natural," he wrote in one of his letters to Natalia, "that men so rich in intellect, education, and experience should make such a big impression on a young man who, on the whole, was a mere provincial and had seen very little up to then."^'' He treasured their debates as marking one more stage in his education. The camps were his true universities, not the physics faculty in Rostov. And he was beginning to realize that he had fallen into a magic circle that was the freest in the whole of the Soviet Union. Where else could he have discussed so franklv and openlv the true history of the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks, the role of 1 rotsky, the disasters of collectivization (Kopelev had participated in that, too, and was a mine of information), the meaning of the purges, the catastrophic start to the Second World

barely read and write.

War?

.

.

.

In Stalin's post-war Russia every conversation they held reeked of trea-

son and "ideological sabotage." Such opinions voiced outside the camps would

have earned them

minimum

at Marlow voices and lard their speech with expletives to preserve the illusion of a normal labour-camp argument. If Gulag was hell, thev were truly onlv in the first circle. Kopelev writes that he first heard this expression applied to the sharashka bv Panin and was never sure whether Panin himself had invented it or was simply passing it on.-^ But it was left to Solzhenitsyn to seize the phrase and fill it with meaning, and that

fino they

meaning had

its

scribed yet free his

two

a

were obliged

of twenty-five years apiece, and even

to speak in

—circum-

origin in the unusual character of the sharashka

—and

in these passionate debates

closest friends.

between Solzhenitsyn and

H IN

THE

FIRST CIRCLE

ONE

manv advantages of the sharashka was that prisoners could unhmited number ot letters, books, and parcels trom home and could send letters out. It was true that all letters and parcels passed through the hands of the securitv officer. Major Shevchenko (he was later replaced b\- Major Shikin), for censorship purposes, but this was a tremendous advance on the usual camp regulations. There was also the comforting fact that the sharashka was situated on the verv outskirts of Moscow By day the prisoners could look into the unkempt grounds of the botanical gardens. By night they could see the pink glow of Moscow's lights reflected in the sky and could hear the whistle of trains leaving the capital for Riga and Yaroslavl. To Muscovites especiall\-, it all seemed verv close and accessible. And yet meetings with relatives were heavilv restricted, and this created a mixture of frustration and longing in the Marfino inmates.' Solzhenitsyn felt these emotions keenlv, for Natalia now lived in Moscow and it was doubly painful to have her so near and yet so inaccessible. But their infrequent meetings w ere a great jov to him. The first had taken OF THE

receive an

.

,

place in Jul\" 1947, soon after his arrival.

Owing

to the secret nature of the

Taganka Prison in Moscow and took place in the officers' club there, for w ives and families were not supposed to know where their husbands were being held. The w hole process w as shrouded in an atmosphere of conspiracy and conducted according to a ritual that Sol-

sharashka,

meetings w ere arranged

at the

zhenitsyn has described in The First

Circle. First

the prisoners had to change

out of their prison clothes and don civilian suits specially issued for the occasion.

Then they were

read a

not to talk about their

work

list

of prohibitions, including

or the location of the prison.

239

strict instructions

At

a later date,

it

— SOLZHENITSYN

[240]

seems, a prohibition was placed on kissing and embracing one's wife, but at this first

meeting embraces were

still

permitted.

Mavrino that prisoners were driven to were not supposed to know the present whereabouts of these living dead, whether they were being brought in from some place a hundred miles away or from the Kremlin, from the airport or from the next world. They were only allowed to see well-fed, well-dressed men with white hands who were no longer talkative, v\ ho smiled sadly and assured them all was well and that thev had all thev wanted. These meetings were rather like those scenes depicted on ancient Greek steles, showing both the deceased and the living people who had erected the monument to him. The steles always had a thin line dividing the other world from this. The living looked fondlv at the dead, while the dead man looked towards Hades with eyes that were neither happy nor sad, but somehow blank the look of one who knew too much.^ It

was due

to the top-secret nature of

another place for their

visits.

Their

relatives

was in fact an open secret to the Moscow wives, and Natalia subsequently went to the Ostankino Park on a number of occasions in the hope of glimpsing Solzhenitsyn through the wire. She was accompanied on these excursions by Panin's wife, Evgenia, whom she had met in the waiting-room during her first visit, and once they narrowly escaped arrest by a suspicious policeman who demanded to see their passports. They

The

location of Marfino

fondly imagined that the

on the grass included

men

their

they could see playing volleyball and lounging

husbands, but

it

was impossible

to get close

enough

to make out their faces. Solzhenitsyn did play volleyball from time to time

and was reasonably good at it (though, according to Kopelev, he was a bossy ^ plaver and tended to intercept passes intended for others). was tender in the Taganka Solzhenitsvn's first meeting at Natalia's and happiest of were "the the extreme and opened a period of two years that .

our years of unhappy

separation,'"^ according to Reshetovskaya, although

.

.

it

was to be almost a year before they were allowed to meet again. On the other hand they were able to exchange letters constantly, and the fact that they were both in Moscow, although totally cut off from one another physically, somehow consoled and reassured them, endowing their lives with a semblance of normality and driving memories of the true face of Gulag into the background.

For Natalia, these were extremely difficult times. She had succeeded in moving to Moscow and was now doing post-graduate studies in chemistry under Professor Kobozev, while living with her aunt on Malaya Bronnaya

—

and overcrowding Moscow was from the front and evacuees with soldiers returning bursting at the seams from the impact of the was still reeling from the provinces, and returning sacrifice for the considerable Natalia had involved and accommodating war Turkins. Their "flat" consisted of a single, large room partitioned to form two smaller rooms, with a small passageway between. Aunt Veronica's mother Street.

—

It

was

a period of terrible shortages

In

the First (Circle

(241

I

one small room, and Natalia moved into the other with. who was now nineteen, while her aunt slept in the passageway. This was all that was left to them of the six room flat that \ eronica had inherited from her mother, for thev had been "compressed," as the saying went, into one room after the Revolution, and the other five rooms had been let to five other families, w ith whom the\ nowshared the kitchen and bathroom.' The Turkins had been pleased to welcome Natalia and offer her a home. Thev had shared her sense of shock and grief over Solzhenits\ n's arrest, although they hardly knew him, had lent a sympathetic ear to her sorrows, and had helped her find her feet in this strange, hectic, and forbidding capital citv. It had been from their place that she had set out for her first meetings with Solzhenitsyn at Kaluga Gate, and it w as there that she met his former sergeant Ilya Solomin, after his demobilization from the army, and heard from him the detailed storv of Solzhenitsvn's arrest. Solomin told her that he had burnt the books he found stored in the how itzer case, but had managed to hide all her letters to Solzhenitsyn and w as now returning them to her. He also gave her Solzhenitsvn's surviving notes on the Samsonov campaign and his front-line copy of Esenin's poetrv, which Natalia immediately sent on to Solzhenitsyn at Butvrki w ith a new inscription inside: "Thus w ill everything that is lost return to you."* Solomin, whose entire family had been slaughtered by the Germans at Minsk, now had nowhere to go and lingered at Malaya Bronnaya for a w hile. After much discussion and an exchange of letters w ith Natalia's family in Rostov, the Turkins arranged for him to move there and to occupy Natalia's old room, which he duly did. The arrangement was not a success, however. Solomin, with his barrack-room ways, old soldier's swagger (a prominent feature of Soviet soldiers returning from occupied Germany), and taste for vodka and late nights, unavoidably scandalized the old ladies and played too much havoc w ith their normally quiet life. The arrangement lasted less than a year, but in the meantime Solomin had succeeded in gaining admission to Rostov University to study engineering and was able to move into a univerand

sister slept in

Veronica's daughter, the younger Veronica,

sity hostel.

In 1946 Natalia had also moved from the Turkins' into a university hosShe had been reluctant to go at first. The Turkins were relatives and despite the overcrowding, she appreciated their affection and support. The hostel would be lonelier and more impersonal and w ould call for more selfreliance. Moreover, the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that once again began to cloak the city as Stalin's paranoia reasserted itself meant that she dared not admit even to the existence of a husband who was a political prisoner she \v ould at once be expelled from the university. But the overcrowdtel.

—

*This

is

a literal translation of the Russian:

translation of Reshetovskava's

book dresses

Tak this

i

up

offers a paraphrase instead of a direct quotation.

double meaning.

vse uteryannoe k tebe vernetsya.

in pseudo-biblical

The

The

English

language, and Kopelev

point of the new inscription lay in

its

[242]

SOLZHENITSYN

ing and the cramped conditions at Malaya Bronnaya were growing intolerable,

and so she was obliged to make the move.*^ The hostel was located at Stromvnka and her life there, with five roommates, was much as Nadia Nerzhin's is described in The First Circle (Solzhenitsyn questioned Natalia on this subject when he was working on the novel). Life was austere, as it was in most European capitals during the earlv postwar years. Food and clothing were rationed, the room at Stromynka was sparsely and shabbilv furnished, and Natalia had only a modest graduatestudent grant out of which to meet her needs. Furthermore, the oppressive secret that she was obliged to carrv round w ith her could be shared onlv with Kirill, Lydia, and the two Veronicas, and this served to increase her sense of loneliness and isolation. Bv the summer of 1947, when she and Solzhenitsyn had their first reunion, she w as in the final stages of completing her doctoral dissertation for Professor Kobozev. The original deadline had been 1 September, bu^ she had succeeded in getting it postponed until November. This meant that her Moscow residence permit and her place in the hostel were guaranteed for another vear. After September, hov\ever, her grant came to an end, and her mother was obliged to send monev from Rostov to support her. She also had no right to a ration card and was forced to buy a temporarv card on the black market. Her position was most precarious. If her dissertation failed, she would be forced to look for a job and another room, or perhaps to return to Rostov. At length, at the end of November, she delivered her dissertation to Professor Kobozev, who declared himself satisfied. In December food rationing was abolished, and in Januarv Natalia was taken on as a post-graduate assistant in Kobozev's laboratorv. Her wages turned out to be less than the grant she had been getting, but she was able to manage, and she was above all relieved to be able to stay in Aloscow. Throughout the spring of 1948 she prepared copies of her dissertation for the formal defence, composed an article and a lecture on the theme of her dissertation, answered some queries

by the two chemists appointed to "challenge" the dissertation at her it, and mentallv prepared herself for the great day in June. On 23 June her formal defence took place, and her dissertation passed on a vote of twentv to two. Lydia and Kirill and some university friends from Rostov were there to hear her defence and join in the celebration banquet afterwards, and onlv Solzhenitsvn's enforced absence cast a shadow over her day of triumph. With her dissertation out of the way, Natalia decided to resume her musical studies and signed up for classes with a teacher called Undina Dubova at the Moscow University Club. She had never abandoned her love of piano playing and possessed her own Becker piano, a treasure that she had installed in the hostel at Stromvnka, where she frequentlv played duets with her best friend and room-mate, Alexandra Popova. She also played fairly regularly with Kirill, and after practising hard was selected to play in concerts with some of Dubova's other pupils. Dubova was herself a pupil of the renowned raised

formal defence of

In

the First Circle

[243I

and teacher Heinrich Neuhaus and on one occasion took Natalia to to play for him. He seemed quite pleased with her playing. Music also managed to bring her closer to her husband. Since his student da\s, Solzhenitsyn had not taken much interest in music, but at Marhno he became a passionate radio listener, tried to catch all the music programmes, wrote at length to Natalia about the pieces he had heard, and was enthusiastic about her return to piano lessons and her success at amateur concerts. Perhaps, he wrote, this w as the "real significance" of her stay in Moscow, and he urged her to "become a great and brilliant pianist" while she was there. Later, in characteristic fashion, he began to construct ambitious plans for her. When she went to giye a series of concerts in Leningrad, he hailed the news that she had deyeloped a professional stage presence and congratulated her on haying made her first yisit to Leningrad not as a tourist but as "a yictor among instrumentalists." He adyanced the slogan "Less chemistry and more music!" and began seriously to encourage her to take up music professionally.** During these years, \yrites Reshetovskaya, they felt extremely close to one another. pianist his

home

We

exchanged letters constantly, and somehow each keenly felt the life of the Sanya took all mv affairs to heart, gave me advice, encouraged me. And I felt that everything I was doing I was doing not only for myself but also for him. h was so pleasant to cheer Sanya \\ ith mv little triumphs: an examination passed with flying colours, a test lecture that went well, a complimentary remark bv a

other.

professor.

The

letters

warmed

us and sustained our feelings for one another, and

our meetings became celebrations

The

in themselves.^

next meeting that Reshetovskaya describes in any detail took place

on 20 June 1948, just three days before she was due to The two of them had come to anticipate their meetings with all the ardour of young lovers again, and Solzhenitsyn wrote to her that "in the evening after work, he had w alked in the yard for a long time, gazed at the moon, imagined the conversation that was about to take place between us, and thought about how I, too, was probably thinking about him 'more than the dissertation.' " He wrote that after washing his hair he had walked around "in a towel rolled up like a turban so that my hair w ould set properly by tomorrow,"'" and that he would take extra care over polishing his shoes and shaving. At their 1948 meeting Solzhenitsyn announced to Natalia an astounding coincidence: Nikolai Vitkevich had arrived in the sharashka* Solzhenitsyn a year after the first,

defend her dissertation.

already in

knew from Natalia, via Nikolai's mother, that Nikolai had been arrested two months after him, and sentenced by a military tribunal to

April 1945,

ten years' imprisonment, the standard tribunal term.

*Kopelev dates V'itkevich's arrival was two vears earlier, in 1948.

in the sharashka as 1950,

\nd

he must have know n

but Reshetovskaya confirms that

it

SOLZHENITSYN

[244] that Nikolai

had been sent

to Inta, in the northern Urals,

on the verv edge

of the Arctic Circle, to serve his sentence. But there had been no direct contact between them, and thev had hardlv expected to meet again while

both were prisoners. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn's

first

response on hearing (from

the Marfino security officer) that his co-defendant was on his

and that he had better "watch

way

to the

had been one of alarm. It was a more or less fixed rule that co-defendants weren't sent to the same camp, and he suspected a deliberate provocation and the preparation of a new case against him. But his fears were quicklv dissipated when he found himself face to face with Nikolai. Nikolai was given the top bunk adjoining Solzhenitsvn's, and Solzhenitsyn simultaneously moved from his lower bunk to the upper one to be beside him. After that the two friends spent many nights deep in conversation, running over the details of their arrests and investigations, comparing charges, describing their camp experiences and exchanging news of Natalia, Lydia, Kirill, and other friends. So intense were these conversations that they earned themselves the derisive nickname of "the Solzhenitsker brothers" and were the butt of many jokes by Solzhenitsyn's

sharashka

his step"

comrades." Their meetings outside Orel and the mock-portentous "conference of the big two" now seemed an age away, and although it appeared for a short while as if thev might still be "two trains travelling side by side," in reality their formerly parallel tracks had begun to diverge. Exposure to arrest and the rigours of the Gulag had evoked different responses in them and had developed character traits that had hitherto lain dormant or been overlooked in the flush of their

youthful friendship.

Perhaps the area in which

this difference

of politics and ideas. Solzhenitsvn was

still

now counted

for

most was that

passionatelv engaged in the ideas

had obsessed him in youth and that were ultimatelv responsible for his and imprisonment. He was still conducting a continual, agonizing dialogue with himself about the meaning of life, the nature of socialism, the importance of Marx, the role of Lenin, and the significance of the October Revolution (his heated debates with Panin, Kopelev, and some of the other prisoners were all part of this process). Nikolai, on the other hand, proved to be less fiery than of yore. Already as a student his opposition to the Soviet system had been tinged with quietism. He was against state interference in that

arrest

his personal life, detested the "big brother" mentalitv

much more

than did

But although in some ways he had gone further in his hostility to the regime, he had always been more passive than Solzhenitsyn and had had a clearer notion of what he was against than what he would have put in its place. It had been Solzhenitsyn who had led in elaborating all sorts of programmes for improvement and in drawing up "Resolution No. 1." Now Nikolai wanted to be left alone more than ever. The camps seemed to have knocked the stuffing out of him, and he simply Solzhenitsyn, and simplv wanted to be

left

alone.

wanted to turn his back on it all and retreat into personal life.''^ Another factor was partly political and partly personal. Of Solzheni-

In

the First

(^irci.k

I245J

two new friends, Nikolai much preferred Kopelev (as Solzhenitsyn had predicted to Kopelev beforehand). Kor all his vouthful rebelliousness, Nikolai had been a Party member and w as the son of a Partv member. He still disliked Stalin and regarded most ideology w ith scepticism, but he perceived that the best w a\ to get on w as to keep in w ith the establishment and tsyn's

accept

authority in return for a quiet

its

the outset (and the feeling

w

life.

But he had detested Panin from

w

as mutual). Panin,

ith his chivalr\-, his elevated

notions of honour, his religiosity, his open contempt for the authorities, and

make

his steadfast refusal to

whom

trouble-maker

a deal

w

them, w

ith

Nikolai most distrusted

t\pe of idealist and was an uncomfortable

as the

—and

reminder of the price of coming to terms. Nikolai's usual response when Panin entered the room, and particularl\- w hen an\ political discussion started,

was simply

we have

to leave

only one

it.

As Solzhenitsyn

We

life.

were born

motto was that to hell w ith

later said, "Nikolai's

to live, so let's live

and

everything else."'^ Solzhenitsyn, however, was moving in precisely the opposite direction.

Not only did he

relish these political discussions

own

ishment for his

and

them

find in

rich nour-

ideas but he found himself draw ing steadily aw av from

The

Kopelev's position and closer to that of Panin.

process

brilliantly

is

w here Nerzhin (Solzhenitsyn) is show n as being midway, in his political and philosophical views, between Rubin (Kopelev) and Sologdin (Panin) and arguing w ith both of them. The w hole novel is an extended debate on the ideas and concepts that preoccupied all three of them at the sharashka and is, on one level, a dramatization of Solzhenits\"n's spiridescribed in The First

tual

odvssev there.

Circle,

The

struggle he show

s

in the novel

betw een the tw o sides

met-

for possession of Nerzhin's soul resembles the struggle that took place,

aphorically speaking, betw een Panin and Kopelev for the allegiance of Sol-

zhenitsyn.

Explaining later the contrast betw een his ow n position

and that of Nikolai, and the course expressed

For

at the sharashka

development took, Solzhenitsyn

as follows:

it

mv

his

part,

true that

I

I

was never able

to get

aw av from

politics or

mv

convictions.

used to try to defend Marxism during the early years of

my

It is

impris-

onment. But it turned out that I w as incapable of it. There were such strong arguments and such experienced people against me that I simplv couldn't. They beat me every time. And so gradually I moved awav from Marxism, and at the sharashka I describe an intermediate position of scepticism, w hen I didn't quite believe in

it

anv more. At

believe in anything, still

at

the sharashka,

all

don't

I I

mv

ing Dostoyevskv, actualh- ...

was

macy of

it

was

I

a

most convenient

anything, leave

began gradually

began gradually to return to that

events,

know

to

me

abandon

alone.

.

position: .

began

to

move

I

don't

Then, w

this scepticism.

old, original childhood concepts.

in the first place idealist, as they call

.

hile

In fact,

Through

I

read-

ever so slowly tow ards a position it,

that

is,

of supporting the pri-

the spiritual over the material, and secondly patriotic and religious. In

other words,

I

began to return slowly and gradually to

all

mv

former

views.'"*

SOLZHENITSYN

[246]

But not quite

all.

When

Peretz Herzenberg, a fellow prisoner, said to

Solzhenitsyn one day that he recognized in him a believer, Solzhenitsvn declined to confirm

it.

The

question of religious belief, he said, was a verv

complex problem, and he implied

As

that he

was not ready

for Vitkevich, the truth of the matter

to solve

'^

it.

seems to be that he was

ordinary individual and that this ordinariness stood out

when

a rather

contrasted with

the sharp originality and intellectual distinction of Solzhenitsyn's other friends.

Kopelev,

who

got on well with Nikolai, nevertheless couldn't stand his habit

of referring to famous Russian writers as "Al" Pushkin, "Mickey" Lermontov,

"Nick" Nekrasov, and "Volodya" Mayakovsky.*

He

had developed

a

sentimental nostalgia for his early childhood in Daghestan, assumed an air of stoic resignation that (his

he regarded as

fitting for a

man

of

Moslem upbringing

dark skin and wide face enabled him to press the connection quite

far,

although he had not a drop of Daghestanian blood in him), and brought

a

on women, regarding all actresses and ballet dancers as "whores" by definition, and men who married them as "unmanly." He loved listening to oriental music and was predictably flattered when Kopelex' nicknamed him "Djalil."'^

Moslem narrowness

It is

to his views

perhaps indicative of Solzhenitsvn's cooling relations with his old

was found for him in The First Circle, although some aspects of the character of Ruska Doronin (notablv his love affair with Clara and his occupying the neighbouring bunk to Nerzhin's) were based on Nikolai. Perhaps a factor in their estrangement was the circumstance that Nikolai worked in the vacuum laboratorv and that their paths did not cross in their work. Nevertheless, their friendship survived the camps and was even revived for a brief period afterwards, but it no longer bore comparison with that intensity of feeling that had existed between them as youths and young men, before their arrest. Among the new friends w ith whom Solzhenitsvn now spent much time was the camp artist, Sergei Ivashov-Musatov (who appears as Kondrashovfriend that no prominent place

Ivanov

in

The First

Circle,

Solzhenitsyn having preserved even the double-

barrelled surname). Ivashov-Musatov vidual

who reminded Kopelev

eccentric in his theories and

of

Don

was

a tall, skinnv, exotic-looking indi-

Quixote, and seems to have been equally

sudden enthusiasms. On Solzhenitsyn he exerwas to last well into the period when they

cised a powerful fascination that

were both

free

men

again. Sentenced to twenty-five years for having attended

novel bv Daniil Andrevev,t Ivashov-Musatov had been brought straight to Marfino and ordered to paint pictures, at the rate of one a month, to decorate the offices and rooms of the prison institute. According a secret

reading of

a

*

These are the approximate Knglish equivalents (except Volodya) of V'itkex ich's nicknames. Andreyev was one of tuo sons of the u ell-know n Russian u riter of the earlv tw entieth centurv Leonid Andreye\' (1871-1919). In 1949 he was arrested and jailed for ha\ing written a t Daniil

novel that was judged "anti-Soviet," and the

manv

friends

who had

visited his

readings from the novel v\ere arrested too. Kopele\' mentions an engineer

Kemnits, w ho had also been

jailed as a result

of hearing Andreve\ read.

at

home

to hear

the sharashka, Victor

In

the First Circle

[247]

Ivashov-Musatov was trained as a mathematician but had an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature and philosophy, and subscribed to a sort of toggv theism that was not limited to anv one recognized religion.'' Ivashov's subjects make it sound as if he somewhat resembled the preto Panin,

Raphaelites without their Christian strain: Parsifal, The Holy Grail, ^ Othello

and Desdemona portraits and landscapes dramaticalK' painted to express strong ,

emotions and views.

It

seems from Solzhenits\n's embarrassingly lengthy

descriptions of the paintings in The First Circle that he approved verv

of Ivasho.'s output at the time, though he

much

was suspicious of an excess of

emotion and questioned Ivashov's romanticism in his literary pictures: did not Ivashov's doctrine of "ennobling" reality come perilously close to the cosmetic injunctions of socialist realism?

On

the other hand, the\' could also

be traced back to the tradition of Russian religious art and the view s of the late Tolstoy, with which Solzhenitsyn felt much more comfortable and familiar.

What seems

have fascinated Solzhenitsyn most of

to

all

was Ivashov's

concept of his vocation.

was not an occupation or

For [Ivashov]

art

only possible

way

human

of

life.

a form of knowledge. Art was the For him, everything around him landscapes, objects,

characters, or shades of colour

—

—

all

had their ow n particular resonance,

which he could unerringly identify and place in the tonic scale. There was a stranger to, and that w as indifference. He \\ as well know n for his extreme likes and passionate dislikes, and his uncompromising .

.

.

only one emotion he w as

opinions.'**

Solzhenitsyn

may

well have been taken with one other aspect of Iva-

shov's technique, brought into play

w hen he was painting

not sufficient for him, Ivashov asserted, simply to look at a ing his portrait.

and

He

his gestures, in

And

that nature

needed to

him,

talk to

listen to

portraits. It

man when

was

paint-

him, observe his smile

order to perceive his inner nature and essential character.

and that character were what he

tried to capture

on canvas

or on paper.

The

engineer Nikolai

nitsyn had

first

met

in

Semyonov (Potapov

Butyrki and

in the novel),

who reminded him

w hom Solzhe-

so vividly of the

sagacious engineers he had seen round the Fedorovskys' table as a child,

Semyonov had been chief engineer during the Pow er Station, one of Stalin's prize projects, and had been captured by the Germans during the war. The Germans, discovering w ho he w as, had asked him to w ork for them in restoring the dam, but although Semyonov had confirmed his identity, he had refused to collaborate. He had also made no fewer than three attempts to escape from became another firm

friend.

building of the Dnieper Hydroelectric

the

Germans, but on

his repatriation after the

war he was accused of betray-

Germans and sentenced to ten years for sabotage. Panin Semyonov as an unthinking robot w ho was ready to do anything for

ing secrets to the

detested

* Ivashov's picture The

Holy Grail

later

hung

in Soizhenitsyn's

living-room in Ryazan.

a

SOLZHENITSYN

[248]

the Soviet regime and take orders without thinking about the consequences.

Solzhenitsvn in time would

who

of Soviet scientists

make

come

army work to

to similar conclusions about the vast

are content to take orders

from above and

to

the Soviet svstem strong, despite their private reservations about and

even hostility to the svstem, but at the sharashka his views had still not developed that far. Theoretically, he \\ as moving closer to Panin, but the force of habit

was hard

terms with

to break,

and

in practice

political loyalists. Besides,

he had no trouble remaining on good what was more important to him at

—

was not a man's political beliefs but his ethical stance view that even Panin endorsed in his friendship with Lev Kopelev. Somewhat different from Solzhenitsyn's other friends was the Marfino caretaker, Spiridon (who appears under his own name in The First Circle). Like Nerzhin in the novel, Solzhenitsvn used to enjoy sawing firewood in this stage of his life

the vard in the mornings before breakfast, usually with Panin. Panin had

summer, he

slept

by an open window

had been an admonition not in the fiercest

his shirt

and words to Kopelev in Butvrki the window), and he made a habit, even

need to "subjugate the

fixed ideas about the

to close

flesh." Invariably, winter

(his first

of Arctic frosts, of walking about the yard without a hat,

unbuttoned almost

to the waist,

and with

v\'ith

topcoat slung noncha-

a

moment the snow disappeared, he would dispense not only with the coat but also with his boots and walk barefoot, seeking out the roughest ground and deliberately walking on gravel, cinders, and other material with hard edges and corners. Panin was also the first to get up in the mornings. It had been his idea to saw firewood, and he persuaded Solzhenitsyn, and sometimes Kopelev, to join him (Nerzhin rubbing himself with hoar-frost in the novel before commencing work with lantly ov'er his shoulders. In spring, the

Sologdin

is

another autobiographical

detail: the

"walrus"

still

had

a taste for

the cold). Since the preparation of firewood was, strictly speaking, Spiridon's

and since Spiridon provided the tools, the three men got to see of him, but it was only Solzhenitsyn who cultivated him and made

responsibility

quite a lot a point

of visiting

him

at

other times as

Panin laughingly called for all

it

Solzhenitsyn was imitating

Tolstoy, in his search for

well.'*^

and he was

right,

his favourite nineteenth-century writers,

above

his "going to the people,"*

wisdom

at

the the feet of the

common

people.

But unlike Tolstoy, he had another compelling reason: his study of Dahl's dictionary had convinced him that the path to a revitalized and healthy literary language lay through a return to peasant idioms and the popular roots of everyday speech. Spiridon was a living and accessible repository of that speech and could teach him far more than books could about the state of the living language.

The

fruits

of this study are also to be seen in The First

where some of the best pages (and some of Solzhenitsyn's most writing) are devoted to an account of Spiridon's

patterns

(a

Spiridon's

own

device Solzhenitsyn was to employ on a larger scale in

* Solzhenitsyn evidently took the joke in

The First

life in

Circle.

good

part, for

he made

it

Circle,

interesting

speech

A Day

one of the chapter

titles

in

of

the First (Circle

In the Life of

Ivan

Detiisovich).

But Solzhenitsyn was

paternalistic fallacies of nineteenth-century its

a

worst excesses. Bv underlining,

in

and the

[249] sutticicntlv

aware of the

populism to distance himself from

The First

the similarities betw een

Circle,

common man

contemporary Soviet manages to deromanticize the traditional concept of "the people" the same time refurbishing it for the future use in a more fruitful

\erzhin-t\pe

intellectual

in

Russia, he

(while at

and contemporar\' way). Onl\- much later, in his polemical writings, did he return to a cruder concept of "the people" and betray some of the insights that had enriched The First Circle.

Meanw hile

Solzhenitsyn w as reading more than

his university days.

The Marfino

at

an\ other time since

library contained mainly technical books

but had an eclectic and eccentric collection of general books that Solzhenitsyn seems to have read in

Mommsen's

its

entirety at one time or another, including

History of Rome, Klyuchevsky's History of Russia, and

works bv Darwin, Turgenev, Timir\azev, and Peter Struve. In April 1948 a plan was made to organize these books into a leisure library and add to them s\stematically. Kopelev w as put in charge of it at Solzhenitsyn's suggestion (Solzhenitsyn had declined the task on the grounds of lack of time) and by steadily acquiring new works, mainly in the field of literature, and taking books out on loan from the Lenin Library, was able to see that they had access to a liberal supply of good fiction and poetr\-. It was now that Solzhenitsyn rediscovered Dostoyevsky, finding him far more satisfying than before. According to Reshetoyskaya, he also read Alexei Tolstoy, Tiutchev, Fet, Maikov, Polonskv, and Blok, and urged her to do likewise. "After all, you don't know them," he wrote, adding characteristically in parenthesis, "and neither do I, to my great shame. "-^ He was apparently much impressed by that great French favourite of Russian readers Anatole France and was almost as enthusiastic about the Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov. Most of the writers mentioned by Reshetoyskaya were poets, and it may have been no coincidence that about this time Solzhenitsyn was himself turning from prose to poetry. On his arrival in the sharashka, he had still been immersed in Tolstoy. "Am slowly savouring the third volume of War and Peace, and with it your little chocolates,"-' he had written to Reshetovskava; and Kopelev reports that soon after his own arrival in the sharashka, he had seen Solzhenitsyn poring over a volume of Tolstoy's novel that he seemed to carry everywhere with him. The margins w ere crammed w ith annotations, some of which struck Kopelev as positively blasphemous, such as "no good," "clumsy," "gallicism," and "too wordy," but when Kopelev mentioned this to Solzhenitsyn he dismissed it: "Don't try to frighten me w ith your authorities. That's my opinion. I wrote it for myself. Tolstoy's language is out of date now."-^ His study of Tolstoy seems to have coincided w ith his efforts to write Love the Revolution and, when that failed, with a new prose work about his life in the army. This later piece, which never acquired a title, began w ith a description of life in the horse-draw n transport unit, where he

—

had

first

served. But

when

it

came

—

to describing life at the tront. he keenly

— SOLZHENITSYN

[250] felt

the loss of his diaries and ran into a dead end.^^

The

switch of interest from the distant past of the Revolution to the

his own life did, however, have a liberating effect on and unlocked the way for him to start w riting his first long and successfully completed work, a narrative poem that finally acquired the title The Way. His first idea was to transpose his armv chapters into verse. Since arriving at the sharashka, he had written a great deal of incidental verse poems to and about his wife, a poem to Kopelev on his birthday, poems about life in the camp.^'* He was encouraged by Kopelev, who admired his talent and himself wrote verse at this time. To the list of poets thev read and discussed in the sharashka, Kopelev adds Pushkin, Gumilvov, Pasternak, and Simonov (Kopelev points out that Solzhenitsyn was much less interested in translations: when read some Bagritsky translations by Kopelev, he responded, "What I need are Russian poems about Russia").''' Putting his prose into verse didn't seem to work, however, and Solzhenitsyn decided to go all the way back to childhood for the start of his poem and to work forwards. The armv chapters could come in as a prose epilogue to the main part of the poem, or simply remain as part 2 (this idea was also abandoned in the course

more recent events of his imagination

of time). Part of the reason for Solzhenitsyn's decision to return to his childhood for this

examine

poem must have been a desire to make sense of his life and to reit in the light of his new feelings about Marxism, the Revolution,

Soviet society in the twenties and thirties, and events, such as the purges,

had only vaguely thought about before. In turning to verse as the for what was planned from the start as a longish work, he seems to have been guided as much by practical considerations as by stvlistic questions. Verse was more easily memorized. In the conditions of the sharashka, it was possible for him and Kopelev to write their \\ orks down on scraps of paper and keep them for a while, but anvthing with unorthodox thoughts in it had to be carefully hidden, and when discipline was later tightened and regular searches were introduced, they often had to be burnt. Their verse could then be committed to memory and reconstituted when conditions were safer. Stylistically, the chief influences on Solzhenitsvn seem to have been the nineteenth-century poet Nikolai Xekrasov,* Alexander Tvardovskv, whose Vastly Tyorkin Solzhenitsvn had admired at the front, t and his beloved Esenin. All three poets were verbally inventive, racv and vigorous in their styles, and steeped in Russian folk-wavs, and the first tw o had a strong satirical vein that matched Solzhenitsyn's present intentions. The provisional title of his poem. Volunteers' Highivay, expressed this satirical intent; it was an ironic reference to a recent government decree bestow ing this name on the old Vladimir High that he

medium

*Nekrasov was long narrative

a

famous editor and poet of the 1860s and 1870s. His best-known work

poem Who

set out to explore various regions of Russia

tSee

p. 125

and note.

is

Lives Happily in Russia? detaihng the adventures of seven peasants

on

foot to find an

answer

to this question.

the

who

— I

N T H F. F R S T

Road running out of Moscow

(

I

; I

RCLE

—the road along

\\

I

2 5

I

]

hich convicts sentenced to

hard labour in Siberia in tsarist times had been led from the capital in chains. The official change of name was meant to svmbolize the supposed abolition

bv the Soviet state of hard labour and the enlistment of "\l/,hcnits\n had

still

his return to the (Ihristian faith, he

hccn writing "god" with

began writing

it

with

a

small

if.

After his operation and

a capital letter again.

A Son down

the crime for

It is

\\

hich

we

of Ciui.AG

L303J

now being punished."'" would not have remembered these words what followed. lie knew nothing of Kornfeld, are

possible that Solzhenitsyn

so vividb had

it

not been for

except that for two months the doctor had not

camp compound, which had and was afraid

left

the hospital or entered the

raised the suspicion that he

was

a

stool-pigeon

go there. Solzhenits\ n dismissed the idea as unlikely, but the following morning he was awakened b\' the sound of hurrxing feet and a tramping in the corridor. Kornfeld's body \^ as being hurried to the operating during the night his skull had been cracked bv a plasterer's hamtheatre to

—

operation w as unsuccessful, and the dead man was placed in the morgue adjoining the room where Solzhenitsyn slept alone. It w as then that Kornfeld's ominous last words returned to him w ith new meaning. In The Gulag Archipelago, w here he describes this episode at greater length, Solzhenitsyn quotes the poem that he w rote in the hospital and that marks his return to (Christianity. Recalling how it had been the faith of his childhood, he describes his youthful conversion to Marxism under the inHuence of "bookish sophistries" and the sense of power and certainty this gave him:

mer.

The

Without

Had But then had come

a

rumble,

faith's edifice

quieth crumbled

his

\\

ithin

mv

breast.

journey "between being and nothingness" and his

return to understanding. I

look back with grateful trembling

At the

life I

have had to

lead.

Neither desire nor reason

Has illumined

its t\\ ists and turns. But the glow of a Higher Meaning Only later to be explained.

And now w ith I

the

cup returned

scoop up the w ater of

Almighty God!

I

to

me

life.

believe in Thee!

Thou remained when

I

Thee denied

'''' . .

.

That these were

his true feelings at the time is confirmed bv a letter he wrote immediately after his release from the hospital. He had been apprehensive before the operation, he w rote, but the faith "in God's will and in God's mercy" that he had recenth' acquired had greatly eased his path.-" The closing pages of part 4, chapter 1, of The Gulag Archipelago ("The to Natalia

Ascent"), where Solzhenitsyn mentions his hospital, are

among

the most

moving he has

poem and

recounts his stay in

written. In

them he describes

not only his reconversion but also his credo, the set of beliefs to w hich his prison career and his sufferings had brought lapses

endemic

to

human

him and

weakness, he had tried to remain

to

which, w

ith the

faithful e\er since.

SOLZHENITSYN

[304]

of good in myself. good from evil runs not between states, not between classes, and not between parties it runs through the heart of each and every one of us, and through all human hearts. This line is not stationarv. It shifts and moves with the passing of the years. Even in hearts enveloped in evil, it maintains a small bridgehead of good. And even the most It \\

on rotting prison straw that

as

Gradually

it

became

clear to

me

I

felt

the

first stirrings

that the line separating

—

virtuous heart harbours an un-uprooted corner of

This

v\

as the reason, writes Solzhenitsyn,

rioritv of religion

man

—

religions

all

—over

ideology.

evil.-'

why

he came to see the supe-

"They

struggle with the evil

men)," whereas revolutions "destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them" and then "take to themselves as their heritage the inside

(all

only magnified still more."" Solzhenitsvn concludes his meditation by expressing gratitude for the years of incarceration in prisons and camps, which had enabled him to fulfil

evil itself,

"Know thyself." And then adds

the biblical injunction

having been in

my

life!"

"And from beyond

of his mature writing, for

you

to talk

—

Xot long

you're

after

into the recovery

"Bless you, prison," he writes, "for the ironic parenthesis, characteristic

still

alive!

the grave they answer:

it's all

right

"-^*

Kornfeld died, the gentle giant, Pavel Boroniuk, burst to bid Solzhenitsyn farewell before departing with

room

his transport. If the

evidence of Cancer Ward and The Tanks Knoiv the Truth is may have been threatened with transportation

to be believed, Solzhenitsyn

himself, and there

is

a suggestion in Cancer

ried out Solzhenitsyn's operation

was

Ward

that the surgeon

also transported

who

car-

without warning. In

the novel, the doctor shouts back to the semi-autobiographical Kostoglotov that a section of his tumour has been sent to Omsk for a histological analysis

and that he should inquire there if he wants further information. Omsk is certainly the place to w hich doctors from Ekibastuz would have sent their samples, and it is possible that this incident is autobiographical. The removed

lump was apparently

a

Solzhenitsyn as writing

malignant lymph node, but Reshetoyskaya records

home

to say that, according to the doctors, his tu-

not metastasized or spread to the surrounding tissues. "F'or that reason, the doctors assured me, there are no grounds for further concern."-^

mour had

At the end of February, Solzhenitsyn was released from hospital and returned to the compound. Boroniuk was gone, of course. Panin was in the punishment block and soon to follow him, as were Pavel Gai, Vladimir Gershuni, and the camp jester, Kishkin. The prisoners were sullen, subdued, and

full

of suspicion, while the

ruthlessly

rounded up

all

camp

authorities e.xulted in their victory

and

the real and suspected trouble-makers.

Solzhenitsyn did not resume his old job of brigade leader, nor did he return to bricklaying. For a while he dreamed of taking up carpentry again.

would be good to master this trade too," he wrote in his letter home on I March 1952 the first for a year, because his letter of the preceding Novem-

"It

—

*.\m()ng other things an acknowledgement that Solzhenitsyn's sentence had been experiences easy, in comparison with those of millions of his fellow victims.

light,

and

his

A Son of ber had not arrixcd.

He

(iUi.ag

IV5l

maintained his romantic prejudice

in

taxour ot man-

and complaining about his reading thouincompetence. "A thirtv-year-old blockhead grows up sands of books, vet he can't sharpen an axe or set a handle on a hammer."'" But he was not allowed to be a carpenter. He was sent to work in the foundr\' as a smelter's mate (this w as also a form of punishment, it seems), an experience he w as later to draw on in w riting The Toiderfoot cnul the I art. According to the description given there, the foundrv w as a high-ceilinged iron building dominated b\' a domed, rust-red furnace that stretched from ual labour, calling himself a "sissy intellectual"

.

.

.

w ith its chimnex" disappearing through the roof. Beside it drying-chamber built of rough brick, and there were piles of burnt earth strew n about the floor, interspersed w ith moulds for casting iron and a varietv of shovels, crow bars, and buckets used either in fuelling the furnace or in extracting the molten iron. The work here was probabK- the hardest that Solzhenitsxn had ever done. The foundry w as sweltering hot, there w as smoke evervwhere, and he had to sweat at a varietv of unskilled jobs, from chiselling slag off the furnace to stoking it and lugging the moulds about. But the foundr\' w as also a kev element in the camp's economx', making spare parts for various kinds of machinerv; and it w as run b\' a free w orker, \ asili Frolov, w ho had a genius for fiddling the books, making articles for sale on the side, and securing excelfloor to ceiling,

was

a large

lent conditions for his workers. Solzhenitsxn based the character of \ asili

Brylov, the foundry manager in The Tenderfoot and the Tart, on Frolov,* and

w ords

Brvlov's

in act

1

mav

be taken as indicative of the situation

in

which

Solzhenitsvn now found himself.

now,

vou fabulous quotas. I've worked new foundries, and I've alwavs got on well with the prisoners. Tell me one thing vou haven't got. Your bread ration's the best in the camp. Vou get double porridge and double soup. We make irons to sell on the side, and as for vour togs, I'll sell 'em for vou anv time vou want. .A.nd anv time vou want to mail a letter, just give it to me. Anv time. Right now if \ou want. You've got vour w ork and there's enough for me to \\ ct mv whisLook, bovs,

it's

not a bad

fifteen vears in the

life

camps,

is it? I fix

I've built eleven

tle.-^

camps were made economically self-sufficient camps already were). Each camp became responsible for paving its wav, and a svstem of pavments to prisoners was introduced, depending on their productivity. Some 45 per cent of the value ot what the camp produced was counted as earned income, w bile S5 per cent w ent to the state. But there was a catch. Seventv per cent of the earned income w as deducted to pay for the maintenance of the armed guards, dogs, fences, camp In earlv 1952 the special

(as

the ordinarv

*In the

text of The Reptihlk of Labour

pubHshed to Frolov.

in the Paris edition

(which was the original name of The Tenderfoot and

of his Collected Works, Solzhenitsvn has changed the

the Tart)

name back

SOLZHENITSYN

[306] jail, 1

3

security officers, warders, food and clothing, and so on, leaving about

per cent of the total to be credited to the personal accounts of the pris-

oners.

the

Anything

sum was

that they earned in this

way

\\

as then divided in two.

kept back, to be handed to the prisoner

from the camp, and the other half \\

as

at

Half

the time of his release

converted once a month into vouchers,

with which the prisoners could bu\' sweets, condensed milk, and similar luxuries in the camp shop, or even purchase additional meals in a specially instituted

"commercial" canteen.

of liberalization. The sums involved were quite small, but huge incentive to prisoners; productivity (and consequently the work tempos) rose enormously. The harsh regime was eased in other minor ways. Films were shown more frequently than before, and the secuIt

w as

a sort

they acted as

rity officers

a

somewhat

— not

relaxed their grip

pigeons could no longer survive

among

voluntarily, but because stool-

the prisoners (this was one of the few

made by the prisoners' brief rebellion). Apart from receiving good rations for his w ork in the foundry, Solzhenitsvn continued to receive monthly parcels from Natalia's aunt Nina in Rostov (paid for by Natalia). These were a "source of life" to him, as he put it in one of his letters home ("Thanks to your parcels I am alive, well, and cheerful," he had w ritten to Nina), and had helped sustain him through the preceding icy w inter and his year as a bricklayer. They contained sugar, bacon, biscuits, oatmeal, dried fruit, tobacco and occasionally luxuries like butter and sausages (and even fresh eggs, on one occasion). Nina w as also able to send him felt boots, socks, mittens, a knapsack, a kitbag, and even a pair of goggles to keep the dust out of his eyes, as w ell as domestic essentials like toothpaste, needles and thread, a sponge, a v\ooden spoon, plastic dishes, and little plastic boxes to keep things in. Just as important, in a different way, were the paper, ink, notebooks, and pencils she sent him, not to mention books by Alexei Tolstoy, Ostrovsky, Koltsov, and Blok. He read a great deal of poetry in t^kibastuz, probably to help him in composing his long epic poems at the time, and he also managed to read works by Herzen, Goncharov, Chekhov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Wilkie Collins. His gratitude to Aunt Nina for her devotion and generosity was unbounded. By now she was over seventy and too old to carry the parcels to gains

—

the post office herself, enlisting the services of a

young

relative for this pur-

pose, but she never failed to meet Solzhenitsyn's requests and desires.

tobacco you sent w as out of this world, just as

wrote to her on one occasion.

my own was

to

mother."

He owed

And on

her, he

remember her kindness

"The

you yourself smoked," he

me

like

"a debt too great to be repaid,"

and

another:

felt,

if

"You

are caring for

for the rest of his life.-

more important to him now in that, tor was unable to fathom, Natalia's letters were grow ing rarer and more distant in tone. Throughout 1950 she had written regularly at the rate of one letter a month, retailing new s about her work at the Agricultural Institute, her concerts, various lectures she was tjiving, and her life in Ryazan. Nina's solicitude was

reasons he

all

the

A Son ok

(iui.AG

[3*^7]

At that time she was living in a hostel, but in February 1951 she had managed to get two rooms out of three in a communal flat in a building specially erected for teachers of the Agricultural Institute. The house was a long, low,

wooden building situated on a patch of empty ground in Kasimo\ sky Lane, on the very outskirts of Ryazan, about a twenty-minute bus ride from the communal kitchens and toilets, no bathcentre. Its facilities were modest rooms, wood-burning stoves for heating, but at least the rooms were big enough to take a grand piano, and Natalia was able to move her piano down from Moscow. Simultaneoush her mother, Maria, had moved up from Rostov to cook and clean for her. It was at about this time that Natalia had w ritten suggesting that she use her summer leave to travel out to Ekibastuz to visit her husband. It was almost a year since she had seen him last, and she was feeling desperately lonely. She no longer had her Stromvnka girl friends for company, and L\dia and Kirill were far away. Solzhenitsyn, however, had squashed the idea. "My dear little girl," he had w ritten in answer to her inquiry, "coming to me here is completely useless, because a meeting is absolutely impossible. We can see one another only three summers from now."-*^

—

,

.

Perhaps because of her disappointment o\er

this rebuff,

.

.

perhaps because

of increasing loneliness, perhaps because her husband now seemed so remote

and inaccessible (able to write only twice a year), Natalia found her feelings slowly changing. She started going out more on her own and became an active member of the newly formed R\azan chapter of the Mendeleyev Society. Ihe chapter's executive secretar\ w as a senior lecturer in chemistry at the recenth' opened Pavlov Medical Institute, \ sevolod S.,* who had moved to Ryazan from Krasnodar on the death of his wife. \ sevolod, like Natalia, seemed alone in the world, and the\' proved to have many things in common. His training was almost identical with Natalia's, he had studied (in \ oronezh) under Natalia's former professor from Rostov, and he had even applied to the Agricultural Institute at the same time as Natalia for the vacant lecturer's post that Natalia had subsequently been awarded.-^ Natalia seems to have responded cautiously to his friendship at first, but found the fact that he was ten years older than she reassuring and comforting. Apart from escorting her to and from society meetings, he discussed her chemistry lectures w ith her (he was giving identical courses at the Pavlov Institute), offered her advice, and helped her w ith her work. Natalia's mother, Maria, appears to have liked him very much. She encouraged him to drop in for a meal or a drink even w hen Natalia wasn't there and did ever\thing in her power to encourage the relationship. Despite her earlier affection for Solzhenitsyn, she regarded Natalia's continuing sacrifice of her happiness as

had offered Natalia her freedom and had expressed doubts as to whether he would ever be released. In the summer of 1951, Vsevolod had followed Natalia and her mother pointless, particularly since Solzhenitsyn himself

* \'se\ olod's

Lnion.

surname

is

omitted out of regard for members of his family

still

living in the Soviet

SOLZHENITSYN

[308]

Rostov and had asked her to marry him. She had temporized and gone to her aunt and cousins in Kislovodsk, leaving him with her mother. A letter he wrote to her in Kislovodsk appears to have stronglv affected her, for

to

visit

her

own

letter to

urallv short. "It

Solzhenitsyn from Kislovodsk came out strained and unnat-

seemed

he wrote to her

letter,"

as

though you had

at a later date.

"A

to force vourself to begin

vour

kind of reticence fettered vour

On her return to Rvazan, Vsevolod had met her at the station in a taxi, and from that time on there seems to have been a tacit understanding betw een them, although thev still did not live as man and \\ ife. tongue, and after a few lines you broke off."^"

A

determining factor

in Natalia's decision

was the

arrival in R\'azan of

V'sevolod's elder son, Sergei, then thirteen vears old. Vsevolod had not at

—

told Natalia of the existence of two children bv his former wife thev were staving with relatives in the south and he feared the news might alienate her. But he had told Maria, and she had broken the news to Natalia, and when Natalia saw Sergei, she was captivated bv his liveliness and intelligence. The child appealed to her hitherto suppressed and dormant maternal instincts and, after a period of adjustment, he was able to accept her as a friend and mother. Oddly enough, \'se\'olod, too, aroused the maternal instinct in her. Unprepossessing to look at, prematurelv old for his vears, he was even going deaf at the time thev met and learning to use a hearing aid. But first

all this,

plus his helplessness in dealing with the thirteen-vear-old Sergei,

made him more appealing. was a sudden tightening of securitv once more. The w hole country was again under siege from Stalin's security apparatus and in the winter of 1951—52, just when the situation was growing tense in Ekibastuz (and in man\' other camps), Natalia was summoned bv

only increased his evident need for mothering and

Another contributorv

factor

the chief of the Agricultural Institute's "special section" (responsible for secu-

and asked to fill out another long questionnaire like the one she had been faced with in 1948. Once more she was obliged to say that she was in the process of dissolving her marriage, and to w rite the necessarv information about Solzhenitsvn in the column marked "former husband." On this occasion, however, she resolved to complete the divorce proceedings. Since a divorce had to be announced in the newspaper, and since she did not dare jeopardize her position in Rvazan (where no one knew she was married), she travelled to Moscow gave the Turkins' flat as her home address, filled in the necessary papers, and placed an announcement in the Moscow Pravda, which was much less read than its rival the Moscow Evening News (even so someone at the sharashka spotted it).* At the same time she handed Solzhenitsyn's notebooks, manuscripts, and other papers (including his annotated copy of War and Peace) to the younger \ eronica Turkina for rity)

,

safe-keeping.

She was somewhat strengthened *The

legal formalities

February 1953.

dragged on for

a

in

her resolve bv the unhappy coinci-

while, and the divorce v\as not

made

absolute until

A Son of (iulag

f3vl

one of Solzhenitsvn's six-monthlv letters (the one due in and the approval of her friends. The loss meant that a w hole year was to go by from one letter to the next, v\ hich stretched the thin thread of their relationship to breaking point. In the meantime Lvdia Kzherets, Solzhenitsvn's as well as Natalia's friend, apjiroxed of the new marriage, and Veronica lurkina came down to Rvazan to be introduced and also gave her endorsement. In the spring of 1952, Vsevolod and Sergei moved in with Natalia and Maria on Kasimovskv Lane. le and Natalia did not go through any form of marriage ceremony but simpK announced to the world that henceforth thev would be man and \\ ife. I'his w as the position \v hen Solzhenitsvn left the hospital after his cancer operation and went to work in the foundrv. His parcels continued to dencc

ot the loss of

November

195

1)

I

(still paid for by Natalia), but her letters had now ceased, indicating something was wrong, hi March 1952 he had the chance to w rite again, and sent news of his operation, assuring everyone that he had recovered; and he must have written to Aunt Nina too, for he asked her to "clear up the

arrive

that

uncertainty" for him. She dared not do

it,

regarding

it

as Natalia's

dutv to

him the news. But Natalia was too frightened: she was unw illing to upset him so soon after his cancer operation. The whole business was to drag on until September 1952, when Aunt Nina hnallv wrote, "Natalia write and give

has asked

me

to tell

vou

that

vou mav arrange vour

life

independentiv of

her.""

Solzhenitsvn was puzzled and irritated bv this vague and roundabout means of communication uas his marriage ended or not? He wrote to Natalia again, asking her to amplify this "meaningless, enigmatic phrase" and spell out the true situation. It appears that he still hadn't given up hope of u inning her back. "No matter what you've done during the past two years," he wrote, "vou will not be guiltv in mv eves. I shall not criticize or reproach vou either in mv thoughts or my words. Neither bv mv former behaviour nor mv luckless life, which has ruined and withered vour youth, have I justified that rare, that great love that you once felt for me and that I don't believe is exhausted now. The only guiltv one is me. I have brought vou so little joy, I shall be forever in your debt."''- But it was too late. Reluctantly, Natalia wrote and informed him about her marriage, and that brought their correspondence to a close. Although we have abundant exidence in The First Circle of Solzhenitsvn's feelings about his initial separation from Natalia and their first, "fictitious" divorce, we can only guess at his feelings on learning the truth of this genuine divorce, and Natalia's love for another man. What slender evidence we have suggests that he was incensed and mortallv jealous. Despite his lofty declarations of Natalia's right to leave him and seek her happiness elsew here, he seems not to have believed that she would do so; and when, at the time of their fictitious divorce in 1949, she had assured him of her continuing love and lovaltv, he had confessed, with his usual candour, that that was w hat he had wanted all along. But now the separation was irrevocable, and it seems

—

—

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[310]

that Solzhenitsvn's attitude to his rival

He

terness.

later called

him

was one of deep resentment and

bit-

"a scoundrel tor tempting into marriage a wife

whose husband was still among the living."'^ He was now into the last year of his sentence and beginning to look forw ard to his release. He knew that it was not guaranteed. There had been innumerable instances of prisoners' being charged and sentenced in the final months of their prison term, or simply not being released at all. Even if he was allowed to go, he had been told he could never return to central Russia but was destined for "perpetual" exile. Nevertheless, he had survived the purge of camp trouble-makers that had carried off Panin, Boroniuk, and the

unquenchable optimism he looked forward to making la\' ahead. To Aunt Nina he wrote a request for textbooks on arithmetic, geometrv, and other mathematical subjects. He would trv to become a schoolteacher again. With his prison record, it could and with

others,

the best of

only be

\\

at a

his

hatever opportunities

humble

level in

some

out-of-the-v\'a\' village or small settlement,

hat she sent

him should not be

the standard text-

but he

still

insisted that

books.

On

geometrv, for instance, he specified an older book, "where the

\v

problems for construction." As Reshetovskava points out memoirs, "He w as sure that a person with a mathematics degree, vv ho had worked at mathematics in a sharashka as well, would certainly not have forgotten it and could easilv teach it in a village school. But \\ hat Solzhenitsyn wanted \\ as something for himself, some sort of inner satisfaction, so that even in a village school he w ould be almost a reformer in the method of teaching mathematics. He would conduct his courses on the highest-possible

text offers lots of in her

level.

"'^

In April 1952, when he was studying these books in his spare time, he was surprised bv a summons to see the securitv officer. For a moment he feared that he was not to be released after all, but it turned out that his old school friend Kirill Simonvan was being investigated by the MGB in Moscow. Kirill was now a leading surgeon in a Moscow hospital and w as making a brilliant career for himself (among other things, as the author of some medical monographs). He had separated from Lvdia Ezherets after a short and unsatisfactorv marriage, but in all other respects seemed to be flourishing. Solzhenitsvn w as asked, for reasons he could not fathom, to testify to Simonyan's "anti-Soviet attitudes" and to confirm the testimony he had given during his investigation in 1945. But he refused. Although not ashamed of the answers he had given Captain Ezepov as a green young prisoner seven years before, he was not proud of them either. As a camp veteran, he now knew how unnecessarv it had been to try to answer at all. He did not confirm his former testimony, but on the contrarv renounced it as extracted under duress. Kirill, he said, was a model Soviet citizen. The exact nature of the events surrounding Kirill's arrest and interrogation is still not clear, but from a later, rather garbled account of the matter by Kirill, and from the guarded comments of one or tw o people who knew him in later life,'' it is possible to reconstruct an approximate picture ot w hat

A Son OK must have taken

place.

of homosexual charge (it

It

appears that

(iui.AG kirill

had been detained on some

— homosexuality was (and

uas homosexuality, apparentlv, that had

marriage to Lydia).

I

3

I

is)

a

crime

led to the

i

)

sort

Union

in the Soviet

break-up of

i

Kirill's

laving arrested Kirill, the security organs looked

at his

and presumably discovered his involvement with Solzhenitsvn. Kirill had not been implicated enough to be questioned at the time, but the "anti-So\'iet" character ot Solzhenitsyn's crime offered a convenient weapon w ith u hich to threaten Kirill now, and that was presumably why Solzhenitsvn \v as asked to "confirm" Kirill's anti-Soviet views. Solzhenitsvn's refusal must have been file

rather inconvenient for Kirill's investigator, but the latter chose to ignore

and showed

it

copy of Solzhenitsyn's 1945 testimony as if it were fresh. Kirill (like Solzhenitsyn himself and the rest of their group) was depicted there as a "harmless" malcontent, socially at odds with the tone of Soviet society and dissatisfied with many of its minor manifestations. Reading it in 1952, however, when the\ were all seven years older, and with the eves of a badly frightened man, Kirill w as horrified: it looked like an act of betrayal. Having achieved his purpose of scaring Kirill half to death, the investigator Kirill a

appears then to have offered him some sort of deal his hospital colleagues,

—perhaps

to

inform on

perhaps to perform some other kind of service.

perhaps he was simply kept

some

Or

Whatever it v\as, it had nothing to do with Solzhenits\'n at the time, but it cast a shadow over Kirill's life that was to stay with him until his death, and for which he was to hold Solzhenitsyn chiefly responsible. It also spelled (unbeknownst to in reserve for

later occasion.

Solzhenitsyn) the death of their friendship.

Solzhenitsyn spent the rest of 1952 labouring in the foundry, reading

up on mathematics, and working away steadily at his poetry. His long, autobiographical poem. The Way, had spawned two independent works: Prussian Nights, a verse narrative, and Feast of the Conquerors, a verse play, both of them about his experiences with the advancing Red Army in East Prussia. In the course of 1952 he started a second play, Decembrists icithout December,^

based on his experiences in the Smersh prison

at

Brodnitz, and wrote a

ber of shorter poems, most of which have never been published.

was

later

published, with the enigmatic

title

able light on Solzhenitsyn's developing views

The poem was

a meditation

on the

num-

One

that

of "Russia?" throws consider-

on Russian

history.

poet's search for the "real" Russia, a

Russia of "forthright men," "impassioned cranks," "welcoming doors," and as he put it, where you did not kick a man when he was down, where slavishness was not the norm, and where the wisdom of one's ancestors was not ignored. The poet's aim was not just to praise Russia's

"broad tables,"

and ignore her faults but also to recover a sense of the true nature of homeland. This nature, he felt, was one that could do "without the Slavs without the sacred sword!" Wars and conquest were and v\'arm waters virtues his

.

*This plav

v\as later

.

.

renamed The

Solzhenitsyn's Collected

\\ orks.

Captives

and appears under that

title in

the Paris edition of

SOLZHENITSYN

[312]

unnecessary to Russia, for they had brought only grief and disaster, especially to the

other nations that had suffered from Russia's might.

We

have become universally hated. Everywhere we shall be crucified, Thev will slaughter us on the \ istula, And in China build us funeral pvres.

The

Tartar's indelible birthmark and the foulness of Stalinist filth Have marked us all! Thrice cursed Will be Russia's name henceforth.

Yet there was a

tin\'

morsel of hope.

the true, unique Russia

was

still

However

delicate

and

fragile she

remained,

cherished in the hearts of her hundred mil-

and this Russia had still to make herself heard. theme had appeared in some passages in The Way, written a few months earlier, \\ here Solzhenitsyn had addressed Russia as "mv homeland, mv shame," as an accursed, pitiless, ridiculous, insensate native land, unworthy of the name of mother, yet one that he could not help loving immoderately. This time he had sought the blame not only in the Tartar yoke and Stalinist excesses but also in Russian history, and particularly in the unbridled criticism and ridicule that generations of Russian w riters had heaped on their homeland. "Thank you, fathers of the enlightenment! You wanted to ease our way! Yon sowed with great impatience nov\' admire what we have reaped!" Solzhenitsyn's own generation, he felt, had helped to make things worse, by living too much on the surface and not seeing through to the essence of things. Only arrest and imprisonment had opened his eyes lion people,

A

similar

—

to the truth.

'^

Exile for Solzhenitsyn

was only months away.

He

later

wrote

in

The

Gulag Archipelago that in his eight years in prison and the camps, he had never

good word about exile, yet "the dream of exile burns like mind, a flickering, iridescent mirage." It was a dream he himself had cherished from the earliest days of his imprisonment, even if he had thrust it away during the middle years of his sentence. Now, at last, it was to be realized. Although he tried to fight down the hopes that involuntarily rose within him, to preserve a cold indifference, and to remain faithful to the stoicism he had worked so hard to acquire during his three years in Ekibastuz, he could not entirely suppress a feeling of muted exaltation. And yet, mixed with these hopes were feelings of regret. "Only on the threshold of the guardhouse," he later wrote, "do you begin to feel that what you are leaving behind you is both your prison and your homeland. This was your spiritual birthplace, and a secret part of your soul will remain here forever while your feet trudge on into the dumb and unwelcoming expanse of 'freedom.' "^' Solzhenitsyn's sentence ended officially on 9 February 1953. Four days heard anyone say

a

a secret light in the prisoner's

—

A Son of CiLlag

I

i

•

^

1

together with a group of other released prisoners, he was led out of the main camp gates under armed guard and marched to the railway station. Superstition decreed that you should never lo(jk hack at vour last prison; otherw ise vou w ere doomed to return there. According to another tradition, you should throw your spoon at it, so that it didn't pursue vou (alternatively, you should not leave the spoon behind; otherwise you would be obliged to return for it). Solzhenitsyn decided to take his spcKm w ith him. He had moulded it personally in the Kkibastuz foundry and v\anted it as a keepsake. .At the railway station Solzhenitsyn's group mingled with hundreds of other prisoners brought there from other camps in the gigantic Karaganda complex. Together the\' v\ere loaded into a long prison train and set off once more for an unknow n destination. later,

i8

EXILED "IN PERPETUITY"

FIRST few davs of journey, FOR THE he had followed three years his

that

this

Solzhenitsvn retraced the route

earlier in

coming

to Ekibastuz, only

time in reverse: north to the old-fashioned prison of Pavlodar, north-east

Omsk, with

shades of Dostovevskv, and east to Novosibirsk. Again same surlv armed guards, the howling dogs, the crowded Stolvpins. It was hard to believe that all this presaged release. But in Omsk a good-natured warder, marvelling at their good fortune, informed five of them that they were being sent south. And in Novosibirsk they were put on

to

its

there were the

a train that did indeed crawl south

—through the dustv wilderness of

Kazakhstan, skirting Lake Balkhash, to Alma-Ata.

due west

to the regional administrative centre of

From

east

there thev travelled

Dzhambul, on the very

midway between Alma-Ata and Tashkent. Thev arrived in Dzhambul in the dead of night and w ere transferred bv lorry, still under armed escort, to the town jail. The next morning thev w ere moved to the local MVD headquarters, where a lieutenant informed them that thev had all been assigned to the district of Kok Terek, on the southern fringe of Kazakhstan's vast desert of Bet-Pak-Dala. A brown sheet of paper border of Kirghizia,

was shoved across the desk at Solzhenitsvn informing him that from this day hence he was to be exiled to the district of Kok I'erek "in perpetuitv" and that in the case of unauthorized departure he could be sentenced to tw enty

imprisonment with hard labour. This w as the first official confirmation had been sentenced to exile as well as imprisonment, but it came as no surprise. All prisoners released from Ekibastuz, w hether or not exile figured in their sentences, were obliged to go into exile. After signing the document, Solzhenitsvn w rote a satirical epigram that ended:

years'

that he

3

'4

— F.

I

sign

w

X

11.

F.

o

" D " N PF RPETU TY I

m\

ith a flourish,

I

heart

is

I

3

'

5

]

Hght.

Like the Alps, basalt or the firmament,

Like the stars (no, not those on \our shoulders so bright!)

Oh, enviable

fate,

I

But can everv word,

Can

the

am permanent! I

wonder, be truer

MGB be permanent too?'

Solzhenits\n and his companions

\\

ere confined to a small

davs, before being marched back to the station.

From

room

for

t\\

bv had come, in the direction of Alma-Ata. But halfwav there, in the small town of Chu, thev were unloaded and made to continue on foot. It w as stiflingly hot, and the members of the group, having cultivated the convict's habit of acquiring and retaining as man\' clothes as possible, were terriblv overdressed. Solzhenitsvn himself was wearing long underpants and his twill trousers, two paddetl jackets (one filched during stock-taking at the camp), and his old, threadbare arm\ greatcoat, w hich he had faithfully treasured since the dav of his arrest eight vears beforehand in East Prussia. In addition, thev all had kitbags and suitcases to carr\ 1 hev trudged for six miles along a dustv road until darkness fell, w hen thev were locked up for the night in the jailhouse of the hamlet of Novotroitsk. The follow ing da\ a lorrx' came to collect them and carried them bumpilv over the last fortv miles to Kok Terek. It was 3 March 1953, just eighteen da\s since Solzhenits\n had been marched out of Kkibastuz. Thev were still to all intents and purposes prisoners under armed guard, and in Kok Terek their destination was inevitabh- the .\I\ I) station, where thev were interrogated b\' an officer of the MGB and asked to fill out a questionnaire and to w rite dow n a curriculum vitae. 1 he\' were issued w ith spetrain

back the w

a\"

there the\' set off

the\"

.

cial identity

cards indicating their status as exiles (thev

have the usual internal passport) and informed that

allow ed to

wished

to travel

Kok lerek for anv reason, the\" could do so onlv w ith permit from the M\'D. Even then the\' had to indicate their desti-

bevond the a special

w ere not

if the\'

district of

nation, the dates of their journcN' there and back, and the place

would be

sta\ ing

w here

the\-

while awav. In the meantime, in Kok lerek, thev were

MVD tw ice a month. MVD

obliged to report to the

Opposite the station Solzhenitsvn had spotted the village school, a low thatched adobe building with an incongruous, neo-classical stone portico stuck on the front. \\ hen the questioning was over, he asked casually ,

where the

district

education office was to be found.

When

the

MCiB

officer

there would be no objection

answ ered his quer\- serioush', he deduced that to his applying for a job there, and permission to go to the education office was granted at once. \\ ithin a few minutes Solzhenitsx n found himself w alking normally dow n the street for the first time in eight \ears. He almost had to

pinch himself to make sure that he w I

W ith

dreaming.

s the meaning of this great free word. I am no sub-machine-guns threatening me from either

wonder w hether evervbod\- know

walking along by myself!

as not

-

SOLZHENITSYN

[316] flank or

from the

rear.

I

look behind me: no one there!

right-hand side past the school fence, v^here a big pig if

I

like,

I

can

v\

on the

alk

left,

where hens

is

It

I

Hke,

I

can take the

rooting in a puddle.

And

and scratching immedi-

are strutting

ately in front of the district education othce. I

walk the two hundred yards

for eternity,

is

already just a

relaxed. In the course of those

higher

to the office,

straighter,

little

my spine, \\ hich my manner already

and

two hundred yards,

I

seemed bent more

a little

haye graduated to the next-

ciyil estate.

Putting on his usual bold front, Solzhenitsyn \yalked into the education office and, just as casually as

that he would

like to

become

when

speaking to the

a teacher.

The two

MGB officer,

announced Kazakh school inspec-

stout

—

in these remote parts, everytors he found inside \\ ere surprised to see him one knew everyone, especially in a professional field like education. He explained that he w as an exile, and after disappearing into an inner sanctum for a while, they emerged to beckon him inside. There he was greeted coolly and circumspectly by the director, "a small, lithe, attractive Kazakh woman about her," who questioned him about his qualiw ith something feline fications and his past career. What clearly interested her most were the reasons for his imprisonment, but Solzhenitsyn brazenly replied that they were .

.

.

and that he was not at liberty to tell her.' She responded by telling him that she had no vacancies for teachers of mathematics and physics. Solzhenitsyn already knew this to be untrue. When the two inspectors had left the outer office, he had got into conversation w ith the typist, a plump, middle-aged Russian woman of about fifty who was herself a former prisoner, and she had told him that Kok Terek v\ as extremely short of mathematics teachers. As for teachers of physics, there wasn't one in the entire district. But there was nothing he could say or do. The three Kazakhs w ere obvioush' frightened by his exile status and in the end compromised by asking him to fill out vet another questionnaire (in duplicate) and write out another curriculum vitae. Ihev would let him know, they said,

a state secret

if a

vacancy occurred.

Solzhenitsyn returned to the MV'D station w ith its makeshift adobe lockofficers here had been affected by the easygoing southern Even the ways of the Kazakhs, and no move was made to lock the new arrivals up for the night; thev were allowed to sleep on some bundles of hay in the yard. This first night out of prison, under the stars, was never to be forgotten by Solzhenitsyn, w ho wrote lyrical descriptions of how it affected him in both Cancer Weird and The Gulag Archipelago. Here is how he expressed it in

MVD

up.

the latter l)ook.

A

night under the open sky!

We

had forgotten what

I

it

was

like.

There had

had no thought of sleep. walked and walked and walked about the prison yard, which was bathed in

always been locks and bars, always walls and soft,

warm

trough,

a

light.

A

cart left

where

it

ceilings.

I

had been unhitched,

a well, a

drinking

small hayrick, the black shadows of horses under an open shed

—

it

was

"in I^ERPl TUITY"

F'"XILED all

Ii'T]

so peaceful, so ancient, so tree troni the cruel imprint ot the

only the third of March, but there was not the slightest almost summer\

M\

1).

It

the night

chill in

was

air.

It

had been in the daxtime. Again anti again the bra\ ing of donkevs rose over the spraw ling \ illage lA Kok lerek, long-draw n-

was

still

,

as

it

out and passionate, telling the she-asses of their love, of the ungovernable strength

Some ot

flooding their bodies.

the braying

w as probably

the she-asses answ ering.

found it difficult to distinguish one voice from another, but that powerful bass bellowing was perhaps the noise of camels. I felt that if onlv had a voice, I, I

I

would

too,

able to

baying

start

at

the moon:

shall

I

As Solzhenitsvn w

shall

be

Olcg Kostoglotov, "On that times he had vowed look on the gloom v side, the opti-

rote in Cancer \Vi/nI of

never to do either."' Despite his desire to

him

The

I

mo\e around!^

night he believed and hoped again, no matter

mist in

be able to breathe here!

as

\\

how many

unquenchable.

following dav the exiles were allow ed to look for private lodgings.

Solzhenitsvn found

a

room

in a tin\'

mud

hut whose roof was so low that he

w indow and an earthen floor. bed he simply laid his padded jacket on the floor and slept on that. There were no amenities of anv kind he did not even have an oil lamp as but just to be alone in the dark \\ as sheer vet (electricitv was unthinkable) bliss after all those vears of cells and barrack huts glaringh- lit bv da\- and

couldn't stand

For

up

inside, with a single, fogged

a

—

—

night.

On

March 1953, Solzhenitsvn was roused l)v Mrs Chadova, w ho seemed terribly agitated. "Go to the

the verv next morning, 6

his elderly landlady,

square and listen to what the loudspeakers are saving," she asked w hv, she whispered, "I'm frightened to

tell

said.

When

\ou, I'm frightened to

he tell

vou."^ In the main square Solzhenitsvn found a crowd of about two hundred

people listening to

a radio

announcement

that Stalin

had died. The old men

had bared their heads and w ere openh' grief-stricken. Others looked mournful,

and onh

a

few of the vounger

men seemed

unconcerned.

Solzhenitsvn w as not merel\- unconcerned, he wanted to jump for joy.

His arch-enemv was dead.

The man w ho had come

to personif\ tor

him

all

the evils and penersions of the Soviet system, author of the monstrous labour

camps and monarch of the archipelago

(for criticizing

whom

Solzhenitsyn

had been flung into the abxss), had come to the end of his intamous lite. Women and girls wept openlv in the street, dabbing their eyes w ith their handkerchiefs. Concealing his real feelings and setting his face in a suitably solemn expression, Solzhenits\n left the square and returned to Chadova's hut. Fhe rest of the dav was spent w riting a commemorative poem in honour of this signal occasion,

"The

Fifth of

March."*

(Chadova's hut was not suitable for a long stay, and Solzhenitsyn found

another room with a young couple called Yakov and Katerina Melnichuk, on

Sadovava

Street.

Their clav hut w

asn't

much

bigger than Chadova's but w as

*()thciallv the equivalent of S 100, unofticiaiiy less than half of that

amount

in present values.

SOLZHENITSYN

[318]

somewhat

better

equipped and allowed him more room. Katerina Melnichuk

later described her

He came hands.

I

.

.

.

first

impression of him.

and put

his

wooden

suitcase

down by

We

shook

were in a dreadful state. Yakov, mv husband, picked up his suitcase and "Oho! It's heavy! What have vou got in there books?" "Yes, books," he

clothes said,

the front door.

could see that he was well-mannered and very good looking, but his

—

said.

He used to burn the bunk out of boxes in the kitchen. would have been asleep for ages, but he used to stay up till all hours reading bv the oil lamp or writing something. He was strange. Soon after he arrived, I boiled some potatoes in their jackets and turned them out onto a plate. He picked up a potato, rolled it about in his hands and suddenly bit into it. I was alarmed. "What are you doing, Sasha? Peel it first." But he only smiled at me. He was remembering old times, I expect.

We made

midnight

him

a

oil a lot.

.

Katerina recalled his getting up earh' for long

.

.

We

walks over the steppe

if it

w as

—

fine.

—

morning and going w as not, he used to pace the sharashka. She told him

at six in the

When

it

up and down the garden, just as he used to do in to rest more and not push himself so hard, but he simply smiled and said he couldn't help it, it was w hat he w as used to. Solzhenitsvn now had time to look at his situation and surroundings more carefully. Exile as an institution had been common in Russia for centuries bv the beginning of the twentieth century there were about a quarter of a million Russians in internal exile at any one time. After the Revolution the new Soviet leaders promised that exile, like all the other repugnant features of the tsarist regime, would be abolished; but, like all the other repugnant features, it was not only not abolished it was adapted and intensified a hundredfold. Ihe numbers sent into exile had taken an exponential leap with collectivization in the years after 1929. Throughout the thirties and forties, many millions were sent into exile, including, during or after the war, whole peoples, such as the Yolga Germans, the Crimean Tartars, and the Meskhetians. After 1948 it had also become the accepted practice to send almost all prisoners convicted under Article 58 ("anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda") into exile w hen they had served their sentences, regardless ot what those sentences had stipulated. Kazakhstan had long been familiar w ith the phenomenon of exile. In 1930 the Kazakhs had rebelled against the policy of collectivization, and Marshal Budenny and his famed Cossack cavalry had been sent to suppress the revolt, w hich they did w ith their usual brutal efficiency, hacking dow n the

—

—

precious trees (in a very dr\ land) of rebellious peasants and putting a torch to their

become

homesteads. Since then, Kazakhstan, with a

prime

repositor\' for exiles. In the

was an ethnic mixture of great

varietx',

its

Kok Terek

empty

spaces, had

district alone, there

including Kazakhs and Russians, large

contingents of Ukrainians, Volga Germans, Greeks from the Kuban, Che-

chens from the Caucasus, Koreans from the Far East, and representatives of

—

^

F",

just

about

Many Kok 1

X

1 1. F,

D "in P K R P

J

I

U IT Y

" L

of them had arrived in the years just before and after the

erek,

3

'

9J

other nation in the Soviet empire.

c\ cr\'

and

its

central \illage of Berhk,

rapid and mainl\' unplanned development. sort of settlement,

When

,

It

\\

ar.

had consec|uentl\ undergone

was

a

sprawling, featureless

with about four thousand inhabitants, most of them

exiles.

Sol/Jienitsvn arrived, the village had no church or m()sc]ue but pos-

sessed a cinema and a co-operative store.

1 here w as not a single asphalt road Dust was everywhere, and when it rained the roads became a quagmire and impassable. If a vehicle happened to be out in the steppe when it rained, or even on the outskirts of the village, it had to be abandoned or until the rain stopped and the roads dried out. For the driver stayed with it this reason, there were few vehicles in use, and the villagers preferred mules,

in the place.

—

—

donke\s, horses, or camels.

The main

occupation in the area was agriculture, mostly

cattle- and though the authorities were trying to encourage more arable agriculture, especially the grow ing of sugar beet. This was made difficult by the long, hot summers and frequent droughts, but a series of irrigation channels had been dug to bring w ater from the river (^hu, and in Kok 1 erek itself there w as an intricate netw ork of irrigation ditches feeding the individual farms and holdings. Most water went to the state collective farm, run bv Kazakhs, but private peasants w ere allowed to have water about once every three to four weeks, and then there was a tremendous hustle and bustle throughout the village. Competition for the water was fierce, leading to jostling and even fights, and since the water was often given at awkward times in the middle of the night or at dawn uproar was almost endemic. For the first month or so after his arrival, Solzhenitsyn remained without work. He continued to badger the people in the education office, but they were visibly frightened by his political past and after a w hile refused to receive him at all. They even produced a document signed by the regional education office stating that all the schools in the Kok Terek district were fully staffed w ith mathematics teachers and had no need of more. Since the MV D had paid him the money earned and saved at Ekibastuz, he was in no immediate need and decided to bide his time. B\' going to the tea-room once a day for two rubles' worth of hot broth and by subsisting on potatoes, bread, and dripping, he w as able to make his money go a long way. Thrift w as by now second nature to him. In the meantime he occupied himself w ith w riting out the verse he had composed and memorized in the camps. One day he was unexpectedly stopped in the street bv an .\1\ D officer and told to go w ith him. The officer led the way to the district consumer cooperative, a wholesale enterprise responsible for supplying all the shops in Kok Terek, and ordered him to start working there. He v\'as signed on immediately as a "planning officer," with no questions asked, at a princely salarx' of 450 rubles a month,* and set to work.

livestock-rearing,

—

* Officially the equivalent of $100, unofficially less than half of that

amount.

SOLZHENITSVN

[320]

had been enlisted, it transpired, to help cope w ith the annual crisis brought on by the Soviet custom of holding a grandiose, nation-wide "sale" of consumer goods every 1 April. The whole exercise was little better than a propaganda trick, for no more than a few copecks w ere ever dropped from each item. Nevertheless, everv single article for sale was affected, and this meant that everv wholesale distributor and ever\- retail shop in the country was obliged to make an inventory of its stock and set the new prices (w hich were centrally determined, of course). Since the task had to be accomplished

He

almost overnight,

it

in\ariabl\ created chaos every year.

Solzhenitsvn was quickh follow ed into the co-operative offices by tw o other unemployed exiles, V. I. \ asilenko, a former ship's captain who had

and Grigori Samsilovich, who was became friends. All three were put to work beside the fifteen permanent staff, w ho w ere already poring over enormous inv -ntories and furiously clicking their abacuses. It was a simple

same

arrived in the still

a stranger to

part\- as Solzhenitsxn,

him, although they

later

and intenseh- boring bookkeeping operation, not at all to Solzhenitsyn's taste, but there w as nothing to do but give in and get on with it. Even so, it w as not in Solzhenitsyn's temperament to obey orders blindly.

by the slow ness of working out all his sums on paper, he asked for machine. No one seemed to know w hat it w as at first, and no one in Kok Terek knew how to use one, but somebody remembered that there w as one in the district statistics office, and eventually this w as procured Irritated

a calculating

for Solzhenitsyn's use.

A

more

spectacular piece of effronter\' followed about a

the going began to get tougher.

week

The obese Kazakh chairman

later,

w hen

of the co-oper-

and announced that since they were and since the matter w as urgent, everyone would henceforth be required to work from seven in the morning until tw o the next morning, w ith an hour's break for lunch and another for supper, making a seventeen-hour day. Solzhenitsyn was appalled by this news, not least because he w as deep into his verse pla\- and knew that this would deprive him of the time needed to w ork on it. He already resented working at the co-op at all. Seventeen hours was out of the question. And he ative called the entire staff into his office

so badh' behind with the repricing exercise

marvelled at the sheeplike

employees

as

w ell

way

as the exiles,

in

which everybody, including the

free

accepted this despotic injunction without a

murmur. As a

political exile he could not \oice his objections aloud. He would have been accused of ideological sabotage. But nobody else spoke up, so he resolved on a course of action that he had learned from experience in the camps not to answer back, but simply to ignore the instructions and do

—

what he w anted. At

five o'clock

I

the morning. All ing to count.

rose from

mv

Thev

mv

desk and

left.

.\nd

I

did not return until nine

in

colleagues were already sitting there, counting or pretend-

looked

at

me

as

though

I

were crazy. [Grigori Samsilovich],

.

"in Pfrpktlitv"

l-.xii.KU

who

l.^^'l

sccrcth approxcd otnix hchaxiour but elaixd not imitate nic, infornuxl

privately that the boss hatl stood oxer ni\ cnipt\ desk screaming that he

dri\e

me

a

hundred kilometres

mc

would

into the desert.''

w rites that w hen he heard this, his heart w as in his month, w as quite \\ ithin the chairman's pow crs to get him expelled from Kok Terek. But miraculously the chairman elid nothing. Kazakh letharg\ smalltovyn dilatoriness, and the faint beginnings of a more liberal era following the uncertainty caused by the cleath of Stalin combined to favour him with an unexpected immunitw and he was left alone. 1 he chairman even looked away w hen he passed him in the corridor. S()l/hcnits\ n

for

it

,

Solzhenitsxn's stubbornness and self-conhdence were s(X)n to be rew arded

new way. The superintendent ot studies at the Berlik school, Zeinegata Svrvmbetoy, a \oung Kazakh and prominent member of the local Party organization, had been very impressed w ith Solzhenits\n w hen he first came to ask for a job. This "tall, skinny man w ith the pale face and deep-sunken eves" had struck him as rather comical at their first meeting, w ith his faded cavalry breeches, patched boots, and the mangy fur cap that he nervously kneaded in his lap. But Solzhenitsvn's seriousness and self-confidence had won Svrxmbetov over, while his academic qualifications in ph\"sics and mathematics were well nigh irresistible.'" The one objection to employing him had been the virtually insurmountable one of Solzhenitsvn's political past. One couldn't be too careful. But after he had been w orking for about a month in the co-operative, Solzhenitsvn received a call from Svr\mbetoy. The latter was on his wa\' to a trade-union meeting at the Dzhambul Regional Education Office and w anted a copy of Solzhenitsx n's diploma to take w ith him. He w as determined to employ him if he could and w as prepared to take whatever political risks were necessarv In Dzhambul, S\Tymbeto\- pointed out to the regional director of education that it was absurd to have such a highly qualified teacher in the village and not use him. The regional director agreed and personally signed an order appointing Solzhenits\n teacher of mathematics, ph\sics, and astronomy in the Kirov High School in Berlik, thus bxpassing the local officials w ho had in a

been blocking his entry." Solzhenitsvn was overjoyed. Prom the very day of his arrival in Kok Terek, the tide of desire to return to his old profession had been running high.

"To

and run

To feel myself a man again! To sweep into the class-room burning eves over childish faces!"'" The determined \oung

teach!

mv

superintendent had rescued him. Solzhenits\n began teaching immediately after the Ma\' holida\s; he later

described his emotions in The Gulag Archipelago.

Shall

I

describe the happiness

the chalk? This ship:

I

was

reallv the

stopped noticing

all

gave

me

to

day of

my

release, the restoration of

it

go into the class-room and pick up

the other things that

made up

the

life

my

citizen-

of an exile.

SOLZHENITSYN

[322] \\

school.

hen I

I

\\

as in Ekibastuz,

w ould look

at

it

as at

our column w as often marched past the

some

local

inaccessible paradise, at the children running

and the tinkle of the bell from seemed to me the supreme, heartbreaking happiness to enter a class-room carrying a register as the bell rang, and start a lesson with the mysterious air of one about to unfold wonders." at the teachers in bright dresses,

about the vard,

me

the front steps cut

...

to the heart.

It

Characteristically, he noted that although nostalgia

was

and

his teacher's

bv his needed the contrast after years of humiliation, after years of knowing that mv talents were unwanted." His talents w ere certainly w anted in Kok Terek, where he was immediately asked to take the top two classes in physics and mathematics. He found them "tragically unprepared" for their leaving examinations, due in a month's time, and threw himself joyously into the herculean task of making up for lost time. "I prescribed additional evening classes, group discussions, field-work, astronomical observations, and they turned up in greater numbers and higher spirits than if the\' had been going to the cinema."'^ instinct explained this craving for the class-room,

hunger

ith

the time

came

w as

for the examinations, the superintendent

afflicted

an access of sudden doubt. Perhaps Solzhenitsvn was rusty and had

forgotten his mathematics and ph\sics in the camps? to check.

Syr\mbetov, the onh man

had been so o\erjoyed

to find

There had been no time

Kok Ferek w ith a university degree, another university man that he had rushed him in

manage w as desperate to

into the school as fast as he could

it.

of his school-leavers and

tr\'

if

also dictated

for esteem: "I

When w

it

I

le knew of the low standards and improve them. But what

he had blundered?

The

Soviet educational system calls for leaving examinations to be taken

—

and w

from the Minopened by the teacher in the presence of his pupils and then written up on the blackboard. This is to ensure that no one know s the questions in advance. \\ hen the packet of the superinquestions arrived in Kok Terek a da\' or two early, as usual in

two

istry

parts

oral

of Education in

ritten.

Ihe w

Moscow and

ritten questions are sent

are supposed to be

—

—

tendent called Solzhenitsxn and the other mathematics teachers into his

office,

and instructed Solzhenitsvn to answer the questions in the presence of the other teachers. To Svrvmbetov's delight, Solzhenits\n answered them all w ithf)ut difficulty. A similar incident occurred two days later, w hen the examination was illegalK'

broke open the

seal,

taking place. In the villages and hamlets around

Kok Terek,

the seventh-year

pupils were taking a similar leaving examination at a lower level. Suddenly the telephone rang in S\r\mbetov's office, and a teacher from one ot the

came on the line: "We can't solve the questions! 1 he answers coming out all wrong!" Soon another teacher rang in, and then a third. 1 he despairing superintendent summoned Solzhenits\n and asked him w hether he could answer the se\enth-class questions as well. Solzhenitsyn complied, village schools

are

and the chastened superintendent rang back each of the schools

in turn.'^

EX

I

LE

D " N PKRPKTUn Y

"

I

[

3 - 3

J

This farcical episode reflected the abvsmall\- low educational standards prevailing in Kazakhstan. Man\- of the village teachers had had onl\' seven

vears of schooling, and there were other features of the local svstem that

w as meawas an excellent idea, but in practice, owing to a lack of inspection and an\- means of verification, it simplv led to teachers' awarding high marks indiscriminatelx". 1 his academic inflation was reinforced by pressure from local officials to ensure that their children got good marks, regardless of performance, and bv a general unwillingness on the part of the teachers to upset their superiors. LastK', there were militated against excellence. For instance, a teacher's performance

sured

b\- his

examination

results. In

theorv

it

the peculiar effects of positive discrimination in fa\ our of Asia,

were doing

To

women.

In Central

women had

this

their

been traditionallv oppressed, and the Soviet authorities best to change things and offer incentives to Kazakh women.

end, they had introduced quotas for examination passes bv

women

and similar quotas for places in institutes of higher education; but since not enough Kazakh women were qualified to take them, the quotas were filled with unqualified candidates.

Manv

depressing educational standards

still

of these ended up as teachers, thus further.

Solzhenits\n \\ as irritated and affronted bv this sort of pettx' corruption, which flourished both inside and outside the school. One source of such corruption was the precarious situation of the exiles. Of the four thousand inhabitants ot Kok 1 erek, a majoritv were exiles, who were reminded at ever\' turn of their position as second-class citizens and their dependence on the goodwill of the authorities. These reminders usualh' took the form of requests for "loans," accompanied b\- threats of dismissal if the exiles proved uncooperative.

Within the school the unofficial loans w ere svstematized in the form of deduction made from teachers' salaries ever\' pav-dav, and the headmaster would regularlv demand fiftv rubles from each teacher towards a "present" for one of his daughters' birthdavs, or call individual a twenty-five ruble

teachers into his stud\' to "request" a loan of

up

to fi\e

hundred

rubles. Before

graduation, the parents of Kazakh pupils w ere obliged to contribute a half or

—

whole sheep to the school in w hich case a certificate w as guaranteed, even the pupil had failed and w hen the local Partx' bosses took correspondence courses to improve their qualifications and pav (w hich they frequenth did), it was the teachers at the school who answered the questions and completed a

—

if

the written tests for them.'''

Much of this simplv reflected the oriental social arrangements and tribal customs of traditional Kazakh societ\-, but it w as compounded b\" the corrupt centralized power of the Part\' hierarchx" and the weakness of the law Nor were matters helped bv the passive complicitv of the exiles themselves. As ex-prisoners, thev expected to be ill treated and to be obliged to knuckle .

under,

w hich made

Yet there w

Serb and

as

their oppressors' task that

nothing inevitable about

a colleague of Solzhenitsvn's,

had

it.

much

easier.

Georgi Mitrovich, an elderb

built a formidable reputation for

SOLZHENITSYN

[324]

all forms of corruption and backsliding, although he had served ten years for "counter-revolutionary Trotskyite activity" and was an exile. A livestock expert by profession, he had once worked in the district agricultural department, but had been sacked for exposing the local Party leaders' practice of exchanging their cows for better ones from the collective farm herd or of having their private cows fed and fattened at the collective farm's expense. After that he had been transferred to the district health department, where a similar series of events occurred, and had then moved to Solzhenitsvn's school, where he continued in the same vein, exposing ille-

himself as a scourge of

galities at teachers'

meetings, writing complaints to the regional authorities,

and even dispatching telegrams to Khrushchev. He was dismissed for a while from teaching, then reinstated, then transferred to another school, and came w ithin a hair's breadth of being rearrested, but he persisted with his fight for justice.

Solzhenitsvn did not submit meeklv to the system either, refusing to award high marks for favours and rejecting, when it came, a request for a loan from the head of the

Kok Terek

education department. But although he

admired and became friendly with Mitrovich and shared his indignation, he did not support him in his campaigns. Mitrovich was somewhat protected by the fact that he was now old and in bad health, and as a faithful Leninist (something that struck an answering chord in Solzhenitsyn emotionally, if no longer intellectualK), he could attack the system "from the left," w hich earned him a certain degree of indulgence. Solzhenitsyn, however, had moved other direction and could not afford to give rein to his real opinions. Consequenth' he kept quiet, and to avoid voting against Mitrovich would in the

find a pretext to slip

away from meetings before

a

vote was taken.'

A

more compelling reason for Solzhenitsyn's pation w ith his w riting. From the moment of his

silence

was

arrival in

his preoccu-

Kok Terek, he

had devoted every minute of his spare time to it, despite the difficult conditions and the necessity for absolute secrecy. For the first three weeks he had had nothing else to distract him and had made splendid progress. Then had come the job at the consumer co-operative and then the teaching, so that ever\'

moment was now

precious to him.

dow n onto paper everything that he had composed and memorized in Ekibastuz. Above all, this meant The Way (now somewhat ambitiously called a "novel in verse"),* which he was at last able to w rite out in full and revise. W hen completed, the poem contained eleven His

first

task

had been

to get

sections or "chapters" of unequal length, preceded

an equally brief introduction.

on the ballad form 'I'yorkin,

the

poem

e\

It

was written

by

in a loose

oKed by Alexander l\ardo\sk\-

a brief

prologue and

iambic metre modelled for his

mock-epic

that Solzhenitsyn had so admired at the front. Fhe

\

'asily

Way

is

longer than Tyorkin, however, consisting of over ten thousand lines of verse *

It is

possible that Solzhenitsyn

he called his has,

poem

a

was influenced by the

no\el in \erse. In fact, The

Way

subtitle of Pushkin's Evgeiiy Oiiegi)i

w hen

has no plot in the sense that Evgeny Onegiii

and contains oniv one major character: the autobiographical hero.

,

EX

1 1.

D "in

F

Fkrpk

"

un

I

^

1

("twice as long as EitgciJe Onegiii,'' as Panin later w rote ot

it

3 - 5

1

in his memoirs),'**

had been a prodigious teat to memori/,e it, e\en w ith the help ot the rosarv and the slips ot paper. The poem has not been published, except tor cha[ner 9, which has appeared separateh' both in Russian and in translation under the title ot Av/.v-

and

it

And

sian Nights.

of the prologue, which was later rewritten b\ Sol/.he-

a part

w hen quotetl by

nits\n, slipped out in the late sixties

about his work.* The prologue

interesting for

is

of his role as a v\riter.

camp. Despite .

.

.

To

prisoned

is

not to

To

Ijc

tells

us about Sol/henitsyn's \iew

describing his hard

compulsion

feels the

in the

an essay

to

lite in

w

the

rite.

dav.

write now, without dcla\

Not

in

millstones of

heated wrath, but with cool and clear understanding.

mv

thoughts can hardly turn.

rare the flicker of light in m\' aching soul.

mv 1

is

the circle around us tautly draw n,

verses

icill

burst their l)onds and freely roam.

can guard, perhaps, bevond "their" reach.

In rhvthmic

is

it

man

The Too

And

hat

however, he

write!

But

\\

b\' l)rietl\'

his weariness,

Yes, tight

He

begins

It

a friend in

harmonv,

this

hard-won

also explicit about his mission.

himself but on behalf of the millions

camps or been crippled

gitt ot

speech.

He is writing not just on behalt of who had died in Stalin's prisons and

for life b\' their sufferings.

I do not w rite m\ verses for idle pleasure. Nor from a sense of energ\' to burn. Nor out of mischief, to evade their searches.

Do I

carrv

I

The

have paid

Oh,

them

past

mv

captors in

free flow of m\' verse

if this

a cruel price for

w ere but

the

mv

brain.

dearlv bought,

is

my

sum

poet's rights

.

of the price paid for

But those others paid the price w

my

verse!

ith their lives.

Immured in the silence of Solovki, drow ned in Or shot w ithout trial in \ orkuta's polar night.

the thunder ot

w aves.

Love and warmth and their executed cries Have combined in my breast to carve

The

receptive metre of this sorrowful tale.

These few poor thousand incapacious lines. Oh, hopeless labour! Can vou really pay the price? Do vou think to redeem the pledge with a single life? *Solztienitsvn later published

heading

"On

some

the Soviet Border."

extracts in the \'est)nk

Thev show

the hero

RKhD,

(i.e.,

no.

117 (1976), under the

Solzhenits\ n) on his

way from

Brodnitz to Moscov\' under armed escort and describe his meditations on the course ot Russian history (see p. 312).

SOLZHENITSYN

[326] For In

\\

mv

hat an age has

women's happy

country been so poor

laughter, so very rich

In poets' lamentations!

—

Verse, verse

for

A drop of scented Here, the next

t\\

in outline,

is

ent\' \ears,

the

all

that

we

ha\ e lost,

resin in the razed forest!

programme

that

\\

as to

'''

occupy Solzhenitsyn

for

not just in verse but in prose as well, and that w as to

mature works, ranging from A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to the three \olumes of The Gulag Archipelago. About the rest of The Way, Solzhenitsvn has been extremelv reticent. Four years after completing it, he told Dimitri Panin that he w as rather dissatisfied with the poem, finding it long-w inded and repetitive, and he spoke of rewriting it. In the earh' sixties, after the success oi Ivan Denisovich, he did indeed rew ork some of the chapters and tone them dow n before offering them to Aoiy Mir under a different title (A Cheerless Story). Sovy Mirs editor, Tvardovskv, rejected them and is quoted (in The Oak and the Calf) as saving,

give birth to almost

all

his

can understand that vou had to w rite something in the camps; otherw ise vour brain would have gone rustv."-" He also told Solzhenitsyn that the poem was "the sort of thing that should be printed in 8-point tvpe in volume

"I

20 of vour collected works."-' In 1963, w hen Solzhenitsvn read the

Anna Akhmatova,

she, too, advised

him not

to publish

it,

poem

to

but to stick to

w hich he w as "unassailable."-from The Way Solzhenitsvn worked on a verse pla\". Feast of the Conquerors, also composed at Ekibastuz and committed to memory there. For manv vears Solzhenitsvn w as even more reticent about the play than about the poem, parth' because of its more controversial subject matter, but mainh because in 1965 the plav, together with some of his other early works, was confiscated bv the KGB and circulated among lovalist members of the \\'riters' Union in an attempt to discredit him. The aura of dread created around the pla\ bv subsequent bad publicity (Solzhenitsyn w as obliged to renounce it w hen tr\ ing to get Cancer Ward published) led manv observers to conclude that the pla\ must contain unspeakable opinions about the Soviet political system, and it w as not until manv vears after he had arrived in the West that Solzhenitsyn released it for publication in volume 9 of his collected works.* prose, in

.Apart

—

In point of fact. Feast of the Conquerors

controversy

made

it

appear.

It is a

is

not as sensational as the later

relativeh short pla\- of about twenty-five

hundred lines, w ritten in iambic rhyming couplets that appear to be modelled on Gribovedov's nineteenth-centur\" comedv Woe from Wit {Feast of the Conquerors is also described as "a comedv"). There are no acts, only a succession of scenes, which all take place at an impromptu celebration banquet organized bv the staff of an artillery battalion at a captured countr\ mansion in Elast Prussia.

Solzhenitsvn's unit had actually held such a banquet in January

1945, and man\- of the characters are based on fellow * Published in 19H1.

An

members of

English translation appeared in 1983 under the

his battal-

title \'lcto>y Celebrations.

F.

X L F. D "IN I

ion. Arsen\" Pashkin, the political in his novel

about the war, figures

PF

R P F T L IT V

"

[32"]

commissar he had once \\ anted to describe Arsenv \'anin; Lieutenant Ovsvannikov

as

becomes Lieutenant ^'achmennikov; Solzhenitsvn himself is transformed into first appearance of this surname in his literarv works); (Japtain I3obrokhotov-.\laikov appears under his real name (he was killed at the front shortlv after the actual banquet took place); and one mav readily imagine that Berbenchuk, the battalion commander, his wife, Glafira, and Captain Likharyov are also based on real-life prototypes. One furCaptain Sergei Nerzhin (the

ther detail reproduced from the actual banquet

upturned mirror

banqueting table

as the

— an

is

the use of an enormous

prop

effective

in

any

theatrical

production. Into this

company of

real-life

prototypes Solzhenits\ n introduced two

— Lieutenant —and the other based on person who the banquet —Galina, an Rus-

contending figures to propel the action along, one

Gridnev, an officer

in

fictional

Smersh

a real

how ever, present at original emigree sian girl who has come all the way from \'ienna, where she lives, to be near her fiance, w ho is fighting w ith the V'lasov forces in East Prussia. Such plot as there is deals w ith the discovery of Galina in a Prussian village bv the

was

not,

assumption that she has been a prisoner of the Germans, their good-natured offer to take her along w ith them, and Gridnev's opposition on the assumption that she is a German spy. The only person w ho learns the truth about her is Nerzhin, w ho was a childhood friend before she departed to the \\ est. When she informs him of her real reason for being in Prussia, he praises her for her fidelit\- and lovaltv to her fiance and vows to help her find him ("I have faith in our Russian future w hile such w omen as you exist"). -^ He soon comes into conflict w ith the bumptious, self-confident Smersh lieutenant (w ho has designs on Galina's virtue in addition to his political suspicions), but nothing results from their clashes, and at the end of artillery battalion, their

the play. Galina's fate

The

plot

is

board cut-outs,

is still

unresolved.

not important, and the characters are a pretext for

Solzhenitsvn to get

little

down

better than card-

to the true subject of

his pla\", w hich is a debate about Russia's past and present, the pluses and minuses of the Revolution, the conflict betw een the revolutionary Communist values epitomized bv Gridnev and the genuine human and moral values

by almost everyone else in the pla\ ranging from the genial, bumbling Berbenchuk and his sagacious, far-sighted staff officers (\ anin, Nerzhin, Dobrokhotov-Maikov) down to the humble peasant lad, Vachmennikov, and including even the emigree Galina. In a variety of monologues and dialogues, Solzhenitsyn examines some of the themes that w ere to become dominant in his mature works: the political and moral bankruptcy of .Marxist ideology, the disastrous effects of collectivization, the monstrous pow er of the security organs, Stalin's paranoia and his abysmal performance at the personified

start

of the

,

w ar

as

commander-in-chief, the decisive role of Russian patriot-

ism in w inning the Second It is

interesting that

\\ orld \\ ar.

some of these themes

art expressed

through the

SOLZHENITSYN

[328]

between the (personally) loyal and honest Russian emigree, Galina, and the (personally) disloyal though loyal in a political sense and dishonest Communist, Gridney, and that the debate about Russia's historical path and destiny should be set in these particular terms. Yet Solzhenitsyn does not come out unequiyocally on Galina's side. He takes a middle position, and it is significant that he hedges and qualifies many of his criticisms of Soyiet society in the pla\ precisely by placing them in the mouth of Galina, who is ostensibly (and automatically in the Soyiet context) a negatiye character and v\ho can be expected to criticize the Soyiet Union because of her background. In the mouths of \'anin, Nerzhin, and the others, the criticism is muted or yaguely loyal, and it is only in their more positiye dreams for the future that their true unorthodoxy emerges (Nerzhin's toast at the banquet is "May it be -"^ possible, in Mother Russia, to say what we think aloud!").

conflict

for

—

—

For these reasons The Feast of the Conquerors, although uncommonly bold time, now strikes the reader as less sensational than the subsequent

its

made

scandal

it

seem. In an era of genuine anti-Stalinism,

it

might almost

have passed the censorship, except for the sympathetic passages on the Vlasoyites, the yery mention of whom triggered an automatic and genuine loathing in Soyiet readers at that time.

But there

is

nothing truly seditious in

it,

noth-

beyond the pale, steps w ere taken to

ing the Soyiet security authorities could point to as totally as

was demonstrated

after its confiscation,

w hen no

legal

Solzhenits\n to account.

call

The same cannot Kok Terek,

be said, how eyer, for

a

second play Solzhenitsyn com-

(later renamed The Capmore ambitious work than Conquerors, with an enormous cast of characters, multiple changes of scene, and a text that alternates between yerse and prose, though the prose predominates. Among the characters met here for the first time are Georgi X'orotyntsev, a former colonel in the tsar's army (later to reappear in August 1914), Ley Rubin and Valentin Pryanchikoy (later to figure in The First Circle), and Payel Gai,

pleted at tives).*

Decembrists

is

a

Decembrists

much

ivithoiit

December

longer and

one of the heroes of The Tendeifoot and the Tart. Eygeni Divnich, the militantly religious anti-Communist whom Solzhenitsyn had met in Butyrki, appears under his ow n name, w hile the author's alter ego is here called Andrei

Kholudeney.t play is set in the Smersh headquarters at Brodnitz, on the Prussian w here Solzhenitsyn had been taken after his arrest. Again there is plot to speak of, and no character deyelopment. The play follows the

The border, little

fortunes of a group of prisoners from their investigation

and questioning

first arrival in

to their "trial"

the cells through

and conviction by

a military

But there are se\eral interesting formal de\elopments. The extremely large cast of characters reflects a first attempt by Solzhenitsyn at a synthesis of all he had learned about the world of the camps. Within this synthesis he tribunal.

*Fublishcd

in

volume 9 of the Collected Works

in 1981.

An

English translation appeared in

1983.

tit

mav be

relevant that the Russian kbolod,

which the name evokes, means "cold."

F.xri.F,

"in

Pf,

rpktuity"

I^-';1

Smersh operation and to describe all the which means not only the prisoners (with whom the svmpathies o\er\\ helmingh' lie) but also the Smersh personnel, ranging

encompass

tries to

I)

all

aspects of the

individuals involved, author's

from the commanding general through his officers and interrogators dov\ n to humble guards. Another feature of this synthesis is its inclusion of scenes of life among Russians who have chosen to stav behind the (ierman lines (Galina's successors as it were) and the inclusion among the prisoners of a the

White Russian colonel (Vorotyntsev),

who

sian

a Pole, a

Yugoslav, a German,

has fought with the Americans, and one

\\

a Rusho has been with the

Belgian resistance.

is

The need to pack so much information into the confines of a stage plav one of the reasons for the play's great length, and it leads Solzhenitsvn into

some

interesting experiments.

puntallv as

a

kind of chorus

The

diverse prisoners' voices are used contra-

at intervals

the interrogators in one of the scenes.

during the plav,

The

as are the voices of

several interrogations are

shown

simultaneouslv, side bv side on the stage, with the dialogue switching consecutivelv from one to another, and a similar technique

is

used to depict the

reading out of the prisoners' sentences. These devices are interesting in themselves

and

also

go some way to vary the pace, which

is

otherw

ise

rather e\en

throughout the plav's twelve scenes. Thematicallv, Decembrists shows Conquerors, containing

more

fullv

and

manv

a logical

progression from Feast of the

of the same ideas, but this time worked out

at greater length.

Perhaps the greatest development

is

in the

treatment of the White Russians and of those w ho chose to remain with the

Germans

or fight with Vlasov's armv. This time Solzhenitsvn comes off the

fence and develops the thesis that Russian history was on their side, that

they were more genuinely "Russian" and patriotic than the Bolshevik usurpers,

and that the consequences of the Revolution had been uniformlv disastrous for the Russian people. It is possible that Solzhenitsvn was "trying out" some of these ideas and not necessarily committed to them himself, but the force with which they are communicated in Decembrists goes far beyond anything in Feast of the Conquerors and makes it incomparably more inflammator\" and dangerous than its more famous predecessor. It is hardly surprising that nothing was heard of it until years after Solzhenitsvn had reached the West. Had this play fallen into the hands of the KGB, his career w ould undoubtedl) have

come

to a

It

speedy and

must be

Feast of the Conquerors

The it

^A'ay,

is

is

particularly successful.

The

verse in

not as assured and inventive as that to be found in

or as vigorous as the driving rhythms of Prussian Sights, although

Griboyedovian wit in some of the banquet exchanges. is the way in which both plays prefigure Solzhenimature work (also begun in exile), his long novel The First Circle.

does attain

But what tsyn's first

At

bitter end.

said that neither play

is

a certain

interesting

their centre, as at the novel's,

is

an impassioned debate about Russia's

and future, and Decembrists in particular anticipates the way in which Solzhenitsyn, in the novel, was to make the microcosm of his work stand for

past

SOLZHENITSYN

[330]

the world outside. In Decembrists the character of Lev Rubin is almost fully formed and is easily recognizable as the lovable Communist we will meet

again in the novel. Nerzhin-Kholudenev

Solzhenitsyn was

still

bioE^raphical character. officers

and

is

less successful,

perhaps because

unable sufficiently to distance himself from

On the opposite side of the ideological fence,

investigators clearly prefigure

some of the characters

this auto-

the in

Smersh

The First

still too \illainous, whereas in the novel they were to human and therefore more believable. Finally, we see Solzhemore become w ith the figure of Stalin, whose statues and porgrapple to beginning nitsyn

Circle,

traits

but they are

dominate the scenery

to the ground at a tense

in Decembrists (one statue

moment

in the play),

though

is it

symbolically knocked

w as only

in the novel

was to enter the action as a living character. The most striking scene in the play is a long debate towards the end between Vorotyntsev and a dying Smersh colonel called Prokhor Rublyov. V'orotvntsev puts forward what one might call a liberal, pre-revolutionary view of twentieth-century Russian history, in which he regards the Revolution as an avoidable disaster, while Rublyov defends the Revolution's achievements not in narrowly orthodox terms but from the viewpoint of its broadly progressive nature. It is stirringly written and sums up the argu-

that Stalin

ments that appear elsewhere in the play, although as a device for the author ow n voice it is too transparent to w ork satisfactorily as theatre. But in form and intensity, it looks forw ard to other notable clashes of opinion in Solzhenitsyn's later works, such as the debates between Nerzhin, Rubin, and Sologdin in The First Circle, between Rusano\' and Kostoglotov in Cancer

to speak in his

Ward, and between Lenin and Parvus

in Lenin in Zurich.

Altogether, then, the plays must be classified as apprentice works, and the

same w ould appear

to apply to the

Solzhenitsyn copied out during his

first

two volumes of camp poetry

that

year of exile. The Heart beneath

the

Padded Jacket and When They Lose Track of the Years (consisting of verses to and about his wife).-' But they were essential steps on his path to becoming a real

w

riter,

and

it

And one Biding

On I

w as

he had predicted

in his preface to

The Way:

dav, in distant exile dim,

mv

time,

I \\ ill

free

mv

tortured

memory from

its thrall:

paper, birch-bark, in a blackened bottle rolled

will consign

Or

as

all

mv

tale to the forest leaves

to a drift of shifting

snow

.-'''

Solzhenitsyn's need for peace and security in which to pursue his

liter-

was finally satisfied in September 1953 when he rented a thatched and whitewashed clay hut on the outskirts of Kok Terek. His new abode consisted of a single room, w ith a tin\' kitchen and an entrance porch, and windows facing south and west. It was unfurnished, but Solzhenitsyn had already learned how to make a bed from packing cases, and although, in Kok Terek, packing cases were like gold dust, he was able, by using his contacts ary activities

.

F.

at the co-operati\ c, to

his

bed

—

X LFD " N I

I

FKRPRTf T I

" ^' 1

bu\ sonic tor two rubles each.

wood

—and one served

as a china

used the old, l)attered suitcase that had been w

I

Three went to make

timber w as to be had

in

Kok

I

a table,

he

him since his arrest at the fashioned him a table and chair from

an exiled Ukrainian friend

front, until

cupboard. For

ith

the stunted and tw isted branches of a local shrub called saxaul

— no other

erek.

Solzhenitsyn eagerly welcomed the solitude that the possession

dwelling brought him. Adjoining the hut was

a vegetable

(jf

his

garden that

continued to cultivate, but there was no other habitation within

his landlord a

'

mattress case stutYed w ith ha\- and wood-shavings reHeved the

a

hardness of the

own

3 3

hundred vards. Immediatelv bevond

his

hedge of pricklv pear and the open steppe, with the

irrigation ditch that ran past his gate stretched the

bluish outline of the (Jhu-Ili Mountains rising in the distance. Solzhenitsvn

continued his habit of taking dailv w alks and liked to w ander along "a forsaken little path that w ound through the fields," as he wrote to Aunt Nina,

where "the

silence

w as not

of this world.""

And

in

The Gulag Archipelago he

has noted that "whenever there w as a puff of v\ind from the steppe, m\' lungs

drank I

it

would

in greedilv. In the stroll

dusk and

Solzhenitsyn w as well off v\ell

at night,

w hether

it

w

as

about alone out there, inhaling and exhaling

paid and there was

little

b\-

to

dark or moonlit,

like a lunatic."-*^

Kok Terek standards, for teachers w ere his monev on. But he liked looking

spend

doing the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and there him back to his childhood and the pungent smells of Grandfather Semyon's adobe farm in the Caucasus. This was the

after himself, readily

was one chore

that transported

new la vers of claw The roof and w eek he w as obliged to replaster the floor w ith a mixture of mud and manure to prevent it from wearing aw a\ On the tirst day after it dried, it was beautifully smooth and clean, but bv the second day a layer of dust began to appear and the floor started to break up. By the end of the w eek, Solzhenitsvn w ould be raising clouds of dust every time he lifted his feet, and it would be time to renew it again.-*'' By an odd coincidence, during the verv davs that he w as settling into new home and preoccupied with thoughts of domesticitv, he was moved his by an unexpected letter from Natalia. She had obtained his address from Aunt Nina and had written in the last da\s of August from the Black Sea, where she was spending her summer holidav. Somewhat naiveh", she proposed a friendlv correspondence in which thev could indulge in a kind of platonic, spiritual communion, and she pictured their two lives as a simultaneous ascent of two "parallel staircases." The letter touched a superstitious chord in Solzhenits) n. It was almost if Natalia had dixined his new circumstances and the loneliness that attended as his solitarv state. An amateur graphologist in Elkibastuz, to whom he had shown an earlier letter of Natalia's confirming their divorce, had predicted a happy ending. It seemed to him that this w as a sign, that Natalia's talk of a spiritual exchange w as mereh' a polite cover for deeper feelings that she dared need to renew the hut periodicalh w

ith

walls needed re-doing onlv rarelv, but everv

SOLZHENITSYN

[332]

not admit openlv tor tear of being rebuffed. In

tiis

heart of hearts he had

never beheved in her love for another man. He felt sure that she had been 'ied astrav" bv \ sevolod and that she w as now bored with him.

On

12

September 1953 he

\\

rote her a tender letter of gratitude

and

love.

Of course

he was willing to take her back, he said, if she was truly prepared to turn her back on her present life and return to him. Otherw ise he didn't see much point in their correspondence, since it \\ ould inevitably involve her in

deception and would in any case have to cease

ever her decision, he would not feel

been

wounded

if

he should remarrw

\\ hat-

or angry, just as he had not

in the past.

my

... I have seen how others have and excuse vour weakness-. I hat Sanchik whom you once knew and loved quite undeservedly would not have forgiven vou. But the present Sanya isn't even sure if there is anything to forgive. I am probably even more guilty towards you. And in any case, I haven't saved vour life, w hereas vou have saved mine and even more than mv life.'"

know how w eak

I

behaved, and

it

I

often was in

me

easy for

is

ow n

life.

to understand

—

("More than my life" w as a reterence to Solzhenitsvn's manuscripts and notebooks, which Natalia had taken w ith her w hen she w as evacuated to Central Asia during the w Natalia,

it

ar.)

seems, w as taken aback by Solzhenitsvn's

intention of leaving \ sevolod, and presumably

it

letter. She had no had not occurred to her,

from the safety of her Ryazan university post and her second marriage, to w onder w hat impact her letter might have on her ex-husband in his lonely exile. Perhaps her letter had been but an impulsive holiday caprice, brought on bv the sun and the sea? In any event, she regarded his reply as an ultimatum, and in October wrote a second letter to set him straight. Dear Sanechka, I was upset both bv the contents of vour

letter,

and bv the

fact that

\ou

totalh'

misunderstood me. I

\\

am

w hich This

w

ill

It is

satisfied

w

ith

I

w

mv

present will

life

and

v\

ish for

nothing more.

perhaps understand the

spirit in

rote to vou.

is all

have to say to vou. .\nd

I

be possible onh w hen vour

life

so, farewell until

becomes

full in all

your work but also in the personal sphere. vou and w ish vou all the ver\ best. Natasha."

only I

completely

hen vou have achieved the same vou

in

I

we meet

trust that

you w

which w ord, not

again,

senses of the ill

be happy.

kiss

not clear w hether Solzhenitsvn reacted with his promised saintliness to

Natalia's abrupt rejection of

all

his proposals,

but w

ith this letter the corre-

spondence ended.* *This exchange of and Reshetox ska\

a.

letters I

la\

subsequenth became

inu seen

onU one

a

point of bitter dispute between Solzhenits\n

of the three letters exchanged,

I

cannot sav w here

1

I-',

X I L F, D "in

P e r p k t u ir ^

Solzhenitsvn soon had something

" [

much more

3 3 3

serious to \\(>rr\ about.

For some time now he had been plagued by a nagging stomach-ache, and in October he began to sutter from intermittent but acute pains in his groin and abdomen. As a result, he lost all desire to eat and quickh' began to lose

Ihe

weight.

local

doctors were unable to offer a satisfactory diagnosis.

gynaecologist friend, Nikolai Zubov, v\ho was also

attempted to treat him, but w sion to visit

was inclined

ith

had

political exile,

no success, and advised him

Dzhambul, w here he could be seen by to think he

a

gastritis or

perhaps

a

to seek permis-

specialists.

stomach

A

had

Solzhenitsvn

ulcer, but at the

memorv of his operation in the camp. I le had been was a success, that the tumour had not invaded the surrounding tissues. Could the doctors have made a mistake? It took him some weeks to make the necessary arrangements for a medical examination in Dzhambul. The tests for abdominal complaints turned out to be all negative, but then an X-ray revealed a tumour the size of a fist growing from the back wall of the abdominal cavity. It w as almost certainly cancer. The doctors were divided over whether the tumour w as a metastasis of the old one, taken out in the camp, or a new grow th unconnected with it.* If it was the result of cells left behind after the removal of the hmph node, these malignant cells could have travelled through the hmphatic channels to the space behind the stomach. In any case, speedy treatment was essential, and since there was nothing to be done about it in Dzhambul, he was given a certificate for admission to the oncological clinic in Tashkent, back of his mind was the

told that

about

a

it

thousand miles to the west. it emerges from Soizhenipubhshed works, and from

the exact truth hes, but have endeavoured to present the picture as

me and letters to me

tsvn's account of the matter in his interview with

in his

Reshetovska\a's memoirs and her unpublished

in 1982.

*

It

is

not clear

\\

hether Solzhenitsvn ever received a report of the biopsy carried out by the

camp medical authorities on his first tumour. If the storv of Oleg Kostoglotov in chapter 6 of Cancer Ward is literallv autobiographical, he did not. Dr William .\. Knaus, who has written the best medical analvsis of Solzhenitsvn's illness (Inside Russian Medicine [New York, 1981], chap.

13),

accepts the Cancer

V\'^/-d'

version as being true for Soizhenitsyn as ueil.

19

CANCER WARD

A POLITICAL FOR was complicated

cxilc to get permission to travel

a

have to return to

—

all

the

\\

av to Tashkent

business, and Solzhenitsvn realized that he

Kok Terek

—

would

But before he did so he made an excursion into the Chu-Ili Mountains, about a for that.

unscheduled and illegal hundred miles to the east. The risks w ere considerable: if caught, he could have been rearrested and sentenced to a further term of imprisonment. But in Dzhambul he had heard rumours of an old man living in a village near the lake of Issvk-Kul w ho made infusions from a mandrake root that w ere supposed to be good for treating cancer.* The idea of folk-medicine appealed to him much more, indeed, than the prospect of radio-therap\" or another operation and he resolved to find the old man and acquire some for himself. The quest proved to be not difficult, and the old man, a Russian settler by the name of Krementsov, happil\- sold him some of his medicine, w arning him, how ever, that an overdose w as tantamount to taking poison and that it was dangerous even to inhale it. The allowable dose was from one to ten drops, to be taken o\er a period of ten davs, the dose to be increased by one drop each da v. Then it had to be gradually decreased to one drop, and an interval often davs allowed to elapse before starting again.' Solzhenits\'n seized eagerlv on this slender chance of a natural cure, bought a large quantit\ of the mandrake infusion, and returned w ith it to Kok Terek. During November and December his tumour had seemed to swell almost b\' the hour: "This tumour distended and distorted my stomach

—

* \)r

—

Knaus u

prepared

in

rites that

the

mandrake

the form of tea.

sleeping preparations.

It

It

root

is

a

\\

ell-known folk remedy

contains the chemical scopolamine,

cannot cure cancer.

3.U

in

w hich

Russia that is

is

usually

also used in

some

:

Cancer Ward

I335J

and pre\ented me from eating or sleeping. was constanth' aware of it. But the fact that it was exerting pressure on the surrounding organs and displacing them was not the worst of it. The aw ful thinii was that it was exuding poison and infecting m\' whole bod\ ."- I he mandrake root seemed to help, however. On II December he wrote to an old acquaintance. Irina Arsenveva, in Rostov that his condition had improxed and his appetite had returned. 1 wo weeks later he w as still relati\el\ cheertul, but b\ the end of the month he had started to go downhill again. ^ Throughout these weeks he had a sense of being at death's d(jor and w as conx inced he had not long to live. Indeed, in The Oak and the Calf he writes that the doctors in Dzhambul 1

.

had given him no more than three weeks. It w as on his experiences of these weeks that Solzhenitsvn drew Kostogloto\'s words in Cancer \\ ard: Although I

I'd

been

couldn't stand,

in pain tor six

sit,

or

lie

dow n

months beforehand, the \\

last

month w

as

.

.

for

agon\

ithout pain and could snatch onlv a few min-

each night. So I had plentv of time to think. That autumn I learned from mv own experience that a man can cross the threshold of death while occupving a bodv that is still not dead. Vour blood still circulates and vour stomach digests things, but ps\chologicaIly vou have completed all vour preparations for death and lived through death itself. Evervthing vou see around vou appears to vou as if from bevond the grave, evoking no emotions. Although vou have never utes' sleep

—

—

a Christian sometimes, indeed, the opposite now vou suddenb notice that you have already forgi\en everyone who has insulted you and bear no more ill will towards those who have persecuted vou. Vou find vourself indifferent to absolutelv evervthing and evervone; there is nothing vou are anxious to put right and nothing vou regret. I would even sav that it is a state

regarded vourself as

of great equilibrium and naturalness, like that of the trees and stones."*

At the forefront of Solzhenitsvn's mind at this time w as the problem of to do w ith his manuscripts in the event of his death. He knew that if found b\' the authorities thev would be confiscated or destroved. He could not send them to anyone, for his mail was censored. What he needed was a reliable person who would come out and collect them and preserve them for better times, but here, too, he was in a dilemma. He and Natalia w ere di\ orced, and their sudden correspondence had ended in mutual misunderstanding. With his ow n familv he still had no contact, and Aunt Nina w as too old to make the journew It was for this reason that he had w ritten to Irina Arsenveva. He hardlv knew her, but she was a former friend of Natalia's and lived in the same house as Aunt Nina. She could take the manuscripts to Nina for safe-keeping. But he could not tell her about it openlv. He could only w rite vaguelv of her coming out to Kazakhstan to "collect his belongings," which

w hat

she naturally did not understand (the fact that

it

w

as a

w eek's journey there

and back bv train did not make her decision an\' easier).' Realizing that it was hopeless, Solzhenitsxn resorted to desperate measures. "I hurriedly copied things out in tinv handwriting, rolled tight cvlinders,

them up, several pages at a time, in a champagne bottle. I then buried

and squeezed them into

SOLZHENITSYN

[336]

mv garden."^' As in the camps where he had tirst composed w orks, Hterature and concealment were inextricably bound up with one

the bottle in these

another.

Meanw hile,

the procedure for his

lashkent had been set in motion, go during the New Year's vacation. permit from the specifying the

\isit to

and Solzhenitsyn asked

for permission to

To make

he needed

the journe\

exact dates on

,

w hich he was

a

MVD

to travel, the place

w here he w ould

w

stav

hile

awav, the length of time aw ay, and the exact date of his return. He would authorities in Tashhave to register all this information w ith the local kent as well as at Kok I erek. At last the permit was issued. Donning his ancient army greatcoat and cavalry boots once more, and arming himself

MVD

and

supply of the mandrake infusion, he

with

a kitbag

New

Year's Eve, 1953, barely able to place one foot in front of the other.

From

a liberal

the very start he was beset with difficulties.

he was obliged to sleep

in the station at

Chu

On New

set off

on

Year's Eve

in order to catch the

morning

express to 1 ashkent. In obedience to the regulations, he handed in his idena room for the night. The w hen he went to collect his card, the dut\' officer was gone. He had got drunk celebrating New Year's Eve and been carried off unconscious to the nearest sobering-up station. The woman who now occu-

tity

card to the station officer in exchange for

follow ing morning,

pied his place could find no trace of the card and shook her head in response to Solzhenitsvn's entreaties.

The

train

exile to travel

step of the

w

as

due

at

any moment, and

it

was out of the question

without an identity card. Cards would be inspected

w ay, and

instant arrest

would

Just then he caught sight of one of the

along the platform.

The

every

follow his failure to produce one.

Kok Terek

MVD

officers strolling

w ho explained his permit. The officer was in a good

officer recognized Solzhenitsvn,

predicament and show ed the

mood and gave him

for an

at

officer his

written permission to travel.

As far as Tashkent, everything w ent smoothly. On arrival, he made his way by tram to the M\ D city headquarters and handed in his permit to sta\'. Then he travelled to the oncological clinic of Tashkent Hospital, but was refused admission without an identity card. In desperation he lay down on the fioor of the waiting-room and refused to move until they changed their minds an incident that he w as later to use in chapter 5 of Cancer Ward, when describing Kostoglotov's arrival at the same clinic. Solzhenitsvn was

—

rescued from this desperate expedient by one of the doctors arranged for him to be admitted to the

clinic,

German

who was

to take

She quickly and the following day he entered

over his treatment, Irina Meike, the daughter of

settlers.

one of the wards. Solzhenitsyn entered the hospital on 4 January 1954, and his treatment began the very next day. Dr Lydia Duna\eva, the head of the radio-therapy department, w as in charge of his case, and although she found a metastasis from the malignant lymph node, she decided that it was only a secondary tumour. The primary tumour, and the real cause of Solzhenitsvn's trouble.

-!'*.«-;*

Solzhenitsvn's mother, as a

young

girl.

I

aissia Shchcrljak,

(Private collection)

Solzhenitsvn's

Shcherbak, and

grandmother Pelageva aunt Maria (standing)

his

circa 1900. (Private collection)

The Shcherbak

familv, circa 1921. Standing at the back are

Roman,

Irina,

Maria, and

Maria's second husband, Fvodor Garin; sitting are Zakhar, Taissia, and Pelageva.

on the

left is

Solzhenitsyn; the other

may be one of Maria's

The child

stepchildren. (Private collection)

The house

Roman

in

Kislovodsk where Solzhenitsvn was born. (Private collection)

Shcherbak's Rolls-Royce, circa 1910. Roman's wife, Irina,

Taissia. (Private collection)

i

,«Vi,**'

'Vis;.

&;^":'^

is

sitting in the

back w

ith

Solzhenitsvn

in

Rostov, aged six and

a half, 1925. (Seuil)

School photograph taken in 1935. Second from the Solzhenitsvn beside him; immediateiv (with braids)

is

(Bobbs-Merrill)

Lvdia Ezherets;

in front

to his right

is

left at

of them

is

back Kirill

is

Nikolai \ itkevich, with

Simonvan;

to Kirill's left

Anastasia Griinau, their literature teacher.

Solzhenitsvn as

a

student at Rostov Lniversitv

(Seuil)

Solzhenitsvn and Natalia Reshetovskaya

immediately after their marriage, in 1940. (Bobbs-Merrill)

Taissia in the late 1930s. (Bobbs-Merrill)

Solzhenitsvn wearing his Patriotic

medal

after

participating

in

the

War

Soviet

recapture of Orel in August 1943. (Seuil)

Solzhenitsvn and \ itkevich (Seuil)

at the front in

Solzhenitsvn

reading

Gorkv's

Matvei

Kozhemyakin to Natalia during her

visit to

the front in spring 1944. (Seuil)

1944, just after signing "Resolution

No.

1."

Solzhenitsyn

on to

at the

Marfino sharashka

his thirtieth birthday.

Permission

be photographed was granted as

rew ard for good work.

The

suit

\\

a

as

provided by the prison authorities. (Pri\ ate collection)

The main (Ardis)

building of the sharashka (formerly a seminary) and the setting of The First

Circle.

Solzhenitsyn as he looked took this

at

Ekibastuz. Having smuggled his

photograph immediately

after his release. (Seuil)

number patches

into exile, he

Solzhenitsyn outside his

Solzhenitsyn successful

in

mud

Kok Terek

treatment

for

hut in

Kok Terek

after his

cancer

Tashkent. (Private collection)

in

in 1955. (Private collection)

(>ANCER

Ward

l337l

seminoma. According to medical specialists,* seminoma is a comparaform of cancer that accounts for less than one-half of one per cent of the cancer cases each \ear, and is usuall\- found in men between the ages of thirt\-fi\e and fifty (Sol/.henits\n had been thirt\ -three at the time of his first operation antl was now tliirt\-fi\e). (iiven Sol/.henits\ n's weakened physical condition and the state of So\ iet medicine in the earl\ fifties, his chances of a cure were about one in three. I)r I)una\e\a decided against surgerN' (w hich is now the preferred treatment in the West, followed b\' radio-

was

a

tivel\ rare

therapy) and prescribed massixe doses of radiation alone.

A

large purple cross

was draw n on Solzhenits\n's stomach, di\ iding his abdomen into four c]uadrants, each ot w hich w as bombarded in turn w ith X-ra\s. Ihree hea\\' rubber mats filled w ith lead w ire w ere placed over the three quadrants not being treated on a gi\en day, and a thin copper shield w as sometimes used to protect Solzhenitsyn's skin from the effects of the radiation beam.^ According to Resheto\skaya, Solzhenits\n's treatment lasted six w eeks, during w hich time he had fift\-five radiation sessions of half an hour each, with a dosage of between 12,000 and 18,000 rads.'"*! This corresponds to 's treatment in Cancer Ward, where w hich the X-ravs had begun to take effect. "This barbarous bombardment of heav\- quanta, soundless and unnoticed by the assaulted tissues, had after twelve sessions given Kostoglotov back his desire and taste for life, his appetite, even his good spirits. After the second and third bombardments, he w as free of the pain that had made his existence intolerable."'" Within a couple of weeks the tumour began to shrink and Solzhenitsyn was eating well again, but then came radiation sickness, loss of appetite, and a difficult period w hen he felt almost as ill as w hen he had arrived. His spirits were also depressed bv the sinestrol tablets he was obliged to take. Sinestrol contained oestrogen, the female hormone, and was administered on the principle that if seminoma w as a male tumour, it might be connected w ith the action of the male hormones, and a female hormone would help to reduce their effect. Now adavs that theorv is discredited.

Solzhenitsxn's description of Kostogloto\

he also noted the miraculous speed w

ith

Solzhenitsyn has described his condition during this period of his convalescence in one of his short stories, clinic. I

"My

appearance was

had gone through

"The Right Hand,"

pitiful. \\\ sallow face

— the wrinkles of

a

set in the

camp-induced moroseness,

ashen hardness of the skin, the recent corruption of m\' bod\' poisons of

mv

sickness and then

Tashkent

bore traces of ever\thing a deathlv,

first

bv the poisons of the medicine, so

cheeks had turned the colour of green."

He

bv the

that

mv

tried to stroll in the hospital

illness rests mainh on Dr Knaus's analvsis (see note p. 333). Knaus based himself on Cancer Ward znd other published sources on Solzhenitsyn's illness. He does not seem to have had an\- co-operation from Solzhenitsyn himself. t.\ccording to Dr Knaus, the figure of 12,000-18,000 rads refers to "air rads," meaning the amount of radiation emitted directU' from the X-ra\' tube. Toda\' the term "rad" refers to the

*This account of Solzhenitsvn's

dose of radiation recei\ed b\ the tumour, and on that definition, Solzhenits\n probablv received 2, 000-3. 000

rads on his

abdomen and

a

somew

hat smaller dose on his tjroin.

SOLZHENITSYN

[338]

grounds, conscious ot his ridiculous appearance in striped p\"jamas that were fit him and with his feet clad in the clumsy felt boots he had camps. After everv few steps he w as obliged to sit and rest, and occasionally, when attacked by radiation nausea, to lie with his head down

too small to

worn until

in the

it

passed."

Judging bv hints dropped

was the

in

Cancer

Ward and elsewhere, Solzhenitsvn

The stubbornness, truculence, and labour-camp veteran made him reluctant to submit to a difficult patient.

distrustfulness of

orders and led to

endless cross-questioning of the doctors about his treatment, while his natural restlessness

made him

resent his enforced inactivity and helplessness to

seem to have responded with humour. Irina Meike, the doctor who had rescued him from the waiting room, and Lydia Dunaveva, were both rewarded with affectionate portraits (as Gangart and Dontsova) in Cancer Ward. Solzhenitsvn's independence of mind also manifested itself in his determination to cling to the mandrake root infusion that he had brought with him and w ith w hich, it appears, he surreptitiously dosed himself when no one was looking. Despite his scientific training, he seems to have nursed an elemental distrust of conventional medicine and maintained, to the verv end, a superstitious faith in nature cures. At the back of his mind, at least w hen he arrived, was also the thought that if the pain became intolerable, and if there w as no hope of a cure, the poisonous infusion offered him one last freedom to end his life when he chose. As life flow ed back into his veins, however, the need for such a choice receded, and after a few weeks he began to recover some of his old vitality. His w alks in the hospital grounds became longer and occasionally w ent beyond them, although this w as officially forbidden to the patients. In Cancer Ward, he draw s a cheerfully humorous portrait of himself during this period in the guise of a letter from Kostoglotov to some friends. influence events. His doctors, for their part,

tolerance and good

—

The

onlv things that can help

mv

nausea are pickled cucumber and pickled cab-

bage, but of course thev arc unobtainable either in the hospital or the medical

and patients aren't allowed out of the gates. "Your relatives can bring you some," they say. What can a poor convict do? I put on m\ boots, fasten mv woman's dressinggown round mv waist with mv army belt, and creep over to the place where the w all is half falling dow n. I clamber through the w all, cross the railway tracks, and in five minutes I'm at the bazaar. .\lv appearance causes no surprise or laughter either on the wa\- there or in the bazaar itself, which I take to be a sign of the spiritual health of our people, w ho have become accustomed to everything. I walk about the bazaar and bargain suUenlw as probablv onlv ex-prisoners know how (pointing to some plump crcam\ chicken, and snapping, "How much do you want for that scraw nv tow 1, old w oman?") \\ hat money have I got, and how did I get it? My granddad used to say, "Look after the copecks, and the rubles 'will look after themselves." .\ clever man, mv grandfather. centre,

.

Solzhenitsyn took the

first

a

.

.

keen interest

in his fellow patients in the

time since 1945, he found himself being treated

as

ward. For

an equal, for

Ward

Cancf.r

here was aware ot his exile's status.

nob()d\

Uzbek

in

the w

arcl

turned out to he

a

\}^'}\

On

the contrarx

lahour-eanip guartl and

,

one \(jung

treelx' told

him

about his experiences, excoriating the prisoners as idlers and enemies of the people,

dreaming that he was talking to one. Sol/.henits\n's natural meant that he w as soon leading discussions in the ward and opinions on this or that subject, something that he could never

little

assertiveness airing his

have permitted himself as

Kok

in

glotov, "he found that he

erek.

I

low e\er, as he

I

later

noted of Kosto-

no longer placed himself in opposition

he was used to doing, but united with them

in their

to the others,

common

calamit\

.""

mid-March 1954 he was released from the hospital, with a warning would ha\e to return again in June for a further course of treatment. This meant that although his tumour had shrunk to less than half its former size, he could not \et consider himself cured and would ha\e to submit once again to radiation treatment. Nevertheless, he felt on top of the world. In In

that he

when he

Januar\',

arri\ed,

had been cold and pouring with

it

rain.

Now

spring had arrived, and in this southern city the trees were in bud and the first

earlv blossoms had

begun

The symbolism was centre, Solzhenitsyn

came

As he made his wa\' to the f)ld citv w as surprised to find open.

across a church that he

All the churches in Rostov

same

to appear.

irresistible.

had been closed

Tashkent. For the

in 1934,

and he had expected to

time since he was

a child, he entered church again and gave thanks to God for his recoverx'. In the city centre he took the opportunitv to look around and make some modest purchases. Again he was reminded of his childhood; apart from his

find the

in

first

a

w artime Moscow in 1943, he had not been in a cit\- since. After numbing world of the camps and exile, he w as bewildered b\ the hustle and bustle, and his amazement o\er the consumer goods available in the shops is communicated in part 2 of Cancer Ward, where Oleg Kostoglotov is flying visit to

the

portrayed making a similar pilgrimage after his release from the cancer

clinic.

Kostoglotov's reactions are perhaps exaggerated for dramatic effect, but his route through the city

is

his ill-starred visit to the

the

same

as that taken

department

bv Solzhenitsvn, including however, Solzheni-

store. In real life,

tsyn did bu\- the green-and-white striped shirt that Kostoglotov cannot afford,

and returned

to

Kok lerek w ith

it.

Late in the day he trekked across the a distant industrial

suburb, about

a

citv

to the

M\ D

stop, to deregister; then he returned to the railway station,

the night on the platform.

It

w as

there he encountered a

—and

floor in a

fit

In the

drake root. it

visit to

He

—

criminals, not

for

Kok

I

Issyk-Kul to obtain

could not

might have been due

in

The Gulag

mother smashing her baby's head on the stone

of drunken rage. morning he set off

another flying

where he spent

witnessed the sickening episode, described

Archipelago, of the sluttish

in

rowdy gang whom

he instanth- recognized as former labour-camp prisoners politicals

headquarters

mile and a half from the nearest tram

know whether

erek and on the

a further

his cure

w av home paid

supply of the magic man-

would

last

or

how much

to his secret tippling of the potent infusion.

ot

SOLZHENITSYN

[340] In Cancer

\\V/;y/

there

is

another autobiographical scene

glotov regards himself, for the

The

first

time in ten years,

figure he sees there, dressed in greatcoat

which Kosto-

in

in a full-length mirror.

and boots,

is

most unmilitarv,

more like a convict than a soldier. "His shoulders had drooped long [he] looked ago and his body \\ as incapable of holding itself straight looking

.

.

tormented, dishexelled, and neglected."'"* This portrait more or

.

less

describes

Solzhenitsvn at the same period, and he remained painfully skinny for some

A

photograph of him taken in his hut in Kok Terek soon after sunken eyes and prominent cheekbones, w hile the greenstriped shirt bought in Tashkent hangs loosely from his gaunt frame. These were the natural effects of his sickness and treatment, but in himself he w as infinitely stronger than before, and he felt a surge of renewed hope and energy. Granted the ill fortune of having contracted cancer at all, he had been e\tremel\' luck\' in having had one of the onh' two types of cancer (seminoma and lymphoma) that could be cured b\' radiation alone, and even then had sur\ ived odds of one in three to pull through. But perhaps more than just luck w as invoked. Cancer remains a mysterious illness w hose development and cure is sometimes associated with mental processes. Solzhenits\'n has described his feelings before lea\'ing for Tashkent as verging on total hopelessness, even despair. But it would appear that he never quite completely lost hope. He w as by nature an inveterate optimist, a fighter to the marrow of his bones and a firm belie\ er in the force of w ill-pow er. If mental processes can indeed influence the progress of cancer, it seems probable that Solzhenitsvn's unquenchable thirst for life and incredible powers of concentration considerably assisted him in his struggle to sur\ive. This is not to discount the importance of the medical treatment. With onl\ the mandrake root to help him, Solzhenitsvn would almost certainly ha\e died. But time to come.

his return reveals

—

—

once medical intervention had taken place, his sheer mental toughness and implacable will to live came into play and could well have influenced the speed and completeness of his recovery. He himself certainly came to believe

something a strong tion.

On

like that

purpose"

and more than once asserted,

all

another occasion he produced

tory explanation.

in later life, that

living creatures are susceptible to disease

The

a different

"w ithout

and destruc-

and somew hat contradicI could see no other me has not been mine in

cure was "a di\ine miracle;

all the life given back to around a purpose."" The contradiction ma\' only be apparent, for a believer might argue that it w as God himself w ho had inspired in Solzhenitsxn the will to resist and to overcome, in which case both man and divinity w ere working tow ards the same end (a view that Solzhenitsyn certainly holds now ). If Solzhenitsvn's first successful skirmish w ith cancer had returned him to a belief in God, this second, more deadh battle seems to have convinced him that Ciod w as not mereh' at but also on his side.

explanation. Since then, the

full sense:

The

first

it is

built

w elfare of his

pupils.

one of the happiest of

his life.

soul to the it

was the Berlik school. Solw hile devoted himself heart and

beneficiary of his restored energy

zhenitsyn genuinely loved teaching and for

a

Looking back

at this

period

later,

he declared

Cancf.r

Ward

I

34

i I

were m\ seeoml xoiilh, aitliougli hati nothing but the \\ ho had never had anv proper instruction, were very fond .\nd it gave me enormous of me. And \\ hat a lot of time I spent v\ith them! Real live children! Ihev had seen nothing thev were the children pleasure. nothing. For thev weren't allowed to leave that place either. For of exiles them the whole world consisted of w hat the\ could see there, and what thev loved exile as

I

school.

if

it

1

The children,

.

.

.

.

—

.

didn't see there they in

mv

have

life

.

—

.

I

would never

sec.

.

.

.My goodness, how the\ studied! Never

seen such eagerness anvwhere."'

Despite the urge to spend ever\' spare niinute of his time writing, Solzhenitsvn organized a geodetic club, for w hich he helped the children

make

and took them out on geodetic expeditions. He taught them astronom\', and almost ever\' evening a group of them would come to his hut, v\ here he would sit them dow n outside and study the sky with them, until they could identify every star. For this purpose he devised and built a model of the night sk\' in the shape of an upturned bowl. When all

their o\\ n instruments,

he placed

a

candle beneath

positions, each labelled

Pupils also

homew ork

came

w

it,

all

ith its

the constellations stood out in their correct

name.

indixidualh' with their school problems or with pieces

and Solzhenitsyn was well known for his discuss their work with them or their parents. He kept a special notebook for each class in w hich he recorded details of each pupil's behaviour, their likes and dislikes, preferred subjects, and spare-time interests. And nothing was too much trouble for him.'' One of his colleagues, the Cierman teacher, Frieda Chernousova, was so impressed w ith his erudition and talents that she regarded his turning to

of

w

that the\' couldn't do,

illingness to call

on

his pupils at

home and

authorship after the publication of grave mistake.

He was unlock

a

"He

A Day

in the Life of

should ne\er have done

teacher of rare talent.

an\- child's heart."

.

.

.

it.

Solzhenitsyn could find the keys to

Chernousova

recalled that he had an excellent

knowledge of German and could read English. She little

Ivan Denisovich as a

His vocation was teaching.

also recalled a significant

scene.

One day

he had gathered the pupils together to take them on an excursion.

himself was carrying his usual equipment;

a

He

knapsack over one shoulder and

a

camera over the other. The children were talking and shouting and making a tremendous racket. All of a sudden he rapped out a command in a voice that was unbelievably pow erful and metallic: "Attention!" The class instantly fell into line and froze. It w as then I realized he had once been a soldier, and no ordinary soldier either."*

The

pupils responded to Solzhenitsyn with affection and admiration, had an uncanny \\a\' of bringing out the best in them. He used to burst into the class-room like a \\ hirlwind, giving orders before he had even reached his chair: "So-and-so to the blackboard. So-and-so give me a report on the homework." It was said that he never talked down to his pupils but for he

treated

them

The two things he couldn't were unpunctualit)" and sloppiness.

like equals, despite his strictness.

abide, according to one of the pupils,

SOLZHENITSYN

[342]

"He

\\

as strict

ises,

\\

hether

it

photography w

One

anvone broke his w ord or arrived late for an late and invariably carried out his promgive us an extra geometry lesson or simply to do some

and exacting

He

appointment.

w

if

himself was never as to

ith us."'*^

of Solzhenitsvn's most prized possessions

purchased

it

from

his salar\-,

\\

because of the extra hours he put in the

\\

as his

camera.

He

had

hich w as one and half times the normal rate

—

thirt\

a

week

instead of twenty.

Almost

thing he did with the camera, in secret from everyone else, w as to

first

and cap that had been his uniform in (all of w hich he had smuggled out w ith him w hen he left), and use the self-timer to take a self-portrait. This w as one memento he w as determined to have and to keep; years later, copies of this photograph w ere to find their w av to close friends and former camp

up

dress

in the

padded

jacket, trousers,

the special camp, complete

comrades in

in

w

Moscow and be

ith

numbers

kept as a talisman.

He

eventually published

it

The Gulag Archipelago.

to w hich the camera w as put w as filming his manuscripts. now Solzhenitsyn had relied not so much on holes in the ground as on whose details he has never disclosed taught him by a fellow a method exile of concealing papers both inside and outside his hut in such a w ay that the\ would not be found even bv search parties. But with the camera he started to make microfilms, and these he inserted into the covers of tw o books, placed the books in envelopes and addressed them to Alexandra Tolsto}', at her farm in the United States. The name of Tolstoy, his favourite author, w as a kind of svmbol for him and an augurv of proper treatment. "I knew nobodv else in the West, not a single publisher, but felt sure that Tolstoy's daughter w ould not den\ me her help."-" But he did not, it seems, ever try

Another use

Until

—

—

I

to send

them.

Solzhenitsvn's relativelv high salary meant that he could his

hut instead of renting

built for cold storage

and came

would continue

the latter

it.

to an

to Reshetovskaya, he

agreement w

to cultivate

now purchase

had a cellar ow ner whereby the vegetable garden and they would

According

ith

the former

share the produce.

At the age of thirtv-five, Solzhenits\n

settled

dow n

to a life that

was the

During the day he taught at sch(X)l. chores or occupied himself with his pupils.

nearest to normal he had e\ er experienced. In the earlv evenings

he did

his

At night and during the weekends (except for the not infrequent occasions when evervone w as obliged to "volunteer" for Sunday w ork to help w ith the harvesting or other agricultural tasks), he w as kept busy w ith his writing. As usual, he filled everv minute of the daw and to the outside world presented a

picture of the contented bachelor.

But

as alw a\ s in Solzhenits\ n's case,

appearances were deceptive, and

he was far from content. Perhaps his biggest problem was loneliness. Paradoxicallv, he had felt emotionallv more secure in the camps, for there he had

known where he w as. The "enemv" had been easily recognizable and identifiable camp guards, securit\ officers, stool-pigeons, trusties and he had

—

—

Cancer Ward known how As an

were.

to deal with thcni. lie

1

had also known cxactlx

total trust

and

confidence.

total

Ihes"

tom of the heap. Solzhenitsyn had had no

among camp

w ere

all

3]

his friends

old convict of long experience, he had believed he could

glance w ho w as trustworthv and w ho not, and

had been

who

34

tell at a

friends there

together

at

the bot-

difficultv in confiding his inner-

most secrets to them, and e\en in reading his works to them to hear criticisms. Outside the camps, how ever, there w as no cement of common adversitv to bind people together, nor the same sense of confronting a common enemv. People w ere anxious to get on w ith living their ow n lives. W hat the\ valued were privacy anti family affairs. Facu people like .\Iitro\ich and other political exiles had a dimension to their lives that had not existed in the camps; this made it harder to get to know them propcrlv and pre\ented SoIzhenits\n from completeK' committing himself to them. It was all verv confusing, and

he experienced considerable difficult\

The one

in adjusting to

it.

exception to this general rule was an elderlv couple of political

exiles called Nikolai

friends. Nikolai

and Elena Zubov, w ho soon became Soizhenitsxn's

Zubov w as

the gynaecologist

who had

closest

advised Solzhenitsvn

stomach pains, and, although in his earlv sixties, was still bursting w ith energw Like Solzhenitsvn, he worked time and a half and w as indefatigablx punctilious in the execution of his duties, never hesito seek treatment for his

middle of the night to attend to a patient and keeping round the clock. In this impulsive energv and dedication to duty, Solzhenitsyn recognized a kindred spirit. Another reason for feeling comfortable \\ ith the Zubovs was that both had served time in labour camps before being exiled to Kok Terek, and the\' understood Solzhenitsvn's psvchologv. On the other hand, the\" were quite different from him in their tating to rise in the

himself on

blissful

call

acceptance of exile as the best of

all

possible worlds (after the horrors

of the camps) and in their readiness to forget the injustice that had been done to them.

Thev had come from

a small

town near Moscow

.

Elena had been mar-

meeting and marrving Zubov, had moved in with mother, though the latter's domination of her son had stretched

ried before, then, after

him and

his

Elena's tolerance to the limit.

It

w as the mother's short-sighted impulsiveness

had led to Nikolai and Elena's downfall. Some time after the war broke out, she had unthinkinglv taken in a deserter from the Red Armv and given him shelter for a couple of nights. Not long afterwards the deserter was caught and made a full confession about w here he had staxed. Nikolai's mother was almost eighty and deemed to be bevond prosecution, but Nikolai and Elena were charged and convicted as enemies of the people. Thev were each sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, to be follow ed by perpetual exile (as in Solzhenitsvn's case, two defendants meant an organization), and were that

released into exile in different places: Elena in Krasnoyarsk and Nikolai in

Kok Terek.

After

a

year of writing incessant complaints and protests to Mos-

cow, Elena had been allowed

to rejoin her

source of their present contentment."'

husband, and

this

was the main

SOLZHEMTSYN

[344]

Not long

after Solzhenitsxn got to

own

know them,

the\ crow

ned

their hap-

Ihev from the same ingenious Ukrainian who had equipped Solzhenitsvn's hut, who was an absolute wizard vxith the gnarled and twisted shapes of the local saxaul. Nikolai also had in him something of Tristram Shandv's Uncle Tob\', for he had evolved an elaborate plan for laying out his quarter-acre garden in the form of a miniature park, complete w ith a central a\ enue, apricot trees, a vineyard, hops, tobacco plants, and a semicircular summer-house. Nothing of this existed when Nikolai proudly showed Solzhenitsxn over his bare plot, piness with the purchase ot their

cla\'

hut, with a garden attached.

possessed not a stick of furniture but w ere able to order

it

but he could see the details so clearK in his mind's e\e that he referred to

them

as if the\'

were already

there.

Solzhenits\n came to adore this kindh

jolh pair

,

and spent

a great deal

"Thev were like a father and mother to me," he said and thev pro\ ided him w ith the first famih' enxironment he had know n

of time in their house. later,"

were the prototypes of the KadEven their tw o dogs, Zhuk the Alsatian and Tobik the terrier, welcomed him as part of the family, and Solzhenitsvn would take them for long walks over the dusty steppe or to the river Chu, three miles away. Tobik in time became a messenger between Solzhenitsvn's clav hut and the Zubovs'. Nikolai would tie a message to his collar and send him off to SolzhenitSN n w ith it, and Solzhenitsyn would send his reply in the same since the Fedorovsk\'s in his childhood (the\

mins

in Cancer W'urd).

fashion.

Betw een them there grew up that SolzhenitSNu's relations the a

Zubovs about

well-educated

his

w

w

ith the

riting

man w ith

trust

and love that w

other exiles, so

and show ed them

much

as

unthinkable

in

so that he confided in

his manuscripts. Nikolai

an interest in languages, architecture,

histor\',

was and

meteorolog\', as well as the medical sciences, and Elena was equally a booklover.

They became

his first readers (in the

and encouraged him w In

June 1954,

at

ith their love

the start of the

camps he had had only

listeners)

and admiration.

summer

vacation, Solzhenitsyn returned

to Tashkent for a further course of radiation treatment.

He was

given a friendh'

w elcome b\' the doctors and nurses and w as found to have improved enormoush' he had put on w eight and w as looking quite w ell. Nevertheless, he was kept at the clinic for nearK' two months. The treatment had to be interrupted at one point w hen his w hite-blood-corpuscle count dropped dangerousl\' low but it w as thereafter continued until pronounced successful. While killing time in the w ard, Solzhenitsyn read a great deal and w rote a series of critical articles on Soviet authors w ith the rhetorical title Let Us Open Our Eyes.-' It is possible that he was inspired b\' reading at the time a celebrated article in Sovy /i//> called "On Sincerit\- in Literature," by X'ladimir Pomerantsev, an anti-Stalinist plea for more openness and honesty by Soviet w Titers and a \eiled attack on socialist realism. In Cancer Ward the reading of this essa\' by one of the characters becomes an important part of the action (coincidentallv, it w as almost certainh- for publishing this article

—

,

.

C^\NCER that

Alexander

I

was

\ai\l()\sk\

disniisseci

of Novy Mir). S\dia, and even Kirill,

who

despite his resentment over the 1952 episode, had nevertheless written in

Solzhenitsvn's defence.

Fhe chief militarv prosecutor's reasons

w ere

charges

for seeking an

annulment of the

cited as follows:

from the evidence in this case that Solzhenitsvn, in his diarv and in N. D. Vitkevich, although speaking of the correctness of Marxism-Leninism, the progressiveness of the socialist revolution in our countrv, and the inevitabilitv of its victorv throughout the world, also spoke out against the personalitv of Stalin and \\ rote of the artistic and ideological shortIt is

clear

letters to a friend,

* Solzhenitsvn's

changed view of the appropriateness

from

had separated and he had

after thev

Kopelev

at

ot"

his

fallen in love

w

remarriage to Reshetovskaya dates ith

uas "the onl\' woman he could trust," and he asked Kopele\ This argument seems both to underrate the strength of

exile.

the time and to

show him

tThe November I

another

woman. He

also told

the later date that the main reason he had gone back to Reshetovskava was that she

in a

worse

light

to

burn

his letters to

him from

his actual feelings for Natalia at

than he perhaps realized.

holiday celebrates the anniversary of the Revolution (see note p.

Ryazan was coincidentallv the birthplace of Solzhenitsvn's favourite

31).

poet, Esenin.

Matryona's Place

1

3*^7]

comings of the works of many Soviet authors and the air of unreality that pervades many of them. He also wrote that our works of art fail to give readers of the bourgeois world a sufficientlx comprehensive and versatile explanation of the arm\ and people and that our literary works are no match for the adroitK fashioned slanders lA the bourgeois world against our country.-' inevitabilitx of the victory ot the Soviet

The

interesting thing about this plea

is its

erary criticism there u as in Solzhenitsvn's

revelation of

earl\- letters

how much

and how close

it

lit-

was

to the criticisms he was to voice as a mature w riter. Soviet literature's "shortcomings" and particularly its "air of unreality" were to become leitmotivs of his later criticism and the targets against w hich his own iiterarx' practice w as

directed.

The

rehabilitation tribunals

w ere

much

as

a

foregone conclusion as the

Special Board sessions and militar\' tribunals before

Soviet

Union had changed

them

Verdicts were

in that respect.

— nothing

still

in the

decided before

It was just that attitudes had changed at the top. was sweet for Solzhenitsvn to read the tribunal's final resothat he was still, after all, "a Soviet patriot," not guilty of any

the proceedings began.

Nevertheless,

it

lution, to learn

crime, and that the decree of the Special Board, passed in

those years ago,

all

July 1945, was null and void and his case closed as unproven. It was in fact a year of good news. F'irst his remarriage, then his reha-

bilitation.

But

a brief

cloud w as cast by the sudden and tragic death of his

w ho had moved

landlady, Matryona. Matryona's niece Kira,

to the village of

Cherusti across the railwa\' line after her marriage, had unexpectedly acquired a plot of

keep

it

ground

to build on.

But

for

some reason she w as not allowed

to

unless she could build something right aw ay, and there w as no chance

of obtaining the necessary timber in time.

It

so

happened

that .\Iatr\ona had

willed Kira her goniitsa, a spacious annex to her main cabin that

and no longer used.

less self-contained

w

more or Matryona

as

Kira's father insisted that

allow the annex to be dismantled right away, without w aiting for her death,

and be transferred

to Cherusti and re-erected on Kira's plot. Matrxona agreed, and the annex was duly chopped away one evening and loaded onto two

by

When

they came to the railw

a\ line, one of the Matr\ona, were trying to free it when out of the darkness, a pair of unlighted locomotives bore dow n on them and smashed the sledge to smithereens. All three were killed instanth', the engines were derailed, and the main-line express was stopped only just in time to avoid a major catastrophe.

sledges pulled

sledges got stuck.

a tractor.

Two

of the men, helped

b\'

Since the tractor driver had been moonlighting, his helpers had been drinking, and the locomotives should have been lighted, just about every-

body was

to

blame and the w hole

affair

w

as

hushed up. Matr\ona's

undeterred by the tragedy that had struck them (the other Matryona's nephew

),

man

relatives,

killed

was

quickly buried their dead and quarrelled o\er Matr\ona's

inheritance.

Solzhenitsyn was caught in the middle of this episode.

He

had watched

SOLZHENITSYN

[368]

the annex being dismantled and towed away, had been roused from his bed

and questioned bv the poHce

in the

middle of the night on w hich the accident

occurred, had attended the funeral and the wake, which was held in Matryona's

moved

house, and had subsequently ters-in-law

the

web

,

where he

house of one of Matryona's

sis-

and heard about

of family envies and resentments that lay behind the disputes over

Matryona's meagre possessions.

It

the scenes of Russian peasant

life

tuals)

to the

learnt further details of the accident

and

later

provided the

was

a priceless

opportunity to peep behind

(not often accessible to city-bred intellec-

inspirati(jn for his classic short story

"Matryona's

which he described the entire episode. The rest of the school year seemed to pass in a blur of preparations for forthcoming move to Ryazan. On visits to Moscow, Solzhenitsyn and

Place," in

his

Natalia visited his old sharashka friends Kopelev, Panin, and Ivashov-Musa-

w ives. When she was not staying w ith him in loraway at his novel, completing a full first draft by the time he was ready to move. And in June 1957 came the move itselt. Passing through Moscow, they spent a week with Natalia's uncle, Vatov and their respective

foprodukt, he worked

lentin Turkin, the

cinema

critic.

summer honeymoon

Valentin had also been through

times since that carefree

of 1940,

couple to spend their

in

when he had urged

difficult

the

Noung

Tarusa. In 1948, during Stalin's cam-

paign against "rootless cosmopolitanism"

(ie.,

interest in foreign countries),

Valentin had been publicly pilloried and his textbook on the history of the

cinema banned before publication. The charge against him was that he had written too favourably on the American cinema, particularly on the pioneering role of D. W. Griffiths, and thus slighted Soviet achievements. Since he wasn't a Jew (the campaign against 'cosmopolitans" was aimed primarily at the Jews), he had escaped with a reprimand and was able to retain his post at the Institute

of Cinematography. But the shock of being attacked

when thousands w ere

He was

still

disappearing into the camps had

the brilliant, sophisticated

Solzhenitsyn

at their first

man

left its

of the world

at a

time

mark on him.

who had

dazzled

meeting, but now had retired into himself and

become even more epicurean in his private habits than when Solzhenitsyn had first met him before the war. It was at this time that Solzhenitsyn renewed his acquaintance with Valentin's daughter, Veronica.

The

pretty fifteen-year-old schoolgirl with

from before the war was now married for the second time and had a tw o-\ear-old daughter. During the day she worked in a children's library and in her spare time was studying journalism at Moscow University, where her husband, Yuri Stein, was also studying, after seven years in the air force. They still lived in the family's cramped communal flat on Malaya Bronnaya Street, together w ith Veronica's two aunts. Veronica had followed Solzhenitsyn's vicissitudes with sympathetic interest ever since he and Natalia had been to stay with her and her mother flying pigtails

during their honeymoon in 1940. In 1945, after Solzhenitsyn had been arrested, investigated,

and sentenced,

it

w as Veronica's mother

to

w hom he

first

sue-

M ATRYON a's

Place

I^*^)*;!

s ot his w hereabouts; and it was w ith the t\\ o \ eronhad stayed during that crowded \ear from 1945 to 1946, when Solzhenitsvn w as successixelv in Hut\rki Prison, New Jerusalem, and Kaluga Gate. I he younger \ eronica had been present w hen ll\a Solomin returned from the front and described to Natalia the details of Solzhenitsvn's arrest, and in 1953 she had met Solomin vet again when he, t(M), had returned from the labour camps. Finall\', it was to X'eronica that Natalia had given Solzhenitsyn's early stories and some of his books (including the profuselv annotated copv of War and Peace) when she had left Solzhenitsvn for \'sevo-

ceeded

in

sending new

icas that Natalia

lod.

Veronica was thus aware of the various stages of Solzhenits\ n's od\sse\jails, camps, and exile, and w hen she heard of his return from

through the

Kok

him a letter saving that if he was e\er in Mosw elcome at their flat in Malava Bronnava as in the old davs. Coming at a time w hen he was still alone and feeling friendless and neglected, w ith no family to turn to, her letter had touched him, and he had responded with gratitude, saying that he appreciated her gesture all the more because he was too self-conscious, after his vears in the camps, to approach old acquaintances first. But it was not until now reunited w ith Natalia, that he had felt able to accept Veronica's offer. The return to Malava Bronnava must have evoked \ivid memories in Solzhenitsvn and Natalia and helped to cement their feeling of having completely buried the years of their separation. X'eronica and \\\r'\ welcomed them with true Russian hospitalitx' and informed them that since the\- had recently acquired an additional room on the tioor above their flat, Solzhenitsyn and Natalia w ere w elcome to stav there any time thev were in Moscow. Veronica regarded the returned exile with especial interest, and it seems that a bond of sympathy and affection sprang up betw een her and Solzhenitsyn almost immediately. She found him much changed from the impetuous and energetic student of 1940. He was now thin and had aged far more than she had expected. His hair was dull and lifeless, his eves somewhat sunken, lacking their old fire, his expression serious, and his movements slow and deliberate. At the same time, he seemed distant and absent-minded, although beneath the gentle exterior she sensed a hard, steelv centre that had not been there before. On the whole, she liked this reserved, courteous but strong-willed figure rather more than the self-centred, bumptious student of Terek, she had w ritten

cow, he w

as just as

,

1941.'^^

Natalia, for her part, was in a supercharged mood of euphoria, willing go to endless lengths to please and entertain her returned husband, full of energv and ideas, and bubbling over with happiness. It was as if she were anxious to make up for all the care and creature comforts he had missed while away and to heal the scar caused bv their separation. She arranged a shopping expedition to purchase a number of items that were available onh' in Moscow and that they needed for their new life in Rvazan, including Solzhenitsyn's first typewriter (a Moskva-4). Between them the\- planned to t\pe to

SOLZHENITSYN

[370] all

the manuscripts that Solzhenitsyn had accumulated in the four years since

from Ekibastuz

his release

—Natalia

professionall}',

employing the touch-typing

she had learned at university, and Solzhenitsyn in the classic two-finger mode.

down the Volga and which thev embarked on before settling in Ryazan. ^^ The one thing that saddened their stav in Moscow was Veronica's news of Ilya Solomin's arrest and imprisonment. It had happened in May 1946, quite soon after Ilya moved awav from Natalia's aunts in Rostov and into the unversity hostel. He had been a member of a group of students who used to meet regularly for parties, discussions, and various social functions, and between flirting they had talked politics. This had aroused the suspicions of the universitv authorities, the group was presumabh' infiltrated bv an informer, and the whole lot were rounded up and arrested. Ilva, as one of two who had served in the army and \\ ere therefore older than the others, had been sentenced to seven vears in the labour camps for anti-Soviet agitation, and most of the rest had been given five vears. Most disquieting was the news that an attempt had been made to link Ilva's case \\ ith that of Solzhenitsyn and \ itkevich (both were from Rostov), and Ilva's assertion that when shown some of the evidence in Solzhenitsvn's case, he had discovered some damaging testimonv against him bv Kirill. He had asked Veronica to pass this information on and to warn Natalia against her friend. It was yet one more point Natalia also bought tickets for a short steamer cruise

Oka

rivers,

of potential discord betw een the

t\\

o former school-friends, but

Solzhenitsyn's inclination at the time was to dismiss

Once with

a

in

it

seems that

it."*"

Rvazan, Solzhenitsvn and Natalia commenced their new life Her two rooms in the communal flat on the first floor

burst of activitv.

had grow n shabbv in the five vears that she had occupied them, and Solzhenitsvn, armed with the practical experience gained in the camps, set to w ork to rew ire and redecorate them. The smaller of the two rooms was equipped with

a

double bed,

a pair

of desks, and bookcases

all

around the walls

—

for

Solzhenitsvn and Natalia. Natalia's mother, Maria, continued to sleep in corner of the larger room,

w hich

also served as their fixing-

a

and dining-room

combined. In this way, not onlv were the rooms made more convenient for their new occupant but the shade of his predecessor w as exorcized in the same operation. The kitchen and toilet (there was no bathroom) continued, as before, to be shared with Natalia's neighbours. An advantage of the wooden house on Kasimovsky Lane was that it was still on the edge of open country, and although the Rvazan suburbs were expanding year bv vear, encroaching ever further on the surrounding fields, it still had a quiet, tree-shaded garden. In one corner was an ancient apple tree, beneath w hich Solzhenitsvn constructed a bench and table for working out of doors, and in the summer thev carried out a couple of loungers and spent w hole davs in the garden. Within a vear or two the yard of the Radio door had been asphalted over and was used as an unofficial vouths on their motorcvcles, and a food warehouse across attracted a stream of noisy lorries, but even then the garden contin-

Institute next

race-track

the street

bv

local

MaTRYONa's

l^LACF.

l37'l

a rchigc, and in w inter the "Walrus," w ho had always rexelled in was happy to chop firewood outside. "I don't remember ever having had such living conditions in all niv life," Solzhenitsvn wrote to I)r Zubov at about this time."^ And a few vears later he was to devote one of his miniature stories, "Breathing," to the jo\' the

ucd to be the cold,

garden gave him. it rained, and the clouds arc still scudding across the sky. A few drops from time to time. I stand beneath the apple tree the blossom not quite faded vet and breathe in. So what if this is only a postage stamp of a garden hemmed in bv five-storey monsters. I no longer hear the roar of motorcvcle exhausts, the v\ hine of record

Last night

—

still fall

—

.

.

.

players or the tinkling of transistors. sport of others, so long as rain,

it

will

still

we

be possible to

Even

if

you and

I

are constantly

made

the

can breathe here under the apple tree after the

live.-*^

21

THE SCHOOLMASTER FROM RYAZAN SEPTEMBER 1957 Solzhenitsvn started work as a teacher of physics and INastronomy applied for the at High School No. in Ryazan. He had 2

first

post in the spring, but o\\ ing to his prison record

the appointment to be confirmed.

had been arrested for it

had taken some time for

The appointments

Education Department expressed amazement to say

it

director of the

at the fact that

Ryazan

Solzhenitsyn

"Do you mean most uninformed Soyiet citizens,

criticizing the "personalitx- cult" in 1945:

existed as long ago as that?"' Like

she thought that Khrushche\'s speech had concerned onl\- the post-war years.

now had his certificate of rehabilitation to proye and the headmaster of High School Xo. 2, Georgi Matyeyey, whom he met at the department, turned out to haye fought on the same front as Solzhenits\n during the war." After an exchange of reminiscences, no more needed to be said. Solzhenitsyn appears to haye been as outstandinglx successful in his teaching in R\azan as he had been in Kazakhstan, and for much the same reasons. His yerye, his enthusiasm, his inyentiyeness, soon became bywords in the school, and he was found to be particularly adept at making the connection between theory and practice. In the days of his fame the headmaster told a yisiting reporter, "The main thing about him ... is his indestructible loye of life and of eyerything in life concerned with science. Say his class is coyering a particular subject. He makes a point of taking his pupils to a local factory or workshop and getting them to watch what's going on. Then he tells them to soKe a problem on the basis of what they haye obseryed at the factory. It is amazing how clear and obyious the laws of physics become when you perceiye them in life around \ou, not eyen suspecting that you Fortunately, Solzhenitsyn

his innocence,

372

The Schoolmaster from Ryazan

[373]

have been witnessing them all along." Matvevev recalled having become so absorbed in some of Solzhenits\n's poetic descriptions of phwsics when vis-

come

class-room that he forgot what he had

iting his

for

and sta\ed to

listen

until the end.'

Soviet cliches about an "indestructible love of

life"

can be discounted,

must be remembered that this account was written in the of Solzhenitsyn's success and achievement of nation-w ide fame. afterglow Nevertheless, the picture of the gifted and dedicated teacher emerges with great claritv from all accounts of his work in Rvazan. He was known for keeping up w ith the latest developments in his subject, particularlv in the field of space travel, and twice went to Moscow to lecture on the teaching of phvsics. He was also asked to write an article on earth satellites for the local edition of .A;; Agitator's \otebook (it was never published) and spoke at a local meeting to mark the launching of the first sputnik. Another interest put to good use was his hobbv of photograph v. Taking over the school photographx' club, he introduced a passion for order and precision that w as quite new to most of the pupils. Soon the dark-room was festooned with neativ tvped notices some of them in verse containing instructions on how to develop and print, or admonishing the students against waste and a meticulous filing system was introduced to keep track of club members' work. When a group of fellow teachers went on a brief hunting expedition, it was inevitable that Solzhenits\n should go along w ith his camera. And yet this appearance of plunging heart and soul into his teaching was only a facade, for Solzhenitsvn w as careful to limit his commitments at the school and to organize his life w ith the utmost rigour, so as to leave the maximum amount of time for w riting. He restricted his hours of teaching to fifteen a week for the first \ear, twelve in the second \ear, and eventuallv to onlv ten the minimum to qualifv as "emploved" and be eligible for social of course, and

it

—

—

—

—

securitv.

One

of the reporters

who

later visited the school

described his routine

as follows.

Time

is

so precious to

him

that

vou would take

motives weren't so crystal clear and fundamental.

it

for a

He

mania

if

his creative

arrives in his class-room

bell. He doesn't hang around after the end of good reason, doesn't drop into the staff room. He takes every opportunit\' of avoiding long meetings and conferences, not hesitating to use the help of one of his pupils to slip past the open door of the auditorium unnoticed. At the same time, he manages to get evervthing done. He breaks no promises, is never late, and demands the greatest exactitude from others in the fulfilment of their duties. Alexander Isavevich's punctuality is proverbial.

just

one or two minutes before the

classes and,

\\

ithout a

.

He

is

a

This self-discipline naturalh' extended into

his private life as

etovskaya has written in her memoirs of the monkish first

.

.

person of rare self-discipline.^

few vears

in

Rvazan.

"We

lived

bv

a set

life

w ell. Resh-

they led during the

of strict rules on going to the

SOLZHENITSYN

[374]

cinema, concerts, and theatres.

We

allowed ourselves

visits to

the cinema

only twice a month. As for concerts and theatres, these were limited to a visit every other month. All this was recorded. If we exceeded the quota in any

one month,

we had

to abstain the following

month

order to make up for

in

it."^

Although she was

to

complain of this

strict

regime

not without reason), Natalia seems to have accepted time. After

all,

she had read

in years to

docilely

it

come (and

enough

at the

"The Darling" and been warned. Somewhat

harder to accept was the isolation from her former friends. She still taught for \v hich, incidentally, she received at the Agricultural Institute

—

chemistry

a very good salary, thus making it possible for Solzhenitsvn to reduce his hours at the school and earn so little on his own account. But like Solzheni-

now spent no more time at her job than was absolutely would rush home as soon as she could to help Solzhenitsyn on what was by now almost their joint project, the second and third drafts tsvn himself, she necessary, and

of The First Circle.

According to Reshetovskava's memoirs, work on the second draft lasted from the summer of 1957 until mid-January 1958. An important feature of this draft was the complete reworking of the chapters devoted to Nadia Nerzhin and her life in the Moscow University hostel at Stromynka while her husband was in the sharashka. Vox this, Solzhenitsyn now had Natalia's diary to work from, and he questioned her exhaustively about her movements, thoughts, and emotions at that time, as well as about her relations with the

other girls

who

shared her room. With a few of these he also had an oppor-

tunity to talk, especially

whom

w

ith

Alexandra Popova (Olga

in the novel),

with

he and Natalia occassionally stayed v\'hen they visited Moscow.''

Solzhenitsyn was also able to discuss large sections of the novel with the originals of

some of the

principal protagonists, above

all

with Lev Kopelev

and Dimitri Panin. Together they went over some of the scenes in which all three of them appeared, and Panin, in particular, was very active in helping Solzhenitsyn think up new themes for some of Sologdin's arguments with Rubin. Although both friends figured very prominently, Kopelev seems to have taken a more detached view of Solzhenitsyn's work and to have given

what he wrote, whereas Panin had

him

carte blanche in

ical

ambitions of his

own and

took a lively interest in

In a sense this suited Solzhenitsyn quite well, for he to Panin's

literary all

and philosoph-

stages of the novel.

had moved much closer evils ot the Rev-

views on the perniciousness of Marxism and the

whereas Kopelev, though thoroughly disillusioned w ith Stalin, still less intact. Panin also welcomed Solzhenitsyn's return to Christianity, but in 1959 he wrote him a long letter saying that faith was not enough and that before Solzhenitsyn could regard himself as a true Christian he would have to submit his will to the church. Solzhenitsyn, it appears, was not prepared to make such a submission.

olution,

preserved his faith in Lenin more or

A number of meetings took place in Moscow, where Solzhenitsyn also saw the painter Sergei Ivashov-Musatov and discussed his role in the novel

— The Schoolmaster from Ryazan with him. lvashov-.\Iusato\- was not

him

1

3 7 5

]

Panin and Kopelev, and liked to talk to him about such subjects as the role ot the artist and the meaning of art in contemporarv societ\'. In the sharashka Solzhenitsvn had been a sincere admirer of Ivashov-Musatov's talent. He still treasured the pencil sketch Ivashov-Musatov had made of him there; and the artist's picture The Castle of the Holy (irail hung in his living-room in R\azan. But now he had doubts. Ivasho\-Musatov was obsessed with one project in particular Othello, Desdemona, and lago which he had started in 1956 or 1957. Solzhenitsvn felt that it was a waste of the artist's talent and argued for more "relevance." On one occasion, in 1959, during a visit to Ivashov-Musatov's studio with Panin, Solzhenitsvn exclaimed, "I can quite understand w h\ great artists have alw avs draw n on the eternal subjects in Holv Scripture, and I can see w hv thev also find inspiration in Shakespeare. But I cannot understand w h\ an artist should be so firmlv attached to the subject matter of ages so remote from ours after he but Solzhenitsvn regarded him as

as close to

as

a creative colleague

—

has been witness to the sufferings of people close

and treacherv, around him."

as

thev exist in our

Moscow

\ erv occasionallv his

Solzhenitsvn had brief

One pov

visits

of these was Nikolai in

The First

He w as now

a

b\-

friends travelled

Semvonov, the

to the top of his profession.

man who

Panin

still

down

to

all

Rvazan, and

friends living farther afield.

original of the engineer called Pota-

Solzhenitsvn had

highlv successful

him. Fidelitv, jealousv,

dav, are right in front of him and

from old labour-camp

whom

Circle,

own

first

met

in

Butvrki in 1947.

since his release had climbed back disliked

Semvonov

intenselv, but

Solzhenitsvn was verv fond of him and treasured the cigarette-case that

Semvonov had made him

in the sharashka for his birthdav.

Semvonov's

visit

gave him the opportunitv to show him the chapter placed into Potapov's

mouth, "The Buddha's Smile,"* the original idea for w hich Semvonov and he had dreamt up together in Butvrki. Contacts w ith these old labour camp comrades were extremelv important to Solzhenitsvn for a number of reasons. Ihe vear in Torfoprodukt had acted as a kind of "decompression" period in which he had begun to recover from the tensions and psvchological strains imposed b\ his term of impris-

and had commenced the painful process ot adjusting to His existence there had been of necessity solitary and reclusive. He was set apart from the rest of the villagers bv his education and experiences and had been emotionallv absorbed by the reaw akening of his love for Natalia. But now he was obliged to fit into normal societ\- in a far greater varietv of wavs, to rub shoulders w ith people of all kinds and in all walks of life, including those w ho w ere his educational, and in a few instances

onment and "normal"

exile,

life.

his intellectual, equals.

*Thc chapter is a reworking ot a well-know n camp anecdote that depicts Mrs Roosexelt arri\ ing in Moscow for a goodw ill \ isit just after the w ar and being show n round a model jail. The w hole thing

is

a

put-up job

b\'

of the prisoners) the wa\

the So\iet authorities, and the in

stor\'

which the elaborate deception

is

describes (from the point of view

mounted specialU

for her benefit.

— SOLZHEXITSYN

[376]

1

man

\\

living

w as psychologically difficult for him. He still had that sense of a ho has returned from the dead and \\ ho therefore regards the normal as somehow strange and incomprehensible. With them it was still

his

impossible to

make

friends.

None

of the other teachers

him, not even Matveyey, the headmaster.

The

\\

as

remotely close to

felt truly comho had shared similar experiences, former sons of Gulag \\ ho, like himself, had been innocent victims of Stalin's political terror. This sense of ease extended also to the Zubovs, \\ ith whom he carried on an intense correspondence throughout his years in Torfoprodukt and Ryazan, detailing his most intimate thoughts and plans. Their sensitive and concerned responses did much to buoN' him up and soothe him during this

fortable

ith

\\

were those

only people he

\\

period. .\part (for his

\\

from the

practical utilit\' of these meetings

ork on The First

compan\ was

their

three plavs dealing

ith three

w ith

his shanishka friends

another motive for restricting himself to

Among

need for absolute secrecy.

his

w

Circle),

his papers

were

of the most sensitive issues in recent Soviet

Germany; the Smersh during and after the w ar; and the terrorization of political prisoners by criminals in the camps, aided and abetted h\ the camp authorities. In addition there w as his long autobiographical poem expressing history: the unbridled behaviour of Soviet troops in occupied

brutal excesses of

sharp criticism of the Soviet regime from the very earliest days of the Revo-

onwards, and numerous other "seditious" poems, including the ode Khrushchev had done so far affected the light in w hich these works would be officially regarded. Each was, to a greater or lesser degree, "criminal," and their discoverx' would have led to fresh arrest lution

on

Stalin's death. Little that

—

and imprisonment it not worse. It was true he had devised ingenious hiding-places for most of them, but should he attract suspicion in an\- way, there was a chance the\" would be found. And now he w as w orking on \et another forbidden theme the secret prisf)n institutes set up b\ Stalin for scientists to carrx" out research and again needed perfect confidentiality. It w as this above all that motivated Solzhenitsvn's monastic life-st\ie. .\s he later wrote in The Oak and the Calf:

—

I

had to adapt m\

acquaintances invitations

had

\\

hole

—because

a single free

I

and alw ays

hour. ...

He w ent drafts

flat,

colleagues at to

to

make

a

to the .

I

tightly as possible,

as

.

need for tight security; make no friends or invite

nobody

couldn't afford to

to

mv home

let a

I

show of indifference

paper, and burning his

ith

never

.

.

.

to literature.*^

to cover his tracks b\' destro\ing

no spaces or margins and using both

fair

I

w hat I had moment.

took care never to reveal any broader interests

soon as thcv had been superseded, typing

w

and accept no

single scrap of

or allow an observant eve inside for a

w ork

enormous lengths

and outlines

.

couldn't afford to explain to anyone that in fact

hidden escape from the

Among mv

life

Ryazan

at all in

—

his

all

rough

w orks

as

sides of the

copies as soon as the final \ersion had been typed

The Schoolmastkr from Kva/an he

a habit that

hat! started in the

camps

w

antl

[377]

as destined to

the dux he was expelled from the Soviet Union,

in

continue until

1974.

no doubt that these conditions made tor immense difficulties and in e\er\ da\ li\ ing. All these drafts and copies had to be burnt sheet bv sheet in the Solzhenitsyns' stove, w hich w as situated in the shared kitchen of their communal flat. This meant sitting up late until their neighbours w ere in bed and asleep. There \\ ere a hundred other such menial tasks to be performed w ith boring repetition, all of w hich are described (\\ ith somewhat excessi\e self-satisfaction) in the opening pages of Tbe Oak and the Calf. On the other hand, some of these difficulties w ere almost certainK' of Solzhenitsvn's ow n making, answ ering to w hat w as b\ now an irresistible psvchological imperative. There was a sense in w hich he needed the whiff of

There

both

in

danger

\\

is

riting

in his nostrils,

parth

perhaps, to enable him to relixe and recapture

,

the emotional stresses of the past, and parth" because after long \ears of

conditioning he simpU"

felt

more comfortable

in

an atmosphere of embattled

conspiracv.

Evidence for

can be found

his attitude in these matters

to the details of his past. For Solzhenits\n this past

found meditation and studv,

its

remembrance

a

w

in his

response

as the object

sacred dut\

the anniversar\" of his arrest, he organized a "conxict's da\

.

."'

of pro-

on morning

F\er\' \ear. In the

he cut himself tw ent\-thrce ounces of breaci and put tw o lumps of sugar in hot w ater for his drink. At lunch time he had groats.

And

"And how

a

bow of broth and 1

I

get back to m\- old form," he later

am alreadv picking up crumbs to put The old sensations start up i\ idh .'"^

As he

a ladle

of

supper he had the remainder of the bread and groats again.

quickK'

of the da\", the bowl.

for

I

w

in m\'

rote. "B\' the

mouth and

end

licking

\

points out in that

same passage

in

Tbe Gulag Archipelago,

manv

camps "like holv relics." Solzhenits\n himself treasured the padded jacket and number patches from Fkibastuz, the aluminium spoon he had made himself there, his armv greatcoat, and his battered suitcase with the ba\()net hole in the side.* And there were reminders of this past evervw here for those w ith e\es to see. In

others did the same, and treasured their souvenirs from the

—

Milrsevo he had discovered that nearlv half the inhabitants had passed through

camps at one time or another, albeit most of them for theft. In Rvazan there was a hole in the railw av fence just outside the station that for some reason w as never repaired. Most passengers hardh" noticed it, but Solzhenitsvn did, for it was the spot w here the Stolvpin cars stopped and prison vans were backed up to load or unload prisoners even now the authorities

the labour

—

disliked admitting their existence.

More prominent ment

to the

MVD

straining at the leash

came * \\

in

was another kind of reminder,

on the south-w

from Mikhailo\

The havonet as

still

featuring a statue of a

hole had been

.

a

massive monu-

camp guard holding an

est side

Alsatian

of Rvazan, w here the main road

Solzhenitsvn was even asked to lecture in

made bv an armed guard

being transported to Fkibastuz.

at

one of the

halts

when

a local

Solzhenits\ n

SOLZHENITSYN

[378] labour

No.

camp soon after his arrival camp for women on the

2, a

in

Ryazan

—

in Corrective

outskirts of Ryazan.

The

Labour Colony was one

lecture

of his usual ones on physics and space travel, but he was terribly distracted by the emaciated faces and angular bodies of the w omen who had come to

him, and he could vividly imagine the cells they had just left, their come here, and the miserable life they would return to after-

listen to

reluctance to

wards.

One

day, finding himself in Novoslobodskaya Street on one of his

visits

Moscow, he decided on impulse to enter the "Parcels Reception Office" of Butvrki Prison. It w as full inside, mostly of women. This, he realized, was where his own parcels had come from. He recalled that on one occasion in Butyrki he and his cell-mates had discussed the problem of what job to take if and uhen thev w ere released and what v\ as the most useful thing they might do. All agreed that the most useful contribution would be to take a

to

folding stool to the Butvrki parcels office, \\

hat

went

metal in

it,

to

make

a perfect parcel. It

and contain

plastic

spoons and mugs

Solzhenitsvn w alked over to inspect the wall and

wondered w

into practice, but he

outside, and advise people on

sit

should have

list

soft sides,

as well as

of regulations hanging on the

hat chance there v\'ould ever be of putting their old plan

had barely begun

to read the notice

sergeant-major challenged him and quickly hustled him out.

On

with nothing

food and clothing.

another occasion he visited the block of

flats

when an

MVD

'"

he had helped build

at

Kaluga Gate. In those days, back in 1946, the block had been on the outskirts Moscow and hemmed in bv watch-towers and a high fence, sufficiently isolated not t(^ draw attention to itself. Now it was lost in the anonymous suburbs that stretched for miles in all directions. A sports shop stood on the spot w here the canteen and cultural and educational section had been and

of

where,

all

those \ears ago, Solzhenitsvn had recited (Jhatsky's subversive

monologue from Woe from Wit. Their old trusties' room was now part of someone's flat on the third floor, and higher up were the parquet floors he and the doors he had puttied.* Placing his hands behind his back, Solzhenitsvn paced the path that he had once paced when it had been a compound, and imagined himself back in the old days. Again that feeling of having returned from the dead, of being endowed with a double vision, came back to him. The residents of these buildings had no idea that as they strolled across the central courtx ard, thev were stepping over the ghosts of former prisoners, one of w horn had leapt to his death on this \ er\' spot. "And only had

laid

those trees in Neskuchn\- Park

.

.

.

bore witness that they remembered

happened." Unable to resist a sudden temptation, SolzhenitSNU climbed the first flight of stairs, and just below the flat w here the camp commandant's office had been, scraw led in black crayon on the white window sill, "Labour (>amp Division No. 121.""

everything, including me, and that

it

had

all

really

*lt appears that after the piil)hcati()n of /van Denisovich Solzhenitsv n

prominent physicist then h\ ing the

rooms

in that

\

antl admiretl the fact that his

was invited

to

meet

a

crv building. According to rumour, Solzhenitsvn paced

Hoors did not stjueak.

The Schoolmaster from Ryazan Unlike Nikolai \

unable and unw

an immense

itkc\ ich

[379]

and nian\ millions of others, Solzhenits\ n w as April 195S he conceived the idea of w riting

illing to forget. In

histor)' of the

labour camps, basing himself on his

ences and the stories he had heard from others.

He made

own

experi-

a tentative start,

on the vast enterprise that was to become I'he later to write in the preface to volume 1, he no longer regarded his own eleven years on the archipelago "as something shameful or a nightmare to be cursed," but had come "almost to lo\e that monstrous world." And in volume 3 he was to claim positive advantages for it. ("Life behind bars has given us a new measure for men and things. It has w iped from our eves the gummv rtim of habit, which alwa\s clogs the vision of the before abandoning

it

again,

Gulag Archipelago. As he was

man who

has escaped shocks.")''

That same spring of 1958 Solzhenitsvn suffered a relapse and was obliged to enter the hospital for a course of chcmotherap\ Natalia was desperateh' worried. Only a year ago, at her husband's urging, she had gone to the Lenin Library and read everything she could find about cancer, malignant tumours, melanoblastomas, and so on, and had come to the conclusion that Solzhenitsyn had only about four years to live. But the chemical treatment proved to be outstandingly successful, and Solzhenitsvn was discharged after onlv tw o .

weeks, although he continued to attend the hospital as an out-patient.

He

w ith infusions made from the suppiv, and v\ith another folk-remedv

also continued to treat himself occasionallv

mandrake root, of which he still had a made from a fungus that grows on birch trees.'' By the end of the treatment, Solzhenitsvn felt titter than he had done for years and was filled with optimism. The tumour seemed to have subsided and was no longer causing him discomfort. Ihat summer, after careful preparation, he and Natalia had their first proper holidav six weeks in Leningrad, which Solzhenitsyn had never visited before. Characteristicallv, he had established a card index on the city's historv and art beforehand (Natalia had done the same for its architecture), and the two of them spent much of their time wandering earnestly from monument to monument, index cards in hand, dutifully photographing and listing all the places seen, for all the world like

—

Japanese (or Soviet) tourists.

1 hey also went to concerts, the

ballet,

and the theatre. The

pla\ that

impressed them most, according to Natalia, was a little-known piece bv Alfred Jarry called The Sixth Storey, about which Solzhenitsvn later wrote to the

Zubovs: "The subject is elementarv. 'He' deceived 'her' and did not marrv her. But here, precisely, one becomes convinced that the most important thing in art is not what is said but how it is said."'"^ Later, in .4 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he was to suggest a different conclusion, w hen a prisoner terminates a discussion about the merits of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin

with the exclamation "No! feelings in me!""' Later

To

still,

hell

with vour hoic

in his

Nobel

if it

lecture, he

doesn't aw aken good

was

to trv to find a

middle wav between these two extremes.

At some point

in

1958 Solzhenits\n decided to resurrect his old hobbv

SOLZHEMTSVN

[380]

One motive, according to Natalia, w as that he had put on weight chemotherap\' treatment and \\ as anxious to shm dow n again an impulse that drove him to imitate Panin and start doing yoga exercises every morning. But there was more to it than that. After his long years of impris-

of cvclincr.

—

after his

enclosure, he craved mobility; and although he was at last living beloved central Russia, he had seen ver\ little of it. He needed to get out and take possession of it, physically, mentally, and spiritually. He could not afford anvthing more than a bicycle, but even this had its positive side,

onment and in his

it satisfied his romantic prejudice against the noise and smell of the internal-combustion engine,* w hile simultaneously reminding him of the carefree cvclincr tours of his \outh. A bicvcle brought him one step nearer that innocent past and pushed the intervening years a fraction further aw ay.

for

Oka

Natalia bought a bicvcle, too, and they

w ent

River and surrounding beauty spots.

On

for excursions to the

one of these they

nearby

visited the

village of Solotcha, nestling deep in primeval w oods about from Rvazan. Solzhenitsyn immediately fell in love with it, and years. The toUow ing it became a favourite haunt of his over the next few summer, fixing up his heavv bic\cle w ith pannier bags and loading up w ith

beautiful

little

thirtv miles

provisions, Solzhenits\n

made

a

and Rxazan provinces meet."^ These were moving, bew

Oka Moscow

longer tour alone through the lower

region, and the vear after that he toured the upper

Oka w here

ildering, disconcerting,

the

and infuriating jour-

nevs for the ardent pilgrim. On the purely functional level, there was the sheer difficultv of finding anxthing to eat or anyw here to stay for the night. There are no inns or hotels or restaurants in the small tow ns and villages ot the Russian countrvside, and no outsider

ularh alone. Tourism

is

for

groups

is

expected to travel there, partic-

in large cities. Solzhenitsyn could rarely

and w herever he w ent w as greeted with incredulity seemed that only a thief, a spy, or a criminal on the run could be travelling at random, w ithout an official itinerary. Good Soviet cit-

anvw here

find

and suspicion.

to stav It

izens could not conceive of a solitary traveller touring the countryside for

no particular reason, and this led to all sorts of misunderstandThere were profounder disappointments too. \'isiting the ramshackle village w here his adored Esenin had been born, he found only ugliness, povertv, neglect. The monaster\- in which the poet Polonsky was buried had been knocked to pieces and its site turned into a labour camp; the poet's abandoned grave was inaccessible inside the locked compound. In almost pleasure, with ings.

every village the churches had been pillaged and turned into stables, warehouses, or clubs, their bells silenced and their murals defaced. And yet Solzhenitsyn was also stirred by the sprawling undulations of the broad Russian plain, the slow meanderings of the river Oka, the smudges of wood and forest

on the horizon, and the sheer defencelessness of these medieval-looking villages, each w ith its ruined church and bell-tow er. Beneath the surface ugli*In

his miniature storx

fun of the motor car.

"Means of

Transport,"" written not long after this. Solzhenitsyn

made

Thk Schooi.m astkr from Ryazan

[3^1

I

ness and vulgarity ol tasteless concrete boxes, loudspeakers on posts, and

garishh painted w indows, he

coiiltl still [lerceixe

sian traditions shining through,

and

his ears

Russian historx and Rus-

were

filled

w

ith the

words of

Russia's poets on the matchless beauty of the Russian countrx side.

Much

of what he saw and

felt

subse(|uentK found

of miniatinx' stories that he began to w

rite at this time.

its It

wa\ into is

a series

not clear w hat

—

new form prose miniatures ranging from about a hundred hundred words in length. 1 he\' ma\' have been suggestetl b\ linthe best-know n example of works of this kind genev's poems in prose or perhaps b\' the example of some of the Russian modernists at the beginning of the centur\ like Remizox or Zam\atin. Altogether he w rote about a do/en and a half in the course of the next four or five \ears, w ith titles like "Along the Oka," "Esenin's Birthplace," and "A Poet's Ashes." One of the earliest was probabh "Breathing," cited earlier, and another was "The (jt\ on the Neva," recalling his \isit to I.eningrad. In other respects 1958 seems to have been a quiet \ ear for Solzhenits\n. By the end of it he had completed a third, and for the time being final, draft of his sharashka novel, now called The First Circle, and put the manuscript to one side. He may even have tinkered w ith some of the material for what was to become The Gulag Archipelago. But he must then ha\e turned his attention elsewhere, for w hen he first broke into print, it w as not w ith an\ of his literary w orks but w ith an article in the local Ryazan new spaper, the Priokskaya Pravcla, entitled "Post Office Curiosities," on the failings of the Soviet postal service, which appeared in March 1959.' Ihis article, a kind of curiled

him

to try this

to three

—

—

,

osity in itself,

is

actually rather revealing of Solzhenitsvn's psychology at the

shows the way in w hich his barrack-room-law \'er s\ ndrome, so noticeable in the prisons and camps, continued to operate in much the same way when he was back in civilian life. In his later memoir. The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenits\n maintained that his exasperation w ith the inefficiencies and bureaucratic mentalit\- of Soviet officialdom had been held rigidly in check in Ryazan. "Though, at ever\- step in my daily life, I collided with rude, conceited, stupici, and greed\' bureaucrats of every degree and in every institution, and though I sometimes saw a chance to crash through a barrier and sweep away the rubbish w ith a w ellaimed complaint or determined protest, I could never allow myself to do so, time, for

it

never take half

a step

out of line in the direction of rebellion, of resistance,

but had always to be a model Soviet citizen, always to submit to every bully

and acquiesce in an\' stupidity.'"^ In fact, as the very tone of this passage suggests, he was not nearl\' as successful in suppressing his anger as he subsequently made out, and the Priokskaya Pravda article was a result. A year later he wrote a similar article complaining about the railway's practice of selling two tickets for the same seat, and sent it to the newspaper Giidok (The Train Whistle). The perfectionist temperament that was so profoundly and nobly affronted by the human waste and misery of the Gulag Archipelago was equally irritated and exasperated, it seems, by these infinitely more petty

SOLZHENITSYN

[382]

bureaucracy, but the difference w as that, w hereas the profounder rebeUion had resulted in the w riting of an excellent novel and was to produce several outstanding works of literature in the years to come, all that the lesser irritation could spawn w as indignant missives to the newsfailings of the Soviet

papers in the

spirit

of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells."

It is

just as well that

Gudok discouraged him h\ not printing his contribution."''' The interesting thing about these articles is that they show Solzhenitsyn grappling, how ever superficialh', w ith themes from contemporary Soviet life

change from his almost total immersion in the past. At about the time ot newspaper article, in casting around for a subject to w rite upon, he upon the idea of describing his work at the school. Reshetovskaya writes,

as a

his first hit "I

remember

for

one night

that

mv

husband w

photography, feverishly making notes,

radio dial, for an outline of 'One

What became nitsvn's

of this outline

new-found

Day

as seated in the corner in the

weak

in the Life of a

we

reserved

light given out

by the

School Teacher.'

"-"

not known, but neither the theme nor Solzhe-

is

interest in

contemporary subject matter seems

survived for long. Instead, on 18

May

to

have

1959, he transferred the idea to a story

that he provisionally entitled Shch-854, about a

labour-camp prisoner

in Eki-

bastuz.

The

stor\-

w

as

based on an idea that had

first

come

to

him

in 1952,

w hen

he w as bricklaying in Kkibastuz. It

was an ordinary camp day

—hard,

as usual,

and

I

was working.

I

w

as helping

hand-barrow full of mortar, and I thought that this w as the way to describe the w hole w orld of the camps. Of course, I could have described my w hole ten years there, I could have done the w hole history of the camps that way, but it was sufficient to gather everything into one day, all the different and to describe just one day in the life of an average and in no fragments to carry a

.

.

.

way remarkable

prisoner from morning

till

night.-'

had lain dormant. Now it suddenl\- reappeared occupy all Solzhenitsyn's w aking thoughts. Somewhere at the back of his mind he recalled l\)lsto\''s dictum that a novel might take for its subject the life of all Europe for a century or the life of a muzhik for a single day. I olstov had tried both, and had been more successful w ith For seven years

again and quickly

War and to the

day

this idea

came

to

Peace than with

narrower form.

in the life

It

A

History of Yesterday, but Solzhenitsyn

followed naturally from his attempt

felt

drawn

to describe a

of a schoolteacher, but was now centred on the subject that he

—

most deeply about the camps. At the same time, it unlocked the passions that had been thwarted by his failure to make progress w ith his history of the camps and opened up a new channel for them to flow into, w hile bringing several of his preoccupations together into a single focus: "It seemed to me that the most interesting and important thing to do w as to depict the felt

fate of Russia.

Of

all

the drama that Russia has lived through, the deepest

was the tragedy of the Ivan Denisoviches. I wanted concerning the false rumours about the camps.""

to set the record straight

The Schoolmastfr from Ryazan The

stor\'

Solzhenits\n wrote

Denisovich Shukhov

is

wakened on

is

[3^3]

deceptivel\- simple in outline.

a frost\"

u

inter's

morning

l)\

—

Ivan

the sound

hammer hanging on a hrass rail the traditional eamp signal for rexeille. Although feeling fexerish, he forces himself to leap from his bunk and start

of a

the day's ritual.

As

the heavily laden latrine tank

is

being carried out b\ some

to swab out the 'guardhim to breakfast in the steaming mess hall, watch him go through the monotonous and immutable procedures of the roll-call, bodv search, and march to the work site, and see how the prisoners reluctantly prepare to w ork in the sub-zero temperatures. The stor\ then builds to a climax in which Shukhov and his fellow bricklayers become so carried avvav bv their w ork that thev disregard the final whistle and run the risk of being penalized for failing to stop in time and line up for the return march. Once back in the living compound, Shukhov performs a number of chores and does a personal favour for an imprisoned Moscow intellectual named Tsezar Markovich, bv queuing for Markovich's parcel at the post office and saving Alarkovich the trouble. Markovich pa\s him for his favour and also lets Shukhov have his camp supper, since he will not need it that e\ ening. Shukhov uses the money to buy some tobacco from another prisoner, performs some more little chores, chats w ith his barrack-room comrades, and falls asleep content. "The dav was over, a da\' without a cloud, almost a happv day." The story is narrated entirelv through the eves of Ivan Shukhov and

other prisoners, he house.

from

is

grabbed bv

a

warder and sent

We then accompany

his point of view, yet in the third person, allowing the author to break

into the narrative

and offer

his

ow n comments and observations w

ithout

interrupting the flow (rather according to Percv Lubbock's distillation of the

Jamesian method). The language was colloquial, rac\ (to the point of obscenity in places, though Solzhenitsvn generallv found euphemisms for his more colourful expressions), rich in folk idioms and allusions, \et also fresh and

studded w

ith

neologisms invented bv Solzhenits\n on the solid foundation

Shukhov was depicted

of his study of Dahl's lexical principles. Ivan crafty

and cunning but

tradition (clearly a brother of \

was sharpened bv the

as a

essentially moral picaresque hero in the Russian folk asil\'

Tvorkin), whose struggle for sur\

ival

was a considerable achievement, but Solzhenitsvn had surrounded his hero w ith such a rich cast of characters that he w as able to endow the story w ith quite another dimension. There was Tsezar Markovich, a screen w riter from Mos-

cow

hellish

regime of the labour camps. This

representing the metropolitan intelligentsia;

naval captain from Leningrad,

onage

after

having w orked w

who had been

ith

in itself

Commander Buinovskv,

jailed

on the suspicion of

the British as part of allied co-operation dur-

w ho had

ing the war; Tiurin, Shukhov's brigade leader, a doughty peasant

been exiled to Siberia imprisoned for his nationalists,

as a

faith;

a

espi-

kulak during collectivization; Ahoshka,

former prisoners of w

Ukrainian guerrillas. Central Asians

representing every category of prisoner

ar;

—

known

a Baptist,

Latvian and Lithuanian

in short, a galler\

to Solzhenitsvn.

of r\pes

Lach one

SOLZHENITSVN

[384]

occupied only

a

paragraph or a page or

t\\

but the effect of their repeated

o,

appearances and combined stories was to create

a

panorama of Soviet hfe and

Soviet history, a universalized portrait of suffering and oppression. Liberal hints indicated that, during these years, there had been very little to choose

between life inside and life outside the camps, in other w ords, that the Soviet Union was one gigantic labour camp. And the character of those who survived it was perforce bitter, distrustful, long-suffering, and yet stoic and in the long run triumphant over those responsible for the oppression. It is doubtful \\ hether even Solzhenitsyn recognized the extent of his achievement. The story had seemed to come so easily and naturally; into it had flowed all his stored-up knowledge and experience, but set dow n in a kind of shorthand, concentrated and extraordinarily rich. Its elements had

come from

diverse corners of his past.

The

figure of Ivan Denisovich

Shu-

khov, for instance, the "Shch-854"* of the title, as well as his name, had come from a soldier in Solzhenitsyn's battery. Shukhov had not been partic-

was simply that Solzhenitsyn later rememand likeable fellow and that somehow his face, character, and even his manner of speaking suddenly seemed to fit Solzhenitsvn's requirements. "Quite unexpectedly, w ithout any choice on my part, ularly close to Solzhenitsyn.

bered him as

It

a decent, honest,

and then the face, then some of his past, w here he first the name was from and how he spoke, began to enter my tale."-' His actual biography had been quite different. He w as never, so far as Solzhenitsyn knew, arrested or imprisoned, w hereas the fictional Shukhov's .

.

.

.

.

.

biography w as a composite of the biographies of other peasants whom SolAnd it was deliberately designed to be

zhenitsyn had met in the camps.

typical rather than idiosyncratic or sensational. ical

element as well.

myself been

a

"I

There was an autobiograph-

could ne\er have described him successfully

simple bricklayer in the camps.

One can't gain a

it

I

hadn't

proper under-

standing of the meaning of such w ork from mere hearsay. I describe a peaswith a peasant's shrewdness and a convict's shrewdness, but, of course,

ant,

one

is

bound

to

draw on

one's

own experience,

just as

one does when describ-

ing an\' character."-"^

For many of his leading characters, Solzhenitsyn drew on prisoners he had known in Ekibastuz. The naval commander Buinovsk) was based on Captain Boris Burkovsk\- from Leningrad except for one episode during the morning roll-call w hich was taken from an incident that had happened to Vladimir Gershuni. Tsezar Markovich, the script writer, was based on a .Muscovite, Lev Grossman (w ho had once been a pupil of \'alentin 1 urkin, though neither Solzhenitsyn nor Grossman had know n of their connection at the time). The early life of Tiurin, Ivan Denisovich's brigade leader and

—

the son of a family of kulaks,

someone he *Shcb

is

w as based on

later referred to (in

stories told to Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag Archipelago) as Nikolai

K

by

(other

the t\\cnt\ -sixth letter of the Russian alphabet. If each preceding letter stands for 999

prisoners in the camp, then readers, of

how

big the

camps

Shukhov \\

ere.

is

the 25,829th prisoner, a vivid indication, to Soviet

The Schoolmaster erom Kva/an

[3^5]

Tiurin's character were apparentlv modelled on someone else). Alvoshka the Baptist and the canteen orderlx according to (Captain Burkovskv in a later interview, were also based on recognizable prototypes.

parts of

,

Perhaps because of

this

adherence to

real

people and

writing of Shch-854 proceeded with unusual speed.

term finished,

at

than

six

little less

the end of June,

w eeks

in

all.

As

it

was

Bv

real events, the

the time the school

virtually complete, having taken a

in the case of The First Circle,

all first

drafts

were burnt and the fair copy was carefully concealed.""" During the first part of the summer holidays, Solzhenits\n and Natalia carried out a major reorganization of their living arrangements. The two gymnastics teachers who shared their communal flat on Kasimox sk\- Lane had decided to move out and go elsew here. Solzhenitsvn suggested to Natalia that they bring her two aunts Nina and Manva from Rostov to live with them. Since Maria had moved to Ryazan to look after Natalia, they had managed alone, but Nina was now approaching eighty and Manva wasn't much younger. It was arranged for them to exchange their flat in Rostov for the extra room in Ryazan. Solzhenitsvn was particularly grateful to Nina for all the \ears w hen she had sent him parcels, and he knew that Manva had helped as well. Their move had the additional advantage of filling the flat with one famiK w hich made conditions much easier for the concealment of manuscripts and the burning of drafts in the kitchen stove. But it also had its draw backs. For Nina and Manya, the move from Rostov, w here they had spent their entire lives, was a painful wrench. Relations between them and Maria or between them and Natalia were not alw avs of the smoothest. The tw o old ladies w ere not blood relatives and seem to have retained a decidedly aristocratic streak. They were reserved and somewhat haughty in their demeanour, w ith the curt manners of the upper class and no disposition for gossip or small talk. But they were also disastrously helpless in practical matters and therefore dependent on the practical Maria's goodwill (as well as on Natalia's salary) for their daily comforts, a dependency that thev were sometimes reminded ,

of

when

relations deteriorated.

For Solzhenitsyn there was the burden of living v\ ith four women, of whom three were elderly and had lived alone for most of their lives. He was used to the chattering of Maria, who loved to talk endlessly about her childhood and youth in the "good old days" and w as an inveterate gossip, and he enjoyed the care and attention that these more or

women

lavished on him. But he found

hile the

it

difficult to

less unoccupied endure the small talk, w

atmosphere of teacups and old lace that they created was somew hat at odds with the unvarnished manners he had acquired at the front and in the labour -"^ camps. While in Rostov to arrange the move, Solzhenitsvn and Natalia had taken the opportunity to visit a number of their old friends, including Nikolai V'itkevich, who had at last married and was completing his Ph.D. dissertation. But the two friends were further apart in their view s than ever. Solzhe-

SOLZHENITSYN

[386]

nitsvn had been taking a keen interest in the Pasternak case. The preceding October the award of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak for Doctor Zhhago had created a furore in the Soviet Union, and the storm had continued \\ ell into 1959. But when Solzhenitsyn tried to discuss the subject with Nikolai, the latter w as completely uninterested. He was more concerned about some sort of dispute in the chemistry department of Rostov University, where he was now w orking, and about the problems he was having in gaining promotion. Academic politics were more interesting to Nikolai than events in the outside

world, w hereas for Solzhenitsyn

it

w

as just the reverse.

From Rostov the Solzhenitsyns travelled w est to the Crimea to visit Nikolai and Elena Zubov, who had been freed from exile the preceding year and had come dow n here to live. Their move had been complicated by the one of their daughters was very ill and by their desire to visit Elena's sick and aging mother en route. The place where Nikolai had succeeded in finding w ork w as not in the lush Mediterranean Crimea of Russian romantic fiction but a barren and cheerless area on the north shore. Solzhenitsyn, when he saw it, commented that it differed from Kok Terek only in that it was surrounded by sea instead of desert, but the Zubovs were their usual, fact that

equable selves and uttered no complaints. Solzhenitsyn was delighted to see them, for the Zubovs were

still

his

and confidants. As he had said in one of his earlx' letters to them, "sitting dow n to w rite to you always puts me into a particularly good mood in which everything seems simple and I feel free to bare all my feelings to you. And no wonder. Only w ith you was I able to share three such difficult and lonely years."- On this occasion Solzhenitsxn brought them the completed version of The First Circle they had been the earliest readers of the first drafts set dow n in Kok Terek, and now they w ould have an opportunity to compare. But he forbore to tell them about his new est w ork, Shch854, perhaps in the interests of secrecy or perhaps because it w as still not closest friends

—

completeh' finished.

The

tw o

w eeks

that Solzhenitsyn

unusually sedentary for them In the

Crimea w ere no timetables. the beach and go swimming. In

and Natalia spent

—no guidebooks, no

mornings they would take

a stroll to

in the

itineraries,

w as siesta time, and in the evenings they would w alk or swim once more. Even in the southern heat, however, Solzhenitsyn could not bear such inactivity for long and soon started work on a story he had been planning for some time, about the death of his lorfoprodukt landlady, Matryona Zakharova. Its provisional title was based on a Russian proverb, "Without a Righteous Person No Village Can Stand,"* but after struggling for some da\s with it, he seemed to run into a blind alley. According to Reshetovskaya, he felt that he had exhausted the image of Matryona and had nothing left to sav about her, although his theme w as still not fully devel-

the afternoons

it

*"Righte()iis person"

word meaning and

is

an approximate translation ot the Russ'vdn

a virtuous

nol)ilit\ ot spirit.

person

just short

of

a saint,

pi airJiiik, a higlih

charged

but well above the average run in goodness

The Schoolmaster erom Ryazan oped.

I

therefore laid

le

Haek

it

in R\a/.an, the

13^?]

aside unfinished.-^

two

them

ot

settled

down

with the three old ladies

Ihex thenisehes moved into the room \aeated

in their

Hat.

the g\

now enlarged m instruetors, w

hieh w as iw iee the si/e ot their pre\ ions one and allowed

them

to spread thenisehes a 1

hours

week, instead

a

while the old ladies took the other two

little,

or the past \ear Solzhenitssn had been teaehing tor onl\-

rooms.

at that le\el,

ot his initial titteen,

although

it

kept his

l)\

and

salar\- \er\-

this \ear

low

.

twehe

he asked to eontinue

Throughout September

and into the beginning ot Oetober, he worked at Shch-S54 onee more and Oetober 1959. All in all the w riting of it eompleted his re\ ision of it on had taken just over three months. 1

now quiet

1

extreme and ran more or less to a timemornings he would rise earlv and do his yoga exercises, after w hieh he liked to chop and saw firewood, sometimes w ith Natalia. In her memoirs there is a picture of the two of them at w ork with a cross-cut on a heft\- log of w hat looks like birch. To ease the task for Their

life

w

as

in the

table set b\- Solzhenits\ n. In the

Natalia, Solzhenitsx n introtluced the idea of counting the strokes

cut through a single log, and devised other

ony of the

little

games

it

took to

to relieve the

monot-

task.

much

of the day, Natalia was away teaching at the Agricultural and Solzhenitsxn usualh" had to spend a certain amount of his time at school. The headmaster had asked him to take on mathematics in addition the marking would to physics and astronomy, but Solzhenits\'n refused take too much time. It seems that on one occasion he w as even approached to take over as headmaster, but hastih' declined that too. Nothing could have been further from his desires. \\ hen not at school, Solzhenits\ n read, w rote, or typed, and hated to be disturbed. He systematicalh discouraged visitors, with the grudging exception of his shanishkn friends from Moscow Man\' years later, after their separation, Natalia was to accuse Solzhenits\n of having deliberateh' cut her ties w ith her other R\azan friends and estranged her from her colleagues at the institute. There was much truth in this. Solzhenits\n was undoubtedly unsociable, w as obsessed w ith his w ork, was utterly self-centred, and was unyielding in the demands he made on Natalia, insisting that she both assist him and observe all the conditions he set. After sixteen years of lonely, "bachelor" life at the front, in the camps, and in exile, he w as also more set in his ways and more rigid in his attitudes

For

Institute,

—

.

than ever.

But there w ere other barriers Natalia's former marriage.

to socializing in

Most of her

during her years with \ sevolod.

He

Ryazan that arose from had been built up

circle of friends

still

lived in

Ryazan, and mixing with

meant running the risk of meeting him too. SimilarK w ith the scientific club and other places w here her colleagues from the Agricultural X'sevolod was alwa\s likely to be there. A further Institute congregated complication and embarrassment was that \ sevolod was now living w ith Natalia's and Solzhenitsyn's old childhood friend Lvdia Ezherets. Lvdia had these friends

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[388]

never approved of Natalia's abandonment of X'sevolod and return to Solzhenitsvn, mainly because of the children, and had tried to talk Natalia out of it.

After the separation \ sevolod had cried out his sorrow

s

on Lvdia's shoul-

der and within an amazingly short time had married her. She had kept her room in Moscow in order not to lose her registration there but was now

Moscow and Ryazan. new life-stvle and

dividing her time between

Natalia largely acquiesced in her

w titer's w

the tic

ife

and helpmate more than she

side she decided that

and

t»>ok lessons in

it

w as time

relished the role of

later admitted.

cooking and sewing to help her achieve

full-time professional

woman,

On

the domes-

to turn herself into a proper housekeeper,

she had had

little

this aim.

As

a

opportunity or taste for

had been looked after bv her mother for all but Moscow. But now she acquired a sewingmachine (a cosy photograph of her at work on it appears in her memoirs), turned her hand to the arcane arts of pickling and bottling, produced kasha and curtains for the admiration of her husband and aunts, and tried her best to become a housew ife in the traditional manner, though not alw ays, it seems, with a high degree of success. She also typed, filed, and read things for Solzhenitsyn; and in the composition of The First Circle she was summoned to assist as source, collaborator, and critic. In all this, it is true, she was commanded by Solzhenitsyn, but she also seems to have found it novel and flattering and w as w illing to fall in w ith all of his schemes. In her memoirs she notes of this period that she and her husband "w ere living in a state of

housew ork, and

in an\ case

the six years she had spent in

complete harmony.""*^ SolzhenitSN'n

w

as

now

settled for the first time in his life

to organize his literary affairs

more

and was able

systematically. In exile he had started

which he collected information on music and literature. The literature now began to bulge from the vast amount of data collected and had to be constanth" rearranged and relabelled. Solzhenitsvn's method w as to w rite out notes, in the best schoolmasterly fashion, on this or that w titer and file them aw av in folders marked "Russian Literature," "Soviet Literature," and "Western Literature." To widen his range of knowledge, he bought an enc\ clopaedia of w orld literature, and at the same time started to build a systematic library, for w hich he bought, according to Natalia, books by Herzen, Dosto\'evsky, Tolsto\ Hemingway, Graham Cireene, Richard Aldington, and many classics from the eighteenth century. He also subscribed to Soviet collected editions of the w orks of Chekhov, Kuprin, PauAnatole France, and joined a childhood favourite stovskv, Prishvin, and files in files

especialh'

,

—

—

three separate libraries in Ryazan.

Reading nitsyn

all

was very

these books strict

w as

a different matter, especially since

Solzhe-

about apportioning his time betw een w riting and read-

and Reshetovskaya reports that he was a very slow reader. He tried, she works that had a high reputation as models of literature, and developed a complicated and idiosyncratic system of rating them w ith a combination of dots, plus signs, and exclamation marks. Naturally his tastes ing,

savs, to read only

The Schoolmaster from Ryazan He

fluctuated.

[3^9]

quickly went off Anatole France and Kuprin; on the other

hand, he gave the very highest marks to the nineteenth-centurv Slavophile poet Fyodor liutchev, especially to his celebrated p)eni "Silentium,"'" w hich

reads as

the great poet had been able to see, across a century, into Solzhe-

if

nitsyn's very soul, sending

A

He

read. allv

him an admonition and

a

warning.

very different response was evoked by some of the Soviet authors he attracted

v\'as at first

grew disenchanted w

ith

by the limpid prose of Paustovsk\- but gradu-

Paustovsky's long and rambling autobiograph\

as it appeared in its multiple episodes.* He felt that Paustovsky had become bogged down in the story of his life, "which threatens to occupv two out of the seven volumes of his collected works." Worse still, Paustovskv was deliband most painful events in Soviet historv, erately avoiding the principal which meant that he had tailed to find his true subject "in an epoch when

—

—

"^'

one cannot help finding one's theme. A few months later he was similarly exercised by the first instalments of Ilya Ehrenburg's long series of memoirs. People, Years, Life,f w hich w as liberal literary journal Novy Mir{\ew World). SolzheEhrenburg was "arguing with the dead and trying to prove to the living that he was honest and clever," in Reshetovskava's words. Later he somewhat modified his viev\'s and was much interested b\' Ehrenburg's reminiscences of the Civil War period. "There are profound thoughts there

being serialized in the nitsyn

that

I

that

felt

have never encountered elsewhere.

esting.

Manv

of the portraits are also inter-

"'-

But

didn't alter Solzhenitsyn's general disapproval of writers

it

w ho w rote

Reshetovskaya notes that he didn't disapprove of such, onlv of memoirs b\' writers, feeling that they were "a prod-

their autobiographies.

memoirs

as

uct of narcissism on the part of the author" and an admission of failure, signifying the

w Titer's

"inability to elevate himself to an artistic generaliza-

what he has observed.'"' Spurred on by his mounting irritation, Solzhenitsyn sat dov\n and w rote another indignant article, this time not about the post office or the railw ays but on a subject that w as much dearer to his heart literature (disregarding the fact that if it w as published, the true nature of his interests would be revealed). Entitled "An Epidemic of .\utobiogration of

—

phies," the article asked, to write a simple

ten about

by

does

their contemporaries or

a challenge: "Isn't

to this

"Whv

a writer

autobiography? Those

about time that

it

by

who

who

is

capable of creating need

prove worth\' of

'literarv scholars,' "

at least

it

will

be writ-

and ended w

magazine publishers put

a

ith

stop

epidemic of autobiographies?"'"*

Solzhenitsyn sent the article to the Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literar\ * Paustovsky, a romantic novelist and stcjrv writer, was one of the Soviet Union's best-known and best-loved writers. His autobiographical cvcle of five books, known collectivelv as The Tale

of Life, appeared in instalments \ People, Years, Life

was

reappraisal ot the twenties

and Tsvetae\a.

from 1946 to 1962.

serialized in

and

its

Sovy Mir from 1961

to

1964 and v\as noteworthv for

its

frank treatment of proscribed writers like Babel, .Mandelstam,

SOLZHENITSYN

[390] Gazette)* in

November 1960 with

a

covering note: "I should prefer not to

receive a courteous apology to the effect that 'unfortunately the editors don't

have the space to publish published. If

I

am wrong,

this.' If I

I

am

right,

request a rebuttal."

request that

I

The

article

my

article

be

was signed, "A.

Solzhenitsvn. Teacher." Eleven days later the article was returned with a curt rejection and no rebuttal. Paustovskv, to

whom

Solzhenitsyn had boldly

copy of his article, did not reply at all, despite the fact tsyn had also praised the first part of Paustovskv's work for sent a

that Solzheniits

form

as "a

chain of free-flowing novellas."^' It

appears that Solzhenitsyn sent this article to

a

number

of other pub-

but nobody was interested.

lications in addition to the Literaturnaya Gazeta,

As he later wrote in his own autobiography. The Oak and the Calf, it was probably because nobody had heard of him. In The Oak he further writes that although his article "looked like an attack on memoir literature generally, its purpose was to express

real

great dark epoch and yet

my

exasperation

were forever trying

v\'ith

writers

to sidle

who had

round

it,

seen the

ignoring the

things that mattered most, telling us nothing but trivialities, and sealing our

eyes with emollients

till

we no

longer saw the truth. "^^ This was undoubt-

edly an important ingredient in his anger, but his distaste for literary

remained very

oirs

his

real,

w hich

is

presumably

\\

hey he

felt

mem-

obliged to preface

own work in that genre with an apology. Solzhenitsyn was to argue later own memoir was "different," and certainly the circumstances of its

that his

however, and in its "argument \\ ith time," it removed from Ehrenburg's apologia pro vita sua. Age and sense of past achievements were enough to produce a change of perspective.

publication

was not a

*

The

L

nion.

\\

ere. In its goals,

really so far

Lilenitiirnayu Gcizeta

is

pul)lished three times a

week and

is

an

official

organ ot the Writers'

22

ON THE THRESHOLD DESPITE ALL THESE preoccupations, "linguistic exercises"

kept up since the sharashka.

Solzhenitsvn did not omit his daih"

with Dahl's dictionary, w hich he had rehgioush'

He

felt

he needed

this regular session in order to

steep himself continually in the spirit of the Russian language and to refresh

himself by repeated immersion. Years ago he had realized that the

\\

titer's

might be not just to rescue forgotten areas of Soyiet experience and history from obliyion but also to liberate the Russian language from the dead weight of Soyiet cant and cliches that were pulling it down. Judging the task

sickness of the language to be seyere, he had determined on radical mea-

—namely,

to reyiyify it by returning to its natiye and traditional roots and in folk speech. \ ladimir Dahl's dictionary w as the greatest repository of pure Russian language ayailable to him. Influenced by the great German philologists of the nineteenth century, Dahl had gone to the common people to document and define the character ot the Russian language. Moreoyer, he had responded to the genius of the Russian language by organizing his dictionary according to the roots of w ords, rather than the words themsehes. Ihis proyided scope for illustrating and analyzing the enormous wealth of prefixes and suffixes w ith w hich Russian is endowed, constituting one of its greatest glories and offering a yast repertoire of nuances of mean-

sures

in folklore

ing.

In the century or so since Dahl compiled his dictionary', Russian has all Indo-European languages in becoming relatix ely more and less synthetic, a deyelopment that Solzhenitsyn respected in his w riting. But it has also suffered an unnecessary impoyerishment of yocabulary and forms, partly under the weight of tw entieth-century innoyations

follow ed the path of

analytical

39'

SOLZHENITSYN

[39^] in scientific

and partly of

and bureaucratic language, partly as a result of sheer neglect, purging of modern Russian literature of so many

as a result of the

leading

its

\\

titers

of talent.

From

his yery first

experiments in yerse, Sol-

zhenitsyn had sought to do two things: to cleanse his language of bureau-

and industrial jargon and cliches (except w here he used them for

cratic

satirical

purposes); and to refresh and enrich his lexicon either with old forms of

ords taken from Dahl or with

\\

found

new

coinages formed according to the rules

Dahl, but not actually pre-existing in the language.

in

monl\' difficult to illustrate this process in lytical

and uninflected

as English, but at

its

It is

uncom-

language as determinedly ana-

a

lovxest

and most feeble

it

might

be likened to forming the non-existent "ept" from "inept," or reintroducing an archaic word like "ruth" b\- analogy with "ruthless," and so on. English barely tolerates such tricks and brands

them

as barbarisms,

but Russian

is

and more hospitable. Eyen so, Solzhenitsyn did not escape similar charges of barbarism and bathos when he was published, and his reforms were always to be controyersial. Curiously enough, one of the few Hying Russian writers he later came to admire for his style was Vladimir Nabokoy, whose linguistic yirtuosity deeply impressed him. But Nabokoy was altogether too Westernized in his yocabulary and syntax to serye as a model, and the two men \yere poles apart in their aesthetic sensibilities. Solzhenitsyn's innoyations and coinages were a highly conscious and calculated affair. Natalia noticed that in going oyer his writings he would make a note of all the neologisms and new expressions and mark them in the

more

flexible

margins, taking care not to exceed a certain quota per page.' if

he oyerloaded the

accepted.

He

text, his

innoyations would stand

vyas also painstaking in his choice of

less

names

He

realized that

chance of being

for his characters.

His fayourite name of "Nerzhin," for instance, had been inspired by the Belorussian yillage of Syerzhen, which he had come across at the front. For

some reason the name of the yillage stuck in his mind, and he tried to adapt it. His first attempt was "Syerzhenin," but that was unsuitable because it seemed to share the same root as the Russian yerb svergat\ "to oyerthrow." He then tried "Kerzhin" and only later came to his final form of "Nerzhin."-* On other occasions he picked the names that appealed to him from ready-

made

lists.

For instance, the eyocatiye name of Shkuropatenko giyen to one

of the prisoners in Shch-854 belonged to one of Natalia's students at the Agri-

names Obodoysky (in August 1914) came from a list of pupils who had attended the Ryazan Secondary School for Boys in 1904 and w hose names appeared in a book published to mark the cultural Institute (there

is

no law of

libel in

the Soyiet Union), and the

of Gangart (in Cancer W'anJ) and V'arsonofiey and

school's centennial.'

formed a deep attachment same author's dictionary of Russian proyerbs, a copy of which Aunt had once giyen him in boyhood but w hich he had long since lost. This,

In addition to Dahl's dictionary Solzhenitsyn to the Irina

*

Nerzhin

also has overtones of the Russian nezhiiy,

meaning "tender."

On

thf.

ruRFSMoi-i)

[393

1

gave rise to extensi\c annotating, copv ing, and rcclassit\ ing, a task in which Nataha helped him by typing out the proxerhs he had marked and fihng them. His dream, she writes, was to have a big \ase filled with eards on w hich all the best proverbs were written, so that he eould pick out a card too,

at

random."* In the

autumn of 1960 Solzhenitsvn returned

to his stor\- about .\latr\ona

Zakharova and successtully completed it. It is not known what had prevented him from finishing it earlier, but it mav ha\e had something to do v\'ith the deeper level of meaning that Solzhenitsvn wished to achieve. The storv of the old woman's penurious life and needless death in a train accident was affecting in itself, but Solzhenitsvn seems to have felt that it contained a greater significance than that, and in his final draft he was able to find a satisfactorx' wa\' to dramatize and universalize Matrxona's fate. .\t the heart of the storv, in its final form, w as the message that Matrvona, despite her sknenlv wa\s and low intelligence, \\ as a genuinelv good and moral person but that there was no room for her in the grasping, materialistic culture of contemporary Soviet societv. Being old, infirm, and ill educated, she \\ as at a fatal disadvantage in dealing \\ ith ambitious relati\es and unfeeling local officials and was the \ictim of repeated injustices. \\ hen she fell ill, she w as dismissed from the collective farm (the onlv emplover in the village apart from the peat-works); since she was semi-literate, she was unable to deal w ith the forms thrust at her by the bureaucrats and hence received no pension; without a job, she got no allowance of peat for cooking and heating. Yet she was still expected to work for nothing at harvest time, to help friends and relations dig their cabbage patches. Her good nature was taken for granted, and her w illingness to work hard exploited. The culmination \\ as her brotherin-law's demand that she break up her house and allow him to cart aw av her annex for his daughter, and her death in helping him carrv out this removal, which was entirely against her o\\ n interests, was her final sacrifice. "We all lived beside her," concludes the first-person narrator, "and never understood that she was that one righteous person w ithout w hom, according to the proverb, no village can stand. Nor any city. Nor our w hole land."' It was a storv very much in the idiom of the late Tolstov, and bv implication deeply subversive. Ihe peasants were depicted as living in poverty and squalor, totally at the mercy of despotic officials from the village soviet, the collective farm, and the peat-works, and just as alienated from them as any pre-revolutionary peasant from his landowning masters ("Just as the\had formerly stolen wood from the landowners, so they now hauled off peat from the Trust"). B\' a variety of hints Solzhenitsvn even managed to suggest that they had been better off before the Revolution: at least they hadn't had to harness themselves to the plough, as Matryona and the other women did regularly every year. The whole story was also bathed in a kind of Christian light. Although there was nothing overtlv religious in it and although Matryona was not represented as a believer (apart from attending church on feast-days), she and the other characters were all described and judged in '^

SOLZHENITSYN

[394]

terms of Christian morality, while the proverb that gave the story its name, and with which it ended, not only was traditionally Russian in character but

world view. Finally there was the sweep of that was one village he had happened to observe; it had spread

also expressed a Christian last

sentence.

The

not limited to this

people's travail, Solzhenitsyn seemed to be saying,

through the entire land. Having completed the story to his satisfaction, Solzhenitsyn put it aside and found himself thinking about his experiences in the hospital at Tashkent. Apparently, he was not yet ready to contemplate

a

major prose work on the

subject, but he turned his attention to a particular incident that

him

the time and remained graven in his

at

had shocked

memory. One day during

his

convalescence, v\hile strolling in the hospital grounds, he had encountered

man

feeble old

struggling to

obvious sickness and grossly

and he asked Solzhenitsyn to the receptionist.

Once

a

way through the main gate. he man's distended belly made it difficult for him to walk,

make

his

assist

I

him

there, the old

as far as the

man grew

admissions office to see

arrogant,

demanding

treatment on the basis of his earlier services to the Revolution.

It

special

turned out

documents that during the Civil War he had served in a Cheka detachment," where he had been responsible for hacking hundreds of people to death with a cavalry sabre. Looking at the old man's now sclerotic and enfeebled fingers, Solzhenitsyn had tried to imagine them as instrufrom

his

"special

ments of death and had

felt

repelled

by the very thought of having helped

him.

The

figure of the revolutionary executioner

was

at

the opposite pole to

Matryona, but perhaps for that very reason spoke to Solzhenitsyn's creative impulse almost as strongly as the old woman. Employing a first-person narrative very much in the style of "No Village Can Stand," he s\\ iftly retold the incident in the form of a short story. In a way it \\ as a neat reversal ot the Matryona theme. The narrator's Samaritan-like compassion for the old man turns out to have been lavished on a moral monster, and the reader's

one of indignation and outrage rather than of sympathy for the it seemed, had two faces. Shch-854 and "No Village Can Stand" glorified the more or less passive, martyred figures of Ivan Denisovich and Matryona, summoning compassion and humility from his readers, while "1 he Right Hand" smote the wicked Comrade Bobrov and appealed to the reader's sense of outrage and scorn. They were two sides of a single sensibility, often in uneasy juxtaposition with one another and w resresponse

is

oppressed. Solzhenitsyn's muse,

tling for

supremacy. Only w

Old 1 estament

ith

the passage of

many

years did the vengeful.

side of Solzhenitsyn gain ascendancy over his Christian

humility.

Ihe

like the Matryona story, was consigned to Solzheand he then took up a completel)' different kind ot project a play about contemporary life, set not in the Soviet Union but in a mythical country intended to represent a kind of composite of both East and West. "The action takes place in an unknown country at an unknown "

Right Hand,"

nitsyn's desk drawer,

—

On thk Thrkshold

I395I

period, and the eliaracters ha\e international names," he later told an inter-

viewer. "1 did this not beeause

wanted

to treat the

regardless of

\\

I

wanted

to conceal

moral problems of society

my

in the

ideas but because

hether the\' were capitalist or socialist."

Solzhenitsyn was also chafing over his inability to w

rite

remotelv publishable under Soviet conditions, and that

I

developed countries, It is

possible that

anvthing that looked b\-

choosing

a

neutral

and a more abstract theme, he thought he might somehow produce something that would make its w av into print. 1 he subject of the plav was the return of two scientists, Alex Coriel and terrain

flict

town after a long term in labour camps charge ot murder, their subsequent careers, and the ensuing conbetween them. When the play opens, Philip has alreadv been home for

five

years and has

Philip Radagise, to a southern seaside

on

a false

become head of

a bio-c\bernetics laboratorv at the local

university, whereas Alex has only just arrived after spending five vears in

Thev meet at Maurice Craig, an elderh' professor of music, a gourmet and bon vivant, w ho is living with his voung third wife, lillie, a journalist. Alex learns that .Maurice is estranged from his daughter from his first marriage, Alda, although she lives in the same citv; and in the course of his conversation with his old friend Philip, we learn of a critical difference betv\een them: w hereas Alex has come to terms with his past, is prepared to talk freely about it and even "bless" it for v\'hat it has taught him, Philip is ashamed of it, has completely banished it from his mind, and refuses to discuss it. Nevertheless, he is still perfectlv friendh' and invites Alex to join his laboratory, which Alex agrees to do. In the next scene (the play is divided into scenes and has no acts), Alex has a tender reunion with his cousin Alda but is disturbed to discover how neurotic she is. He persuades her to undergo treatment at the bio-cvbernetics laboratory, where techniques have been evolved to stabilize erratic personalities and cure neuroses. She agrees, and later in the play we discover that the treatment has been a success. Meanw hile, Philip is engaged in an interdepartmental battle for more funds and has decided to seek militarv support for his laboratory. At a partv he throws to celebrate the success of his manoeuvre, he triumphantly parades the cured Alda before an admiring general and announces the establishment of a separate institute of bio-cvbernetics with himself as its head. But Alex has become disillusioned w ith the w ork of the laboratory. Alda's cure has estranged her from him, and the collaboration w ith the military is the last straw: he announces at the part\' his intention to join Philip's arch-rival, Terbolm, who runs a laboratorv devoted to social, the wilderness to gather his thoughts and readjust to freedom. the

home

ot Alex's uncle,

not biological, cvbernetics.

At the climax of the party, 1 illie arrives to announce that her husband, is dying and has expressed a last w ish to see Alda. Alda bursts into tears, and it is clear that this sudden grief has undone her cure. Philip and his colleagues return to the room and accuse Alex of having deliberateh' let her go to Maurice out of spite. The penultimate scene show s the death of Maurice,

— SOLZHENITSYN

[396]

Maurice, while an eccentric distant over him. Alda

is

relative,

of returning to Philip's laboratory for join

Aunt

Christina, reads the Bible

terriblv distraught but afterwards

announces her intention

more treatment, while Alex goes

off to

Terbolm. Solzhenitsyn entitled the play The Light Which

very limited success in making

it

Is in Thee,

but had only

relevant to both East and West.

matter, the use of "biofeedback" techniques to modify the

Its

human

a

subject

personal-

was certainlv topical both in the Soviet Union and in America. Biofeedback machines were already in existence to control certain bodilv malfunctions such as irregular heartbeat and hypertension, and new developments were making it possible to use them, instead of drugs, as relaxants and tranquillizers. The idea that a young woman like Alda could undergo "neurostabilization" was therefore not entirely far-fetched, and Solzhenitsyn had obviously done some homework. But the setting of the plav, the main characters, the conflicts, and even the ethical dilemma at the centre of the play inevitably reflected Solzhenitsyn's experiences and had an indubitablv Soviet stamp to them. Alex was a transparent stand-in for Solzhenitsvn himself, and Philip for Nikolai Vitkevich. Maurice Craig and his young wife were modelled on Valentin Turkin and his third w ife; Alda was based on Turkin's daughter, Veronica; and Aunt Christina owed her character, including a love of cats, to Solzhenitsyn's ity,

aunt

Irina.

The

southern seaport was, of course, Rostov.

In his treatment, too, Solzhenitsyn

usual preoccupations.

was unable

The labour-camp theme

to get

spoke for

awav from

itself

(where

but in the Soviet Union would two scientists be returning to civilian

his else

life after

twelve years in the labour camps?) Kquallv characteristic was his portrait of

from a "three-letter institution" (the D7 F in the play Department of Thoughts and Feelings), who had his own reasons for being interested in neurostabilization.* The scene showing Aunt Christina reading from the Ciospel of St Luke over the dving Maurice was more overtiv religious than anything Solzhenitsyn had done in this line before, but in other respects it followed recent developments in his thought fairly faithfully. He also underlined the significance of this scene bv drawing on St Luke for his title: "Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darka fire-eating general

ness."!

The

plav was quite different from those he had written before in that

it

and a number of characters associated with them represent the forces of hedonism (it is not without significance that Philip and Tillie are sexuallv promiscuous as well), \\ hereas Alex and Terbolm are aware of a deeper set of values, and Alda is the "candle in the wind," buffeted by blasts from both sides. It showed Solzhenitsyn tack-

was

a

plav of ideas. Philip, Maurice,

Tillie,

*Solzhenits\n's theme turned out to be uncanniK prophetic in vieu of the initiated poiicv of incarcerating dissidents in

tThe

quotation

is

from Luke

11:35.

The

KGB's

soon-to-be-

mental hospitals.

plav circulated under the

title

of C.aiidk

but in his Collected Works, Solzhenitsvn has restored the original, biblical

title.

in the

Wind,

On thk ling

(>.

Snow 's theme of the "two

P.

equipped

Thrkshoi.d

to

do

cultures"

as a teacher of science

and

I

3

97

I

— something he was eminently w —and indicated

a practising

riter

an extension of his range, but the characters were too bl{K)dless, and the conflicts too obvious, for

it

to

be verv interesting

drama.

as

Solzhenits\'n later acknowledged his failure in The Oak and the

I

realized tor the

right,

first

time how

piece of

a

work mav

(.'alf.

stul)l)ornl\ refuse to

come

even after four or Hvc rewritings: vou can throw out w hole scenes and

—

them w ith others and it still looks hopelesslv artificial. spent a go(xi on it and thought had finished but no, it u as still no j^ood. I had based it on the true story of a particular Moscow family; I did not cheat once; I expressed only ideas I sincerely held, man\ of w hich I had long since cherished, refusing from the very first act to humour the censors whv, then, was it such a failure? Could it possibly be because had avoided a specifically Russian setting and that off Russian ground 1 am doomed to lose my feel for replace

1

deal of labour

—

I

—

I

.

.

.

the Russian language?**

Nonetheless, Solzhenits\n w as pleased w

owing

to a rather curious incident, \'eronica

ith his pla\ to

became

her second husband, Yuri Stein, had recently

its first

moved

begin w reader.

ith, and She and

to a slightK' larger flat

Chapaye\sky Lane, w here they also kept a room free for Solzhenitsyn, and one day Natalia rang to say that she and Solzhenitsyn would shortly be coming to Moscow and might w ant to spend the night there. On the e\ ening in question, \ eronica waited up for them. \\ hen the\ failed to arri\e, she went to bed, where she had a painful dream about herself and her dead father. Later that night she woke in great distress and could not go back to sleep for a very long time. The follow ing day Natalia rang to apologize: they had been in Moscow but had spent the night elsewhere. Noticing some sadness in Veronica's voice, Natalia asked what the matter was, and when Veronica explained about the dream, she covered the receiver and asked her to hang on for a minute. A few moments later, Solzhenitsyn came onto the phone and began to question Veronica closely about her dream and the time when she had dreamed it. Veronica asked Solzhenitsv n w hether, on top of becoming a fatalist since he left the camps, he had started believing in dreams as well. Solzhenits\n told Veronica that Natalia would explain everything the next time she was in Moscow After a short interval, Natalia came to Moscow and handed Veronica a brown paper parcel. In it, she said, was Solzhenitsvn's new plaw two of whose leading characters were based on Veronica and her father. On the night they had been planning to come to her, just w hen she had dreamt her dream, they had been visiting friends in another part of Moscow All had stayed up very late to hear Solzhenitsyn read some extracts from the play, and according to their calculations he had been reading the scene betw een Alda and her father at the very moment w hen Veronica had been having her dream. Since this was such a striking coincidence, Solzhenits}'n wanted in

.

.

Veronica to be the

first

to read the play.^

,

SOLZHENITSYN

[39H]

Oddly enough, another moeiel for one of the characters in the pla\' arrived Ryazan shortly after it was finished Aunt Irina, w ho paid the Solzhenitsyns a visit in January 1961. Solzhenits\'n was extremeh anxious to please this favourite aunt of his childhood and went to unusual trouble, for him, to entertain her and make her feel at home. He and Natalia showed her Ryazan and took her for trips in the surrounding countryside. They even proposed that she leave her adobe hovel in Georgievsk and move closer to them, hi the village of Davydovo, next door to their favourite excursion spot of Solotcha, there was a house with a garden for sale, w hich they were prepared to buy for her. Irina could live there, and they would visit her regularly, using the house simultaneously as a country cottage where they could rest and relax. Irina appears to have seriously considered the idea. She liked the surroundings, and she had struck up friendh relations w ith Natalia's mother and aunts. But after years of solitude and a lifetime spent in the Caucasus, she was set in her v\ays. Above all, there was the problem of her many cats. How could she possibly get them to R\azan, since no one in the family possessed a car and there was no question of taking them by train? Nor was there any question of leaving them behind. They were her whole life now the object of all her thoughts and feelings, and she had developed highl\idiosyncratic views about their immortal souls. She later wrote to Maria, "[Cats] are indeed the true followers of Christ. People, on the other hand, are far remo\ed from the teachings of Christ." In the end she decided not to make the move. She was too old, she said, and "it's better not to budge the elderly from their well-worn grooves.'"" Apart from Aunt Irina, visitors to the Solzhenitsvns were now few and far between. Natalia's aunt Zhenva came from Kislovodsk once or twice. Alexandra Popova came down from Moscow Nikolai Potapov called on his way to a new job on the river Kama, and Panin and Kopelev appeared infrequently. One day Solzhenitsyn was astonished to receive a visit from Leonid \ lasov, the former naval lieutenant he had met on the train to Rostov in 1944, whom he had narrow h escaped in\olving in his dow nfall by describing

—

in

,

Vlasov's view

s

in a letter to

\ itkevich.

be the same chirpy sparrow

who had

The

diminutive V'lasov turned out to

captivated Solzhenitsyn during their

and the two of them got on famously. X'lasov announced was living in Riga but that he was obliged to visit Aloscow from time to time and would call again, and before he left he invited Solzhenitsxn to visit him in Latvia. In Ryazan, Solzhenitsyn continued to isolate himself from the mainstream of the city's life and to preserve his jealoush' guarded privac)'. But he did make one pair of new friends, an elderh' couple w ho in some sense came although to occupy the place that the Zubovs had held for him in Kok Terek he continued to correspond with the Zubovs as before. The new couple, V'eniamin and Suzanna I eush, were both Jew s, both mathematicians, and both worked at Natalia's Agricultural Institute, where she first got to know them. \ eniamin w as extremely tall (well over six foot six, according to one

train ride together,

that he

—

'

On the Threshold

I399]

account) and thin, w ith gentle, delicate features and an inner peace that was reflected in an expression of

complete repose. Suzanna,

physical and psychological opposite

—not

much

over

his wife,

five feet,

was

his

vivacious,

smiling, emotional, and extremely sociable.

Like the Zubovs, the leushes had also suffered

at the hands of the though not to the same degree. V'eniamin \\ as a mathematician of great brilliance who had won a Stalin Prize for his mathematical research in the aircraft industry. At the beginning of the fifties, during Stalin's drive against "rootless cosmopolitans," he had been dismissed and had found it

authorities,

\\ ork in Moscow. After a long search, he had found Ryazan Agricultural Institute, and w as now chairman of its

impossible to find further this post in the

mathematics department. Despite this fall from high position and the difficulties the\' had experienced, neither V'eniamin nor Suzanna seemed in the least bitter about it. On the contrary, they

were

like

the

Zubovs

in that

they seemed outstandingly

equable and contented.

And

unusual combination of

political clear-sightedness, personal

it was this composure, and reasonableness in their dealings w ith others that must have reminded Solzhenitsyn vet again of his old friends in Kok Terek. Both the Teushes were

yet they had forgotten nothing, and

cultivated intellectuals in the old, pre-revolutionar\' tradition. \'eniamin adored

book about it. He was also interested had w ritten books on Chekhov and the history of the Jewish people, but was now devoting most of his attention to his childhood passion of anthroposophv, Rudolf Steiner's mystical religion based on the ideas ot Goethe. Suzanna Teush w as less interested in abstract ideas than her husband, and it is not clear whether she shared his interest in anthroposophy, but she was a woman of impeccable taste with a strong leaning tow ards the visual arts and a natural sense of style. The thing that seems to have impressed ever\bodv who knew the Teushes was their absolute lack of pettiness and vulgarity. There seems not to have been a shred of vanity or falsity in their make-up. Veniamin, in particular, was frank and honest to a fault, a man of transparent integrity who could be utterly trusted. What they possessed, in short, was that elusive quality called music and

at

some point had written

in art, architecture, history,

and

a

religion,

'

breeding. In the smug provincial atmosphere of Ryazan, the Teushes shone like a beacon of culture and learning, and it w as not long before they and the Sol-

zhenitsyns had become good friends.

been the chief bond, and

at

An

interest in literature

seems to have

some point Veniamin became Solzhenitsyn's

chief reader and literary confidant

—again

filling

the role formerly occupied

by Nikolai Zubo\ (and carrying out a function of great importance to Solzhenitsyn). Teush read most of the works that Solzhenitsvn had written in exile and was very impressed with them, praising their originality of thought and language. But the work that he picked out as truly extraordinary was Shch-854. It is not clear whether the version he read was the original, longer one or a revised version that Solzhenitsvn prepared in the summer of 1961.

SOLZHENITSYN

[400]

Perhaps

it \\

he

as

who

advised Solzhenitsvn to remove

versation between Burkovich and

explained the

wav at

the language.

At It

it.

a

long polemical con-

(in

which the former

the Americans had been deceived about the Soviet stan-

who persuaded him to tone down some of Teush is said to have w ept over the tale the first was, he said, a work of Tolstoyan power and achievement,

Sebastopol) and

dard of living time he read

Isezar Markovich

all

events,

with immenselv far-reaching

and

and book was published; according to one source, he also told Solzhenitsvn, "There are three atom bombs in the world: Kennedv has one, Khrushchev has another, and vou literature,

social

political implications. Soviet life

he said, could never be the same again

if

this

'""

have the third. Such extravagant praise was obviously music to Solzhenitsvn's ears, but

what was he

new

to

do about

it? F'or

the time being he was concentrating on a

revision of The First Circle, but at the back of his

over the possibility of

at last revealing

mind he was turning

himself and submitting his work to a

wider audience. There w ere advantages and disadvantages in this. As he later wrote in The Oak and the Calf, the great advantage of the underground writer

was

to

be able to write

in

complete freedom. "He needs

censors nor editors in his mind's eve; nothing confronts rial.'"^

And

to

keep neither

him except

Solzhenitsvn had exploited this advantage to the

his

full.

mate-

But the

accompanying disadvantage w as that he was deprived of rigorous criticism and had no w a\' of discovering his strengths and weaknesses or of estimating his position in relation to the larger w orld of literature. 1 eush's praise was all verv well and had set him thinking, but he thirsted for an objective, professional assessment of what he had w ritten. He felt "clogged and supersaturated" anci "was beginning to suffer from lack of air in the literarv underground." He also thirsted for recognition. Despite his modest facade, he had lost none of his old ambition, none of his self-confidence and drive. If he talked about "no hope of publication in his lifetime," he w as not being insincere, but there was a strong element of insurance in such pronouncements, an anticipation of the worst for fear that the best might never come to pass. In

manv

of his later statements, Solzhenitsvn has implied that

time he w as aloof from the mainstream of Soviet literary

life,

took

all

little

this

inter-

and regarded it as somehow trivial and irrelevant, but this is essenAs we have seen, he had tried to break into print w ith articles criticizing the bureaucracy. He had submitted his article on literary memoirs to the Literaturmiya Gazeta, regardless of the fact that publication would reveal to its readers in Ryazan that he really did have literary interests. And in truth, his thrusting, restless, activist nature was always at war with the secretive, reclusive, conspiratorial habits of the hyper-suspicious labour-camp vetest in

it,

tially a pose.

eran.

for many vears this active and opinionated critic had, of course, followed developments in the Soviet literary world w ith more than ordinary interest. Ever since reading Pomerantsev's article "On Sincerity in Literature," in the December 1953 issue of Novy Mir, he had kept up with that

On thk

ruRKSHOi.i)

l4"i|

magazine antl had rcatl in it unorthodox stories by Tendrvakox and ()\echkin and controxersial articles hv Ahramov, i.itshit/., and Shcheglox. He also knew that Alexander \ardovskv, whose Tyorkin he had so admired at the front, had been dismissed from the editorship o( Novy Mir for daring to pub1

lish

them.

Nor

could he ha\e missed the other contradictor\ signs of the

Soviet Union's zigzag path tow ards lil)eralization

—the dropping of the

sec-

ond clause from the accepted doctrine of socialist realism at the Second Congress of Soviet Writers in 1954;* the posthumous rehabilitation of famous but officially discredited and censored w riters like iiabel, Bulgakov, Koltsov, and Ivan Katayev; the rehabilitation of Olesha and Zabolotskv; the reappearance in print of Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Zoshchenko; and then the speeches on literature at the 1 Wentieth Fartv (Congress in 1956, when Sholokho\' had attacked the Writers' Union in no uncertain terms and denounced its general secretary, Alexander Fadeve\ ("Why has nol)od\' told him that the Writers' Union is not a military unit and certaini\ not a penal colons' and that no writer wants to stand to attention in front of Fadeyev"). Shortly afterwards Fadeyev had committed suicide. All this had happened before Solzhenits\n returned from exile (it has since been dubbed the period of "the thaw," after Fhrenburg's 1954 novel of the same name), and it would be surprising if Solzhenitsvn had not shared at least some of Kopelev's optimism. But then had come a period of confusion, encouraging Solzhenitsyn's pessimistic belief that little fundamental had changed. Khrushchev's "secret speech" had indeed spelled the end of easy certainties and ready-made solutions, but it had also opened up a yawning chasm of doubt into which nobody wished to fall. Was everything to be allowed now or w as this only a tactical retreat from the old Part\- line? 1 he rehabilitations of writers from the twenties and even some emigres such as Ivan Bunin seemed to open up the possibility of direct communication with .

.

.

'"*

,

the pre-Stalinist past, but did this also sanction emulation and imply toler-

ance for opposing points of view

?

Would

writers

now

be able to imitate the

daring formal experiments of their predecessors instead of being strapped to the procrustean bed of socialist realism?

The

questions were endless, the

answers few, and neither rulers nor ruled seemed to know exactly w here they

were going.

come w ith the two volumes of a new miscellany Moscow (containing works by Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Tsvetayeva) and the serialization again in Novy Mir of a new novel by Vladimir Dudintsev under the provocative biblical title Not by Bread Alone. The novel was not of a very high literary quality, but w hat distinguished it Signs of liberalism had

called Literary

—

*The

official definition

—

of "socialist realism" had been set out in 1932

was founded and all Soviet writers v\ere obliged being the basic method of Soviet literature and

to join.

It

when

the

literarv criticism, requires

truthful, historically concrete representation of realitv in

its

from the

artist a

revolutionarv development. .More-

over, truth and historical completeness of artistic representation

of ideological transformation and education of the working

Union of Writers

read as follows: "Socialist realism,

man

must be combined with the in

the spirit of Socialism."

task

SOLZHENITSYN

[402]

from the usual stuff was its attack not just on insignificant incidental details but also on certain negative features fundamental to the Soviet system, such as the ruthlessness of the Partv hierarchv, the untrammelled power of the bureaucracv, and the nakedness of their struggle for power. Moreover, the novel had suggested that these features were just as prominent under Khrushchev's rule as they had been under Stalin's that nothing in the system had really changed. There were also pointers in the other direction. Khrushchev, in a speech made in 1957 under the title "For a Close Link between Literature and Art and the Life of the People," had expressed views seemingly identical with the Stalinist line of the past: "Literature and art are an integral part of the

—

nation-wide struggle for communism. literature

and

art

is

.

.

.

The

highest social function of

to stimulate the people to struggle for ever

new

successes

communism.'"^ At the same time there rose to prominence die-hard v\ riter called Vsevolod Kochetov, whose new novel,

in the building of a

crude

Stalinist

an "antirevisionist" tract entitled The Brothers Ershov, specialized

in scurrilous

lampoons and vicious caricatures of the liberals. It was published while Kochetov was still editor of the influential Literatunmya Gazeta (although he was to lose his editorship in 1959), which gave it the weight almost of an official pronouncement. And finally there had been the disgraceful affair of Doctor JMvago and the witch-hunt against Pasternak. Here, if anywhere, was a cautionary tale for a writer like Solzhenitsyn. Pasternak had begun to work seriously on his novel not long after the end of the Second World War. He broke off in 1950, began again in 1953, after Stalin's death, published some poems from it in the magazine Znamya in 1954, and completed it sometime in 1955. It was clear from the note preceding the poems that Pasternak hoped for publication of the entire novel, and in 1956, in the liberal atmosphere ushered in by Khrushchev's "secret speech," he had entrusted a copy to the Italian Communist publisher Feltrinelli. By the end of that year, however, it became clear that publication would be no simple matter. Even Novy Mir had rejected it, explaining in a long and detailed letter of criticism (which was published two years later) that "the spirit of your novel is that of non-acceptance of the socialist revolution.""' Pasternak had not w ritten an "anti-Soviet" novel, nor had he rejected he had virtually ignored the Revolution as such. His crime was much w orse it, bypassing politics altogether. His aim, he said in reply to the letter, had been "to bear witness as an artist, not as a politician. A work of art cannot be all on one plane; it has to speak on different levels'"'' and this in a country where politics presumed to dictate everything in life, down to the very movements of a man's soul. Ihe other sticking point v\ as Pasternak's treatment of the intelligentsia. As his Novy Mir critics noted, the dying of Doctor Zhivago at the end of the twenties symbolized the virtual end of the Russian intelligentsia: "In your opinion, those members of the Russian intelligentsia whose road parted with that of Doctor Zhivago and who began to serve the people went astray from their true goal, spiritually destroyed themselves.

—

—

.

ON

THK

THRESHOL

I)

f

4

' •

^

]

and created nothing worthwhile."'** To understand the flavour of this argument and the cause of Pasternak's disagreement with his critics, it is sufficient to take out the words "to serve the people" and substitute "to serve Stalin,"

was the

for 1929

year of the Five-^ear Plan, of the collectivization of

first

agriculture, of forced industrialization, of the terrori/.ation of independentK'

thinking w It

riters,

and

ot Stalin's

undisputed ascendanc\' o\er the country

w as probabK' nai\e of Pasternak ever

lished, but

to expect his no\

speech" and diatribe against Stalin, there w as

at least a

not understood the reservations and limitations w ith

hedged

el

to be

pub-

he can be forgiven for thinking that after Khrushchev's "secret

his denunciation.

Khrushchev and

with Stalin's assistance, over the backs ot

his colleagues

men

like

I

chance. But he had

w hich Khrushchev had had climbed

rotskv

,

to

power,

Bukharin, Rvkov,

and Kamenev. Thev \v ere "Stalin's heirs" in a v erv real sense of the word, and thev had no intention of letting his marvellous totalitarian machine run down to the point where thev themselves would be threatened. The mild and pacific Pasternak, w ith the clear vision of an artist, w as too ruthless for the blustering bullies in the Kremlin, and unfortunatelv premature. Pasternak had agreed under pressure to rew rite some of his book, though not to betrav its artistic message, and also to request Feltrinelli to return his copv. But it was too late. Translations were in progress in a varietv of countries, and in 1957 the novel appeared, to world-w ide acclaim. The follow ing year, in October 1958, Pasternak w as awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and a veritable whirlwind raged about his head. At first he accepted it, then, under intense pressure, rejected it. 1 he Literatiiiiuiyci Gazeta labelled him a "judas," a "rabid individualist," a "malicious

literarx-

snob":

"He

has put

a

hands of the enemv bv giving the bourgeois publishing houses his book, which is saturated with the spirit of anti-Sovietism." Pnvcda called him an "internal emigrf^ and his book a "literarv weed."''' Ihe hastih convened board of the \\ riters' Union took the extraordinarv step of expelling

w eapon

in the

—the

first such major expulsion since that of Anna Akhmatova and .MiZoshchenko in 1946 (and rivalling, in its seriousness, the expulsion of Boris Pilnvak and Kvgenv Zamvatin from the All-Russian \\ riters' Association in 1929).* And on the dav that Pasternak declined the prize, \'. E. Semichastny made a public speech of unparalleled violence and vulgaritv, raising a theme that w as to be taken up bv the entire Soviet press in the davs

him

khail

*

Akhmatova and Zoshchenko had been

expelled after a Central

Committee

resolution

was passed

censuring the magazines Leningrad and Zvezda for their editorial policies in general and for publishing "ideologically harmful"

works bv .-\khmatova and Zoshchenko

paign against them was led bv .\ndrei Zhdanov

and

a

in particular.

head of the Communist Partv

in

The camLeningrad

scourge of writers. Zamvatin and Pilnvak had been expelled for publishing their noncon-

formist works abroad. Zamvatin's (a

,

We had appeared

in

Prague, and Pilnvak's Mahogany

simultaneous Soviet edition of Mahogany had been banned

at

the

last

in Berlin

moment, thus making

it

appear that the Berlin publication w as an intentional evasion of the censorship). During the controversv over Doctor Zhivago, Alexei Surkov, the secretarv general of the

had made the links Pilnyak, a book bv

explicit: a

"Thus,

Russian w

ill

be

for the first

second time

in

our histor\

published abroad."

after

W titers'

Union,

Mahogany by Boris

SOLZHENITSYN

[404]

—

the idea that Pasternak should leave the Soviet Union and emigrate West.* Pasternak was horrified bv this threat and eventually wrote a personal letter to Khrushchev begging to be allowed to remain. Solzhenitsvn had followed the progress of the Pasternak affair with fascinated revulsion, but it is difficult to know whether he drew anv direct comparisons or conclusions from it. Pasternak w as a \\ orld-famous poet with a reputation dating back to before the Revolution, whereas he was a total unknown with a camp record behind him. Pasternak's novel had almost entirely to

come

to the

evaded the issues of collectivization, the purges, and the camps bv stopping short of them, whereas in Shch-8S4 and The First Circle Solzhenitsvn had tackled them head-on by making them his verv subject matter. And if Doctor Zhivago was anti-Soviet, v\hat epithet could qualifv Feast of and some of his camp verses?

the Conquerors,

Decembrists ivithout December,

On

the other hand there was encouragement to be found as well. In

had been unthinkable that a major writer should hand his novel Western publisher before it had been approved at home, let alone that it should be published abroad and not in the Soviet Union. There was also the relative mildness of the sanctions. Writers in the thirties and forties had gone to jail for far less, and others had been physically liquidated. Even expulsion from the Writers' Union w as a trivial punishment in comparison with the question of survival. What the campaign showed was that there were still strict limits w ithin w hich Soviet writers were compelled to operate and that those who exceeded the limits would find the full force of the Soviet media used against them. But it also showed that it was nowpossible to defv the government machine and remain not onlv alive but at at least if you had a reputation. Then there was the unexpected liberty Stalin's

day

it

to a representative of a

—

The barbarous treatment of Pasternak had attracted indignant responses from all over the world. Telegrams and letters had flooded in, by no means exclusively from people hostile to socialism, but from writers of all shades of opinion, including Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Halldor Laxness, Mulk Raj Anand, and Jorge Amado. Stalin would have dismissed these protests, but Khrushchev's new policy of detente and increasing contacts with the West had introduced a potent newfactor into the relation between Soviet writers and the Soviet government. Finally, there was the indefinable impact of the Nobel Prize itself. Had that new

force of foreign public opinion.

not also conferred a considerable degree of immunity on Pasternak?

As

the furore over Doctor Zhivago died aw ay, the political

seemed to swing the other way

pendulum had Con-

again. In January 1959 the Twenty-first

had prtxluced nothing to compare w ith Khrushchev's "secret Twentieth Congress, even though the general line remained But in May had come the Third Congress of Soviet Writers,

gress of the Party

speech"

at the

anti-Stalinist. *

Among other

Pasternak

.

.

.

and breathes."

Semichastnv speech contained the follow ing passage: "If u

things, the

Pasternak with a pig

.

.

.

then v\e have to sav that

has fouled the spot

w here he

ate

a

pig w

ill

e

compare

never do what he has done.

and messed on those

b\-

w hose labour he

li\es

On where

a distinetly

respected noxelist to

Surkov

thf.

Thresh old

[4"

5

I

lil)eral

trend was

whom

Solzhenitsvn had sent his youthful stories, replaced

Konstantin Pedin, the once-

visil)le.

as secretary' general of the Writers'

Union, and TvardovskN's

statement as editor ot Novy Mir was contirmed. Khrushchev, flushed

rein\\

ith

ascendancy at the recent Party congress, even good word to sav about Dudintsev, whom he had harshly criticized

his success in establishing his

had

a

the year before.

Nevertheless, the Writers' Congress had also been notable for the

ber of prominent absentees.

Many

num-

writers had xoted with their feet and

expressed their disapproval of recent trends by staying away. So obvious was it

that Party

spokesmen had raged about

of the writers, fhe message was

a

"conspiracy of silence" on the part

rammed home

that the Pasternak affair had done incalculable harm to Soviet literature, and gradually a new thaw set in that was to surpass not only the original thaw of 1954 but also that of

1956-57.

1

his

time the major role v\as played by young writers comparatively

new to the Soviet scene. The leaders of the members of the middle or older generations nova,

I

vardovsky, and Victor Nekrasov

earlier liberalization

— Ehrenburg,

—whereas the new

had been

Paustovsky, Paleaders

were

rel-

newcomers who had grow n up since the war. 1 he best-known among them was a young poet called Evgeni Evtushenko, who had come to prominence in 1956 with his long poem "Zima

ative

Station" and then proceeded to turn his poetic career into a public spectacle

much to

as

Mayakoxsky had done

forty years earlier.

have been moulded by Stalin's terror, and

his psychological

He

make-up.

He was

this

And

made

a great difference to

daring, provocative, and controversial.

lacked the fear of the older generation and

ficult" subjects.

Evtushenko was too young

having cultivated

made

a point

his popularity

of tackling "dif-

among

the

young and

progressive, he attempted to use this as a lever for advancing the liberals'

Other young poets followed suit: Andrei \'oznesensky, Bulat Okud(who w as FLvtushenko's wife for a v\hile). Among prose w Titers Vasily z\xyonov, a young doctor turned w riter, played a role

cause.

zhava, Bella .\khmadulina

analogous to Evtushenko's, with his slangy

young and

tales

of

life

among

the alienated

and sons" theme, w hile the short story flourished as never before since the twenties. Yuri Kazakov, Daniil Granin, Yuri Nagibin, Vladimir Tendryakov. Efim Dorosh, X'ladimir Soloukhin, Vladimir Maximov, and many others stretched "socialist realism" to its outer limits and helped give Soviet literature an interest and variety that it had lacked for nearly thirty years. In all this the younger generation had been supported by certain liberal elders such as Ehrenburg, Paustovsky, Kornei Chukovsky, Samuil Marshak, and especially Tvardovsky, who gave them every encouragement and published

his exploitation of the "fathers

many

of them in the pages of Novy Mir. But there remained a strong

conservative camp, with leanings towards Stalinism and a desire for strict party discipline in literature. This group included figures like Leonid Sobolev,

SOLZHENITSYN

[406]

Alexander Dvmshits, and Vladimir Ermilov, as well as the now notorious Kochetov. In truth, Kochetov had lasted only three years as editor oi Literaturnaya Gazeta, but in 1961 he was appointed editor of the influential monthly magazine Oktyabr (October), which he proceeded to turn into a bastion of reaction, and was already working on a new polemical novel, The Secretary of the Regional Committee, which was to contain a vicious lampoon of P>tushenko.

Bv

the time that Solzhenitsyn began to think seriously about publica-

world was therefore divided into two warring camps, a way, the divisions in the Party and the country. It was a novel position for the Soviet Union to be in and was undoubtedly the result of Khrushchev's anti-Stalin campaign and struggle for personal power. For the first time Solzhenitsyn could perceive prominent figures who seemed to share some of his own views on the past. Nevertheless, he still hesitated to reveal himself. "It seemed to me at the time, and not without reason, that such a revelation would be extremely hazardous: it might tion, the literary

situation that reflected, in a sharper

my manuscripts and of my own liberty."^" What helped was the Twenty-second Congress of the Communist Party, to change his mind and especially the line it took on de-Stalinization and October held in 1961, congress made by Tvardovsky. speech to the the The emphasis the congress placed on de-Stalinization came as a surprise to almost everyone. True, it had been maintained as official Party policy ever since Khrushchev's "secret speech" in 1956 and had been reaffirmed at the Twenty-first Congress in 1959, but after the first wave of reforms of 1956 and the consequent shock of the explosion in Hungary, the official policy had been to soft-pedal it. One reason was that Khrushchev, despite his overall ascendancy, still had pow erful opponents within the Politburo. It was as though the Party leaders, after the terrors of Stalinism, had instinctively, out of self-protection, wanted to ensure that no man should henceforth be given complete hegemony. The two most powerful men after Khrushchev, Frol Kozlov and Mikhail Suslov, w ere hardliners who acted as an ideological brake on their impetuous leader, while the other members of the Politburo maintained a middle position between the two extremes. At the Twenty-second Congress, however, Khrushchev seems to have determined to reduce the power of his opponents once and for all; and to do this he chose to raise once more the spectre of the "anti-Party group" and the need for more reform. It is difficult to know, in retrospect, how far Khrushchev had meant to go. As in his "secret speech" on Stalinism five years beforehand, he grew extremely emotional when speaking on the second day and appears to have been carried away by genuine feelings of outrage and regret for the past, which led him perhaps further than he had intended. At the climax of his speech, he made a dramatic promise to erect a monument in Moscow "to the memory of the comrades who fell victims to arbitrary power" and concluded, "Comrades! Our duty is to investigate carefully such abuses of power in all lead to the loss of

their aspects.

all

Time

passes and

we

shall die, since all of us are mortal,

but as

On long as

we ha\e

the strength to

Thrfshold

thf.

work we must

[40-]

clear

up man\ things and

tell

the truth to the Partv and our people.""' Superficially,

him

it

looked as though Khrushche\ were carr\ing

all

before

and taking a further significant step along the road of de-Stalinization.

was

it, and thev were and contents of T\ardo\ sk\'s speech, which w as read w ith close attention by the w riters. r\ardovsk\ a candidate member of the Central Committee in his ow n right, adopted a position of solid support for Khrushchev. He said that Soviet literature had benefited immeasurablv from the reforms introduced after the 1 w entieth Congress in

This, at

least,

hov\'

the intelligentsia chose to regard

particularh' encouraged b\ the tone

,

had undergone a period of moral regeneration and spiritual uplift. it feel shackled hv the past, and w riters had flourished in the new atmosphere of freedom. But this, he felt, was still not enough. In an obvious reference to Kochetov and his friends, he pointed out that "too man\ writers" were finding it difficult to adjust to the new atmosphere and still vearned for the eas\' certainties of the past. Moreover, Soviet literature had still not taken full advantage of the opportunities opened up to it b\' the Tw entieth Partv (Congress. It was still not sufficienth' devoted to the Iruth (w ith a capital 7 ) in all its aspects and therefore w as not fulfilling its responsibility to its readers, 'if I am not mistaken," continued Tvardovsky, 1956.

No

It

longer did

it

was Suvorov who

said that a soldier takes pride not onlv in his victories in

battle but also in the privations he has

paign.

We

writers,

when

had

to

undergo

in the

telling of the feats of labour of that

course of the cam-

wonderful

soldier,

the people, often keep completely silent about the privations and difficulties he

has had to undergo in his great campaign. feelings of a

man w ho

has overcome

We are w ounding the rightfully

indefatigablv towards his loftv chosen goal. But that feeling of pride

and pa\ ing proper tribute

noble disinterestedness, and readiness, this

proud

the difficulties in his path as he marches

all

we

should rather be reinforcing

to his bravery, endurance, patience,

make any

sacrifice.

But

can be done onlv by show ing the labours and ordeals of our people

in a

manner

that

is

if

necessary, to

totalh truthful and faithful to life,w ithout varnishing and

The

cunningly smoothing out

all

contradictions.

exists,

but out of inertia

its

outw orn survivals continue

and

our press in general. --

in

Tvardovskv's speech made

a great

.

.

.

cult of personalit\"

impression on

to

echo

in

all literar\

w

ithout

no longer

our literature

circles,

not least on Solzhenits\n in his provincial backw ater. "I couldn't

and

remember

w hen I had read anything as interesting as the speeches at the Twentv-second Congress. In my little room in a decaying w ooden house ... I read and reread those speeches, and the walls of mv secret world swaved like curtains in the theatre, wavered, expanded, and carried me queasily with them."-^ Khrushche\'s emotional speech about

monument

telling the truth to the

people and erecting

seemed to echo his deepest feelings. Telling the truth about these victims had occupied virtualh' all his waking thoughts for the past ten years, and he had a pile of manuscripts to prove it. As for Tvardovskv's speech, Solzhenitsxn couldn't help being pleased by its

a

to the victims of Stalinism

SOLZHENITSYN

[408]

and patriotic reference to Suvorov; and its injunction to "show the labours and ordeals of our people in a manner that is totally truthful to life" seemed to describe exactly the tale of Shch-854 nestling in its hidmilitary metaphors

ing place. Izvestia, to w hich he subwas still as avid a newspaper reader as he had been when a student and army captain), but to be absolutely sure of getting a full version of 1 vardovsky's speech he \\ ent to the cit\' reading-room and read it in Pravda. There the thing that struck him most forcefully was 1 vardovskv's words about writers' not having taken advantage of the possibilities opened up to them by the Twentieth Congress, and his hint that Novy Mir might publish bolder and more polemical works if onl\ it had them. Solzhenitsyn had liked T\ardo\skv ever since he had stumbled across Vastly Tyorkin at the front, leading him to conclude that Tvardovskv w as perhaps "our best Soviet poet." He especially approved of Tvardovsk\ \s peasant origins, his profound understanding of the common people, and his feel for their language. B\' the same token, w as it not a hundred to one that Tvardovskv himself would respond to the peasant figure of Ivan I3enisovich Shukhov and the tale of his "labours and ordeals"? But still Solzhenitsyn was a prev to agonizing doubts and fears. Since the preceding spring a cop\' oi Shch-854 had been with Kopelev in Moscow, and Solzhenitsyn and Kopelev had draw n up a short list of writers to w hom it might be show n. With this in mind, Solzhenitsyn had revised the text one more time, omitting some of the biographical detail concerning the main characters, toning dow n its political outspokenness, and polishing the st\'le. A few people had read it already. Some had praised it to the skies, others were slightly more reserved, but all agreed on its outstanding importance as a social and political document, and everyone wanted it to circulate. But Solzhenitsyn w as reluctant to take risks, and it w as Kopelev w ho persuaded him that in the aftermath of the Twenty-second (Congress, the time was right to submit the work to Tvardovskw""^ It would appear from Kopelex 's later remarks that they had little hope the book would be published. Kopele\'s argument to Solzhenits\n was that since the manuscript had been shown to certain people and had made such a deep impression, news of it was bound to travel, and there w as a danger that Solzhenits\n might be accused of circulating the work illegally. If it was submitted to Sovy Mir, it would automaticalh' be read by members of the staff, and any further circulation could be described as accidental. It was decided to ask Kopelev's w ife, Raisa Orlova, to take the manuscript to Novy Mir.* Kopelev himself preferred not to do so, because he was in the midst of

Solzhenitsyn read most of these speeches in

scribed (he

w as one of those who did not have the highest opinion of Ivan Deiiisovich it know n and published. The phrase "It is a t\ pical production storv," which Reshetovskava attributes to Kopelev in her memoirs, u as indeed said b\' him, but it was offered to r\ardovsk\' as a possible argument to *

v\

It is

true that Kopelcx-

hen he

first

read

it,

but he was unstinting in his efforts to get

use with Khrushchev, not as

a literarv

appreciation.

The copy that Solzhenitsyn

later sent to

On an acrimonious dispute w

THRKSHoin

thi

ith the editorial staff,

Pages.

including Ivardox

w as

their refusal to support a liberal anthology he

[409]

in\()l\ed

v\

sk\',

over

ith called I'anisa

-^*

On

4

November

1961 Solzhenitsx n took a train to

discussion of the matter during the

November

holidas'.

Moscow

for

lo preserx e

one

last

his secret,

room at a hotel instead of staxing w ith \ eronica or another of and saw only the Kopelews. 1 he hotel he had chosen was in Ostankino, near the site of the former sharashka, and in the intervals between reading a translation oi For Whom the Bell lolls (borrowed from Kopelev) he he booked

a

his friends,

still enclosing the site and recalled the crow ded da\s he had spent there with Kopelev, Panin, hashov-Musatov, and his other

strolled along the fence

w as there that he had begun to w rite seriouslw V\ ould the others w ith Kopelev and approve of his present enterprise, and w ere his old dreams of freedom and fame about to be realized, or was he thrusting his head into a noose again? Once more the optimistic activist w arred with the suspicious convict within him. He w as almost fortv-three. ( j)uld it be that friends."*^ It

agree

his long-awaited, eagerly thirsted-for yet inxoluntarih'

w as about

dreaded

literar\

career

to begin?

the Kopelexs bore the follow ing inscription: "1 o ni\ dear friends, Le\ and Ra\a, w ho started the unforeseen nioxement of this tale." * Tartisa Pages

w as

a

literar\

almanac edited bv Paustovsky and containing

positix e critical

poems b\ I s\eta\ e\a was widely regarded as a

appreciations of formerly taboo figures like Bunin and Meverhold and

and ZabolotskN

,

as v\ell as prose

bv some younger Soviet

writers.

It

challenge to socialist realism and a manifesto of re\isionism, and sold out

matter of da\s. 1 arusa

is

a district just outside

.Moscow

.

its

75,000 copies

in a

^3

BREAKTHROUGH

I •

HE STORY OF how Shch-854 made its w ay from an outer office of Novy Khrushchev and eventual pubHcation (as A

JL/l//> to the desk of Nikita

Day

in the Life of Ivcm Denisovich)

has been told and retold so

many

times that

now legendarv, and like all legends, it has acquired such embellishments along the w ay that it is sometimes hard to disentangle fact from fiction. The book's physical path, however, from the Kopelevs to a copy-editor named it is

Anna Berzer, and from her to Nozy Alirs editor, Alexander l\'ardovsky, and thence via Khrushchev's private secretary to Khrushchev himself (and via Khrushchev onto the desks of members of the Presidium) is well attested, and there can be little doubt as to the accuracy of the general picture.' Raisa Orlova delivered the manuscript to Noiy Mir in mid-November 1961, immediateK- after the holiday, with strict instructions that it be passed directly to Tvardovsky. It was a week or so before Berzer got around to looking at literary

it,

and

but

when

political

she did, she was

at

boldness and showed

once struck by it

its

exceptional

to a colleague in the critical

section of the magazine, Kaleria Ozerova, to check her impressions.

Ozerova

was something quite out of the ordinary. Both women realized, how ever, as the Kopelevs had done, that the story's frankness and outspokenness presented special dangers and problems. It was not that the labour-camp theme w as entirel\' new Solzhenitsyn has given the impression in some of his public statements (and especially in The Oak and the Calf) that Ivan Denisovich appeared in an almost total void and that

asfreed that Shcb-SS4

.

was nothing remotely comparable in existence at the time, but that is not quite true. Ever since Khrushchev's "secret speech" in 1956, the camp theme had been bubbling just below the surface, and a number of returned

there

410

Brfakthroucjh

I

4

I

I I

w rittcn powerful ami harrow ing memoirs about their experimemoirs of Olga Adamoxa-SHo/.berg, for instance, were alreadx in Berzer's possession (the\ were sul)sec]uentl\ draw n upon h\- SoI/.henits\n for The (iiilag Archipelago). FAgenia (iin/.burg and Dimitri \ itko\sk\-, to name but tw o of the best, were hard at work on extraordinar\' exposures of the death camps of the Siberian Far Fast, and \ arlam Shalamox had already completed and shown to friends his sequence of tightK' crafted stories on his experiences in Kolvma.* Among the Moscow intelligentsia the closure of most of the camps and the mass rehabilitations were a prime talking point, and man\ manuscripts were circulating from hand to hand. Sol/.henits\ n, in his isolation in Ryazan, knew little of these, for none of them had succeeded in breaking through the barriers into print. 1 here w as still a conspiracx" of silence about the camps as far as literature was concerned. It was one thing for the first secretary of the Party to stand up at a congress and denounce the prisoners had

ences. 1 he

another for a literary magazine actualh- to print something on the subject (Khrushchey's "secret speech" remains to this day unpublished in the Soyiet Union). And not eyen Tyardoyskw whose bold words at the congress had echoed Khrushchey's and w ho enjoyed a certain immunity as a candidate member of the (Jentral (>ommittee and a meml)er of the Supreme Soyiet, had been able to get a frank exposure of the camps into his journal (although \nvy Mir w as far and aw a\' the most "liberal" and outspoken of all So\ iet magazines). The surface of Soyiet literature, therefore, had remained yirtually undisturbed by this seething commotion in the depths, and literary life w as conducted as if nothing much w rong had eyer happened; there were only a few dark hints to indicate the reason for the eyils of Stalinism, l)ut quite

"holes" in so

many

people's biographies.

was in this atmosphere that Anna Berzer contemplated w hat to do next. She agreed with (Jrloya that if the story went through the usual editorial process, it would run into insuperable difficulties. Someone on the staff was sure to try to block it out of caution or fear, and then it would be rejected like all the other manuscripts on the camps. How eyer, she sensed that what she held in her hands was sensationally good, perhaps a masterpiece, and again she agreed w ith Orloya: the one man who would appreciate it and be in a position to do something was Tyardoysky. Her task, therefore, was to get it directly to him and persuade him to read it personally, but this apparently simple operation was in fact no eas\' matter, for reasons that haye to do \yith the w ay Soyiet literary magazines are organized. Like all Soyiet magazines, Novy Mir had (and has) an enormous staff by Western standards and a structure both bureaucratic and hierarchical. Editorially, it was diyided into three sections, coyering poetrx', prose, and criticism respectively. Each section was staffed by rank-and-file copy-editors like Berzer and Ozeroya, who represented the lower end of the hierarch\' and performed the daily task of editing and correcting and preparing manuscripts It

*Solzhenits\ n makes an exception for Shalamov, whose stories and verse he seems to have read as earh' as 1956.

— SOLZHENITSYN

[412]

a regular basis and whether the authors were new and bee^inning, or old friends with established reputations. But they were not members of the editorial board, and their subordinate position was symbolized by their having their offices on the first floor, whereas the editor and his

for the press.

It

was thev

v\'ho dealt

know them

consequently got to

with the authors on

best,

worked on the third. Each of the three sections had

associates

a chief to direct

it.

Chief of the prose

Shch-854 arrived in the office was Evgeni Gerasimov, an unin-

when

section

and journalist who nevertheless presided over the best section critical section w as about to be taken over by the up-and-coming young critic Vladimir Lakshin, and the poetry section to ever\one's surprise the weakest, although the magazine had an outstanding poet as editor w as directed by Tvardovsky himself. The section chiefs also sat on Novy Mir's editorial board, of which they were junior members, together with co-opted members like the writers Igor Sats, Alexander Maryamov, and spired in the

w

riter

magazine. The lively

—

—

ItJ^or

top of the heap sat the magazine's ruling quadeputy editor, Alexander Dementyev; his secAlexander Kondratovich; and the managing secretary,

Vinogradov, while

ternitv:

at the

1 vardovsky; his

ond deputy

editor,

first

Boris Sachs.

Anna

Berzer knew that any one of her seniors had the right to

demand

it, if and that any one of them might take fright and possible recklessonly to "protect" Tvardovsky from the consequences of his ness. If the work were to get as far as the censorship board, for instance, and be rejected there, it might provoke recriminations and even sanctions against

reject

to read the story

w ere not w ithout foundation. In the past questionable manuscripts had been handed straight to the security organs. Only that year there had been the notorious incident in which the manuscript of a new book by the distinguished novelist Vasil\- Grossman Life and Destiny had been confiscated by the KGB after the editor of Znamya, Vadim Kozhevnikov, had sent it to them. Grossman himself had been forced to yield up all the magazine.

Such

fears

—

his copies

of the novel on pain of instant arrest, and even the carbon paper

had been borne away by the police.-* There w as scant chance of such a response from the members ot the Novy Mir board, but this w as the general atmosphere in w hich even the most liberal magazine was obliged to operate, and there was a distinct possibility of a well-meaning board-member's stopping the novel in its tracks. For this reason, Berzer planned a special strategy for reaching Tvardovsky directly. and ribbon used

in

typing

it

had the manuscript retyped. The original, according to Solzhenitsyn's usual thrifty custom, was typed on both sides of the paper, with single spacing and no margins. Merely to look at it strained the eyes and First she

Grossman's novel resurfaced and reached the West almost twenty \ears later in circumstances were even more dramatic than its disappearance. Apparently, it was secretly microfilmed b\- someone high up in the Party (or by the relative of a high-up) v\ ho had access to the type-

*

that

script,

writer

and the microfilm was stored in a safe place. In the late was informed of the film's existence and arranged for it

published

in

Sw itzerland

in

1980 (an English translation

is

seventies, a dissident Soviet to

be smuggled out.

in preparation).

It

was

— liRK

AK IHROUC.H

I4

I

?

)

deterred one troni reading on. Another disagreeable feature w as the eoniplete

absence of an author's name.

supph' one, whereupon the

summoned

IJer/.er

(]uiek-\\ ilted

skv," whieli was dul\- typed in beneath

was

read\' for presentation, but the

members

and

ot the editorial boarti

Kopele\ and asked him to

Kopelex thought up "A. R\a/.antlie cr\

ptie title.'

problem was how get

it

to

I

to

\artlo\sk\

,

The manuscript bvpass the other particularK since

he preferred to delegate such things and to read manuscripts onl\ after

his

deputies had seen them.

Her

solution

w

as to exploit the problematical subject

matter o( Shcb-S.W

and turn it to her adxantage. Approaching her immediate superior, (ierasimov, she asked him w hether he would like to read "a stor\ about the camps." Foreseeing nothing but trouble, CJerasimox waved her awaw She then did exactly the same w ith Kondratox ich and Sachs and received more or less the

same response. Dementyev, the other deput\ editor, w as not usualK on the premises, and Berzer now had the right to approach \ardo\ sk\ (Choosing her moment and her words, she went up to his office on the third floor and laid two manuscripts on his desk: Sophia Petrovini, h\ L\ dia (^huko\ska\a,* and Shch-854. 1 hey were both unusual, she said, and both controversial. Sophia Petrovna was about the great purge of 1937 and a mother's suffering, I

while Shch-854 it

\v

as

about "a prison

camp

.

seen through the eves of a peasant""^

voiced, she said, the thoughts and feelings of the Russian people.

She could not ha\e put

it

more cunninglv or temptingh'. 1 vardovskx's

peasant origins and predilection for peasant themes were well know n in Mos-

He

had made his name w ith his intimate portrait of poems on village and peasant life, and AV/:v Mir had a reputation as a publisher of "country prose." He would take onl\- one manuscript home to read, he said, and without hesitation picked up Shch-854. Solzhenitsyn's and Kopelev's calculation that rvardo\sk\ would be attracted by the theme of the story had proved fullv justified. The date was 7 Decem-

cow

literary circles.

Vasily Tyorkin and his

ber 1961.

custom when reading manuscripts at home how one da\- later, he began to read Shch854. After a few pages, he is said to have felt that it w as inappropriate to read it in this relaxed position, so he got up, dressed, and read the storv through the night, stopping only to make himself tea in the kitchen. According to Solzhenitsvn, he read it through twice and was so excited that he could not sleep afterwards and was absolutelv bursting to share the good new s w ith someone. Unfortunately, it w as still earh' w hen he finished (Reshetovska\a says 5 a.m.), and Tvardovsky w as obliged to contain his impatience until the relatively late hour when metropolitan intellectuals stirred from their slumIt is

was

said that Tvardovsky's

to take

them

to bed; that

is

,

bers.

There followed an a\'alanche of telephone *Chuk()vskava's novel, written in 1939

purges

in literary

terms

at

Tw o

1-0,

was

a rare

in

Russian

in the

W est

English translations bear the latter

—

to Kondratovich, to

example of an attempt

the time thev were happening.

Union, but has been published Deserted House.

—

calls

It

both under title.

to deal

with the

has ne\er appeared in the Soviet its

correct

name and

as

The

— SOLZHENITSYN

[414]

—

to find out who w as hiding beneath that transparent Berzer, to Kopelev pseudonym of A. Rvazanskv. He was deHghted to hear that the author was genuinely unknown, an obscure schoolteacher from Ryazan, and not a

on him. According to Reshetovskaya, he upbraided Kopelev for being so secretive about his friend and not having drawn Tvar-

professional pla\ing a trick

when

dovskv's attention to the storv

"You

Kopelex'

came

to discuss Tanisa Pages.

should be proud to have such a friend. He's got a wonderful, pure, and

Not

great talent.

a

drop of falsehood

What happened

next

is

in it."'

not clear. According to one w

riter close to

Novy

Mir, Tvardovsk\- insisted on reading passages aloud to his wife over breakfast. He then rushed to the Novy Mir offices to get some extra copies, but 9

Saturday and no one was there except the cleaners. By nowunstoppable, Ivardovskv broke open Berzer's desk, took out the four extra copies and dashed off to the flat of his friend Semyon Lungin, where Victor Nekrasov, another Novy Mir author, also happened to be staying. "A new-

December w

as a

born!" he proclaimed. "Victor, go for a bottle. After all, I'm a colonel and you were onlv a captain.'"' Such kidding w as very much in Tvardovskv's stvle (as was the vodka at the slightest pretext), and it may have

genius

is

been on this occasion that he also joked to Nekrasov: "Do you remember how one great writer went to see another great writer? I'm joking, of course, because I don't consider you a great writer. But a great writer has just been born nevertheless."

*

to join them, and the morning was progressively drunk. Tvardovsky was the loudgrowing spent in talking and seen I \ardovsky as excited and never that he had said est. Nekrasov later even w hen enthusiastic about a manurestrained, he was voluble. Usually announcing that his only unquenchable, w as occasion he this script. But on

was summoned from home

Igor Sats

aim

to Nikita. it!

henceforth w as to get the story into print.

in life

It's

.

.

.

They

go to the very top,

"I'll

say that Russian literature's been killed.

in this folder with the ribbons. But

vet. We've sent a telegram.

.

.

.

We'll take

who

Damn and

blast

him him under our wing, help him, is

he? Nobody's seen

book through."^ Later, he said to the novelist \'era Panova, by a new Gogol.'"' "Believe it received a telegram from Kopelev: "AlexSolzhenitsyn 1 hat same day article very much w ants to see you with delighted Trifonovich ander regards" ("article," of course, and congratulations possible soon as come as evening, Solzhenitsxn learned that Ringing up Shch-854). w-ord for was the code night, and the follow ing day, on sleepless and excitement Tvardovsky's of Tvardovsky himself, from telegram received a he birthday, forty-third his

and push

his

or not, I've got a manuscript

—

—

*Tvardovskv's reference was Nikolai Nekrasov in 1845,

to

DosUnevskv's

first

noxel. Poor Folk,

when Nekrasov was planning

to

launch

w a

liich

new

he sent to the poet literary miscellany.

Nekrasov read the novel and was so impressed that he rushed to the home of the celebrated literarv critic Vissarion Belinsky and exclaimed, "A new Cogol has arisen!" Belinsky is reputed to have replied, "CJogols grow in your imagination like mushrooms," but w as equally impressed

when he

read the novel.

HROUGH

BrKAK'1 inviting

him

to

come

to

postal error, he received

Moscow

at Xozy Mirs expense. As the resuh of a two copies of the telegram, as though to underline

the importance of the occasion.

'"

That night, according to Reshetovskaxa, to sleep.

His

U'Sl

mood was one

it

was Solzhenitsx

n's

turn not

of exultation and triumph, although, throughout

the da\- he had remained outwardl\- calm, mercK repeating to himself over how tunnw" I xardovskv was ver\' much on his and over, "How funny mind just then. A few days earlier Natalia had bought a cop\ of Tvardovskv's latest narratixe poem. Distant Horizons, and Sol/.henits\ n had i)een admiring the author's political frankness and artistic skill. Now the famous author had responded with admiration of his own. Nearlv a vear later, Solzhenitsvn w as to w rite to Tvardovsk\ "The greatest happiness that 'recognition' has given me 1 experienced in December last vear, w hen \ ou found Denisovich worth a sleepless night. None of the praise that came afterw ards .

.

.

,

could ever outstrip that.""

On Tuesday, 12 December, Solzhenitsvn had a free da\ from school and caught the seven o'clock train to Moscow. Picking up Kopelev en route, he made his wav to the \ovy J//r offices. Tvardoxskx' had not vet arri\ed, so Kopele\' took him to meet Anna Berzer and her colleagues on the first floor. Solzhenitsvn w as

unaw are of the

role that Berzer had played in getting seems that he took an immediate liking to this diminuti\ e and marvellously intelligent w oman. Not so, how ever, to the second deputy editor, Alexei Kondratovich, who struck him as a pompous and self-important bore. Tvardovsky arrived at half past one, straight from a meeting on that year's Lenin Prizes for literature. He was a big man in all senses of the word, and he greeted Solzhenitsyn gravelv and politelv, and w ith a certain solemstill

manuscript to 1

his

\

They went

ardo\ sk\

but

,

it

Movy Mir boardroom, w hich also served and seated themselves round the long, oval editorial table, w ith Tvardovskv and Solzhenitsvn at the two ends. Also present were Kondratovich, Dement\ev, Sachs, Berzer, Mar\amov, and, after a little w hile, Kopelev, who was invited to join them. The discussion was led bv Tvardovskv, w ho began in a more or less businesslike fashion but soon grew animated and launched into a veritable paean of praise to Solzhenitsyn's storv, quoting his favourite episodes with relish and permitting a broad smile to stretch graduallv from ear to ear. What made him a great editor, apart from his excellent taste, was preciselv this boundless enthusiasm for works by other authors, and an abilitv to share in their triumphs that was rare in a poet of such achievement himself. Facing nity too.

as

Tvardovsky's

upstairs to the

office,

Solzhenitsvn he said:

You have

know

which schools vou studied, no need either to I he fact that \ou chose a small form show s \ ou instruct or to nurse you. are an experienced artist. Vou have described onlv one da\ and \ et evervthing written a marvellous thing.

but vou have

come

to us as a fullv .

.

I

don't

formed

in

writer. V\'e have

.

,

— SOLZHENITSYN

[416] there

is

to say about prison has

been

said.

.

.

.

Your choice of hero

not Tsezar, for example. ... In some ways vour book toyevskv's] House of the Dead: there intellectual, ple.

.

.

.

whereas here the

The dav chosen

show evervone both .

.

.

.

.

.

is

is

why

he omitted

so ordinarv that

that

through the eves of the peo-

not even bath dav.

you don't show any

.

.

.

You

was

horrors.'-

to pretend that

encomium

he had remained

rela-

of Tvardovsky's. Perhaps that

speech (which he himself noted down) from his detailed

description of his relations with

came

it's

and on the Siberian [sic] construction projects. the commander, and even Fetvukov evokes sympathy.

this extravagant

this

excellent

at the front

One feels so sorrv for And the good thing is

unmoved by

is

even better than [Dos-

see the people through the eyes of an

intellectuals are seen

In later years Solzhenits\'n tively

we

is

the Calf when he he deliberately put up a true that

Novy Mir

to publish the latter in 1975.

It is

in

The Oak and

and indifference, responding only grudgingly to the compliere heaped upon him. But this was mainly a defence mechanism

front of reserve

ments that \\ and a sign, among other things, of his own insecurity: he could not bear to be snubbed or disappointed after investing such great hopes in his story; he was simply steeling himself against the worst. In fact, it is clear even from his o\\ n account of the meeting that he was deeply flattered. This exalted recognition was balm to his battered ego, belated recompense for all those years of suffering and toil, and he wasn't above playing up to his hosts' amazement over the crabbed, eccentric appearance of the original manuscript, or coquettishly flaunting his tiny salary of sixty rubles a

part-time teacher in salary).

He

Ryazan (passing over the

fact that

month

as a

he lived off Natalia's

thoroughly enjoyed his role of the indigent, provincial nobody \\ hich only

and had deliberately dressed shabbily for this solemn occasion,

provoked more amazement from his metropolitan companions. The other members of the editorial board were briefer in their remarks, and Solzhenitsyn was relieved to discover that they had very few criticisms

make or suggestions for changes. The main problem, it seemed, was the title, which nobody liked. After an animated discussion, in v\hich Kopelev also joined, they unanimously settled on .4 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* Afterwards the talk became more personal. Tvardovsky and the others asked Solzhenitsyn about his past in the camps (Kopelev was able to join in when they talked about the sharashka) and his life as a teacher in Ryazan. They wanted to know w hat else he had written, but Solzhenitsyn was evasive. He told them that although he now regarded himself as primarily a prose writer, he had begun with verse since it was easier to memorize in and had written quite a lot. He also told them about the occasion the camps w hen he had been caught during a search v\'ith a fragment of Kkibastuz in verse on him and had passed it off as Tvardovsky's. At the end of the meeting, Tvardovsky insisted on draw ing up a conto

—

*

—

title is One Day .... hut the Russian "one" simply plays the role of the therefore prefer A Day which Russian otherwise has no equivalent. the stress supplied hy the numeral.

The accepted

article, for lifts

1

.

.

indertnite .

,

which

I

Brkakthrolgh tract at once.

He wanted

to

pay Solzhenits\ n

others pointed out that the proper rate for a

lower

— 300 rubles

a signature,

and

this

I4 at

first

I

"

the highest rate, but the

pubhcation w

was agreed upon. The

as

total

somev\hat

w as quite

—the ad\ ance aUme

handsome compared w ith Solzhenitsvn's usual earnings exceeded two years' worth of his salary. Tyardoysky's parting words w ere that he could not

give a firm promise

of publication, or say anything about dates, but that he promised to do his best.

by

He also handed

his

two

cles in the

made Dementxev and Kondratovich, from w hich the obstaw ay of publishing it became clear. Both editors praised the story Solzhenitsyn the preliminary reports on the story

deputies,

and power, but both expressed doubts about its political the more negative of the two: "Seen from this acceptability. horrible inside the camp and just as horrible beyond its boundaangle, it is we don't publish, it will look as though we fear the ries. A difficult case: if truth, and we will only drive it underground, from where it w ill spread all over. But publication is out of the question, because it shows life too onesidedly, involuntarily twisting and upsetting the proportions." Kondratovich had more praise for the story but was also pessimistic about its publication chances. "It's a pity, but we probably won't be able to publish it," he began, and he ended up: "It's very talented, but how can we publish it?"'' Solzhenitsyn took the two reports home with him, together with a copy of the contract. When he arrived, w rites Reshetovskava, he seemed dazed. "Silently he opened his brief-case and showed us a large, thick sheet of paper on which the word CONTRACT was written in large letters. I couldn't '""^ believe my eyes. I sank down helplessly on a chair and burst into tears. In answer to Tvardovsky's pressing questions about what else he had written and might be able to offer Novy Alir, Solzhenitsyn had mentioned his early verse, some of his miniature prose pieces, and "a short story," having in mind "Without a Righteous Person No Village Can Stand" (he regarded his other work as too controversial to mention at that stage). He now settled down to prepare the story about Matryona for publication, toning it dow n a little and cutting out some of the sharper comments, and on 26 December returned to Moscow to deliver these things to Tvardovskv. "This story can't fail to appeal to Tvardovskv," he had said to his wife while working on it, and he was right, learning of Tvardovsky's enthusiasm on his third visit, a week later, to discuss Novy Mirs opinion of it. But he was disappointed by Tvardovsky's reaction to the other things he had offered. The verse was dismissed as uninteresting: "Some of it is publishable, but we want something to make a bang, and this isn't it" (to Lakshin, Ivardovskv had said that the verse wasn't worth reading). As for the miniature stories, Tvardovskv seemed perplexed by the unusual genre and failed to take them seriously, regarding them as "jottings on your scribbling pad for further use." What he yearned for as an editor was something strong and striking that could stand comparison with Ivan Denisovich. These little pieces were too fragile and precious, too much in a minor key to suit 1 vardovskv's present for

its

literary skill

Dementyey was

requirements.'"'

SOLZHENITSYN

[418]

The

old vear \\ as almost at an end, and the school holidays had begun. wonderful moment for Solzhenitsyn. Still basking in Tvardovsky's praise and the wonderment of the Novy Mir staff, he could relish for the first time some of the rew ards of authorship, v\ ithout yet suffering the responsibilities of fame and controversy. The difficulties that lay in the way of pubin any case, lication loomed only indistinctly in the unforeseeable future It \\

as a

—

they weren't his problem: Tvardovsky had promised to take

all

that

on

his

shoulders.

Something of Solzhenitsvn's mood

time can be deduced from a Zubovs in the Crimea in response The letter was begun some time before at this

playfully affectionate letter he wrote to the to their belated birthday greetings. his trip to

My

Moscow on

26 December 1961.

kind, dear friends.

Don't reproach yourselves for forgetting mv birthdav. It doesn't feel in the Furthermore, my birthday this year was least as if vou had forgotten me. .

anyway something

.

.

of a red-letter dav

—

it v\

marked by

as

a

telegram from Alex-

ander Trifonovich (not unknown for his poem Distant Horizons, etc.). On the twelfth I went to Pushkin Square to meet him. What will come of it all is still unclear.

Mavbe

which case

I

w

w

I

After his return from

You w ill be it

ill

know more bv the time

Moscow

I

mv

to the

end of this

letter, in

spare time (being too bashful to admit

have been amusing mvself w

foolhardy enough to attempt to write.

A Day

come

he did add something:

surprised to hear that in

even to vou)

I

add something.

ill

in the Life of

ith literature, that

is

One of the things I wrote was

to say, a

I

was

yarn called

Ivan Denisovich, and after the Twenty-second Congress

I

Nozy Mir. NATs reaction exceeded my wildest expectations and was expressed in telegrams and expressions of delight. They decided that I was some kind of a literary rough diamond and didn't even seem to w ant to make any changes or corrections. All this took me by surprise, just as it will surprise you. Perhaps you will get a thought that the time w

chance to read

it

as ripe to publish

one day

(if

they publish

accepted the story, has signed

great,

So

To

and

it

doesn't

that's the

and sent

it).

a contract for

The editors want depend on them.

thousand new rubles.

it

it

off to

That is, the editorial board has and paid me an advance of a

it,

to publish, but the chances are not very

news, and of course the whole thing has knocked

me

sideways."^

celebrate the glad news, Solzhenitsyn and Natalia decided to spend

New

Year in Moscow w here most of their friends seemed to be. Even Teush was there now, having retired from teaching a short while before, so that Ryazan seemed perfectly empty. The thought of Teush reminded him that this would be a good moment to review his security precautions. Ever since exile he had kept up the habit of concealing his manuscripts in case of random searches by the KGB, and of burning most of his notes and drafts. the

But over the years,

,

as

he had gradually returned to

a

normal way of

life,

he

liRK A Kl

HROUfJH

I

4

I

9

I

had inevitably grow n laxcr. The sheer hulk ot" his archixe had also grown tremendously, until it had reached the point where he was having to conceal well o\er a dozen full-length works, including an extrenieh' long novel, together

with notes and drafts that he

still needed in order to complete work in progmanuscripts in cramped single spacing, he was unable to reduce their bulk significantly, and all this paper somehow had to

Facu by

ress.

t\

ping

all

his

be found hiding-places that were both secure and easy to reach. I'here were few friends he could trust w ith such a delicate task, but the Teushes were evidently among them, and on New Year's Eve, having gone through his manuscripts a last time and burnt what seemed no longer necessary, he and Natalia travelled to Moscow with a suitcase containing most of the rest. It was on this train journey that there occurred a curious incident illustrative of some of the tensions induced by Solzhenitsvn's secretive way of life and the strains imposed on his naturally impetuous nature. Soon after they left Ryazan, a drunken hooligan began to make a scene and abuse some of the passengers not far from where Solzhenitsxn and Natalia were sitting. None of the other men in the train raised a finger to stop him, and Solzhenitsyn felt an irresistible urge to jump up and put this insolent hooligan in his place, but he realized that if it came to a hght, he w (;uld almost certainly be dragged off to the police station for an explanation, and that would mean risking his precious manuscripts. "So in order to fulfil my duty as a Russian, 1 had to exercise a quite-un-Russian self-restraint. 1 sat there, feeling ashamed and cowardly, staring at the floor while the women scolded us for our unmanliness.'"'

w hen he came

\'ears later,

the

memory

of

it still

constraints that

Oak and the Calf, seem s\'mbolic of the larger

to record this incident in 11k

rankled, and

it

also

came

w ere increasingly imposed on

to

his natural desire to tight.

This was one of

many

always

humiliating wav, but just as aggravatingh

in

such

a

when

times

m\' secret

life as a

w

riter r()hl)cd

—of m\

me

—

iKJt

freedom of

mv freedom to speak mv mind, m\ freedom to stand up straight. We all had heav\' loads on our backs, but I w as also dragged dow n, and mv spiritual

action,

energies diverted from literature, by unwieldy burdens hidden beneath the surface.

for

It

Mv

l)ones

would ache w

ith longing: straighten

up, straighten up

if

vou die

it!'**'

was with

Teushes'

a great

flat later

that

sense of

morning

they walked out of the around Moscow, having left the case

relief, therefore, that

to stroll

of manuscripts in the Teushes' safe-keeping.

To

celebrate the occasion, Sol-

zhenitsyn allow ed himself to be persuaded to buy

Reshetovskaxa

"a miracle, a real event

later,

tainly, Solzhenitsyn

w as not much given

—

a

new

suit. It

w as, wrote

especially for me."'''' Cer-

to dressing up.

On

the contrary, he

took a perverse pride in his shabbiness. In exile he had flaunted his fraying

army

greatcoat and faded

rushed off to buy visit to

new

artiller\-

clothes.

And

breeches long after most other exiles had

donned for his first make an impression. 1 he

the nondescript attire

Novy Mir had been deliberately chosen

to

— SOLZHENITSYN

[420] role of

sona.

dow ntrodden outsider matched his inner vision of his authorial perw as not something he could lightly abandon just because he had a

It

in his pocket.

thousand rubles

Alexandra Popova, and on New Once again they found him at work on vet another version of Othello and Desdemoua, though six years had passed since he had started it; and once again the two men fell into a furious argument about the nature and purpose of art. A few months previThcN' toasted the new year of 1962

Year's

Dav

Ivashov-Musatov

visited

\\

ith

in his studio.

ously Ivashov had written to Solzhenitsvn, "Life and invariably provoke in

me

rejection or admiration," but the

played out in the

life

its

manifestations

violent emotions of sorrow or joy, anger or delight,

drama was always seen

one

as a personal

of the individual, and the figure of Othello personified

the worst traged\' that could befall the individual: faith betrayed. For Sol-

zhenits\n, this w av of approaching

somehow evaded

too abstract and

life's

problems seemed too private and

the social evil that preoccupied his

own

thoughts. His attitude, according to Reshetovskaya, w as that Shakespeare's

how could they more than the lives of living prisoners w ith w hom he had man\ hardships?-" It was the same argument that Solzhenitsyn

characters had been depicted in thousands of paintings, so

preoccupy an shared so

artist

had deployed on offered the

his visit to the studio

same

repl\-.

What

but the nature of

societ\' at large

with Panin

evil.

tsyn, the loss of faith in societ\' or in one indi\idual,

was your w hole

life?

1959, and Ivashov

Which blow s

when

that individual

struck hardest, the impersonal blows of

from your nearest and dearest?*

society or a blow

The

in

him was not the scale of evil in What was worse, he asked Solzheni-

interested

next day, Natalia returned to Ryazan, and Solzhenitsyn went to

on "Matryona." There were only it was still the holiday period and several members had failed to appear. Once again it was Tvardovsky who led the discussion. As Solzhenitsyn had predicted, he liked the story very much for its \illage subject matter, for its peasant heroine, tor its pure Russian language, laced w ith proverbial expressions and popular diction. But it had also placed him in something of a quandary. In the first place it was the Novy five

Mir

offices to hear their verdict

of them round the oval table this time

—

—

even more

critical

of Soviet reality than Ivan Denisovich. Ihe

latter, after all,

and referred to a period and a phenomenon that v\ere supposed to be w ell in the past and that had the labour camps been roundh' condemned by the highest in the land. Matryona's stor\', however, was set in 1956, only a few years beforehand, and referred to a time and a place that had suffered no such obloquy. As Fvardovsky saw it, the author was "determined to show the village at its worst. You might have had been

set in the late forties

given us one *l

am

—

little

iiuichrcd to

have had

a social

glimpse of the sunny

Manin Dew

Everybody

hirst for the suggestion that

in sight

b\-

was

allegorical.

is

a

degen-

hashov-Miisatov's painting

content as well and that Sol/.henits\ n misunderstood

interpretation, the subject

had been duped

side.

it.

According

may

to this

Othello stood for the Russian intelligentsia, which

lago-Stalin into betraying and murdering the Russian people (Desdemona).

Brkakthrough erate or a vampire.

added up

.

.

.

Your searching

I421I

ga7.c has

missed nothing."-'

to a devastating picture of degradation, corruption, cupidit\

moral depravity

in the

It ,

all

and

heloxed Russian countryside.

1 vardovsky also found the treatment "a

bit

too Christian" for a Soviet

and the story "aesthetically thinner" than Ivan Denisovich. But worst all was the feeling that it was too subversi\e to publish and that he dare of it, a feeling that had evidently been reinforced by Alexander publish not Dementyev at a discussion before the meeting. Dement\'ev was so convinced of its unpublishabilit)- that he had declined l\ardovsk\'s invitation to speak to the author and had left the room before I vardovsks' launched into his monologue. Yet despite his forebodings, 1 vardovsky plainly ivaiited to publish it. He likened it to the moral tales of Tolstoy and praised its "realism w ithout an adjective" a reference to the Soviet distinction between the "critical realism" of the nineteenth-century classics and the "socialist realism" of Soviet authors. It was clear that Solzhenitsvn's story was much closer to "critical" than to "socialist" realism, but Ivardovsky dared not say so in front of his subordinates. He also realized by now that it would be absurd to expect any sort of orthodox) from Solzhenitsyn. "Tm not saying you should have made Kira a member of the Komsomol," he commented at one stage, and when the discussion was over he said in his favourite joke\' manner, "Please don't become ideologically reliable. Don't w rite anything that m\- staff could pass without my having to know about it."-The conference had gone on for three hours, most of them taken up b\' Tvardovsky as he had gone round and round in circles, trying either to jusjournal,

—

tify a rejection

Berzer, to

of the story or else to find reasons for publication.

whom

Solzhenitsyn had taken

a liking

during their

Anna

joint editorial

Denisovich, later told him that she had never seen Tvardovsk\and indecisive. His literary instincts were at war with his political ones. But at the end of the day the matter was left open. Tvardovsky seemed to be saying that the story was unpublishable, but at the same time he asked Solzhenitsyn to leave it with him so that other members of the board

work on Ivan so confused

might read

it

too.

Lastly, he sought to reassure Solzhenitsyn on the subject of Ivan Denisovich.

He

wasn't yet sure

how

to

go about getting

hurry us, though. Don't ask which issue everything in his power to push

it

it

will

it

be

published: "Don't try to in."-^

But he would do

through. Solzhenitsyn believed him and

w as glad to leave all the arrangements to Tvardovsky. "Not evervthing depends on x\lexander Trifonovich," he wrote to the Zubovs on his return to Ryazan, "but everything that does depend on him w ill be done. Neither he nor his staff can recall a work that ever had such a big impact on him. And so we will

have to

wait."^"^

Solzhenitsyn had decided to devote the next few months to revision of The First Circle,

of the novel. With luck,

it

a

complete

making this his fourth and, he hoped, final draft too might be published in time. Accordingly, he

SOLZHENITSYN

[422]

returned to his routine ot hurrying

home from

ing every

moment

social life

went bv the board, and he

of his spare time to his

\\

school after lessons and devotriting.

Once

again friends and

tried to put the fate of Ivan Denisovich

completely out of his mind. In March 1962 he wrote the Zubovs:

Mv

affairs in

Moscow have come

zine hasn't contacted me, nor time, ril keep

ing the

mum

I

to a

them.

complete I

for another couple of

March holidays

I

shall

For two months the maga-

halt.

think that A. T. must be having a hard

months and then go there

be staying put

—

I

shall

again.

Dur-

be even busier than during

term time.-'

There were

feu' interruptions,

any, although he did

Novocherkassk.

It is

and Solzhenitsvn was anxious not

make an exception

for an

unexpected

to allow

visitor

from

not clear from Reshetovskava's version of this episode

had obtained Solzhenitsvn's name or whether her arrival at accidental. At all events she was a stranger, Dr Anna Dzhigurda, and she was travelling in search of a cure for her geologist son who had recently contracted cancer. Solzhenitsvn gave her a portion of the mandrake root and told her about the birch fungus that was supposed to help. In return Dr Dzhigurda, a surgeon, asked whether she might examine Solzhenitsvn, to w hich he agreed. "You were born lucky!" she exclaimed when she had completed her examination. His tumour, she said, had detached itself from his body and shrivelled. There was no more danger.'^ A few years later, when he came to w rite Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsvn modelled the figure of the young geologist, \ adim Zatsvrko, on Dr Dzhigurda's son. Another interruption provoked mixed feelings in Solzhenitsyn. In February 1962 Nikolai \ itkevich moved to Ryazan to take up a post as a senior lecturer in chemistry at the Ryazan Medical Institute. Natalia looked torward eagerly to meeting Nikolai and his wife once more and renewing their old friendship, but Solzhenitsyn was not thrilled. "They'll start visiting us. VYe'll have to exchange presents."-' Times had changed since the climax ot their friendship during their years at the front, and Solzhenitsyn anticipated little pleasure from Nikolai's arrival now. Nevertheless, a childhood friend w as a childhood friend. The \ itkeviches were w elcomed on arrival, and soon the four w ere going on bicycle rides together and meeting at one another's homes. Despite his forebodings, Solzhenitsyn did attempt to be sociable. By the time of the Ma\ holiday, Solzhenitsvn had finished his revision of The First Circle and w as readv to hide several copies of it before allowing himself to relax. At least one of them w ent w ith him to Moscow, where he learned that not much had happened to Ivan Denisovich in the four months he had been away, rvardovsky was perplexed as to how to approach the problem of publication. If he set the w ork in type and submitted it to the censorship, they were bound to reject it, and there was e\ery chance they would report the book's existence to the C>entral (Committee or the K(JB, and that would irrexocably stop it.

how the their

visitor

home was

Breakthrough 1

paign

I4-3I

he point was that Khrushchcx's renewal of his de-Stalinization camat

liberals

the 'I\\enty-second Congress had not been quite the success the

had hoped

for.

The

congress had not endorsed

proposals, the final resolutions

all

made almost no mention

of Khrushchev's of "mass repres-

sions" under Stalin (a key phrase of Khrushchev's that had indicated an intention to go well

bevond the resolutions of the 1 wentieth

monument

the idea of a

to the victims of Stalinism

(>ongrcss), and had been completeb

dropped.

Khrushchev's weakness was masked, however, b\ feverish at

home and

acti\ it\

abroad, bi foreign affairs he intensified the Berlin

threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East

crisis

both

and

Germanw He resumed

ith .Marshal Tito, a move that was intimateh' linked w ith deand was strongly opposed bv man\' members of the Presidium. And, most significantly of all, he made the decision to send ballistic missiles to Cuba. At home he continued to attack Stalin in public, and in April promulgated a decree that cancelled aw ards, dating back to March 1944, to seven hundred former NKV'D officers for the "e.xemplarv execution of government tasks." Ihese tasks were not specified but probablv referred to the mass deportations of Ukrainians, Crimean Tartars, and other peoples from territories recaptured from the Germans tow ards the end of the v\ ar. The period covered bv these awards, incidentalh', included the time when Solzhcnitsxn was arrested and affected all ranks of the securit\ police, up to and including the former head of Smersh, Sergei Kruglov. It was another straw in the w ind that Bukharin's w idow w as received b\ Khrushche\ and apparenth' assured that her husband w ould be ofhcialh exonerated of the "crimes" he w as alleged to have committed.* 1 o all appearances, then, the omens w ere mixed, and the main tide was not running quite so strongh' for Khrushchev as appeared at the time. 1 he main bod\' of the Party remained suspicious of Khrushchev's domestic reforms and were made uneasv b\' his adventures in foreign policv. The\ preserved, at best, a silent neutralitv between him and his opponents, waiting to see which side would w in, w bile the conservatives made it clear that the\ w ere still a force to be reckoned w ith. Khrushchev therefore needed allies in his struggle for change, and he w as w ell aw are that his most reliable and eager supporters w ere to be found among the intellectuals. Of all the literar\' intellectuals, T\ardovsk\ w as the most prominent and most influential supporter of the Khrushchev line, and thanks to his seat in the Central Committee had a good view of the pow er struggle in progress there. He also had a shrew d idea of just how strong the conservatives still were, and he resolved not onlv that it w ould be necessarx' to circumvent them if /vY/w Denisovich were to be published but also that its best chance la\- in its being offered to Khrushchev as a weapon in his struggle for more reform. 7 vardovsky therefore decided to compose a preface that w ould present the

the dialogue

w

Stalinization

*In the end Bukharin was not rehabilitated.

SOLZHENITSYN

[424]

storv in this light and to look for a Party connection

who

could get the man-

uscript to Khrushchev.

Meanwhile, he was basking in the reflected glory of his discovery and showing the manuscript to various luminaries in the literary establishment. One of the first to read it had been the venerable and universally loved critic and children's writer Kornei Chukovsky, to whom Tvardovsky had shown it when thev were both relaxing in the government resort area of Barvikha. Chukovskv had at once recognized the story's qualitv and had congratulated Tvardovsky on his discovery of a major talent. Later he had the idea of writing a report on the storv and sending it to Tvardovsky "in case it should come in hand\' for you." Headed "A Literary Miracle," the report w as unstinted in its praise. Shukhov, wrote Chukovsky, was a generalized portrait of the Russian common man: resilient, stubborn, hardy, jack of all trades, cunning, and kind-hearted" a close kin to Vasily Tyorkin. The story was written in a wonderfully pure and traditional Russian with an admixture of camp slang, which did not draw attention to itself but seemed as natural as breathing. The theme was tragic the evil repression inflicted on innocent men over a long period of years, and their suffering at the hands of "armed scounvet the author had not taken the path of easy indignation and fierce drels" denunciations, and "in this lies his greatest achievement: nowhere does he

—

—

—

He

express his passionate rage.

Chukovsky noted a powerful, original

is

not a polemicist but a historian."

that "this story

marks the entry into our

literature of

and mature writer. ... In every scene the author chooses

and every time is victorious." He warned with the text or edit it, pointing out that its apparent eccentricities showed the w riter's mastery of the Russian language, not his weakness, even if a few of the near-obscenities would have to be toned down or removed. Otherwise, there was nothing in it that could not pass the censorship, for the story dealt with events that were past and was "totally dedicated to the glory of Russian man." It would be terrible to -^ think that such a story might not see the light of day. Chukovsky's comments about the censorship and the story's innocuousness were clearly intended for Tvardovsky to show to the higher powers, and his report gave Tvardovsky the idea of collecting similar reports from other outstanding Soviet writers, since this would create a momentum for the story and help convince the political bosses that this was indeed an excepthe line of

maximum

resistance

Tvardovsky against trying

tional

work of

to tinker

He drew up

literature.

a short list

of authors to

show

it

to:

Paustovsky, Marshak, Fedin, and Ehrenburg. In the case of Ehrenburg,

Tvardovsky was for some reason unwilling to act as the go-between himself and persuaded a reluctant Solzhenitsyn to deliver the manuscript personally. It turned out that Ehrenburg w as away, but Solzhenitsyn was astonished to learn from his secretary, Natalia Stolyarova, that he had already read it. So had Stolyarova. She praised it and said she was especially pleased that Stalin wasn't even mentioned in it.* "However," she added, "I don't understand *Stolvarova had herself served Soviet

Union from

Paris).

She

a

sentence in the labour camps (after her voluntary return to the

also

gave Solzhenitsyn information

for

The Gulag Archipelago.

Brf.akthrough

whv

wasn't written from the point ot view

it

In the e\ent,

ot

l.hrenburg declined to write

I425I

an a

intellectual.""''*

report on the novel, as did

Fedin. Privateh', I'cdin assured Tvardoxsks' that it w as a hopeless enterprise and that he w as w asting his time. Marshak, on the other hand, w rote in much the same vein as (^huk"oper subject matter for serious

literature.

24

A TRUE HELPER OF THE PARTY

ON

HIS

ning

a

RETURN from Moscow

summer

to

Ryazan, Solzhenitsxn started plan-

was to be his hrst, and he some of the popular landmarks Lake Baikal, the Enisei holiday

visit to Siberia. It

—

was anxious

to see

River

formed part of the itinerary of almost

—

that

all

Soviet tourists to the

region.

He and constraints of

Natalia set off at the end of June. Solzhenitsyn disliked the rail travel,

the submission to timetables, and the fuss and bother

of catching trains, but he had no choice. travel,"

are too

course,

it's

not our style of

many changes

travel not visiting

"Of

he wrote to the Zubovs from one of their stopping places. "There of train, too many stations, and too little fresh air. You on your muscles but on your nerves. But there is no other w ay of

such distant places."'

The

journey out took almost a week, and on one of their legs Solzhe-

nitsyn had a chance meeting that he was later to describe in The Gulag Archi-

MVD

He found himself sitting beside a young officer who had just completed his training at the Tavda Academy and was on his way to start work in the Irkutsk labour-camp complex. The officer was friendly and talkative and told Solzhenitsyn what a mess the camps had fallen into

pelago.

MVD

since Khrushchev's liberalization of them, and

how

insolent and hostile the

(when Solzhenitsyn was in exile), when had been even worse, with the prisoners

prisoners had become. Back in 1954 the liberalization process began,

it

work and buying themselves television sets with their own money. The young officer waxed indigant at the very memory of it, quite unaware of who it was beside him, drawing him on with innocent questions and sympathetic commiseration. Yet, as Solzhenitsyn realized, he was not a flatly

refusing to

427

1

SOLZHENITSYN

[428]

bad voung fellow

companv he kept

It

.

all

was simply

that his training, his surroundings,

and the

conspired to convince him that labour-camp prisoners

were a desperate, cruel, ungrateful, and virtiialK' subhuman race who deser\ed no understanding or svmpathv w hatsoever and w ho responded only to compulsion and force. Doubtless he described this angry diatribe w hen he called on one of his old Ekibastuz friends, Yuri Karbe, who was now living in Sverdlovsk. In

bv

its

due course the Solzhenitsyns reached Lake Baikal and were impressed is astonishing," Solzhenitsvn w rote to the Zubovs,

grandeur. "Baikal

"and somehow the word 'sacred' doesn't seem, out of place."* Ihev spent its shores and dav-dreamed of building a cottage there,

several days exploring

Solzhenitsvn humorouslv described in that same letter to the Zubovs. "V\ e've chosen a 'Happ\' \ allev' w here we've decided to build our cottage (300 steps above the railw av line). There will be a small halt below, water from a mountain spring, solar panels on the roof to charge our batteries during the da\', and paths and summer-houses among the cliffs."After thev had been to Sludyanka, at the southern tip of Lake Baikal, thev learned from Maria in Rvazan that a telegram had arrived from Ivardovskv, asking Solzhenits\n to go at once to \ovy Mir. She had informed a project that

Tvardovskv that Solzhenitsvn w as

in Siberia

care of the post office in Krasnoxarsk,

some

through which he would be passing on

kal,

was extremelv reluctant to cut short distance aw av and it had been such

but that he could be contacted

five

hundred miles west of Bai-

his return journev.

his holidav. Siberia a

huge enterprise

Solzhenitsyn

was such an immense

to get there that he did

not w ish to waste the opportunity. But Ivardovskv's telegram aw aiting him in

Krasnoyarsk contained exciting news: "Cable immediately chances short Moscow re preparation manuscript for setting."' Setting was an immense step forward. It was the stage at which the

visit

v\ork

w ould have

have decided on

to be submitted to the censorship, it

and Tvardovskv w ouldn't

unless he had good reason to believe

it

would

pass. Sol-

zhenitsvn had w anted to spend some davs travelling dow n the river

but he decided to omit that part of his )ourne\ and return to

ELnisei,

Moscow bv

2

Tvardovskv w as duh* informed bv telegram. It was raining the night they arrived in Moscow. The follow ing day, a Sunday, the\' hurried out to Zhukovka, a resort area on the outskirts of Moscow, where the Kopelevs had a dacha. "You're now the most popular man in Moscow," said Kopelev, "and I'm green with envy about it.""^ He told SolzhenitsN'n of the praises being heaped on Ivcjn Deiiisovich by Chukovsky, Marshak, and the others, and about the large number of unofficial copies ot the novel being passed from hand to hand. Some said there were as many as five hundred. Reports had come in of its being read as far afield as Kiev, Odessa, and Sverdlovsk. Readers w ere doubly anxious to grab it w hen they could because nobody believed that, w ith such a subject, it would ever get

July.

*A

reference to

a

well-known Soviet song that contains

a line

about "the sacred Baikal."

A rRLE Hflpfr ok ihf Pari

y

[429]

w hen Solzhenitsyn rang Anna Berzer, she

into print. Later,

told

him

that

the manuscript had been read and approved by no less a person than Khru-

shchc\

private secretarw \ ladimir Lebedev,

's

who was

to Khrushche\ himself. But before he did so, he

certain changes,

proposing to show

w anted the author

to

it

make

which was whv Solzhenitsvn had been summoned from

Siberia.

The

changes tc^ok place in the \ovy p.m. on Mondav, 23 julv 1962. Ever\one was there the tirst discussion o\ Ivan Denisovich, with the addition of a

editorial conference to discuss these

Mir boardroom again, just as at

at

1

newcomer, \ ladimir Lakshin, who had just taken over the section of literary criticism. Tvardovsky was beaming. He felt that his campaign for publication was at last beginning to bear fruit and that his unorthodox methods were justified.

He

explained to Solzhenits\ n how he and Dementx

w ith some help e\ from Lakshin, had drafted a letter to Khrushchev in w hich the\ stated as the unanimous opinion of the \aiy Mir editorial board that hw! Denisavich should be published, and had requested Khrushchev to give the matter his personal attention. (This unanimitv w as no fiction 1 vardovskv had insisted on taking a formal vote on it in June.) 1 hev had also quoted the favourable opinions of several leading writers that Tvardovskv had collected through the spring and summer. Instead of approaching Khrushchev directlv, how ever (w hich he might have done since they were personallv acquainted), Tvardovskv had judged it wiser to hand this material, together with a copv of the manuscript, to Lebedew who had since read the storv and expressed his enthusiasm. 1 hev had thus gained a valuable allv for the final approach to Khrushchev. 1 vardovskv then explained the changes that Lebedex' w ished to see made. Most of them centred on the figure of Captain Buinovskv, the ex-naval commander and former Partv member, who in the final pages is condemned to the punishment cells for a heroic gesture of defiance. Solzhenitsvn had conceived and shown him semi-satiricalh', but Lebedev wanted the comedv toned down so that Buinovsky could emerge as a "positive hero." He also wanted Solzhenitsyn to moderate some of the language, particularlv some of the camp slang and the repeated references to the camp officers as "vermin." There also had to be at least a token condemnation of the Ukrainian nationalists, the Banderites (from Buinovskv if not from the narrator); the prisoners should be shown as having some hope of freedom; and there should be a mention of the fact that Stalin had been responsible for all these crimes. When Tvardovsky had finished, he invited comments from the others, and Dementyev took over; but whereas Tvardovsky's tone had been neutral and dispassionate, Dementvev was more aggressive. He thoroughlv agreed with Lebedev's criticisms and had others of his own. The conversation about the Eisenstein film The Battleship Potemkin was an insult to Soviet art and should be cut. Shukhov's conversation w ith Alvoshka the Baptist about God should also be cut, and there were manv more criticisms in similar vein. Dementvev had alreadv irritated Solzhenitsvn bv his refusal to attend the

—

,

SOLZHENITSYN

[430]

discussion ot his story about Matryona, and as earlv as his

first visit to Novy Dementyev's hypocritical charm, which he regarded as a cover for political orthodoxy. Now Dementyev seemed to be standing in his way, dissipating the effects of Tvardovsky's reasonableness and infuriating Solzhenitsyn with his pedantrv. In The Oak and the Calf he describes himself rephing as follows: "I have waited ten vears and I can w ait another ten. I'm in no hurry. Mv life doesn't depend on literature. Give me back my manuscript and I'll be on my wav."^ Reshetovskava repeats his description of this scene in her unpublished chapters, but also records (presumably basing herself on Solzhenitsvn's notes) that at one point his tone became more reasonable: "I will not agree to revisions that \\ ould destroy the harmon\" of my stor\' or go against mv conscience. ... I cannot write for some particular category of readers, I have to reckon w ith my material, and I have a generalized reader in mind."'' Whatever the exact nature of his response, Tvardovsk\ w as sufficiently alarmed to interject, "You don't have to do anything. Ever\thing we've said today you can take or leave as you think fit. It's just that we all very much w ant the manuscript to get through." After this there was an aw kw ard silence the rest of the board-members had little to say. Onl\- Lakshin joked that he was against removing Solzhenitsvn's veiled sw ear-words from the text, since he had started using some of

Mir Solzhenitsyn had taken

a dislike to

—

home

them

at

script

aw av and work on

himself. Eventually, SolzhenitsNU agreed to take the it

one more time, with

objections. In his pocket diar\' he

made

a

a

view

to

manu-

meeting Lebedev's

note next to the date, 23 Juh':

"Difficult conference at N.M."**

He

during the next three days. With Buino\ skv no problem to reduce the comedy and stress his heroic side; and he did, after hesitation, put into the commander's mouth a criticism of the Banderites. Coming from a Party member and not the narrator, it sounded quite natural (although later, for another edition, he cut it again). It w as also easy enough to tone dow n the language and slip in a reference to Stalin, which he did in the jokey style ("Old Whiskers") of his letters to Nikolai \ itkevich from the front. He drew the line at show ing the prisoners hoping for freedom, how ever, and similarly refused to cut either the Potemkin or Alyoshka scenes. On the whole he was w ell satisfied, as he wrote in a letter to the Zubovs while still engaged on this work.

accomplished

he had no

his task

difficulties. It

w

as

.\ccording to A.T. and Co. m\' story

is

making

satisfactory progress, hi literary

been unprecendentedly unanimous praise: exceptionally favourable reports have come in from Chukovskv, Ehrenburg, and others. Before the last stage is tackled, I have been asked to carry out a bit more work on it, \\ hich

circles there has

I

am

doing now.

hardiv believe

On Berzer.

it

Nobody is setting conditions are we reallv so near?*^

that

would cripple the book.

I

can

—

26 July, Solzhenitsyn handed in the revised manuscript to Anna not clear how much of a hand Berzer herself had in the final

It is

A True Helper of the Party editing.

In

impeccable

Moscow tact in

litcran

circles she

was kn(n\n

[43 for her erudition

']

and

handling authors and their manuscripts. She was also one

of the few editors in the So\iet Union know n to be totally on the author's side

and adept

at

deceiving the censors. Certainb', she had early adxised

Solzhenitsyn not to

make

too man\' concessions in advance, since one could

never know w hat would pass and w hat not (he later assessed the changes he as amounting to less than one per cent of the text). Berzer w as rapidly becoming the only person at Novy Mir w horn Solzhenitsyn fully trusted. As it turned out, he w as not alone. Anna Berzer's office on the first fioor of the Novy Mir building had become a kind of unofficial club for the liberal authors published by the magazine, where they would meet at five o'clock after a day's w riting to toast "Asva," as she was affectionateK called, exchange the latest gossip, and drink themselves under the table. Among the leading and more convivial members of this club were \ ictor Nekrasov, Vladimir Voinovich, and Xaum Mendel (w ho published under the name of Naum Korzhavin); and on that evening of 26 July, As\a had promised them a rare treat: a meeting with the mysterious author of .A Day in the Life of Ivan De-

made

nisovich.

The meeting was

arranged

request of Nekrasov, w ho had

at the

felt a

Tvardovsky had confided in him the morning after reading Ivatt Denisovich. Nekrasov had also been astonished by the book and genuinely w ished to express his admiration to the author, especially after hearing from Berzer w hat a charming and modest man he was. Solzhenitsyn, though generalh' avoiding Moscow literary circles, was not averse to meeting Nekrasov, for he in turn had deeply admired Nekrasov's best-known book. In the Trenches of Stalingrad, w hen he had read wins you over with ks genuine truth it in the camps in 1947 C'7he book about war and is as different as heaven from earth from everything else that has been written about the w ar,"'" he had told Natalia in one of his letters, adding that it made him nostalgic for his army days and covered the same subject matter as he had w anted to cover in his projected but unw ritten w ar sort of proprietary interest in the author ever since

.

.

.

novel, The Sixth Course). Solzhenitsvn's

first social

meeting w

ith a

group of Moscow w riters turned man he was struck by

out to be very agreeable, although as an abstemious the quantity of wine and vodka sion as remarkably sober

by

consumed (Nekrasov

later recalled the occa-

their usual standards). Nevertheless, he joined

the toasts to Ivan Denisovich, literature, \ovy Mir, and e\en Confucius

—whose

them and compared with Christ's. Nekrasov told Solzhenitsyn about his trips abroad and how difficult it had been, on a recent visit to Italy, to remain quiet about Ivan Denisovich w hen Soviet literature was criticized for its lack of realism. teaching Solzhenitsyn expounded to

Solzhenitsyn found Nekrasov animated, interesting, and sociable but was rather taken aback w hen Nekrasov suggested they pass to the "thou" form and call one another bv their Christian names. The prim schoolmaster was unused to such metropolitan informalit\" and agreed only after much hesitation. On a more serious note, Nekrasov praised Solzhenitsyn for his

SOLZHEMTSYN

[432]

camp in such a w av that all camps \\ ere included and to \\ rite "Matrvona" so that the whole countryside \yas described: "Tell me, how vyas it you were able to write lOO per cent truth? \\ hat's the secret of your art?" Solzhenitsyn replied disingenuously, "The secret is that when \ou\e been pitched head first into hell you just write about it." Nekrasoy wondered aloud w hat sort of impact Ivan Denisoiicb w ould haye when it was published. W ould it start a conflagration or would eyery thing stay as before? Solzhenitsyn replied, "But it's not a sensational exposure; it's the people's ability to describe a single

point of yiew

.""

7 he follow ing day Solzhenitsyn w ent back to \'ovy Mir to hear w hether the reyisions he had made vyere acceptable. On this occasion his meeting w as with Tyardoysky, Berzer, and the managing secretary, Boris Sachs. lyardoysky and Berzer professed themsehes satisfied, but Sachs wanted to cut more of the swear-words, and Solzhenitsyn agreed to remoye another three. Tyardoysky then gaye Solzhenitsyn a copy of his preface to read. Solzhenitsyn disliked the w hole idea of a preface. \\ hy couldn't the reader be left to make up his ow n mind, without being "prepared" in adyance? And he particularly disliked the use of the word "happy" to describe han Denisoyich's day. It would seem that lyardoysky had borrowed this idea from Chukoysk\ w ho in his reyiew had underlined the fact that this grim picture described a "happy day," and not one of the worst days. He had eyen, according to one report, suggested that this go into the title: "han Denisoyich's Happy Day," but this had not found fayour w ith an\ one. In response to Solzhenitsyn's objections, howeyer, Tyardoysk\' agreed to remoye the offending ,

adjectiye.*

Tyardoysky still declined to show Solzhenitsyn the opinions w ritten by Chukoysky, Marshak, and the others. He didn't want to spoil Solzhenitsyn, he said, to which the latter responded that the time for spoiling him was already past. And it w as true, for the w ords "genius," "a work of genius," and similar extrayagant praises were to be heard from all sides, and Solzhenitsyn had already been told by Kopeley of the gist of the famous writers' reports. Yet he remained in total command of himself and, while exulting inwardh', had steadfastly refused to betray any outward emotion. "You are taking this thing much more calmly than any of us," Anna Berzer had said to him one day. "We are all worried, but you're not." This was not quite so. Reshetoyskaya notes that he w as tense and w ound up, finding it difficult to sleep, and had started taking bromide at night.'" Tyardoysky's last words as Solzhenitsyn left the \ovy A//;" office vyere to ask whether he had an\ thing else to offer them. "In my yiew," replied Solzhenitsyn, "it's now up to A'017 Mir to do its bit. When that happens, I won't be slow to follow

it

up."

"

For the second half of the summer holidays, Solzhenitsyn planned to *Tvardovsk\- had probablv been misled bv indicating that

it

however, would have been

a

a

phrase

in the

happy day." To

concluding lines of Ivan

"happy" without distortion of Solzhenitsvn's meaning.

had been "almost

a

call

it

Deiiis(rcich

qualification,

A Truk Hfipfr take to his bicvcic again.

I

Ic

ok thk I^ariv

had arranged

I433I

to tour the Baltic States

u

ith his

rediscovered friend Leonid \ lasov, for which purpose he took his bicvcle on the train to Riga. Apart from the phxsical exercise and the chance to see

new

however, he had another motive for seeing \ lasov. lie wanted Vlasov to repeat the story of an episode that he had been involved in at the beginning of the war and that he had first told Sol/henits\ n during their chance meeting on the train from .Moscow to Rostov in 1V44. Solzhenitsyn places,

had never forgotten felt it

w as

in his

mind.

just

w

it

and now wished

to write a short storx

hat he needed for offering to

Novy Mir.

I

he

about

title

it

—he

w as alreadv

The holidav was interesting and successful. Solzhenitsvn returned bronzed and slimmer, with three rolls of film he had shot on the trip. But almost immediatelv he w as forced to take to his bed with an attack of sciatica, a legacv of the camps. In order not to waste anv time, he occupied himself in

bed v\ith revising The Light Which Is in Thee. Sufficient criticism had now accumulated to make him thoroughlv dissatisfied w ith it, and he continued to work on it throughout the first half of September. Meanwhile, the decisive moment had arrived in I vardovskv's campaign to have Ivan Denisovich approved at the highest level. Khrushchev w as spending the summer in the south and had left for when Solzhenitsvn went to Riga, at the end

the Crimea at about the time

of Julv. On 6 August 1962, Tvardovskv sent the revised manuscript to Lebedev, who w as still in Moscow, together with his covering letter to Khrushchev and the selection of reviews. For about a

month

afterwards, nothing

much happened,

except that

Dmitri Polikarpov, head of the cultural section of the Central Committee, rang Ivardox skv and asked for

a

copv. 1 his w as rather surprising, since the

whole point of approaching Lebedev and Khrushchev had been to outflank Polikarpov, a notorious reactionarv. However, news of the stor\''s special status must have percolated to a verv high level, for Polikarpov rang back later to say he would not oppose publication. On 7 September, Khrushchev received the American poet Robert Frost, who was in the Soviet Union as part of the Soviet- American cultural exchange programme, at his villa in Pitsunda, on the Black Sea coast. Ironically, Ivardovskv was supposed to be in America carrving out the Soviet part of the exchange, but he w as indisposed and could not go. Frost was accompanied by Lebedev and the Soviet poet Alexei Surkov, formerly head of the Writers' Union. According to Reshetovskava (whose unpublished chapters contain the fullest account of these events), Lebedev and Surkov began talking about Ivan Denisovich in Khrushchev's presence. "What's that?" Khrushchev allegAnd w hen Lebedex' explained, edlv said. "What are vou concealing from me?" '"^

he demanded to see the manuscript.

Oddlv enough

(in

Reshetovskava's account), Lebedev had forgotten to

bring the manuscript w ith him and was obliged to

Returning, he

is

.Moscow to get it. Khrushchev sometime

flv to

said to ha\e read extracts aloud to

between 9 and 14 September, deliberately choosing the "positive" scene of

SOLZHENITSYN

[434]

main emphasis. Halfway through, Khrushchev summoned Mikoyan to listen, too, and is said to have been particularly touched by the way that Ivan Denisovich, when laying bricks, so carefully husbanded his mortar. When the story was finished, Khrushchev asked Lebedev why Tvardovsky didn't simply go ahead and publish it. Lebedev pointed out that it was not so easy and reminded Khrushchev of the difficulties Tvardovsky had experienced with his own poem Distant Horizons. Khrushchev then said that both he and Mikoyan approved of Solzhenitsyn's story and saw no reason the building of the generating station for his

why

it

could not be published.

Khrushchev and his entourage returned to Moscow almost immediately after the reading, and on 16 September 1962, Lebedev rang Tvardovsky: "Trifonich, there is justice in this world!" That same day, Anna Berzer despatched a letter to Ryazan bearing the glad tidings: "Now we can say that Ivan D is on the very threshold. We are expecting news any day."" But there was still no official word from the Central Committee, and Tvardovsky was on tenterhooks. "If they refuse Lll resign," he is said to have threatened to his colleagues. Finally, at midday on 21 September, he received his promised call, but it was not at all what he had expected. "Deliver us twenty-three copies by tomorrow morning!""' Tvardovsky was flabbergasted. He did not possess twenty-three copies. deliberately kept the number down so as not to let the story circulate had He (he was unaware of just how many were circulating, and it was certainly not his fault). To type up twenty-three copies w as out of the question in a single night, so he grasped at the only other possibility: a limited printing of the

necessary copies. Novy

Mir

didn't have

its

own

presses,

it

was

a

dependency

of Izvestia. Tvardovsky rang the head of Izvestia's printing department and

arranged to have four machines set aside from printing Izvestia that night and reserved for printing twenty-five copies of Ivan Denisovich.

Berzer and Kondratovich w ere put in charge of the operation and ted four proof-readers and an equivalent latter the text It

was

a far

number

allot-

of type-setters. For the

presented major problems of style, spelling, and vocabulary.

cry from the dull and cliche-ridden speeches of government lead-

Nor did the unorthodox nature of the contents escape them, though they were sworn to secrecy about this strange project. They worked feverishly through the night, and at dawn the next morning the copies were bound in the distinctive light-blue covers of Novy Mir and the plates locked aw ay in the Izvestia strong-room. Later that morning twenty-three copies were delivered to the offices of the Central Committee and the remaining two to Tvardovsky (one of w hich he later presented to Solzhenitsyn). Khrushchev ordered the copies to be distributed to members of the Party Presidium, and on 23 September departed for (>entral Asia to inspect the virgin lands and look into agriculture there. 1 hree days later Solzhenitsyn arrived in Moscow for a short visit. Apart from Berzer's vague letter of the sixteenth, he knev\- nothing of the past month's events and immediately telephoned her for the latest news. "Tell me just one thing. Has he read it?" ers.

.\

"Yes.

He

liked it." Solzhenitsx n hurried rf>und

the whole story.

mented

away

Me was

t(j

see her,

com-

w hich

.

.

.

People have

a desire

Fired on bv this good news, he worked

that's clean."'

at the \'lasov storv,

and she told him

thought that m\ entr\ into literature would be

people would be so tuU ot enthusiasm.

something

I435]

naturally elated. Returning to Ryazan, he

to Natalia, "I ne\er

like this, that

to touch

Iruk Hklpkr of ihk Party

at that stage

bore the

title

of

"The CJreen

Cap." rhe Presidium held its meeting sometime in the middle of October. Xobod\' know s exacth w hat w ent on there, or indeed w hether there w as one meeting or tw o. In his ow n memoir Solzhenits\n refers to onlv one meeting, but others, including Zhores Medvedev,* maintain that Ivati Denisovich was discussed at two meetings. .According to them, the first time it came up on the agenda several members announced that they had not had time to read identified by rumour as Frol Koziov and Mikhail Susit. Other member.s lov objected to the book, pointing out that the camp guards ought not to have been depicted so unta\ourabl\'. Yet another source has Khrushchev wagging his finger at the pair of them and declaring, "How can we fight against the remnants of the personalitv cult if Stalinists of this t\ pe are still among us.'"'*^ At another point he is reported to have said, "There's a Stalinist in each of \ ou; there's even some of the Stalinist in me. We must root out

—

—

"'"^

this evil. If first

these reports are to be believed, Khrushchev did not get his

time, and the matter

Now

w

\\

as raised at a

wav

the

second meeting one or two davs

mainly silence, although someone is supposed to have would it be grist to?"-" Goaded bv this general lack of enthusiasm, Khrushchev demanded, "Whv don't \ ou sav something?" And when no discussion was forthcoming, he said, "1 here's a Russian pro\"erb that says silence is consent."-' The resolution to publish was proposed bv Khrushchev and seconded by Mikoxan. One last remark b\- Khrushchev later later.

asked,

there

"Whose

passed into

as

mill

Moscow

folklore:

"This

isn't a

campaign,

it's

a policv."--

Tvardovskv was unofficially informed of the result by Lebedev on 15 October 1962, but it w as another five days before he received a copy of the official resolution. For this he was summoned to a personal meeting with Khrushchev, which lasted for more than two hours. Khrushchev, he later reported, was in a mellow philosophical mood. He praised Ivan Denisovich as a life-enhancing work that was fulh* in the spirit of the Tw entv-second Congress. It would have been harmful, however, if not so well written. Some people had w anted the camp administration to be presented in a more sympathetic light, but he had retorted, "W hat do you think it was, a holiday resort?" Khrushchev commented on the strange wav the book had been presented for his approval and said he found the whole process abnormal. "\\ hat have we got the state machinery for?"-^ he asked irritably. How ever, he did not go back on his permission to publish. Perhaps it was at this point that Tvardovskv raised the question of the ,

* In

Ten Years

after

Ivan Denisovich.

SOLZHENITSYN

[436]

it is generally known that he seized the opportunity of this meeting to suggest to Khrushchev that the censorship be lifted altogether.

censorship, for

made bv kisses," Tvardovsky later reported himself as saying. you abolish the censorship of imaginative literature? Books are what could be worse than that?"-^ circulating in illegal copies According to Zhores Medvedev, Tvardovsky was deeply convinced of the need to abolish the censorship and had gone to the meeting w ith Khrushchev intending to argue for such a step. I lis contention was that editors were far more responsible and experienced than censors, since censors, for the most part, came from among the less successful employees of the publishing houses. "I mean, vou wouldn't give them my job, would you? So wh)' can't I, a member of the Partv's Central Committee, a writer and an editor, decide whether or not to publish a particular story or a poem? After all, our entire and then some total stranger editorial staff discusses it and comes to a decision from Glavlit, some fool who understands nothing about literature, goes and "Babies aren't

"Why

don't

—

—

blue-pencils our decisions."-''

According to both Solzhenitsyn and Medvedev, Khrushchev heard Tvardovskv out with some svmpathv. In Medvedev's version, Khrushchev is

even said

to

have expressed enthusiasm over the recent decision to stop "We lifted the censorship on foreign cor-

censoring foreign correspondents:

respondents and look what happened. Nothing.

They

told rather fewer lies."-^

Solzhenitsyn, however, feels that Tvardovsky took an over-optimistic view of Khrushchev's reactions and fell into the trap of attributing to the Soviet leader

what were essentially his ow n opinions. But even in this more Khrushchev is not seen as contradicting 1 vardovsky's

mistic version,

pessiasser-

tions.

In respect of the censorship their conversation remained inconclusive, but the more important practical matter was resolved. Ivan Denisovicb could be printed. Returning to his office, T\ ardovskv at once dispatched a telegram to Solzhenitsyn in

Ryazan, w hich reached him that same Saturday evening. number magazine congratulations Tvardov-

—

"Story appearing eleventh sky.

"" The following day Solzhenitsyn

replied.

Dear Alexander I rifonovich, I had lately been of the opinion (and become completely resigned to the idea) that Ivan Denisovicb wouldn't get through. So much the more unexpected and pleasant was it to receive your telegram yesterday, for which many thanks.-**

And

the day after that he wrote to the Zubovs.

Dear friends, As an amusing example of something that in, say, the late autumn of 1953,* never thought I w ould live to see, let me inform \'ou that Ivan Denisovicb has reali/x how radically my life is changing, what been passed for pii hiicat ion. ... I

1

*I.e.,

when

Solzhcnits\ n was in exile and had his second txnit ot cancer.

A

Truf. Hki.pkr ok

great spiritual opportunities arc opening

dangers (fame, success,

moment

I'm

loss of

thk Party

[43 "1

up before me, and

also

what

spiritual

conscience and feeling, hack-work). ... At the

overwhelmed and have

lots

of letters to write, so please forgive

mv

brevitv.-'

His

mood continued

be one of suppressed jo\'. Had he allowed his would have shouted his \ ictors to the roof-

to

natural exuberance tree rein, he tops, but \ears of

camp

training followed b\

dissimulation had taught check.

I

lis

him

more \ears of concealment and emotions and hold them in

to discipline his

natural optimism had been o\erlaid

1)\

pessimism born of

a

bitter

w as for this reason that he had replied to I vardovsk\- in such sober terms and kept up his bantering tone w ith the Zubovs, although w ith the latter he had allowed himself to strike a more solemn chord. But this stoicism exacted a price. According to Resheto\'ska\a, he began to dream more frequentiv One night it was Khrushchev stopping a train and making Solzhenitsv n board it. .Another night he dreamt that a big conference w as in progress and that someone came out and announced that Ivan Denisovich had been passed for printing, after w hich he was surrounded by eager students of literature. On still another occasion he dreamt he w as at a concert given bv the \\ ell-know n conductor Konstantin Ivanov and the pianist Bella Davido\"ich, but w hen the conductor bent forwards to speak to her the\- turned into 1 \ ardovsk\ and .Anna Berzer. Yet things seemed to be going his wav. On Sunda\ 21 October 1962,

experience, and a superstitious fear of the worst.

It

.

word of explanation, Pravda published ''The Heirs of Stalin," an poem bv Evtushenko, in w hich he u arned against those Stalinists who still held positions of power and wanted to turn back the clock. Like Ivan Denisovich, Kvtushenko's poem w as well know n in .Moscow literarx circles and had begun to circulate privatelw Its sudden publication in such an without

a

anti-Stalinist

authoritative organ signalled a victorv for the liberals and a blow against the

conservatives.

One week It

later,

Solzhenitsxn was called to

turned out that these were the page-proofs

Moscow

—the

to correct the prrx)fs.

final stage.

As he

later

discovered, he was supposed to have corrected the gallevs as well, but these

had not been show n to him,

e\ identlv for fear that

of the changes he had agreed to

make anv .As

it

to.

he w ould take back some

At the page-proof

stage,

it

w as impossible

alterations of substance.

happened, he had

just

completed

his

new

stor\'

based on the epi-

sode related to him h\ Leonid \ lasov, w hich was now called "Incident

at

Kochetovka Station." The episode concerned a middle-aged man who had turned up unexpectedK" at a small railwav station behind the front lines in the earlv part of the w ar and reported to the local commander that he had become separated from the train transporting him to the rear. He w as one of several hundred soldiers w ho had escaped from Cierman encirclement and were being sent to the rear to be reallocated to new units. 1 he suspicions of the commander, a vouns Red .Arm\ lieutenant, were aroused bv the man's

SOLZHENITSYN

[438]

evident good breeding, his "prerevolutionarv" manners, and an extraordi-

nary

of the tongue

slip

name

tionary

\\

hereby he referred to StaUngrad by its pre-reyoluThe lieutenant concluded that the man was a

of Tsaritsyn.

W hite Russian spy who had been infiltrated through the lines at the front, and handed him oyer to the NK\ D, knowing full well that he was condemning the man. w ho protested his innocence, to either death or a long prison sentence. In Solzhenitsyn's hands the story tion to

"The Right Hand"

became

in that the reader

that occurs just before the story's end,

a parable, similar in

is left

though the yictim, Tyeritinoy,

The

innocent sufferer like Matrvona, not an agent of repression. narrated

b\'

the

young commander

— Lieutenant \

zhenitsyn portrayed, and satirized, his naiVe, idealistic,

The

and

fatally

narrow

construc-

ponder the reyelation

to

own younger

in his blind

Zotoy,

asili

in

an

is

story

w horn

is

Sol-

self: puritanical, loyal,

devotion to the Soviet cause.

Zotov likes Tverisympathy right up until the fatal slip over Tsaritsyn, w hen his Soviet education and Red Army training, w ith their emphasis on the eternal need for vigilance, take over and cancel out this fellow-feeling at a stroke. His friendliness gives w ay to mortification as he suspects he has been taken in, and his subsequent hostility enables him to send 1 veritinov to possible death on the slenderest thread of tragedy of the storv, as told bv Solzhenitsvn,

tinov and

is

draw n to him.

He

treats

him with

is

that

friendly

suspicion.

Solzhenitsvn's descriptions of the station behind the front lines and of the chaos and turmoil of the

he had

\"et

first

among

\ear of the w ar w ere

done, and the picture of his \ounger

the best things

Zotov w

self as

as richer

and

more three-dimensional than the autobiographical characters in the plays (in the narrators had been merely observers). But "Incihis stories up till now dent" w as now here near as tightly w ritten as his other stories and show ed a lamentable tendency to w ant to turn itself into a novel. There were numerous irrele\ant sub-plots, and Solzhenitsvn seemed over-anxious to stuff in as much information and comment as he could (perhaps sensing that this was the nearest he would ever get to writing his novel about the w ar). The result was a baggy and shapeless holdall that could ha\e done w ith considerable ,

pruning before publication. Nevertheless, Solzhenits\ n had once again displa\ed his talent for putting his finger

on the sore spots of recent Soviet

controversial subjects he raised in this short

disastrous start to the

w

ar; Stalin's

history.

work were

Among

the

many

the Soviet Union's

leading role in that disastrous

start;

the

who was winning the w ar; the ill treatment of soldiers w ho had escaped from German captivity or encirclement; and the hidden tyrann\ of the secret police, who continued to relative indifference of the peasants near the front as to

monitor and control the movements of Soviet soldiers and the Soviet populace even at the time of their most harrow ing and tragic defeats at the beginning of the war. In his asides and comments, Solzhenitsvn was even able to bring in the thirties

(as

he had done

in Ivan Deni.wvich),

but the main emphasis

A Truk Helper of the Party

l4 3yJ

was on the multiple tragedies of the war.

On

the night before his departure to

Moseow

to

cheek the proofs, Sol-

zhenits\ n read his just-completed story to Natalia and to Alexandra Popova,

who was But

as

staving with

them

for a

few days, and was pleased bv their praise. a menacing storm

he travelled up to the capital, he was aware of

hanging not onlv over him but over the entire countrv, a crisis that threatjust as effectively as any local or literary conflict to sweep his storv

ened

—

the Cuban crisis, which had just reached its climax. Nearlv a week had passed since President Kennedv had called Khrushchev's bluff over the rockets on Cuba bv displaving aerial photographs of them and announcing his blockade. Ihe question on evervbodv's lips was: Will Khrushchev tell

awav

his ships to

run the gauntlet? Ciiven Khrushchev's unpredictabilitv, no one

anv certaintv whether he would or he wouldn't. was the eve of the November holidav, exactiv a vear since he had agreed to send his storv to Novy Mir. 7 his time, instead of staving in an obscure hotel in the suburbs, he had been bookecl into the luxurious Ukraine Hotel near the centre, all expenses paid by Novy Mir. He found the editorial offices in a festive mood. Raisa Orlova had told him how members of the editorial staff had embraced one another and done no work the preceding Mondav, when they heard the news of permission to publish. "If onlv vou knew how manv people were jumping with jov, and verv good people too!"^" Now the staff gave him the latest news. Literarv Moscow was agog at the prospect of seeing Ivan Denisovich in print. Novy Mir had been inundated with phone calls. The girls who did the proof-reading had gushed over Shukhov and exclaimed over the names Solzhenitsvn had given some of his characters: \ oikovoi (meaning "wolfish"), Alyoshka, with its echoes of Dostovevskv. "Now a new literature is beginning," said one of the editors.^' Solzhenitsvn did not see Ivardovskv on this occasion, but Boris Sachs passed on to him one last request from Lebedev. This was to remove one religious remark put into the mouth of the brigade leader Tiurin: "I crossed mvself and said to God, 'Thou art there in heaven after all. Creator. Thv patience is long but thv blows are heavv.' " Plaving for time, Solzhenitsvn said he would think about it and took the page-proofs back to his hotel. He sat there with the proofs on the desk before him and the radio on, listening to the latest news from (]uba. If there was to be a world conflagration, the proofs hardly seemed worth correcting. But that very weekend Khrushchev decided to back dow n, and the crisis began to subside. Solzhenitsvn's storv would appear after all. There remained the problem of what to do about Tiurin's invocation of the Lord. Certainlv Solzhenitsvn owed Lebedev a favour. If it had not been for his energetic advocacv, the storv would never have got into print at all. On the other hand, Tiurin was a kev figure in the storv, in some ways more important than Ivan Denisovich himself, for through him Solzhenitsvn had managed to contradict the whole official version of the historv of the preceding twentv vears and to smuggle in a true account of collectivization and the could sav It

\\

ith

SOLZHENITSYN

[440]

Lebedev had been right to spot the danger, though too and too superficially. Solzhenitsvn pondered the request. Rereading the story, he found his camp days coming back to him, remembered his comrades and the cruel torments they had endured, and pictured their joy that at last the truth vyas emerging. For the first time, he writes in The Oak and the Calf, he \\ ept oyer his tale, and realized he \\ as bound to refuse. During his brief stay in Moscow Solzhenitsyn had two important meetwith Anna Akhmatoya and with V arlam Shalamoy. It was Kopeley ings who took him to see Akhmatoya on 28 October 1962.* Akhmatoya was fiattered to hear that Solzhenitsyn knew her Poem ivithoiit a Herat by heart. He told her he had found it difficult and obscure at first, but then it had become clear. She read some of her poems, and he praised her patriotism, calling terror of the thirties. late

,

—

her, in effect, "the soul of Russia."

but she found his manner

He

also read

some of

his poetry to her,

of reading strange and later told Lvdia Chukoy-

much of it and that in poetry his prose, howeyer, she had only the was "yulnerable." Por Solzhenitsyn Ivan Denisovich in a samizdat copy and had said She had read his[hest praise. two hundred million citizens of the think that eyer\ one of the time, "I at the Now she was this and learn it by heart." should read story Soyiet Union described him to Chuacquaintance, and the next day to make his delighted We'ye foryoung, and happy. bearer of light. Fresh, sharp, as "a koyskaxa he listens exist. Eyes like precious stones. And stern: people that such gotten according to Chukoyskaya, Akhmatoya's lexicon, saying." In what he's to this latter comment was the highest praise. Akhmatoya asked Solzhenitsyn whether he realized that in a month he w ould be the most famous man on earth. Solzhenitsxn replied, "IVe got strong neryes. I coped with Stalin's camps." But Akhmatoya pointed out that Pasternak had not coped w ith fame. Fame was difficult to handle when it came late.'" The meeting with Shalamoy must haye been yery different in tone. Shalamoy had suryiyed seyenteen years in the notorious camps ot Kolyma, in north-eastern Siberia, and had written a series of maryellous and carefully wrought stories about his experiences, $ as v\'ell as some less interesting yerse. Solzhenitsyn had alw ays supposed that there must be other suryiyors like himself writing about the camps, but Shalamoy was the only one who had come to his attention in 1956 he had read some of his poems and had "tremrecognized a brother."'^ Later he acknowledged that "Shalamoy's bled as experience in the camps w as longer and bitterer than my ow n, and I respectfully confess that to him and not to me was it giyen to touch those depths of skaya that she had not been able to make

—

I

*

Akhmatova was one

ot"

the candidates for the Nobel Prize that year

(it

was won by John

Steinbeck). t

Akhmatova's long and complex poem

is

partly a distillation of

memory,

partly a meditation

on

and parti v a poetical statement on Russia's destiny. It is regarded by many as the crow ning achievement of her life's work, but has never been published in full in the So\ iet history,

Union. IThcN- have been translated into Knglish in two volumes: Kolyma Tales Graphite {\c\\ \ork, 19S1), both translated by John Cilad.

(Si:\\

York, 1980) and

— A Truk Hflpf.r of thi Party

[44

i |

savagery and despair towards w hich lite was dragging us all.'""* Sol/.henits\ n seems to have preferred Shalamov's verse to his prose (in The Oak and the (Utlf he expresses the view that Shalamox's prose had suffered from the isolation in v\hieh he had written it and that it eould easilv have been impro\ed "w ith no change in the range of material or the author's viewpoint"),'' and at their meeting he asked Shalamov to send him a selection so that Solzhenits\ n could offer it to Movy Mir. Before his departure for Ryazan, Solzhenitsvn was given the set of gallev proofs that had been kept aw av from him bv Novy Mir (marked "Author's copv. Return bv 25/10"), and also the twent\-fifth copy of the special edition that had been printed for the Central (>ommittee. A few days after his return, he received a long letter from 'I\ardovsk\-, in which the latter hastened to assure him that no harm had come of his refusal to accept Lebedex's last suggestion.

says that (iod exists),

"Regarding that

you perhaps went awav

bit

(where Tiurin

feeling rather apprehensive,

but everything is all right, although I did have to 'seek advice' on that point one telephone call was enough to settle it."''' FxardovskN' also ga\e Solzhenitsvn the annoying news that he and Novy Mir had been prevented from being the first to write openlv about the labour camps. (iod know

lest,

the It

nothing special, but

s it's

published

just

a

where words

first

time.

still it's

happened

all

the same. Izvestia has

rubbishy story called "Rough Diamond," bv one (jeorgi She-

The

like

"nark," "grass," and "morning praver" appear in print for

storv's shit-awful, not

worth bothering about.'

turned out that Alexei .\dzhubei, Khrushchev's son-in-law and edi-

wind of the impending publication oi Ivan had assembled his staff and harangued them for being too slow. "VVhv is Novy Mir opening up such an important subject as the camps and not us.'" Someone had recalled that two vears previously the\' had been sent a story about the camps by a writer living in faraway (Jhita, almost on the Chinese border, and that it had been rejected. There was no trace of it in the office, but they had managed to trace the author, Georgi Shelest, and he had tor-in-chief of /zt'dv/z^, having got Denisovicb,

dictated

it

over the telephone to them

at Izvestia's,

considerable expense.

It

had then been rushed out on 6 November, in the newspaper's holida\' number. In the event, the story's quality was so low that it sank w ithout a trace, to become merely a footnote to the saga of Ivan Denisovich, but Tvardovsky was understandably upset by Adzhubei's cynical opportunism and later '" snubbed him when Adzhubei tried to appear friendh The third theme of Tvardovskv's letter w as Solzhenitsyn's future and .

the testing time that lav ahead of

him

after the publication ot Ivan Denisovich.

Repeating Akhmatova's w arning about the dangerous effects of fame ("the brilliant rise

of a big

new name

over the literary horizon"), Tvardovsky

expressed the hope that Solzhenitsvn would be able to preserve his dignity, maturity, moral strength, and "the integrity of your wonderful talent." At times, wrote Tvardovsky, he had

wondered whether Solzhenitsyn's concern

SOLZHENITSYN

[442]

for his integrity w as not perhaps excessive, "amounting almost to indifference to the opportunities that the publication oi Ivan Denisovich will open up to vou," and Tvardovskv confessed that he had been a little hurt by Solzhe-

nitsyn's

guarded response

'pleasant' "

word

"that feeble

by which

to his telegram of congratulations, especially to describe Solzhenitsyn's feelings,

Tvardovsk\- said he had found insulting. Nevertheless, it \\ as now to Solzhenitsyn's self-restraint that he w as appealing, and he hoped that Solzhenitsyn

would

the blandishments that would

resist

come

w ay

his

to let other editors

something" for their journals, to w rite screenplays, and so on. have "a in anvone's hands, plead your prior commitment to Novy vourself put "Don't right to hope for this), sav that it takes everything that have some (we Mir comes from vour pen." In conclusion, Tvardovskv apologized for offering so much advice, "but vour literary youth (despite the artistic maturity of your little

talent) obliges

me

to offer these

and perhaps even offend

words of caution, even

if

they are superfluous

you."''''

letter ("Your letand concern over me, that

Solzhenitsyn appreciated the delicacy of Tvardovsky's ter I

am

deeply

moved

.

.

.")

from Sovy Mir, he wrote,

him

to

me

so friendly, even full of such love for

w as

He

and apologized

for

strongly.

has trained

me

I

felt

seeing the fat letter

impulse had been that

said he

ant," but he added, "I should have been insincere

more

On

at length.

its editors wanted was sorry if his self-restraint had caused having hurt Tvardovsky w ith the word "pleas-

his first

cuts.

make more

offence,

and wrote back

no wild joy

to expect the

at the time.

worst

I

much more

if

may

I

had expressed myself my whole life

say that

often than not. ... In the

let good luck fool you, or bad luck frighten you.' " His greatest happiness had come, he wrote, when he learnt that Tvardovsky had found Ivan Denisovich worth a sleepless night. He w as aw are of the dangers of fame and w ould not let himself be devoured by it. "But I foresee that its duration w ill be brief, and I want to use it as

camps

I

took to heart the Russian proverb 'Don't

sensibly as possible for the sake of the works

I

ha\e already written."

Solzhenitsyn also w rote that he had long ago decided not to give interview or to reply to attacks on to

all

the letters he receix ed.

He

him

in the

a single

newspapers, or even to reply

had been w arned

at

the Novy

Mir offices

that

plans were afoot to film his book, and had accepted the staff's advice not to get involved or to try to

w rite

the script.

And

he w as prepared not to promise

prose or verse to anyone but Novy Mir.^^^ the characters of the two men mostly at their Tvardovsky w as w arm, big-hearted, and generous, frankly delighted at the other man's success and eager to do everNthing he could to help. He was touchinglv anxious for Solzhenitsyn's welfare, full of tactful advice and judicious comment on the pitfalls that lay ahead. At the same time he had the proprietary instincts of the editor, proud of his discovery and loyal to the new writer's talent, but also demanding loyalty in return and not hesitating to express his picjuc at w hat he took to be the younger man's ingratitude. Solzhenits\'n, for his part, responded graciously, underlined the areas where

The exchange showed

best.

A

I

he was in agreement w

Hf.lpkr ok the Party

RUF.

ith

vardovsky, and

1

made

it

[443]

plain that he

prepared to take the older man's advice and consider himself author."

It is

true there were

some

was

fully

"Xovy Mir

a

reservations. Solzhenitsxn v\as careful to

exclude "plaxs" from the works he would offer to \ovy Mir (he had

t\\

o more

or less ready), and he stood his ground on the coolness of his response to

Tvardovskv's congratulatory telegram, explaining

But

was

it

all

done

\\

ith tact

dinary flash of insight

and understanding

b\- his

it

camp

— reinforced bv

training.

that extraor-

duration will be brief") that

("I foresee that [fame's]

was the hallmark of Solzhenits\'n's mature and sometimes piercing vision. It is \\

orth d\\ elling on this point because Solzhenitsvn later gave a slightly

different picture in The Oak and the Calf. Taking the unsatisfactory nature of his it

subsequent relations w

rvardovskv

ith

as his starting point,

he projected

back onto these early days of their friendship and implied the existence of

between them than seems

a greater friction

have been the case. In

to

sense, the unedited chapters of Reshetovskava's memoirs are

Certainly, she had her o\\ n scores to settle

tive.

time she came to write them, but there

is

w

ith

a useful

this

correc-

Solzhenitsvn bv the

nothing to suggest that she leaned

two men's friendship. For instance, immediately after selectively quoting from his reply to rvardovskv in The Oak and the Calf., Solzhenitsyn writes, "We were already on terms of such

to either side in her depiction of the

warm

we had

friendship, although

his colleagues present.

.

.

never once met tete-a-tete, w

Shortly afterw ards

.

I

w as

at his

follows this with a matter-of-fact description of the delivery to

Mirs Xo\ember

of an advance copy of Novy

none of ," and Tvardovsky

home

ith .

.

.

issue (containing Ivan Deniso-

"We

embraced, and Alexander Trifonovich w as as happy as a schoolboy,""^' and so on. As usual in Solzhenitsvn's memoir, it is Tvardovskv's moods that are described and commented upon, usually slightly patronizingly, while the reader is left to conclude that Solzhenitsvn is unmoved. 1 he picture looks somewhat different in Reshetovskava's version, how-

vich).

ever. First of

she quotes a further passage from Solzhenitsvn's letter to

all

Tvardovsky. I've got

another story ready to give to \ovy Mir.

I

shall

be

ver\- interested to

hear

was thinking of coming to see vou and bringing it with me on 14 or 15 November. But now it seems you won't be there, so I'm wondering whether it's worth coming. Actually, all I want to do is deliver the storv to the your opinion of

it.

I

office as quickly as possible.

All last year

I

felt a

.

.

.

desire to

meet vou sometime

tete-a-tete,

of the editorial board present, and ask your advice about lie is

ahead.

I

hope we

will find an opportunitv in

convenient for you to come to Ryazan

Reshetovskava then describes

gram

inviting

Solzhenitsyn to

Embankment on

either 15 or 16

"This was the meetinsj that

my

—be our

all

December guest.

w ithout the

rest

sorts of things that

or Januarv?

Or

if it

'^^

how Tvardovsky responded

with

a tele-

come to his flat on the Kotelnicheskava November. Solzhenitsyn chose the fifteenth. husband had

so looked forward to," writes

SOLZHENITSYN

[444]

Reshetovskaya, and she gives an account of the meeting as Solzhenitsyn had described

it

to her. Evidently the

two men had

talked excitedly for hours,

interrupting one another, discussing their literarv plans, other writers, ature in general, and agreeing

on

just

about everything.

I

liter-

vardovsky had

been "tenderlv solicitous" towards Solzhenitsyn and on receiving "Incident Kochetovka station" had said tactfully, "It sometimes happens that one story is successful and the next one isn't," and had begged him not to lose at

heart if it was a failure. (In The Oak and the Calf Solzhenitsyn describes Tvardovskv as "very agitated when he took the storv from me, and still more so as he read; he could not have dreaded failure more if the work had been his

own.") Reshetovskava also describes the

arrival of the

Novem-

proof copy of the

Mir (omitting Solzhenitsyn's picture of the bulky Tvardovskv dancing about the room crying, "The bird is free! The bird is free!") and adds that although Tvardovskv offered it to Solzhenitsyn, the latter declined, "bringing aw ay with him instead a rapt admiration for Tvardovsky and his And childlike smile, w hich had somehow been miraculously preserved. when they parted, they embraced and kissed for the first time."^'' Natalia was supposed to meet Solzhenitsyn at the station at ten o'clock that evening but bumped into him on the very threshold of their flat. He was ber Novy

.

.

.

standing there in his grey overcoat, clutching his grey brief-case, his face radiant.

"My

appear

to

in

fatuated with friendship.

star has risen!"

both Pravda and

He

told her that favourable reviews

Izvestia.

And

were due

according to her, he seemed "in-

rvardovsky, and what he took to be the

start

of their true

""^"^

In these last days before the publication of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenilife assumed an almost surreal quality. In Moscow the name of his was on nearly everybody's lips, and its publication was awaited as a major political event. xMore and more people v\ ere becoming aware of the author's true name and identity, although the copies circulating still bore the

tsyn's

story

pseudonym A. Ryazansky. Sergei Ivashov-Musatov wrote that he had recently attended a gathering of a dozen old friends where the sole topic of conversation had been the keenly awaited publication of no. 1 of Novy Mir, which was to carry a sensational story by a previously unpublished author. "It turned out that by some sort of miracle a half o( those present had already read the story and were fully aware of the author's name." They had original

1

been deeply impressed by the story's outstanding qualities and had said that Moscow was agog and waiting for publication day. "I was astonished,"

all

w

rote Sergei.

his old Ekibastuz comrade, later wrote to say that had read the story "a month before publication," under the name A. R\azansky, but had deduced who the author was after recognizing the description of Ekibastuz and particularly some of the characters, such as Buinovsky and Tsezar Markovich. "Naturally, after discovering who the real author w as, I was so surprised that I blabbed about it, and rumours fly around

Vladimir Ciershuni,

he, too,

A Moscow ulations

I

KLK Hi

i.i'KR

OK

rm Pakiv

I445I

as tast as in camp." Other Iricnds in the know wrote with congratand requests for copies it w as obvious that Novy Mir w ould sell out

—

overnight/^

As a result ot all this excitement, Solzhenits\ n could hardh sleep, lie was still w aiting anxiousix to hear Tvardovsky's verdict on "Kochetovka," and was determined to exploit his impending fame h\ publishing as man\vxorks as he could. 1 o this end he took out his labour-camp pla\ I'be Rcpiihlic of Labour and hastil)' revised it, changing the hero's name from Ner/.hin to Nemov, emphasizing the romance between Nemo\ and L\uba, and toning down some ot the harsher expressions in the light of the experience he had

He

gained in editing Ivan Denisovich. Tenderfoot

and the Tart, playing on

ning to take hold

Mir

as

among Moscow

a

also ga\e

new xogue

intellectuals,

soon as he and Natalia had retvped

Literary

work was slow

ed,

how ever,

it

for

slang that

and planned

to take

b\' his

other duties. it,

He

a

it

to

,\V/i,7

still

had to

his school

being inspected during these crowded days of mid-November. Solzhenits\n w as caught up in

was begin-

it.

keep up his teaching and marking, and, as luck w ould have that,

The

a less political title.

camp

On

w as

top of

curious episode concerning a fellow

teacher of his, Mikhail Potapov.

Potapov was involved

in a t\'pical Soviet quarrel

over living-space and the desire of another famiK to

expand

at his

expense.* 1 hese neighbours,

it

in the

between neighbours block w here he

li\

ed

appears, were also aching

revenge on Potapov's wife for having informed the authorities some of them were drawing illegal pensions. As a result of their scheming, Potapox- w as framed on charges of haxing raped a fourteen-\ ear-old gips\girl who lived in the same building and of having sexuallv assaulted a fivevear-old girl. Ihe other teachers had hrst heard of these charges the preceding summer, w hen Potapov had been summoned to the cit\" inxestigator's office and had never returned, but the trial was taking place onlv now in November 1962, and it quickh' became clear that the evidence was being rigged. Although excluded from the court-room, the teachers saw and heard the parents of key witnesses, all children, rehearsing them in the evidence they were to give and threatening them w ith dire punishment should thev stumble or make a mistake. 1 he sentence was severe: twelve vears in strict-regime labour camps. to get their

that

,

1 he teachers wrote a collective letter of protest to the court, as a result of which thev were summoned one bv one to the district Partv headquarters and threatened w ith dismissal from their jobs for "casting aspersions on Soxiet justice." Fortunatelv for Solzhenitsvn, impending fame made him invulnerable to the threats of the district Partx', and he decided to take the matter further. No longer x\ as he to be fettered bx his anonvmitv and prison past. He knexv that Potapov had alreadv served nine vears in the labour camps under Article 58 (the same article under xvhich he himself had served) and *This subject later found literary expression in The hcankiad, by h\ David Lapeza (New York, 1976; London, 197S).

X'ladiniir \'oino\ ich, translated

SOLZHENITSYN

[446] that he

had made things worse

against a co-defendant.

for himself

Thev were

decided to use his position to w also able to use his

Ols^a

by refusing

rite a protest to

new Moscow

to give false testimony

thus fellow veterans, and Solzhenitsyn the

Supreme Court. He was

connections to persuade an Izvestia reporter,

Chaikovskava, to investigate the case and give

it

publicity

(it

eventually

took three vears to get the case reviewed)."*'^

On Saturdav, 17 November, Solzhenitsvn received a telegram from Tvardovskv approving of "Kochetovka" and asking him to phone. When he rang that evening, Tvardovskv asked him to come to Moscow the following dav to go over the storv w ith him in preparation for its publication in the Januarv number of Novy Mir. He apologized for the short notice, but a plenarv meeting of the Central Committee was to begin on Mondav and Tvardovskv, as an alternate member of the committee, would be obliged to attend. It was necessarv to do the work before the meeting if the story w as to meet the deadline. first snowfall of the w inter to catch Sunday morning and meet Tvardovskv at the Novy

Solzhenitsvn hurried through the the seven o'clock train on

Mir

offices.

November

The preceding dav had been w hen the

the official publication dav of the

were sent out and and their friends. It w as the last peaceful dav, the lull before the storm, and Tvardovskv told Solzhenitsyn that the atmosphere in the offices had been "just like in church." One by one people had come in, handed over their seventy copecks in silence and received the long-aw aited copies. Triumphantly, Tvardovsky laid Izvestia on issue of .V017 Mir,

the staff were able to

buy copies

the table opened at page

5,

with

subscribers' copies

for themselves

its

long review of

.4

Day

in the Life of

Ivan

by the well-known Soviet w titer Konstantin Simonov. To skimmed the first paragraph and put it aside, saying, "Let's get down to business." Tvardovsky took this, probably correctly (though Solzhenitsyn denies it in his memoir), as an affectation and walked out of the room, leaving Solzhenitsyn to peruse the article alone. Solzhenitsyn later complained to Natalia that Simonov had w ritten "nothing about the language, about the penetration into the soul of an ordinary man," which suggests that he had expected rather more of this erratic establishment writer than he admits to in Ilje Oak and the Ca/f.^' They then got down to business. According to Reshetovskaya, Tvardovskv began by asking Solzhenitsyn how he wanted him to comment on "Kochetovka" "with or without an anaesthetic." Solzhenitsyn rejected the anaesthetic, but w hen Tvardovsky produced a stream of criticisms, he vigorously rebutted them one by one, leading Tvardovsky to remark, "Why don't you try to hold the w hole line instead of fighting for every foxhole?""^*^ Nevertheless, judging from his comments in The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn was grateful for Tvardovsky's perspicacity in editorial matters. This was particularly true when shortly afterwards they discussed "Matryona." Tvardovsky had decided that he should publish the two stories together in the January issue of Novy Mir. They would make quite a splash, a worthy Tvar-

Denisovich,

dovsky's chagrin, Solzhenitsyn

—

A Truk Hi

I.HI

r

ok ihk Pariv

f447l

follow-up to Ivan Iknisovich. Almost anything with Solzhcnitsvn's it,

he

felt,

was the

was publishable now

.

What he was concerned

name on

about, however,

literarv c]ualit\'.

Mis attention to

detail in discussing the

second story was remarkable,

and Solzhenitsyn was impressed by Tvardovsky's knowledge of country and grasp of popular custom. Examples of

this superior

knowledge

arc

life

quoted

seems that Solzhenitsyn was somewhat readier "Kochetovka."* It must have been now that Solzhcnitsvn's cumbersome and didactic title, "Without a Righteous Person No Village Can Stand," was replaced bv the more evocative "Matryona's Place. "t In addition, the action of the storv was moved back from 1956 to 1953, to blunt its political sharpness and topicality. A change was also made in the other title. Solzhenitsyn had called it "Incident at Kochetovka Station," since Kochetovka was the real name of the station where the original incident had occurred in 1941. Tvardovsky's arch-enemy in publishing, however, and the editor of the reactionarv literarv magazine Oktyahr, was Vsevolod Kochetov, a neo-Stalinist, and it was thought to be needlesslv provocative to leave such a similarity of names in a story about in

The Oak and

the (Ja/f,

and

it

to accept these corrections than in the case of

Solzhenitsyn therefore renamed

the effects of Stalinism.

Krechetovka Station. "t It w as probabh' on

ond and

last call

this visit to

Moscow

on y\nna Akhmatova.

It

it

"Incident at

that Solzhenitsvn paid his sec-

appears that she read her master-

piece. Requiem,^ to him, but Solzhenitsyn criticized

it

in

terms reminiscent

of those he had once used in objecting to Ivashov-Musatov's Shakespeare

your verses are always about one person's destinv." Akhmatova was evidently surprised and rejected the criticism. "Do you mean to say vou can't convey the destiny of millions bv describing the fate of a single person?" she asked him, and pointed out that in her epilogue she had expanded the poem's meaning to encompass "millions."" They apparentiv discussed domestic matters as well. Akhmatova asked Solzhenitsyn whether paintings: "It's a pity

*

It

must not be forgotten

that, for all his love of the countryside

zhenitsyn, unlike Tvardovsky, was a town bov. zation of the village has not, to

tThe customary Russian

title

my

The importance

and the Russian

village, Sol-

of this fact for his later ideali-

knowledge, been discussed.

of "Matrvona's //owe" does not reallv convev the nuance of chnr in the

Dvor means literalh' the working space around a peasant's or smallbetween wings, if the hut has them, or between the hut and outbuildings such

title AlatryonitJ dvor.

holder's hut, or

as stables or pens.

It is

often translated as "vard," but Solzhenitsvn cleari\-

means

to include

both the buildings and the \ard. Dvor also has rural and folk oxertones that are missing from

"home." I Solzhenitsyn restored the original title

when he came

to republish the storx

in his (Collected

Works. ^Requiem, about .Xkhmatova's loss of a son in the purges, was written between 19.^.^ and 1940 and memorized by .A.khmatova and a few friends. It was not published until 1963. "Lydia Chukovskaya, who reported this meeting, thinks that .\khmato\a nonetheless took Solzhcnitsvn's criticism to heart, and quotes as evidence

her epilogue:

These two

"And when,

lines

driven

do not appear

mad bv

in the

torments,

published

/

te.xts

two

lines that

.Vkhmatova

later

added

to

.Marched the regiments of the condemned." of Requiem.

SOLZHENITSYN

[448]

Moscow but he repHed,

he was now thinking of moving to

mv

old ladies under

care,"

,

and indicated that

it

was

he had grow n more sombre since their first meeting. "1 here's over his face," she told Chukovskaya."^*^

A

"I

have several

She found that kind of shadow

unlikely. a

Moscow and found Tvardovsky hen he rang to confirm the time of their meeting. "Come right over on the double!" he exclaimed excitedly. When Solzhenitsvn arrived, he heard that several thousand copies of Novy Mir had been diverted to the bookstalls set up in the Kremlin for delegates to the plenarv session of the Central Committee, w hich I vardovskN had been attending all week, and that Khrushchev had announced from the platform that .4 Day iu the Life of Ivan Denisovich was an extremely important work which they should all read. \\\e delegates had trooped off to buy it and had emerged from the meeting each clutching two volumes, one red containing materials for the plenary session and one blue containing Solzhenitsvn's story. Elsewhere in Moscow the magazine had sold out completely, despite the printing of several thousand extra copies, and was already a collector's item.'" The press w as unanimous in its praise. Tvardovsky's preface had carefully prepared the ground by linking the story with the name of Khrushchev and Khrushchev's speech on de-Stalinization at the Twenty-second Party in

week

later

Solzhenitsvn returned to

mood

an ebullient

v\

—

—

—

Congress.

The ture.

subject matter of Alexander Solzhenitsvn's tale It

echoes the unhealthy phenomena

in

our

life

is

unusual in Soviet

associated

w

ith the

litera-

period

of the personality cult, now exposed and rejected by the Party, .\lthough these events are so recent in time, thc\past its

w as

like,

we

consequences

in the

fully,

now seem \ cry remote

to us.

present must not be indifferent to

courageously, and truthfully can

and irrevocable break with

it.

But w hatever the

Only by going

into

we guarantee a complete

those things that cast a shadow over the past.''

all

This w as the theme taken up by the reviewers. Simonov (in the reviewinitiall\- declined to read) wrote that the myth that Stalin had not know n w hat w as happening in the country had now been

that Solzhenits\ n had

exploded forever and praised Solzhenitsvn as a "mature, unique master." Five days later, \ ladimir Krmilov, a notorious secret-police informer, timeserver,

and hack

critic,

beloved of the Soviet establishment, fulsomely praised

Solzhenitsvn in the pages of Pravda, likening him to lolstoy but also firmly

yoking him

"There can be no doubt that the fight against the up b\ the Party and the Soviet people since the Twentieth and Iw entv-second congresses of the CPSU, will continue to facilitate the appearance of works of art outstanding for their Ihe possibilit\' of telling the truth has ever-increasing artistic value. been affirmed by the Part\' and the people."'" The tw o leading Soxiet new spapers had set their official seal on Solzhenitsyn's reputation, his respectability, and his transformation from an enemy of the people into a national hero. Catapulted to fame virtually overnight, to Party policy.

consequences of

Stalin's personality cult, taken

.

.

.

A Iruk Hklpfr of thk

I^arty

(449]

\\ as now acclaimed as an exemplary and writer. "The Party has called u riters its helpers," Simonoy \\ rote in Izvestia. "I belieye that Alexander Sol/.henitsyn in his story has shown himself a true helper of the Party in a sacred and vital cause the struggle against the personality cult and its consequences.""'

the provincial schoolmaster from Rya/.an

citizen

—

25

THE CREST OF THE WAVE SiMONOV, no

risks

Ermilov, and the many

critics

who

followed them were taking

hen thev placed Solzhenitsyn's story firmly within the bounds

w

an instrument in the process view of their political leader, of de-Stalinization. This, after all, was the place, and it is clear first in the Khrushchev, w ho had authorized the story in advance. Nothing down been handed that the political line to be taken had of

official

that

Party policy, emphasizing

happens

in the public

spontaneously, least of

The work was thought. Even

thus

all

made

in the Soviet

thereby making

it

Union

is

supposed to occur

"spontaneous" praise or "spontaneous" criticism. safe for public

Tvardovsky's preface, with

udices, served to soften tent,

domain

role as

its

and

more

consumption its

—

or so

Khrushchev

calculated appeal to Party prej-

partially neutralize the story's subversive con-

palatable to the hierarchy.

What exactly the Party line was to be can easily be gauged from the very titles of the first review s (the editors who w rote the headlines being closer to Party control than the writers w

ere):

"About the Past

Name

in the

Name

of the

Must Not Future"; "In the Name Truth Be the Full "Let Truth"; Necessary Bitter But Flappen Again"; "A Be Will Never But It Was "Thus Repeated"; Not Be Told"; "This Must of Truth, in the

Again"; "In the

and the way of

Name

life in

of Life"; "This

of the Future." In short, ran the message, the events

the labour

camps described

in Ivan Denisovich

undoubt-

edly existed once, and should be known about, but they belonged irrevocably to the past, to the era of the euphemistically named "personality cult."

Under

the

civilized rule of Stalin's successors, these

more enlightened and

problems and "mistakes" had

all

been

face the future with optimism and

rectified,

a sense

450

and

of security.

it

was now possible

to

The

(]rf.

ST of ihk

W ave

l45

'1

This theme w as taken up in the IxkIn of the reviews. 1 vard(n sk\ had tone bv specifically linking the grimness of Solzhenitsvn's subject matter w ith Stalin's crimes and emphasizing the abilitx' of So\ iet literature to confront the problems ot the past. Krmilov, true to his obsequious charset the

very existence of the story to the Partv's wise policv of

acter, attributed the

renouncing Stalinism and thanked the Partv for making

it

possible to

tell

the

(The Light), a mass-circulation illustrated weeklv, called the storv "profoundh' Partv-minded." Simonov approvinglv quoted Khrushchex on Stalinism, and Drutse, in the literarx' magazine Druzhha Wiroclov truth. Kruzhko\-, in Ogonyok

(Friendship of the Peoples), took up Krmilov's theme of gratitude to the Partv for

haxing created the opportunitx for such In a

number of cases

it

was

be published.'

a stor\- to

clear that these genuflections

than the ritual obeisances customarih' exacted from literarv

were

critics

little

more

under the

Soviet Union's feudalistic rules for intellectual debate and that the work's

sharper and more literarv qualities had immediateh' been recognized. Most critics

agreed w

ith

1

vardovsky (and Chukovskv

in his appreciation) that the

unsensational presentation of the material enhanced storv gained in

power from the

its

author's self-restraint.

impact and that the

Thev noted

the "ordi-

nariness" and typicality of Ivan Denisovich and his comrades, taking the

point that thev to

w ere not criminals but innocent Soviet

citizens

imprisonment and hard labour bv an unjust regime acting

zhenitsvn's stor\'

and fortitude.

w as

And

for once, called

it

a

its

h\mn

to these people, to their courage,

condemned

illegallv. Sol-

good humour,

economs- of means seemed miraculous. Ermilov, right

"epic," evoking the

name

of Tolstov, w hile man\' others

recognized the w ork's greater affinitv with the classical Russian prose of the nineteenth century than with Soviet literature. All agreed, moreover, that despite the painful subject matter, the stor\'s ultimate effect was to inspire

hope and provide a sense of uplift. Such a comforting conclusion was verv important in the Soviet context, for one of the fundamental tenets of socialist realism w as (and is) that w orks of art should encourage optimism and proclaim the resolution of conflicts; and what better resolution could there be than to sav that the whole problem was over and done with? But the more perceptive critics were not prepared to stop there. Encouraged, perhaps, bv the storv's exceptional patronage, they drew rather more far-reaching conclusions. Grigori Baklanov, a not untalented novelist and chronicler of Second

World War

subjects (rather in the

mould of Simonov, but

at that

time more

honest) wrote an excellent, long review in the Literaturnaya Gazeta in

he pointed out that

A Day

in the Life of

w hich

Ivan Denisovich was one of those rare

creations that change one's vision of the world, after

w hich

it is

"impossible

go on writing as one did before," for it had created "a new level of dialogue with the reader, and on this level much that until recentlv seemed perfectlv satisfactory is now hopelesslv outdated and boring." Baklanov shared in the general admiration for Solzhenitsvn's main characters, shrewdlv picking out the brigade leader Tiurin as equal in interest to Ivan Shukhov, but he also to

— SOLZHENITSYN

[452]

—

the securit)' guards, calling them "hardly which w ent well bevond most official comment, for the active role of the M\'D and NK\'D in these repressions was usually passed over in silence. Baklano\ also anticipated w hat w as to become one of the principal Why stir up the past? Why rub salt in objections to Solzhenitsyn's story sa\ing that the onlv wa\- to heal the wounds was to admit the wounds? them squarelv in the first place. Finally, Baklanov correctly identified two of Solzhenitsvn's most powerful underlying themes, w hich were now here stated explicith- but e\er\where implied. One, that these e\ils had occurred because the Soviet people had blindh' believed w hat they were told and not the evidence of their ow n eves and ears; and, two, that not only would life in the Soviet Union have been better and more humane w ithout Stalin's policies but that manv of these policies had remained unchanged (contrary to w hat raised the question of the villains

Soviet,"

—

—

the Partv line maintained).

Baklanov's analvsis was echoed two weeks later in the Moscow newspaper Moskovskayci Pra-cda (Moscow Truth), by the critic I. Chicherov, who pointed out how much of Stalin's w ar effort and industrial production

—

had been directed inw ards, at controlling his ow n people, rather than outwards, against external enemies. And he mentioned another objection being made against the stor\- (that it would "give comfort to the Soviet Union's enemies") onl\- to dismiss

as a pretext for hypocrisy.

it

in Dnizhba Xarodov. With great prescience, he declared that Solzhenitsvn's storv represented a personal duel betw een Ivan Shukhov and Stalin (had he said between Solzhenitsyn and Stalin, he

Furthest of

all

went Drutse

would have been even nearer the mark), in w hich the undoubted w inner w as Shukhov. It had been said, w rote Drutze, that Stalin did not love the masses. Worse than that, he had despised them and turned them into cogs, and Ivan Detiisovich w as the storv of w hat had happened to those cogs behind barbed w ire. What w as needed w as a restoration of their moral rights. Unfortunateh', there were "certain big cogs" who found life all too comfortable "watching over the little cogs" and who were still around, making such a restoration difficult to achieve. Even more controversially, Drutse pointed to the similarities on both sides of the wire. "Are we not struck by the austere landscape of this stor\- because we, too, as often as not, scanned the sky w ith morbidlv strained eves? Did .

.

.

And

didn't

we

we

not also lay bricks, each in his

also look back

on each day,

just like Ivan

own

wall?

Denisovich,

and w ith a logic inscrutable to common sense rejoice inw ardly, 'Oh well, the ?" In other words, Ivan Denisovich wasn't just day didn't go too badh' about the camps but about the w hole of Soviet societ\- under Stalin and, insofar as the "big cogs" were still in place, partly about the Soviet Union .

.

.

todav as well. It is

no wonder

that for a few

,

heady w

eeks, Soviet intellectuals thought

that the censorship had been abolished. If stories like Ivan Denisovich could

be published (which, to

tell

the truth, had evaded the censorship; had the

professionals at Cdavlit got hold of Ivan Denisovich,

it

would have been torn

Thf. (^rest of thk to shreds), if articles like Baklanox's

"The Heirs of

Wave

145^1

and Drutse's coukl appear

in

the naticnial

to seem To cap it all, rumours spread that F\)likarpov, the Party's top ideological watch-dog, was in trouble with Khrushchev. Apparently Khrushchev had onlv just got around to looking at Doctor Zhivago, and he felt that the novel w as so highbrow that it would ne\ er ha\e appealed to the masses an\-wav and w as therefore not worth the international scandal that had been provoked by banning it. Since Polikarpov had been responsible, he received a reprimand, and there was talk that the ( Central Committee's cultural section was to be abolished and replaced h\ a much

press, if

that almost anything

smaller

bodv w

ith

Stalin" could he printed in Pravdci,

was

more

time

limited powers."

Academy

at the

hegan

possihie.

Polikarpov's problems were this

it

compounded when he appeared

of Pine Arts to present the

official

about

at

Partv

list

of

candidates for the forthcoming elections. Normally, there would have been

no doubt about its automatic acceptance. The academy, like the Artists' Union and most other organizations in the arts, was firmly in the hands of the cc^nservatives, headed in this case by Victor Serov and Alexander Gerasimov, though it was true that Serov had lost his post as president of the academy the preceding year.

On

this occasion the

unthinkable occurred: Polikarpov

was hooted off the stage, and the meeting broke up in disarray. As in the Writers' Union, so in the other creative unions the liberals were in the ascendant, and everywhere the call was for less control and less censorship.' In this atmosphere, in the eyes of the

tsyn was more of a hero than ever, and

(as

Moscow

intellectuals, Solzheni-

Tvardovskv had predicted) he was

little something" to publish or perform. To most of them he said no, if onlv because he had virtually nothing to offer. Tvardovskv had already seen and commented negativeh' on his verse. His

inundated with requests for "a

only tw o publishable short stories w ere already w

ith A'017

Mir, and he regarded

The First Circle as far too sensitive and controversial to show to anyone just yet

—

it

was

still

being kept in concealment, together with the w orks w ritten

Kok 7 erek. There remained

his plays, which he had carefully excluded from his promise to Tvardovsky and in particular The Tenderfoot and the Tart, which he had taken to Aloscow with him w hen going to discuss "Matrvona" and "Krechetovka." On that trip, it seems, he had taken the play round to Oleg FTremov, the director of the Sovremennik (Contemporary), Moscow 's new est and most experimental theatre, and either then or a few days later had given them a in

,

reading of

Soon

it.

An

actor

after the

who was

present described the scene as follow

s.

awesome experience of One Day, Tvardovskv told the members of w ould shortly be coming to see us. Naturally, we

the theatre that Solzhenitsvn

held our breath:

And recoiled ous man who

W hat

would this mysterious new colossus be like? w hen he actually appeared, because it was

in surprise

stood before us.

He looked

like a dental

We a

waited.

very curi-

technician or a bookkeeper.

was made of rather good wool, but extremely old, w ith old-fashioned trousers as wide as the shoes which no one in Moscow circles had worn for His

suit

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[454] vears.

And

football

The

\\

his hat

ith

it

\\

as incredibly

crumpled,

in the school yard.

.

.

as if his physics pupils

had played

.

actor noticed nothing special about Solzhenitsyn's face, except for

an impression of bad teeth,* nor did he care for his manner of reading.

He

read rather badlv, like a

somew hat hamm\

verv intense, assiduous, even zealous

in his

when changing camp commandant

forgot to change voices

out e.xactlv

like

the

provincial actor. True, he

was

"performance," but he sometimes

would come minor error. The

characters, so that the "tart"

—there was

that kind of

reading was everv bit as curious as his appearance."*

Nevertheless, the director and actors were deeply affected by the contents of the plav.

we cried openly who commented

"We were

professionals and accustomed to the drama, but

after the first act." This,

that

when he had

it

seems, surprised Solzhenitsyn,

read these scenes to former prisoners they

had laughed rather than cried. But he was pleased by the excellent reception his play was accorded, as well as by Efremoy's decision to put it on, though he v\as somewhat alarmed by the speed with w hich Efremov \\ anted to press ahead. With his experience and know ledge of the vagaries of the Soviet erar\'

world, Efremov wanted to take advantage of the moment.

And

lit-

Solzhe-

was a hot property, whose name would automatically fill the theatre. Efremov offered to rehearse day and night and put the play on within a month, in time for the New Year holiday, and even to accept changes in the text as they went along if Solzhenitsyn w ished to make further revisions. But Solzhenitsyn took fright. He did not like to be rushed he w as used to taking and it seems that he also wished to consult Tvardovsky about the his time wisdom of such a step. He later wrote about his fears in The Oak and the Calf: "What if some 'top people' happened to see it before its premiere, got angry, and put the lid not only on the play but on the stories that should be appearwas 100,000, ing in Novy Mir any time now? The circulation oiNovy Mir whereas the Sovremennik auditorium seated only seven hundred people.""" In his memoir Solzhenitsyn attempts to throw the blame for this delay onto Tvardovsky and Novy Mir. Tvardovsky had not cared for the play when he read it and had told Solzhenitsyn that "it doesn't come off artistically you're ploughing the it isn't theatre," and that it w as 'Tvan Denisovich again '"^ Solzhenitsyn comments that it wasn't the same old field. same old field. Tenderfoot dealt w ith an entirely different sort of camp, a regular corrective nitsyn

—

—

.

.

.

.

.

.

—

labour

camp

instead of the special

what he means.

camp

of Ivan Denisovich.

Tenderfoot belonged to a different period

of the Gulag. For the chronicler and the historian

*

Another Moscow

intellectual

who met

although his teeth were crooked,

the\-

the general austerity of his expression.

catch a stranger's attention.

Solzhenitsvn

impressed

at

b\- their

Thev and

in the

One

can see

development

— w hich Solzhenitsyn

about

this

also

time has commented that,

strength and naturalness and relie\ed

the eyes were invariably the

first

things to

'1"HK

considered himself to be

—

it

(^RKSr

()!•

rilK V\

AVK

1455

was new subject matter. Besides,

treatment of the labour camps was bound to be different from there

no evidence that Sol/henitsvn ever used

is

dovsky also had

a point. /Vrtisticallv speaking,

as Ivan Denisovich

and represented

Consciouslv or tinconsciouslv,

I

this

(though

than

a literarv

advance.

vardovsk\' w as judging Sol/henitsvn's out-

put by the exceptional standards of his

lirst published storv, and in judgement than Solzhenitsyn himself, w ho had appreciation of the worth of his work when it was not prose.

was

to

show

Of

Ixar-

liut

was the same grountl

'/'eiuicrfooi

a regression rather

a theatrical

a story

argument).

I

a surer

this he a

poor

course, one cannot entirely discount the motive that Sol/.henits\ n

attributes to

I

vardovsky

— namely,

his professional jealousy of other literary

no exception to the general rule in being riddled with clicjues of one kind and another, not all of them based on ideological alignments; and loyalty to one's magazine, publishing house, literary institute, or theatre was often fierce and consimiing, providing a sense of identity that was entirely missing from the Writers' Union, and serving as a substitute for political activities that would be normal in other societies. Alexander Dementyev, for instance, Ivardovsky's bosom friend and literary confidant, w hom Solzhenitsyn disliked because of his reser\ed attitude to Ivan Denisovich and "Matryona's Place," was motivated almost entirely l)y his fanatical devotion to the magazine and his desire not to see its existence and role jeopardized by attempts to overreach itself. Solzhenitsvn's portrait of Dementyev in The Oak and the Calf is a caricature. Dementyev, according to one who knew him well, was "a cunning old fox w ho w as totally absorbed in Novy Mir and devoted his life to getting it out and helping it through the censorship." It is true that Dementyev would have rejected Ivan Denisovich if he had thought it would endanger his beloved joiu^nal, but not because he was a Party hack. To Solzhenitsvn's irritation, Dementyev was one of those w ith \v hom Tvardovsky had discussed his play and who agreed w ith 1 \ ardovsk\ that it wasn't suitable for Novy Mir. Under pressure, 1 vardovsky did exentually consent to Solzhenitsyn's approaching one of the theatres. In his memoir, Solzhenitsyn records Ivardovsky's dislike of the Sovremennik ("I must warn you against those theatrical gangsters!")" and says that vardoxskv suggested instead the more conservative Mossovet 1 heatre, run l)\ that same \\\v\ Zavadsky, now aging, whose theatre studio Solzhenits\'n had once attended in Rostov. Zavadsky was an old friend of 1 vard()vsk\'s and had staged the dramatization of Vasily Tyorkin, but Solzhenitsyn was not attracted by this prospect, or swayed by the sentimental connection w ith his youth, and ne\ er made the approach, preferring instead to go to the Sovremennik. The weeks and months following the publication of A Day in the Life of outlets. Soviet literary circles are

I

Ivan Denisovich

\\

ere naturally difficult for Solzhenitsyn.

1 \

ardovsky had been

would not turn his head. le w as too old and experienced for that, and all who knew him in those years agree that he withstood the pressures remarkably well. Nevertheless, the pressures were

correct in anticipating that fame

I

SOLZHENITSYN

[456]

enormous and presented problems both moral and practical. He was indeed flooded with letters from all over the country, to which he and Natalia did their best to reply. The majority were friendly and admiring, but there were also hostile and even abusive epistles, many of them from members, or exmembers, of the security services and from neo-Stalinists in the Party. In due course Solzhenitsyn was to find a literary use for these letters, but in the short term they were a sharp and unpleasant reminder of a still-powerful current of opinion within the country, and distinctly upsetting in their often personal scurrility.

There were also endless invitations to attend this or that function, to become a member of this or that body, to contribute articles, lectures, stories, and to meet this or that eminent person. Most of the invitations he refused without a second thought, but membership in the Writers' Union, which \v as offered to him almost immediately and went through on the nod, was to prove invaluable, for it enabled him, a few months later, to give up teaching and live as a full-time writer without incurring the charge of "parasitism," a crime much publicized and persecuted during Khrushchev's rule and applied to almost anyone without a regular job.* Membership in the union also gave him pension and social-security rights and allowed him entry to the "restricted access" sections of libraries, where he could consult the books and journals that had hitherto been beyond his reach. Fame also presented Solzhenitsyn with the dilemma of how to use it. On the one hand he was anxious to get further \\ orks into print (or onto the stage), but on the other he w as frightened of committing a blunder. "I did not realize the extent of my newly won strength," he later wrote, "or, therefore, the

degree of audacity with

inertia kept

me

\v

hich

I

cautious and secretive. ...

could I

was

now in a

behave.

The

force of

hurry to stop before

I

was stopped, to take cover again and pretend that I had nothing further to offer and nothing further in mind." It was the old convict's mentality of .") that he had trained suspicion and distrust ("Don't let good luck fool you himself to live by, and years of conditioning couldn't be undone in a day if at all. This was why he leaned so heavily on Tvardovsky for advice, while simultaneously resenting his dependence. Years later, when he came to write his memoir, this resentment rose to the surface and he was to criticize Tvardovsky for having wasted time and failing to take advantage of the favourable situation as well as for having suppressed his play. But it is clear that he was just as culpable, as he freely admits elsewhere ("my anxieties about Novy Mir fettered me less than my excessive caution").^ Not surprisingly, he was pulled in two different directions, and it was to be a good three years before he resolved the doubts and misgivings that now began to beset him. For the moment Solzhenitsyn w as happy to take Tvardovsky's advice in most things, and in no area v\as he more faithful to Tvardovsky's recommen.

.

—

dations than in his relations with the press, Soviet as well as foreign. *This was the charge on which the voung Leningrad poet losit" Brodsky was months later, in March 1964, and sentenced to five years' compulsory labour.

to

be tried

a

few

ThK

("RK si ok IMF W'avf,

Newspapermen

tried to toree the doors of

rooms

I

to

mv

...

I

w hieh

in

nn home and

w ere telefihone

calls

ot

the

45

"I

Moseow hotel in Moscow

from embassies

school in Ryazan; written cjiiestionnaires were sent from press agencies. said not a single

answ cring

men,

sta\ ed; there

I

\\

word

to an\ of

too. (]iiestions that

act of rebellion or a life

daring to rebel,

I

was would be asked

them. ...

if once started bv Soviet new swould predetermine mv response: either an immediate of cheerless conformitw Not wishing to lie, and not

estern correspondents,

I

I

afraid that

I

(]uestions

preferretl silence.'"

On the whole he was successful in his campaign to fight off an interOn 28 November Soi-ietskaya Rossiu published a brief biographical note \

views.

about him, composed jointlv by himself and

I

\

ardovskx

.

This called

him

"the son of an office worker," recorded the earl\ death of his father from

unknow n

causes, and after

summarizing his education and arm\ career stated was arrested on unfounded political charges and sentenced to eight vears' imprisonment," after w hich he ser\ ed a period of e.xiie. hi 1957 he was "completely rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti'' and was now working as a teacher. This w as the sum total of the information that SolzhenitsN'n wanted printed about himself, and only one reporter succeeded in making a slight dent in his defences \ ictor Bukhanov, of the that in 194.^ "Captain Solzhenitsyn

—

national press agency, Novosti.

Bukhanov,

He

around.

like all the

but from beyond

a lesson,

disturb the students."

of

whom

other iournalists, was very

called at the school

He

and managed

much

given the run-

to observe SolzhenitsMi giving

a glass partition, so that his

presence "v\ouldn't

talked to Solzhenitsvn's colleagues and pupils,

all

professed themselves amazed bv his sudden success and said thev

had never suspected his secret life as a w riter. Only the headmaster had had an inkling that he was busy w ith something, but had concluded he must be writing a physics textbook "v\hich he is fully qualified to do." His pupils reported that he w as a first-rate and much respected teacher, that he was proverbially punctual, punctilious, and exacting, and that the language of Ivan Denisovich w as not the language he used in class. All praised his highly developed sense of responsibility and capacity for hard v\ork. Bukhanov gleaned a number of details about Solzhenitsvn's hobbies and habits from Natalia, w hom he found "cultivated and somev\ hat more open" than her difficult husband. "She is just as reluctant to talk about her husband as he is about himself. But being a woman she is less strict in her observation of this principle." She gave him tv\o snapshots of Solzhenitsyn (presumably

—

v\'ith

permission), and

couple:

"God

Bukhanov heard from others

that they v\ere an

icieal

grant every family the same happiness." Bukhanov also man-

Kasimovsky Lane, w here one evening he watched "He v\'as dressed in a padded jerkin and a fur cap v\ith its ear-flaps and straps hanging dow n undone. I w as astonished to be reminded of Ivan Shukhov. For all the intellectual disparity between them, the story's author and hero are united by something basic and aged to

visit

the

flat in

Solzhenitsyn go into the yard to chop wood.

unforgettable."

SOLZHENITSYN

[458]

But Solzhenitsvn himselt was virtually impossible

to talk to.

He continues to refuse to give interview s either to Soviet or to foreign journalists. He doesn't conceal his dislike for members of the press. ... It is difficult for a reporter to talk to Solzhenitsvn. His invariablv polite but firm "noes" reduce one to despair.

w

ill)

I

and captivated to speak to

For nitsyn.

all

had been w

as

my

his effort

his

lie

charm, but

I've

had enough

(in effect against his

me w ith

—

that

w as

his intelligence

m\-

last

attempt

Bukhanov had got about four sentences out of Solzhe-

to deprecate the fact that the first re\iews oi Ivan Denisovich

ritten before

to expectations?

should

.Moscow

editor had instructed."

stories before publication

up

in

Rvazan. Solzhenitsvn conquered

in

me w ith

him

One was

him four davs running

talked to

and met him

He

publication and that he had been paid for his

its

—

a

dangerous precedent. What

if

he could not

repeated the idea that the path from w

titer to

live

reader

only through his books, comparing his present situation unfavour-

w ith that of nineteenth-century writers: "Nobody them for sensational stories; they were simply read." x\nd he starBukhanov by saving severely ("without a hint of humour in his voice"),

ably (and inaccurately) pestered tled

"You'll find

all

that out after m\- funeral."

There w as much

w

that

Solzhenitsvn's not to allow

as

admirable

in this

dogged determination of

himself to become an empty celebrity and to

it w as a matter was one w ay, after all, of dealing with the problems posed by fame. And partly it w as a demonstration of independence, a declaration that he was not like other men, that he would not be seduced down the primrose path to become a celebrity. For this reason he refused the he offer of a spacious flat in Moscow It seemed a good decision at the time valued his privacy and needed the isolation that R^ azan provided although he was to regret it bitterh in later years. But there was also an element of naivety and misunderstanding about it. SolzhenitsNii's strength as a creative writer w as that he had been cut off from the normal w orld since early manhood and had steeped himself in the Russian classics of the past. This was the source of that amazing "purity" that everx one noticed in his w ork, as if he w ere virtually untouched h\ the last thirt\- \'ears of Soviet literary history. Every great man, it seems, has a touch of the innocent about him. It is this that gives him that special angle of \ision and single-mindedness of purpose; it is the price he pays for his singularity. Solzhenitsvn was an innocent in the ways of the world. He absolutely refused to play the game the way the press and the literar\' w orld w anted him to, or any other game except his own, and, as it happened, that too demanded privacy, secrecy, and conspiracy ("silence, exile, and cunning"). .\n illustration of this mixture of naivet\' and suspicion occurred when Solzhenitsvn \ isited the Moscow Arts 1 heatre to talk to some teachers and students from the theatre's drama school. He was clearly uncomfortable w ith

preserve his modest\' in the face of extreme temptation. Partly

of sheer self-preservation

—

it

.

—

—

—

the conxentional format of "the writer meeting his readers" and sharplx' declined

The Crest to talk

about his personal

seemed

to strike

him

life

of the

Wave

[459!

or working habits. 1 he whole arrangement

as artificial

and insincere, although once he got into

unease vanished and he was perfectK' charming. Even

stride his

resist pillor\ing the reporters

example of

w ho had pestered him

journalistic superficiality,

visited his battery

he quoted

during the war to write

a

a feature

in

so,

Rvazan, and

correspondent

about

life at

his

he couldn't as

an

who had

the front. "I

him," said Solzhenitsyn, "that he was wasting his time. 'Vou won't be able to write anything useful, because tomorrow you will leave here. To understand, you have to be a part of the batter\-, fight with it, and not know told

whether vou are going

to live or die, or

'

die.'

whether vour comrades w

ill

live

or

"'-

As an

indication of

what sometimes sets the literarv writer apart from was not w ithout merit, and Solzhenitsyn's aim in

the journalist, the example telling the story

was

to support his contention that the writer can write only

about what he knows. But

in a sense it was to underrate the role of the would be severely crippled if thev follow ed Solzhe-

imagination, for writers

nitsyn's injunction literally. Fortunately, Solzhenitsvn himself ignored the

moral of

this storv in his

major novels.

Later that evening the subject of journalism came up again. Solzhenitsyn had begun his talk by asking whether anv journalists w ere present and

had been satisfied to hear that none was. Halfw av through the evening, he suddenly broke off and exclaimed in a surprisingly angry voice, 'Tve been deceived! You said there were no journalists present, but I can see one in the audience." At this a young

man who had been

taking notes stood

up and

admitted to being a student journalist, but said that he had come out of curiosity and did not plan to

w

rite

anything.

He

then launched into an unex-

pectedly bold attack on Solzhenitsyn's remarks. Solzhenitsyn was wrong, he said, to

be so contemptuous of journalists and to think that they were auto-

would publish things against his will. As for besieghim in Ryazan, they had only been doing their job, and if Solzhenitsyn would show some understanding for their position and co-operate a little, he matically dishonest and ing

wouldn't have so

many

difficulties.'''

Solzhenitsyn accepted the student's remarks w

ith

good humour and

apologized for his harshness, but nevertheless called him over afterwards to

check that he would not write anything. figured

many

It

was

a

curious episode that pre-

later ambiguities in Solzhenitsyn's relations

with the press.

There were two other attempts, besides Bukhanov's, to find out more about Solzhenitsyn's character and past. One resulted in a short and uninformative background piece by I. Kashkadamov in the Uchitelskaya Gazeta (Teachers' Gazette); the other, more interesting, was a longish article about Solzhenitsyn's years in exile that appeared in the Kazakhstan new spaper Lenimkaya Smena (The Lenin Shift). Some enterprising editor discovered that Solzhenitsyn had spent his exile in Kok Terek, and a correspondent called Kungurtsev w as dispatched to interview the teachers at his former school and his former landlady, Katerina Melnichuk, and to inspect the thatched

SOLZHEXITSYN

[460]

adobe hut on the edge of the desert where Solzhenitsvn had lived. He was remembered with great affection. Former colleagues recalled his great erudition, former pupils his painstaking instruction and love of his subject, and all

rejoiced in his present success.'"*

Although Solzhenitsvn cared responsibilities of fame, the latter

evening in December an

little

either

for

the privileges or the

One

proved harder to avoid.

Saturdav

from the Provincial Partv Committee came to the school to inform him that he was to report to Polikarpov at the Central Committee offices in Moscow the following Mondav, 17 December, for a verv important meeting. The Provincial Committee w ould send a car to take him (he was a VIP alreadv, whether he wanted it or no). Solzhenitsvn decided to make a show of his independence and to resist anv attempts to co-opt him. "I deliberately w ent along in the suit I had bought at 'Clothes for the \\ orkingman' and wore to school; in my much-mended shoes w ith patches of brow n leather on black; and badlv in need of a haircut. This w ould make it easier for me to balk and feign stupidit)."" It turned out that he had been invited to a grand gathering at the Pioneer Palace on Lenin Hills, w here Partv leaders were meeting four hundred writers, artists, and other members of the official

creative intelligentsia.

Despite his shabbv dress, Solzhenitsvn w as invited onto the podium to shake hands personallv w

Khrushchev and be introduced to the entire w ith Tvardovskv, and during one of the intervals was introduced to a short, unassuming man in rimless glasses whose face wore a thoughtful expression. This turned out to be \ ladimir Lebedev, Khrushchev's secretarv and the man w ho had done more than anvone, w ith the exception of Tvardovsky, to get Ivan Denisovich published. Solzhenitsvn was favourablv impressed bv his modest manner and gladlv met his request for a signed copv of his story. The rest of the meeting was not so agreeable. Unbeknow n to Solzhenitsvn, Khrushchev had been taken two weeks beforehand to an exhibition, "Thirty Years of Moscow Art," at the Manege Gallerv, at which a group of modernist and abstract painters had been invited to display their art in three separate rooms. Khrushchev had been speciallv led into these rooms by the arch-conservatives Serov and Gerasimov, whereupon he had exploded w ith indignation, calling the artists parasites and pederasts, threatening them w ith expulsion to the West, and jeering that their canvases looked as if they had been painted by idiots. ith

gathering. For the rest of the time, he sat

As long

as

genuine

art.

I

am chairman

We

of the Council of Ministers

aren't going to give a

we

are going to support a

copeck for pictures painted bv jackasses.

Historv can be our judge. For the time being historv has put us this state,

and we have

to

answer

for evervthing that goes

on

in

it.

at the

head of

Therefore

we

are going to maintain a strict policv in art. ...

Your prospects here

are

nil.

What

is

hung here

simpiv anti-Soviet.

is

Art should ennoble the individual and arouse him to action. of a picture like this?

have taken

a lot

To

cover urinals with?

.

.

.

The

.

.

.

It's

amoral.

W hat's the good

people and government

of trouble with vou, and vou pav them back with this

shit.""

— The Only

(^rest of the

Wave

I461

|

the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny had the courage to answ er Khrushchev

back, while the rest stood

The

bv

in

bemused

Khrushchev's

silence.

the Manege, all the leading newspapers had taken up the cry of more discipline in the arts. Editorials had appeared calling for all the unions of creative workers to be joined in one monolithic union, thus making them easier to control and less susceptible to da\' following

visit to

nonconformist deviations. In the event, nothing came of

this

extreme demand,

but Khrushchev had clearly sent out word that the arts needed careful w atch-

and the conservatives, w ho had stage-managed the campaign, were in Several Stalinists had been restored to positions of prf)minence. Three days after the Khrushchev outburst, Serov had been elected president of the Academ}' of Fine Arts, despite the earlier booing of Polikarpov, and conservatives occupied key positions in most of the creative unions, leaving onlv the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union as a place w here liberalism still seemed in control. Khrushchev w as due to speak again that dav in the Pioneer Palace, vet ing,

full cry.

seems that the w riters gathered there were extraordinarilv complacent they heard the keynote speech bv Leonid Ihichev, w ho w as chairman of the ideological commission of the Central Committee. According to rumour, Ilvichev spoke for ten hours, w hich would be a record even bv Soviet standards. It is more likely that the entire meeting lasted ten hours. Nevertheless, Ilvichev's speech was inordinately long. In it, he admitted that people had been asking for an end to censorship. "Exhibitions w ithout juries, books w ithout it

until

editors, the right of the artist to display

he wishes. 'Let us create as restrict us.' "

And

we

without an intermediary an\ thing

ourselves wish,' these people say. 'Do not

he was defensive about the role of the Party and the

influ-

ence of the West. But he quickly dashed any hopes that he or Khrushchev

sympathized with these trends. Art, he declared (including

literature),

must

continue to be "Party-minded." There was no such thing as peaceful coexistence between the various trends in

art.

concept alien to Alarxism-Leninism. that the Party, expressing the

Freedom of creation was

"It

is

a bourgeois

the great good fortune of our art

fundamental interests of the people

.

.

.

defines

the tasks and direction of artistic creation."'

Most of

was directed

and led on from Manege. "Formalism," in all its guises, was his principal target. But a number of writers were attacked, including Ehrenburg, whose memoirs were continuing to appear in \oz-y Mir. There was also an extraordinary clash between Khrushchev and Evtushenko. The following day, 18 December, had been set for the world premiere of Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony, whose first movement was a setting of Evtushenko's poem "Babi Yar" to music. Although the performance had been authorized by Khrushchev, Ilvichev now appealed to Evtushenko and Shostakovich to cancel it, w hile Khrushchev himself intervened to say it was inappropriate, because there was no longer any antiSemitism in the Soviet Union. Evtushenko disagreed and refused to cancel Ilyichev's speech

Khrushchev's reactions to the exhibition

the following day's performance.

He

at visual artists

at the

also enthusiasticalh-

defended the mod-

— SOLZHENITSYN

[462] ernist artists, saving he

work

will

was convinced

that "formalistic tendencies in their

be straightened out in time." Khrushchev commented, "The grave

hump-backed,"

straightens out the

Sergevevich,

we have come

to \\hich

way

long

a

Evtushenko retorted, "Nikita

since the time

when only

the grave

straightened out humpbacks. Really, there are other ways."'** All in

all,

the

omens were bad, but

it still

didn't

seem possible that the

great breakthrough achieved with the publication oi Ivan Denisovich had been in vain or that the

momentum

of liberalization could be halted so abruptlv.

Indeed, Iva>} Denisovich had been specificallv exempted from criticism bv chev, and the presentation of sonallv

its

was eloquent testimony

Ilvi-

author to the audience by Khrushchev per-

to

continued high standing

its

v\'ith

the Party

leaders.

The

following day the Shostakovich

not before Evtushenko had added some

symphony was performed, though new lines to his text in the light of

Khrushchev's criticisms and before the choir had attempted to resign. Appar-

were dissuaded at the last minute bv a stirring speech from Evtushenko in his best platform manner. In the evening the xVIoscow Conservatorv was packed with liberals, though the government box was emptv and the television cameras originally set up to cover this gala performance had been dismantled. The atmosphere was electric, and at the end, when Evtushenko and Shostakovich took their bows, the hall exploded in applause. It was a salute to the two men's courage, and a demonstration of liberal

entlv, thev

solidaritv, as

much

Two davs

as appreciation of the

later all further

performance.

performances were cancelled, and

Ilvichev returned to the offensive

at

a

week

another meeting with writers,

later

artists,

and cinema workers. Again he concentrated on the artists, although this time praising Ernst Neizvestny for his "civic maturity" and singling out Evtushenko and the voung novelist \ asilv Axvonov for similarlv "mature" behaviour. Other artists, writers, and musicians were attacked for "formalism" and refusing to toe the Party line. As if to underline that the authorities meant business, the mildlv liberal editor of the influential Literatuniaya Gazeta,

Kosolapov, was shortly afterwards replaced bv the conservative Alexander

Chakovsky. It is

phony to,

not clear whether Solzhenitsvn attended the Shostakovich svm-

concert.

but

all

It is

not the sort of thing he would normallv have been attracted

his liberal friends

were

there,

and

at least

one

Moscow

(Evgenia Ginzburg) later claimed to have met Solzhenitsvn there.

writer

'*^

New

Eve saw him celebrating in the rather unlikelv company of Oleg Efremov and the actors at the Sovremennik Theatre. There were candles, fireworks, champagne, and voung actresses in skimpv dresses dancing the twist a far cry from chopping firewood in Rvazan. It is not recorded whether Solzhenitsvn danced as w ell. 1 he December issue of Novy Mir was verv late in appearing and did not Year's

reach the news-stands until early January 1963, about a

have done.

It

month

after

it

should

turned out that the second instalment of Victor Nekrasov's

Thi, (Irkst ok ihk

Wave

travel notes, Both Sides of the Oeean (the first instalment

w ith

l4'^>3J

had appeared alongside

This was the and Nekrasov's notable fairness to the Soviet Union's ideological enemies was regarded as seditious. He had also included some remarkably sympathetic descriptions of American abstract art, which was the w rong thing to be doing at that particular time. On 20 January 1963, Izvestia printed a swingeing attack on Nekrasov and by implication on Novy Mir for pla\ing a "dangerous game" in failing to attack the Soviet Union's ideological enemies and ignoring the cold war.

Ivan Denisovich), had run into heavy trouble

the censors.

part dealing with Xekrasov's visit to America,

—

—

Not long

January issue of i^ovy Mir came out, carrying "Matryona's Place" and "Incident at Krechetovka Station." Surprisingly, the\' had hardly been touched by the censors, perhaps in deference to the patronage of Khrushchev, w hich was perceived to be still continuing. Regular readers of Novy Mir and everyone with the slightest feel for literature read the stories avidh' and welcomed them as proof that Ivan Denisovich had not been a Hash in the pan and that a major newwriter had arrived in their midst. I he portrait of the old and humble village woman, Matryona, particularly stirred readers' breasts with its evocation of patriarchal Russia and its compassion for the "insulted and injured." The name of Dostoyevsky was now joined to that of Tolstoy in the general search Solzhenitsyn's

after this, the

two short

stories

for comparisons.

Solzhenitsyn's star seemed

still

to be riding high.

uar\' a journal specializing in the republication

.Midway through Jan-

of fiction for a mass audience,

the Romati-gazeta (literally. Newspaper-novel), published

.4

Day

may even have been

in the Life of

second and Zhores Medvedev), and a few weeks later the publishing house Sovetsky Pisatel (Soviet Writer) brought it out in book form in an edition of 100,000 copies. Both editions immediately sold out. It would probably have been possible to sell ten times as many, but Soviet publishing is not geared to the market. As in all other forms of Soviet enterprise, production runs are decided at the top, according to complex political criteria, not on the basis of demand, and the story was never reissued. Interestingly enough, Solzhenitsvn exploited the occasion of these reprints to restore some of the cuts that had been imposed on him by Lebedev and Xovy Mir and to make a number of minor improvements. It w as a bold step to take in the generally fearful atmosphere of Soviet publishing, but nobody seems to have noticed or complained. Ivan Denisovich in 750,000 copies (there third impression, according to

a

26

FIRST DOUBTS

As

two main factions in the Partx' and camps continued, there v\'as no wav in which Solzhenitsvn could keep out of it. At the political level, Khrushchev came under fierce attack bv the conservatives (said to be led bv Frol Kozlov) in the early months of 1963 and was severely weakened by the Cuban fiasco. He had also stirred up a hornet's nest at the November 1962 plenarv session (the one at which the delegates had been seen clutching their red- and blue-covered books) by proposing sweeping administrative reforms in the Party's structure, whose ultimate effect would be to reduce the role of ideological control and make Party bosses more accountable for their decisions. This, too, w as anathema to the conservatives, and it w as the force and skill of their counter-attack that had driven Khrushchev (and his watch-dog over the arts, Ilvichev) onto the defensive and caused them to change their line. But the conflict was by no means resolved, and the signs in the press were confusing. For example, as early as January 1963 a critic called Lydia Fomenko made a public attack on the hitherto sacrosanct Ivan Denisovich in Literaturnaya Rossia (Literary Russia). Praising it for its "bitter truth" and

THE POLITICAL

L the

Struggle between the

corresponding

literary

1 1

literary skill, she nonetheless

accused

its

author of failing to disclose "the

full

dialectic of that time." Ivan Denisovich expressed "a passionate 'no!' to Stalin's

order,"

Fomenko

wrote, but

it

"failed to rise to the philosophical level of the

period, to a broader generalization capable of embracing the contradictory

phenomena of that

era."' In other words, there was no optimistic conclusion and no indication that there were "good Communists," even in the camps, who understood what was happening and would help to put everything right in the end. But the riposte to Fomenko came from, of all people, Ermilov,

464

First that

i

s

I

same sneak and informer who had nevertheless

mand" and this

Douh

time

in Izvestia,-

tuhilletl the "scjeial

when it Krmilov reproached Komenko

praised Ivan Denisovicb in l*nivda

first

unity of the story

This did not contrar\',

mean he had

demanded failed to

I

eom-

appeared. Writing

for asking too

the author of Ivmi Denisovicb ("Write about this as well as that!"), artistic

4''' 5

that he stop precisely

much of when the

where he had.

grasp the dialectic of Stalin's time; on the

he had done so perfectly.

K\en more confusing was the fact that the main l)od\ of the article in was deyoted to a blistering attack on l-Jirenburg and his memoirs in Navy Mir, that is to say, on a v\ riter judged to be in the same camp as Solzhenitsyn and standing for more or less the same sort of things. Stranger still, although Khrenburg's memoirs, dealing as they clid uith the period w hen Stalin v\as aliye, had also been authorized by Khrushchev, it could not have been simply a case of attacking Khrushchev's favourites, otherw ise Solzhenitsyn would have suffered too. Only a month or so later did it emerge that there \v as indeed a distinction (in the minds of the authorities) between the two men, that Khrushchev had withdrawn his support from Khrenburg (though he was maintaining it for Solzhenitsyn), and that therefore the word had gone out to "get" him. The occasion of this revelation w as vet another meeting between the Party leaders and the writers, this time six hundred of them, which took place in the Kremlin on 7-8 JVlarch 1963. Again Solzhenitsyn was present and again Ivan Denisovicb was singled out for praise by Khrushchev, but this time the general atmosphere v\'as grim and threatening. "It was rigged," Solzhenitsyn later w rote, "so that the Stalinists had a preponderance of five and the air was filled with harsh invective and destructive hostilitv to one v\

hich these remarks appeared

.

to

.

.

anything that gave off the faintest w hiff of freedom."^ Ilvichev, the Party's ideological watch-dog, spoke

again attacked formalism and abstractionism in

speech, he expressed satisfaction that a

"What

is

particularly important

ideas of the Party, the very

A number lessness,'

is

that,

art.

on the

first

day and

Referring to his earlier

more orthodox

line

now

prevailed.

under the influence of the healthy

atmosphere of creative discussion has changed.

of creative workers have begun to lose their feelings of 'defence-

people have been speaking out about Party-mindedness and national

and about socialist realism, w ithout fear of being considered and conervatives." And he added ominously, "Everything is returning to its place" (meaning that all the conservatives were returning to

feeling in art,

reactionaries

their places)."*

The

came with Khrushchev's extraordinarily long speech was clear that his main aim was to put a stop to any ideas of liberalization in the arts and to halt the trend that he himself had started. Far from showing himself sympathetic to Tvardovsky's earlier plea for the suspension of censorship in the arts, he was at pains to go the other way. "We must bring all the Party's ideological weapons, including such powerful instruments of (>ommunist education as literature and art, into combat real sensation

the following day.

It

SOLZHENITSYN

[466] order," he said.

Party will line." his

"On

demand

questions of creative art the Central Committee of the

of everyone

.

.

.

that he abides unswervinglv

by the Party

Like Ilvichev the dav before, he attacked Ehrenburg unsparingly for

memoirs and conducted

a sort

of verbal tour of the

arts: literature (w

hen

he abused Voznesenskv and Axyonov), painting, music, the cinema, the thelambasting innovation and experiment and lauding orthoatre, even jazz

—

doxy. Party loyalty, and socialist realism. At last, quite unexpectedly, he turned to the heart of the matter and addressed the central problem lying behind

all

the other problems

—namely,

the Party's attitude to Stalin and Stalinism. Ehrenburg's real crime,

it

turned

had been to suggest in his memoirs that in the thirties everyone had know n about Stalin's crimes but had been powerless to do anything and had therefore watched what was going on "in silence and with clenched teeth." This went much further than Khrushchev himself had gone in his speeches to the Twentieth and Twenty-second congresses, for it cast doubt on Khrushchev's claim that he and the other party leaders were ignorant of the out,

worst excesses of Stalinism. Did the leading cadres of the Partv know about the arrests of people at the time? But did the\' know that people were being arrested w ho were They believed Stalin and did not in no way guilty? No, thev did not know Yes, thev knew

.

.

admit the thought that repression could be applied against honest people devoted to our cause.

Even more unexpectedly, Khrushchev went out of his way to speak warmly of Stalin personally and reveal that "at Stalin's funeral many people, including myself, had tears in their eyes. These were honest tears. Although we

knew of

Stalin's personal shortcomings,

The monstrous in his "secret

still

we

believed in him."

crimes of which Khrushchev had spoken

at

such length

speech" were now suddenly reduced to "personal shortcom-

and Stalin was once more the beloved leader. The about-face could not ha\'e been more dramatic, and many theories have been adduced to account for Khrushchev's sudden change of tack. That his position as leader was severely weakened as a result of the Cuban crisis is without question. Undoubtedly, Kozlov and his allies w ere strengthened by Khrushchev's failure, and whenever there are foreign-policy problems in the Soviet Union there is alw ays great pressure for more conformity and discipline at home. The position of Ehrenburg as a witness was also rather special, in that he, as much as Khrushchev and some of the other political leaders, had once enjoyed Stalin's favours, and although he was still telling less than he knew, there was always a chance he might go further and reveal all. Ihe conservatives had perceived this from the beginning. At the very first meeting between the Party leaders and the intellectuals, a conservative writer, Galina Serebrvakova, had electrified the gathering by revealing that Stalin's favourite secretary, Alexander Poskrebvshev, was not only (contrary to popular belief) alive and well but w as also w ritiner his memoirs, in which he accused Ehrenburef ings,"

First Doubts

l4'^J7]

of having been an accomplice of Stalin's. Ihis theme had been taken up bv

Ermilov

in his attack

returning to

The

it

on Ehrenburg

in Izvestia,

and now Khrushchev was

again.

point was that

Ehrenburg had written, "e\er\bod\- knew," time far more than mere writers like himself. .\nd this was the central dilemma of de-Stalinization, which Khrushchev, in his impulsive w a\ had failed to foresee namelv. Where do vou stop? If de-Stalinization was taken to its logical conclusion it would indicate that most of the top leaders, including Khrushche\' himself, were responsible tor the crimes ot Stalinism. Even more w as this true of the upper levels of the bureaucracy in every sphere of Soviet life, ranging from the armed forces to the economics ministries, from the police to administrators of the arts, w hich is why the conservatives had such powerful support from the Partv and government apparatus. Only a Nuremberg-stvie trial could deal with the enormity of the crimes committed against the innocent Soviet population, and since Khrushchev had no intention of going that far, he was bound to twist and turn in draw ing the line. What the conservatives had apparentlv done was to point out to him the dangers of the path that he w as follow ing and to convince him that it would inevitablv lead to disaster. Khrushchev, therefore, had to preserve de-Stalinization in the form of a tactical manoeuxre by the Party and pre\ent it from becoming a major change of policy, let alone a moral crusade, w hich is w hat some of the intellectuals wanted it to be. And in the rebuke to Ehrenburg was concealed vet another axiom of Party policy, namely, its monopolv of wisdom and truth. It was one thing for Khrushchev to make speeches on Stalin's crimes, but quite another for mere w riters to take up the same theme. Writers w ere unreliable: thev could not be trusted to toe the Partv line, to go just so far and no if,

as

this implicated the Party leaders of the

—

,

—not even Ehrenburg, with

farther

When

a lifetime of zigzagging experience behind

down, there could be no question of abandoning the censorship and Partv control over w riters, for no one could tell w here this would lead. As evidence of this danger Khrushchev revealed that Soviet publishing houses and literary magazines had been "flooded w ith manuscripts about the life of persons in exile, in prisons, and in the camps" since the publication of Ivan Denisovich. "Take my word for it, this is a ver\' dangerous theme. It's the kind of 'stew' that \\ ill attract flies like a carcass, enormous fat flies; all sorts of bourgeois scum from abroad w ill come crawling all over it." It was a restatement of one of the conservatives' favourite arguments about not w ashing dirtv linen in public, and also a reference to the enormous interest being him.

the chips were

taken abroad in Ivan Denisovich. all

The book had

alread\-

been translated into

the major languages (two different English translations had appeared

bv

January, one month after Russian publication, and two more would follow in the *

A

same year)* and was now being

translated into

many more,

including

Soviet-sponsored translation of Ivan Denisovich began serialization in the Moscov: Xezis in

December 1962 and w

as

subsequently published by Penguin Books.

The

translator,

Ralph Par-

.

SOLZHENITSYN

[468]

those of most of the satelhte countries of Eastern Europe. Speculation in the

Western press about the meaning of its pubHcation was rife, and, of course, Western commentators on the contents of the storv could afford to be far more outspoken than their Soviet counterparts. Solzhenitsvn's reputation survived this meeting unscathed, but it was clear that the whole balance of the Partv's attitude had tilted stronglv against him, as it had against most of the other writers associated w ith Novy Mir Ehrenburg, Nekrasov, Evtushenko, Axyonov, Voinovich, Yashin. Indeed, a few davs beforehand "Matryona's Place" had been heavily attacked bv the conservative novelist and editor of Znamya, \'adim Kozhevnikov, in the pages of the Literaturnaya Gazeta. Kozhevnikox complained that there were too many "querulous" stories and tales appearing in Am'v Mir and said that he had experienced a feeling of "deep spiritual pain" while reading "Matrvo-

—

na's Place."

me

was written bv its author when he was mind in w hich he could not with anv depth understand the life of the people, the movement and real perspectives of that life. In the earlv postwar years such people as Matryona reallv did harness themselves to the plough in villages ravaged bv the Germans. The Soviet peasantrv performed a great feat It

seems to

still

that "Matrvona's Place"

in a state of

in those

circumstances and gave the people bread, feeding the countrv. This

To draw the Soviet Bunin village of our dav is historicallv incorrect. Solzhenitsvn's storv convinces one over and over again: w ithout a vision of historical truth, of its essence, there can be no complete truth, no matter how great the talent.' alone should evoke feelings of reverence and admiration. village as a

argument used by Lydia Fomenko about Ivan Dehad "failed to rise to the correct philosophical level" and "reconcile contradictions," and in "Matryona" he lacked a vision of "historical truth." These were but euphemisms for toeing the Party line, which decreed that anv shortcomings depicted in literature should be local and particular, and be contrasted unfavourabh" w ith the generallv positi\e march of Soviet society tov\'ards a radiant Communist future. Another essential was that any shortcomings so described should be shown as being the fault of something other than the Soviet system (in this case the Germans) or as belonging to the distant past and since overcome. (The criticism would have been even harsher had the critics known that the time referred to in "Matryona" was not 195 3 Stalin's time but 1956 Khrushchev's.) In fact, the logic of this position was that no shortcomings should be described at all until after they had been corrected. The reference to the pre-Soviet and antiSoviet Russian writer Bunin was also ominous. Bunin was held by Soviet It

was

nisovich.

essentially the

In that story Solzhenits\n

ker,

\\

ho had responded

—

—

—

to the prudishness of Soviet sensibilities

by toning dow n some of

Solzhenitsvn's saltier expressions, was falselv accused of having exercised a political censorship

of the text, and a ri\ai translation was commissioned from

The

latter's

mid-Atlantic \ersion was indeed racier in

choose between the two translations

in

its

Max Havuard and Ronald

vocabularw but there w

as

Hinglc\

nothing to

terms of accurac\', and neither was ver\ satistactorw

First Doubts critics to

ha\c w

[4'^'y]

rittcn in the ninctecnth-centur\' tradition ot "critical real-

ism," w hose "task"

it

capitalism and tsarism.

had

l)een to excoriate

Now

ism had been superseded

that these e\ils

b\' "socialist

Russian societx' for the evils of had been oxercome, critical real-

realism,"

\\

hich could not but approve

of socialist societv and be optimistic. Interestingly enough, the mention of Bunin's

name w as

quite perceptive on Kozhevnikov's part, for Solzhenits\n

\olume of his stories. From avowed and perceived kinship w ith the Russian writers of the nineteenth centur\' was to be turned against him, and he would be described more and more as a "critical realist" out of his time.

him and had

did admire

now

caretully annotated a

on, however, Solzhenitsvn's

Two

reviews did not constitute a campaign. Indeed, an\\\ here else but

Union two negative voices among a chorus of praise w ould have gone virtuall)' unnoticed; but one of the first casualties of censorship is free and spontaneous opinion. All public utterances instantlv acquire symbolic value and are minutel\- studied for "clues" to attitudes and positions. Readers and w Titers alike become morbidh sensitive to nuances; virtually nothing is nor is it meant to be. These review s were therefore ever taken at face value taken as a hint, or a testing of the political w eather, to see w hat the response would be. And when there w as no othcial response, the criticism grew bolder. A critic called Laguno\ lumped the Solzhenitsyn of "Matryona's Place" with Ehrenburg, Nekrasov, Axyonov, and F>tushenko and said that what the\ all had in common was a desire to "distort our reality and purposely play up the Soviet

—

aspects." Semyon Babaxevsky, a best-selling pedand cheap optimism, twice w inner of the Stalin Prize, wrote that it is "always much easier to describe the bad, the dark, and the dirty than to praise the good, the radiant, and the pure. What could be simpler than to take, say, the old woman Matrvona and depict her in totally black [sic] colours, and present her life in such a w av that the collective farms are to blame for everything.?"'^ In April Oktyabr joined its voice to the chorus with a critical article by N. Sergovantsev. For the time being such voices were still in a minority; and apart from Lydia Fomenko, almost no one raised a word against Ivan Denisovich. "Krechetovka," for instance, was generally praised, its setting in 1941 makits

darker,

more negative

dler of Party slogans

.

.

ing

it

.

.

.

easier to accept as a description of the undesirable past. Solzhenitsyn

now thought and

.

the

it

reasonable to press ahead with attempts to get The Tenderfoot

Tart performed. Fie had completed his revision of the text and was

anxious for the So\remennik 7 heatre to go ahead. But in the

atmosphere, Efremov was in difficulty.

It

about labour camps w hen the Part\ leaders had made this subject

new and changed

was not so simple it

to stage a play

clear that the\

played down. Solzhenitsyn decided to turn to his

w anted

first political

more help would be forthcoming. Having sent him the play at the beginning of .March, he called on him in his office on 21 March. As it turned out, Lebedev was unhelpful. His first reaction on receiving the play had been to ask whether Tvardovskv had read it. and w hen he patron, X'ladimir Lebedev, to see whether

SOLZHENITSYN

[470]

discovered Tvardovskv's dislike of the plav, this seemed to confirm his disinchnation to get involved. able in literature.

The labour-camp theme was no

The Sovremennik, he

said,

\\

own

longer desir-

as interested in the plav onlv

would fill the theatre. "I do not doubt for its would break the dow n, as the saying goes, in their doors theatre-goers that what sort of thing went on in the camps." But the eagerness to find out whole thing was impossible because of those "huge fat flies" (in Khrushchev's phrase), the foreign correspondents and "home-grown philistines," who would sensationalism and because

.

applaud

.

it

.

it.

Three months later Solzhenitsyn went to visit Lebedev for a third and last time, and Lebedev expanded on what was wrong with The Tenderfoot and the Tart. What Solzhenitsyn had failed to do, he said, was to show that some people had been successfuUv re-educated in the camps. Somehow it alwavs seemed to come out that the dishonest triumphed and the honest were doomed to destruction, which was a contradiction of socialist realism. Besides, the plav w as an "insult to the intelligentsia," since it show ed so manv of them fighting for privileges at the expense of their principles. Interestingh' enough,

word about the plav had got round and had even reached Khrushchev, who thought it was a dramatization of Tcati Denisovich. "Let them put it on," he had said while under that impression, but Lebedev had explained to Khrushchev that the plav w as not about Ivan Denisovich and w as not acceptable.^ Luckilv, Ivafj Denisovich itself retained

its

relative inviolability through-

out 1963, although in most other respects the atmosphere steadily worsened.

At the end of March the Writers' Union held a plenarv session at w hich the "voung" writers Evtushenko, \ oznesenskv, and Axvonov were heavilv criticized on a varietv of grounds; Grigori Baklanov, Yuri Bondarev, and Bulat Okudzhava among the slightlv older generation, were also taken to task; and there were even rumours that Tvardovsky was to be replaced as editor of Novy Mir. Immediatelv afterw ards a hvsterical campaign of vilification was directed against Evtushenko for having published his Precocious Autobiography magazine LExpress) without permission and without lull, which mav ha\e had something to do w ith the fact that Frol Kozlov had a heart attack in Ma\' and disappeared from the scene, leaving the conservatives temporarily leaderless. Then, at a plenarv meeting of the Central Committee in June 1963, Khrushchev back-pedalled somewhat from his earlier, hard position. He declared himself no longer in favour of a single, monolithic union for the arts. On the other hand, he had come round to thinking that a single publishing house would facilitate the Party's control, and he was still in no doubt that such control was necessary. Meanwhile, in May, Tvardoxsky had given a relatively outspoken interview to Henry Shapiro, the chief Moscow correspondent of L'PI, in w hich he had defended all \'ovy Mirs authors and had singled out Solzhenits\n and Ivan Denisovich for specially high praise. Solzhenitsyn was aware of these fluctuations in the political arena. The publication and success of Ivan Denisovich had, as he later put it, drawn him

abroad

(in the

Paris

clearance from the Soviet censors. After that there was a

First Dolbts

4" 1

i I

and he couldn't help know ing w hat w as going Lebedev had been occasioned hv an invitation to attend the June Partv plenum, \\ hose main theme was once again the Partv's policy on the arts. Normally, such invitations w ere much sought after and prized, but Solzhenitsyn had absolutely no desire to spend a week in into the Party's court circles,

on. Indeed, his third visit to

hot,

sweatv Moscow listening to boring

affabilit\' itself,

continued high standing literature

and

political speeches. Lel)ede\

had been

despite his criticisms of lendcrf'oot, confirming Solzhenitsvn's

politics.

at

Khrushchev's "court." Thev had chatted about his albums of photo-

Lebedev showed Solzhenitsvn

graphs of the famous, including man\ authors, as well as Khrushchev, Gromyko, and other bigwigs on foreign tours, and insisted on photographing

Me was surbv Solzhenitsvn's request to be excused from the plenum, but agreed to it readily enough, leaving Solzhenitsvn to hasten back to Rvazan. It was Solzhenitsyn's last term at the school. He had given in his notice on the strength of the royalties from Ivan Denisovich and his tw o stories. There were also abundant royalties from abroad, where he had become an international celebrity overnight, and it seems that the film studio Mosfilm had conSolzhenitsvn so that he could take his place in the album too.

prised

tracted to produce a film of Ivati Denisc/vich. Perhaps because of this

departure from the world of teaching, he had

and

June completed

on

felt

an urge to w

impending

rite

about

it,

contemporary subject, "For the Good of the Cause." The theme was simple enough and based on a real incident that had occurred in Ryazan. A technical school, housed in makeshift, inadequate premises, is at last, after many delays and disappointments, about to move into a new modern building. So enthusiastic are the students that they have given up their holidays and much of their spare time for nearly a year to act as unpaid labourers and hasten its completion, but at the very last moment the building is commandeered bv a Moscow ministry for use as a scientific institute. Nothing that the school principal can do is sufficient to shift the corrupt district Part\' secretary, Knorozox', from his decision in favour of the ministrx', and it emerges that the whole switch has been master-minded by the scheming director of a local factory, Khabahgin, w ho hopes to become head of the new institute. The principal, students, and staff of the school are deeply upset and disillusioned but are obliged to make w av "for the good of in

his first stor\

a

,

the cause." In

its

formal aspect the storv w as an uncomplicated example of

socialist

was based on the temporarily notorious figure of A. Larionov, w ho had committed suicide after his shady dealings in the meat market had been exposed. Grachikov, secretary of the town's Party committee and the "positive hero" of the storv, w ho takes the school principal's side, was based on the Party organizer in Solzhenits\ n's own school, and the character of the principal was modelled on someone else Solzhenitsvn knew. In the story they appear as little more than cardboard cut-outs (as are the students and the one other teacher w ho is mentioned), manipulated to illustrate the story's didactic message, and it was onl\ the realism after the "thaw" of 1956. Knorozov

— SOLZHENITSYN

[472J

message that contained anything unusual about it, for, as in Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn had inverted the pohtical moral that socialist realism was supposed to carrv. Khabalvgin, Knorozov, and the men from the ministry who

come from Moscow

to inspect the school

—

in other

the establishment and the upper Partv hierarchy

pulous

villains,

while the heroes were the

hierarchv or outside

A

it

"little

words,

—were

people"

all

members

of

satirized as unscruat

the bottom of the

altogether.

particular aspect of this

w as underlined

in the description of the dis-

trict secretary.

h was been it

Knorozox's boast that he never went back on

in

Moscow w ith

StaHn's word, so

it

v\as

still

his

word. As

it

had once

toda\ w ith Knorozox's word:

was never changed or taken back. And although Stalin w as long dead, Knowas still here. He w as a leading proponent of the "strong-willed school of

rozo\

leadership," and he saw

other

It

w av of running

was the problem of

thev were

still

in this his greatest virtue.

things.

He

could not imagine anv

''

Stalin's heirs in a

hrml\- in place and

new

guise,

and the message was that

running the countrv as before. pleased with the storv when Solzhenits\'n

still

seems that Tvardovsky w as it to him in June, for he immediatelv scheduled it for the Julv issue oi !\ovy Mir. It was at once a riposte to those who had criticized Solzhenitsxn for being unable to w rite about anything except the gloomier aspects of the past, especialh' the labour camps (even, "Krechetovka" had been about a man destined for the camps) and a blow in the struggle against the neo-Stalinists It

delivered

what \m"v Mir needed, especialh' now after the Partv plenum, when Khrushche\- had slighth' opened the gates for the liberals again. Solzheni-

just

tsvn, too,

w as

satisfied b\'

1

\ardovskv's prompt response and in general

felt

hopeful about the w av his career was developing.

Among

other

omens

that encouraged Solzhenitsvn's

time were some unexpected encounters w

ith

optimism

at this

the establishment. In Februarv

1963 he had been invited to address seventv members of the Soviet Union's supreme Militarv IVibunal, that same tribunal under whose auspices the Special Board had sentenced him in 1945 to eight years' imprisonment and perpetual exile. He was even able to joke about it and was met with a s\mpathetic response. The\' told him endless horror stories about the camps and the work of the tribunal in the past, answered his questions w illinglv, seemed genuinelv indignant, and discussed Ivati Denisovich with sincere admiration. "I looked about me," Solzhenitsvn later wrote, "and was amazed: thev were human beings! C>ompletelv human! Now the\' were smiling, and franklv explaining how thev had onlv wanted to do good."'" Solzhenitsvn realized that there was an element of show in it all, but the verv fact of their meeting him spoke volumes about the change. Ihe deputv chief militarv prosecutor. Colonel D. T. Terekhov, had also received him in his office and described to him the arrest and investigation of Stalin's former minister of state securitv

— 1

First Doubts

Ahakumov and

[4"

3

w ho had master-minded Terekhov had interrogated before thev were shot. Solzhenitsvn recognized in him a man of exceptional forcefulness, honesty, and talent, of the kind w ho might cleanse the land of injustice, and felt that there might reallv be on the wav a new order that was readv to reform Soviet society." But not everything looked rosv that summer, for the honeymoon period of his friendship with Tvardovsky appeared to be fading a little, and a certain amount of friction was creeping into their relations. On Solzhenitsvn's side it was occasioned by an uncomfortable sense of being patronized. Of the many works he had offered Tvardovsky for publication, 1 vardovsky had Victor

of the secret-police official

the "doctors' plot,"* Mikhail

Rvumin, both of

whom

taken only three short stories: "Matryona," "Krechetovka," and the

Good

now "For

of the Cause." Solzhenitsyn's Uric poems, some extracts from The

Way, his miniature stories, his labour-camp play, and perhaps also The Light Which Is in Thee (though it is not clear whether Solzhenitsyn had vet shown him this play) had all been rejected. Moreover, Solzhenitsvn had a suspicion that I vardovsky had somehow played a role in the Sovremennik's decision not to proceed w ith Tenderfoot, and he resented the fact that Tvardovsky had failed to put in a good word for it with Lebedev. He felt that it had been one thing to defer to Tvardovsky 's judgement w hen he was unknown, but now he was world famous and, in many people's judgement, a better w riter than Tvardovsky. Tvardovsky, for his part, seems to have felt that he w as in a position of tutelage vis-a-vis Solzhenitsyn and that he had a proprietary right to Solzhenitsyn's work, in view of the unprecedented and successful campaign he had waged to publish .4 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He had recognized in Solzhenitsyn a natural ally, and he certainly hoped, with Solzhenitsyn's help, to advance the cause of his magazine, but he also thought, not without justification, that Solzhenitsyn ow ed him something too. It must also be acknow 1edged that in matters of literary judgement he had right on his side, for everything he had rejected of Solzhenitsyn's so far had been second-rate, and everything he had accepted, apart from "For the Good of the Cause," had been excellent. Indeed, one can only admire his restraint in not jumping on the

bandwagon of Solzhenitsyn's popularity

The

at the slightest

ditferences of taste and interest betw een the tw o

opportunity.

men

also emerged \ovy Mir published Shalamov's poetry. To his astonishment, Tvardovsky was uninterested in their labour-camp themes and rejected them on grounds of form they were "too much like Pasternak." As Tvardovsky later wrote to Shalain

Tvardovsky 's response

to Solzhenitsyn's suggestion that

*In No\ ember 1952 nine Kremlin doctors were arrested and charged with conspiring with the British and American intelligence services to murder So\iet leaders, and w ere said to have been responsible for the death ot Andrei

Zhdanov

in 1948.

Since the doctors were Jewish, the accu-

had anti-Semitic o\ertones, but the doctors were saved bv the death of Stalin in March 1953 and were released a month later. The v\hole episode is usuallv referred to as the doctors"

sations

plot.

SOLZHENITSYN

[474]

mov, thev were not the sort of thing at all, in his opinion, that would appeal Novy Mirs readers. '" Solzhenitsvn conceded Tvardovskv's right to regard himself as a better Ivardovsky was a famous poet. But as it happens, Solzhejudge of poetrv nitsvn had stumbled across a peculiar prejudice of Tvardovskv's. Andrei Sinyavskv, who had recentlv contributed a long article on Pasternak to Novy Mir, reports that although Tvardovskv had supported the article on political grounds, he had said to him, "I've only one request to make of you please don't make Pasternak out to be a classic." Tvardovskv was convinced that Pasternak \\ as a minor poet, destined to sink \\ ithout a trace. He also exclaimed one dav with distaste, "He's no better than that Mandelstam,'"^ meaning to

—

—

that he didn't care for either of them.

He

was,

it

seems, e.xtremelv hostile to

modernism in all its forms, holding that a writer should be popular and read by the masses. This was what had so endeared Solzhenitsyn to him, for thev w ere cast in the same mould and shared the same literarv values. Shalamov, on the other hand, was a modernist. Even his short stories, despite the rawness of their material, were highly wrought and polished, with an emotional restraint that went well bevond Solzhenitsvn's in Iva)i Denisovich. Solzhenitsvn was w illing to tolerate the modernism for the sake of the subject matter,* but Tvardovskv was not. It was this intolerance, coupled with Tvardovskv's jealousx', that explained whv Novy Alirs poetrv section was so weak.

A

disharmony between the two men also sprang from their difI vardovskv was the most remarkable Russian editor of his time, but he was a Partv member and a high Soviet functionary, and this w as verv important to him. A w titer w ho worked with him over man\' vears has characterized him as follows: certain

ferent perceptions of the world.

7 vardovskv was not

a political radical

verv influenced

behaviour bv

bv nature, he was a Partv lo\alist and but he w as also a superb editor and had an unerring instinct for literar\' qualitv. He was constitutionallv incapable of publishing inferior work, he sought excellence in evervthing, and it was this that led lish

him

in his

into politicallv

Ivan Denisovich.

He

this,

dangerous waters, particularlv w hen he decided didn't look for trouble, he didn't

want

to

pub-

trouble, he didn't

came, and he did his level best to get out of it, but he w as ow n high editorial standards, and on that front he wouldn't compromise. He was therefore constantlv finding himself put into ambiguous situations in which he felt deeplv unhappy and verv uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do about it. like

trouble

draw n into

w hen

it

by

it

his

'"*

Despite this inner conflict

—or perhaps because of —1 vardovskv was it

and

manoeuvring

a past

master

mum

possible past the censors and their political mentors.

at Soviet literary politics

*i3cspitL' feeling that Shalaniov's prose stvic still

his

able to admire his achievement.

words."

He once

at

had suffered from told Kopelev,

"You

maxifound the

to get the

his isolation,

He

Solzhenitsyn was

can't get a razor-blade betw een

'

KiRST Doubts

l4"

5

]

w as precisely here that Solw as to a system of literary (and increasingly political) values older and more disinterested than those of the Soviet establishment, values that he had imbibed from his immersion in the classical Russian literature of the nineteenth century. As he later wrote of Tvardovskv, "he was too reach' to beliexe that this s\stem was all-embracing and durable. He could not imagine an\one rejecting the system from the outset. He could not imagine my discerning or knowing tactics of

it

absorbing, even exhilarating, but

zhenitsyn parted

company from him.

it

Solzhenitsyn's loyalty

things about literature or politics that he himself could not see or did not

know."'' This judgement, characteristically harsh, puts the blame

all on one and perhaps exaggerates Solzhenitsyn's own feelings at this time, but it does point to a fundamental difference between the two men. Solzhenitsyn was able to take this stance because he was an outsider. His prison experiences had set him apart for all time from the Soviet establishment and the world of political and social orthodoxy. As he later noted in The Oak and the Calf, "I could never be so candid w ith [Tvardovskv], so at ease with him, as I could with dozens of people on \\ hom the groves of Gulag had cast their indelible shadow."'''' The dividing-line between them w as still the barbed-wire fence and the ploughed strip, a ghostly barrier that continued to separate the oppressed "us" from the privileged "them." It was membership in this grim club that still guided Solzhenitsyn in man\- of his judgments of others, and from which he derived an essential element of his own iden-

side

tity.

Nor can one lution.

Even

if

was not prepared

One

discount Solzhenitsyn's egotism, ambition, and iron reso-

he understood Tvardovskv intuitively and intellectually, he to

make any allowances

or to budge an inch from his plans.

of his enduring strengths, as a writer and as a man, w as this absolute

refusal to

compromise; but

it

made

for

some

difficult relationships

and some

turbulent scenes, especially in his dealings with his editor.

One such Moscow on

scene occurred in July 1963. Solzhenitsyn and Natalia were

way back from Leningrad. Solzhenitsyn was in a dudgeon about some changes that Boris Sachs had allowed the censors to make in "For the Good of the Cause" without asking his permission (among other things, they had removed the word '"strike" from his description of the protest the students proposed to stage), having only just discovered them when the July issue of Novy Mir appeared. Here was a perfect example of his differences with the magazine. Such practices, he told Tvardovskv, had become so normal that no one noticed them any more. Tvardovsky sided with Sachs and accused Solzhenitsyn of "flaunting his principles." But Solzhenits\n felt betrayed. For him, every word counted. Even if other authors acquiesced in such treatment of their works, he was not going to join them. This little contretemps then escalated into a more serious confrontation. Tvardovsky had just returned from a meeting with Ilvichev to discuss the composition of the Soviet delegation to a conference of a hundred writers that was to be held in Leningrad the following month. The conference w as in

their

SOLZHENITSYN

[476]

to be a symposium on the novel jointly sponsored bv UNESCO and the Communist-inspired Community of European Writers (COMES). It w as one of a series of events (the just-completed Moscow International Film Festival w as another) designed to demonstrate the Soviet Union's policy of cultural coexistence with the West. After some pleading, Tvardovsky had managed to secure the inclusion of Solzhenits\n in the Soviet delegation, w hich, in terms of Soviet literary politics, meant a signal boost for Novy Mir and the

entire liberal

As

it

camp.

happens, 1 vardovsky had

drinking bouts

—

his

answer

just

come round from one of his

to the insoluble

periodic

problems that beset him.

It

had

summer, and he had been taking to the bottle somewhat more than usual. His eyes were still bloodshot, his skin sagged, and he was chain-smoking with nervous concentration; but he was also elated been

by

a particularly difficult

his success

with Ilyichev, and he confidently expected Solzhenitsyn to He was still furious with

agree to go. But Solzhenitsyn refused point-blank.

the censors, he detested 'Fvardovsky's drinking habits, and he

mined not

to

w

aste his time at conferences.

As he

later

was

deter-

wrote, "It would be

what I thought, and ... to go there like a pet monkey would be shameful." But Tvardovsky was appalled: "I made it my business to see justice done. You can refuse if you like, but it's your duty to be there

quite impossible to say

in the interests

of Soviet literature.'"**

\ ictor Nekrasov,

Tvardovsky.

He

who w as

present during this conversation, sided w ith

himself could not go, because he was

still

under heavy attack

from the authorities for his travel notes. An official "investigation" into his behaviour abroad had been going on in Kiev for months, and he w as on the brink of expulsion from the Party. He felt that Solzhenitsyn ought to go, not so much for the sake of Soviet literature as for Tvardovsky's sake. According to Nekrasov's account of the scene, Tvardovsk\- openly pleaded w ith Solzhenitsyn and virtually went down on his knees to him, but Solzhenitsyn was adamant. He gave no explanation and no reasons, and Nekrasov felt that for the first time he was seeing a completely new side of Solzhenitsyn. In his view Tvardovsky deserved support, if only in the form of gratitude and a

human response

to his misery.'*^

The COMES meeting went ahead without Solzhenitsyn, who writes that he w as obliged to decamp from Ryazan on his bicycle to avoid giving a negative answ er to all the telegrams and official invitations that came for him. It was not a success, for it revealed a wide chasm between Western and Soviet w titers in their attitudes to literature. In desperation Ehrenburg was freed from disgrace and dispatched to Eeningrad by Khrushchev personally to pour oil on troubled w aters, and in a speech of brilliant diplomacy he did do something to draw the tw o sides together, but there w as no real meeting of minds. 1 here was, howexer, a curious postscript. In an apparent attempt to underline the Soxiet Union's sincerit\ in seeking closer ties w ith the West,

Khrushchev invited a group of tw enty-eight writers on the Black Sea. There he treated them to one of his

to his villa at Pitsunda, long, rambling speeches

I'iRST DOL'B TS that took in

(

Aiha,

1

liingan

thing but culture, in tact

he suddenix broke

olt

,

(-hina, tsarisni, Stalinism, clisarnianKiit

—and w

and

I4"

as

in\ ited

1

incongruousK threatening \ardo\ sk\ to read aloud I

ers present as

Khrushchex

peasant

itii-

estern w

speech, but the extraordinarx thing ai)out

's

Then

lonu satirical

poem " xorkin in the Next \\ orld." " xorkin," w ith its earth\ oms and untranslatable expressions, w as just as batHing to the \\ 1

I

—an\-

in tone.

iiis

~

it

rit-

x\as

its daring political content, as daring in its x\ax- as Ivciii Dciiisoiich, x\ hich had condemnec] the poem to circulate imderground tor much ot the nine xears since it was x\ ritten.* It seemed that Khrushchex x\as anxious once attain to use literature to demonstrate his broadmindedness and to dissipate, bx this gesture, the gloom induced bx' his uncompromising speech. Ihree dax s later, "Tvorkin" x\as published in Izirstia.-'*

An Txardox

skx' in

men

both

argument \\ ith on the part ot" Txardox skx is quoted as

interesting aspect ot Solzhenitsx n's description ot his

\\

ith

saying that the

The Oak aud

the (Ailf'xs the insularitx

regard to contemporarx literature.

sxmposium xxould

in anx' case

it

rexeals

be pointless, since there xxere

no noxels \\ orth arguing about: "It is doubtful \\ hether a nox el can be x\ ritten in our time." To this, Solzhenitsx n boastfullx ripostes, "G/;/ccv Ward x\as alreadx" begun. The First Circle had been finished a x ear before, but didnt knoxx in x\ hat form 1 dared offer it to Tvardoxskv. And I x\ as supposed to sit in a sxmposium, bound and gagged, listening to fortx mouths chorusing, 'The noxel is dead!' 'The noxel is obsolete!' 'There can be no more nox"-' els!' Yet this was a conference attended bv William Golding and Angus I

Wilson, Alain Robbe-Cirillet and Nathalie Sarraute, Hans berger and Jean-Faul Sartre,

\\

here nox

els

Magnus

En/.ens-

bx Giinter Grass, Tieinrich Boll,

Samuel Beckett, Graham Greene, and Saul Belloxx xxere also discussed. It was hardly likelx- that the death of the nox el \x ould be the main point on the agenda it x\ as little more than a rhetorical slogan to draxx attention to the main subject matter. Solzhenitsyn, b\- reason of his long x ears of imprisonment, and Txardovskx', as a result of his ideological blinkers and ignorance of foreign languages, had barely heard of the names of the leading European and American novelists of the time, let alone read and understood them. Yet they xxere quite ready to dismiss them our of hand. Meanxx hile, at the sxmposium itself, the senior Soviet delegates (though not Tvardox skx' and not Ehrenburg) devoted their efforts to a violent attack on Jox ce, Kafka, and

—

Proust and a justification of their non-publication in the Soviet Union. Despite

Khrushchev's halt-hearted liberalization, the Soviet Union still

in the literarx'

as a

whole

xxas

Dark Ages.

In August, Solzhenitsyn did escape

on

his bic\ cle.

He and

Natalia w ent

*"Tvorkin in the Next \\ orld" w as l)egun, and largeK completed, in 1954 and was said to have been circulating in saniizdat since about 1957. A continuation of Vastly Tyorkiii, it purported to

show T\ orkin's adventures

in the

"next world" after his death, but the next w orld bore a sur-

prising similarity to Stalin's Russia, skv.

The poem appeared

(1963).

in Izvestia

which \\ as niercilesslx criticized and satirized bx' T\ ardovon 18 .\ugust 1963, and a few dax s later in Sovy Mir. no. 8

SOLZHENITSYN

[478]

on

a caretulh'

planned tour of "Russian antiquities," setting out from Me-

shchera, in Ryazan Province, and cycling through the provinces of Ivanovo

and Yaroslavl to

Moscow

—through the heartland of ancient Russia.

Thev

and Rostov the Great, inspecting the monasteries, churches, and fortifications of the Middle Ages, taking photographs, making notes, and camping out overnight. Soon after arriving back in Ryazan, they set out on another ride, this time to Tula Province and Yasnava Polyana, Tolstoy's estate. For Solzhenitsyn, with his deep love of Tolstoy, it must have been in the nature of a pilgrimage; but he visited the picturesque, unspoiled cities of Suzdal, Vladimir,

had started collecting material once more for his big novel on the Revolution, tentatively called The Red Wheel, and it may be that he was already planning the scene that was eventually to appear in August 1914 \n \\ hich the

now

young Sanya Lazhenitsyn (based on Solzhenitsyn's father) confronts an aging Tolstoy at Y'asnaya Polyana to ask him for his thoughts on the purpose of life

and the writing of poetry.

On this Tula trip, they also paid a visit to Kulikovo Field, site of the famous fourteenth-century battle between the Russians and the Tartars, a turning point in Russian history. There they inspected the ruined medieval church of St Sergius of Radonezh, whose iconostasis had been chopped up for firewood, whose flagstones had been carried off by the nearby villagers to pave their yards, and whose cupolas had been plundered for their tin. They clambered up the unusual cast-iron tower erected in 1848 to mark the site of the battle and made the acquaintance of the dogged and faithful caretaker, Zakhar Dmitrievich. Zakhar fascinated them by his prickly gruffness, by his dedication to the church and monument, and above all by the devotion with which he had sewn a special pouch inside his tattered jacket in which to carry and cherish the Kulikoxo visitors' book. Disgusted by the disrepair into w hich the site had been allowed to fall and yet captivated by its air of desolation, Solzhenitsyn spent a whole day wandering about the field, reconstructing the epic battle that had been fought there, and he and Natalia spent the night in the caretaker's hut at the latter's invitation.

Two

years later

Solzhenitsyn described the caretaker, the monument, and the day he had spent there in one of his finest short stories, "Zakhar the Pouch."

By

the time the Solzhenitsvns returned to Ryazan, a

new

controversy

was breaking over "For the Good of the Cause." On the very last day of August, a deputy editor of the Literaturnaya Gazeta, Yuri Barabash, pub"What Is Justice?" in which he called the story "a faillished an article ure." He was right, but for the wrong reasons, since he maintained that the

—

—

defects of "Clause" "had

much

in

common

with those that

critics

had already

noted ... in 'Matryona's Place.' " Solzhenitsvn's main mistake, he wrote, had been to "operate with abstract categories that were empty of concrete social content,"

and

his

view of

life,

as reflected here,

was

just as "archaic"

as in the earlier story.""

The ters

Literaturnaya Gazeta followed this

up

b\'

printing three readers'

supporting Barabash's criticism. Then, quite unexpectedly,

it

let-

published

First Doubts another article

I479J

favour of the storv, this time bv the mildly liberal novelist

in

Daniil Granin,

who

zation of Soviet

life

praised

and

it

as a contribution to the necessary democrati-

a plea for

greater justice. Almost immediately after

that the paper changed tack yet again

v\ ith another attack both on the story and on Granin's defence of it, adding an editorial note to the effect that Sol/.henitsyn had violated the canons of socialist realism b\ "mechanically

itself

the tradition of critical realism to socialist soil." By then it was October, and, appropriately enough, the ultra-conservative magazine (and Novy Mirs chief ideological adxersarv) Oktyahr, edited b\' Kochetov, published a harsh attack on both "Matryona's Place" and 'i"or the Ciood of the Cause." In the same issue Oktyabr printed a glowing review of a new work about the labour camps called Endurance by a former prisoner, Boris Dyakov. Dyakov was a loyal Communist w ho had remained faithful to the Party and who had survived his ordeal by becoming a trusty. He rejected

transplanting

.

.

.

Solzhenitsvn's criticism of the trusties as parasites and stool-pigeons and praised

them as loyal helpers of the regime.-' At this juncture Novy Mir returned

to the fray with three readers' letters

praising "For the Ciood of the Clause," onl\- to find itself attacked bv the Literaturnaya Gazeta for selecting only favourable letters and suppressing the

unfavourable ones. 1 his drove Novy Mir to investigate

and

its

readers' letters in

had received a total of fifty-eight letters about which fifty-five story, of were completely in favour, two had stylistic the criticisms, and only one was hostile and couched in such abusive language that it was unpublishable. These facts were conveyed to the Literaturnaya Gazeta in a "letter to the editor," at the end of which Novy Mir revealed a little secret. 1 Welve of their favourable letters had been sent simultaneously to the Literaturnaya Gazeta, v\'hich had published not one. It w as the Gazeta that had been guilty of suppression, not Novy Mirr^ I he debate then died down, but what was interesting about it \\ as not just the light it threw on the tug of war between the conservatives and liberals or on the fluctuations of Solzhenitsyn's reputation but also the fact that it took place at all over such a mediocre storv. From the point of view of the passion displayed and the space devoted to them, virtually no distinction was made between "Matryona" and "Cause," vet one was a masterpiece and the other a pot-boiler. And "Cause" attracted far more attention than Solzhenitsyn's much better storv "Incident at Krechetovka Station." At the same time, nobody bothered to say how badly \v ritten "Cause" \\ as the conservatives because they had other, more damning accusations to make against it, and the liberals because they didn't w ant to damage their case. It was a typical instance of politics completely overriding literary values. detail

to discover that

it

—

—

27

LENIN PRIZE CANDIDATE HAVING GIVEN UP

his teaching post, Solzhenitsvn

ahh more time in w hich to pursue preoccupation was to get something else into

now had immeasur-

his hterar\- career.

print.

I

lis

His two plaws and

first

his

\erse iiad proxed frustratingh unpopuhir w ith Ixardovskx and other ihakovsky and Isavev. A third candidate, Cionchar, w as an ex-ofhcio vice-chairman of the prize committee. 1 o a certain extent, committee members were tied bv the nominations made by the organizations they represented. The Sheep Bell and Into the Storm, for instance, had been proposed bv the board of the USSR Writers' Union, while Prometheus was the nominee of the Writers' Union of the Russian Republic. Because of the conspicuous safety of

its

subject matter, Prometheus

SOLZHENITSYN

[4«2]

—

had the most nominations of all including one, according to Zhores Aledv'edev, from the Directorate of Weather Bureaux of the Central Provinces, which gives one some idea of the processes at work behind the prize awards. It w as reasonablv clear that, given their ow n preferences, committee members would plump for something safe and uninspiring, but clearer still that thev would do w hat the\' w ere told: if an order came from on high to vote for Ivan Denisovicb, the\' would do so w ithout blinking. And here la)' the chief

hope of Solzhenitsvn's supporters. At first there seemed to be something of

a

bandwagon

rolling in Solzhe-

nitsvn's favour. In mid-|anuar\- 1964 izvestia published an interview

prototype of one of the most memorable characters tain

in

w

ith the

Ivan Denisovich, Cap-

Buinovskv, the lo\al (>ommunist naval captain w ho is dispatched to the cells for arguing with the guard commander in one of the closing

punishment

scenes of the book. His original.

curator of the naval

museum

Commander

Boris Burko\skv, was

now

of the cruiser Aurora in Leningrad, and he

enthusiasticalh' confirmed the truthfulness of Solzhenitsvn's portrayal of

Ekibastuz and

its

prisoners (thus refuting conservative accusations of exag-

BurkoN sk\ asserted that the

geration). B\' the greatest iron\-, like the prisoners in the no\el,

had

in their hearts

men

in the

camps,

"ne\er broken with the

done to them w ith the Party or our and thousands like me were phvsicalK' torn from the Party and people, but our hearts and thoughts were still with both.""* Ihis was undoubtedly true of Burkovskv, but it hardl\ coincided w ith Solzhenitsvn's portraits in his stor\'. On the other hand it made perfect propaganda for the Party, and had ne\er identified the evil SN'Stem.

I

Lenin Prize.

mouthpiece of the Party, Pravda, pubby Samuil Marshak," winner of the Lenin Prize the preceding \ear, and at a VV riters' Union meeting in early February to discuss the nominations, letters urging support for SolzhenitsN'n w ere read out from Kornei ('huko\ sk\- and Ilya Ehrenburg, w hile

At the end of January the

official

lished a strong article in favour oi Ivan Denisovich

Lev Kopelex took the

floor to

endorse

his old friend.

\ovy Mir

also published

Januar\ number an extraordinarily long and detailed article by V'ladimir Lakshin called "I\an Denisovich, His Friends and Foes." Lakshin anain its

h'zed

all

the articles that had appeared on Ivan Denisovich throughout the

year, carefully dissecting the hostile critics'

one

arguments and rebutting them

b\' one.''"

oped

But the conservatixes w ere not inactive, either, and in February develtheir counter-attack. At a combined meeting of the Moscow and the

Russian Republic branches of the criticized b\ a secretar\

\\ titers'

L nion, Ivan

of the

Moscow Union, and by two

"experts": Boris

oi Endurance, and, for some reason, Ceneral A.

devoted to

a

Denisovich

Dmitri Fremin (once a scourge of Dudintsex's Sot

vicious attack

on Lakshin and

Fodorskv.

his article, for

it

once been endorsetl b\ Khrushchex

.

All this

w as

hea\il\'

Bread Alone),

Dyakov, author time was

Much

w as still telt w ho had,

to assault Solzhenitsxn's supporters than the author himself, all,

liy

sater atter

w as then reproduced, together

Lenin Prize (candidate

l4^3l

with an approx ing editorial note, in the Literatunuiya Guzetu (without indication that the Gazetas editor

—Chakovsky—was

Lakshin's article had stirred

storm of controversy. The \oung Yugo-

a

slav critic Mihajlo Mihajlov (later to

was

visiting

article

Moscow, was

told

He

Ivan Denisovich as critics to

a

in

it

almost

letters a da\-,

ill

tell

\"ou

the preceding Near,

riter's Spiritual

e.\tra\agantly)

w

I

progress Veniamin

nitsxn and the \\

on

of

all

ot his

them

who

\()u are."^

1

me

he idea of

I.

Teush w as w

riting an article,

Mission," in w hich he

Solzhenitsvn has been

filled

spiritual hurricanes: a hurricane of love

Ivan Denisovich has

first

Chicherox-, and even as this

"A. Solzhe-

commented (some-

phenomenon.

this

The atmosphere around expanding

w ho

dissident in \'ugoslavia),

kind of litmus paper had been voiced bv one of the

write about

debate w as

a

told Mihajlov of a saving then current in .Moscow: "Tell

what \ou think of One Day and

what

become

bv Lakshin that since the publication

he had been recei\ ing up to 150

favourable.

an\'

a rival candidate).

become

a sort

w

and

spinning and ever-

ith

a

hurricane of hatred.

of touchstone, or, as one reader put

it,

an

X-rav apparatus that virtuallv automaticallv sorts people into the living and the dead, w

ith

dead, w ithered

Teush had been given sands

—of

letters that

souls.''

access to the hundreds

Solzhenitsvn had received as

—perhaps

a result

e\en thou-

of the publication

oi Ivan Denisovich and "Matrxona," and he built his article around cation of this material and an analvsis of the responses.

He

a classifi-

found, naturallv

enough, that an overwhelming majoritx' of readers faxourable to the stories had themselves suffered in the labour camps, or had relations or close friends who had served and often died in them. Thev were supported bv others w ho

were appalled and shamed b\" the revelations made bv Khrushchex Solzhenitsvn, and others about Stalin's terror and the horrors of Gulag, and by those members of the intelligentsia, the Party, and the bureaucracy \xho sincerely desired a change for the better and a more humane society. Together they composed a majority of those x\ ho xx rote. On the other side were former prisoners, like Boris Dyakov, xx ho had survived more or less comfortably in the camps bx' co-operating xx ith the authorities; former camp guards and officers of the camp administration; and members of the Party or the bureaucracy xxho w ere either implicated in Stalin's crimes and still shared his ideas or xxho simply believed in strong-arm methods and feared that change of any kind xxould bring anarchy and the loss of at least some of their privileges. These divisions reflected more or less accurately the divisions in society at large, and for this reason it xxas easy for the t\xo main camps to fall in behind their leaders and take up positions for the political battle over the Lenin Prize. In this sense the struggle over Ivan Denisovich xxas xery much part of a larger struggle then in progress. But the reasons tor the ferocity vx'ith XX hich this particular battle \x as fought also have to do \x ith the peculiar ,

qualities of the story itself,

dimensions of

its

success.

\x

hich completelx' transcended the social and political

SOLZHENITSYN

[484]

These were,

in the first instanee, its hterarv quahties.

It

is

hard tor

how bleak and barren the Soviet Hterarv scene is and was (especialh in the earh' sixties), how parched and starving Soviet readers are for contemporarN' hterature of anv quahtw If one casts one's mind back over the nearlv fort\- vears since the Second World War, one finds barelv haUa dozen writers whose names stand out as possibK' ha\ing worldclass literar\- talent: Akhmatova, Pasternak, Solzhenits\n, Brodskv, Sinvavand three of these were of an older, skv, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Nekrasov pre-war generation. Dozens of Soviet w riters ha\e been translated into Knglish and other foreign languages, but most stand out onl\' because of the emptiWesterners to grasp

just

—

ness of their surroimdings, so that, ironicallv,

Russian w cal

riter to

be translated into English

—than

for a second-rate

scandal

As one

critic

is

easier for a third-rate

riter

a politi-

or a first-rate Italian one.

has aptlv noted, most Soviet so-called literature consists of

rh\thmic prose.

editorials in \erse or in the\' fulfil the

—

French w

it

pro\ided he provokes

fimction of

sense of the word, but

a free

press

I

he\' are read

— not

and

that literature

listened to because

is

free in the

proper

and its writers are sufficientK' skilful to smuggle in ideas and issues that get smothered in the newspapers. (This is not, bv the wa\ to be taken as a slander on the writers. Man\' of them perform miracles bv wav of allegor\' or indirection, it is

freer than the actual press itself,

,

and

in

another setting would certainh' do as well as an\'one

—w

lettres the\-

can be more daring

and read w

ith

more

—an

— and

else.) In heUes-

are therefore listened to

respect.

In such a setting

an editorial

ithin limits

.

\

Day

editorial of

in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

imcommon

was

also perceived as

daring, force, and impact. But

much

w as a genuine work of art. Paradoxicallv, as the English critic Max Ilavward has noted, although Ivcin Denisovich was published in Moscow for a\owedh' political reasons and was receixed both there and abroad mainl\' as a political sensation, it w as one of the few Soviet prose works since the war that could stand completeh' as a work of art and be discussed exclusi\el\' in terms of its aesthetic achie\ement, quite apart from its political qualities. It w as a universal statement about the human condition, and it w as for this reason that comparisons were made w ith Tolstov and Dostovevskv and that hungr\' readers cherished the book. Ihus far, one supposes, the Western reader is able to follow and svmpathize, but there was another dimension of the book that is difficult to describe and summarize, but without which no account of the impact oi Ivan Denisovich would be complete. This dimension one can onb' call spiritual, not out

more than

that,

it

of an\' sentimental regard for the attributes of the alleged "Russian soul" but

simply because it relates to that sphere of human existence w here morality and faith conxerge and w hose workings are bevond our conscious understanding. It is a sphere that in the Soviet Union has been so scorched by Marxist theorv and Son iet practice that it had seemed, during Stalin's rule at least, to have succumbed to total atrophy. Perhaps the simplest wa\- to illustrate the impact oi Ivan Denisovich and

— Lf.nin Frizk

(^

an 1)1 date

14^^51

what it meant to Soviet readers is to reproduce some ot the comments quoted by Teush. "iMv face was smothered in tears," wrote one woman. "I didn't wipe them aw a\' or feel ashamed, l)ecause all this, packed into a small number of pages of the magazine, was mine, intimately mine, mine for e\er\ dav of the fifteen \ears I spent in the camps." Another woman: "I wept and can weep now but at the time there were no tears." And a laughed. ... man: "Although I w ept as read it, at last felt myself to be an equal citizen with all the rest, whereas up to now I felt only hostile looks reminding me of Pechora and Norilsk."* And another: "For me and others like me \-our stor\' was the last hope that justice still exists somew here, that it has not vanished or died out." And another: "At last the chill of estrangement is beginning to melt. We too, all of us, are being given some human svmpathw" Even more striking were readers' responses to the author himself: "I kiss your golden hands"; "Thank you for your truthfulness"; "Let me bow to the ground before you, dear friend"; "Thank goodness that you exist look I

,

I

I

.

after yourself. \

our existence

is

"We

our happiness";

we

love \ou,

.

.

believe

you, we wish you health and strength, thank you"; "Please accept our love and gratitude, beloved w riter, great writer"; "Thank \()U for \-our love and courage".

And,

at greater length:

Thank xou, dear

friend, cf)mrade

and brother! Thank vou

achievement, thank vou from the bottom of

mv

heart.

I

for vour tremendous would give vou any-

remembered Sivava Alaska and X'orkuta'J' w ept as read thev were all familiar characters, as if from mv ow n brigade. Thank vou once more! Please carry on in the same spirit w rite, w rite. Keep \\ ell, dear thing, anything. Reading your story .

.

.

I

the frosts and blizzards, the insults and humiliations. ...

I

I

.

—

friend.

Vou have

nothing can w ipe

already it

left

vour name

.

in the history

.

.

.

.

of Soviet literature, and

awaw'"

—

Perhaps all this does reflect the "Russian soul" in its emotional fulsomeness and hyperbolic expression. But it also reflects the spiritual w asteland that was Soviet literature before the appearance of Ivan Denisoi'icb, and the

enormous sense of

spiritual

and psychological

relief

induced bv reading

Solzhenitsyn's story (and reinforced by "Alatryona's Place"). In these cir-

cumstances the debate about Ivan Denisovicb took on a significance that had never attended the discussion of any work of Russian literature before, either before or since the Revolution. It w as indeed a literary struggle and a political struggle, but it was also a struggle for the hearts and souls of the Russian people.

Solzhenitsyn was inundated with such letters, which had kept coming throughout 1963 and v\hich now increased again as a result of the debate over the Lenin Prize. One consequence of his conscientious reading of them

was the unpleasant discovery

that although the

Gulag Archipelago no longer

*T\\)urt's

proachable and that

ment

issued

ruling."

The secretary took the document and read out the ing a

summary

full

contents, includ-

of Solzhenitsyn's military record, details of the charges against

him, and the Military Tribunal's judgement that there had been no case to answer and therefore no crime. Pavlov rose to his feet: "1 am defeated. I offer my apologies." But the damage had been done the prize had gone elsewhere. The slander had also proved extraordinarily effective, a fact that \\ as noted in the appropriate places and stored away for future reference.

—

28

NOT ANOTHER PASTERNAK SOLZHENiTSYN

ACCEPTED THE Lenin Prizc committee's decision philo\\ as aw are of the prize's s\'mboHc importance and the boost his victory would have given not onh to himself but also to the liberal cause as a \\ hole. In his memoir he suggests he was in two minds about it. "\\ innintj the prize would have had its advantages: it would have consolidated mv position. But there were more disadvantages. An 'established position' carried obligations to be lo\al and grateful."' Yet his presence in Moscow during the judging and his meeting with Ivardoxskv indicate that he w as keener on w inning than he would later care to admit. Certainb', the defeat of his book, and with it of T\ardovskv and Sovy Mir, did nothing to improve his chances of further publication. To get something published w as now Solzhenitsvn's chief preoccupation, and throughout the spring and earh' summer of 1964 he carried out a thorough revision of fhe First Circle to make it more palatable to the authorities. In its original form the novel had stuck with extraordinar\' hdelitv to the facts of Solzhenitsvn's imprisonment in the shcinisbka and the work he had been engaged on there, although it had telescoped events from his three years at Marfino into just over three days. The central narrative thread of the novel was the Soviet diplomat's telephone call to the American embassy to warn it of the espionage rendezvous in New York. Solzhenitsvn had begun the novel with this and then had sw itched to the sharashka (called Mavrino in the book), to the team of prisoner scientists working on voice prints and their remorsesophicalh', although he

.

.

.

—

less

search for the identity of the erring diplomat (called Innokcnti Volodin).

The

leading members of the team w ere Lev Rubin (modelled on Kopelev), Gleb Nerzhin (based on Solzhenits\n himself), and, slightly to one side,

496

Not Anothf.r Pastkrnak Dimitri Sologdin, for

I

497

I

horn the protot\ pc had been Panin. \ Olodin was in

\\

of the novel v\as shown entering Lubvanka and enduring all its humiliating reception procedures as a prelude to interrogation. The novel ended w ith the refusal of Nerzhin to continue working at the sharashka and his departure for an unknow n destination

due course

arrested,

and

in the closing chapters

the

in

the general camps.

.\round this bare framework Solzhenitsvn had constructed a noble and comprehensive narrative encompassing almost the whole of Soviet society. At its centre, and described in the greatest detail, were the imprisoned scientists, a company of volatile, highlx intelligent, and articulate intellectuals who, in their working hours, carried out the scientific tasks assigned to them (creating a walkie-talkie radio, a scrambler telephone,

but who,

in their free time, passionately

and

voice decoder)

a

debated major issues of philosophx',

politics, and moralit\ and above all the rights and w rongs of Soviet history. Iheir debate was gi\en added poignance b\ the fact that the\ were all the innocent victims of that history, and it w as broadened b\' the illustrations ,

way that history was w orking itself out in other At the lower extreme of this iinhers conceritrationnaire were the regular hard-labour camps (of the type that Ivan Denisovich inhabited, and worse). 1 hese were largely off-stage in The First Circle, though it was made clear that all the privileged scientists in the sharashka had come Solzhenitsvn offered of the

areas of Soviet society.

from that nether world and constantly risked being sent back there if the\' should slip or step out of line. It was the upper layers that concerned Solzhenitsvn now, the first circle of hell (where the scientists were) and above. In addition to the lives of the prisoners, he was able to depict those of their guards and bosses, the M\'D and personnel and the military scientists

MGB

in

charge of the prison institute

—notably Adam Roitman (based on Major

1 rachtman) and Anton Yakono\- (based on

(Colonel X'asiliev).

Solzhenitsvn was able to make connections w

ith

Through them,

the higher reaches of the

Soviet security services, the Party, and the government, the minister of state security, Victor

Ihrough some

ot the free

workers

up to and including Abakumov, and even Stalin himself.

at

the sharashka, Solzhenitsvn was also

able to trace paths to the Soviet intelligentsia and ultimately to the erring

diplomat, Volodin, and his famih', so that almost the whole of Soviet society

was connected by the for the

w hole net

In this tic

it

was

sufficient for

to be set sw a\'ing.

way Solzhenitsvn achieved

form akin

and porone strand to be jerked

silken threads of Solzhenitsvn's narrative

trayed as a single v\eb, in which

to that of

A Day

in

The First Circle

in the Life of

a

perfection of artis-

Ivan Denisovich, endow ing the

w hole of Soviet society, including the inmates of bound together in an indissoluble symbiosis, in which the society of the camps w as but a microcosm of life outside. But in The First Circle he had achieved it with infinitely more richness and diversity, and made explicit what was only implicit in Ivan Denisovich nameh", that in the

reader with a sense that the the camps, was

—

oppressive anthill of the contemporary So\iet Union, those

in the

labour

SOLZHENITSYN

[498]

camps were

freer than those allegedlv

calh', the land of

Gulag

\\

as the

and formally

only place where

a

"at liberty." Paradoxi-

Soyiet citizen had nothing

further to fear.

The principal illustration and expression of this freedom in the noyel were the debates between the prisoners, notably between Nerzhin, Rubin, and Sologdin, though many more prisoners \\ ere draw n into the discussions in the course of the narratiye. The two sides of the central issue were personRubin, the Leninist, rejecting Stalin but still ified by Rubin and Sologdin clinging to the socialist ideals of the Reyolution; and Sologdin, the Christian and militant anti-(>ommunist, asserting the prior claims of morality and personal faith. Nerzhin \yas shown as oscillating between the two (rather as Solzhenitsyn had done between Kopeley and Panin in real life), but gradually moying closer to Sologdin as his faith in Marxism and the justice of the Soyiet system was eroded. At the centre of Solzhenits\'n's fictional uniyerse were

—

moral it\' and the claims of conscience; and the "message" of insofar as

it

could be reduced to a formula, was that

man

this crucial debate,

should "belieye his

eyes and not his ears," should listen to his moral instinct and his conscience

and behaye accordingly. It \yas in line with this precept that Nerzhin vyas shovyn, at the end of the noyel, yoluntarily abandoning the sharashka, where he was inyohed in helping an immoral goyernment and embracing the dangers of banishment to Siberia. There were numerous sub-plots in the noyel. One concerned Nerzhin's relationship w ith his vyife Nadia (modelled on Natalia), who was studying at Moscow Uniyersity and dared not reyeal that she w as married or where her husband w as Hying. Another told the story of Nerzhin's innocent romance lieutenant at the sharashka called Simochka, w hile still others with an described relationships between the prisoners and their wiyes, or between prisoners and some of the \yomen who worked in the institute. Innokenti Volodin's family relationships occupied a significant place in the narratiye, and in one part of the noyel, Solzhenitsyn entered into Stalin's mind and attempted to offer a psychological portrait of the tyrant from inside. The noyel was also filled w ith stories and anecdotes, including a spoof reworking of the medieyal Russian epic The Lay of the Host of Igor, in the form of a Soyiet-type trial of Prince Igor for treason, and a satirical account of a mythical yisit to Butyrki Prison by Mrs Rooseyelt, for w hich some show cells are prepared and the prisoners issued w ith special clothing and luxuries tor the

MGB

"^

duration of her

yisit.

The problem

that Solzhenits\ n faced in his reyision

the noyel less controyersial politically and

One

vyay

was

more

to cut certain chapters altogether

a satirical analysis of dialectical materialism,

(called

w

how

as

to

make

acceptable to the censorship.

—

for instance,

one on Lenin,

one about the need

for resistance

"The Word Will Smash Concrete")! and two shovying

Innokenti's

centurv, the Lay is the onh Russian work of medieval times to known to e\er\' Russian schoolchild. tThis chapter was renamed "On the Back Stairs" w hen the novel was restored to its full length

*

Probably written

have become

in the twelfth

a classic

of ninetv-six chapters.

and

is

Not Another Pasternak gradual conversion from Soviet orthodoxy to

Elsewhere he cut scenes and

distrust.

lines

[499]

a position

of scepticism and

and dropped some of

his sharper

statements.

1

his

still left

many

things requiring change, and of these the most fun-

damental concerned the nature of Innokenti X'olodin's telephone

call at

the

beginning of the book. In his original version, Solzhenitsvn had stuck to the

was obvious that this \ersion could its morbid sensitivity towards all things military and connected with security, the Soviet censorship would never have permitted it. Indeed, he would have courted arrest by submitting it for publication in the first place. Solzhenitsvn therefore changed the subject of the conversation to a warning to a w ell-know n Soviet doctor not to hand over some medicine to a Western colleague on his next trip abroad, since the gift would be used against him and he could be arrested.* From the point of view of the plot, the substitution was very neat and true stor\" of the atomic secrets, but

never be printed

allowed the novel to preserve respects

it

the Soviet Union. With

in

were rather

consequences

in other

far-reaching. In terms of the moral debate about

w hether

its

original shape, but

its

or not the prisoners should agree to help the government, effect: the

handing over of medicine

to a foreign doctor

it had a tri\ ializing and the betra\al of

the dangers involved to the Soviet doctor concerned could hardly be

pared w

ith

trading in atomic secrets and with the betra\al of

a

com-

Soviet agent

The truth was infiniteh' more dramatic than the ficand Solzhenitsyn has several times lamented the necessity of making the change. Yet in some respects the change was for the better. In the question of espionage and the acquisition of militar\- secrets, the beha\ iour of the Soviet government w as not essentialh' at variance w ith the practice of other governments. It is far less easy to condemn such behaviour as embassy.

to a foreign

tional substitute,

morally reprehensible than

hounds and persecutes for

its

it is

to despise the actions of a

citizens simply for contacts

w

government

ith foreigners

humanitarian purposes, such as the sharing of medicine. Both

that

—even

t\

pes of

were going on, and both involved the active participation of the securit\" services, but the medical theme show s clearer evidence of moral baseness than espionage does. Furthermore, although Solzhenits\n and man\- dissidents were eventualh' to reach a point w here the\- would w hole-heartedl\oppose and condemn the acquisition b\- the Soviet state of anv more pow erful w eapons whatever, there were few Soviet citizens if anv not already activity

—

behind bars,

who

could have reached that conclusion

—

b\-

1949,

when

the

Even in 1964, most people would still have pureh fictional terms, therefore, the new (fic-

action of the no\el takes place.

been equivocal about tional)

it.

In

motivation w orked better than the old (true) one.

The

relationship

between

tant in another respect.

The

real life

and fantasy

no\el was, after

all,

in the no\ el

based on

real

w

as

impor-

people

in a

Man\' of the characters' prototypes knew of Solzheof them, and some, like Kopelev, Panin, and Sem\onov,

real place at a real time.

nitsyn's fictionalization * Solzhenitsvn

had the background of the "doctors' plot"

of the telephone

call.

in

mind w hen he

altered the character

SOLZHENITSYN

[500]

had helped Solzhenitsvn with some ot the scenes. Most approved of what he had done or simply shrugged their shoulders and gave him carte blanche, but what would Kopelev make of his fictional double's new motivation? It was perfectly plausible, and in the circumstances of the labour camps the prisoners would have had very little choice anyway. The fictional Lev Rubin (whatever Kopelev in real life might have done) would have had little difficulty in rationalizing

Party, after fiction. It

all,

away any

ethical objections that sprang to

mind.

The

And

fiction

was

could never be that wrong.

w as understood

that novels

had

to

obey

in

their

any case,

own

laws and couldn't

be tied too tighth' to the real-life events that inspired them. Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn felt constrained to show a copy of the version to Kopelev, it

and

a further

of objections,

who w ith

day discussing

w hich Kopelev

his wife, Raisa Orlova, spent it

with Solzhenitsyn.

later

summarized

new

two days reading

They both had

a

number

in a long letter to Solzheni-

s on the novel as a whole. "Muster your patience," and then may heaven guide you." The most interesting point in the letter seems to have been Kopelev's division of the novel into two layers: what Solzhenitsyn had seen and depicted from nature and what he had imagined (i.e., life in the sharashka and life outside). According to Kopelev, the scenes in which Solzhenitsyn had written out of his own experience were immeasurably stronger than the rest, and this led to an "inner duality" in the novel, weakening its total impact, for he found it difficult to believe in "those homunculi w ho perforce are conceived in new spapcr and

tsyn, setting out his view

he wrote, "read

it,

archival test-tubes.

The

"-

mind appear

scenes Kopelev had in

to have

been those describing

Soviet "high society" and the intelligentsia. Kopelev had a right to criticize

because he knew them

than Solzhenits\n (indeed was

far better

a

member

of

them) and understood how they worked. While he may have taken umbrage at the fact that

Solzhenitsyn had

caricatured them,

it

was

made fun

also true that

of the xVIoscow intellectuals and

some of Solzhenitsyn's

simplifications

sprang from ignorance of his subject matter. Another irritating feature ot Solzhenitsyn's novel, from Kopelev's point of view

with which he pronounced his xerdict on these

was the self-confidence

,

circles, leading

imbued w

protest in his letter that Solzhenitsyn appeared to be

ous certainty that he held felt

that Solzhenitsyn

"all

Kopelev to

ith a

danger-

the truths in the hollow of his hand." Kopelev

had strayed out of

his

depth and that certain parts of

the book had suffered as a result.

Kopelev's criticism holds additional interest in that

it

offers a kind of

commentar\' on the book's central motif of believing one's eyes and not one's ears. On one level Solzhenitsvn persuades the reader that he should believe the misery, poverty, and corruption he sees all around him and not fine words and promises about the radiant future that lies just around the corner. In the book it was Rubin, Kopelev's fictional double, who w as most subject to this roseate delusion,

Kopelev's tsyn's

and Rubin's character more or now Kopelev was in

at that period. \ et

own maxim

less

a

faithfully reflected

way

turning Solzheni-

against him. In attempting to describe people and aspects

Not Another Pasternak

[501]

of societ\' that he did not know and had not seen, said kopelev, Solzhenitsxn

was being

false to the truth,

and

in these

passages his narrative lacked \eri-

similitude.

Kopelex's reproach w as to become zhenitsvn's fiction in later \ears and

made (though

there had been

Much

commonplace of

criticism of Sol-

recorded instance of

murmurs about

his portraxal of the

intellectual Isezar Ahirkox ich in .4 earlier).

a

first

is

Day

the

in the Life of Ivan Denisovicb

its

being

Moscow someu hat

debate has taken place over the perceived disparit\' in Solzhe-

works between the autobiographicallv grounded passages and those were entireh' imagined. Solzhenits\n acknow ledged the gravit\- of the charge in his letter ot replv and rejected it as too sweeping. "It is not for me to judge," he w rote, "but I would be a dead duck if I were to believe that cannot w rite out ot my imagination, for one cannot see evervthing for oneself." He was also able to point out that Kopelev had underestimated Ivan have been an oaf if Denisovich and "Matrxona's Place": "Wouldn't had listened to vour advice on both occasions? Therefore \ou cannot ask me to accept vour tastes without convincing proof."' It was a good point but did not necessarilv invalidate Kopelev's criticism on this occasion. 1 he success ot Ivan Denisovich and the short stories (w ith the exception of "For the Good of the Cause") was undoubtedly due to their having been nitsxn's

that

I

I

firmh' rooted in autobiographical

I

manv

realit\', just as

of the best scenes in

The First Circle deri\ed their power from the same source. But there were

manv

striking scenes, characters,

and episodes w

ith

no autobiographical

basis,

and not even the scenes depicting Stalin, later to be much criticized, w ere as weak as some ha\e alleged.* It is true, howe\er, that Solzhenits\n did seem to

need

a firm

autobiographical substratum from

take off and that his

remained

in close

own

touch w

it

—or could draw on w hen the other characters — w tended and

ith that

author projected himself into

become

hich his imagination could

\\

particular brand of realism flourished so long as

substratum

it

l)ut

to

ither

w hen too far removed from personal experience. It would appear from Reshetovska\ a's account of this exchange that Kopelev also commented unfavourably on the interrogation chapters, but how exactly is unclear. Admitting that others had made a similar criticism, Solzhenitsvn promised to give the matter some thought and also said he w ould do everything in his power, w ithin the limits posed by the form of the novel, to mitigate the negative effects on the character of Rubin of the change of artificial

plot.

Three years *.According to

w hen the novel w as

later,

one source,

circulating in samizdat, Solzhe-

\'ictor Ilvin, then secretary of the

Moscow branch

of the Writers'

KGB), once asked Solzhenitsvn, atter reading The First Circle, uhether Solzhenitsvn had ever met the former minister for state security X'ictor Abakumov, for the portrait of him in the novel was "very, very accurate." It appears that Union (and reputed

to

be

Solzhenitsvn had gathered

a

a lot

responsible for interrogating

connection w

Heutenant-general in the

of information from the prosecutor D. Terekhov,

Abakumov

ith the "doctors' plot"). Incidentallv,

stov in terms similar to those used by the critics of Solzhenitsyn, saying that error to introduce the figure of

Napoleon

who was

(Abakumov had been arrested in Chekhov, among others, had criticized Fol-

after Stalin's death

into

War and Peace.

it

had been

a

major

SOLZHENITSYN

[502]

nitsvn sent Kopelev a letter in

\\

hich he referred to these earlier discussions

"As you know," he wrote, "there were weighty reasons why I couldn't give an accurate description of what actually happened. At the same time I was determined to preserve the central theme: that an excellent man with ideal convictions needs no practical criteria of good and evil, since he is sufficiently guided by his convictions." He had been in a hurry at the time, he wrote, and that w as w hy he had picked up the typical theme (for the period described) of "giving away medical secrets." But he had not foreseen \\ hat unpleasant consequences there would be for Kopelev, when read"I must say I had never expected such a ers took the novel too literall\ primiti\e approach from literary men. To think that the literary public, which has more experience than most of the relationship between a prototype and invention, should insist so obstinately on confusing a prototype with a fictional character, and a plot with the true course of events. I hope, nevertheless, that this refers only to a tiny minority and that it won't be generally read that way." Solzhenitsyn wrote that he had had similar discussions with other prototypes in the novel but that it was less of a problem for them, since they were not known in the literary world. Kopelev should regard this as a "letter of rehabilitation" and show it to anyone who, after reading the novel, might refuse to shake his hand."^ about the

plot.

.

Not

everything, in

had been plain

fact,

sailing

with the other proto-

types. Sologdin in the novel allow ed his decoding device to be burnt, just as

Panin had done

w

ith

in real life,

but

w hereas Panin had

also refused to co-operate

the authorities, had gone off to Elkibastuz rather than co-operate (and

had played no small fictional

role in

persuading Solzhenitsyn to do the same), the

Sologdin destroyed the design only as

a tactical

the details in his head in order to bargain with Colonel

measure and kept

Yakonov

Moreover, Sologdin stayed in the sharasbkci, leaving Nerzhin whereas Panin had done the opposite. There

is

no evidence that Panin w

his biograph\- at the time.

On

as

unduly upset by

to

for a reward.

go off alone,

this alteration in

the contrary, he took an active part in helping

Solzhenitsyn modify his fictional double in order to make him more accept-

more outspoken and more was possible to admit even fifteen years later. Panin w illinglv helped Solzhenitsyn invent new dialogue and new arguments to put into Sologdin's mouth, and he seems to have been flattered to be asked to do so. But he w as also guided, it appears, by a certain vanity, w hich manifested itself in a desire to see himself portrayed in a flattering light. And in later years, when he came to write his own memoirs, he expressed the hope that in revising The First Circle vet again, w hich he knew Solzhenits\n to be doing, Solzhenitsyn would bring his fictional counterpart closer to reality. "I hope that w hen it is published, Sologdin w ill be rehabilitated by the author and transformed from a lady's man and a careerist into something more worthy of, and nearer to, his living prototxpe.'"" At last the revision was finished. The novel was reduced from ninetyable to the censors, for the real-life Panin had been

openly anti-Communist

in

1949 than

it

Not Another Pasternak cightv-scvcn chapters

six to

w

(this

as the \crsion that

world and be translated into foreign languages), and

was softened. What remained was

material

dards, with tutes,

its

still

of Stalin. Vet there w as

With

a

small chance that

it

first

had

at

round the

politicalK' sensitixe

controversial by Soxiet stan-

its

daringh" hostile depiction

would jump the hurdles stand-

it.

his usual

thoroughness and his

person to see

it

"ofhciallx"

once perceived the

literarx-

for planning, Solzhenitsyn set

flair

about preparing the ground. For some time the

as to traxel

its

between prisoners and guards,

vivid account of the hostile relations

ing in front ot

w

detailed description of one of the hitherto-secret prison insti-

its

bleak picture of Soviet societx at large, and

its

l5ircumstanees t\ung

and circumstances had kept them apart, and

And

in the

mother had not been just an adjunct appeared to him she x\ as a w orld in herself."* his

them

end parted them

to his father, as she

together, for

good.

had alx\ays

—

1

his appears to

Solzhenitsyn xxas

been on one of

be

first

directlx'

shown

autobiographical, though

his

mother's

letters

his early visits to Georgievsk, for

in the version of 7'be First Circle that

w as shoxxn

Solzhenitsyn goes on to describe batches of

it is

not clear xxhen

and diaries. It must have the above passage appears

to Ivarciovskx'. letters tied

up

x\

ith

coloured

ribbon, bundles of theatre programmes, old newspapers, photographs, note-

books, magazines,

all

miliar to Innokenti

of them breathing an atmosphere that was totallx unfaand that he had formerly disdained. In his mother's

handxvriting he finds reminiscences of her xxent straight to his heart, of a xxhite

mother,

as

ried a\x ay,

an enthusiastic teen-age all

girl,

life as a

student.

June night xxent

x\

in

"One

description

Petersburg xxhen his

ith a croxx

ti,

all

equally car-

Moscow Art Theatre troupe at comments, "A breath of that jov

crying for jov, as thev met the

And Solzhenitsyn He knexx of no such theatre company

Petersburg Station."

touched Innokenti.

today, and

if

there

SOLZHENITSYN

[520]

w

—

he could think of no one staving up

all night to meet it except tor Department with bouquets ordered on expenses. Certainlv no one would weep for jov on such an occasion."' The key element in this passage is Innokenti's discovers of his mother's jottings on "ethical considerations," in w hich she praises such old-fashioned concepts as compassion and tolerance, and he is particularlv struck bv one formulation: "\\ hat is the most precious thing in the world? It seems to be

as one,

representatives ot the Cultural

the consciousness of not participating in injustice. Injustice

you

are,

always was and

it

alwaxs will be, but

it

let it

stronger than

is

not be committed

through you." There are similar passages on "Truth, Goodness, and Beautv" w ith capital letters), and Innokenti realizes that "six vears ago, he w ould not have noticed" these passages.

(all

At the end of

it all,

he comes to another realization (omitted from the

version show n to Tvardovskv).

These vellow ing pages confronted him w

ith

the abounding varietv of conflicting

currents and ideas, the imaginative freedom and anxious forchotiing that w as the

Russia of the 191{)s

been taught

—the

in school

pre-revolutionarv decade, which Innokenti had

last

and college

to regard as the

most rotten and shameful

the entire historv of Russia, so pitiful that had the Bolsheviks not extended

helping hand, Russia would simpl\- have crumbled from within and collapsed

in a

in

ruins.

Yes,

it

had been

a

part too helpless. But

much w

Innokenti realized that up

The

too garrulous decade, in part too self-confident, in

hat a crop of

fresh idea that he

till

now had of

idea of pre-revolutionary Russia. idea that riage,

new

makes perfect sense

in

And

risen

his

what

a sprouting of ideas!

robbed.''

mother was inseparable from

his

Solzhenitsvn links this with another

terms of the novel and of Innokenti's mar-

but that also contains more than

had prevailed:

shoots,

now he had been

a grain

of autobiographv: "His mother

from the grave, she took her son aw

a\

from her daugh-

ter-in-law."

From father

this part of the past,

Zakhar and

tsvn paid a

it

was but

his familv. In 1964,

visit to his

a short step farther

during

back to Grand-

a trip to the south,

Solzheni-

grandfather's old estate near Armavir. Zakhar's

man-

and neglected but still sturdy, was now occupied h\ a collective farm. Solzhenitsvn had no difficultv in entering and w alking around and w as quickh- able to identifv the former dining- and draw ing-rooms, the various bedrooms, and other parts that he had heard described or seen in photographs. Afterw ards he prow led the gardens and was impressed to see that Zakhar's original lavout had remained more or less unchanged, with its orchard, avenues of poplar and plane trees, kitchen garden, rose garden, and so on. Evervthing was overgrown and terribh' neglected now but the principal features had proved surprisinglv durable. Solzhenitsvn hung around for the best part of a day, taking notes and writing down his impressions. He would dearh' have liked to question some sion, dilapidated

,

K.NTER THK K( B i

of the old

men

know n /akhar

much

lie

antl

I

Manx

saw working on the farm.

eould doubtless ha\e given him

5 ^

'

I

them would ha\e

ot

\ i\ itl

descriptions and

\alual)le information. But he dared not, for fear ot re\ealing his iden-

The shade of his grandfather did, however, materialize at one point his w anderings. W hile contemplating the empty reservoir, which had once su})[)lied the house and gardens w ith piped w ater and w hich he remembered ha\ ing seen brim full in some photographs, he caught sight of a pair of small l)o\s pla\ ing nearl)\ "\\'h\ is the reservoir dry?" he asked. Ihey told him that "old Shcherbak had put a spell on it." Sol/.henitsyn asked them w ho Shcherbak w as, and the bo\s explained that he had once owned the place but that w hen it w as expropriated during the Revolution, he had put a curse on it, so that the w ater wouldn't flow any more.** For more information about Shcherbak and his life, Solzhenitsyn had to turn to .\unt Irina in (Jeorgievsk, whose earlier tales he remembered from his childhood. lie asked her to write her memoirs for him, since she was virtualK the tmh one ali\e who could remember it all. Aunt Maria, his mother's tity.

during

.

sister,

might

Irina's

education and intelligence.

also ha\e l)een able to provide

Nor

some information, but she lacked

did she hold the same fascination for

SolzhenitSN n that Irina did, for he was as anxious to hear about her

life as

he

was about Shcherbak's. Sol/.henitsvn's reunion

w

ith

w

ith his

aunt and the relationship he established

her also appear to ha\e been fictionalized in the

version of The First

full,

ninet\ -six-chapter

where Innokenti, after scrutinizing his mother's an impulse to call on an elderly uncle and learn still

('/uxle,

suddenb feels more about the past. He

papers,

finds his uncle living in a crooked

little

wooden

between the w alls of houses, so that no trees or gardens are to be seen. The door, w ith fretted panels, leans at a crazv angle and Innokenti is unable to obtain any ho\el, one store\- high, in a cobbled street that runs directly

answer to his knocks or to gain entrance through a tiny gate leading into the yard. The street seems emptv, until he catches sight of an old man approaching slowh', carrx'ing two full buckets of w ater. The old man is skinn\-, has one shoulder higher than the other, and is concentrating so hard on his task that he pa\s no attention to Innokenti. The latter, however, recognizes the

man

as his uncle and thev embrace. The uncle ushers Innokenti into the entrance passage of his tiny house and hrmh' bolts the door. Innokenti finds himself in an interior like none he

old

has ever seen before.

The short passage had betw een the rooms, ing,

a

low

ceiling, a

two cupboards, and two

gate,

w

ith

all

microscopic w indow looking out onto the

regular doors.

the doors

w

ere askew

old-fashioned patterned carving.

the air inside

w as heavv and

stale, for

the

.

it

.

.

some

To go

obliged to bend your head and also to keep the ceiling. There were three tinv rooms,

,

And lined

in all the

w

ith felt,

rooms, and others fold-

through any of them, you were

clear of the

lamps hanging from

w ith w indow s facing the street, and double w indow s had been stuffed w ith all

cotton wool, tinv glasses, and coloured paper, so that only the ventilation panes

SOLZHENITSYN

[522]

could be opened, but even these had strips of shredded nev\ spaper hanging in

them: their constant trembhng

in the

draught frightened the

flies

Innokenti's sense of the grinding poverty of his uncle

the uncle's clothing: his shirt

is

unmentionable, his jacket

is

aw

ay.*^

reinforced

by

in rags, his trousers

held together only by patches, his boots a cobbler's nightmare. Innokenti

is

He

had come with the idea of staying the night, but his impulse now is to leave as quickly as possible. Gradually, however, as his uncle lovingly shows him round the house and small court-yard garden, Innokenti w arms to his uncle's dignified acceptance of his lot, to his sharp intelligence, and to his sly humour. For his uncle is not oblivious to his poverty; he comments wittily on it and can see himself from the outside. More importantly, he proves to be a perceptive critic of the life he observes around him, and as their intimacy grows, Innokenti learns of his uncle's actixe hostility towards Ixnin and Stalin and his conviction that Soviet power is both alien and illegitimate. He has remained faithful, in other words, to the beliefs and values he held before the Revolution. Throughout this chapter the fictional demands of the narrative have to be met, and it would be excessive to identify the characters of Innokenti and his uncle w ith those of Solzhenitsyn and his aunt in every detail. Ihat the physical appearances and living conditions of the fictional uncle and real aunt do more or less coincide, how ever, was later confirmed by a photograph of Irina at her gate that appeared in Stem magazine in 1974, and there are reasonable grounds for believing that the psychological understanding between uncle and nephew reproduces fairly accurately that which grew up between the real-life nephew and his aunt. There remained the figure of Solzhenitsyn's father, about w hom least of all was known. Again we find echoes in the life of Innokenti. 'innokenti didn't remember his father but those around him never tired of telling the son about him. Innokenti was used to feeling very proud of him.""' There was little Solzhenitsyn could do to fill the void, however. He remembered his mother's stories, but there was hardly anyone alive w ho had known his father. Solzhenitsyn would have to re-create him, and R-17 would be in depressed and repelled.

.

.

.

.

.

.

part the realization of this aim.

The peace and quiet of Rozhdestvo was a godsend. He could write all day and every day if he w anted, and yet he was w ithin an hour and a half of Moscow if he needed to go there. And in the summer of 1965 he went there quite often, sleeping at the Steins if the need arose to stay on. In August he and Natalia went to central Russia on a camping holiday, on w hich they were joined by Dr Zubov, who had come up from the Crimea specially for the occasion.

They

gathered

in the Steins' flat to

make

the final preparations,

and on the evening before their departure the leushes dropped in for a drink and a chat, accompanied by two young friends of theirs: Ilya Zilberberg, an engineer and anthroposophist disciple of I eush's, and his w ife, Ellya. i he appearance of comparative strangers in the flat on social occasions was com-

—

'

P^

mon enough

in

N T F. R

to

K( B

K

i

I

those davs. Solzhenitsx n was such

matic figure that people were eager

enough

H

1

know someone

a

5 - 3

I

mysterious and enig-

him, and those luck\themseKes ot the chance. presence in good part, and con\ersa-

just to take a look at

in his circle otten a\ ailed

Sol/henitsyn seems to ha\e taken their

w hether there could he a return to the The general opinion was that there couldn't. Despite some ominous signs since Khrushchev's departure, it w as felt that liberalization had gone too tar, and authorities like Nadezhda Mandelstam were quoted as believing in the impossibility of a tion re\()l\ed aroiuid the cjucstion of

past (meaning a return to Stalinism) in Soviet society.

reversal.

On

another topic, Solzhenits\ n

nineteenth-centurv thinker

(-]uoted the case ot

who had encoded

his

(>haadaye\

."^

the

manuscripts and hidden

them sheet bv sheet in different books in his library. Only in Soviet times, one hundred years later, had the\- been discovered and decoded, and they had been prepared for publication, but publication had then been banned because of the manuscripts' "reactionarx content." This curious incident had obviously made an impression on Solzhenitsyn and he later cited it in the opening pages of The Oak and the Calf. The evening broke up relatively early because the Solzhenitsyns w anted prepare for their departure the follow ing da\-. It w as then that Solzhenito '

tsyn seems to have

shown some curiosity about the tw o strangers in their remembered seeing Solzhenitsyn and Teush con-

midst. Ilva Zilberberg later

deduced that by Teush seems to

ferring in a corner and looking in his direction, from w hich he

he was the subject of their

discussion.

have been satisfactory, however, for Zilberberg to help

him

fit

a

Whatever was

said

few minutes later Solzhenitsyn in\ ited

the roof-rack onto his

little

Moskvich, and they

chatted about motoring matters before amicably parting.'It is not know n w here the Solzhenitsyns spent their camping holida\" it

may have been

in the

Tambov

region,

w hich Solzhenitsyn w

as

studying

for the purposes of The Gulag Archipelago and his proposed noxel about the

Revolution. But w hile they were awa\-, there were some ominous developments in the political world. An important ideological conference took place to discuss Party policy.

According

to Solzhenitsyn,

it

was dominated by

KGB, who

in

new Party-state control committee

to

Alexander ("Iron Shurik") Shelepin, a former chairman of the 1963 had been appointed chief of

a

enforce ideological orthodoxy. Shelepin role in

the overthrow of Khrushchev

and

have retained close links w

to

is

thought to ha\e played

a

major

had appointed him) through the appointment of

(althcKigh the latter

ith the

KGB

his friend Vladimir Semichastny as his successor. At all events, his promotion to full membership in the Presidium in 1964 had been w idely regarded as a reward for his and the KGB's services during the coup. At the August conference Shelepin is said to have been a leading advo-

who underwent a conversion to mystical Christianwere harshly critical of Russian history and Russian society. When the first letter was published, in 1836, Chaadayev was declared insane and placed under medical supervision. Most of his writings were not published in his lifetime.

*Piotr Chaadavev was a friend of Pushkin's it\-

and w hose

Philosophical Letters

SOLZHENITSYN

[524]

cate of closer ideological control. Coexistence with the

on

West should not

take

overtones or implv the "ideological disarmament" of the Soviet

pacifist

people, but should be accompanied bv a sharpening of the struggle in the

of ideas. De-Stalinization w as sapping the people's w

field

and

halted,

w as time

it

ill

and should be "enemies of

to resurrect Stalin's "useful"' concept of

seems, was paid to cultural matters. had been sound and should be revived.* Novy Mir should be investigated and prevented from giving so much comfort to the bourgeois enemv. There w ere even rumours that the KGB had called for the arrest of "a thousand intellectuals" as a precautionar\" measure, but this w as probablv a later reaction to the events that followed. Solzhenitsyn heard about these things upon his return from holidav. They reinforced the fears that had never been far from his mind since the fall of Khrushchev, and his first thought was for his novel with Novy Mir. Its chances of being published now seemed more remote than ever. Tvardovsky's enthusiasm remained high, but the position of the magazine w as too precarious for him to take any major risks at the moment, and he lacked the connections in high places that he had possessed under Khrushchev. Solzhenitsyn had heard on the grape-vine that he, Solzhenitsyn, had also been critthe people." Particular attention,

Zhdanov's 1946 decrees on

it

literature

icized at the ideological conference for "distorting the true picture of the

labour camps."

He

felt

exposed and vulnerable, especiallv because the pages

of The Gulag Archipelago were lying on his desk, and he decided that the safest

course would be to forget First Circle

On

ideas of publication for the

moment and

get The

6 September 1965 he went to see Tvardovskv at his dacha in Pakhra

to ask

w hether he could

and w

as in

made

his request,

an

take the novel awav. Tvardovskv had been drinking

frame of mind, so that when Solzhenitsvn 1 vardovsk\" on the raw and trigger off reproached Solzhenitsvn, not for the first time, for

irritable, obstinate

other resentments.

having

all

back from \ovy Mir.

it

seemed

He

to catch

in samizdat and thus reach the West. This was a particularly sore point w ith Tvardovskv, for that spring he had been summoned to see Polikarpov at the ideological section of the Central Committee, confronted with a copv of Grani, and asked to explain the stories' appearance there. In the eves of the authorities, the interest of an openh let his

miniature stories circulate

anti-Soviet journal in the v\'ork of an\ Soviet author

was

at best politically unreliable,

and

at

w as proof that

that author

worst activelv collaborating with the

Soviet Union's enemies. Tvardovsky had told Polikarpov that

it

was incon-

ceivable that Solzhenitsyn had had anything to do w ith their publication,

and that in any case "most of the stories" were not his w ork. But since then he had learned that the Soviet w omen's magazine Semya i shkola (Familv and School) had actually set them up in type and was planning to publish them, with Solzhenitsyn's active help and connivance. Such a step w as out of the

—presumablv Semya

question for works that had alreadx' appeared in the West

*See note

p. 403.

FNTF R

THK

K( B i

[

5 2 5

1

and Solzhcnitsyn was deceiving them on this point. Tvardovsky himself \\ ould be exposed as having lied to Polikarpov, and all this for stories that he genuine!) believed to be second-rate. Solzhenitsvn could at least have told him about the negotiations w ith Semya i shkola. "I put mv head on the block for \ ou, and what i

know

shkola didn't

But worse

still v\

this

as the prospect that

do vou do?"'' Tvardo\sk\ also had harsh words to sav ab(Hit Sol/.henits\n's beard. There w ere rumours, he said, that Solzhenitsvn had grow n it so that if he wanted to slip across the frontier, he could sha\c it off again and cross unrecognized.

Me

revealed that at a meeting he had attended in Novosibirsk a

w ritten question had been handed in asking w hether it w as true that Solzhenitsvn had once worked for the Ciestapo, and that Polikarpox had \irtuallv accused Solzhenitsvn of handing Grani his stories himselt.

Given Tvardovskv's aggrieved and petulant tone and the strained atmosphere of the meeting, these snippets of information emerged as accusations rather than as the warnings the\- were presumablv meant to be, and it was Solzhenitsvn's turn to take umbrage. He was not the sort of man to forgive a slight, and although the camps had succeeded in mellow ing him for a while, his attitude to those w ho w ere not close personal friends had not reall\- changed verv much. Tvardovskv's words hurt, and he carefullv noted them dow n for the book of memoirs he was planning to write (he had been taking notes since the day of his first editorial conference at Novy Mir, but it w as only recently that the idea had begun to form in his mind of putting them into a book). Apart from feeling resentful, he remembered the notorious recent confiscation b\' the KGB of X'asilv Grossman's novel Life and Fate^ and w as genuinely apprehensive that the same might happen to him. In explaining the matter to Tvardovskx', he bungled it, however, and instead of being honest told a schoolboy fib about

w ishing

to "correct the

grammar." Tvardovskv was incredulous, and even more so when Solzhenitsvn at last explained his true motive. There was nothing wrong with the Novy Mir safe, he said, and refused to let the novel go. Then he asked that just one of the four fair copies be left at Sovy Mir, which had, after all, signed a contract to publish it and paid Solzhenitsvn an advance. The book was rightfully theirs. But Solzhenitsvn w as adamant, and his iron w ill easily prevailed over Tvardovskv's. The follow ing dav he w ent to the Sovy Mir offices and removed all four copies in a suitcase brought specially for the purpose. He took the suitcase to the Teushes, who had just returned from their summer holidav, and left it there w ith three copies inside. A fourth w as delivered to the literarv critic Yuri Kariakin, at Pravda. For some reason, although he no longer trusted Tvardovsky or Novy Mir to keep his manuscript safe, Solzhcnitsyn still had faith in the ultra-orthodox Pravda and w as still hopeful that the newspaper's mildly liberal editor, Alexei Rumyantsev, w ould publish one or tw o chapters as he had promised. '"^

*See note

p. 412.

'

SOLZHENITSYN

[526]

With these

deliveries safely accomplished,

Solzhenitsvn returned to

Rozhdestvo in a much more relaxed state of mind. The date was 8 September. Four clavs later, on 12 September, X'eronica Stein arrixed in a state of great agitation, bearing two items of bad new s. 1 he preceding evening the KGB had raided the Teushes' flat and carried off all three copies of The First Circle. Three days prior to that, on the ver\- day Solzhenitss n had returned to Rozhdestvo, the KCiB had arrested the literar\' critic Andrei Sinyavsky, for smuggling stories to the \\ est. Solzhenitsxn w as petrified by this new s. According to Veronica, all the colour drained from his face, leaving it an ashen gre\', and he w as momentaril\' speechless." He thought at first that he must have walked into a trap, and he bitterly regretted having removed the novel from Novy Mir. Sureh' it gave as much cause for his arrest as the works Sinyavsky had sent to the West. What was the meaning of it all.^ As at the time of Khrushchev's overthrow his feelings were akin to panic. He w ondered w hether the police were looking for him, and whether perhaps thev had already been to his flat in Ryazan and searched it. Perhaps they w ere on his track at that \ er\' moment? It was late afternoon. Throwing all his manuscripts and some clothing into the car, he decided to set off for IvardovskN's. Despite the fact that they had only just quarrelled and that he had ignored Tvardovsky's ad\ice in removing the novel, he felt that Tvardovsky was the only person w ho could advise him. But before leaving he had the presence of mind to have his photograph taken, so that his miser\- might be registered for posterity.'*^* Solzhenitsvn dro\e to 7 vardovsky's by a circuitous route, so as to avoid entering Moscow He ran out of petrol about a mile short of his destination and had to w alk the last bit of the wa\', carrying a jerr\'can in his hand. T\ardovsky reacted to the new s of the novel's confiscation w ith admirable calm. Cione was the petulance and chagrin of the preceding week; in its place were sincere distress and a grave determination to sort the matter out. After prolonged thought he decided that the best course would be for him to approach Demichev the next morning. Then he changed his mind and suggested that Solzhenits\n w rite Demichev a letter. They sat down to draft it together, but disagreed over the wording. Solzhenitsxn w as for a strong protest and wanted to refer to the novel's "illegal" removal, but IvardoNsky was more cautious. Who knew w hat w as legal and illegal when the security service was involved? He insisted that the tone of the letter be kept mild and respectful. After yer\' little sleep that night, Solzhenitsvn dnne into Moscow where he w as greeted by new s of fresh calamities. Only the day before, a second w riter, the little-know n Yuli Daniel, had been arrested by the KGB. More to the point, it turned out that at the time w hen Ihe First Circle was confiscated, the KGB had also found and taken the archive that Solzhenitsvn had ,

.

,

deposited w

only

earl\-

ith

Teush

tv\o

and half \ears ago.

fhis archive contained not

versions of Ivan Denisovicb, "Matr\'ona's Place," Fhe Republic of

*The photograph

appears in Solzhenitsyn:

A

Pictorial Record, p. 60.

Enter THH KCiB

[527]

Labour, and so on, none of which was very important, but also copies ol his early camp verses and his verse play. Feast of the Conquerors, one of his most

very few intimates had ever seen the play, and he had never attempted to "lighten" it for publication. It was too inflammatory, too damning. And now it was in the hands Tif the KGB.'** "anti-Soviet" works.

It

over.

Only

looked to him as

if

a

his brief

but glorious literary career was already

—

30

THE TURNING-POINT THE

KGB RAID and the confiscation of

and archive constituted

his novel

the most serious blow to strike Solzhenitsvn since his cancer of twelve

years beforehand. According to his later assessment, he

felt

it

worse even

than his arrest eight vears before that.

The

catastrophe of September 1965 w as the greatest misfortune in

seven years. ¥or some months \\

ound

that

—

w ound

right

.

.

of

some

line or other

though

were

it

through the breast,

The

could not be pulled out.

it

memory pain.

a )a\ elin

felt as

I

from

\\

a real,

ith

mv

fortv-

the tip so firmlv lodged

slightest stirring within

mv impounded

all

unhealing phvsical

me

(perhaps the

archive) caused a stab of

.

Throughout this period I felt a constriction in mv chest. There was a sickening tug somewhere near my solar plexus, and I could not decide whether it was a spiritual sickness or a foreboding of some new grief. Ihere w as an unbearable burning sensation w ithin me. w as on tire, and nothing helped. Mv throat was always dry. I felt a tension that nothing would relax. You seek salvation in sleep (as you once did in prison): let me sleep and sleep and never get up again! Switch oft and dream untroubled dreams! But w ithin a few hours the shutter of the soul falls away and a red-hot drill whirls vou back to realitv. Everv dav vou must I

tind in yourself the will to put

one foot

in front

of the other, to study, to work,

and must do these things, although in reality vour mind wanders every five minutes: Whv bother, what does it matter now ? In your daily life you seem to be acting a part. You know that in realitv it's all gone pfft. It is as though the world's clock had stopped. Thoughts of suicide to pretend that the soul can

.

for the first time and,

How

I

hope, the

them again

in

volume

.

last.'

serious these thoughts of suicide

referred to

.

2

of

71x'

528

were

is

not certain. Solzhenitsvn

Gulag Archipelago, but from there

TUF

c(]uallv clear that the itica ot suicide

is

it

ts\n\s l)asicall\- sanguine in

TURNIN(;-P()INT

1965, he writes, "I

w oukl

circiniistances

ion that "a suicide

w ho has

is

1

[5-9]

was realK

t|uite

ahen to Sol/heni-

and optimistic tennx-ranient. Apart from

that period

was conxinced throughout m\- lite that never in anv contemplate suicitle," and he goes on to state his opin-

alw a\

game of

s a

bankrupt, alw a\s

man

a

in a cul-de-sac, a

man

and doesn't ha\e the will to continue the strugIn such circumstances it takes "more will-power to stav ali\e than to

gle."

lost

the

life

-

le.

\\ ill-power

had,

Sol/henits\ n certainix

according to his memoir,

l)Ut

intermittent feelings of hopelessness persisted tor about three months, during

which he

dail\'

for arrest

and

operate w

ith an\' in\ estigation

expected to be arrested, lie psvchologicalK' prepared himself long imprisonment.

a

He

decided that he would refuse to co-

and composed

a ringing declaration in

"Conscious ot m\' responsibilit\' to m\' predecessors

ad\ance:

in the great literature of

1 cannot recognize or accept the right of gendarmes to superx ise it. answ er no questions under interrogation or in court. This is m\ first and

Russia, will last

1

statement."'

One tsvn's ger,

ma\' easily believe that these were the worst months of Solzheni-

life,

and w

but

it

was not

in his nature to

ith his characteristic resilience

The most immediate

remain inactive

he took steps to

in the face

of dan-

a\ ert further disasters.

was presented bv his notes and unfinished drafts which he had taken to Moscow with him w hen Rozhdestvo. \\ ith the aid of some ex-prisoners who were helping risk

for The (iiihig Archipelago, hastily leaving

him gather information spot in the provinces.

and arranged

for the book, he transferred everything to a

He also completed

for the fourth

and delivered

copy of The

his letter to

Tirst Circle to

remote

Demichev

be retrieved from

Pravda and delivered to Novy Mir. Quite apart from the confiscation of the other three copies, there was now no hope that extracts would be published in the Soviet

whom eral

Union's leading daily. Rumvantsev, the mildly

liberal editor

on

Solzhenitsyn had pinned his hopes, was dismissed as part of the gen-

upheaval, and his successor, Mikhail Zim\anin, chairman of the Jour-

nalists'

A

Union, was know n

to

be

a hardliner

sign of the tension that Solzhenitsvn

the generally strained atmosphere in

and

cronv of Brezhnev's.

a

w as under

Moscow

time— and of —was the

at this

literary circles

row-

had w ith Tvardovskv over the return of his novel. The ground for it had already been prepared by their disagreement over Solzhenitsvn's letter to Demichev. Tvardovsk\ had been further upset to that Solzhenitsyn

learn of the confiscation of the archive, including a play that Solzhenitsyn

himself acknowledged

w as

—by Soviet standards—

virtually treasonable.

When

w as returned to Novy Mir by Karvakin, Solzhenits\n seems to have expected Tvardovsky to welcome it back and lock it up in his safe again, but Tvardovsky refused. He was badly frightened h\ the news of Solzhenitsvn's "anti-So\'iet" play and took the viev\- that Solzhenitsyn himself w as to blame for the confiscation bv having removed the novel in the first place. the novel

In The Oak and the C^//" Solzhenitsyn builds a big scene out of this inci-

dent and compares Tvardovsky unfavourabh' w

ith

Pushkin w hen the

latter

SOLZHENITSYN

[530]

was editing the journal SovremetJtiik. It is inconceivable, he writes, that Pushkin would have turned away a novel being similarly hunted by Benckendorff,* and he describes himself as leaving Tvardovsky's office with his "orphaned and unwanted novel" under his arm."^ It is possible that Tvardovskv's fear at this juncture was excessive, but it is hard not to regard Solzhenitsvn's later account of it as exaggerated. Tvardovsky had every reason to feel vulnerable. Sinvavskv, the better-known of the two arrested writers, was one of Novy Mir's star critics and a highly controversial one, celebrated for his spirited advocacy of Pasternak's poetry and his satirical attacks on Partv stalwarts. The arrest of Sinvavskv was as much a black mark against Novy Mir as was the confiscation of Solzhenitsvn's archive, and Tvardovsky felt doubly threatened. In a more cohesive and less hagridden society, Tvardovskv, Solzhenitsyn, and the families and friends of Sinyavsky and Daniel might have got together and made common cause against the common enemv, but the legacy of Stalinism was still strong. Not only was there not the remotest chance of such solidaritv being manifested but even within the separate circles there were splits and backbiting, and individuals were often left to fight their battles alone, t

A week or so later,

this painful rift

Party-inspired

rumours

that

was widened bv Tvardovskv's

had w

to publish a letter that Solzhenitsyn

had

he

ritten

refusal

defending himself against

collaborated

with

Germans.

the

Solzhenitsvn implies that Tvardovskv's chief reason was injured pride, because the top copv of the letter had been sent to Pravda (before Solzhenitsvn

knew

of Rumyantsev's dismissal) and only a carbon to Novy Mir, but a careful reading of his

memoir

disagreement

\\

to writing to

reveals that Tvardovskv's rejection

ith Solzhenitsyn's entire strategv

Demichev,

as

was part of

a

deeper

over this period. In addition

Tvardovsky had suggested, Solzhenitsyn had

also

fired off letters

of protest to Brezhnev, Mikhail Suslov, and Yuri Andropov

(asking Zhores

Medvedev

to post

them

Moscow). In

in

his

account of the

affair,

Solzhenitsyn says he was afraid that Demichev might suppress his

letter,

but

it

seems equally

practice of firing off as a direct

likelv that

manv

he

\v

as

simply following his old

protests as he could.

connection with Demichev,

it

To

Tvardovskv,

camp

who had

looked as though Solzhenitsyn were

simplv trving to go over Demichev's head and thus over Tvardovskv's

and

as

hv Ivardovsky refused to help." In essence it was a conflict of perceptions. Tvardovsky was very much a man of the Soviet establishment. He knew better than most how the Party and government hierarchies worked, who was responsible to whom, who owed w hom a favour, and how one worked the levers of power that were available. But he was fullv prepared to abide by its rules and in the end well,

*

this

appears to be the

real

reason

Count Alexander Benckendortt was chief of the

\\

secret

pohce under Nicholas

I

and became

Pushkin's particular tormentor after the Decembrist rebellion of 1825.

tin a postscript to I he Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsvn later conceded that his comparison of Tvardovsky v\ ith Pushkin had been unfair and that Ivardovsky had behaved reasonabh' in not v\

ishiny to take back The First Circle after the

KGB

raid.

The Turning-point submit to w h;ite\cr he w

Lv^

'

]

on the other hand, hatl sjient eomfortahU again, and after the conhseation of his arehi\e, he fek that he might he battling for his \er\' life. In these eircumstanees, an\ thing was allowed, just so long as he survived. W hat did it matter to whom he wrote and in what order? Hut to too nian\

TvardoN

\

as told. Sol/.hcnits\ n,

ears outside the

sk\

it

looked

like

s\

w

stem e\er to

ilful

fit

in

self-indulgence.

'rhe\ parted on \er\ bat! terms, and Sol/.henits\'n drove back to Rozh-

So far as he could tell, \er\- few people \ et knew of summer-house, and he took great care to see that an\ letters he sent were posted in either R\ a/an or Moscow But it was isolated and exposed, and he felt xulnerable there. If the K(IH did hnd out about it, he could be picked up antl jailed before an\ one knew Moreover, there no longer seemed to be much point in Natalia's sta\ing on her job in Obninsk had still not materialized, and she would ha\e to return to R\azan for the start of the dest\() to rejoin Natalia. his precious

.

.

—

school vear. farcical stor\' of how Natalia w as finalK' excluded from the Obninsk was further depressing exidence, if evidence was needed, of the amazing lengths to w hich the Soviet authorities w ere apparenth' prepared to go now to thw art Solzhenits\n's most innocuous plans. Quite apart from the

1 he

institute

confiscation ot the archi\e (and there seems to ha\e been

the

two

sets of events),

no connection between

nothing could have been more calculated to reinforce

Solzhenits\n's growing sense of fear and apprehension. Despite Demichev's

phone

call

of |ul\ and the categorical assurance of the director of the institute

appointment was guaranteed, the necessarv confirmation bv in Moscow had not been forthcoming. Instead, the academ\- had ordered that all the dossiers of the successful applicants for some sixt\- senior and junior vacancies that were being filled that summer be submitted for scrutin\-, and finding nothing irregular in Reshetovskaya's application, it had arbitrarilv cancelled all appointments. Since manv of the junior staff had already been engaged and had resigned from that Natalia's

the

Academ\ of Medical Sciences

meant throwing them out of work, Imt the academ\was adamant and decreed that "all staff engaged as a result of the examination are to be dismissed from the posts thev are holding." A new examination commission was appointed to replace the old one, and the whole examination w as held again. Again, Reshetcnskaya was selected for appointment, whereupon the academv adopted a special resolution to change the composition of the institute's academic council. Seven Obninsk scientists were dismissed and replaced by five appointees from Moscow w ho attended onlv one meeting that at which the second round of voting was due to take place. K\ en now the voting was supposed to be by secret ballot, which still gave Reshetovskava a chance, so the vote w as postponed indefinitely on the grounds that no ballot papers had been prepared. Finally a special meeting of the presidium of the Academv of Medical Sciences was called in Moscow with onl\" one item on the agenda: Should Reshetovskaya their pre\ ious jobs, this

,

—

be allowed to take part

in the

competitive re-examination tor the post of

SOLZHENITSYN

[532]

A

senior scientific assistant at the Medical Institute in Obninsk?

galaxy of

Zhores Medvedev, who had been active, with Timofeyev-Ressovsky, in lobbying Demichev and others on Reshetovskava's behalf. From the papers in from of him, Medvedev saw that Reshetovskava's application and supporting documentation had been subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny; it uas equally clear that not the slightest weakness had been found in her qualifications. Nevertheless, the presidium recommended that Reshetovskava be excluded from the competition on the grounds that an employee of an agricultural institute could not possibly fit into a medical institute, even as a chemist. 1 he institute's director. Professor Zedgenidze, refused to implement the recommendation, saying that it was illegal to exclude her, \\ hereupon the academx' cancelled the "chemical" vacancy altogether and had it rescheduled as a "medical" vacancy under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health. Strictly speaking, such a transfer required the approval of the (Council of Ministers of the USSR (the approximate equixaat least in theory), and it may be that the appointlent of the British cabinet ment was even discussed at that level, but nothing was ever made public about it.'^ Medvedev and Timofevev-Ressovsky both suffered as a result of their exertions on Reshetovskava's behalf. Medvedev was denied an already agreed exchange visit to the United States to work in a genetics laboratory there, and Timofeyev-Ressovsky was almost denied an American prize for his research. An attempt was made to persuade him to reject the prize on the grounds that its award w as a proxocation, but 1 imofevev-Ressovsky refused, and the insignia were informally delivered to him by a visiting vice-president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences before the Soviet authorities top brass attended the meeting, as

\\ ell

as

—

w ere able

By

to intervene.

little drama had played itself out, Natalia was back in Ryazan and Solzhenitsvn had found a nev\- refuge: the dacha of Kornei Chukovskv at Peredelkino, the writers' colony just outside Moscow Chukovsky had pronounced A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich "a literary miracle" w hen given it by Tvardovsky to read. Like Ehrenburg and Marshak, he was an elderly survivor of the years immediateh before and after the October Rev-

the time this

.

olution, but as a literary critic and children's writer he had survived the years

of Stalinism physically intact and morally uncompromised, and was univer-

He

met Solzhenitsyn in 1963, when SolChukovsky was meticulously neat in his habits and, according to an eyewitness, had called for his tie beforehand, saying, "The greatest living writer of our country is coming to see me, and I must be properly dressed."' Solzhenitsyn, wearing a light-blue knitted shirt, grey sailcloth trousers, and an anorak, had surprised everyone present by his cheerful informality and by the athletic w ay he had bounded up the stairs. Earlier reports of his cancer had persuaded them that Solzhenitsyn was a seriously sick man, but he had laughed and told them that although the tumour in his stomach had been "this big" (showing them two sally loved

and respected.

zhenitsvn called on him

had

first

at his xilla in

Peredelkino.

The Turning-point

[533]

no longer bothered him and was completely cured. ()\er discussed l)osto\e\"sk\ Ciorkv, Zoshchenko, and other w Titers, and afterw ards the\ had \isited Pasternak's grave together. Ihereatter the two men Ix-came friends, though not meeting ver\' often, because of Solzhenitsvn's distance from Moscow K.ven when he did come he generally avoided Peredelkino. h was too fashionable, and he had no desire to go where other w riters congregated. But (^huko\sk\ had remained solicitous of Solzhenits\n's w ell-being. On one occasion he had asked Solzhenits\'n w hether he had enough monev to live on. Solzhenitsyn replied that he w as all right. " Ihe main thing is not to spend too much mone\' on \'ourself." Pointing to his shoes with inch-thick soles, he had added, " I hese will last me eight years at least. "^ In earl\' 1965 the two men had discussed for the first time the possibility of S()lzhenits\ n's coming to work at (^huko\ sk\'s dacha ((>huko\ sk\ w as now aw a\' a great deal receiving medical treatment at where Second Lieutenant Solzhethe government sanatorium in Barvikha nitsyn had once spent his weekend on leave from the front). Nothing had been decided then, but in the aftermath of his archi\e's seizure Solzhenitsxn w ent to see C^hukovskv again, and (>hukovsky repeated his offer. Apart from the comfort and convenience, Peredelkino w as a much safer place than Rxazan. Solzhenits\n w as too isolated in R\ azan, w ithout triends or influence. He had made enemies there w ith his story "For the Good of the Cause," based on a true incident in Ryazan, and .\Iedvedev has suggested that one of the reasons for the authorities' reluctance to let him mo\e to Obninsk w as that the\- had established an efficient s\stem of surveillance in R\azan and didn't w ant to have to start again in another tow n.'^ If Solzhenitsyn happened to be arrested in Ryazan and a scandal ensued, it could alw a\s be shrugged off as an excess of zeal on the part of local officials, w hereas in Obninsk or Moscow the authorities would have to do it openh' and face a clenched

fists),

lunch the two

it

men had

,

.

—

public outcry.

Solzhenitsxn mo\ ed into Peredelkino sometime before the end of Sep-

tember. Apparenth" the original plan had been for him to use

a

couple ot

rooms above the garage, but in the end he occupied a ground-floor room opening off the dining-room, which had formerly been used by Chukovsky's daughter L\dia, also a writer. (]hukovsk\'s rooms were upstairs. Solzhenitsyn insisted, however, on looking after himself, doing his own shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and would not hear of anyone else's doing it for him. .\11 the houses in Peredelkino are set well back from the road and are surrounded by trees and large gardens. It is a perfect place to find peace and solitude, and here Solzhenitsyn settled dow n to aw ait developments and brood on the meaning of the KGB raid. It was here that Kopelev telephoned to inform him that "his case" had been passed to the public prosecutor* and here, too, that the Etkinds found him w hen they called on their w ay back to *This is v\hat Solzhenitsyn writes in The Oak and the Calf (p. 398), but it is not quite accurate. Everyone else inxolved agrees that it u as never "the Solzhenitsyn case," but always "the Teush case."

SOLZHENITSYN

[534]

Leningrad from a holiday in the south. Solzhenitsyn was sitting alone in his room. Although it was evening, he had not bothered to s\\ itch on the light and was unoccupied a phenomenal rarity for a man so proverbially busy. His face was grim and drawn when he told them about the loss of his archive, but he perked up sufficienth to chat during the evening and later accompa-

—

nied

them to the station.'" At other times he paced the garden. I

strolled for

grounds w

hours through the dark cloisters of the pine trees

ith a heart

empt\ of hope,

vainl\ trying to

in

comprehend

Chukovsky's

my

situation,

and, more importantly, to discover some higher sense in the disaster that had I had come to grief and I did not understand. I seethed. I had long ago come to understand the meaning of my arrest, my deathlv illness, and manv personal misfortunes, but this disaster I could make no sense of. It rendered meaningless everything that had gone before."

befallen me. ... rebelled.

...

What made

I

was his complete ignorance of supposed that he was followed from Novy Mir after picking up the copies of The First Circle and that the KGB had swooped on Teush's fiat just as soon as they knew where the novel was, fearing that Solzhenitsyn was about to put it into samizdat. Discovery his situation hardest to bear

the motives for the

KGB

raid.

He

had

first

of the the archive containing his early works must have been a lucky and

unexpected bonus. But that theory was demolished w hen he learned that the archive had been confiscated not from Teush but from Ilya Zilberberg, the young engineer and anthroposophist he had met on the eve of his holiday. There had been two raids simultaneously, one to pick up the novel and the other to confiscate his archive.

This evidence of prior planning based on the KGB's evident foreknow 1edge of what they were seeking showed the raid in a much more sinister light, and it must have been the shock of this discovery that had turned Solzhenitsvn's mind to thoughts of suicide. It also appears to have induced a feeling of blind panic,

w hich

led

him

into the fateful error of isolating himself

from the other people involved in the affair and the case that grew out of it. It was an understandable reaction during those early days w hen he literally awaited arrest, but in the w eeks that follow ed he w as cut off from first-hand information about how the case was progressing and prevented from learning facts that might have changed his perception of the KGB's motives and intentions. Instead, he brooded on the event in the solitude of his room, making only occasional sorties to contact the Steins and learn from them how the investigation was going. He could not understand why the KGB agents had chosen to raid Zilberberg as well as Teush. How had they learned of the

important

and when and why had Teush given it to his young From Veronica and Yuri Stein he learned that Zilberberg was an ardent admirer of Teush's, a frequent visitor to his home and an occasional visitor of the Steins as well. He was therefore well acquainted

archive's whereabouts,

friend in the

first

place?

— rH

F.

TURN

I

N G - PO N T I

[

5 3 5

]

with those of SolzhenitsNn's unpublished works that had been passed around

among Stories

friends to read

—

as v\ell as

The First

('AUidle in the

(Circle,

with certain items restricted to

Wine/, the Miniature

much narrower circle, camp \erses. All of these a

such as The Way, The Republic of Labour, and earl\ had become part of a much larger How of unofficial reading that was so popular

and hungrib dexoured

in

Moscow

literar\' circles at

the time, and although

Solzhenitsxn had alw a\s been careful to distinguish between works that could

go into samizdat and be copied and those that could onK be read, in the relaxed atmosphere of the earh sixties these restrictions w ere interpreted fairh' liberallw Furthermore, the Steins' flat was well known as a literarv "salon" w here a great deal of samizdat was discussed and passed around. hat the Steins were unable to tell Solzhenitsxn was what else, if an\ thing, leush might have show n Zilberberg, and for some inexplicable reason neither the\' nor Solzhenitsvn seem ever to have asked. Solzhenits\n did have a single meeting w ith the 1 eushes to clarif\' certain details, but this question \\

appears not to ha\e been raised. Solzhenitsxn jumped to the conclusion that

leush and Zilberberg had been unforgi\abl\' lax w ith his papers, had read in their entiretx', and had discussed their contents over a tapped tele-

them

phone.

'-

At

that stage Solzhenitsvn seems to have regarded Zilberberg as the

chief culprit in the affair, a theor\

that

w

as influenced, perhaps, b\

hypothesis that Zilberberg w as an informer. Later he came to blame

more, describing him, decent fellow but,

According

in his

ow n account of these

alas, careless, a

to Solzhenitsvn, he

had

muddler, visited

a

I

the

eush

events, as "a thoroughly

happ\ -go-luck\ conspirator."

1 eush to remove the main portion

of his papers shortly before the raid took place,

but Teush had "broken the

and out of carelessness failed to replace them again. (>onsequently, instead of leaving onh' safe works in Teush's possession, SolzhenitsN n had left some of his most sensitixe material, and it was this that Teush had transferred to Zilberberg and that had fallen into the hands of the KGB. As for Zilberberg, Solzhenitsx n w rites that he "did not rules," extracted things to read,

know and had not checked up on" him as and was unaware of leush's intention."

a

possible recipient ot his papers

Seen from Solzhenitsvn's \antage-point and in the light of his conviction KGB raid was directed exclusiveh at him, this scenario contains a great deal of logic, but Zilberberg has since w ritten a book on the subject that the

that puts Solzhenitsxn's version into doubt.

The to

first

him only

thing Zilberberg makes clear

in the

tsvn apparenth'

summer

first

'"^

is

that 1 eush passed the archive

of 1965 and not earlier

thought.

Teush did

in the year, as

so because he

Solzheni-

was planning

to

go

two months and w as afraid to leave sensitive material lying about in an empty flat, particularly since he had reason to believe that he w as under some sort of surveillance himself. The preceding year he had written his long article on Ivan Denisovich and its importance for Soviet societw Although he awa\' for

had

strictly limited the

number of copies

to five

and had forbidden

its distri-

SOLZHENITSYN

[536]

bution ot

its

samizdat, one copy had "got away" and there had been a

in

circulation.

1

ing a snoopy neighbour and a strange telephone

decided to entrust

rumour

here had also been one or two suspicious incidents inyoK-

all

call.

leush had therefore

the remaining copies of the article, together w ith Sol-

zhenitsyn's archiye, to his

young

triend

w

hile

he \yas away.

happened, Zilberberg was also planning to go away for a month in mid-August, but since his mother was staying in Moscow and since their communal flat was shared with two other families, he felt there was little likelihood of anyone's breaking in while he was away. In fact, there was no break-in, but on the day of his return, on 1 1 September, he was yisited by agents of the KGB and the archiye was remoyed, together w ith a large quanand tity of his own papers. By this time, Teush w as also back in Moscow

As

it

,

his flat

was raided on the same day.

Zilberberg demonstrates that the archiye w as handed to him b\

Teush by the KCiB agents at the moment of confiscation. He reproduces the exact wording on the search record drawn up by the agents, which includes item no. 10, "a white paper packet measuring 38 cm x 24.5 cm. fhe packet bears a rubber stamp marked 'mechanical engineering.' On being opened, the packet w as found to contain a brown enyelope, in which were found a number of typed and handwritten manuscripts."" The record goes on to list about two dozen items, some ot them anonymous, a few signed with Solzhenitsyn's real name and seyeral in a sealed parcel

w

ith his

and that the

seal \yas

found

to be intact

pseudonym "Stepan Khlynoy." Zilberberg

states categorically that

he had read neither Feust of the Conquerors nor any other work in the archixe that had not been passed round to eyeryone in their circle, so that he could not haye "talked on the telephone" about them or shown them to an\one else.

Zilberberg giyes

Lubyanka by the with 1 eush on

a

detailed description of his

interrogations at the

inyestigator in charge of the case and of his consultations

how

as the " leush case,"

to respond.

The name

of the case throughout was giyen

and the subject of the inyestigation w

as said to

be leush's

on Solzhenitsyn. According to the inyestigator, this "libellous" and anti-Soyiet article had been discoyered in the luggage of a foreign tourist as he was leaying the country. Although the article w as unsigned, inyestigations had led the KGB to Teush, and they were now trying to determine how many copies existed and whether the article had been distributed b\' Teush. Under Soyiet law at the time, the composition and possession ot "libellous" manuscripts was not a crime, whereas deliberate circulation was. The inyestigator made it clear that the KCiB had been tapping a number of telephones for quite a while, including those of Zilberberg and Teush, but he needed more substantial eyidence if charges were to be brought. Some of this was communicated to Solzhenitsyn b\- the Steins at the time, but it seems he found this explanation of the case difficult to belieye. VVh\ would the KCiB haye gone to the trouble of a double raid simpl\- to article

confiscate an article about him, especially

when

the

flats

they yisited con-

The Flrning-point taincd his

dence?

In

(537I

works? SiircK it could not ha\c been a colossal coincias to conchule that the confiscation ot The hirst (jix/c had coincidence. The tletectixes hatl been on their \\a\ out ot

i|

Crimea, calling on correspondents, picking up material, and whenever possible visiting places that figured in his narrative. Hut again there w ere problems.

I

he axerage proxincial Russian

strangers

—especially when they

highK

is

start to ask

nits\n pointed out w hen already in the West,

gather firsthand information.

where the peasant

it

As Solzhe-

was cxtremeU'

difficult to

Province, for instance, to

—there

are

still

afraid to talk to a stranger about

all

them

to question

— any

questions.

lambov

to

rebellion had broken out

ing there, but the\' are

was frightened

went

"I

susjiieious of strangers

awkward

for tear of putting a speed\'

e\ ewitnesses fixit, and I m\ self end to m\ expe-

dition.""^

One

other chore that Sol/.henitsyn accomplished that

summer was

to

write a further letter to Ix'onid Brezhnev, protesting once more against the confiscation of his archix e and the statements being Part\- meetings. "Slanderers

ha\e declared \\

ar in the

various proxinces that

in

same

employing even

unit

and w

awarded

as

a traitor, a collaborator, or in effect a

official

made

an otficer

I,

tx\()

against

him

x\

.

.

.

ho tought the entire

actixe-service medals,

member

at secret

propaganda channels

\x

as either

of the Ciestapo." Apart from

reports of this kind, Solzhenitsx n had received information about mxsterious

play and novel, information that came from upper reaches ot the Partx'. I he First Circle w as being passed around among senior members of the C>entral (Committee and the Writers' Union, and Feast of the Conquerors xxas being shox\ n both to these and to leaders of the Artists' and Musicians' unions, the calculation being that their content was so blatantlx' anti-Sox iet that all right-thinking (Communists were bound to be revolted by them. Such an assumption w as some-

dealings

sources

x\

x\

x\

ith his confiscated

ithin or close to the

hat unfair to the noxel.

true that The First Circle

It is

w

as ultimatelx" anti-

(Communist in content, but the political message xxas vxell buried and Solzhenitsyn had toned it dow n from his original, sharper version. It x\ as more overtly anti-Stalinist than anti-Communist, and until the confiscation there had been grounds to hope that it still might see publication one dax'. But \x ith Feast of the Conquerors, it did not stand a chance and that xxas the point of the KGB's strategy. This "anti-Soviet" play composed in the labour camps xxould be used to discredit Solzhenitsxn's entire

taken in conjunction

output.-^ It is

not clear how

of these works. In his

be sharp

in

much

Solzhenitsxn's letter said about the circulation

memoir he

writes that his

first

inclination

had been to

tone but that the journalist Ernst Henri* persuaded him to be

more diplomatic.

In the end, he

aimed

reproaches

his

at the Writers'

Union

rather than at the Partx' itself and also offered a sort of apologia for his vision

of the role of the xxriter.

I

knoxx that

in

mv

x\

orks strike

some people

our past and contemporary

ture to keep quiet about. But * Ernst

Henri

is

the pen

name

of

life

if

as too sharp,

the xvriter

is

Semyon Rostovsk)

exposing unpleasantnesses

some reason they xxould prefer

that for

.

litera-

not permitted to express the people's

— SOLZHENITSYN

[562]

common

pain and anxietv,

if

the writer cannot be a kind of cybernetic "feedback"

for his society, then the writer

is

unnecessary and Hterature will be replaced by

cosmetics. Sickness can be cured only

if it

is

diagnosed and named in time

twenties v\ ho warned about and the personality cult, but they w ere liquidated instead of being heeded. As the proverb goes: Friend and your flatterer I cannot be.^'

driven inwards,

it

festers.

There were

\\

riters in the

Stalin's character

end of July 1966 and was never answered or acknowledged. Solzhenitsvn came to feel, how ever, that it had helped his cause with the authorities, and it may also have contributed to his obtaining

The

letter

was posted

permission for part

meeting

1

at the

of Cancer

in the Central Writers'

Ward

Club

to

be discussed

later that year.

at a Writers'

Union

V THE BEST FORM OF DEFENCE SOLZHENiTSYN HAD COMPLETED part earl\- summer. Like A Day in the

I

Circle,

m Rozhdestvo in the

Ivan Denisovich and Ike First

described a group of people cut off from the mainstream of society

it

world whose boundaries were arbitrary. was not a labour camp but a cancer clinic the Tashkent clinic Solzhenitsvn had attended in 1954. The novel's action was set a little

and isolated In this case that

of Cancer Weird Life of

in a smaller, artificial

—

it

later, in 1955.

As

in all novels* set in

such "closed" institutions, the characters had

been chosen to represent

a cross-section of societv.

were Oleg Kostoglotov,

a

The two

principal patients

former labour-camp prisoner now

in

administra-

had been w hen undergoing treatment), who was suffering from cancer of the abdomen, and Pavel Rusanov, a highranking official in the Communist Partv, with cancer of the neck. These two w ere the protagonists in the ideological and ethical conflict that lay at the tive exile (as Solzhenitsvn himself

* Solzhenitsvn did not in fact accept the epithet of "noxel" to describe Cancer

Ward: he preferred

the traditional Russian term oi povest\ which can be approximately translated as "tale."

explained his reasoning in The Oak and

more and more blurred is

in

—

it is

it is

light in construction

too man\- of us readilv

"The dividing

our countrv, and the result

of course a short storw though

the novella

the Calf:

call a 'novel.'

a large

is

a

lines

He

betw een genres are becoming

devaluation of forms. Ivan Denisoiich

and dense one. Less substantial than the story

and clear-cut

There are

and

in subject

several story lines,

ideas. .\ tale [potest']

is

and the action almost

is

what inevi-

tablv extends over a fairlv long time. .\ novel [roman] (odious word! surely v\e could find a better one?) differs from a tale not so

and

a rapid

tempo can

the breadth of

its

much

in size,

nor in the duration of the action (compression

number of

also be virtues in a novel), but in the

horizon, and the depth of

prefer the term "novel" to describe Cancer

its

destinies

ideas" (pp. 24-25 n.). Nevertheless,

Ward and have used

563

it

throughout.

it

embraces,

I

personally

SOLZHENITSYN

[564]

heart of the novel, a conflict bctw een matcriaHsm, pohtical e.\pedienc\', and

on the one hand, and altruism, spiritualit\ and compassion on the champion of altruism, \\ as autobiographical in conception and undoubtedh' served as the mouthpiece for manv of Solzhenitsvn's own view s, although the details of his arrest and imprisonment were parth" based on the experience of his former sergeant Il\a Solomin. Through Kostoglotox', Solzhenitsxn was also able to introduce the charming, old-world figures of a pair of elderly exiles named the Kadmins (based on Nikolai and Elena Zubo\ ), and between them, these three characters represented the forces of decency and affection. But whereas the Kadmins had o\ercome the malignity of the societ\ in w hich the\ found themselves w ith submission and love, Kostoglotov's defence of personal libert\' and search for justice and compassion were truculent and aggressive, and there w as little doubt as to where Solzhenits\n's true sympathies lav. Kostoglotov w as the champion of freedom against the forces of political paternalism and authorit\". selfishness

,

the other. Kostoglotox

Rusano\

members of which the

,

his

,

opponent, personified

authorit\',

and through Rusanox* and

his family, Solzhenitsvn offered a picture of the corrupt

Partx'

establishment operated to control society and of

tarian attitudes to the people

it

go\erned. Despite

a

its

way

in

authori-

heroic attempt on Sol-

zhenitsvn's part to be objective in his portrayal, the character of Rusanov

came out close to caricature, w hile that of Rusanov's daughter Aviette, a young establishment poet moving in fashionable literar\- circles, overstepped the bounds of realism altogether. In the last chapter, w here she w as shown visiting her father and cheering him up with all the latest gossip from literary Moscow, Solzhenitsvn mercilessly satirized the capital's intellectuals, going well beyond the sarcastic picture of the intelligentsia that he had painted in The First Circle (and hinted

at in Ivan Denisovich). Arra\ ed around these two protagonists were the other patients, two of

w hom could be

view of the world, and one for w ere Efrem Podduvev, a former construction worker (and congenital liar) w ho w as suffering from cancer of the mouth; and \ adim Zatsvrko, a young geologist and Party loyalist (inspired h\ the story of the lad\' doctor who had visited Solzhenitsxn in Ryazan to obtain some of the mandrake-root infusion for her son) w ho had cancer of the leg. Each represented a different facet of the materialist attitude to life: Podduyev a negative one of opportunism and deception, and Zatsvrko, who was portra\ed as being in the heroic mould of the positixe heroes of So\iet fiction, a more attractive one of self-abnegation in the name of the cause. Kostoglotov's ally, Dxoma, a sixteen-year-old schoolboy also suffering from cancer of the leg, simpl\- represented childlike honestx' and human perplexity in the face of the enormous, and seemingh- unjust, challenge of his illness. said to stand for Rusanov's

Kostoglotov's. Rusanov's

The

allies

confrontation of

all

these characters with the terrifying threat of

death from cancer lent the novel an existential resonance that w as more overt than that

in either

Ivan Denisovich or The First Circle (although death had been

an unseen presence

in

both of them), and Solzhenitsyn explicith- drew atten-

Thk Bfst Form tion to this clement

of Dffencf.

[5'^'

5]

by the rather crude device of having Podduvev read

Tolstov's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and undergo a sort of conversion. This later led man\- critics to praise Cancer Ward for being more profound than Sol/.henitsvn's other novels. Yet

clear that unlike, sav, The

it is

Magic Mountain or

The Rack (with which Solzhenitsvn's novel has been compared), Cancer Ward

was not about the

existential

dilemmas posed

b\'

death or the meaning of

death, or even about the meaning of illness in a fundamental wa\', but rather

about the light that

which

life

illness

and death throw on the

The hidden theme

of Cancer

Ward w as

cations for the health of Soviet societv.

was

ethical

dilemmas with

confronts us, particularl\- in their social and political application.

set in 1955,

when

in fact de-Stalinization

This was

de-Stalinization had

being fiercely debated and opposed; and

whv

begun

a close

\\

its

impli-

in earnest

but was

still

examination of the ebb and

flow of Kostoglotov's and Rusanov's illnesses reveals that there

and reciprocal relation between them.

and

the action of the novel

is

an intimate

hen Kostoglotov's recover\'

is

at its

height (coinciding with successes in the policv of de-Stalinization), Rusanov's sickness intensifies;

when Kostoglotov

ated with some parallel

experiences a relapse (usuallv associ-

political setback),

Rusanov

is

shown

to be

on the up

and up. It

w

as in this context that the relationship

doctors acquired

its

betw een Kostoglotov and his

true meaning. Solzhenitsvn's portraval of the doctors in

—

Cancer Ward particularly of Lvudmila Dontsova, the head of the radiologv department (based on the real-life Lvdia Dunaveva), and her assistant \ era Gangart (based on Irina Meike), and their dailv cares was later widely praised as a triumph of old-fashioned realism (it was, if anything, "real" socialist

—

realism, or socialist realism as

it

might have been without the ideological

trimmings, rather in the manner of the celebrated building scene

in

Ivan

But Kostoglotov was shown coming into conflict with them o\er the question not simply of what his treatment ought to be but of who should decide it and on w hat grounds. In so doing, Kostoglotov raised the issue of whether a man had the right to dispose of his own life, and of the ethical and also political dilemmas posed bv the paternalism, however benevolent and even idealistic, that the doctors exercised in w ielding their pow er. Dontsova argued that the doctors had the right to determine the treatment and to use it on the patient, w hatever the consequences, because thev were the experts and their aim was to save the patient's life (even if thev inadvertently ruined or destroyed it as a result of the malignancy of the illness or the inadequacy of the treatment). It was not difficult to see that these arguments contained a metaphor for socialism or that Solzhenitsvn was opposing personal liberty to the w ell-intentioned despotism of the doctors. In part 1 of Cancer Ward the dilemma was not resolved. The doctors did, after all, save Kostoglotov's life, when his preferred method of dosing himself w ith the mandrake-root infu-

Denisovich).

sion and relying on faith and will-pow er had failed.

On

the other hand, there

remained the larger question. Saved his life for what? For what what sort of society, and w hat sort of country?

sort ot

lite,

SOLZHEMTSVN

[566]

The

question w as raised but not answered in part

At the end of the seemed to be in the ascendant. He \\ as much recovered from his sickness and able to enjo\' hfe again, so much so that he \\ as engaged in a double flirtation in the hospital by day with Dr Gangart and by night with a pretty young nurse called Zoya. Rusanov, by contrast, was going 1

.

part, Kostoglotov

—

through

a difficult period, leaving the reader

ever, the

with

a sense

of optimism.

How-

words w ere spoken bv Rusanov's daughter Aviette an ominous or an ironic ring to them, depending on one's

first part's last

and had either point of view

"Don't worrv," she told her father, "evervthing

.

is

going to be

" all

right. Everything.

Solzhenitsyn had submitted the novel,

Mir

soon

as

as

it

was readw and on

journal's staff to discuss

the meeting, the

were

in

more

18

Marvamov, Berzer) members of the editorial board

junior people present (Lakshin,

(Dementye\', Kondratoxich, Sachs) were against. 1 he

They found

and thev disliked

its

objections

lumpv and

were

shapeless,

tendentiousness, particularh' in individual scenes, such

w ard about

Stalin's culpabilit\' for the

ingrad blockade and the chapter on Aviette's

who had

latter's

the composition of the novel

as a conversation in the hospital

gradov,

meeting of the

a

Generallv, according to Solzhenitsvn's version of

it.

favour of publication, while the older

of two kinds.

other works, to Sovy

like all his

June there was

Len-

her father. Igor Vino-

visit to

recenth' joined the board, announced, "If

we

don't print

no reason for our existence," and Tvardovsky, summing up, spoke powerfulh in the novel's favour.

^this,

I

see

Art does not exist

knows

it is

a

in this

weapon,

it

world to be

loses

we

its

a

weapon

fire-pow er.

in the class struggle.

We are quite free

in

Once

it

our judgements

no more concerned w ith w hether it will get bv or it in the next w orld. The w ork is topical in that it presents a moral reckoning on behalf of a new Iv aw akened people. Unfinished? Great works alwavs bear the mark of incompleteness. Resurrection, 7 he Possessed trv to think of a single exception. Ihis is something we want to publish. If the author will work on it a little more, we will launch it and fight for it to the limit of our powers and bevond!' of this piece of vours:

not than

if

we were

are

discussing

.

.

.

.

—

.

.

.

.

.

—

It

sounded almost

like a repeat

of the decision to launch Ivan Denisovich,

but Tvardovskv was not w ithout his criticisms.

He

still

disliked the

title,

he

agreed that the Leningrad blockade discussion w as one-sided and wanted Hitler mentioned as well as Stalin, and he, too,

felt

that the Aviette chapter

was a lampoon on the intelligentsia and should be omitted. Solzhenitsyn, as w as by now his custom, had made a virtuallv stenographic record of e\erything that was said and answered the points one b\ one. He absolutely refused to tone dow n the character of Rusanov, as some of those present had suggested, or to soften his references to the svstem of administrative exile. But

he did agree to make most of the changes proposed bv 1 vardovsky, and a week later he returned the manuscript, revised and shorn of the Aviette chap-

The Best Form with an alternative

ter,

title

suggested

of Defence The

in brackets:

[567]

Ward

at the

End

of the

Avenue.

Unfortunateh', bv the time the\ came to discuss

Tvardovsky had changed

his

mind.

He demanded

it

a

week

after that,

further cuts and altera-

by Dementyev and Sachs, and began to drag his feet over publication. 1 he circumstances were not favourable. The magazine was alreadv having great trouble w ith Alexander Bek's novel The Xezv Appointment and Simonov's War Diaries, both of w hich haci been announced but were being held up bv the censors.* He wasn't sure w hether they could take on vet another controversial major work. Besides, "we have to have the sort of manuscript in which we can defend anv passage w hatsoBut Solzhenitsyn, alas, ever because we share the ideas expressed in it. ..." always been. Perhaps they would try for publiis the same as he has following that basis he w as prepared to sign a contract cation the vear. On for the novel at once and offer an advance of 25 per cent. In the meantime Solzhenitsvn could be getting on with, and perhaps finishing, part 2.Solzhenitsvn was intenselv irritated bv this unexpected turn of events. He had been genuineh- happv to be reconciled w ith Tvardovskv and had tions along the lines earlier suggested

.

basked

.

.

in the latter's sincere praise of the novel's artistrv,

doubts and resentments returned.

He felt

he distrusted and had alw avs regarded as

but

now

all

his old

that Dementvev and Sachs, w horn his enemies, had been w orking on

Tvardovskv to change his opinion and had engineered matters so that they were present at this second meeting, w hereas Lakshin and Solzhenitsvn's other supporters were absent. Concealing his feelings, however, he simplv said that he would not sign a contract and w ould take the manuscript w ith him.

The Xozy Mir debacle had the

first

place

it

important consequences for Solzhenitsxn. In

hastened a decision that he had alreadv been moving tow ards

but that he might have postponed itv

—namelv,

if

publication had seemed a real possibil-

to let his novel circulate in samizdat. In this wa\" he

the readers he so desperatelv craved and

w hereas with The

First Circle

w ould reach

would

get

at least a limited public,

he had reached virtuallv nobodv. Secondly, he

made in response to Xoiy Mir's demands. And thirdh he felt moralh' free of A'ocy Mir. Up till now a sense of obligation had bound him to Tvardovskv and his magazine, how ever erraticallv of late, and it w as a relief to shed it. His resolve to try samizdat \\ as fortified bv a conviction that he had nothing to lose. His panicky fears about w hat the authorities might do to him w hen thev had read and digested Feast could restore the cuts that he had reluctantlv

,

,

*The

Xeii-

Appointment was

a

novel about the death of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Stalin's fellow-

Georgian and people's commissar

for

heavv industry during the

thirties.

Ordzhonikidze

onlv go\ ernment leader to protest against Stalin's terror and to be killed as

was ne\er published and subsequentK' circulated to be a relati\elv

unexpurgated account of

in

samizdat. Simono\

his experiences as a

Second World War, and to contain se\ere criticism of my know ledge, appeared in samizdat.

to

Stalin.

\\

ar

's

a result.

War

\\

as the

The

novel

Diaries

w ere

said

correspondent during the

rhe\' ha\e not been published or,

SOLZHENITSYN

[568]

the\' had done was distribute it up their campaign of slander, but this could hardlv hurt him, since the people w ho were reading it were hostile to him anyway. It anything, it helped, for it added to his reputation, and each negative rumour spread about him provoked a score of rebuttals from \\ ellw ishers. It also demonstrated the authorities' helplessness. If that was all they could manage, he had little to fear. Nothing he released now could be as damaging as his play.

of the Conquerors

had pro\ed groundless. All

among themselves and somew hat

ion)

News

of the novel's circulation (though

among

certain

Moscow

what he took

livid at

touch w 1

step

intellectuals

to be a breach of

still

in a

Aorv

.l//>'s

security.

Solzhenitsvn to check the matter, but the

ith

highh- restricted fash-

who was

soon reached Tvardovskv, I

latter,

le tried to get in

though aware of

vardovskv's efforts, had no desire to talk to him and w rote a letter instead. If

thought

I

\()ii \\

ere upset because the tale* has

the editors of Aory

Mir ...

author has this right, and of

it.

What

is

more,

I

it

I

become know n

to others besides

should be bound to express surprise.

would be strange

if

vou ever intended

.

.

.

Every

to deprive

cannot allow Cancer Ward to repeat the dismal career of

me mv

Circle]: first there w as an indefinite period of w aiting, during which the author w as repeatedly asked bv the editors not to show it to anyone else; and then the novel w as lost both to me and to those w ho should have read it, but it is being distributed to a few select persons on a secret list.'

novel [The First

Solzhenits\n later heard that Tvardovskv had wept w hen he read this letter,

dovsk\

w

—

and w ith Tvarw hich w as exactly

but he remained unmoved. Ihe break with Sovy Mir

—w

as almost complete.

He w as

on

his

ow n now

,

hat he wanted.

His latest idea was to tr\ to achieve something through the \\ titers' Union, which he knew included a number of liberals among its rank and tile, particuiarh' among the \ounger members. It had looked as if an opportunit\' might present itself at the Writers' Congress planned for )une, to which he would have had access as a bona tide member of the union, but the congress was postponed until the end of the year, and Solzhenitsvn w as impatient to

move quicker than that. He therefore managed to arrange for a discussion ot Cancer Ward to be held at the (Central Writers' Club in Moscow .\fter three .

months of delays and three postponements, the meeting was held on

November It

17

1966.

was

billed as an

"expanded session" of the Bureau of the Creative

Prose .Association of the .Moscow Writers' Organization within the Russian

W titers' Union. In other words, it was at a relaand w as one of a series of occasional meetings to discuss individual books. But as the chairman, C. Berezko, noted, the attendance on this occasion w as extraordinariK high (tiftv-two w titers were present), and it appears that tickets for the event were extremely hard to come b\". Berezko Republic's branch of the

tively

*I.e.,

low

(.'aiicer

level

Ward. See note

p. 563.

.

The Best Form also indicated that the

of

Defence

meeting had been called

that the usual reason for such sessions

\\

at

[5*^9]

Solzhenitsvn's request and

as "a difference of

the author and the publisher," suggesting that Solzhenits\

outflank

A oi'y.l//>.

This

was presuniahK wh\'

I

opinion betw een

n's

purpose was

to

\ardo\sk\ had instructed his

staff not to attend.^

B\ and large, the w Solzhenitsx n's literar\

s\

hierarch\

riters

w ho gathered

in the

,

club that afternoon were

Of his known opponents

mpathizers and supporters.

in the

onlv Zo\a Kedrina addressed the meeting. Notorious for

trial of Sin\a\sk\ and Daniel, w here she had appeared on behalf of the Writers' Union, she w as noisiK heckled when she rose to speak, and X'ictor Xekrasov led a mass w alk-out long before she had finished. For this reason, criticism of the novel was fairb muted and more or less followed the lines of the arguments made earlier at \oiy Mir. Man\ people were made uncomfortable bv the portrait of Rusanov, w hich thev felt revealed too much hatred on the part of the author and therefore constituted an artistic failure. Others felt that the labour-camp theme intruded overmuch, or were disturbed bv the novel's "naturalism."* There was w idespread criticism of the Aviette chapter, w hich w as described as farcical and exaggerated, and a few people expressed unease over the w a\ in w hich discussions of Tolstox's storv The Death of Tcan Ilyich and of \'ladimir Pomerantsex 's article "On Sincerit\" in Literature" seemed to have been

her recent role as a "social accuser" in the

"dragged into" the noxel artihciallw Against fa\()ur of

its

this

was

set a

chorus of praise

publication. Solzhenits\n

in

favour of Cancer

was compared,

Ward and

in his literarv

and preoccupations, w ith the classics of the nineteenth centur\ were drawn between the novel and Tolstov's storv, mosth"

,

and

in

methods parallels

to the novel's

\\ ith reference to more recent literature, Solzhenitsx n's fate was w ith that of Babel, Bulgakox Platonov, Zamvatin, Zabolotskx compared Zoshchenko, Akhmatova, and Pasternak all of them classics of the Soviet

advantage.

,

—

w ho had suffered hea\ il\- at the hands of the authorities for the courage and honestx" of their w riting. Alexander Bek's blocked novel w as recalled, and man\- speakers expressed indignation that two such outstanding works w ere being denied publication. The best contributions came from the \eteran novelist \ eniamin Ka\erin and from Arkadi Belinkox a brilliant and her\ critic w ho had himselt spent thirteen \ears in the camps for his "anti-So\iet" w ritings. Kaverin pointed out that in addition to talent, Solzhenitsxn had two indispensable qualities for a great writer: "inner freedom and a powerful strixing for truth." He was the most impressive of a w hole group of promising nexx w riters x\ ho \xere revitalizing Soviet literature. "The new x\ riting has arrixed, and the old, era

,

reptilian,

crawling literature that understood service to society as

a straight

W ho now

remembers the books that line betw een txxo points ... is hnished. were full of lies, distorand that were published in millions of copies .

*A

reference to

.

.

some of the medical

detail in Cancer

Want and

bv Soviet standards, treatment of Kostoglotov's sexual

\

perhaps to Solzhenitsvn's frank,

earninss.

SOLZHENITSYN

[570] tions,

and praise of Stalin, open or camouflaged, and remote from the truth?"

Cancer

Ward should be published immediately, for doomed to failure. He cannot write

zhenitsyn are

"all efforts to silence Sol-

from the way

differently

he writes."' so special.

still more accurately on w hat made Solzhenitsyn "The outstanding merit of the works of Alexander Isayevich is

that thev

ere actually written.

Belinkov put his finger

\\

A man got many

he wanted to write." There were great experience of it,

life

and perhaps the

to the point of writing the

traditionalist, as

books about and he had

talent to write excellent

but for some reason they never had. Solzhenitsyn had done

restored Russian literature to

it,

former greatness. But he was not

its

some people seemed

books

other writers, said Belinkov, with

just a

to think. "Solzhenitsyn creates a

new

system of Russian prose, because he introduces into the composition of his art new unknown, or forgotten ideas of good and evil, life and death, and the relationship between man and society. The apparently traditional nature of his style is similar to the art of the Renaissance, which was close to the art ,

of the ancient world, but only at a distance and on casual inspection. Solzhenitsyn's writing

is

not only similar to the Renaissance;

sance of Russian spiritual

At the conclusion of ment.

He

it is

in fact the renais-

life."^

the discussion, Solzhenitsyn

thanked the participants for their

many

was invited

to

com-

kind words and above

all

His years of solitude as a writer had had both advantages and disadvantages. The fact that he had been writing virtually for himself meant that he had never had to wonder whether this or that w ork for their professional criticism.

would "pass." On the other hand, in isolation one inevitably became less demanding of oneself, and it was essential to receive informed criticism of one's work. That was why he had requested this discussion, particularly since he w as being deprived of publication and the natural responses of his readers.

He went

on to discuss some of the points raised by the other speakers,

"not in the spirit of petty polemics" but simply in the interests of clarification. First there

Some

was the

title.

Was

it

meant

to be a

symbol?

speakers have said that there was a cancerous grow th in our society. Yes,

there was. But that wasn't

Ward,

Cancer Ward:

w

it

as the sickness

1

what had

1

in

had

in

mind.

When

I

called the

mind, and the struggle against

book Cancer

this sickness.

I

w ould not depress the reader or reduce him to despair. ... I used it because I reckoned to overcome it in resolving the question of the struggle between life and death. That was why I quite calmlv emploved this title, that and no more. boldiv gave

it

this title

because

I

reckoned that

I

Another question concerned the confinement of the action w

ithin the

walls of the hospital ward, thus curtailing the view offered of Soviet society as a

w hole.

W asn't

Recentlv

1

this unnecessarily restrictive?

Solzhenitsyn thought not.

have come to the conclusion that literature can never describe the

whole of our world, can ne\cr encompass everything

.

.

.

But

it

has one inter-

esting qualitx

any work of of planes

is

.

Let

Bf.st

HF.

I

mc make

literature can

a

Form ok Dkkencf

comparison u

become

ith

[5~i]

mathematics.

a cluster of planes. In

defined as an aggregate of planes

It

seems

passing through

all

to

mathematics, a

me

that

a cluster

gi\en point

.

Each author chooses a point corresp(jnding to his experience and inclinations. But each point can have a myriad planes passing through it, tilting in all \nd vou can take any subject you like. This subject w as possible directions suggested to me bv mv illness, w hich gave me a chance to obtain a virtually professional know ledge of it so as to verifv m\ treatment. I might not have chosen the cancer \\ ard, but something else entireK But if \-ou w ant to go beyond .

.

.

.

the confines of the cancer ward, \()U will find those same planes everywhere.

Solzhenits\"n then touched on a

number

of other questions. Since 90 per

cent of the speakers had been critical of Rusanov, he

felt

there

must be some-

thing to this criticism, but, unfortunately, no one had been able to indicate a

way

of putting the character right, and he

\\

as

still

proceed. .\s for the Aviette chapter, he agreed that

puzzled about how to

it

was

farcical

by

but said

mouth only statements and opinions actually people and reported in the Soviet press. It was his little joke

that he had put into her real

The

certain kinds of critics.

uttered against

collection of Tolstoy stories, including The

Death of Ivan Ilyich, had actually been on the shelves of his ward when he was in Tashkent, as had the copy of Novy Mir containing Pomerantsev's article

He

"On

Sincerit\ in Literature," and both had led to discussions in the

could truthfulh" place his hand on his heart and say,

w

ard.

have invented

"I

nothing."^

down, Solzhenitsvn tossed

Just before he sat

in a small surprise.

Since

his negotiations

with Xovy Mir over the novel had proved inconclusive, he

had sent

two other reviews, Zvezda (The

off to

it

the former based in Leningrad and the

and Pro.s-/6»r (Expanse), w ell known, in Alma-Ata

Star)

latter, less

(by going to the provinces, Solzhenitsyn was trying to circumvent veto).

His announcement had the desired

able to close the meeting, a

number

effect.

of speakers

Moscow 's

Before the chairman was

demanded

to

know w hat

decision was being taken. Lev Kopelev proposed that a transcript of the dis-

cussion be sent to Zvezda and Prostor. Another speaker suggested that Moskva, the magazine of the

Moscow branch

of the

W riters'

Union, and

its

publishing

house be approached to publish the novel and that any decision reached should be by the entire meeting, and not just the secretariat. In the end, two resolutions

were passed, one

to

send off the transcripts, the other to urge publi-

cation as soon as possible.

Pressing

home

his advantage, Solzhenitsvn

conclude from our discussion that when it

to the

Moscow in

part in our

immediately asked, "May I second part, I can bring

finish the

"Of course," replied the chairman, Alexander Isayevich, in my own w ould ask you, "And the name of those present toda\-, to visit us more often and take Writers' Organization?"

to general applause.

name and

I

life

I

and our

The meeting was

discussions.'"^

—

minor triumph for Solzhenitsyn and had the addidozens more copies of Cancer Ward into circulation in samizdat. As news spread of the discussion, more and more people w anted

tional virtue of putting

a

SOLZHENITSYN

[572] to read the novel,

and those

pressed to lend copies,

if

who had

participated in the discussion

were

thev had them, to friends and to friends of friends,

where further copies were made and passed on.* In this way, pressure was built up on the authorities to do something about it. It was a relatively newtactic for Solzhenitsyn (though he had tried it, in a limited and modest way, v\ith his Miniature Stones), and he was impressed with its efficacy. He was beginning to realize the value of the Soviet Union's still tiny, but growing, body of independent opinion and to appreciate the importance of publicity,

when

was amplified by foreign radio stations broadcasting back beyond that body of Soviet listeners to foreign broadcasts there was the foreign public itself, and its opinions, too, were important to the Soviet authorities. The possibilities for exercising influence, it seemed, were far greater than he had once imagined. During that crowded month of November 1966, he proceeded to put these new discoveries to the test. A Japanese newspaper correspondent, Komoto Sedze, had recentlv sent him a request for an interview or for written replies to five questions. Solzhenitsyn had routinely refused such requests up till now but this time he decided to accept and arranged to meet Sedze at the Writers' (>lub the dav after the discussion of Cancer Ward. It was a brilliant and bold tactical move. The club was such a public place that when Solzhenitsvn met the correspondent, with his official interpreter and a photographer from the Novosti press agencv, who set up floodlights to take pictures, the club emplovees and bystanders assumed it must be official, whereas Solzhenitsvn had deliberately not sought the necessary permission and was particularlv

it

into the Soviet Union. Furthermore,

,

acting quite outside the normal Soviet regulations. The interview lasted only about twenty minutes (Solzhenitsyn discovered that Sedze himself had been a Soviet prisoner of war and had spent three years in the labour camps), but

the written answers to Sedze's questions had already been prepared, and

Solzhenitsvn simply had to hand them over.'" In view of the noveltv of this direct communication with the outside

world, Solzhenitsvn's statement was

fairlv

circumspect.

He

did not refer to

the confiscation of his novel and archive or to the ugly rumours that were

being circulated about him

at secret

meetings, but he did mention the exis-

tence of The First Circle and the fact that as his

two unpublished

Wind.

He

hoped

to finish the

it

had not been published,

plays. The Tenderfoot and the Tart

also described the subject of Cancer

Ward and

as well

and Candle

in the

indicated that he

second part quite soon. Asked to offer

his

views on

a

standard cliche, "the writer's duties in defence of peace," he gave a characteristicallv individual

The

fight for

peace

is

answer:

"I shall

broaden the scope of

this question.

only part of the writer's duties to society. Not one

little

*rhis ma\- be an exaggeration on my part. Arkady Belinko\' writes, in Novy Zbtirnal, no. 93 handed copies to union members personally, one at a time. Each member was obliged to sign for his copy and to read it in a room specially set aside for that purpose.

(1968), that Victor llvin

In this w ay, further circulation of the typescript was some copies got a way.

restricted. It

is

probable, however, that

The Best I'orm bit less

important

is

defence of peace must begin

in the soul

of evcr\'

[573)

the fight for social justice and for the strengthening of

spiritual values in his contemporaries. effectix e

Defence

oi

human

Russian literature, and

I

being.

I

This,

—w \\

and now here

ith the

as

else,

is

w here the

defence of spiritual values

brought up

in the traditions

cannot imagine m\self working as

a

of

writer without

such aims." "

Another personal rule that Solzhenits\n now broke was his refusal to make public appearances. Fhe first time was almost by accident. .\ friend casualh' asked him w hile the\' w ere w alking in the street whether he would agree to speak at the Kurchato\- Institute of Phxsics. Sensing that this would give him another opportunitN' to make his presence telt in the capital, Sol/.henitsvn assented, and the meeting w as fixed verv quickb so that there could ,

While preparing this lecture, Solzhenits\n sta\ed at the Steins' flat, and \ eronica Stein w as the involuntar\' w itness of how much it meant to him. Returning from her office in the late afternoon, she thought she heard his voice and imagined he must be saxing something to her. W hen she popped her head inside the door of his room, how e\er, she found him rehearsing a scene from The First Circle w here the engineer Gerasimovich has a brief prison visit from his w ife and as he looked up, she be no

official interference.

— —

saw tears in his e\es.'-

W hen Solzhenitsvn arrixed at the institute that exening, he found si.x hundred people present and w as given an enthusiastic reception for his readings from Cancer Ward, Candle in the Wind, and the ostensibh' "forbidden" The First Circle. New s of his appearance quickly spread, and soon he was inundated w ith invitations from all over Moscow. He accepted as manv as he could, and everxthing seemed to be arranged: permissions were granted by the directors of various institutions, dates established, notices put up, and invitations sent out, but at the last minute each lecture w as cancelled. At the Karpov Institute, Solzhenitsx n arri\ ed in the car that had been sent for him only to find a notice pinned to the door: "CJancelled ow ing to the author's indisposition.""

turned out that the Moscow

Cit\' Party Committee had been ringing w arn everybodx- off, threatening the institute directors w ith reprisals if they went ahead with their meetings. Semichastny, the head of the KGB, denounced Solzhenits\n's effrontery at Party ideological conferences and briefing sessions for Party propagandists, but, paradoxically, his fulminations only increased Solzhenitsyn's self-confidence. If that was all the head of the dreaded KCiB intended to do to him, there was no danger. It was It

round

to

difficult,

however, to find other platforms to speak from,

until, quite

pectedly, he was in\ ited to the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Studies

No\ember

unex(a

pre-

With a premonition that this might be his last opportunit)-, Solzhenitsyn went along prepared to speak as well as to read; after treating his listeners to two chapters from Cancer Ward, he seized on a question from the audience in order to get a tew \ious meeting there had been cancelled) for

things off his chest.

30.

— !

SOLZHENITSYN

[574]

must explain

I

appearances,

vou.

\\

I

hv, although

have

now

I

used to refuse to talk to reporters or make public

started giving intervie\\

and

s

believe, as before, that the writer's business

I

am

standing here before

to write, not to

is

platforms, not to keep explaining himself to newspapers. But a lesson: the

\\

riter exists not to

\\

ma\- think has no business at

all

This organization took awav

mv

.

.

.

There

to tutelage over the arts, that

supervising literature

mv

haunt public

have been taught

but to defend himself.

rite

no obvious claim

certain orga)uzatwii that has

I

—but

a

is

you

that does these things.

which was never intended for publication. Even so, I said nothing, but went on working quietly. However, thev then made use of excerpts from mv papers, taken out of context, to launch from the plata campaign of defamation against me, defamation in a new form form at closed briefing sessions. What can I do about it? Onlv defend mvself novel and

archive,

—

So here

I

without

mv know ledge and

am! Look, I'm

in a restricted edition

still

and

Look,

alive.

contrary to is

this

my

head

wishes,

is still

among

being circulated

on

my novel

mv

shoulders. Yet,

has been published

the chosen

\ sevolod Kochetov, the chief editor of Oktyahr. Tell me, then,

denv mvself similar privileges? Whv shouldn't from the same no\el here todav?

I,

—people

whv

the author, read

like

should

I

vou chapters

'"*

w as an

It

to be heard

carried

awav

and these w ere extraordinary

extraordinar\- performance,

from b\-

a

\\

ords

public platform in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn was

the strength of his feelings

—

recklessly, exaltedly.

He

imag-

ined he could see before him the face of Semichastny, and his resentment

knew no bounds. "In jov,

a

loud voice, and with a feeling of triumph and simple

explained myself to the public and paid him hack.

I

An

insignificant con-

and perhaps in the future too, ... I had been granted an audience of half a thousand and the freedom to speak!" The son of Gulag w as trulv unbending his knees and straightening his back. As he later wrote vict in the past,

when

describing this scene:

Vou would have

to live

through

a

long

life

of slavery,

bow ing and scraping to w ith the rest in hyp-

authoritv from childhood on, springing to your feet to join ocritical applause, all

this as slave

nodding assent

and

to patent lies, never entitled to

citizen, later as slave

Don't look round! Don't break ranks!

from

platform w

a

ith

an audience of

—

five

answer back

and convict: Hands behind your back! to appreciate that hour of free speech

hundred people,

also intoxicated

w

ith

freedom.''

But even more important w as another sensation that accompanied this explosion of anger and truth: "This was perhaps the first time, the very first time, that I felt mvself, saw mvself, making history." The legend of Solzhenitsvn was being born. He read some chapters from The First Circle, but this time the most provocative ones, the most political ones, instead of the domestic chapters he had read at the Kurchatov Institute.

the

Within davs the news of

his outburst

KGB had travelled round Moscow,

to hear

it.

and of

his daring defiance of

but Solzhenitsyn w as no longer there

Also contributing to the legend were those sudden disappearances

— The Best Form

oe Defence

[575]

December he shaved off his beard once more work on 1 he (iulag Archipelago, not so pimpernel. He was beginning to Hve a Hfe now that

of his, and at the beginning of

and shpped awav to much a musketeer as far surpassed, in

his hide-out to a

excitement and danger, the

lives

of his fictional heroes.*

Between December 1966 and Februars' 1967, Solzhenitsvn produced second draft of the

first six

parts of The (iulag Archipelago, revising

ing over fifteen hundred pages in

two and

a half

months. Alwavs

his

and retvp-

a

strenuous

worker, he surpassed himself on this occasion, working sixteen hours

a

day

two shifts. He had read somewhere the theories of the German doctor Beckmann that sleep was more refreshing and that vou needed less of it if vou went to bed at sundown and rose w ith the sun the next morning. Going one better than the theorv, he established a routine w herebv he w ent to bed at eight o'clock each evening and rose again at two. From two to ten in the morning, he worked his first shift, took a break for an hour, then w orked again from eleven in the morning to seven in the evening, and then in

—

had a further free hour before going to bed again. He also washed, cleaned, and cooked for himself, and as a result of this killing timetable, he had one or

two bouts of

He

illness.

"^

did not omit to take his faithful transistor radio with

of being w ithout

news was unbearable, even

—the idea — and some-

him

in his rural solitude

Radio Libert\', and other Western stations. Apart from his usual curiosit\', he w as listening for news of his interview w ith Komoto Sedze, w hich the latter had agreed to publish during the first w eek of the new vear (not onlv had Solzhenitsx n gone over to the

how found time

to listen to the BB(^,

w ith his new tactics of communicating directlv w ith abroad, but from the ver\' outset he also tried to control both what w as published and when and where). He was puzzled and disappointed to hear nothing, and concluded that either Sedze had grown afraid or the interview had been suppressed bv his editor. Solzhenitsvn's little "bomb" had failed to go off. (Onlv much later did he disco\er that he w as w rong. Fhe interview had been published in Japan, but no echo of it had reached the \\ est. I le had overestimated the closeness of the cultural ties between Japan and the Western world.) Irked bv this failure, but in other respects encouraged by the general success of his new polic\' of openness, Solzhenits\n pondered his next move. .\s earlv as the preceding J ul\ he had hit upon the scheme of writing an open he idea had been suggested letter to about a hundred of his fellow writers. to him b\' a similar open letter w ritten in the spring of 1966 by two priests attacking the behaviour of the officialh approved Orthodox church.' To write and send such a letter w ould be a gamble, for the challenge would be offensive

I

While Solzhenitsvn was awav, the authorities carried the campaign against him into his home district ideological secretarv, Alexander Kozhevnikov, denounced Solzhenitsvn at a local Fartv meeting for his "harmful influence on Soviet youth" and quoted passages

*

town of Ryazan. The from The and

Feast of the Conquerors

the Tart.

under the mistaken impression that he was

Natalia got to hear of

Kozhevnikov.

it

and personallv delivered

a letter

citing The Tenderfoot

of protest to an astonished

SOLZHENITSYN

[576]

and more overt than anything he had done before. On the other \\ ere now w riting such letters all the time. The Sinvavskv-Daniel trial had provoked a w hole spate of them, not only of the mild varietx' that he had refused to sign but also more outspoken ones, such as the eloquent letter that the young intellectual Alexander Ginzburg had addressed to Premier Kosygin or the fiery denunciation of Mikhail Sholokhov by Lvdia Chukovskava after Sholokhov's disgraceful remarks at the Party (>ongress. If he w ere to do something similar, w ith his fame and reputation behind him, the impact would be enormous. None of these other authors of open letters had been arrested or charged w ith an offence, so the chances of getting aw ay w ith it seemed good. However, he needed a pretext, and he decided that the forthcoming Congress of Soviet Writers would be the ideal moment. 1 he congress had just been postponed until the spring of 1967, w hich would gi\e him time to make the necessary preparations. far

cightier

\\

hand, lesser-know n personalities

\\ hen he returned to Ryazan at the beginning of March, the government seemed to be becoming e\en more restrictive than before. In December it had ratified a new decree establishing two new paragraphs of the criminal code directed against "anti-Soviet" statements and unauthorized demonstrations. But the opposition was also stronger. A group of distinguished aca-

demicians and

intellectuals, including Shostakovich, Kaverin,

amm, and

—

Mikhail

—

Romm,

new name on such appeals Andrei Sakharov, had signed a letter of protest w hen the decree w as first promulgated, and in January a group ot young people had demonstrated in Pushkin Square against the new law although several of them were arrested as a result. Also arrested were Yuri Galanskov, for publishing a new samizdat journal, Phoenix 66; Alexander (iinzburg, tor compiling a "w hite book" on the Sin\a\sk\ -Daniel trial and sending it to the West; and tw o of their friends, for helping them. In February, shorth before Solzhenits\n's return, two of the \oung demonstrators had been tried and one of them, \ ictor Khaustov, sentenced to three years in a labour camp. Like Sinyavsky and Daniel before him, Khaustov had held firm under cross-examination and did not renounce his opinions Igor

I

a relatively

,

or admit an\- guilt.

'^

Solzhenitsyn must have been aw are of these developments, but the dem-

\oung poets were remote from those members of the literary and his ow n immediate concern was to secure a final decision on Cancer Ward. Part 2 had been almost completed before he went away, and w ith his usual love of m\'stification he had arranged for his not quite final draft to be forw arded to Fx ardo\ sk\' a month before his return, thus leading Tvardovskv to think he w as in Ryazan rather than somewhere

onstrators and

establishment that he knew

,

quite different. Relishing this opportunity to exercise his old labour-camp skills

of "throw ing up a smoke-screen," and his role of the cunning outsider,

he had accompanied

dovsky that the assuring

him

it

latter

w

ith

an elaborately misleading

could be "the

first

that their inabjlity_to agree over part

his attitude to A'017 Mir. "I

letter

reader of part 2"

continued to follow the

1

had acti\

informing Tvar-

he wished and no w av affected ities and the policy in

if

Tm

Bhsi I'orm ok Dfkkncf.

[5"~1

of voiir maga/inc with complete approval." This was untrue, hut Sol/.henitsvn

felt

he needed to

Ixardoxskx to

flatter

lull

and make

his susjiicions

things easier for himself. In his account ot the matter, he suggests that he

was alread\ anticipating

rejection

1)\

Ixardoxskx and was simpl\

tr\

ing to

keep things polite, but sul)set|uent exents indicate that he had not realK gi\en

up hope. Part

1

had been rejected

magazines had declined to

l)\

Solzhenitsx n had ended

[>art

both Zvczda and

extracts.

j"»ul)lish 1

/*rostoi\

Aory Mir was

of G///aT \\V//Y/on

and three other

his last hope.'''

a relati\el\

optimistic

was under control, and he was full of hope, whereas the Partx official Rusanov was still sick and \ iewed the future w ith misgixing. In part 2, however, the pendukmi gradualK sw img the other w a\ Kostoglotov's cure was more or less completed, but at the cost of se\ere radiation sickness and imknow n damage to his libido from the hormone treatment. I lis romances with /o\a and Dr (iangart both entled inconclusi\el\ He had neither the appetite for ph\sical sex w ith the one nor the psxchological strength to sustain a marital relationship w ith the other. The novel ended enigmaticalK w ith Kostoglotov pa\ing a \isit to the i ashkent zoo, w here the animals reminded him of people he knev\' (a fierce, vellow-exed tiger recalled Stalin, though Stalin's name w as not mentioned cxplicitK ). One animal w as missing from its cage. A macacjue monke\' had been blinded w hen someone threw tobacco in its eves, and the monkev's fate was compared, metaphoricallx to Kostoglotov's. I he "tol)acco," in his case, had been his labour-camp sentence and his illness; and "no one" w as responsible, just as the monkex s assailant had remained anonxmous. He had survixed, but the cure had almost killed him, and he remained a sort of cripple. Rusanov, by contrast, was completeh' cured and had been discharged even before Kostoglotov the car taking him aw av had narrow 1\ missed runnote. Kostoglotox

s illness

.

.

,

,

—

ning dow n Kostoglotov their

sxmbolic expression of

in the drivewax', a suitablx'

mutual antagonism. In part 2,

more

attention

was paid

doctors than had been possible

duced.

Dr

in part 1,

and some

nex\

Oreshchenkox-, a retired general practitioner

xx

ho obxiouslx enjoxed

made to embodv a surprising plea for the medicine; and the humane surgeon. Lev Leonidovich, xxith

the author's approval,

of private

and xxork of the figures were intro-

to the personalities

x\

as

virtues a

more

than usual sxmpathx' for the sufferings of his patients, turned out to have learned his compassion in the labour camps, like Kostoglotov. 1 ogether

x\

ith

Dontsova and Ciangart, these "good" doctors xxere placed in opposition to

Nizamutdin Bakhramovich, and his hangers-on, x\ ho x\ ere lazy, technically unqualified, and interested only in personal advancement. The ultimate fate of the good doctors xxas perhaps symbolized bx' Dontsova's their venal chief,

discovery that, as a result of too

much exposure

to the

X-raxs

(in

the selfless

pursuit of her duty), she herself had contracted cancer.

Two nexx

patients in part

2

xxere also of interest for Solzhenitsvn's grand

design.

Maxim

C^halx',

learned

how

manipulate the system, was

to

an unscrupulous Communist "businessman" a naturally ally

xx

ho had

of Rusanov's, and

SOLZHENITSYX

[578] a

lugubrious librarian called Shulubin gravitated to Kostoglotov. Shulubin,

an Old Bolshe\ik and

was suffering from a severe and terminal w hich endowed his conversations \\ ith Kostoglotov with a particular pathos and urgencv. Once a true believer, he had become thoroughlv disillusioned w ith the crueltv and corruption of Soviet societv, but not with socialism. Into his mouth w as placed an eloquent plea for "ethical socialism," based as much on the ideals of the Russian socialists of the late nineteenth centurv as on the theories of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. \\ hat Shulubin advocated was perhaps an earh' variant of "socialism with a human face," and so persuasive was his reasoning that for several vears he was taken to represent Solzhenitsvn's own views on socialism. Onl\ much later did Solzhenitsvn reveal that this was not so. He had passed that point long ago in his own development, but had found it interesting to make the best possible case for socialism through the medium of a svmpathetic character. His own views, as embodied bv Kostoglotov, Oreshchenkov, and the Kadmins, entailed a rejection of socialism, but the\' had of necessitv to be camouflaged if he was to stand an\" hope of Soviet publication. \\ hen he arrived at the Novy Mir offices on 16 March 1967 to discuss the form of

a loxalist,

rectal cancer,

novel once more, Solzhenitsvn found that although the entire editorial board

had read part 2, the meeting with Tvardovskv was to be tete-a-tete. Tvardovskv w as in a deep depression. In the course of the winter, the Central Committee had sacked his two most faithful deputies, Dementye\' and Sachs, w ithout even asking him. \ovy Mir had been attacked in Pravda and was finding it harder and harder to get things past the censorship. And Tvardovsk\ himself w as under a cloud. After failing to be re-elected to the Central Committee, he had been rejected bv the Supreme Soviet and had been ostentatiouslv passed over for a medal that w as awarded to colleagues who had Sholokhov, Pedin, Leonov, and Tychina. As a result, toed the Partv line he w as more preoccupied than ever w ith the fate of his magazine. He had managed to maintain the qualitv of his editorial board bv signing up the liberal writers Efim Dorosh and (>hingiz .\itmatov, but his freedom of manoeuvre was greatl\- limited and he feared that there was little hope of publish-

—

ing Cancer this,

Ward during

the

onh' the highest praise for

One

2

vear.

He was

desperately sorr\- about

"three times better" than part

1

and had

it.-"

ma\' assume that Solzhenitsvn was disappointed by this new

was no one still

coming

because he had found part

s. There Union likelv to print it, and publication was chances seemed even slimmer after the two men had

else in the Soviet

his goal.

But

become embroiled

his

in a sillv quarrel of the sort that

had spoiled their tw o

previous meetings. Tvardovskv was irritated bv some news that had been

passed to him the dav before bv Georgi .Markov,

Union

secretariat, to the effect that Cancer

a

member

of the Writers'

Ward had been published

in the

was true, it made his task of securing Soviet publication impossiblv difficult, and he w as angrv w ith Solzhenitsvn for manoeuvring behind his back. SolzhenitsNn tried to soothe him h\ explaining that it w as only one chapter and that it had appeared in Czechoslovakia, w hich was hardly the West.

If this

— The Best Form

W est.

Ic

1

explained that

in

had also been ottered

that

response to

a request,

viewed b\

a

he had sent them

added

a

a

ehapter

that sinee

Sloxak journalist (sinuiltaneousl\-

tew months pre\iousl\ he had been inter-

a

Japanese correspondent

as well).

turned out that l\ard()\sk\ knew about the Japanese

It

due

intormation that

tiie

I579]

to sexeral So\iet niaga/ines. lie

then he had also gi\en an interxiew to slipping in

Defence

of

to lea\ e for ltal\ the next da\

tor a

meeting of

briefed on the latest tiexelopments before his departure

—

was

article. lie

COMES

had l)een

antl

was probablv

that

wh\ he had been told about the Cancer \\V/yv/ chapter as well. And this, too, was a bone of contention between them. Almost their tirst quarrel had been over Solzhenitsxn's refusal to go to Leningrad for the in 1963. In the

winter of 1965,

of (X)MKS and had refused to

noxel and archix ing

normalh

,

w

e,

1

(X)MKS

sxniposium

\ardo\sk\ had been in Paris for

comment on

w as w ell and work-

assuring \\ esterners that Solzhenitsxn

had been

hile \'igorelli, the secretarv general of CX).\IES,

reported as sa\ing that he had had "a friendh' chat" w

been told that the novel and archix

e

meeting

a

the confiscation of Solzhenitsyn's

Solzhenitsxn and

ith

had been returned to him. Solzhenitsvn

now reminded IvardoNskv how much he hated \

igorelli for this

and hinted that he expected better beha\ iour of IxardoN skv on

his

statement

forthcom-

Rome. As tempers rose, Tvardovsk\- exclaimed over Cancer Ward, "E\en

ing visit to

publication depended entireh' on me,

I

wouldn't publish

if

W hen Solzheni-

it!"

tsvn asked wh\', he replied, "Because of vour non-acceptance of the Soviet regime.

You

refuse to forgi\ e the Soviet regime anxthing.

forget anvthing.

You have much

explain that he was

full\' in

too good a

favour of the Soviet regime in

elected deputies to independent workers' Soviets

treel)

could not be false to his

memorv and

w ere. Ivardovskx' invoked the societ\' that

.

You

.

.

refuse to

memorv!" Solzhenitsvn its

tried to

original

— but

that a

form

w

riter

describe things otherw ise than as thev

collective farms as a "sacred" aspect of Soviet

Solzhenitsvn refused to respect, but Solzhenits\n pcjinted out

w ere not mentioned in his novel and that the true objecbook la\- elsew here. "What reall\- casts its shadow o\er the w hole the prison-camp s\stem. No countr\' can be healthv w hile it carries

that collective farms tions to the

book such

is

a

tumour inside it" (he was, incidentallv, contradicting his statement Club the preceding November that there was no s\mbolism

the Writers' it).

He

until

also

reminded Ivardoxskx' of something

he started receiving

letters in

at

in

had not know n

that he himself

—

response to Ivan Denisovich

that

Khru-

w ho had presided over the run-down of Stalin's labour-camp empire, had also been responsible for establishing a new netw ork of camps almost as oppressive as Stalin's, and that these camps were still in operation.*

shchev,

Nevertheless, Tvardovsk\' insisted that Solzhenitsvn had gone too *In one respect

—

that of the food pro\ided in the

camps

than Stahn's (according to one storv, Khrushchex',

— Khrushchev's were

when

presented w

camps, halved the amount for food because he was appalled by the shchev's rule that three kinds of

camp regiment were

ith

said to be

far.

worse

the budget for the

cost). It

was under Khru-

introduced, according to the rations pro-

vided and the restrictions imposed on the prisoners: normal, intensified, and se\ere.

SOLZHENITSYN

[580]

vou must make some concessions to the Soviet regime. vou can't afford iwt to vou can't fight a howitzer with a pea-shooter." Until six months earlier, Solzhenitsvn would probablv have agreed with him, but now he w as not so sure. He felt that writers at last had public opinion and he was determined to exploit a how itzer of their ow n it to the hilt. Cancer Ward, he told 1 vardovskv, was alreadv circulating, and nothing could stop it now. If nobody would publish it in the Soviet Union, it no longer mattered to him. "Mv books can wait, Alexander Trifonovich. shall die, and evcrv w ord \\ ill be accepted, just as it is. Nobodv w ill w ant to correct them!" T\ardovskv was irritated by these high-flown words and poohpoohed them as self-infatuation. Solzhenitsvn, he felt, was striking attitudes. "Sav what vou

like,

—

In the long run,

—

—

1

"

There's nothing easier than telling vourself that vou're the

and

all

know

Tvardovsk\' did not letter to the \\ riters' a

onh brave

one,

the rest are poltroons, alwavs readv to compromise."-'

w

of Solzhenitsxn's resolve to

Congress, nor did he

know

rite

an open

that in addition to sending

chapter oi Cancer Wardlo Slovakia, Solzhenitsvn had that verv week (per-

haps even that dav) handed

who had lator

a

complete copv of Part

1

to the Slovak journalist

w ho w as also a transsome months previouslv to response, Solzhenitsvn had sent him ten

interview ed him. This journalist, Pavel Licko,

from Russian, had written

to Solzhenitsvn

inquire about his latest work. In

pages from Cancer Ward, and Licko had arranged for their publication in the It w as a w orld scoop, and Licko w as subsequentlv asked Union and trv to get an interview w ith Solzhenitsvn. He was well equipped for the task, having served as an officer in the Soviet armv during the w ar and speaking fluent Russian, but v\hen he approached the \\ riters' Union in Moscow he was repeatedlv told that Solzhenitsvn was busv or ill, or even almost dN ing, and could not receive visitors. Licko was also denied a permit to visit Rvazan. Having sent a telegram to Solzhenitsvn and received an invitation to visit him, however, he had managed to pull

Bratislava Pravda.

to visit the Soviet

,

sufficient strings

there

sk\';

in \

through

his militarv contacts to obtain the

permit and had

week preceding Solzhenitsyn's talk with Ivardovhe had spent six hours in Solzhenitsvn's companv at his new flat

travelled to

Rxazan

in the

ablochkov Passage." Unfortunatelv, Licko proved to be an erratic witness,

dered his storv of this unique

visit to

who

later

sequent accounts of w hat he saw there are not to be fulh' trusted.

however, take down views (Solzhenitsvn

a relativelv

and the interview, when

ungarbled account of Solzhenitsyn's

wrote to him

later

it

turni Zivot (Cultural Life)

appeared

on

31

embroi-

Solzhenitsvn's home, so that his sub-

listing

some of the worst

in the Bratislava literarv

March

He life

did,

and

mistakes),

magazine Kul-

1967, attracted a great deal of atten-

becoming a prime source of information about the reclusive author for some years to come. In it, Solzhenitsvn gave the fullest and frankest account

tion,

of his

life

yet to appear anywhere, underlining his military record, pointing

out that he had been sentenced not

in a

court of law but by the "extra-judicial

decision" of a special tribunal, and listing his labour

camps and

his place of

Thf Best Form of Defence

Among

[5H1]

works he drew special attention to (dancer Ward, of completed part 2; The First (Jircle, w hich he said had taken him nine \ears, off and on, to complete; and his pla\s I'he '['einlerfoot and the Tart and (aduIIc in the Wind. Of the latter he commented, "1 do was successful w ith it. Ne\ertheless, both the Vakhtangox and not think Lenin Komsomol theatres w anted to stage it at one time." I le also mentioned his miniature stories and said he w as aw are that thev had appeared in translation in the English magazine Encounter, although he had had nothing to do exile.

which he

his litcrarv

had

said he

just

I

with

it.

As on

interesting as the details of his biographv

literature.

Owing

I

le

admitted that he w as not w

to the circumstances of his

literature. Nevertheless,

life,

w ere

the

\

iew

s

he expressed

read in world literature.

ell

he had had time

Russian

onI\- for

he had decided opinions on w hat to expect

in the

near future. "I have a subjective impression that literature in \\ estern Europe,

perhaps because

it

has not experienced anv upheavals for the past se\eral

decades, ma\' be rather shallow

.

The foundation of

experiencing of social processes. Eastern Europe, has endured profound upheavals. Eor this reason

literature lies in the

in I

w hich

am

I

ver\'

deep

include Russia,

hopeful for

its

future." Russian literature in particular, he said, had alwavs been

literar\'

characterized bv

its

sensitivitv to suffering, but

now

it

w as exposed

to dan-

gers of a different kind. "In our countrv vou sometimes hear that writers

should paint false

and

w hat

is

going to happen tomorrow

literature

is

cosmetics." 1 he dut\' of the writer

a pretty picture

justifies lies.

Such

of

.

1

his

is

was not exclusivelv towards societv but also tow ard each individual w ithin society, and their interests did not alw avs coincide. Ehe individual had manv problems that the collective did not know how to solve. Solzhenitsyn also elaborated on an idea that had caught his attention at the Writers' Club discussion of Cancer Ward. Yuri Karvakin had been one of those who expressed reservations about the portra\al of Rusanov, and had quoted Camus's w ords that art of the higher kind should not pla\' the part of prosecutor. Solzhenitsyn had replied at the time that this raised the issue of "the correlation between the present time and eternitv" in a work of art, and now he took up the idea once more.

The

writer needs to maintain a balance between the two categories of the present

and

eternity. If his v\ork

aeteniitatis,

much

then his work

is

so topical that he loses his view of things sub specie

v\ ill

quickly die.

conversely, should he devote too

and "air." The writer stands at all times between and should forget neither the one nor the other.

force, dis

And

of his attention to eternit\- and neglect actualitv, his work loses

Tw o further points

its

it

as

writers.

its

colour,

and Charyb-

of note emerged from the Licko interview.

that Solzhenitsyn did not regard for society to persecute

this Scylla

One was

unusual or even necessarily undesirable

"There have been manv cases

in

which

society treated a writer unjustly and he fulfilled his vocation nevertheless.

SOLZHENITSYN

[582]

The The

writer must be prepared for adversity. This

is

an occupational hazard.

writer's lot will never be easv."

Secondlv, Solzhenitsvn voiced his thoughts on his preferred method of

composition said,

in his novels.

1 he genre he regarded as most interesting, he

was the "polvphonic novel"

(a

term

first

coined to describe the novels

of Dostovevsky). Solzhenits\'n's definition of the polvphonic novel seemed

from the accepted one. In his view, the touchstone of the it had no one hero. "The way I interpret polyphony, each character, as soon as the plot touches him, becomes the main hero. That way, the author is responsible for, say, thirty-five heroes and doesn't give preference to any one of them." He had \\ ritten two books in this way, he said, and was planning to write a third.-' It was a few days after this interview that Solzhenitsvn had gi\'en Licko a copv of part 1 of Cancer Ward. His idea seems to have been to get the novel published in a "friendly" East European country if publication was impossible in the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia was particularlv suitable just then, in view of the liberalization that was taking place in the months preceding the "Prague spring." Bratislava was also a good choice. It was less in the limelight than Prague, so that plans for publication there would be less likely to attract attention.* At a later date Licko w as to claim that Solzhenitsvn had asked him to seek publication in England or Japan as well, "since he believed "-^ that E^ngland and Japan had the most deep-rooted cultures in the world. In view of certain conflicts in Licko's evidence, this storv w as disbelieved by most of those who heard it; but in the light of Solzhenitsyn's known ideas and plans at this time, it is not entirelv implausible. Later, uncier pressure at home, Solzhenitsvn denied that he had "authorized" anvone to publish Cancer Ward, but it is quite possible that he had a contingency plan whereby Licko was to act if anvthing untoward should happen. He was still apprehensive about the possible results of his forthcoming open letter, and he anticipated all kinds of unpleasantnesses, up to and including arrest. It is equally plausible that Licko confused what Solzhenitsvn was saying to him, but unlikely that he imagined the w hole idea of publication in the West. The theorv that Solzhenitsvn may have envisaged Western publication to differ a little

polvphonic novel was that

Ward is given credence b\' a similar moxe that he made a month when he gave explicit instructions for The First Circle to be published in the West. The person he entrusted with this mission was Olga Carlisle, an American journalist of Russian descent and the daughter of the man who

of Cancer later,

had carried out the microfilms of The

w w

as in

Moscow

as preparing.

First Circle,

to collect material for an

\ adim Andrevev. Carlisle

anthologv of Soviet poetry that she

Although he had never met her before, Solzhenitsyn was

influenced in her favour bv the kind of subjective "signs" that appealed to his intuition: her kinship

with V'adim Andrevev (and through him with her

grandfather, Leonid Andrevev), and the fact that her maternal grandfather

had been the *The

Socialist Revolutionary politician Victor

Chernov. Her pedi-

printed and bound and lying

Slovak edition of Cancer Ward was actually w hen the Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia, but

it

in the v\'arehouse

never w ent on sale to the public.

Thk Best Form of Defence

l5^3l

gree on both sides, from Solzhcnits\n's point of view, was impeccable. Fur-

thermore, she was

a

good friend

ot

Kornei (Jhukovsky (who had put

it all, her photograph had stood on the desk where he worked in (>huko\skv's dacha. He had studied it manv times, w ithout ever thinking that he would one da\' meet this attractive woman and call on her for help. Chukovskv's information that she was in Moscow must have struck him as a w onderful coincidence or even an "act of God," w hich is how he described to her Licko's recent visit to Rvazan. 1 hev were walking back to her hotel from the flat where they had met (for the second

Solzhenitsvn in touch with her) and, to cap

time, that evening), and Solzhenitsvn described to her the details of his dif-

and his plans for dealing with it. The KCiB was tr\ing to him into silence, he said, but he had outflanked it by giving part of Cancer Ward to Licko, and now he wanted her to see that The First Circle appeared in the \\ est, first in America and then in other countries. "It is a big book mv life," he told her, adding that it was his most important w ork, the one that mattered and would hit the Soviet leadership ficult situation

throttle

1

—

the hardest. Fie also told her he wanted

it

to "stun public (jpinion

throughout

known." .\t the same time, absolute secrecv w ould have to be preserved and no mention made of his participation in this decision. "You can imagine w hat would happen to me if vou w ere found out." He also told her of his plan to send an open letter to the forthcoming Writers' Congress in Ma\' and asked her to do what she the world. Let the true nature of these scoundrels be

could, as a journalist, to get

publicized in the

it

accepted the assignment eagerlv. Flving to her father

in Paris

W est.

\\ estern

Carlisle

seems to have

Kurope, she contacted

and took the microfilms from him. Bv the end of

.\pril

1967 they were in America.-' Solzhenitsvn's most important novel publication in the West. Part

1

w as now launched on the road

The Gulag Archipelago, his ultimate exposure, was almost complete and safe-keeping of trusted friends.

to

of his second novel was half-wav there, while

The

nitsvn's letter to the congress. 1 he

in the

decks were therefore cleared for Solzhe-

first

draft

had been finished the preceding

summer, when Solzhenitsvn first thought of the idea, but since then had lain untouched. On his visit to Moscow, however, Solzhenits\'n took the opportunitv to show this draft to Chukovskv, Kaverin, Kopelev, and one or two others, and to ask their advice. On 24 March he returned to Rxazan and in I he principal change he and more general. Originally,

three days v\Tote out a completelv revised text.

introduced was to make the it

had resembled some of

letter less personal

his earlier (private) letters to the authorities, con-

centrating on the confiscation of his novel and archive and listing his personal

Now it began with a resounding denunciation of the Soviet system of censorship, w ent on to rehearse the injustices perpetrated against Soviet writers over the preceding fortv vears, and onlv then referred to the persecution and harassment inflicted on himself. From a personal, if eloquent, plea for justice for one man, it had turned into a thunderous denunciation of the entire conduct of the literary establishment, and was no longer a petition but a demand for justice for all. According to Reshetovskaya, Solzhenitsyn's

grievances.

SOLZHENITSYN

[584]

favourite listening during the da\'s w hen he

Beethoven, and

much

of

it

was written w

ith

was composing the

letter

Beethoven's Ninth S\

was

mphonv

plaving in the background.-"^

When

the letter

was

finished, Solzhenitsyn

at

something

w riting

a letter to

found himself

of a loose end and tried to catch up on correspondence,

Mmeiim ("How Russian it is, how characteristic, the collection of names and objects, and how verv timelv!").* He put together a critical article on Gribovedov from notes written earlier, and even found time to read some stories mailed him by beginning w riters and to send them his comments. But somehow he could not settle, until the thought crossed his mind that he might not survive the release of his open letter unscathed and that it w ould be a good idea to write a sort of valedictor\' literarv testament (for w hich he also had notes readv). In a month of sustained elation, from 7 April to 7 Mav, he w rote Shalamov and thanking X'ladimir Soloukhin

for his Letters from a Riisshin

150 pages of an apologia pro vita sim, describing and anahzing his thoughts and actions from the moment he had decided to offer /iv/;; Denisovich for publication up to and including his most recent quarrel w ith I vartiovsky.-' His account w as selective, polemical, and hugely entertaining, a step-by-step justification of his past behaviour and a rollicking denunciation of his enemies. In these pages he could let his hair dow n and give vent to his deepest feelings, but he also had a didactic intent: to explain to himself and others how it w as that he had reached the end of his tether and w h\- he had decided to launch his open letter. It w as a means of coming to terms w ith himself in the lull before the impending storm and was eventualh to form the basis of the first four chapters of his "literar\' memoir," llje Oak and the Calf. There remained onh the task of sending his open letter to the intended he recipients. With the help of Natalia and several assistants in Moscow prepared 250 tvped copies of the letter, each signed with his own hand, and in the last five davs before the congress had them posted from difterent districts in Moscow (never more than two in the same box) to outw it the postal censorship. The recipients were chosen with meticulous care and included all the people whom Solzhenitsyn regarded as honest and genuine w riters, leading members of the Writers' Union and other public figures, a sprinkling oi apparatchiks to confuse the KGB, and w riters representing each ot the nonRussian republics. Curiously enough, Solzhenitsyn placed great hopes in the

o\'er

,

non-Russians (but w took place).

as

disenchanted

This careful planning ations,

and

b\' their

reactions

when

the congress

-^

it

duly bore

was the hallmark of Solzhenitsyn's

fruit.

The

style of oper-

vast majority of the letters reached their

on 18 Ma}' was hardly a

destination, and well before the opening day of the congress,

1967, the text

was being circulated

congress delegate

who

didn't

in samizdat, so that there

know about

it.

*Soloukhin's book, published in 1966, was about icons and icon collecting, and contained,

among

other things, an impassioned plea for the preservation of Russian churches and their

contents.

'

33

LETTER TO THE WRITERS' CONGRESS FOURTH ALL-UNION Congfcss THEsolemn

of Sovict \\ riters

affair to celebrate the fiftieth

a

\v

as

intended to be

anniversary of Soviet pow

er,

w hv it had been held over from the preceding year. According to Zhores Medvedev, preparations for the congress were exceptionally thorough. Both the Writers' Union and the ideological department of the CJentral C.ommittee w ere determined to ensure a tacade ot complete unanimity, to w hich end the lists of w titers w ho w ished to speak w ere \\

hich was one of the reasons

and the texts of all the speeches approved in advance. commission w as set up to accomplish this task, and speakers were warned that they must on no account depart from their prepared statements. It was feared that some delegates might try to raise the subject of Sinyavsky and Daniel, whose imprisonment w as still a rallying point for opposition to the Part\' line. And to make doubly sure that there would be no untoward incidents, no guests \\ ere invited from the other creative unions (artists, com-

carefully scrutinized

A

special

As a result, the enormous Main Hall ot the Kremlin Palace of Congresses was four-fifths empty w hen the congress opened It w as clear that the organizers had done their job w ell. Observers found it the dullest congress in the entire history of the Writers' Union. Once posers, musicians, and so on).

.

Demichev had demanded absolute loyalty to the doctrine of socialist realism opening address, there w as nothing further to discuss, and the general tone was summed up tow ards the end of the congress by a complacently ironical Sholokhov: "Judging by the past few days, everything is going as it should w ith good people: quietly, peacefully, calmly, w ith no sharp speeches in his

and no unnecessary outbursts

—

in

other words, everything in the garden

585

is

SOLZHENITSYN

[586]

lovely, so that everyone breathes freely and smiles benevolently, and the atmosphere in the auditorium is so tranquil that some in the audience have been dozing off."Whether Sholokhov's irony was meant to be pointed is not clear. He certainly was no friend of Solzhenitsyn, but he could hardh' ha\e been unaware that behind the scenes the atmosphere was anything but tranquil. Just about every delegate present \\ as aw are of Solzhenitsyn's letter, and by the second or third day all of them had read it. It was the main topic of conversation in the intervals between the sessions, at mealtimes and in the corridors of the congress hall, completely dominating all other concerns. Never had the contrast been greater betw een the unruffled, dead surface of Soviet literary life

and the seething passions underneath. F^or the first time since the early thira writer was trying to make a connection between the real problems facing So\iet literature and the empty formalities of its ceremonial. Solzhenitsyn had divided his letter into three parts. In the first he confronted head-on a subject that had not been tackled since the late twenties: the censorship. Now here in the Soviet constitution, he w rote, was there any provision for a censorship board. Its very existence was illegal, w hich was presumabh' w hv it was never publicly mentioned. Yet it gave arbitrarx' power ties,

over w Titers to indi\ iduals w ho hadn't the faintest idea of survival of the

drag out

its

literar\-

merit.

"A

Middle Ages, censorship has managed, Methuselah-like,

existence almost to the twent\-first centurw Perishable,

it

to

attempts

to arrogate to itself the prerogative of imperishable time, of separating

good

books from bad." Soviet writers, continued Solzhenitsyn, were not supposed to express their own judgements on man and society, and when they did,

works were mutilated beyond recognition. He then listed some of the and the writers who had suffered from it, ranging from Dostovevsky to Pasternak. Curiously enough, he also struck a nationalistic note, pointing out that "from the national point of view" the censorship was short-sighted and foolish. their

specific absurdities of the censorship

Our

literature has lost the leading position

century and the beginning of this one.

.

.

.

it

To

occupied the entire

of our country now appears imnieasurablv more dull,

Not only does our country

at

trivial,

—

the end of the last

w orld the

literary life

and inferior than

it

—

hv this in world opinion but world literature is poorer for it too. If the world had unrestricted access to all the fruits of our literature, if it were enriched by our spiritual experience, the v\ hole artistic exolution of the world would move in a different way, acquiring a new stability and rising, indeed, to new heights.' really

is.

.

.

.

lose

Solzhenitsyn formally proposed "the abolition of

all

censorship" of imagina-

and the granting of independence to publishers. In the second part of his letter, he dealt with the role of the Writers' Union. The union not only had failed to defend a long list of persecuted Soviet writers but had itself often led the persecution. There was no need for this tradition to be maintained, he wrote, and he proposed that union

tive literature

Letter to the Writers' ('ongress guarantees to defend

members should henceforth he

its

"so that past illegahties w Thirdl\- and lastlx

case and defend

He

him

,

ill

clearl\-

[5*^7]

formulated

not be repeated."

Solzhenits\ n called on the union to consider his o\\ n

against the persecutions to w hich he had been subjected.

repeated the complaints (and more) he had voiced

in his lecture at

the

Lazarev histitute: about the confiscation of his works, their restricted circulation among Partv loyalists, the campaign of slander against him conducted at Part\- meetings, the blocking of Cancer Ward, the refusal to perform or publish his plavs and screenplay, the refusal to reprint any of his pul)lished works in a collected edition,* and the cancelling of his public lectures. "Faced v\'ith

these flagrant infringements of m\- copyright and 'other' rights, will the

Fourth Congress defend me or w ill it not? It seems to me that the choice is not w ithout importance for the literar\- future of some of the delegates themselves." Solzhenitsvn concluded with a ringing declaration that he would from the grave even more fulfil his duty as a w titer "in all circumstances

—

successfullv and incontrovertibly than in

my

lifetime."

In this, his first polemical public statement w ritten for a large audience, Solzhenitsvn had tvpicallv gone to the heart of the matter in naming censorship as the chief enemv of Russian literature and in divining that it w as the

one subject the congress organizers would want to avoid. His letter went well bevond his earlier statements and set a pattern for many public utterances to come, mixing concern for national pride and the national interest with a more specialized care for the fate of the national literature and alarm over the treatment of his

own

works, linking them firmly as ditterent tacets

of the same, central problem. In other words, the central problem of Russian literature and the problem of Solzhenits\n w ere one and the same thing. letter, Solzhenitsyn had what the response would be, halt hoping that he would be invited to the congress to defend and discuss it. On 19 Mav, he had lunch w ith Kapitsa, w ho thoroughly approved the contents of Solzhenits\n's letter and later commented, "The technological revolution w ill

After seeing to the deliver\- of the copies of his

stayed on in

do

far

more

Moscow

to find out

for general prosperity than an\- socialist rexolution.""^ For the

next tw o davs Solzhenitsvn staved in Peredelkino, discussing possible strategy with Chukovsky and others, and on the day of the congress opening gave a reading at a research institute in the Moscow suburb of Bogorodskoye. The hall was half empty, and the reading (of the Spiridon chapters from The First

did not go well. Solzhenitsyn then read some of his miniature stories and his letter to the Congress. It was the only public reading of the letter in Moscow (Solzhenitsyn stood up to read it after having sat to read from his Circle)

works) and had an immediate impact on w ho greeted it w ith genuine applause.

his

otherw

ise

lukew arm audience,

Solzhenitsvn was all the more disturbed by the absence of such a collected edition in the Soviet Union because he had just learned of the publication of one by Possev in West Germany (indeed a friend had recent!) brought him a copy from there). *

SOLZHENITSYN

[588]

But

it

\^as not the congress platform,

the academician

Tamm

and

a

group of

Mozhayev

and that evening,

after

dinner with

his colleagues, Solzhenitsyn

heard

had been no mention of the letter in the public sessions of the congress, although most of the delegates had talked of nothing else in the corridors outside. Ihe next day, the Solzhenitsyns lunched with Shostakovich and his young wife, Irina Supinskava, who fetched them in her car and took them to Shostakovich's luxurious dacha in Zhukovka. Shostakovich, too, seemed to approve of Solzhenitsvn's letter,

from

his friend Boris

that there

him a "truth-seeker," and presented him with a signed record.''* Meanwhile, the congress continued as the authorities had planned, and only one person present found the boldness to challenge the leadership. A writer named Vera Ketlinskaya got up and complained that although it \\ as admissible to criticize or dislike this or that author, it was intolerable simply to ignore someone and pretend that he did not exist, "as our speakers have done with regard to the talented author Solzhenitsyn." She was evidentlv called

greeted

\\

ith

loud applause (the stenographic record has

a suspicious

space where applause would normally be recorded),! but that was

blank

and was no mention of Solzhenitsyn's letter.*^ Medvedev tells the story of a popular poet who, after downing several drinks at a party, announced his intention of going up to the platform the follow ing day and reading the letter aloud to the delegates. He even extracted a solemn promise from another writer present, w ho was due to chair one of the follow ing day's sessions, to call on him at the appropriate moment. But when the next day's sessions began, the prospective chairman was absent, and his replacement read out all,

there

an apology, saving that the other writer had been unexpectedly taken

The

poet

w as unable

to take the initiative himself,

ill.

and thus the contents of

the letter remained excluded from the debate.

ful

The ease with w hich this was accomplished may be ascribed to the careway in which the delegates to the congress had been picked beforehand.

Hardly anyone of independent views attended,

a

circumstance that was

all

the easier to arrange because of the natural distaste of most writers of conse-

quence

for being marshalled

and manipulated

like

puppets. But there was

plenty of support in the form of unofficial letters and telegrams to the con-

The most significant, urging an open discussion of Solzhenitsyn's lethad eighty-three signatures on it, including those of just about every writer, critic, and editor of consequence in literary Moscow (though with the exception of Tvardovskv, Lakshin, and the upper echelons of Novy Mir) J A number of writers wrote individual letters, of w hich the most outspoken came from the young prose w riter Georgi V'ladimov, w ho w ent even further

gress. ter,

*

According

to Shostako\ich's

and Solzhenitsyn teenth

Symphony

fell

memoirs

out two vears

(1969) for

its

(Testimony), as edited b\'

later, after

Solomon

V'olkov, Shostako\ich

Solzhenitsyn had criticized Shostakoyich's Four-

undue pessimism.

tin the unpublished chapters of her memoirs, Natalia Reshetoyska\a confirms that there was applause. She reports Solzhenitsyn as haying been told that Tyardoysky \\ as among those vyho applauded.

Letter to the Writers' Congress

[5^9]

than Solzhcnitsxn in his denunciation of the iniquities of the censorship and the pusillanimity of the union leaders. Sol/,henits\n letter. In his

like a

man

was

gratified

memoir he

voluntarily

quences from

mounting the

his effrontery.*^ That

to put his affairs in order acting.

His

\\

and genuineh surprised 1)\ the success w ritten and disseminated mv

confesses, "I had

and send

\\

(jf

his

letter

scaffold," fullv expecting dire conse-

as

his

whv

much

he had gone to so

trouble

manuscripts safely to the West before

ords about accepting death and speaking from be\'ond the gra\e,

while rhetorical, undoubtedK reflected

a

dread of the reprisals that he antic-

ipated from the goyernment side. Vet nothing happened and nothing said, not

even

after the letter

had appeared

back again. Solzhenitsyn does not say so this, too,

he had arranged

b\'

handing

in the

in his

a cop\- to

was West and was broadcast

account of the matter, but

Kfim Etkind on the eye of

the latter's departure for a literary conference in \ ienna. Etkind passed a S\\ all

edish editor of his acquaintance and asked

him

to see that

the major Western newspapers, and this dul\' happened on

after the congress ended. "^

A

3

it 1

it

to

appeared

in

Ma\', shortly

photographer w ho visited Solzhenitsyn

at

Chu-

koysky's dacha that week found him pacing the garden with his transistor

BBC had and w ould broadcast it back. "* He did not realize how successful he had been, howexer, until he attended a public meeting organized by the Writers' Union on 31 May 1967 to celebrate Paustovsky's seventy-fifth birthday. Paustovskv had long been an idol of the liberals, and even Solzhenitsyn shared the general respect for him, despite having criticized his autobiography in the past. The meeting had

radio in his hand,* waiting impatiently to discover whether the

obtained the text of his

been organized

letter

as a kind of liberal counterblast to the Writers'

Congress,

which few of them had attended, and was full to overflowing (over 900 writers w ere estimated to be present). Kaverin, as chairman, made a long speech in praise of Paustovsky's career, in the course of w hich he defined three main strands in Russian literature: the romantic (of which Paustovsk\ was the best living exemplar); the "dramatical grotesque," typified bv the late Bulgakov; and philosophical realism, whose leading exponent at that time was Solzhenitsyn."

At some point during the meeting, Kaverin went up to Solzhenitsyn and complimented him on his tactics. "What a f^rilliant move that letter of yours was!" And Solzhenitsyn was even more surprised to learn that 7 vardovsky approved of his letter, although Tvardovsky had not signed the collective letter of support.'- His information about Tvardovsky's attitude came at second hand, and he did not know that Tvardovskv had done more than approve or write in support, that he had been active behind the scenes. The secretariat of the Writers' Union had called a confidential meeting immediately after the congress to discuss how to respond to Solzhenits\n"s letter. They had regarded the letter as a "blow below the belt" and w anted to reply *. According to Natalia Resiietovskava, the radio

Komoto

Sedze.

was

a gift

from the Japanese correspondent

SOLZHENITSYN

[59o]

in kind, but the degree of support for Solzhenitsvn within the Writers' Union and the hullabaloo created abroad by the publication of the letter had caused them to have second thoughts, and Tvardovskv (supported, it seems, by Simonov and Polevoi) had vigorouslv persuaded them to take a different line. Thev should publish a statement, he said, confirming that there was no blemish

on Solzhenitsyn's war record, admitting that his letter contained things that deserved attention, but sternlv admonishing him for the "sensational" manner in which he had behaved. Having grudgingl\- accepted this suggestion, the secretariat asked Tvardovskv to invite Solzhenitsvn to their offices to confirm that this would satisf\' him before thev submitted their proposed statement to the Central Committee for final approval (one of the reasons they always moved so slowly and ponderouslv was that everything had to be approved bv the Central Committee's ideological section before anv action could be taken). Tvardovskv experienced his usual difficulty in tracking the elusive author down but finallv reached him on 8 June 1968, just before Solzhenitsvn w as to leave for Rozhdestvo. Over the telephone, he implored

drop e\er\'thing and come at once to Novy Mir, but Solzhenitsyn was He thought that Tvardovskv wanted to persuade him to make a retraction. If not, and if Tvardovskv was readv to publish something, he would let him wait until after the weekend. The BBC had announced three readings of his letter during the next few days, and he preferred to wait for

him

to

suspicious.

these to

He

make

his position stronger.'''*

therefore arranged to see Tvardovskv on 12 June, and only then did

he learn about the union's climb-down and the reasons for Tvardovsky's sense of urgencv. Tvardovskv rushed

him

off at once to the union's offices (situated

house that Tolstov used as his model for the Rostovs' residence in War and Peace) to meet \ oronkov and three other members of the secretariat, including the loyalist Cieorgi Markov. The meeting lasted for a couple of in the

hours and was friendly. Markov explained hypocriticall)' that Solzhenitsyn's letter couldn't

was too

be discussed

tight," but that

now

at the Writers'

Solzhenitsyn would help them "find

were

Congress, because "the agenda

thev were readv to consider a

way

it

and hoped that

out" of the difficult situation they

(meaning the clamour from abroad for an explanation of their attihad come well equipped, bringing copies of his earlier letters to Brezhnev and Demichev, as w ell as of his letter to the congress, and he informed them of its prehistory, starting with the confiscation of his archive and ending with his dismay at receiving no answer to his in

tude). Solzhenitsvn, as usual,

complaints. 1 hat was why, as a

last resort,

he had resolved to address the

congress (though he fibbed that his reason for not sending the letter

was

*

It

v\

eekend learning

appears that, between listening to the

how

BBC

broadcasts, Solzhenitsyn spent

to use a scythe. Natalia Reshetovskaya reports that

Rozhdestvo on 14 June, Solzhenitsvn had scvthed the entire plot to do such a thing.

him

when

it

composed was his desire for moderation). Markov and company feigned sympathy ("Of course Comrade Brezhnev

first

—the

first

when

much

of that

she arrived in

time she had

known

Letter to the

(Congress

\\'riters'

1

591

I

letter") but were elearl\ disturbed by the fact that produced his congress letter in so man\' copies and that it Solzhcnitsvn had had got abroad so quickb lad it been his intention to appeal to the Soviet Union's "enemies" over the head of the union? Not at all, replied Sol/henitsvn innocenth'. He had prepared sufficient copies to reach all the delegates

never got to see your

I

.

to the congress, because in the past his letters in single copies

had been pigeon-

holed and never answered. As for the circulation of the

letter abroad, he had had nothing to do with it. It had come about because of the union's delav in answering him. Thev should have called him to the platform, allowed him to read it into the record, and then discussed it. Solzhcnitsxn's logic was unassailable. The secretariat members were almost certain that Solzhcnitsvn had deliberately moved to outflank and put pressure on them, but thev w ere too dim-witted, and too hampered b\ their inabilitx' to call a spade a spade, to be able to counter his arguments. The conversation then mo\ed to Cancer Ward. Solzhcnitsvn v\ as w rong, said Markov, to say that Novy Mir had refused to publish his novel, and he appealed to Tvardovsky to confirm this fact. Tvardovskv agreed, dismissing the argument he had had w ith Solzhcnitsvn over part 2 as "just talk." The secretariat members were worried about the circulation of Cancer VV^r^(and,

and about rumours that they might even be abroad. Solzhenits\n simph' replied that he w as not to blame, but 1 vardovsky seized on their anxieties to secure an advantage. 'That's just wh\' I say that Cancer Ward must be published immediatelv. That w ill put a stop to all the hullabaloo in the West and prevent its publication there. We must put excerpts in the Literaturnaya Gazeta two davs from now with a note that the storv will be published in full." to a lesser extent. The First drcle) in samizdat

,

Solzhenitsyn w as astonished to hear them agree, and then to be actuallv

thanked for coming and explaining. In Tvardovsky's limousine on the wav back to Novy Mir, Tvardovskv planned w hich chapter to offer to the Literaturnaya Gazeta, while Solzhcnitsvn savoured the fruits of victorv. "That dav I

experienced for the

first

time

successful show of strength. .

.

.

that

in

mv

life

.

.

And how w ell

.

what

and no other, from the dav thev are

Union appeared

in the Literaturnaya Gazeta,

Cancer Ward. Solzhcnitsvn heard that

department of the

Demichev was * Natalia

(Central

Committee

No

his

statement from the

had been vetoed bv the cultural at

the suggestion of

Demichev.* some-

meeting with the secretariat for four davs.

Ward and include

it

in

observation that Solzhenitsv

five or six

days

in v\hich to set a

the relevant issue, whereas the two davs that were

short a time and produced the dela\' that ga\e n's original

Demichev

his chance.

account of the meeting w as

November, v\hen

the prospects for publishing Cancer

may have

An

earlier

chapter from left

v\ere too

She adds the interesting much more positive than

comments were added Ward weve alreadv much worse.

the one he eventually published, and that the satirical tone and sceptical in

a

nor did an extract from

Reshetovskaya, on the other hand, has suggested that Solzhenitsyn himself

meeting would have given the Literaturnaya Gazeta

only

make

feeling particularlv hostile towards Solzhcnitsvn since

been partly to blame by delaying Cancer

it

feels like to

born."'"^

Unfortunately, the triumph was short-lived. Writers'

it

thev understand that language

SOLZHENITSYN

[592]

one

in the

to friends

KGB had sent him a tape of Solzhenitsyn describing their meeting and mimicking Dcmichev

Soviet hterature depend).

As

in the process (on

a delaying tactic,

such minutiae does

Demichev suggested

that

all

fortv-two secretaries of the Writers' Union should read not onlv both vol-

umes of Cancer Ward but also The First Circle and Feast of the Conquerors before coming to a decision, which would take some time. Before sending off the manuscript of Cancer Ward, Tvardovsky asked Solzhenitsvn to make one or two cuts to render it less provocative, to which Solzhenitsvn agreed." By now Solzhenitsvn was well advanced in his preparations for writing the first in his series of planned novels on the period of the First World War and the Revolution. Volume 1, now to be called August 1914, would deal primarily with General Samsonov's campaign against the Germans on the eastern front, and especiallv the Battle of Tannenberg, marking Russia's first big defeat in the war.

He

had the material he had collected when

still

a

student in Rostov, but he needed some local colour and extra background information. Accordinglv, he and Natalia decided to take to East Prussia

to inspect

a trip that

summer

and Lithuania, accompanied bv Efim and Ekaterina Etkind,

some of the

Just before thev

places in left,

\\

hich the novel's action occurred.

Solzhenitsvn was involved in a collision in his

Moskvich and w as obliged to get the bodv repaired (it had been rammed and stove in from behind after he braked to avoid a pedestrian). Getting a repair done quickh' through the official repair shops in the Soviet Union is almost impossible, but Solzhenitsvn found an enterprising mechanic who was a specialist in working on the side, and became quite fascinated bv this man's cheerful ingenuitv in cheating his bosses. Solzhenitsvn had recently accepted a

commission from Mosfilm

in a school,

the

first

but he

now

week of Julv,

to

\\

rite a screenpla\' that

make

resolved to

jotted

down

his screenplay of The Parasite.

he had intended to

set

the mechanic his hero and, during

preliminarv notes for what was to become

"''

Almost the first use Solzhenitsvn made of the car after its repair was to an unorthodox interview He w as visited bv a former labour-camp prisoner called Leonid Samutin, who before his arrest had fought with V'lasov's forces on the German side. Solzhenitsyn at once interviewed him for The Gulag Archipelago, but not trusting the walls indoors, he took Samutin into the garden and sat him in the Moskvich to ask him some questions.'' 1 he Solzhenitsyns and the Etkinds finallv set off in the second week of July. Their first goal was a village near Smolensk, where Solzhenitsvn sought out Tvardovskv's brother, Konstantin Ivardovskv, who, unlike the famous editor, had stayed on the land and worked for the village's collective farm. From there thev drove north-east into what had once been East Prussia. Apart from inspecting the terrain over which Samsonov's armv had fought, Solzhenitsvn w anted to revisit the places where he himself had fought with his artillerv batterv, and he was filled with nostalgia when thev arrived. As usual they camped along the way, spending cheerful evenings around the campfire, cluring w hich Solzhenitsvn recited the whole of Prussian Nights to the Etkinds from memorv. take

down

.

Letter to tin was not able

Ic

I

to follow

(Congress

\\'RrrERs'

his routes

all

the

way

159^1

—some of the places now belonged

w here Saiiisonov had fought and where he himself had been

to Poland. Hut he was able to soak up the physical appearance and atmosphere of these forests and marshes, to \ isit the solid and once-prosperous Prussian villages that had formerh' so impressed him, and to tour old Kcinigsberg (now Kaliningratl), w ith its memorial to Kant and its air of bourgeois Driving into Lithuania, the Solzhenitsyns parted from the Ktkinds stabilitx continued on to Latvia to stay for a while w ith Olga Zvedra, the widow and .

of the noted revolutionarx' leader Ivan Karpunich. Solzhenitsyn planned to write about Karpunich and Olga in his historical no\el and had

come

to

question Olga and study her papers.'*^

would appear that during the course of the summer of 1967 Solzhecame close to being reconciled with his old school friend Kirill Simonnitsyn As long as nine years ago, he and Natalia had sent greetings to Kirill on yan. It

the occasion of the latter's fortieth birthday, but Kirill had not replied (he later

Now

claimed not to have received anything, owing to his change of flats). it was Kirill who initiated the first move. According to the sketchy

account he has given of

it

in his

pamphlet about Solzhenitsyn,

Kirill

and

his

sister Nadezhda had been provoked by the controversy surrounding Solzhenitsyn's letter to the Writers' Congress to write to him and suggest a reunion. The first response apparently came from Natalia, w ho asked Kirill to write Solzhenitsyn a more personal letter, and Kirill wrote again. It seems that either then or in a later letter Kirill must have mentioned his suspicions about

Solzhenitsvn's role in his interrogation of 1952 and referred to the fact that

he had been shown the record of Solzhenitsyn's ow n interrogation, for in a reply dated 26 June 1967 Solzhenitsyn reproached Kirill for having been

duped by the KCiB

into beliexing that Solzhenits\n's statements of 1945 had

been made

He

such

in 1952.

also regretted that Kirill

was opening old wounds

at

a time.

According to a former friend of Kirill's, Kirill w as alarmed by the very outspokenness with w hich Solzhenitsyn referred to such sensitive matters and by the fact that he had sent his letter through the open post Kirill was convinced that his own letters were subject to being opened by the KCiB and felt that the same might also be true of Solzhenitsyn's. He therefore w rote a carefully worded letter in which he accused Solzhenitsyn of taking a onesided view of life. "Objectively speaking, you have become the standardLenin, whom I'm convinced bearer of Fascist reactionaries in the West. to, yes, and old Marx and love you used you and honour just as much as fashion. 1 hink about severest the Engels too, would have condemned \ou in

—

.

.

.

These sentiments did more or less reflect Kirill's sentiments at the time, but apparently he stressed them in case his letter should fall into the hands it!"

'

of the It

KGB. appears that Solzhenits\'n did not take offence, for further correspon-

when Solzhenitsyn turned

dence led the two

men

up

at Kirill's flat,

there was no reply

for

about an hour, Solzhenitsyn scribbled a note and returned to

to arrange a meeting, but

to the bell. .After waiting in the slip

it

lobby

through

SOLZHENITSYN

[594] the door.

When

he opened the flap of the letterbox, he caught sight of

frightened to

two

Kirill's

was evidently too open the door. Solzhenitsyn lowered the flap and left, and the

slippered feet standing stock

still

in the halKvav: Kirill

friends never met, either then or later.

'"^

Towards the end of the summer, Solzhenitsvn retired to Rozhdestvo and plunged into work on the first volume of his historical epic. Before disappearing, however, he sent word to Olga Carlisle to proceed at full speed with the preparation of the American translation of The First Circle and to aim for publication in the winter of 1968, in approximately eighteen months' time. A few weeks later, Carlisle came to AIoscow to secure Solzhenitsyn's approval for the rather cumbersome arrangements she had made. In addition to retaining a translator (Thomas Whitney, a friend), she and her husband, Henry Carlisle, proposed to act as editors: her husband would also be the book's literary agent for foreign sales, another friend would act as a lawyer to draw up the necessary agreements \\ ith Harper & Row who would prepare to publish in strictest secrecy and another friend, Harrison Salisbury (the Soviet-affairs specialist of the New York Times), would guarantee to the publisher the book's quality. Whether it was made clear that all this would cost large sums of money in editorial, agency, and legal fees and in incidental expenses is not known (the translator, having inherited a small legacy, had agreed to work for nothing). In her book on the subject, Olga Carlisle reports Solzhenitsyn as saying that money was no object. "Money must be spent freely, nothing must be spared. There must be no thought to money. "^^' In view of the later controversy that erupted betv\ een them, it may be doubted that Solzhenitsyn, with his seven-vear-old boots and habit of feeding himself out of tins, had the slightest idea what fabulous sums could be spent in America on these subsidiary literary services. Meanwhile, there was no movement on Cancer Ward. lovxards the end of August, Solzhenitsyn had suggested to 1 vardovsky that thev sign a contract for the novel. That would formalize the situation and might provide some momentum towards publication. But Tvardovsky refused, saying he could not do so \\ ithout permission. Not long afterwards Solzhenitsyn heard a rumour that Cancer Ward was to be published in Italy. 1 he rumour proved false, but it provoked Solzhenitsyn into \\ riting a letter to the Writers' Union secretariat pressing them to come to a decision on Cancer Ward. It was four months, he wrote, since over a hundred writers had supported his letter to the Writers' Congress, and three months since four members of the secretariat had agreed to publish a statement refuting the slanders about him and to

—

—

"look into" the question of publishing his novel. In that time

new

slanders

had been spread by Party activists (to the effect that he had defected to Egypt or England) and he had heard that A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was being secretly removed from Soviet Cancer

Does the

secretariat believe that

these endless delays, that

it

w

ill

Navy Mir was ready do so.

libraries.

Ward but was awaiting permission

mv

to

to publish

storv will silently disappear as a result of

cease to exist, so that the secretariat will not

Letter to the Writers' C^ongress have to vote on w hcthcr to include

in,

or exclude

it

from, the literature of this

June meeting I warned the secretariat that we must make publish the story if we wished to see it appear first in Russian, that

country? ... At the haste to

it

[595]

12

under the circumstances we could not prevent

its

unauthorized appearance

in

the West.

And

he increased the pressure bv blaming the union

manv months,

.\fter the senseless delav of

does happen, secretariat.

...

the time has

will clearly be the fault (or

it I

insist that

my

in

come

to state that

perhaps the secret w

if it

ish?) of the

story be published without delavl"'

Instead of treating this as an open letter, Solzhenitsvn

them

advance.

made

fort\-t\\o

ho w ere supposed to be reading his no\el, plus one to the secretariat office, and he did not show it to an\one. The response came quicker than he had anticipated. On 18 September 1967 Tvardovskv summoned him to Xo-cy Mir and told him that three days previously the secretariat had held a meeting to consider a replv and that it would meet on 22 September, w ith Solzhenits\n present, to discuss the whole question again. At the secretariat meeting, 1 vardovskv had held out for publication of Cancer Ward and had been supported b\' two of the members, w hile several others had appeared to waver. "Things aren't altocopies and sent

to the forty-tw o secretaries

gether hopeless," he told Solzhenits\

twenty-second would be

n.

\\

Nevertheless, the meeting on the

had been given and w ere highl\- indignant about it. Their strategy would be to concentrate on Feast at the expense of Cancer Ward, and it would be Solzhenitsyn's and l\ardovskv's task to reverse these priorities. (T\ardovsky w as practicalK' the onlv member of the secretariat not to have a difficult one. All the secretaries

Feast of the Conquerors to read

read the play: he refused to accept

it

from the

KGB,

and Solzhenitsvn

he had no other copy available to give him. Simonov was another

honourabh' refused

to read

said

who had

it.)

Solzhenitsyn agreed to w

rite out a preliminar\- statement in w hich he from Feast. He also wrote down some answ ers to possible questions and meticulousK prepared some clean sheets of paper, numbering them and ruling in the margins, on w hich to note down a record of the discussion. He had taken to doing this not onlv at Sovy Mir but whenever he was involved in literarv discussions, calculating that the sight of him taking down their w ords w ould inhibit e\ en his most rabid enemies and induce an element of caution. Coincidentallv it enabled him to keep his head down and have time to think l)efore answ ering some of the hotter questions. -The gathering took place in the former "Rostov mansion," started at 1 p.m. and ended at 6 p.m. Konstantin Fedin, chairman of the Writers' Union, had been called in to preside, although he w as se\ent\ -fi\e and in pof)r health. As a reasonably talented novelist of the twenties and thirties, Fedin had once possessed a certain authority among the writing fraternity but had squandered most of it as a result of his cow ardh' behaviour during the Pasternak

would

try to deflect attention

SOLZHENITSYN

[596]

w as the authoritx' of his office, not the man, that was now needed, and the certaintv that he would remain loyal to his political masters. Interestingly enough, some of the more prominent writers on the secretariat, including Sholokhov, w ere absent from the meeting, but there w ere still over thirtx members present, as w ell as an ideological w atch-dog from the cultural department of the Central Committee, Comrade Melentyev, who took notes throughout. It was, in general, a far more hostile assembly than that which had gathered at the Writers' (>lub some ten months earlier. The secretariat had taken the precaution of conyening two hours before Solzhenitsyn's arri\al to agree on the line to be followed (presumably laid down by Melentyev). In this sense it was to be a typical Soviet business meeting, w ith the main decisions taken in advance and the roles of the participants well rehearsed. The only problem this time was that the sacrificial victim had prepared a different script and w as determined to thw art the leadaffair. It

ers' intentions.

In his opening speech, Fedin expressed distaste for Solzhenitsvn's latest

He

letter.

leagues

found

("We

are

it

threatening and offensive,

made

the face of his col-

a slap in

to appear as scoundrels rather than representatives of

the creative intelligentsia"), and an attempt to force their hand. In this he

was supported b\

se\eral others, including \ oronkov,

who broadened

How

attack to include Solzhenitsvn's relations with the West.

to the congress reach the "filthy bourgeois press" so soon,

broadcast so eagerh' by foreign radio stations, and

answ er

this

why

the

did his letter

why was

it

being

didn't Solzhenitsvn

"loathsome bourgeois propaganda" and dissociate himself from

it?

The temperature rose rather quicklw

.\t

one point Solzhenitsvn snapped

w as "not a schoolboy" obliged to jump to his feet and answer each question as it was asked. He would take several and answer them together (in this w av he was able to answ er only those he chose to and ignore others). that he

Alexander Korneichuk, a third-rate Ukrainian playwright, alleged that Solzhenitsvn's letter had been broadcast before the congress opened. Not so, said Solzhenits\n. But instead of reph ing to the question of how it got abroad, he counter-attacked w ith one of his prepared answers. is made here of the word "abroad," as if it whose opinion is greatlv respected. Perhaps this is understandable to those who Hood our literature with lightweight sketches about lite abroad. But this is alien to me. I have never been abroad. Throughout my life I have had the soil of mv homeland under mv feet. Its is the only pain

\ ery suggestive

referred to

and

some high

effective use authorit\-

.

.

.

I

feel;

He

it

the only subject

I

write about.

recited once again the various slanders and sanctions he

w

as

being

subjected to through secret Part\ channels and offered chapter and verse.

News

of a secret directive banning the

of IvaiJ Denisovicb and ordering

him

in several letters,

its

librar\' circulation

of T

Day

in the Life

withdrawal from the shelves had come to

one of w hich, from the Oimea, he quoted verbatim.

Letter to the Writers' Congress

[597]

statement that he had defeeted to F.gypt had been made by a Party propaganda official in the Moscow suburb of Bolshexo. Ihe allegation that he had gone to F.ngland had been made b\' a Major Shestakov in Solikamsk. Party activists in \arious parts of the country had accused him ot collaboration during the \\ ar and said that he had been released from the camps either by mistake or before his time was up. X'ladimir Semichastny, a former head of the KCiB, had accused him of "materially supporting the capitalist world

The

by not

collecting his royalties,"

and so on.

After this fighting response (which,

among

other things, testified to the

excellence of Solzhenitsyn's sources), the balance of opinion shifted a

little in

Afanasy Salynsky and Konstantin Simonoy, supported by Tyardoysky, suggested that Cancer Ward be published and a communique issued defending Solzhenitsyn's record. Fedin held back, saying that Solzhenitsyn should first make a statement denouncing the use made of his name by "our enemies in the West." Korneichuk, noting Solzhenitsyn's evasions ("You were asked questions but you failed to answer"), weighed in v\'ith that orthodox view of world affairs that Solzhenitsyn refused to take into account: "Do you not realize that a colossal, world-\\ ide battle is being fought under very difficult conditions? We cannot stand aloof. With our works we defend our government, our Party, our people. We travel abroad to Solzhenitsyn's fayour.

.

carry on the struggle." Korneichuk added nitsyn's "nasty, insulting

zhevnikov concurred. But

Surkov

(a

.

.

.

it

.

.

upset he had been by Solzhe-

foul" play. Feast of the Conquerors. \

was

left to

The

adim Ko-

the senior secretary present, Alexei

prominent baiter of Pasternak),

Solzhenitsyn and his novel.

how

to spell out the real objections to

publication of Cancer Ward, he said, "w ould

be more dangerous than Svetlana's memoirs"* and would be used against the Soviet Union.

"The works of Solzhenitsyn

those of Pasternak: Pasternak was a

man

are

more dangerous

divorced from

tsyn has a bold, militant, ideological temperament and

life,

is

a

to us than

while Solzheni-

man

possessed by

an idea."

When discussion turned more specifically to Cancer Ward, a new argument was introduced namely, that Solzhenitsyn was not a talented writer anyway. Sergei Baruzdin, a w riter of children's books, said he had ne\er been impressed by Solzhenitsyn's works. Toktobolot Abdumomunov, from Kirghizia, said that Cancer Ward w as too gloomy ("There are many tedious

—

passages, repetitions, and naturalistic scenes").

The Georgian

Berdy Kerbabayev, from Turkmenia, had found Solzhenitsyn attempted to stem the tide of the Conquerors.

At the very

start

Irakly

Abash-

more than 150 pages, and

idze confessed that he had been unable to read

it

first

"nauseating."

of

all

by renouncing

Feast

of the meeting, he had read out a prepared

statement saying that he had "long since disowned" this play, which w as the

work not of the mature writer Solzhenitsyn but of the nameless prisoner Shch-232, written at a time of hopelessness w hen millions were being repressed. *The

reference

is

to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva,

Letters to a Friend, in 1967 shortly after she

had defected

who pubUshed

to the \\ est.

her memoirs, Tzi-enty

SOLZHENITSYN

[598] "I

now

bear as

responsibility for this play as

little

and books that

for speeches

wish to bear

many

other authors would

wrote in 1949," he had said

they

he added

a

new

eyer w idely circulated or printed,

I

solemnly declare that the

threateningly.

w

bilitx is

ill

And now

thrust: ""U Feast of the Conquerors full

on the organization that has the only remaining copy. ...

fall

this organization that

is

is

responsiIt

disseminating the play."

Solzhenitsyn also attempted to answ er some of the criticisms of Cancer He denied (not altogether truthfully) that the title and subject matter

Ward.

were symbolic. The book was rooted in autobiography, and its texture was too dense to be a symbol. Nor was the story "anti-humanitarian." In it, life conquered death. "But I do not belieye that it is the task of literature ... to or to tone it down." Mo\ing to more comfortable ground, conceal the truth he vyas able to demonstrate the misconceptions on w hich a number of the more detailed criticisms had been based, and he concluded by urging them .

to publish Cancer

.

.

\\'a;Y/

quickly, before copies reached abroad.

There were signs that not all the speakers were against this idea. Eyen some of those who had attacked Feast of the Conquerors expressed satisfaction that Solzhenitsyn w as willing to renounce it publicly. It was suggested that if Cancer Ward were sufficientK- reyised in consultation with Sovy Mir, a way might still be found to publish it, despite the criticisms that had been heaped upon it. But in the end the whole issue got bogged dow n in the question of w ho w as to make a statement first. Solzhenitsyn insisted that it w as up to the Writers' Union to publish his letter and refute the slanders about him. "Konstantin Alexandroyich [Fedin] says it is I who must resohe the situation. am bound hand and foot and gagged how am I to resohe it? It seems to me that this would be an easier matter for the mighty Union of Writers. My I

—

eyery line

is

suppressed, while the entire press

Fedin was adamant that

Surkoy

who

it

put the matter

dissociate yourself

is

should be the other

from the

in a nutshell.

role ascribed to

of leader of the political opposition

in the

in the

hands of the Union."

way round, and

again it was whether you the West," he said, "that

"You should you

in

state

USSR."

ll^e Oak and the Calf Solzhenitsyn (he called it his Borodino)* battlefield metaphor of a employed his enemies to flight. general putting triumphant himself as a and described "Deploxing m\ forces eyer more boldly, steadily broadening the front, setting the bounds of battle to suit myself, no longer merel)- answ ering their questions but follow ing my own plan, I driye them headlong oyer the field of Borodino to their remotest defence works." There was talk of artillery sal-

Portraying this meeting later in his fayourite

yoes, wheeling cayalry, and

marching dragoons

—good,

stirring stuff

—but

at

in 1812 between the Russians and Napoleon's invading seemed to have ended in stalemate, but it in fact marked a turning-point in the w ar and the virtual end of Napoleon's advance. Tolstoy celebrated the battle in nationalistic terms in a famous section of War and Peace. Solzhenitsyn tirst made the comparison in a letter to Tvardovskv (quoted bv Reshetox skava in her unpublished chapters), explaining it by saying, "For a long time neither side could understand the meaning of w hat had happened or w ho had won. But the French were mistaken in celebrating the fact that thev had held on to their terri-

*The

Battle of

armv.

.\t

Borodino took place

the time

it

Letter to the Writers' Congress

[593 3l

unbidden 'guardians,' and would declare, for all to hear, his unwillingness to have anything to do with the enem\ provocateurs of our countr\ But Sol/.he.

nits\n did not

do

so.

.

.

.

The writer A. Solzhenits\ n could dexote his is

homeland and not

to

its ill-w

ishers.

I

his literarv abilities conipletelv to

ie could,

but he does not w ant

Such

to.

the bitter truth.

The

Lit era til may a (iazetci

had got the best of both workls. It had pubw hich though not nearh militant enough b\ Part\ standards, \\ as still the most anti-\\ estern statement he had e\er made, and it had used the occasion to launch a w ide-ranging attack on all aspects of Sol/.henits\ n\s beha\ iour. It w as the first official response that Sol/.henits\ n had e\er received to his letter to the congress and was to set the ofhcial line for some months to come. And \ et, w hile totalK' negative in tone and content, it could have been worse. No actual sanctions were threatened. .And it did lea\e loopholes. W hile The First Circle was denounced as "containing malicious slander on our social s\ stem," (.ancer Ward w as mereh described lished Sol/.henits\ n's letter,

as "in

need of substantial

idecjlogical revision,"

and

after criticizing Solzhe-

anonvmous authors had added,

nitsvn's refusal to attack the West, the

"Whether A. Solzhenitsxn w ishes to hnd a w a\' out of this cul-de-sac depends primarih on himself." In other words, it was still possible for him to make amends b\' producing a statement. Then, it was implied, there might be a chance for his "ideologically revised" books to be published. It was, as Solzhenits\ n righth' di\ ined, a repK from weakness, and he had not the slightest intention of comph ing. But others w ere outraged b\ the c\nical, sneering tone of the piece, its anonvmitx and the fact that this w as the hrst frontal attack on Solzhenitsx n after two \ears of silence. L\ elia Chukovskava, who had grown friendh with Solzhenitsxn during his long sta\ s at her father's dacha and w ho had grow n steadih more radical in her political \ iew s over the same period, wrote a thundering defence of Solzhenits\ n that rivalled his o\\ n statements in its eloquence and excoriating irc^nv. "Vou see, the\' have to in\ ent a w a\" of dealing w ith a w titer w ho still carries on exposing Stalinism after the command has been gi\ en to forget about it," she w rote. And about his letter to the congress: ,

W hen

I

read this extraordinary letter for the

first

time,

it

seemed

to

me

that

had trodden, pondered and w eighed everything it had had to suffer, counted up its losses and its casualthose w ho w ent to their destructies, pra\ ed to the memory of the persecuted Russian literature

itself

tion outside the prisons

had looked back over the path

—w eighed up

through the persecution of w

riters,

—

the loss to the spiritual

and,

w

the words: "Enough! This must not go on!

Valentin Turchin,

a

voung ph\

that he

w as cancelling

ith

it

in

w ealth

ot

our countrv

the voice of Solzhenitsvn, uttered

We

sicist,

Solzhenits\n's defence and circulated

announced

it

shall live differentlv!"-

wrote another eloquent

letter in

samizdat. At the end of

it,

he

his subscription to the Literatiirnaya Gazeta

SOLZHENITSYN

[634]

and suggested that others who

felt

likew ise should

known how manv complied, but Zhores Aledvedev Solzhenitsvn that in Obninsk,

at least

do the same.

It

is

not

book on responded to

states in his

ten research scientists

and mailed their July copies back to the new spaper's editor, Alexander Chakovskv, as a mark of disgust."^ There were many letters in this vein. As so often happens v\ith officially inspired attacks in the Soviet press, the rebuttals they evoked w ere more effective than the original accusations, and this particular article raised a small storm of protest. But there were

Turchin's

other

call

letters, too,

almost certainly

officially inspired, sent

tiiniaya Gazeta but to Solzhenitsvn personally.

from

mathematics

a teacher of

are a schizophrenic souls of others

bv

things Soviet.

And

w

One

not to the Litera-

such purported to be

North Caucasus. "You and all you can do is corrupt the your bile and your fanatical hatred of all

in Solzhenitsvn's native

ith a vile, black soul,

filling

so,

them w

ith

of course, the anti-Soviet radio stations and rotten

West are delighted to arm themselves with your filth. And you gladly offer them your evil-smelling trash, for which there isn't and cannot be any demand among us." It was the same message as the newspaper's, phrased in more direct language, and it ended w ith a frankness that w ent beyond the new spaper's officialese, reflecting more accurately the true feelings of the KGB: "There's no room for you in our country. Get out! Stop bothering us. Get out of this Can't you understand that neither \'ou nor your filth is life altogether. needed by any of us Soviet people? Scram! I think it was a mistake to let you out of jail. You should have been shot. And only the genuine humaneness of our government permits you to exist. Get out!" The letter was signed by Lydia Kizieva, mathematics instructor at a teachers' training college in Stavpublishers in the

.

.

.

ropol, in the Caucasus.

come

Had

the sponsors of the letter planned that

it

should

from Solzhenitsvn's native province?''

The

authorities

were

clearly casting about for the best

w av to deal with made up their

the problem that Solzhenitsvn posed for them and had not

mind.

Ihe

Litenitiiniaya Gazeta article

was

a

holding operation, leaving

a

small loophole through w hich Solzhenitsvn could return to the fold should

seems that there w as no agreement on what to do next. At this point someone must have suggested that the best way to discredit the author w as to send Feast of the Conquerors to the West and let it be published there. Its anti-Soviet sentiments and especially its open sympathy w ith the Nazis' Vlasovite allies were calculated to arouse a wave of indignation against Solzhenitsyn, particularly among his supporters on the left. Discussion of this idea must have reached a fairly advanced stage, because in late summer, on a routine visit to the (Central Committee's cultural department from Novy Mir, Lakshin and Kondratovich were confidentially informed that a copy was already in the West and was due to be published bv Mondadori. Solzhenitsyn w as finished, they w ere told, and would certainly go to jail.''' Alarmed by this intelligence, the two men informed Tvardovsky, who at once started looking for Solzhenitsvn. Solzhenitsyn, as usual, was hard to he so desire, and

it

Portrait of thk Artist at Fifty find,

sky

but

when he heard

at his

of

I

vardovskv's reason, he rushed to see

1

3 5

]

vardov-

dacha. Tvardovskv repeated the story in greater detail and anx-

iously asked Sol/henitsvn whether he

He was

K'

eager to read

it,

but he

still

still

possessed anv copies of the play.

could not bring himself to accept

a

copy

(which effectively meant from the KGB). Solzhenitsyn assured him that he possessed no copies, and that, if the work should ever reach the West, it could only do so via the K(jB.

from the

secretariat

Their meeting was the most cordial for many months. Tvardovsky was a sami/.dat work bv Zhores Medvedev on the ditficult\' for Soviet scientists Of maintaining links with abroad, and praised the l)ook highly.* Solzhenitsyn, who had grown friendly with Medvedev as a result of the latter's efforts to get Natalia a post in Obninsk, was both pleased and surprised. In former years 1 vardovskv' had been suspicious of samizdat (and had refused to publish Medvedev's book on Lysenko) but now seemed to have changed his mind and was reading a great deal of it. Furthermore, Tvardovsky (albeit reading

involuntarily) had a

Fedin

in

new work

in

subject of the letter

discussed other listened to the

\\

—

his

January

letter to

was Solzhenitsyn, drew the two men together. They

orks in samizdat, and Tvardovsky confessed that he

BBC

(insisting that the

time for the news), and confided article

samizdat himself

defence of Solzhenitsyn. This circumstance, and the fact that the

in

two men

listen together

when

it

now was

Solzhenitsxn that he had sacrificed an

on Marshak and was holding up the publication of a volume of his works because of a refusal to remove some remarks on Solzhenitsyn

collected

from the

text.

Solzhenitsyn

dovsky

felt

so

warmed by

this

meeting that he confided to Tvar-

the existence of The Gulag Archipelago,

and offered

to let

him read

it.

Judging from some of Solzhenitsyn's remarks in The Oak and the Calf, he expected such a reading to open Fvardovsky's eyes still further to the iniquities

of the Soviet past and to strengthen the spirit of rebellion that he sensed

was growing in him. Soon afterwards, he took steps to extract a copy of the manuscript from a distant hiding-place and brought it to Moscow to show Tvardovskv, but other events intervened and 7 vardovsky could not find the time to read

it.^

The meeting

Tvardovsky 's dacha took place on 16 August 1968. Four days later there occurred an event that was to mark the end of an era throughout the whole of Eastern Europe and the USSR the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The liberalization of the Party and government in the latter country, and the attempt to introduce "socialism with a human face," had in their way been a logical culmination of the policy of de-Stalinization inaugurated by Khrushchev in 1956. If the Hungarians had been premature at

—

in

attempting to draw conclusions from de-Stalinization overnight, the Czechs

and Slovaks seemed *The book was

to

have followed

and more evolutionar\' path,

evcntualh- published in the West as The Medvedev Papers,

Fruitful Meetings hetiveen Scientists of the World

(London, 1972).

a safer

and

with the subtitles

Secrecy of Correspondence Is Guaranteed by Lav:

— SOLZHENITSYN

[636]

and had waited for the reforms to be initiated by the Party itself. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them from taking their own destiny in their hands and producing the first genuine and stable liberalization of a Communist regime that the world had vet seen. But on the black night of 20 August the attempt was brought to an abrupt and brutal end by Soviet tanks, and the Soviet government demonstrated once again that it would tolerate no challenge to its centralized and absolute power. The impact of this invasion on the Soviet population as a w hole is not known, since no instruments exist for ascertaining or measuring such data. But the impact on the Soviet intelligentsia was crushing. The liberalization in their own countrv, initiated bv Khrushchev, had been braked and then reversed under Leonid Brezhnev, but so long as liberalization persisted in

neighbouring Czechoslovakia, there was

had some momentum, that

a sense that the original

impulse

still

was not lost, and that liberal reforms might even return to the Russians from their more fortunate neighbours to the West. With the crushing of the Czechs, however, it became clear that, on the contrary, everything w as over and that things from now on would become even bleaker at home. The majoritv of Soviet intellectuals felt bewildered and oppressed by and perhaps ashamed of their country's despotic action this cruel blow but were too cowed and frightened to take positive steps. Only one group all

—

thought differently: the tiny band of activists responsible for starting the Chronicle of Current Events and the Democratic Movement. At the time of the invasion, they were attending the trial of Anatoli Marchenko, the author of

My

Testimony. Copies of the book were already circulating in samizdat and had reached abroad, but Marchenko's trial, which opened on the very day of the invasion, was officially for the minor offence of breaking the internal-

passport regulations.*^

At an impromptu meeting, seven attending the

trial as unofficial

friends of

Marchenko who had been

observers decided that they would organize a

demonstration the following Sunday to protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no chance of attracting public support. Sponta-

neous demonstrations are anathema to the Soviet authorities and are heartily feared bv the average Soviet citizen. What awaited them was certain violence

from the police, arrest, and probable imprisonment. And so it was. At noon on Sundav, 25 August 1968, the seven young people w alked into a corner of Red Square (the old Execution Ground, a favourite tourist spot in front of St Basil's Cathedral) and sat down, holding makeshift banners with slogans on them: "Hands off the CSSR" and 'Tor Your Freedom and Ours." Among them were two women. One, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, had her small child w ith her in a pram. The other w as Larisa Bogoraz, and among the men was Pavel Litvinov. Predictablv, the demonstrators were pounced upon, their banners ripped to pieces, and the\' themselves punched and thrown into police cars

— but not before thev had been seen by

carry round Soviet

Moscow and

Union

that

same

sufficient people for the

then abroad, whence

evening.'^

it

w as broadcast back

news

to

into the

PoRIRAir OK THK ArIIST AT

As Anatoli

^

saved the honour

I'll

IV

K)

3

~ I

akobson wrote soon attcrwards, these se\en incli\icluals an entire nation. Hut apart tVoni this one heroie gesture,

ot

there were tew other signs of protest, hi

the scientihe institutes, higher-

all

educational estai)lishnients, creative unions, literar\ niaga/.ines, and so forth, special meetings

were

called

the Party to obtain endorsements

l)\

ol"

jnibiic

statements applauding the in\asion of (>.echoslo\akia, which were then printed in the Soviet press.

and

their jobs

Even

I

Onh'

braxe

a few

\ardo\ sk\

felt

therebx risking

spirits refused to sign,

At Nrrcy Alir, obliged to go along w

their reputations.

onl\

Igor \ inogradov objected.

ith the

general line,

it

onl\ tor

the sake of shielding his alread\' beleaguered journal. But in his indi\ idual

capacitv

I

\ardo\sk\' resoluteb' refused to sign a collecti\e letter

l)\

So\

iet

writers in support of the invasion, despite the huge pressure that w as put

upon him and the further damage

to his reputation in otticial quarters.

quandarw POr some time

past he had s\mpathv. In Jul\ of the preceding vear the plavw right Pavel Kohout had caused a sensation bv reading Solzhenitsvn's letter to the Fourth \\ riters' (Congress aloud to a congress of Czech writers, after which the letter had acted as a ralhing cr\' for part of the Czech reform movement. Solzhenits^n had also received man\- in\ itations to go to Czechoslovakia (none of which he had been allowed to accept) and w as aware of the impending publication of Cancer Ward m Bratisla\a. He was therefore

Solzhcnitsxn found himself

regarded (Czechoslovakia with

in a

a special

—

news of the invasion and shocked, too, that he had seen it coming and not realized it. He w as staving in Rozhdestvo at the time, completing his revision of the ninet\'-si.\-chapter version ot The First Circle, and had ignored the obvious signs: "For da\ s and nights on end, tanks, trucks, and service vehicles had been pouring southw ards along the high road a hundred vards from mv cabin, but still I supposed our leaders w ere doing it onlv to frighten the Czechs, that these were just manoeuvres."'" Solzhenitsvn writes that his first thought w as to compose a public statement in the \ein of Herzen's celebrated essa\- "Lament," w ritten a centur\earlier.* He would take it to a number of prominent liberals in the Soviet intelligentsia (he mentions Shostakovich, Rostropovich, Kapitsa, and Fvardovskv as candidates), get them to sign it jointh' with him, and make it pubparticularlv shocked b\' the

lic.

With

this in

mind he

did,

am ashamed to showing it to anvone. He

lines of "I

be

seems, compose a brief statement along the

it

a Soviet"

but

at

the last

decided against that, too, fearing that he would

wrath on

his

*Published

in

tOn

I

am

call

dow n

Herzen's journal Kolokol (The

Bell), 3 It

March

1863, in response to Russia's brutal

included the w ords

"Uhen

the very day

when

Lityino\ and his friends demonstrated in

of imitating Herzen and of

somehow making

a protest.

that Kopelex' couldn't stand another prison sentence, to

time to think of the consequences. But

—

I

walk dow n the

afraid to be recognized as a Russian."

Red Square

Solzhenitsvn v\as yisited in Rozhdestyo by Panin and Kopeley and their u

clear

further ofticial

head.t

suppression of the Polish rising of that year. street,

moment shrank from own but

considered issuing the statement on his

letters

won't be of any help."

I

can't for the

(25 August),

and spoke then Raisa Orloya, Kopeley's w ife, objected w hich Solzhenits\n replied, "This is no

life

of

me

iyes,

think w hat to do.

One

thing

is

SOLZHEMTSYN

[638]

This

at first sight surprising decision

w as not

in fact uncharacteristic.

At the time of the protests over the Daniel and Sinyavsky trial, Solzhenitsyn had shown his distaste for signing collective letters. And his instinct in making public statements was to stick to the familiar ground of literature or to the even more familiar ground of his own problems and his duel \\ ith the authorities. He was not ready to act with the selfless and uncalculating bravado of the young dissidents of the Human Rights Movement, nor yet to

—

become

a

tribune of the people.

Justifying his decision later in The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn wrote that neither the time nor the cause

was

right for him.

This is the question to ask: Am I crying out against the greatest evil? Cry out ves, if vou have never seen anything so horrible in just once and perish for it all vour life. But I have seen and know n many w orse things. ... To cry out now w ould be to denv the w hole history of our country, to help in prettifying Wait until they it. I must preserve mv vocal chords for x\\q great outcry.

—

.

.

.

begin translating Gulag into English."

But

this explanation

is

unconvincing. There was no chance of Solzhenitsyn's

"perishing" for a protest over Czechoslovakia.

On the contrary,

being already

a pariah, he had less to lose than most other people and would simply have been acting true to the authorities' opinion of him. Nor would a cry over Czechoslovakia have "denied" Soviet history: to denounce one injustice is not to approve of other, unmentioned injustices. Solzhenitsyn was simply being prudent. As he writes about that same period in another context: he who fights and runs aw av, lives to fight another day. Solzhenitsyn tried to preserve his position b\' w riting that "from then on I bore an additional w eight on mv back. At the time of Hungary, I was a nobody, and it didn't matter w hether cried out or not. Now it was Czechoslovakia, and I held m\- tongue." But then he w cnt on to criticize 1 vardovsky and the Aory Mir staff for behaving in basically the same w ay, for toeing the 1

line in

order to save the magazine for future battles.

It is

hard to see that

there w as an\- essential difference between them, and one cannot escape the impression that in his description of these melancholy events, Solzhenitsyn tried to

have

it

sensible path

was

others to sign

Tvardovskv

the one hand, he seemed to say, he took the

and saved himself

because he

a hero,

On

both ways.

it.

felt

This, he

for bigger things,

but on the other he really

indignant, drafted a statement, and almost got felt,

gave him the right to be contemptuous of

doing nothing about Czechoslovakia. The pity is that his self-centered account tended to obscure w ho the real heroes were the tiny band demonstrating on Red Square and the remarkfor also

—

—

able fact that

members

of the opposition w ere

all

ways: the dissidents, Solzhenitsyn, Tvardovsky. In

heroes in their different a

spectrum of opposition

and dissent from their government's oppressive action, the dissidents w ere at the left extreme, with Solzhenitsyn and Tvardovsky in the middle and the conformists on the far right. Solzhenitsyn

may have been

farther to the left

Portrait of thk Artist at Fifty than Tvardovskv, but both were hampered by their

and

their different plans for future battles. It

members to cut

K'39]

ties to

was the

the estabHshment

dilemma of all unw illing)

classic

of Soviet society opposed to their rulers but unable (or

themselves loose bv going into

consequences. Solzhenitsvn's

total

opposition,

movement tow ards

\\

fearsome

ith all its

this latter position

was steady

and inexorable and had been continual during the three years since the confiscation of his archive, but he had not vet travelled the w hole distance. He still had a toe-hold in the establishment and could not follow the dissidents into open rebellion. Another outstanding indi\ idual who w as beginning to feci this dilemma keenly was the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. Sakharox a pillar of the Soviet scientific establishment, thrice a Hero of Socialist Labour and "father" of the Soviet H-bomb, had begun to take an interest in public-policy questions as early as 1958, when he tried to get the Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing extended. Unsuccessful then, he had returned to this question in 1961 and 1962 and had been instrumental in persuading the Soviet leaders to sign a nuclear test ban agreement with the United States in 1963. At the same time, Sakharov had broadened his scientific and political interests. He had intervened in the education debate then raging in the Soviet Union, helped ,

to destroy the influence of Lvsenko's pseudo-scientific theories in the fields

of biology and genetics, and in 1966 was one of the twenty-five co-signatories

Tw entv-third

Congress of the Communist Party calling on These activities had made Sakharov decidedh' unpopular with the Soviet establishment, and he was steadily of a letter to the its

leaders not to rehabilitate Stalin.

demoted

in his scientific

work, though remaining an academician. But what

signalled a major rupture with his former colleagues and the Part\- leaders

was his celebrated memorandum "Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom," released in May 1968, a few months before the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The memorandum

and co-

called for a genuine coexistence

operation between the Soviet Union and the United States and canvassed the idea of a convergence of their for both sides, zation, the

and

two

in the Soviet

social systems. This would mean changes Union would require complete de-Stalini-

ending of censorship, the release of

political prisoners,

and

a

reform

of the economic system.

The memorandum

at

once began to circulate

in

samizdat and

in

August

1968 was widely published in the West, as a result of w hich Sakharov was

removed from

secret

work and given

to

understand that

his status

would be

irrevocably altered. Almost simultaneous w as the invasion of O.echoslovakia, signalling the effective

end of that period of

liberalization

timidh inau-

gurated by Khrushchev and inexorably throttled bv Brezhnev.

among those w ho read the memorandum in samizdat he had evidently noted Sakharov's name on some of the petitions interceding for Galanskov and Ginzburg, and he was intrigued bv Solzhenitsvn was

in 1968, just as

w ith some of the larger questions There w as, one feels, a hint of ri\ alr\' in Sol-

the eminent phxsicist's attempt to grapple that

were

also troublinir him.

SOLZHENITSYN

[640]

—

Sakharov had got his memorandum one of the people he had had in mind to sign the statement on Czechoslovakia, and he decided to seek a meeting \\ ith him anvwav. The two men met a few davs after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, in the house of a mutual acquaintance (although recently dismissed from secret work, Sakharov was still circumscribed in his movements and could go onlv to places that he was in the habit of visiting and that had previously been checked bv security agents). Solzhenitsvn found himself charmed bv Sakharov's "tall figure, his look zhenitsvn's feelings tow ards Sakharov

—but Sakharov

in first

\\

of absolute candour, his

as also

warm,

gentle smile, his bright glance, his pleasantly

r's" and by his carefully knotted tie and buttoned jacket, betokening an old-fashioned gentility that was somewhat at variance w ith Solzhenitsyn's own preference for generally more informal attire. The contrast in dress, to judge from Solzhenitsyn's account of the conversation, was reflected in their talk, w hich w ith interruptions lasted for four hours. Solzhenitsyn's manner seems to have been importunate, excitable, even hectoring. He was anxious to dispute Sakharov's ideas and criticized him unceremoniously, not hesitating to put forward his own views on the problem of Russia's future, without stopping to think whether he might be hurting Sakharov's feelings. Sakharov, for his part, was calm and reserved, polite and affable, and listened carefully. "He was not in the least offended," writes Solzhenitsyn, "although I gave him reason enough. He answered mildly, tried to explain himself w ith an embarrassed little smile, but refused to be the least bit offended the mark of a large and generous

throaty voice, the thick blurring of his

—

nature.

"'-

Solzhenitsyn did not omit to mention Czechoslovakia, but Sakhann' seemed as perplexed and helpless as he. No other prominent figure had made a move, and the two of them evidently did not feel strong enough to make a gesture on their own. The seven demonstrators on Red Square thus remained virtually isolated. Apart from occasional refusals to sign official letters of

support for the invasion (or diplomatic "illnesses" coinciding with the meetings

where decisions

to

send such

letters

were

protests consisted of the circulation of a few

ance of some political

taken), the only other overt

anonymous

leaflets,

the appear-

and the writing of one or two letters. Mindful of the mistake they had made with the trial of Ginzburg, Cialanskov, and company, w hose year-long investigation had allowed a considerable head of steam to be built up behind the protest movement, the authorities moved rapidly to deal w ith the demonstrators. Gorbanevskava, as the mother of a three-month-old child, was remanded for a psychiatric examination, pronounced mentally disturbed, and released into the care of her mother. Victor Fainberg, a tourist guide, had been so badly beaten that he couldn't be show n in court and was similarly recommended for psychiatric examination he w as later diagnosed to be suffering from "residual s\ mptoms of schizophrenia" and confined to a special psychiatric hospital (meaning a prison hospital) in Leningrad. As for the remaining five, their investis;ation was concluded graffiti,

—

Portrait of thk Ariisi

ai

I-ifiv

K>4

i I

v\ith unprecedented speed on 12 Septeml)er, their trial opened on 9 October, and bv 12 October 1968 it was all over. Two of the demonstrators, \ ladimir Dremhuga and \ adini Delaunav, were sentenced to three and two and a halt \ears imprisonment respectively in normal-regime labour camps. Pavel Litxinov, Larisa Bogoraz, and Konstantin Babitsky were sentenced to hve, four, and three vears of internal exile in Siberia. On the \er\' e\e of the demonstration, Litvinov had put the finishing touches to his massive documentation of the Ginzburg-CialanskoN- case. The Trial of the /'our, and launched it into samizdat, and Natalia (iorbane\ska\ a was performing the same service for Litvinov and her fellow demonstrators. Red Square at Soon w as to

appear ten months

later and describe these events, and the trial that follow ed, minute detail. At the time when these events were unfolding, Solzhenitsyn w as preoccupied w ith a long-term dream of his that at last seemed to be approaching reality, namely, to finance the construction of a church. The outward signs of his religious belief had been few since his return from exile. In R\ azan, he had never gone near the local church, but after the publication of .4 Day ill the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and especialh' '\\Iatr\ona's Place," w ith its overt

in

religious message, he priests, including

had made the acquaintance of

a

number

of

Moscow

such prominent and outspoken preachers as Father Alex-

ander Men, Father Dimitri Dudko, and Father V'sevolod Shpiller. also

known

to have written a

number

circulated in samizdat and then appeared abroad.

resembled some of

He was

of prayers, ot w hich only one had

Known simply

as "Prayer,"

and structure: "At the height of earthly fame I gaze w ith wonder at the path that has led me through hopelessness to here to w here I have been able to convey to mankind some refiection of Ihy radiance," it began, and continued in the same vein. it

his miniature stories in tone

—

Fhere was nothing mystical or intimate about his faith in the

w

his prayer. It

Lord, his confidence that the Lord would

assist

expressed

him

to con-

good works, and reflected his eminently practical attitude to reliGoci was there to help him accomplish things. Solzhenitsvn also seemed gion have little interest in the clerical aspects of the church or in its pastoral to work. Panin, w ho was eventually to convert to Roman Catholicism, had frequently admonished him for his reluctance to submit to the authority of the church and had accused him of the sin of pride. And Natalia Reshetovskaya has stated that Solzhenitsyn never kissed the hands of Orthodox priests, as true members of the church were supposed to do; nor did he seem attracted to the mysteries of the church ritual. tinue

ith

—

It is

rather surprising, therefore, that he should have

come

to the idea

now what he had in mind, and he intended ro\alties. The church w as to be called the Church

of building a church, but this was to finance

it

from

his foreign

was to be a dissident artist named Yuri was intended to be quite a big complex, with a reading-room and librar\-, and an adjoining lecture hall. Only the best priests would be invited to serve, and the church w ould be sump-

of the Holy Trinity, and

its

architect

Titov. According to Reshetovskaya,

it

SOLZHENITSYN

[642]

tuousK decorated. In August and September, Solzhenitsyn, Titov, and some of their friends among the priests set out to look for a suitable site, and their preference rested on the district of Zvenigorod (where the appropriately named

Jerusalem had once been situated). Titov produced a number of designs for the church, some of them apparently quite spectacular, but in the end it was never built (at least one of the priests felt that Solzhenitsyn would do better to spend his money on restoring ruined churches rather than

camp

of

New

on building a new one). Rumours that Solzhenitsyn was to build a church flew round Moscow for many months, and it was alleged that he had made some sort of deal w ith the government in order to have access to his royalties from abroad, but this latter rumour was patently not true, and speculation '^ died after a while.

Meanwhile, Solzhenits\n soon returned

where he learned Ward and The appear, having been pub-

to Rozhdestso,

of the publication in the West, in quick succession, of Cancer First Circle. Part

lished in

England

1

of Cancer

b\-

Ward was the first to Head in the last days

the Bodle\-

of August.

The

re\iew

s

were respectful but somewhat inconclusive. Most reviewers noted the author's tendency to discursiveness and his old-fashioned ideas about causality and narrative structure, but they saluted the seriousness of the theme and Solzhenitsyn's courage in daring to write openly and honestly about forbidden topics. In the end, however, apart from describing the novel's plot and subject matter, they preferred to suspend judgement until part 2 was available. Less than v\\o months later

came

the publication of The First Circle (w hich,

United States, preceded the appearance of Cancer Ward), an altogether bigger and more new sw orth\- event. Harrison Salisbury, in the Sunday AVi:; York Times, called it ''the greatest Russian novel of the last half of the century" and made the obligator\- comparisons to Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chein the

khov (invoking the shades of Hugo, Balzac, Zola, Thackeray, and Dickens elsewhere in his review). Franklin Reexe, in the Chicago Tribune, wrote that Solzhenitsyn w as one of the finest novelists now living anywhere, whether in

Eastern Europe, Western Europe, or North America, and many commenw idely quoted remark that Solzhenitsyn w as

tators repeated Evtushenko's

"Russia's only living classic."

The

sense of occasion was heightened by an

avalanche of news stories describing Solzhenitsyn's embattled situation in the Soviet Union and speculating on how his novel had reached the West (and

whether its publication w ould now harm him); and selection by the Book-ofthe-Month (>lub helped to ensure that within a week or two The First Circle had entered the best-seller lists and was climbing rapidly. But there were also demurring voices. The novel's nineteenth-century aura, structural looseness, and strong documentar\ element disappointed many. "The world of Jo\ce, Mann or Proust doesn't exist for [Solzhenitsyn]," wrote one. He seemed to be unacquainted w ith Freud or Kafka, had no know ledge of modern depth psychology or w ith other contemporarx w ritings on prison camps, and had w ritten a no\ el that w as "less modern" than Doctor Zhivago or The Master and

Mannar it a.

Portrait of the Artist ai I

1-ifty

l'^>43]

he British rcspcjnses had fewer reservations, perhaps retleeting

admiration of traditional reaHsm than was prevalent

in the

a greater

United States.

JuHan Svmons, in the Sitnclciy Times, ealled it a "majestic work of genius," whose e.\plorati(^n of people's behaviour in extreme situations made "the mass of contemporarv fiction dealing with this theme look trivial by comparison." Ronald Ilinglev (in The Spectator), trumping Harrison Salisbur\', described SoizhenitSN n's novel as "arguably the greatest Russian novel of the twentieth

centurv," while those

who acknowledged

fashioned technique nonetheless praised

nitsN'n's

daring conception and

its

sur-

were much more receptive to Solzhesardonic humour than the Americans seem to have been). Raymond

buovancv of tone

prising

untidy construction and old-

its

its

(the British

Williams, in I he Guardian, introduced the interesting idea that The First Circle

was more important and con\'incing than Cancer U^/v/ because it was less like literature, and he met the challenge of its unusual subject matter by refusing to recognize "the frontiers between the imaginative and the real." Solzhenitsyn had refurbished traditional realism and transformed it in order to be able to describe a

An

new

realitv.*

unfortunate b\-product of the mvsterious manner in w hich the two

West was the still-simmering controversy over w hether the author had desired publication or not, while new disputes broke novels had arrived in the

out over copyright and the quality of the translations. In the case of Cancer

Ward, the Bodley Head, with the help of Pa\el Licko, had more or

less

secured

England and had quickh' published a Russian text to support its claim, but rival Russian texts were published on the Continent, notably b\' Mondadori in Italy (in addition to the Possev text that had started the rush), and in America no few er than four publishers had announced their its

copxright to the

title in

intention of publishing

it

there. After the appearance of Solzhenitsvn's state-

ment in Le Monde, two of them, Dutton and Praeger, had withdrawn, leaving two others to fight it out. Farrar, Straus and Giroux claimed copyright on

Head

and accused the rival Dial Press of Giroux and the Bodle\' Head were endangering Solzhenitsvn's safety, and perhaps even his life, w ith their

the basis of the Bodley

edition,

piracy. Dial countered that Farrar, Straus and

claim to authorization, and issued their ow n translation of the entire novel in early 1969.

By

this time, the

Bodley Head had

also prepared a translation of

volume 2, so that Farrar, Straus and Giroux were able to issue the novel in one volume almost simultaneously with Dial. In the matter of translations, there was not much to choose between them. The Bodley Head version had been done b\' Nicholas Bethell and a Soviet emigre journalist called David Burg.t It was not a distinguished piece of work, bearing many signs of the haste and extensive editing to which it had been subjected, but the Dial translation was no better: its flatter and *

It is

not clear

Tolstoy

\\

hether W'ilHams w as aw are of the

in his lifetime,

ature and

life.

tHis

name

real

is

w ho w

fact,

but a similar claim had been

as praised for his abilit\' to "erase the

Alexander Dolber^.

made

boundaries" betu een

for

liter-

SOLZHENITSYN

[644]

more

literal

rendering of the original Russian simplv reflected American taste

in this matter, rather

A more of The First

than having anv greater accuracy.

serious difference of taste had manifested itself in the translation

Circle.

There had been no problems over copyright, but Thomas

Whitney's original translation also bore signs of extensive editing

(in this

case

and was rejected outright by Collins, the English publishers. Collins commissioned three of England's best translators Max Havward, Ronald Hingley, and Michael Glenny to produce a new version (it was published under the pseudonym of "Michael Guvbon"), but their translation, though somew hat smoother and more literary than Whitney's, also contained a large quota of errors and was, if anything, even further from the texture and spirit of the original. It looked uncomfortably like a repetition of the squabbles and multiple competing translations that had been such a feature of the foreign publication oi Ivan Deiiisovich six years earlier, and gave Solzhenits\'n considerable cause for concern, rhen, as now, it helped to divert attention from literar\' matters to the purely political sensation that seemed inseparable from Solzhenitsyn's name and all his work. Under normal circumstances, it might never have happened. Solzhenitsvn is the sort of meticulous author who would have taken a personal interest in the selection of his translators (as he has done since his arri\al in the W est), and would have demanded a voice in the arrangements that w ere made, had he been given the opportunity. But then, nothing w as normal in his literary career, and this haste, this jostling competition between over-eager publishers and their harried translators, was but a by-product of the secrecy, the w eb of conspiracy, and the atmosphere of political intrigue that envelopeci his every move. His books had become contraband, and the Soviet authorities had succeeded, through their persecution of the author, in surrounding them w ith the aura of forbidden fruit. Solzhenitsvn (given his outlaw status) w as not entirely dissatisfied with this process, for the persecution, like most attempts at censorship, was doomed to produce the opposite of w hat w as intended. It simph' spotlighted his work, inflated his reputation, and, by draw ing w orld-w ide attention to him, reinforced his immunity. In a sense the authorities pla\ed into Solzhenitsyn's hands, and the poor translations and competing editions might have seemed a small price to pay for the protective publicity they afforded (the competition and the ensuing recriminations mereh" magnified Solzhenitsyn's attraction for the mainh' h\ the

(>arlisles)

—

sensation-hungr\ tions begin to

\\

loom

estern press). as a

Only

later

—

did these inadequate transla-

problem, and by that time Solzhenitsyn had forgot-

utilit\' in his struggle w ith the So\'iet government. Ihe Soviet authorities w ere not averse to trying to exploit the situation they had brought about. Some of Solzhenitsyn's friends feared that Solzhenits\n would be put on trial for having sent his manuscripts abroad, but Solzhenitsyn himself seems to have been confident that that w ouldn't happen. "No," he said one day in response to a question from Zhores Medvedev, "I think that's unlikely. They've already exhausted themselves in that direc-

ten their temporar\ practical

Solzhenitsvn with two of his pupils in the village of Miltsevo

Natalia Reshetovskava at Miltsevo after

being reunited with Solzhenitsvn in 1956. (Private collection)

^gj^W^

in 1956. (Private collection)

^

;

The house on Kasimovsky Lane (ground floor

left,

in

Ryazan where Solzhenitsyn and Reshetovskava

lived

with three windows) from 1957 to 1969. (Private collection)

Solzhenitsyn on Rvazan Station on the day

of his arrival in spring 1957.

The

Sawing wood vate collection)

at

Kasimovskv Lane.

(Pri-

hole in

had been made bv a convov guard's bavonet when he was still a prishis suitcase

oner. (Private collection)

^"'^^SwafF^

The

tennis player, 1959. (Private col-

lection)

In the garden at

Kasimovsky Lane, 1958.

Left to right:

Maria Reshetoxskava (Natalia's mother),

Solzhenitsvn, Flena 7.ubov, Nikolai Zubov, Natalia. (Private collection)

Sol/hcnitsyn

at his rustic

writing tabic

in

the

woods

at

Solotclia U'''63),

on Cancer Ward and wrote "For the Good of the Cause." (Private

Solzhenitsyn's tion)

summer

cabin

at

\\

Ikt'. i.j

worked

collection)

Rozhdestvo, which he purchased in 1965. (Private collec-

Solzhenitsvn

at

Rozhdest\ o on the day he learned

had been confiscated by the September 1965. (Seuil)

that his manuscripts

KGB,

12

Solzhenitsvn with his Uvo closest friends from his sharashka days, Lev Kopele\ (Rubin

The First

Circle)

and Dimitri Panin (Sologdin)

at

Rozhdestvo

in 1967. (Seuil)

in

Solzhenitsvn making the sign ot the cross over Ivardovskv in his cofhn (Uecember 1971). (Seuil)

Solzhenitsvn's time.

The

room

at

Chukovskv's dacha

in Peredelkino after

he had

left

it

for the last

pitchfork was intended for self-defence in case of need. (Private collection)

Solzhenits\ n

\\

ith

Heinrich Boll

in

Lang-

Solzhenits\n

with

press

photographers

enbroich on the dav of his expulsion from

outside his house in Stapferstrasse, Zurich,

the Soviet Union, 14 January 1974. (UPI)

spring 1974. (Re.x Features)

Solzhenitsyn receiving the Nobel Prize Features)

in

Stockholm four years

late,

December

1974. (Re.x

Solzhenitsvn

at

Harvard, June 1976. (Wide World Photos)

Solzhenitsvn and his second wife, NataUa Svetlova,

New

York

in

July 1975. (Rex Features)

at

the

AFL-CIO

kincheon

in

Portrait of

thf.

Artist at Fifty

tion with the trials of Sinyavsky, Daniel,

and the

rest.

l'''45l

Now

they've got to

think up something new."'"*

Meanwhile, nobodv seemed to know what had become of Victor Louis's copy of Cancer Ward. l\Thaps it w as the one that ended up at the Dial Press or that reached Dutton or Fraeger before they abandoned their intention of publishing the novel themselves. Certainly it contributed to the general confusion, and not long after his trip to Europe, in September 1968, Victor

Louis himself turned up in, of all places, Rozhdestvo. Solzhenitsyn knew from the customs officers that his summer cabin was known to the authorities and therefore probablv under surveillance, but he was nonetheless surprised to find Victor Louis openly on his doorstep. Ostensiblv, Louis had come to explain that he had not taken a cop\' of Cancer Ward to the West, but his real purpose was to try to interview Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsvn was repairing his Moskvich and crawled out from beneath it,

covered in

oil,

nitsyn discovered

when his unexpected visitor arrived. Ihe moment who it was, he refused to answer any questions and

Solzheordered

Louis off the premises. Louis returned on 24 September, however, and w as number of pictures of Solzhenitsyn's cabin \\ ith a telephoto

able to take a

which he later sold to the West German illustrated w eekly Stern. Some time afterw ards, Louis haw ked around the West a purported "interview" with Solzhenitsvn, but a careful reading reveals that all the direct quotations lens,

in

came from other sources and

it

that Solzhenitsyn had said not a

word

to

Louis himselt.

The

"interview" eventually appeared, after

many

refusals, in the Inter-

national Herald Tribune, with a prefatory note explaining Louis's role as a

privileged Soviet journalist and a purveyor of material that the Soviet authorities

wished

esting

to

chiefly

send to the West. Louis's piece said nothing new; it was interas an example of "soft" propaganda. Solzhenitsyn was

Dostovevsky and Tolstoy, his cabin at Rozhat Yasnaya Polyana (and his w hich w as nearer the mark). Louis also summarized the

disparagingly compared

w

ith

destvo mockingly likened to Tolstoy's estate

beard to 1 olstoy's,

accusations recently

made

against Solzhenitsyn in the Literaturnaya Gazeta,

adding that Solzhenitsyn owed alibis to his

been

him

his

his

cunning and

his ability to

manufacture

experiences in the labour camps. But these experiences had also

undoing: "The time Solzhenitsyn spent

so deeply that he

in

camp and

in exile

shocked

became one-track-minded and can hardly keep

ott this

subject in his work."

This had become

a leitmotiv

of official criticisms of Solzhenitsyn, as had

the accusation that he was working for the enemies of the Soviet Union, especially the NTS, abroad. But Louis added a new and up-to-date twist of

own. The NTS, he wrote, accompanied its publication of Solzhenitsyn's works in the West with advertisements stating that "the construction of a Soviet power and the Communist society does not worry Solzhenitsyn. his

.

Party are not life

named

in his story,

.

.

but they are present there as

and mankind." Yet Solzhenitsyn, "who

is

a

member of the

evil foes

of

Writers' Union,"

SOLZHENITSYN

[646]

did not protest against these statements.

W hat

seemed

like a not7 sequitur

about

w as then follow ed up and expanded: "He disagrees with the Writers' Union on many counts, but he doesn't v\ ant to return his membership Nor would the Writcard because it gives him considerable advantages. ers' Union like to expel him, because he is a popular author." In other words, the Writers' Union zvoitld like to expel him. It \\ as the first time the subject the union

.

.

.

had appeared in print, even in this negative form, and the cautiousness of its formulation was an indication of indecision on the part of the authorities. At the same time, it \\ as a useful trial balloon and offered an excellent opportunity to test foreign reactions and to prepare foreign public opinion for what might now logically follow. Perhaps this was the "something new" that Solzhenitsvn had predicted to Medvedev.''' At the end of November 1968, Solzhenitsvn paid another visit to Ivardovsky and Novy Mir. He had with him a cop\' of The Gulag Archipelago for Tvardovskv to read, just as he had promised some weeks before. But Tvardovskv w as busv again and hard to pin dow n. He w as having a room added to his dacha to hold all the complimentary books he had been sent over a lifetime in the literary world, and was too busv supervising the workmen to come to the ofhce. At last he appeared in Moscow on 24 November, for a meeting of Novy Mirs Party committee, and afterwards the two men talked in I vardovsky's office. Tvardovsk\' was preoccupied and pensive. He had recently been a candidate for membership in the Academy of Sciences, but had been turned dow n on orders from above. He was also apprehensive about his letter to Fedin, which had just been broadcast by the BB(>. He felt it might compromise him further. But about the BBC^'s current readings from Cancer Ward he was enthusiastic and generously complimentary, telling Solzhenitsvn, "You're more famous in pAirope than am now." He asked Solzhenitsvn how he was survixing and offered him money from his own pocket, but Solzhenitsyn declined. What he would like, he said, was a further advance from Novy Mir on Cancer Ward 60 per cent, instead of the 25 per cent he had already received. This w as more difficult for Tvardovsk)-, since he had to get permission for such a payment from the Izvestia accountants, but he promised to do his best (and in due course was successful getting the w hole of the advance for Solzhenitsyn, instead of just 60 per cent).'"^" There v\as no question of showing The Gulag Archipelago to Tvardovskv on this occasion. There was too little time, and Solzhenitsxn needed to sta}' w ith I \ard()\'sk\' for the several da\s required to read it. He could not aftord to let the manuscript out of his sight, or run the risk of accidents. They arranged the reading for May Da\ the follow ing spring: Txardovskv would go to Rozhdestvo to Solzhenitsvn's "hunting lodge," as he pla\'fully called it, which he now knew about and read The Gulag Archipelago there, just as he had read The First Circle in R\azan. What Solzhenitsyn did have to show IvardovskN w as his freshly completed screenplay of The Parasite. The screenplay had been commissioned by friends at the Moscow Film Studios (Mosfilm) the preceding year in order to ,

I

—

—

—

—

I

POKTRAIT OF

TH

F.

ArTIST AT FiFTY

K>47]

although there was httle hope that the him would ever be made. Solzhenitsvn, it seems, still nursed a fascination with the cinema, although he was not hopeful either. The Parasite was a comedy

provide him with some monex

,

(unique in Solzhcnitsvn's oeuvre), but he had not been able to resist taking a elections and making satirical fun of them. politicallv controversial subject

—

—

Even when he had removed some of the more subversive still

The girl,

passages,

it

w as

rather too sharp for the prevailing atmosphere.

screenplav describes the adventures of a privileged young

when

Elvira,

she tries to get her

strange provincial town. She

is

damaged

Moscow

car repaired quickly in a

referred to the mechanic Pashka, notorious

w here he works and carrying out repairs on the side (he is the "parasite" of the screenplays's title), and he agrees to help. But hrst he must satisfv two important, queue-jumping clients w ho are clamouring for his assistance as well, an army major and the chairman of the the chairman's repair job is particularlv imporlocal electoral commission tant because the following dav is election day. Pashka completes the work and then stavs up all night to repair Elvira's car (falling slightly in love w ith her in the process). The next morning he learns that the Party bosses are searching for him. He flees with Elvira in her half-repaired car. After a comfor his skill in cheating the garage

—

ical chase, his pursuers catch up w ith him and inform him that it is election day (he has forgotten) and that he is guilty of the crime of not voting the onlv man in the town not to have done so. He w illingly allows himself to be dragged to the polling station, so that the election chairman can have his 100 per cent turnout and close the polls, as usual, ten hours ahead of schedule. The Parasite was the lightest work Solzhenitsvn had yet w ritten and had some amusing scenes, such as the initial collision between Elvira and an army vehicle and the chase through tow n and countrvside. Solzhenitsyn also got in some thrusts at the pett\- bribery of small-tow n life and the ridiculous hvpocris\' of the Soviet electoral process, but the characters were caricaeven the amusing Pashka, w ho w as modelled on the Ryazan mechanic tures

—

—

who had which

repaired Solzhcnitsvn's car for him.

a stranger

w as show n breaking

all

the

One

unw

scene in particular, in

ritten rules

voting secretly, stuck out as a naked polemic, even though true incident that had

happened

to

it

by insisting on w as based on a

Georgi Tenno.'

Solzhenits\n delivered three copies of the script to Mosfilm on 26

November and the

1968,

was presumablv read and shelved. ^^ Tvardovsky of \ovy Mir also read it but found it too sharp for

where

editorial staff

it

w ith one section (presumabl) that based on 1 enno) removed. Tvardovskv's joking comment after reading it was that Solzhcnitsvn's place publication, even

was "inside" and "the sooner the guished

among

better."''"'

After that the screenplay lan-

Solzhenits\n's papers and did not appear until 1981,

when

it

was published in volume 8 of his collected w orks in Russian. That November, Ilenrv Carlisle went to Moscow to seek further instructions on the preparation of The Gulag Archipelago for publication. The launching of

I'he First Circle,

apart from the question of the unsatistactory

SOLZHENITSYN

[64H]

had been a great organizational and commercial success for the and Harper & Row and the publishers had sold the rights for other translations all over the world. Thev were disturbed, however, bv the disputes and sometimes rancorous litigation that had broken out between the various publishers of Cancer Ward, and bv rumours that Solzhenitsvn had w ritten a revised and longer version of The First Circle that he w as contemplating releasing as well. 1 his second prospect would spoil the impact of the Harper & Row edition and throw doubt on the ow nership of the copvright. Journalists and rival publishers were alreadv questioning Harper & Row's credentials, vet the publisher was sworn to secrecx nobodv knew of Olga Carlisle's role as Solzhenitsvn's representative and of the authorization he had given her. Solzhenits\ n's situation w as apparenth too delicate for I lenry (>arlisle to meet him face to face. A message was passed through an intermediary, and Solzhenitsxn replied similarlw He was satisfied with the publication of The First Circle, w ould not release the additional chapters he had written, and wanted Olga Carlisle to handle The Gulag Archipelago in the same fashion as the first book w ith one proviso. She was not to enter into a contract with Harper &: Row until the translation w as readv (w hich he hoped would be in 1970). She should then send a coded message and wait until he gave her translation,

Carlisles

,

:

—

instructions to proceed.

Onh

in the

event of his arrest or death should she

go ahead on her own.-" logether w

ith these instructions Carlisle

West. One, from Solzhenitsvn, was for

brought two requests to the

a small tape recorder.

The

other,

from Kornei Chukovskv, w as for telegrams and letters of congratulation to be sent to Solzhenitsvn on his fiftieth birthda\'. Quaint as the custom max seem to Westerners, fiftieth birthda\ s are an occasion of great importance to Soviet w titers. For the vast majoritx- w ho enjov official approval, it is marked by adulatory articles and statements in the literarv press (and in the national press, as well, it the author is important enough) and shoals of telegrams and letters to his home, not onl\' from official bodies like the various levels of the Writers' Union (all-union, republic, province, and town) but also from "workers' collectives" and committees all over the countrv. Such outbursts ot acclaim are carefullv orchestrated, but thev do sometimes coincide with true popularitv, as had been the case w ith w titers like I vardovskv and Nekraso\ Ihere seemed little chance of Solzhenitsxn's l)irthda\ being so marked, and (^huk()vsk\- w as anxious that the impetus should come from elsew here. Telegrams and letters from abroad would demonstrate world-w ide support tor Solzhenitsvn and strengthen his position in his duel with the Soviet .

authorities.

December 1968, at home in Ryazan. and messages of support did indeed pour in from abroad, and there were man\ laudators articles in the Western press to celebrate the occasion. But what trulv surprised and moved Solzhenitsvn was the enormous volume of cont^ratulations he received from within the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn spent his birthdax

Telegrams,

letters,

,

1

1

Portrait of thk Artist at Fifty

No

one had been

informed. There w as not

ofrtciall\

t''>49l

word

a

in the Literatiir-

naya Gazeta, either before or after his birthdas'. But letters and telegrams

began arriving the rate of at

up

a full

w eek beforehand and

On

to seventy at a time.

v\

ere being brought to the

the da\'

postmen w ere

itself,

flat at

calling

thirt\-minute intervals, so that Solzhenitsxn, Natalia, her mother, and

aunts were unable to open the letters quicklv enough before the next batch B\' the end of the w eek, there \\ ere more than hve hundred telegrams and about two hundred letters, and a further hundred messages arrixed at Novy Mir. According to Zhores Medvedev, Sovy Mir also sent an official telegram, as did the Rvazan and \ oronezh branches of the Writers" Lnif)n, the Czech \\ riters' Union, and a number of Moscow theatres.-' The tone of most of the letters rexived memories of those he had received after the publication of /iy//; Denisovicb. "Please do not lav down vour pen." "I rejoice that our generation's sufferings have at least produced such sons." "You are mv conscience." "We read vour books on cigarette papers, which makes them all the more precious to us. If Russia is paving dearlv for her great sins, it is surelv for her great sufferings, and so that shame max not utterly demoralize us that xou have been sent to her." Tvardovskv xxrote, "May vou live another fiftv x ears and mav vour talent lose none of its splendid strength. All else passes, onlv the truth xvill remain." And Lxdia Chukovskaya: "In vou the dumb have found their voice. I can think of no x\ riter so long axxaited and so sorelv needed as vou. Where the \xord has not perished, the future is safe. You have restored to Russian literature its thunderous poxver."-Solzhenitsyn was deeplv stirred b\' these messages, although he tried not to shoxx it outxxardlv, even to his familv. \ eronica Stein, his sole guest on that memorable da\', reports that after helping the xxomen to open and sort the letters in the morning, Solzhenitsvn disappeared into his stiidv to x\ ork. He came out brieflv for lunch and to drink tea x\ ith some local women x\ ho had called to congratulate him neighbours xvho helped him \x ith t\ping, copying, sending out duplicated letters, and so on and then \x ent back

came.

.

.

.

—

to xxork again, all, it XX

he

x\

that

xx

as typical of Solzhenitsxn to treat

as gloxx ing inside. it

—

hile Natalia shox\ed the visitcjrs

He

it

as a

normal

bred hx pocrisx' and obliged him to behaxe

To

give

holidax slides. All in xx

orking dav, even

He

had

someone

a

a

in

xx

theorx that

present

is

avs that it xx

as

xx

ere false.

to avoid receiving gifts himself

and

rarelx gax e

He

an intrusion on

inexitablv to impose vour

oxxn taste on that person and therefore to limit and constrain him.

money

if

hated making concessions to conxention, feeling

also disapproxed of gift-giving.

another's privacy.

some

them, except

He

in the

tried

form of

or purelv utilitarian objects.'^

This unbending attitude

to the harmless courtesies of ex ervdax

Solzhenitsyn's penchant for taking theories to extremes.

As

life

a result,

shoxx

ed

even his

best impulses and most attractive qualities could express themselves xxith

such uninhibited force that thev became oppressive, cancelling out the pleasure thev evoked. Solzhenitsxn

x\

as not incapable of generositx

initial

—quite

— SOLZHENITSYN

[650]

Medvedev

the contrary. Zhores

describes in great detail Solzhenitsyn's attempts

drug from America for the ten-year-old Ryazan who had developed an acute form of leukemia. He was prepared to spend up to five thousand dollars of his American royalties to pay for the drug. In the event, the drug was obtained for nothing but did not prove as effective as had been thought, and the little girl died two years later. ""^ Solzhenitsyn's offer to use foreign royalties from Ivan Denisovich referred to funds that were blocked to him personally, but later, when money from the Nobel Prize became available to him, he \\ as generous to friends in need and had no hesitation in sending them sums of money. Like many proud and self-centered people, he \\ as a better giver than receiver. His fiftieth birthday was therefore treated much like any other day. Solzhenitsyn not only liked to ignore the conventions, he took a secret and perverse delight in flouting them (thus demonstrating that he was not indifferent). But it was not entirely a normal working day. Buoxed up by this tidal wave of love and admiration from his loyal readers ("Let me scorn mock modesty and admit that I held my head high that v\eek"), he spent part of the time in his stud\' composing a suitably solemn acknowledgement: "I thank the readers and writers whose greetings and good wishes on mv fiftieth birthday have so moved me. I promise them never to betray the truth. Mv sole dream is to )ustif\' the hopes of the Russian reading public." There was nowhere in particular he could send it no Soviet new spaper w ould publish his words without instructions from above. But for form's sake he addressed it to the that year to obtain an expensive

daughter of a friend

in

—

Literatunniya Gazeta before releasing

Solzhenitsyn was to feel pleased

w ith

now

at

himself.

it

into samizdat."'

the height of his powers and had every reason

He

had entered into

the strongest and most ruthless government in the

a

single-handed duel with

w orld and had more than

ow n. Llis losses had been the confiscation of his archive, the public on him, the refusal to publish Cancer Ward and The First Circle in the Soviet Union, and poor translations in the West. His victories had been his letter to the Fourth Writers' Congress, his completion and the safe dispatch abroad of The Gulag Archipelago, and the publication of his two major novels abroad. He was physically safe and had embarked at last on his series of held his

attacks

historical novels.

\o

his admirers, especially inside the Soviet

dom, independence,

purity, justice

—and

in a

Union, he symbolized

free-

narrower sense embodied the

hope that the reforms of the Khrushchev era and the move towards the deStalinization of Soviet life were not entirely lost. He was not alone in this the dissidents were fighting the same battle, often w ith a greater disregard for their personal safety. But w hat Solzhenitsyn uniqueh' possessed was his literary talent and his charisma. He had a natural instinct for battle tactics for know ing w hen to advance and w hen to retreat, w hen to attack and when to defend, w hen to kick up a fuss and w hen to keep quiet. It w as here that his convict experiences stood him in such good stead. In The Gulag Archipelago he had seen the camps as a metaphor for the w hole of Soviet society (the

Portrait of the Artist at Fifty metaphor had appeared

in

Gulag Archipelago made

it

['^)5i]

(Jirc/e as w ell, hut The and developed the metaphor with greater complexity) the Soviet Union was one big labour camp. In dealing with its leaders, Solzhenitsyn instinctively drew on his past experience with the camp bosses. It was one of the keys to his success (and also the key to some of his failures). As he himself was to put it to 1 vardo\ sk\' a vear later:

—

This

a different

is

age

Ivan Denisovkb and The First

explicit

— not

that in

greater part of vour literarv Hfe

which nou had the misfortune

—and

different skills are

of the world of forced labour and the camps.

can sav without affectation that I and ov\e no less to it, than I do to education there, and it w ill last fore\cr. \\ hen am

belong to the Russian convict world no Russian literature.

I

got

mv

I

less,

I

considering anv step of importance to m\- future, of

m\ comrades

and

I

in the

The camps had

listen

above

to the voices

all

m\

a bullet,

place.-''

bred their ow n antidote: the one place where truth had

—

in Stalin's Russia

the greater gulag of Soviet Russia

w

I

camps, some of them alreadv dead, of disease or

hear clcarlv how thev would behave in

been preserxed

to live the

needed. Mine are those

—had

the gulag

itself.

sent

its

And combined

messenger to haunt

with

this

implacable

and this incomparable battle instinct w as the artist's flair for self-dramatization and the power to communicate in \ i\ id, unforgettable language the nature and progress of his struggle. Of course he could hold his head high, and of course he was the object of passionate admiration, of idolization even, and deservedlv so. At the same time there was the mvsterv of his personalitv, the secrecv surrounding his dail\' life dictated partly bv the exigencies of his struggle, but also consciously manipulated by Solzhenitsyn. The artist was not content with mere art: he would make a dramatic parable of his life as well, and art from that parable, and a parable from that art (his memoir. The Oak and the Calf, would put the finishing touches to both). There was a holy innocence as well as calculation about the gusto w ith w hich he fashioned his role, playing hideand-seek w ith Ivardovsky and other friends, acting the Scarlet Pimpernel in matters great and small. It added to the mystery and fascination of his image, lending him an aura that was of the greatest assistance in his battle with the authorities. And if this was true inside the Soviet Union, it w as even more so abroad, w here the mystery of his personality was compounded b\' distance and ignorance. An example of the effect this produced in b\standers w as an article, in the form of a pen portrait, by an anonymous Soviet intellectual, which reached the West shortly after Solzhenitsyn's fiftieth birthday and w as published first in the emigre journal Vozrozhdeniye ("Rebirth") and then in some Western newspapers. It is interesting both for its more or less reliable description of Solzhenits\n's ph\sical appearance and for the idealized and lyrical haze through w hich the w titer view s Solzhenitsyn's personality. Physically, Solill

to reveal the truth

—

—

zhenitsyn

is

described as follows:

—

— SOLZHENITSYN

[652]

He

has an original and fascinating appearance. His eyes are blue, not light blue

but an intense blue, w

ith a

and w hen he looks

vou thev grow

and

he's a big

at

man

\v

—

you might even say scintillating arm and confiding. His features are big,

vouthful sparkle

generally, with broad shoulders and big hands, but well

shaped. He's blond, and despite having something Nordic and Scandinavian in

His hair and beard are both fair, his face (the and kind. He speaks rather fast and very to the point; he's purposeful, self-disciplined, businesslike and precise, but at the same time a bit of a dreamer, w ith a touch of pleasant naivety about him. He's modest, but conscious of his role and worth. He speaks figuratively, without his appearance, very Russian.

upper

part) icon-like, his eves lively

using a single cliche, and his language

mannerism

—

it is

is

a pleasure to listen to,

simple, unaffected, without a trace of

it is

good, pure, genuine Russian.

Meeting Solzhenitsyn, continues the unknown author, "was an enorin our grev life," especially when he was compared with the people one met every day.

mous event

You

experience Solzhenitsyn as a real

slightest trace of timidit\' or

Man (with

embitterment

in

a capital letter):

him, there

is

there

is

not the

nothing petty or dis-

make-up, everything about him is in a major key, organically no posing or affectation. Optimism, faith in the future, extraordinary simplicity, directness, and an enormous, almost childlike interest in everything around him in the people he meets, in their work and opinions, and all this benevolently and w ithout bias.-' honourable

in his

major, there

is

—

In other words, a secular saint. To a people starved of.spiritual nourishment and desperate for beauty, justice, and truth, Solzhenitsyn was as if heavensent, God's messenger on earth, a reassurance that the Russian people and Russian literature had not lost their spirituality. In a country with a centuries-old tradition of deifying its great men, it was inevitable that Solzhenitsyn

would sooner

or later reach the

moment

of his apotheosis.

'

56

EXPULSION FROM

THE WRITERS' UNION IT .

and

IS

IN the nature of things that no

man be

successful in

all

that he under-

takes or experience complete happiness in every department of his at precisely this

moment

life,

of his greatest fame and popularity, Solzheni-

tsyn was experiencing, in his private

life,

the exact opposite of his public

His marriage \\ as about to collapse. A sign of what was afoot was a seemingh- trivial incident w itnessed by \ eronica Stein on the very day of his fiftieth birthday. For some years past, Solzhenitsyn had been allowing Natalia to handle almost all his correspondence. This gave her an opportunit\ to keep up with what he \\ as doing and to feel wanted and useful. On the evening of his birthda\ Solzhenitsyn emerged from his study and handed Natalia a letter to post to Elena Chukovskaya (Lydia Chukovska\a's daughter), in \\ hich he informed Elena that he would be coming to Moscow in three days' time and would like to stay at the Chukovskys' dacha. On reading it, Natalia created a noisy scene, accusing Solzhenitsyn of being selfish and never thinking of her. Why couldn't he go to Moscow on a weekend so that she could accompany him? A row broke success.

,

out that lasted until bedtime, completely ruining the

latter part

of the birth-

day. After Solzhenitsyn had gone to bed, Natalia continued sobbing well into the night in the small

At the

room w here she and

X'eronica were sleeping.

root of this outburst lay Natalia's jealousy of his

Moscow

friends

and probably Elena in particular. For most of the past two years since Solzhenitsyn had fled to the Chukovskys after the confiscation of his archive, Elena (known universally as "Lvusha" in Moscow literary circles) had been helping him w ith his work, gradually increasing her involvement to the point where in all but name she had become Solzhenitsvn's private secretary. By

653

SOLZHENITSYN

[654]

profession she was a chemist hke Natalia herself, but slightly higher

Moscow

up the

Organic Chemistry. She was also Kornei Chukovskv's favourite granddaughter (her father, Tsezar Volpe, had died in the w ar, leaving her an orphan) and from him, and from her mother, had absorbed a lifelong passion for literature. Elena was in her mid-thirties when she met Solzhenitsyn and was ladder, a senior researcher at the

—

Institute of

unmarried as she is to this da) Perhaps the very strength of her personality has something to do with it. When asked to describe her, friends come up with an assortment of flattering adjectives: noble, disinterested, dedicated, generous, intelligent, broad-minded. But they also indicate a quizzical, sceptical mind, absolute independence of spirit, a good sense of humour, and a sharp tongue adept at puncturing affectation and pomposity. The picture is of a clever, subtle, discriminating person w ith a mind of her own. And yet, with all

.

these qualities, she

who seem

is

also

one of those strong, saintly Russian

While her grandfather w

others.

her affections and to his declining vears

worship

women

to find their deepest satisfaction in life in devoting themselves to

his

whom

as alive,

it

was he who

lay at the center of

she dedicated the bulk of her attention. During

and especially

after his death, although she

memory and work on

his literary archive, she

continued to

seems to have

him and his work worthy of her character and

transferred the focus of her attention to Solzhenitsyn. In

her noble, generous nature found

a

cause fully

talents.

Because Elena about

it

herself,

it

is is

still

living in the Soviet

impossible to describe the

Union and has not written full extent of her work for

Solzhenitsyn. Ever since publishing Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn had been

accustomed to

combine

from admirers and

to receiving secretarial help

the day-to-day it

w

work had been done by ith a full-time job,

friends.

Much

of

Natalia, insofar as she had been able

but w

ith the flood

of correspondence that

followed the publication of Ivan Denisovich and with the lengthy revisions of

The First Circle and Cancer Ward (the few photocopiers that existed in the Soviet

Union w ere kept under

clearly too

brought

much

lock and kev

—and

for her, so that others in both

in to help.

still

are),

the labour

was

Ryazan and Moscow were

Elizaveta \ oronvanskaxa, in Leningrad, accompanied

trips as an amanuensis and typed up and The Gulag Archipelago. Reshetovskaya writes, "My husband could approach her w ith literally any request any time, and she would do e\ervthing she could for him." She had even learned to type for Solzhenitsyn's sake, and there were many like her.' Natalia w as thus w illv-nillv distanced from her husband's work, which

Solzhenits\ n on one or

final

versions of

77:?^

two research

First Circle

from being the product of one man at his desk had turned into a cottage industry, especially when, in 1964, he launched in earnest into The Gulag Archipelago. There was the ver\- size of the task. Interviewing or reading letters from 227 ex-prisoners, registering and copying the interview s, obtaining and absorbing a mass of factual printed material, typing and retyping sections of the enormous manuscript, correcting and copying a final draft of

K.X

well over

t\\

PULSION KROM IHK WrIIKRs'

o thousand pages

—

all

this rec|uirecl

LMoN

['^555]

an arm\ of helpers, not to

speak of intermediaries for arranging confidential interviews or scouring provincial libraries for

obscure and hard-to-find books.

\\

hen he came

at last to

begin August 19H, he used the same s\stem, and again there was no lack of volunteers. Finalh', there against the authorities. \\ riters'

and

fift\'

his public

campaign

copies of his letter to the

Congress had had to be tvped, addressed, and mailed from

of postboxes in the \\

was the work required by

1 wo hundred

riters'

Moscow

Union

,

as did forty-four copies of his letter to

a varietv

members

of

with his transcript of the Cancer UV//W discus-

secretariat,

Others were tvped for samizdat or for carrving abroad, and man\ of who helped in this w av reported back to Solzhenitsvn on proceedings of meetings thev had attended or the remarks made bv idethe sion.

the sympathizers

ological

spokesmen

at

was Solzhenitsvn able

closed meetings of the Partv faithful. ()nl\- in this to learn

what Zimvanin had

said to a

meeting of jour-

nalists, or of the instructions issued to provincial librarians to

books from the shelves.

1

wav

remove

his

hese snippets of information Solzhenitsvn would

and timing, he judged among his enemies and rejoicing his friends. For this not insignificant group of people, Solzhenitsvn's struggle was their struggle, he was their leader and standard bearer, and it was this idea that Pavel Licko had clumsilv tried to convev in his BBC interview in London in 1967, but which a poor translation had converted into the image of Solzhenitsvn at the head of a "private armv."^ There was an "armv," an arm\ w ithout arms, a largelv silent mass of supporters content to assist him behind the scenes or to back him passivelv, and for the most part unw illing to come out into the open and risk their securitv. In such circumstances it w as inevitable that Natalia should get pushed somewhat to one side and that others should emerge to take on the extra work. Elena gave up some hours at her institute and worked part-time in order to devote herself more fuUv to it, and thanks to the w eight of her personalitv, her drive, and her energv quicklv came to occupv a special position in Solzhenitsvn's esteem, enjoving his complete confidence and trust. She was also one of the few people whose criticisms he heeded. With her outspokenness she did not hesitate to comment on his writing, particularlv his political w riting, and he frequentlv took her advice. For Natalia the whole thing w as bew ildering. From being an obscure lecturer at an agricultural institute, she had gone on to become the consort of Russia's most famous and acclaimed writer. The doors of .Vorv Mir, of the Taganka and Sovremennik theatres, of the Writers' Club, and almost of the Kremlin itself had been thrown open to her. She had hob-nobbed w ith the mightv and w as simple and straightforward enough to have enjoyed this sudden prominence. But her husband, from the start, had reacted strangeh to his fame. He had often avoided the great, declined their invitations, and insisted on skulking in his ow n backvard. In a w av this guaranteed a continuation of their domestic cosiness. In her book on their life together, there are then hoard the

moment

until,

with his inimitable

right to

make them

flair for tactics

public, sow ing confusion

SOLZHENITSYN

[656]

them taken in Ryazan that seem to sum up her vision of one of them she is show n sitting at an electric sewingSol/,henits\n leans ox er her w ith a bemused smile on his face.

two photographs

ot

their married Hfe. In

machine, w

hile

is plaving the piano and gazing into the distance, while he, thousand Holh w ood movies, leans on the back of the piano

In the other she in

homage

in

an attitude of contemplation. I

his

to a

w as

Natalia's

image of how

their marriage

ought to be:

bourgeois

a

paradise, an island of calm and domestic bliss amidst a sea of troubles. this

calm was ruptured by sudden fame, she w

gracious consort of

a

celebritw to

pla\'

as

still

w

illing to

When

become the

the part of the famous man's wife,

entertain and be entertained, enjoy the privileges and

fulfil

the duties of a

was for Solzhenitsvn. 1 he picture Louis and the Soviet media had begun to present of him as a

person in the public eve. But none of that \ ictor

this

greedy philistine eager for creature comforts, luxuriating in his foreign royalties and social success, was totally w ide of the mark. He could not have cared to

less for

how

w orldly goods and social acceptability (the portrait owed more Union officials themselves behave and feel than to any accu-

Writers'

assessment of Solzhenitsvn). Quite the contrarx', he

rate

uncomfortable w ithout

a hair shirt

of

some

kind.

positively

felt

Ihe thing that absorbed 90

per cent of his energy and time was "the cause": collecting material, writing, distributing, devising strategy.

up more and more of his And what it now brought

life,

in

It

was

this that

had progressively swallowed

leaving almost no time for domestic concerns.

its

wake was odium and

insults, brickbats instead

of plaudits, and continual harassment by the political and literary establish-

ment.

Even

man

this,

Natalia could probably have borne

—

side

by

side with the

she loved. She w as loval to her husband and would have followed him

anyv\'here.

But

his

fame had coincided w

ith

other developments in their rela-

them apart. First, there had been the incident w ith the woman in Leningrad. Such an occurrence was almost inevitable in the light of Solzhenitsvn's celebrity. He was deeply fascinating to many tionship that conspired to drive

women, with

Many

ality.

his

romantic past, his

air

of mystery, and his vibrant person-

of his most devoted helpers were

women, and

probable that their motives w ere mixed: the cause pion w as masculine and not

at all

v\

it is

as noble,

more than its cham-

but

bad-looking. Voronyanskaya, though no

longer young and though apparenth' disinterested, had been a party to the

Leningrad romance and had helped to deceive Natalia over Solzhenitsvn's being there. And \ oronx anskava w as one of Solzhenitsyn's

real reasons for

principal literary assistants as well. I

he Leningrad incident had been patched up, although

it

had led to

separate rooms. But equally serious had been the domestic repercussions of

the confiscation of Solzhenitsyn's archive and his hasty departure from Rozh-

destvo (and therefore from R\ azan). Solzhenitsvn truly thought that his

life

w as in mortal danger. Yet w ithin days of his arrival in Peredelkino, Natalia had been on the telephone demanding his immediate return to Ryazan. She

a

Kx PUIS ON I

1

ROM in

I

Wriikks' Union

K>

5 7

I

said, and was also threatened 1)\ the m\steon leush (the Teushes were her friends too; I'eush had been her rioiis raid eolleague). She eould not understand \\h\ Sol/.henitsx n should want to sjX'nd such a solemn and decisive moment aw a\' from her.^ Perhaps this fatal misunderstanding was hound up with a more profound ps\ choiogical trauma. It was the K(iR raid tiiat had remindetl Sol/henits\ n so forcefulK' of his convict past and that hastened a reversion to his to a period and a frame of mind that w as outside his old w a\- of thinking w relationship ith Natalia. The true son of (lulag had been abandoned b\- her was and indeed not know n to her. The man she received back into her marriage and into her bed had been rehabilitated, born again, to all intents and piu'poses a respectable Soviet citizen. But now he was diving down to the felt

loncK and abandonctl, she

—

depths again, depths to \\hich she could not follow

The

.

fact that Solzhenitsvn's destination after his dive

had been the (.hu-

kovskws was partiv accidental. Kornei, Lvdia, and Klena could ha\e been only dimlv aw are of Solzhenits\n's state of mind w hen he w ent to them, of the complex reorientation taking place in his

could certainlv follow appropriateness,

if

him mentalK' and

mood and

his thinking. But thev and there was a certain finding refuge with them.

spiritualK',

not ine\itabilit\', in his

was manv-lavered and not just might have been conventional once, for Natalia was sensitive to sexual rivalrv, and Elena's devotion to Solzhenitsvn certainlv seems to have had emotional overtones. A friend of both w omen w ho w andered into Elena's room one dav was amazed to find the w alls, shelves, and bookcases plastered with photographs and mementoes of Solzhenitsx n. W hen he made some platitudinous comment, she shook her head and said, "1 hat's all over Natalia's jealousv of Elena, therefore,

conventional.

now."' 1 his

It

is

not to sav that the relationship was any other than platonic or

that Natalia's personal feelings for Elena

w ere necessarih' unfriendly.

It

was

perhaps that Solzhenitsvn's post-birthdav departure to Elena's somehow

svmbolized everything that had gone w rong w

ith their

marriage

in the pre-

ceding three to four years.

covite,

may also have been aw are of the unfiattering comparisons that made between Elena and herself. Elena was a sophisticated Mussteeped in culture and a member of a famous literary family. She had

read

the books, and more, that Solzhenits\n had read and had a far broader

Natalia

could be

all

cultural

background than

he. Natalia, b\' comparison,

was

a provincial school-

marm. She was a gifted amateur pianist and out of a sense of duty tried to read one or two of the "thick" magazines, but her real interests barel\- went beyond the meetings of the Ryazan chapter of the Mendeleyev Society and amateur dramatics at the institute. Of all the friends that she and Solzhenits\n had in common at the time and w ho have commented on the subject, only Dimitri Panin recalls being impressed by her intellect. He found her brilliant in everything she touched chemistry, music, photography vivacious, if moody, companion and a thoughtful, hospitable host.*^ Others, including some who were later to take her side in the split w ith Solzhenitsyn,

—

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[658]

found her affected, gossipy and vain, bourgeois

in her tastes,

and hmited

in

her opinions.

Such judgements mav

reflect the

meetings with Nataha. Panin

time and circumstances of people's

recalls her chiefl\'

from

a

period

\\

first

hen she and

Solzhenitsyn were falling in love again and during their early years in Ryazan. Others met her only in the aftermath of Ivan Denisovich, when Solzhenitsyn's fame was thro\\ ing the first strains on their marriage. \ eronica Stein, her cousin, affirms that Natalia

is

at heart a

spontaneous, emotional

woman who

good and bad news. "If she's in a bad mood, she's plunged into despair." But what seems to have tipped the scales of opinion against her was her pretentiousness and her sometimes comical attempts to live up to the role of "the great writer's wife." Zhores Medvedev recalls that whenever she accompanied Solzhenitsyn, she w ould refuse to let him out of her sight, and insisted on sitting in on all of his conversations, no matter what the subject. Medvedev came to the conclusion that she was trying to hear and memorize everything so that she could write it down once she got home, and he w as not surprised to learn soon afterwards that Natalia was keeping a diary. Another friend remembers her as a terrible name-dropper, while a third describes her as mimicking her husband: "I'm sorry," she would when time say, looking at her watch, "I can spare you only ten minutes" was not really a problem.*^ It seems that all this represented her idea of how a w Titer's w ife should act, and she reinforced this image of herself by reading heaps of literary memoirs. Her particular favourite, according to \ eronica Stein, was the diary of Tolstoy's wife, which she read several times. At one stage she bought a notebook, divided it into columns, and wrote out the psychological characteristics of Tolstoy and his wife as she perceived them (again, it seems, in imitation of her husband's method of analysis he was doing the same with Lenin). She then w ent through the notebook putting ticks against the qualities she felt she and her husband shared w ith the Tolstoys, and crosses where she felt they w ere different. Perhaps it was at this moment that she conceived the idea of someday writing a memoir of her own.* Insecurity clearly had a lot to do with her behaviour and her loneliness. It should not be forgotten that in his years in Ryazan, Solzhenitsyn had virtually cut her off from her former friends and colleagues. He and Natalia had had no social life to speak of, and it was all for the sake of his work, his need for secrecy. Then, for the sake of his work, he had had to spend long periods away from Ryazan and consequently away from her, and for the sake of secrecy (over Gulag) to exclude her from many of his arrangements. To him it seemed both inevitable and logical (forced on him by circumstances, by a cruel government), and her resistance seemed blind selfishness. In their increasingly frequent quarrels, he accused her of "tearing his guts out" with her nagging and of completely disregarding his literary work and professional reacts equally strongly to

—

—

* In the

unpublished chapters of her memoirs, Reshetovskava

volume of \'an Ciogh's

letters that

states that

it

w as the reading of

pro\ided the main impulse for her to undertake them.

a

Expulsion from

He

thf.

Writers' Union

[*^'59l

a life. She \v as sucking and public activities put together.'' To her, his fanatical devotion to his work and his longer and longer absences in Moscow seemed equally selfish. After the incident w ith the Ix-ningrad woman, she had been pathologically jealous, endlessly questioning him on where he \\ as going, turning out his pockets, trving to catch him out. This behaviour had prompted him to start giving her his unsealed letters. Then she had gone through a period of estrangement. She had complained that since their marriage he had overshadowed her and cramped her devel-

problems.

told her that he could not

more energy out of him than

his

w

endure such

riting

opment, quoting Nikolai Vitkcvich and her mother and aunts in support. She tried to move aw av from him, to take less interest in his work, to develop her own interests in amateur photographv and especiallv in music.'" Solzhenitsyn encouraged her in these plans and helped her to get lessons for a while from the celebrated and eccentric Soviet pianist Maria Yudina. Yudina was politically bold (she had read Pasternak's poems at some of her concerts w hen Pasternak was in disgrace) and w as noted for her religious piet\'. She deeph' admired Solzhenitsvn, having sought him out after the publication of Ivan Denisovich, and readilv agreed to teach Natalia (although it was true, as Solzhenitsvn had written to her, that Natalia "w asn't developed enough for a teacher of her calibre"); and it appears that the two women became quite good friends." Natalia's efforts to break awa\ from her husband's spell, however, ultimatelv failed. She was too dependent on him, too loneh' on her own, and he was still the onlv source of glamour in her life, even if he wouldn't behave conventionallv. She was still Mrs Solzhenits\n, it was her one consolation, and she wanted the world to see and acknow ledge it, to w itness her bv his side. Unfortunately, not even this seeminglv small concession was easv for Solzhenitsyn to make. He simplv could not see whv it was important to her. He himself set little store bv appearances and seemed unaware of the nuances that lay behind them. And his unawareness was compounded b\ his indifference to personal relations. As he later confessed, "I had a theor\- that one's personal life should be regarded as secondarv and the kev to mv behaviour was that I reallv treated it that wav and I was constantlv making mistakes." According to his ideas, personal life should account for only about 5 per cent of one's time and emotions, while the other 95 per cent should be devoted to professional duties. It was no wonder that he neglected personal life and failed to understand his wife's needs. Instead of offering her a partnership, he was passive, simply buying time and a quiet life. .

.

.

keep demanding that I spend more time w ith her, pav her more and be more affectionate, and this happened ever\ time she came to but the moment she arrived everything would be gloom and endless

She used

to

attention,

me

.

.

.

until she left all mv \\ ork would just slip from mv hands was alwavs soothing her and saving things up the whole time. That's a perpetual mistake of mine and the cause of manv errors I've made, not onlv in this sphere but elsewhere as well. If onlv could carrv on w ith mv work

conversations, and again. x*\nd

.

I

I

.

.

SOLZHENITSYN

[66o] uninterrupted,

if

the w av of work,

only if

we

only

and then something else. got w orse and worse, but .

with

my

The

could arrange

it

so that private matters didn't get in

could get another chapter w

I

.

.

all

And I

so

I

let

ritten, finish this

book,

things slide year after year, and things

wanted w as not

to be interrupted

and

to get

on

work.'-

conflict

that brought less

w as probably and

insoluble.

They were

less satisfaction to either

locked into a marriage

of them and in which the

needs of one contradicted the needs of the other. And yet, until 1968, no immediate threat had seemed to be in yiew But earlier that year SolzhenitsNU had acquired another woman helper w ho combined Elena C^hukoyskaya's .

interest in literature, strong will,

were

and talent for organization, with qualities that

more appealing and dangerous. Natalia Syetloya w as not only the ways of underground typing and the preparation of samizdat

infinitely

adept in

but also young, beautiful, and alluring. Like Solzhenitsvn, Natalia Syetloya was a mathematician. At the time of their meeting, she was w orking for her doctorate and w as a teaching assistant to Professor Kolmogoroy at Moscow Lniyersity, who regarded her still only twenty, she had married young mathematician named Andrei Tiurin, by whom she had had a son, Dmitri, in 1962. In 1964 they had decided to part, and were diyorced a year later, though remaining on the friendliest of terms. Natalia's mathematical training obviously offered one affinity with Solzhenitsyn, but more important was her interest in literature. As early as the fifties she had been reading the still-forbidden poetry of Akhmatova and Pasternak. Later she had been one of a group of young people w ho attached themselves to Nadezhda Mandelstam and helped her with secretarial work. Among other things she had typed out Osip Mandelstam's Voronezh Notebooks, much of his poetry, and some stories by Bulgakov.'^ Through her involvement with samizdat, Svetlova had recently got to know a number of dissidents. This had started with her introduction to Gorbanevskaya in 1967. Soon afterwards she had met Ginzburg, Litvinov,

as

one of

his star pupils. In 1960, while

an eyen more

brilliant

Larisa Bogoraz, and man\' of those associated with the foundation of the Chronicle of Current Events. After Ginzburg's sentencing, in January 1968, she had also become friendly with Ginzburg's fiancee, Irina Zholkovskaya.

She did not count herself

as a militant,

however. Apart from signing one

collective letter to Komsoniolskaya Pravda to protest an article slandering

Ginzburg and

his co-defendants,'"*

and

briefly attending

one or two

trials,

she had preferred to stick to the literary side of dissent, and she regarded

some of the more outspoken dissidents as reckless and extreme. Her first meeting w ith Solzhenitsyn had occurred in the small

flat

on

Lane near the Central Post Office, where she lived with her mother, Ekaterina (an aeronautical engineer and herself a formidably intelligent and efficient woman), her stepfather, Da\'id Svetlov, her grandmother, and her small son Dmitri. A mutual friend (possibly Shafarevich) had brought SolV'asilicvsky

WrIIKKs'

KXPUI.SION FROM IHl

LMoN

''l I

6

I

J

ot introtlueiiig them, and it seems between them was immediate and mutual. What Solzhenitsyn particularK hked about her w as her pugnacious character, her quickness of mind, and her versatiht\ She had an answer for e\er\thing, and a practical Hair that seemed capable of overcoming e\'ery difhcultw With her knowledge of the ways of sami/dat and the world ot the dissidents, she w as

zhenitsvn there for the express purpose

that the attraction

.

also able to be very useful to him.

ie later said

I

of his attraction to her:

she's able to come up w ith She has such fighting spirit, she She simpb was born to do battle, and that's what brought us together. She has a firm and joined me in mv struggle and we went side b\ side. excellent grasp of any situation, is very intelligent, and alw a\ s has lots of ideas on how to act, what to do, and what response to make.''

She thinks

\\

ith electronic rapidit\

the strongest argument and give

it

.

... In an instant

to \hukovskava, and a couple of open letters appeared in Solzhenitsvn's support, one signetl bv fourteen people and another bv thirtv-nine (though there w ere hardlv anv w riters among the .

latter),

.

.

but according to Solzhenitsvn onlv seventeen members of the union

some sort of protest. The most noteworthv was a visit by seven .Moscow writers to \'oronkov to point out that it was disgraceful for a writer as eminent as Solzhenitsvn to be expelled bv the votes of a handtul of obscure

registered

and unknow n w be discussed

riters

from the provinces, and

This, thev asserted, was not onlv their of a large

to

demand

that the expulsion

plenarv session of the Writers' Lnion with

b\' a

number

of

w

riters in the

own

full publicit\

opinion but expressed the view

union. \'oronkov promised to pass their

request to the higher authorities, but the onlv result w as that the Party bers

among

summoned bv

the seven were

their district Partv

mem-

committees and

reprimand for violating Partv discipline. It was reported that at a meeting of the prose section of the .Moscow branch of the Writers' Union, tw entv-two writers voted against a resolution approving the expulsion, but

giv^en a

the

"^

names of the dissenters are not known. Perhaps more painful than anv of this

for Solzhenitsyn

w

as

Tvardov-

wreck because of the pressures being heaped on Novy Mir bv the Central Committee, and still reeling from the blow of Solzhenits\n's expulsion, Tvardovsk\- is said to have exploded on being show a copv of Solzhenitsvn's letter. "He's finished us!" was his first reaction, meaning that the letter would be used against Aocv \Ur. And he tried to sky's response. Alread\' a ner\ous

down so that he could summon him for a discussion (he knew nothing of the Rostropovich arrangement). But Solzhenitsyn was determined to lie low in Zhukovka until the initial storm had died dow n. A few davs later, judging that Tvardovskv's rage would have subsided, he sent track Solzhenitsvn

him

a conciliatorv

which, among other things, he explained his

in

letter,

reasons for phrasing the open letter as he had.

By

\\

riting this letter

...

I

have shown that

say, "I will lav

down m\

blow

and perhaps

for blow

,

life,"

think tw ice before touching of rising graduallv from

mv

I

am

hit still harder.

me

I

shall resist to the last; that

not joking; that

again. ...

I

So that feel that

I

if

shall

\\

hen

I

continue returning

they are wise, they will

my

\\

hole

lite is a

knees, a gradual transition from enforced

process

dumbness

to free speech, so that m\- letter to the congress and this present letter have been

moments of high

delight, of spiritual emancipation.'"

SOLZHENITSYN

[682]

Typically, despite the friendly tone, Solzhenitsyn

constrained to

felt

still

deceive Tvardovsky as to his present whereabouts bv arranging for his letter to

be carried

The

the

all

think that he

as

\\

way

still

to

Ryazan and posted from

seems to have had

letter

reported to have said after reading all,

he was

in a

Tvardovsky should

there.

out of town. its it,

desired effect. "Well," Tvardovsky

is

"he was entitled to write as he did: after

camp while we were sitting around editing magazines."" In Medvedev later that month, he was even more

conversation with Zhores

He compared Solzhenitsyn to a bird that fiercelv defended young when attacked bv a bird of prey, as opposed to those birds (writers) who ran away under pressure. "One should judge a man not by his hottempered letters but bv his work." Tvardovsky compared Solzhenitsyn to complimentary. its

Gorky, and

his letters to the authorities

with Gorky's

Lenin (and

letters to

Lenin's to Gorky), in which no punches had been pulled. But those letters,

he added, had longer. It

all

since been locked

awav

so that

nobody knew of them anv

'-

was

ironic that

Tvardovsky should invoke Lenin

in

defence of Solzhe-

when Solzhenitsyn himself had gone far beyond "a return to his own thinking about the future. The chapter he was even

nitsyn at a time

Leninism"

in

then writing for August 1914 was

a

debunking of Lenin, and

of the psychological and political distance betw een the two

it

was

men

a

measure

that Tvar-

dovsky did not realize the true position. The "thirty-nine" had also quoted Lenin as a defender of pluralism, and Zhores Medvedev, the only individual to write a personal open letter in support of Solzhenitsyn, had linked his remarks to a general attack on Stalinism and the re-Stalinization of the Party. Only Solzhenitsvn's confidants Natalia Svetloxa, Igor Shafarevich, and that tiny circle of trusted friends who had been allowed to read the full version of

—

—

The Gulag Archipelago

realized

how much

further

down

the opposition road

Solzhenitsyn had already travelled.

Another interesting difference between Solzhenitsvn's latest letter to the his letter to the Writers' Congress was in the huge volume of support the latest letter received from the West. Perhaps it was because the issue of expulsion from the Writers' Union was clearer-cut cut than the some\\ hat more technical questions of the v\ orkings of the Soviet censorship, the difficulties of publishing, and the campaign of official slander against him enumerated in his first letter. Expulsion was a punitive sanction, whereas the letter to the congress had led only to official silence and slanders under the union and

counter.

The national

him

first

PEN

response came

Club

to

in

mid-November

in a

telegram from the Inter-

Konstantin Eedin, expressing shock and imploring

to intervene personally to reverse the ruling. Eedin's reply

\\

as a master-

piece of Soviet stonewalling: "I regard your telegram as an unprecedented interference in the internal affairs of the Writers'

Union of the USSR, the

observance of whose rules

its

same day,

a

lies

exclusively within

competence."

On

the

long statement was put out by the Erench "National Writers'

The Taming

of .Voi)

(68

.1///?

3]

Committee," rehearsing all the sanctions carried out against Soviet writers in the past and concluding unctuously, "Yet despite all this, we still wish to believe that there will be found in the high councils of the nation, to whom we owe the Dawn of October and the defeat of Ilitlerian fascism, men capable of realizing the wrong that has been done and of putting it right. This for the common cause for which we li\e, fight, and die." .\mong the signatories were Jean-Paul Sartre, Elsa IViolet, Louis Aragon, and Michel Butor. Another protest to Fedin came in earlv December from an international group of writers bristling with famous names: Arthur Miller, John Updike, Truman Capote, Kurt \ onnegut, Carlos Fuentes, Yukio Mishima, .

.

.

—

Giinter Grass, Heinrich Boll, Friedrich Diirrenmatt, Jean-Paul Sartre (again),

and Igor Stravinsky, manv of w hom joined the British writers W. H. Auden, J. Aver, Graham Greene, Rosamond Lehmann, Muriel Spark, Philip Toynbee and some more French, German, and American writers in signing one of the strongest letters of protest ever to appear in the London Times: "The silencing of a w titer of Solzhenitsyn's stature is in itself a crime against civilization. Should this appeal fail we shall see no other wav but to call upon the writers and artists of the w orld to conduct an international cultural boycott of a country which chooses to put itself bevond the pale of civilization until such time as it abandons the barbaric treatment of its writers and A.

.

.

.

artists."'^

There was little chance that the Soviet authorities would respond to such threats (nor was there ever any sign that the threat would be translated into action

when

the Soviets refused to budge). Indeed, an editorial in the

Literaturnaya Gazeta three weeks before the Times letter had ities'

made

the author-

determination quite clear. Solzhenitsvn, said the editorial, had virtually

made common cause with

the enemies of the Soviet system. His letters,

statements, and manuscripts were travelling abroad through

"organized and steered by

a practised

have elevated him to the rank of

hand.

'leader'

.

.

.

The enemies

illegal

channels

of our country

of 'the political opposition in the

USSR,' which has been fabricated bv them."'"^ The only really serious charge in the article was the allegation that part of Solzhenitsyn's royalties from Ivan Denisovich had been paid by the American publisher Praeger to an organization called the International Rescue Committee,* w hich, the newspaper said, had organized "hostile acts" against the Soviet Union and its allies. But Ekaterina Furtseva, the Soviet minister of culture, who was in Paris during the last days of December, repeated Fedin's line that "the Solzhenitsvn affair is a

domestic

affair," adding, for the benefit of foreign public opinion, that "if

he writes good books we will publish them."" Meanwhile, evidence was emerging of the ludicrous lengths to w hich the Writers'

Union had been forced

to

go to effect the expulsion

in the first

*Praeger's intentions in pa\ing the mone\' to the committee were evidenth honourable, in that

thev did not want to take Solzhenitsyn's royalties for themsehes, but sighted to assign in this \\a\'.

them

it

was naiVe and shortwere paid oyer

to such a cause. Eyidently, only the first year's royalties

SOLZHENITSYN

[684] 12 of the

place. Issue no.

by now indispensable

Chronicle of Current Events

contained a description of the Gogolian events that preceded the meeting in

Ryazan.

It

appeared that the expulsion had been planned

November. The

at the

beginning of

Ryazan branch of the union, Ernst Safonov, had been so appalled at the prospect that he had volunteered for an appendicitis operation and gone straight to hospital. Of the five remaining branch members, four had been summoned for individual interviews and informed of what was expected of them (the young poet Evgeni Markin was promised a flat if he co-operated, and was duly awarded one). A fifth writer, Rodin, was ill in the town of Kasimov, 120 miles away, but on the day of the expulsion was dragged from his bed and obliged to drive to Ryazan. One hour before the meeting, the five writers were grilled by the ideological secretary of the Ryazan party and given their final instructions; after the meeting, another secretary visited Safonov in hospital to obtain his vote, for it had to be unanimous. Safonov refused at first, but w as obliged to comply a month later.

secretary of the

"^

Perhaps one reason for the generally muted response of Soviet liberals w as a perception that the government had defi-

to Solzhenitsvn's expulsion

nitely

made up

its

mind

that

w

inter to reassert close control over

all

areas of

and that it was dangerous to draw attention to oneself. Certainly the pressure was considerable, and it quickly became clear that after "dealing with" Solzhenitsvn, the authorities were anxious to get to grips with those whom they saw as his backers and supporters at Novy Mir (little suspecting the fissure that had opened up between Solzhenitsyn and cultural

and

intellectual

life,

Novy Mir). I

he primary target w as Tvardovsky himself.

dovskv's standing in

official

A

sort of index of

Tvar-

eves had been provided during the year by the

"By Right of Memory," which he had started middle of 1969. A copy of the early version had been submitted by Tvardovsky to the magazine Yunost ("Youth") as early as 1967, but the magazine had rejected it. After reworking the poem, Tvardovsky had decided to publish it himself in Novy Mir and in the spring of 1969 had set it in type, intending to publish it in the April issue. It w as rejected by the censors, however. Ivardovsky had resubmitted it for the May issue, and again in June, but on both occasions it was rejected. Tvardovsky had then had twenty proof copies of the poem bound separately (rather along the lines of Ivan Denisovich seven years earlier), one of which he presented to Solzhenitsyn and another to Roy Medvedev. His intention was to supply the remaining copies to members of the Writers' Union secretariat and perhaps to the ideological section of the Central (Comfortunes of his latest long poem, in

about 1966 and completed,

in a revised version, in the

mittee, so that publication of the

poem

could be "discussed"

at a

higher

level,

were rebuffed and the copies declined. A factor in this rejection may have been the poem's contents. For the first time Tvardovsky had turned to his childhood for inspiration and could not help dwelling on the fate of his father, who had been proclaimed a kulak

but

all

his overtures

a

The Taming

ok

.Vol

)

M/R

l^^XsJ

and deported to Stalin's labour camps. Solzhenits\n had found the poem too mild and apologetic, yet the very mention of the labour camps and Stalin's repressions had become taboo, and there \\ ere manv lines that could cause offence. Ixardovskx' was evidentb' aware ot this, tor he explicitly refused, in the poem, to hide behind the skirts of the censorship and to express the things that burned his soul. It w as the poet's dut\ "to utter all the unuttered omissions of the past."' Unfortunately, Tvardovskv had arrixed at such sentiments too late for them to be published openly in the Soviet Union any more. But there was more to the official ban than just a distaste for the contents of I xardovsky's poem. The time had evidently come for him and his magazine to be silenced, and this w as the simplest way for the authorities to show their displeasure. Then, in the late autumn of 1969, the authorities benefited from w hat seemed like

an amazing stroke of luck. Tvardovsky's poem appeared

NTS

Tvardovskv w

journal Possev.

Committee and asked

as

immediately

summoned

to explain, (^f course he could not, but

that he write a stinging statement

hated

was demanded

denouncing the publication and pouring

scorn over the

Nl

poem had been

given a different and provocative

S.

it

in the

to the Central

Tvardovskv did so

more so since the ("On Stalin's Ashes")

willingly, the title

and had been printed in its earlier and less finished version of 1967. What he seems to have overlooked in his ready indignation, however, was that the poem couldn't have reached Possev through samizdat, since it had never been circulated in its earlier version. It could only have been supplied by someone at Y'unost, w hich suggests that it might have been deliberateh' planted. Tvardovsky wrote his statement, and the Writers' Union did what it had done w ith Solzhenitsyn's disclaimer over Cancer Ward two years previously it suppressed it for three to four months, so that 1 vardoxskv appeared not to be reacting. In the meantime, Voronkov started putting pressure on Tvardovsky to resign. Similar suggestions had been coming from the Writers' Union secretariat for over a year now, but only at the end of 1969 did the pressure become irresistible. At first there was an attempt to accomplish the matter politely. Tvardovsky was invited to hand in his resignation for "health reasons" (that old Soviet stand-by), and the pill was sugared by the simultaneous offer of a permanent secretaryship in the Writers' Union highly paid sinecure that was the equivalent of being kicked upstairs. When Tvardovsky still refused, it was decided to get at him by changing his staff. Officially, the Writers' Union had no authority to dismiss an editor, but it could dismiss and appoint members of his editorial board. The usual thing was to do this in consultation with the editor, but in extremis the editor's wishes could be ignored. This had happened in the case of Dementyev and Sachs in 1967, and now the union used its powers again to fire Kondratovich, Lakshin, Sats, and \'inogradov all the section heads and all Tvardovsky's

—

—

—

trusted lieutenants. In their place

who were

came

five mediocrities, third-rate

guaranteed to take union orders and toe the Party

This was accomplished

at a special

line.

hacks

"^

meeting of the secretariat that w

as

SOLZHENITSYN

[686] held

—

tvpicallv

—

in

T\ardovskv's absence

Tvardovskv appealed, but

his appeal

was

rejected,

the changes appeared in the Literaturnaya Gazeta for issue, the

week of February 1970. and an announcement of 1 1 February. In the same

in the first

newspaper published Tvardovsky's long-delayed disclaimer over

"By Right of Memory," so that the well-schooled Soviet reader would get the message: Tvardovskv was being punished for allowing his work to be published abroad (which was only part of the truth). To rub salt in the wounds, the Writers' Union summoned Tvardovsky that same dav to a meeting to discuss relations with COMES, the European Writers Association, of which Tvardovsky was the Soviet vice-chairman. V igorelli, the association's secretary-general, had sent a vigorous protest on behalf of the association over the union's expulsion of Solzhenitsvn, and the

meeting was being held to determine the Soviet reply. In fact, there was nothing left to decide, since the decision had been taken at a higher level. Tvardovskv was instructed to write a stiff letter to Vigorelli, announcing his resignation from the post of vice-chairman and Soviet withdrawal from the association as a whole. Just as a liberal literary journal, or

was no longer needed, could

now

its

liberal editor,

so the pretence of co-operation with the rest of

be dropped, and with

it

Europe

the Soviet figure-head.

Tvardovsky needed no more urging. The replacement of his editorial his abrupt removal from COMES added up to a comprehensive humiliation both at home and abroad. He sat down at once and wrote a letter of resignation from Novy Mir. It was the end of an era, and bv the time it occurred, the end was no longer unexpected. For weeks before the actual announcement, Moscow had been full of rumours, and in the last days, in early February, writers and friends of Novy Mir had flocked to the elegant offices in Maly Putinko\sky Lane, partlv as a show of solidarity, partly out of curiosity, and partly, it board behind his back and

last respects to the dying was strangely muted. Solzhenitsyn describes a group of writers, led bv Mozhayev, hastily composing a last-minute collective letter to Brezhnev.'*^ But the text was kept secret, even after Tvardovsky's resignation. On the very last dav, the offices and corridors were packed with sympathetic visitors, standing about in groups, smoking and wondering what was going to appear in the Literaturnaya Gazeta on the morrow. When the final announcement came, they accepted it calmly, fatalistically, almost as a relief. In the next few weeks, Efim Dorosh, a talented prose writer, A. Maryamov, and M. Khitrov announced their resignations from Novy Mir, giving the Writers' Union a clean sweep of the liberals, but apart from that, there w as remarkably little public reaction to the change. Only two written protests circulated in samizdat, and both were anonymous a bad sign when dozens of human-rights activists were willingly going to jail for signing their protests w ith their right names. Solzhenitsyn's attitude to these events seems to have been contradictory. On the one hand, he couldn't but be depressed and angered by the virtual

seems, out of journal.

And

a

subconscious desire to pay their

\et the whole thing

—

The

'I"amin(;

ok Nov) Mir

[om reports to Moscow of the av v\

.

it

it

that

Solzhenitsvn's absence had both cast a shadow over the proceedings and in a

way also dominated them. At the end of his prepared speech, Dr Gierow had added the impromptu remark that "the Swedish Academy regrets the reason w hv Alexander Solzhenitsvn has deemed it impossible to be with us today" and said that the prize would be awarded to him "at a place and time still to be agreed." There was a long pause that seemed to some observpeculiar

ers to contain a

compound

of embarrassment, shame, and silent respect for

who looked for the empty chair that was were surprised to find it had been forgotten. The silence was ended w hen the king of Sw eden rose to his feet and led the assembly in a round of applause. Professor Arne Tiselius, a former winner of the Nobel the missing

supposed

w

titer,

while those

to be there

Prize for chemistry, said in his keynote speech afterwards, .

.

.

"we appreciated hom-

the motives that ha\ e prompted [Solzhenitsvn] not to attend. 1 he

is, if anything, reinforced by his absence."' There were one or two side-shows as well. The academy had put on a display of Solzhenitsyn's works that w as moved from the reception to the banquet and then back to the academy again. A Swedish human-rights organization had put together an even bigger exhibition that was displayed in the premises of the Workers' Educational Ontre in Stockholm. Fhe Educational Centre abutted the Grand Cinema, w here a world premiere of the AngloNorwegian film of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (starring Tom Courtenay) w as given for the benefit of the royal family and the remaining prize winners, but the exhibition was ostentatiously boycotted by the Nobel Foun-

age just rendered

719

SOLZHENITSYN

[720] dation on the grounds that copies of Solzhenits\ n's

v\

it

contained,

among hundreds

orks published in Russian by the

of other books,

NTS. The

Soviet

embassy, which had been active throughout in bringing pressure to bear on the Swedish Academv and the Swedish authorities, managed on the fourth or hfth dav to have the exhibition closed on the grounds that it was a threat to Soviet-Swedish relations. The Nobel ceremonv itself and all associated events w ere bovcotted bv representatives of the Soviet Union and the countries in

the Soviet bloc."

These squalid manoeuvres were standard Soviet practice and barely raised an evebrow in the bustle and clamour of Nobel Prize week (one of the successes of Soviet propaganda has been to persuade the rest of the w orld that such behaviour is more or less normal, at least on the part of Communist countries). But it had its effect on the Swedish Academv, which refused to accept any books from the closed exhibition for its ow n collection and grew decidedly timid in its dealings with Solzhenitsyn. It soon emerged that among the materials he had forw arded at the academ\''s request was a brief autobiographv of about three pages, w hich he urged the academv to make public at once, since he was "deprived of a platform in the Soviet Union. "^ For some inexplicable reason the academv declined and said it would publish the autobiograph\' in its vear-book nine months later, until w hich time the document would remain secret. Feeling bound by his obligations to the academv, Solzhenitsvn did not release it into samizdat, so that man\' facts of his biographv remained unknow n for another vear, adding to the mvsterv of his past.

Meanwhile, the larger controversv around his name continued to rage world-w ide. In November, shortlv before the Nobel ceremonv was due to take place, Rostropovich had created headlines bv releasing a long open letter about Solzhenitsvn to the world's press. Announcing that it was "no longer a secret" that he was sheltering Solzhenitsxn in his house, Rostropovich declared that he had been impelled to w rite his letter by the Soviet campaign against Solzhenitsvn's Nobel Prize. It was the third time, he said, that a Soviet writer had been gi\ en the Nobel Prize. In two cases the award had been regarded

as a "dirty political

game," but

in

one (Sholokhov's)

as a "just

recognition of the outstanding world significance of our literature." If Sho-

lokhov had declined to accept the prize, Rostropovich would have understood that the Soviet authorities no longer trusted the objectivity and honesty of the Swedish academicians, but

now

accepted the Nobel Prize sometimes

it

w ith

appeared that the Soviet authorities gratitude and sometimes

w ith

curses.

campaigns against Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other composers and cited a long list of senseless censorings and bannings w ith w hich he w as personallv acquainted. I le w as not concerned w ith political and economic questions, he wrote, but wished that somebody would explain to him "whv in our literature and art people completel}- incompetent Rostropovich referred to

in this field so often

earlier

ha\c the

final

word?

discredit our art in the eves of our people?"

\\\\\ are thev given the right to It

was alwavs,

it

seemed, because

Thf, Start of a \'ast Entfrprisf. "there

w

as

an opinion" handed dow n from on high. Rostropox ich eonckided

that after his letter "there will

am

not afraid of

it.

1

through

undouhtedU be an

openlx sa\ what

must not be submitted right

["::i1

I

'opinion" about nie, but

think. Talent, of

to the assaults of the past.

.

.

.

whieh we

Sol/.henits\ n seeks the

w rite the truth as he sees it, and see no reason tow ards him at a time w hen a campaign is being launched

his suffering to

to hide m\- attitude

I

are proud,

1

against him.""*

Rostropox ich had apparentK dratted his

letter

while on

a

\

isit

to

Lon-

don at the end of October to recei\e the gold medal of the Ro\ al Philharmonic Societx but it was onK w hen back in .Moscow in Noxember that he decided to make it pul)lic (it was formalK addressed to the editors ()\ Pnivda, Izvestia, Litcraturnayci Gazeta, and Sovetskciya Kiiltiira, none of w hich published it), and he posted it on the e\e of his departure for a concert tour in \\ est Germanx Some obserxers concluded from this that he would not be punished for it, but he was immediateh banned from going abroad again ,

.

(alreadx-arranged tours to France and Finland were cancelled) after his return

from German\

,

and

in

time began to hnd that his Soviet tours were being

cancelled as well.

From

a different

On

Solzhenitsx n.

10

source came another open declaration in support of December, the da\ of the Nobel ceremonx Arthur ,

Miller announced in the Sei:: York Times that he, too, after

popular author

in the Soviet

a

long run as a

Union, had been banned from Soxiet stages and one of his plavs had been suddenh- cancelled,

that a telexision production of

either as the result of a preface he had Russia. h\ his

w

ife

defence of Solzhenitsxn

W hatever

at

Until

ritten to a

book of photographs,

the time of his expulsion from the

W riters'

//;

Union.

the reason. Miller declared his solidaritx w ith Solzhenitsvn

Rostropoxich and his disgust w in the

x\

hige .\lorath, or for having signed an outspoken letter in

now some

ith this

new evidence

md

ot Soxiet intolerance.'

foreign observers haei professed to see a certain leniencx'

Soviet government's attitude to Solzhenitsx n over the Nobel Prize

Most of the official attacks, thex' felt, had been directed as much against the Swedish Acaclemx' as against Solzhenitsx n himself, and there had been nothing like the scurrilous insults hurled at Pasternak. This was true, but probablx' reflected the authorities" uncertaintx and the problems caused them affair.

b\'

Solzhenits\n"s greater pugnacitx

,

rather than anx' sudden teelings ot remorse

December xxhen Pnivda published a wicie-ranging attack on the whole phenomenon of dissidence, with Solzhenitsvn featured as public enemx" number one. There was little new in it. Solzhenitsvn was labelled a "spiritual emigre, hostile and alien to the entire life of the Soviet people," who had tried to "blackmail" the \\ titers' Union bv threatening that his works w ould And their w ax' to the \\ est and then conniving at their appearance there. Feast of the Conquerors w as mentioned again. But perhaps the most menacing note w as sounded in the comparison

or indulgence. This

xxas

borne out on

17

and Anatoli Kuznetsov on the (me hand, and Solzhenitsvn, Bukovskv, and Amalrik on the other. This x\ as the first time

betw een Solzhenitsvn, 1

arsis,

SOLZHENITSYN

[722] that Solzhenitsvn had been

lumped w ith the

dissidents in the official press.

Tarsis and Kuznetsov had gone abroad, while Amalrik had just been sentenced to three vears in a labour camp and Buko\ sky would shortly be in the dock again. The inference was plain: one or the other aw aited Solzhenitsyn in the not too distant future. Another theme w as that all these individuals were the tools of Western intelligence serxices. It w as an argument that would resurface again and again in the vears ahead, in ever new variations.

The

article

was signed with the nom

de

plume

"I.

Alexandrov," which

is

customarilv reserved for authoritative statements by the Soviet leadership, and therefore had the force for loval Soviet citizens that a papal decree has for Catholics.

It

was followed bv harsher outbursts

in

Krasnaya Zvezda (Red

organ of the Soviet armed forces, and Kommunist vooruzhennykb sil (Armed forces Communist), a newspaper devoted to questions of ideology and propaganda. According to Zhores Medvedev, surveillance of SolzheniStar), the

tsvn's friends

and familv

w as

circle

Xorw egian government

intensified,

and pressure w

as applied

on

Hegge withdrawn.'^ For most of December and januar\ Solzhenitsyn w as too preoccupied w ith familv affairs to pav much attention to w hat the Soviet press was saying about him. While his quarrel w ith Natalia simmered on, playing havoc with his nerves and keeping him jumpilv on the defensive, Natalia Svetlova, her

the

to have the journalist Per ,

mother, stepfather, and son w ere able to exchange their small lievskv Lane, plus a smaller,

two-room

flat

that Svetlova

universitN' co-operative, for a big, old-fashioned,

Lane, also just off Gorky Street.

on 30 December 1970

(slightlv

The

extra space

four-room

came

fiat in \'asi-

owned

flat in

in a

Kozitsky

just in time,

because

prematurely) Svetlova gave birth to

a son.

name of Ermolai,

based,

Solzhenitsvn chose for him the quaint and archaic

—

still

on the Greek Hermes "herald of the people." An immediate result of the child's birth was that Svetlova was dismissed from her job. POr the past six months she had been carrying out research and lecturing in applied mathematics at the Labour Institute in Moscow. A friend had obtained the post for her, despite knowing of her pregnancy and who the father was. In a tvpicallv Soviet compromise, he had told her that this might create difficulties for him but that she should stay until the baby w as he

said,

born and see what happened. If the institute bosses kicked up a fuss, she would have to go quietlv; if they didn't, she could stay. In the event, the bosses didn't wait for explanations but simply dismissed her the moment thev learned the new

s,

taking

it

as self-evident that she

would accept

it.

Not

long afterwards her mother, Ekaterina, w as dismissed from her engineering job for becoming the grandmother of Solzhenitsyn's child.' In Februarv 1971 pital,

having

Tvardovskv was discharged from the Kremlin Hos-

made an astounding recovers His thrombosis had been

resolved,

was parth' gone, and he was able to speak again, albeit with difficultv. Soon after his return home, Solzhenitsyn and Rostropovich went to see him. Solzhenitsyn knew how delightedly Tvardovsky had received the news of his Nobel Prize in hospital. "Bravo! Bravo! Victory!" he was said to his paralysis

— The Start have cried to the nurses.

1

o Ro\' Medvede\

him

,

\\

ho had

\

[72 3I

isited

him

at

the end

our prize too," meaning Novy Mir's.^ Solzheparth" parahsed and gave him the freshK completed

of October, he had said, "It nitsvn found

ok a \'ast Enterprise

still

is

tvpescript at August 1914 to read

(

1

vardo\sky had seen an

He

earlier version the

him his letter to was he who had introduced them and told him of all the difficulties surrounding the Nobel Prize and his manoeuvres to get it presented in Moscow Tvardovsky could still hardlv speak, but intermittenth' beamed his interest and approval. Before leaxing, Sol/.henitsvn devised a svstem of different-coloured markers so that 1 vardovskv could indicate which parts oi August 1914 he liked and which parts he didn't he was still anxious to have Tvardovskx's opinion, despite their man\' squabbles. The markers w ere for use in case 1 vardovsky's speech failed to improve preceding spring, hut not the complete Suslov

— reminding

r\ardo\sk\' that

text).

also read

it

.

or deteriorated. It

must have been

just before or just after this visit that Solzhenits\ n

finished the third part of The

Oak and

the Calf, in

which he described

his

expulsion from the Writers' Union and the breaking up of Novy Mir. There

we

find strident criticism of Tvardovskv's beha\iour

and the harsh and

unfeeling reflection on Tvardovskv's cancer that was to shock so man\' readers

when

selves

can

up

live

the to

memoir was published: "Cancer is the fate of all who give themmoods of bilious, corrosive resentment and depression. People

through hardship, but from hard feelings thev

perish.'"^

next part of the memoir, describing Solzhenitsvn's Februarv

visit,

Vet

in the

there

was

an immenselv tender description of Tvardovskv's disablement and of the

understanding betw een the tw o men.

AT's powers of active response were paralvscd, but kindlv feeling streamed from his eves unstemmed, and his face, exhausted as it w as bv illness, still retained its old, childlike expression.

\A'hen .\T

w

something and could not hand w hich w as w arm, and free and alive. He squeezed mv hand in reph and in this wav we understood each other well enough. Understood that all was forgiven between us. Ihat all

manage

it,

I

as particularlv anxious to finish saving

helped him out bv taking his

left

—

,

.

.

.

the bad things, the hurts, the troubles, might never have been.'"

Which mood represented the true Solzhenitsvnr Both, of course, w hich is what made him so baffling to deal v\ith. Negotiations with the Sw edish embassv had come to a temporar\ halt. The Soviet authorities had in the end expelled Per Hegge, and Solzhenitsx n was having trouble with the Nobel lecture that he had promised to write. He felt drained bv the emotional stresses he was undergoing and found himself listless and apathetic. "I had thought of mv Nobel lecture beforehand as a scouring peal of bells. This, more than anvthing else, made the prize w orthwhile. I sat down to it, I even wrote it, but it came out in a form difficult to digest." He was anxious to write about social and political problems, w hereas he had deduced from the speeches of his predecessors that the main theme

SOLZHENITSYN

[724]

He tried to combine the two, but friends to w honi he showed the lecture pronounced it a failure. Solzhenitsyn then wrote to the Nobel Foundation asking w hether he might forgo the lecture, since he should be art and literature.

theme, and the foundation readily agreed. an effort to "shield" the author, as it thought, from the adverse publicitv attendant upon an admission that he preferred to write on social and political themes, the foundation invented a reason of its own. Solzhenitsyn would not be writing a lecture, it announced, because he did not know-

was having

How ever,

how

difhcult\- sticking to the

in

to deliver

If

it.

he sent

cepted bv the censorship;

if

it

it would be interwould be accused of com-

openlv through the mail,

he sent

secretly, he

it

mitting a crime."

The

intention

was perfectly laudable, but

it

backfired.

could not see that this seeming admission of his impotence

—was

The

foundation

—and acceptance

more damaging than the real reason. When he heard the Nobel announcement on the BBC's Russian Service, he was furious and the next day fired off a telegram to Nils Stable, the foun-

of the Soviet rules

dation's director.

It is

for Solzhenitsyn

not clear whether Stable received

Solzhenitsyn released

later

it

to reporters in

Moscow.

prised b\' \our explanation of the motixation for lecture.

never expressed any such thing to you.

I

essar\- at all,

literature

is

you ought

alien to

me

—

to cite

"I

but

a

few days

extremely sur-

refusal to deliver a

If

some explanation

Nobel is

nec-

the truth: the very genre of the lecture on

to talk of the nature of art, creation,

broad judgments on present

to avoid

my

it,

am

ask you to correct your mistake and

social life

make

it

and

its

ulcers.

and beauty and ... I sincerely

public."'- Characteristically, he

now resolved to w rite the lecture after all. There w ere other niggles and anxieties that spring. The Nobel Prize brought with it the sum of about $78, ()()() at the then current rates of exchange, and Solzhenitsxn w anted to have at least a part of it to take care of his new faniiK

make

.

The

Soviet authorities, however, could not miss this opportunity to

life difficult for

him.

When

he asked for $3,000 to be transferred to his

account in dollar certificates for use

in

Moscow's hard-currency shops, the

government insisted on levying a 30 per cent tax. Solzhenitsyn protested that this

was prize mone\' and not subject

to tax, but the

government refused

to

listen.

That spring an attempt w as made to evict Solzhenitsyn from Rostropovich's dacha in Zhukovka. It was understandable that Solzhcnitsyn's presence there rankled. Zhukovka and the adjacent district of Barvikha were elite encla\es, completely closed to ordinary Soviet citizens,

outcasts like Solzhenitsyn.

And

let

alone to social

Solzhenitsyn was living there quite unoffi-

One day

March, he returned from a short jaunt on skis to find a small police delegation awaiting him, led by the head of the Moscow regional passport office, Anosov. This was not the first visit

cialK-,

w

ithout being registered.

in

by the police. A captain had called to see him the preceding autumn but appeared to have been satisfied w hen Solzhenitsyn informed him that he w as a guest of Rostropovich. Now the police had returned in greater force and at

The Start

of

\'ast Enterprise

a

[725]

—

there was a major in addition to the head of the passport and another captain as well. Solzhenits\n was aware that his sittiation was delicate. According to So\iet law e\er\- Soviet citizen w as supposed to he registeretl in his place of main residence, and Solzhenits\n's registration was in R\azan. This mo\e against him was therefore not unexpected. But he hadnt the slightest intention of compUing and with his usual thoroughness had alreach composed a a higher lc\cl

office,

,

letter

of protest to the police, read\' to send off (and release into samizdat)

moment

that an\ thing happened: "Serfdom w as abolished in our countr\ The October Rexolution is said to have swept awa\ the last remnants of it. 1 am, theretore, a tree citizen of this countrx not a serf or a slave. ." When .\noso\ and the police ofhcers informed him of the purpose of their visit, he was not surprised and greeted them calmK even affabh tr\ing to bluff them into dropping the whole matter and imph ing that the\ would get into some kind of undefined "trouble" if the\ persisted w ith their mission. \\ hen the\' insisted that he do something about obtaining a residence permit or return to R\azan, and informed him of their decision to report him, he lost his temper and exclaimed defiantK', "I won't do it! Make m\ own wav to R\azan? Til neither go nor let m\ self be carried there. And if the court issues an order? I won't obev it! If I go, it w ill be in chains!"'^ As usual w ith bureaucrats, the histrionics worked. Ihe police delegation w ithdrew abashed, and Solzhenitsvn w as not obliged to release his fier\ letter on "serfdom" after all. But Solzhenitsxn's prixate life was still in turmoil. Natalia had failed to return to .Moscow after the November holidax s, and he had no idea where she had gone or w hat her plans w ere. hi tact she had gone to the countr\side to sta\' w ith some friends from the .\gricultural Institute in Rxazan, and had taken Solzhenitsxn's carh letters w ith her, especialh those w ritten from the sharashka and later in 1956, when thev were coming together again. She immersed herself in their tender and eloquent rhetoric, so replete with affirmations of eternal love, vividlx' recalling the vears of their greatest happiness and lulling her into a belief that her marriage could still be saved. Her Ryazan friends, in w hom she had once confided w hen deciding to leave \ se\"olod and return to Solzhenitsxn, seem to have encouraged her in the belief that a divorce w as avoidable, and she decided to tra\ el north to Riga to consult a lawver there. On the w a\', she classified and copied out extracts from Solzhenitsvn's letters to support the point that he truh' lo\ed her and had sw orn

the

in 1861.

,

.

.

,

eternal

but the law ver w as obliged to disabuse her:

fidelit\-,

circumstances, where there was another

guaranteed under Soviet law their relations

.

The

letters

and had no bearing on

look for a job and to adopt a child

if,

woman and

,

a

divorce in their

a bab\',

was virtualh

touched onl\ the moral aspect of

legal matters.

She advised Natalia

to

as she claimed, she felt so stronglv

about her childlessness.'^

w ith this and returned to Rvazan. On the w a\ under the influence of Solzhenitsvn's old letters, she had decided to

Natalia was not satisfied to Riga,

SOLZHENITSYN

[726]

make

on her memoirs

and found that the writing acted as a form at the opening chapters, and the more she wrote, the more she convinced herself that a divorce was unthinkable. Eventually, she returned to Moscow but the very thought of Solzhenitsvn with Svetlova and the child made her insanely jealous, just as a visit to her mother in Ryazan and the sight of their flat brought on uncontrollable fits of weeping. Her isolation in Mosco\\' was compounded by a quarrel w ith the Steins. She felt that Veronica had betrayed her by going to meet S\etlova and see the baby and by accompanying Solzhenitsvn to the a start

at last

of therapy. For several weeks she worked away

,

Sovremennik Theatre

after Natalia's "disappearance," as if to set the seal of

new family. Natalia found such behaviour on the part of her cousin disloyal and "demonic" and refused to have any more to do w ith her. Another painful spot was her relationship w ith her former piano teacher Maria Yudina. Vudina was shocked by the rift between Natalia and Solzhenitsxn, but Natalia could not bring herself to tell Yudina who the other woman was, because Svetlova (w ho had been baptized only recently) w as Yudina's god-daughter. Yudina subsequenth* learned the truth from Nadezhda Alandelstam and planned to write Solzhenitsvn a letter, but soon afterwards caught pneumonia and died without doing so.'^ NatalNatalia and Solzhenits\'n finalb met again on 26 February 1971 ia's birthdaw Solzhenitsvn, according to Natalia, was filled with remorse, wept, and said how relieved he was that Natalia had taken sleeping tablets instead of the mandrake infusion and had survived. When she asked whether she could mo\ e back to Zhukovka w ith him, he said that he would rather not just vet and that she should "w ait a \ ear," meaning a \ear from the time of her attempted suicide. I le feared that otherw ise Zhuko\ka would onK remind her of w hat had happened there and have a depressing effect on her. In return, he agreed that he would do nothing about a divorce until then, so that she would have time to recover her strength and build a new lite."^" The knowledge that Natalia was set against a dixorce was extremely painful for Solzhenits\n, and life w as made even more difficult when Natalia began visiting their old friends (the Kopelevs, (]hukovskys, Etkinds, Panin, Suzanna Teush, Father Shpiller) to seek their support and to show them extracts from the letters she had been reading (she also sent some ot the extracts to Solzhenitsvn himself to remind him of his former love for her). Although discreet and tactful b\- nature, she now flaunted these intimacies as weapons in her private struggle, and Solzhenits\n did not know how to react. Seemingh all-powerful in his confrontation w ith the Soviet government, bestriding the world's stage w ith his books, his public statements, and his actions, he was yet helpless when faced w ith the w rath ot a discarded woman. One is reminded of Cyril Connolh 's dictum that "in the sex w ar, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, \ indictiveness of the female," and no remark could l)etter summarize the relations between the Solzhenitsyns. Not the least of the many surprising features of Solzhenitsx n's memoir. The Oak cDul the (Ailt\ is the \ eil of silence he draw s over this dramatic struggle. public approval on Solzhenitsyn's

—

.

of a Vast Kntfrprisf.

The Start

which paralleled and at times completeh overshadowed the public was engaged in. ()nl\' occasionalK does he drop his guard and slip about the true state ot

affairs

tion in the spring of 197

I

felt this

way

—

in

mv

upon me,

ith a

left

place, drained

the pot-holes on the highw av of

put up w

m\

life

to disregard, to let slip,

the fore, painfullv forced itself

all

in a hint

exhaus-

1

me

man would have been

battle he

as in the following explanation of his

largely because that side of

motion had caused

[727]

mv

deep, an abvsmal marital

life.

rift,

t(j

u hich tension and ceaseless

leave out of accrmnt,

me more

more of

came

to

exhausted than another

mv

strength perhaps than

For the preceding

five vears had and had continuallv postponed anv I

was invariablv short of time to finish some work, or some part backed down, coaxed, w heedled, just tf) gain another three months, one month, two weeks of precious working time, so as not to be torn awav from what mattered most to me.' decisive action:

I

of a work, and every time

Now

I

mind was made up, however, he still found himself same time, he w as depressed and debilitated bv the knowledge that he could do practically nothing for the moment to aid and protect S\etlova and their child. U ithout a divorce, he w as powerless to marry her and give the child his name. Ihis meant that if the worst came to the worst, and he w as imprisoned or exiled abroad, she would have no standing in his affairs. She would have the right neither to visit him, nor to follow hiin abroad, nor to receive his income, nor to manage his literary estate. He could not obtain for her an\' of the monex that was rightfully his that his

uncharacteristically helpless. .\t the

without going through

a

humiliating procedure specially devised for this pur-

pose. Atter Solzhenitsyn had protested against the levying of the tax, the

Ministry of Foreign Trade had decreed that each of his applications to receive a

portion of the

each time

it

money should be examined by

a special

committee and that

should take a separate decision on w hether to pay the mone\'

what form, and at what exchange rate. In this w a\ the Xobel Prize winner was effectively prevented from enjox ing his prize. To overcome some of these difficulties, Solzhenitsx n made a redoubled effort to see that his last w ill and testament w as properly legal and watertight, and sent a copy to Dr Heeb in Sw itzerland. As an earnest of Solzhenitsyn's newly aw akened concern for political and religious opponents of the

over, in

regime, the will decreed that in the event of Solzhenitsvn's death, disappear-

would be set up to help Union. The money for it would come from his royalities, particularly the ro\alties from The Gulag Archipelago, and he hoped that others would make contributions once the ance, or imprisonment, a fund for social purposes political prisoners

fund

\\

and

their families in the Soviet

as established. Elaborate

arrangements w ere made for the publication

of his still-unpublished works, and Natalia Svetlova was designated his main

and main executor. In the event of his death or disappearance, to be published world-wide w ithin tw o weeks, and in such circumstances, "no protest from me, in w riting or h\ word of mouth, from beneficiarx'

the will

w as

— SOLZHENITSYN

[728]

prison or in an\" other place w here

modit\

or a single

a single point

In addition to his

\\ ill,

mv

word

freedom

in this

\\

is

restricted, can cancel or

ill.""^

Solzhenitsyn succeeded in sending to

Dr Heeb

the balance of his literarv archive, including an additional copv of The Gulag Archipelago.

He was

not prepared to publish

it

\et.

On

the contrary, he had

Had

decided to put off publication for several more years.

West,

as

he gone to the

he had half expected, to collect the Xobel Prize, he would have

it right a\\a\\ according to his original plan. But now he w as "tr\ing up an excuse for deferring it, for delaying the cup that I could not in the end put from me." He decided that he was justified on two grounds. First, publication might hurt some of the 227 ex-prisoners who had given him their testimony. Secondh he needed more time to write his series of novels on the Revolution. "The Gulag was onlv the offspring of the Revolution and heir to it: if I had had to w rite about Gulag in secrecy, writing about

published to think

,

the Rexolution required even greater secrecy, deeper burrowing, stranger contortions. certainly it." It

no

To make

more important, w as I who must do

haste with the Revolution was even

less urgent.

And

as things

had happened,

it

was, of course, a rationalization of other needs, as Solzhenitsyn secretly

acknow ledged to himself (". it was not just an excuse, though if I am to be strict w ith myself I shall do better to acknow ledge it as such"), and in the end he hit on a compromise: he w ould postpone a decision until Lenin came to play a decisive role in his series of novels. This would come in about book 4. At the rate he w as going, that might give him from three to six \ears more. In the meantime, he would suppress the chapters in w hich Lenin appeared in the first three volumes, much as he had done with the controversial chapters in the original version of The First Circle. Having made this .

.

felt, as he reports, much happier. "This final deadline brought and case into mv life. For the time being, postpone ever\thing else, and work, w ork, w ork. But after that, a head-on clash w as inevitable. Ihere w ere no more loopholes."'*''

decision, he light

But he still needed to have an additional cop\- of Gulag in the West, for w ith the (^arlisles w ere beginning to deteriorate, and he felt he no

relations

Dr Heeb the preceding sum of money representing the The sum would ha\ e been greater,

longer completely trusted them. Olga had been to see

summer and had arranged

to

hand over

a

world-wide roxalties of The First Circle. apparenth", had she not insisted that she should keep some back as a reserve against expenses on Gulag, but it w ould still not amount to as much as SolzhenitsN n had anticipated. Secondh', Olga w as decidedh reluctant to let any

part of the manuscript of The Gulag Archipelago out of her hands and, accord-

ing to Solzhenitsyn, was refusing to

Dr Heeb have

a copy. She still felt and Solzhenitsyn did not w ish to provoke an open break, partly because he feared his secret might come out and partK because he w as genuinely grateful to Olga (Carlisle for what she had done for him. What is more, she had recently informed him or so he understood that the English translation of Gulag w as read) w hich let

that she should control world-w idc publication,

—

,

Thk Si art of

a

\'ast Kntikprisk

I729I

meant that \\ hen the time came the all-important American edition coukl be pubhshed in a matter of weeks.-" With his Hterarv affairs more or less in order, Sol/.henits\n was read\ the open publication in to dehver his next blow to the Soviet government the West oi' August 1914. It meant a great step forward from his previous position u ith regard to TIk' First (Jirc/e and Cancer Wani. 1 hen he had been obliged to dissemble, pretending that he had had nothing to do w ith Western publication and disappro\ed of it and that he would prefer publication in his homeland. Now he knew that Soviet publication was out of the question, even though there was little in the novel to w hich the Soviet censorship could take exception. He was irrevocably persona non grata, beyond the pale, and

—

not even a eulogv of Brezhnev could appear o\er his name.

come out

fore afford to

He

could there-

into the open.

Even so he felt the need for some sort of smoke-screen, how e\er thin and transparent, and he decided to offer the novel to a number of Soviet publishing houses first. The chances that they would accept the offer were infinitesimal, but it would blunt an\' future accusation that he was turning his back on his homeland or deliberateK going abroad first. He could alw a\s say that he had offered them the no\el in good faith and that thev had rejected it, and that onlv then had he sought publication abroad. 1 he problem was that he did not w ish to send the manuscript, because he was afraid of its being copied and finding its wav into samizdat before he could publish it himself. At Rostropovich's suggestion, he sent letters to seven publishers informing them of the novel's completion and asking them whether thev w ere interested in publishing it. There w ere obvious risks involved one of the publishers might ask to see it but in the event, none of them did, and the way ahead was clear. This strategv of camouflage worked beautifuUv, as is clear from a Moscow dispatch that appeared in the Neiv York Times that spring.

—

—

Solzhenitsyn u as reported todav to have offered his several Soviet publishing houses in the

ban on the printing of Friends if

.

.

.

w orks

said that earlv last

in this

latest

novel August 1914 to

that the authorities

would end the

countrv.

month Mr. Solzhenitsvn

sent letters

.

.

.

inquiring

they were interested in seeing the manuscript.

As of a few davs

The

his

hope

ago,

Mr. Solzhenitsvn had not received

a reply.

were reported to have described Solzhenitsyn's actions had advised him to take the manuscript personally to the publishing houses and not wait for them to reply. 1 he article continfriends in question

as "stubborn," since thev

ued:

But the 52-vear-t)ld novelist has refused

to

show the manuscript

in

advance for

two reasons, thev said. The first relates to his feeling that as the w inner ot the Nobel Prize, he should be approached bv the publishers. Ihe other is a fear that the manuscript might be smuggled overseas

if

he allowed

it

to circulate freelv.-'

SOLZHENITSYN

[73^^]

1 he deception

\\

as complete.

mation to the press knew the to be foreign publication.

Not even

full st(jr\

,

the friends he used to pass infor-

so that one ot his major fears appeared

This cover would be blown

as

soon as the Paris

edition appeared, but for the time being no one could suspect store

—once

again, the Soviet authorities

seemed

to

w

hat

have been put

w

as in

in the

w rong.

On

June 1971 the charge was detonated. The

11

the press gleaminglv fresh copies,

VMCA

presented to

smelling of printer's ink, of August

still

The accompan\ing

1914, complete and unabridged, in the original Russian.

statement was brief and noncommittal, merelv noting that the subject of the novel w as the earh davs of the First it

was the

of

first

a

on the eastern front and that

\\ Orld \\ ar

planned multi-volume work. 1 he author's cop\ right was

emphasized, and Dr Heeb was said to be ready to prosecute any unauthorized publication or translation. (>uriosit\' about the novel was intense. The first rumours of its existence had leaked as earh as the preceding November, at the height ot the fuss over the Nobel Prize, but despite the novel's title, nobodv had quite expected the

severeh' historical novel that

was indeed the

start

it

turned out to be. Solzhenits\n's chief subject

of the First

World

W ar,

and

in particular the disastrous

advance of General Samsoncn into East Prussia and his resounding defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg. 1 his was the subject that Solzhenitsvn had studied w ith such ard(Kir all those years ago in the libraries of Rosto\', as a callow \ outh of nineteen, and he w as immensely satisfied to have bnmght it to frui-

seemed an affirmation of the tightness of his choice ot subject, and ot and consistenc\ in his career that he had feared broken by his imprisonment and exile. 7 he Samsonov campaign w as w hat he called a "nodal point" (a term borrow ed from mathematics) in histor\', a moment in the sweep ot time that exemplified the development and conflict of forces critical for man's destiny. Each of his planned series of novels would be devoted to one nodal point (\\ hich is w h\ he w as calling them "nodes" or "knots" rather than no\ els), consisting of ten to tw ent\ days described in great detail and density, and the aim was to plot the graph of this period of Russian histor\' by fixing these points along a curve. In discussing this first volume later, Solzhenitsyn had this to sa\ about his intentions. tion,

it

a continuitx

—

—

.\1\

idea in the

World

\\ ar,

first

decided to choose I

had made

node was

even though a single

to

I

couldn't portray the

event

—

a battle

as 1937,

when returned keep a number of the 1

—and through

w hen

I

in that

I

it

show the whole

was onl\ nineteen.

to this subject

First

many

.

.

.

\\

And

I

ar. it's

years later, in 1969,

I

same compositional writing, and the images had to

earlier chapters in the

tunction, though of course the texture, the actual

be reworked

w hole of the

history has never been told in our country, so

earh

this choice as

characteristic that

was able

as follows.

its

was an adult now

.'-

Solzhenits\ n had been able to draw on his military experiences for the battle scenes.

The technologs was

different, of course, but military strategx'

The Start of had not changed

much, and

that

all

put to particularK good use alized his

with

memories of

his

\\

L73'1

artiller\-

in Aiii{iist 1914. Sol/.henits\

arm\ experiences,

a military cast

\'ast Enterprise

a

hich seemed such a natural subject for a

of mind and

a

in

\\

hen

extended and loving

in righting

his

smoke" in the it w as at last, Solzhenits\ n had garnered

in

In a ver\' real sense (and this

remained

in Fast Prussia,

forexer w ith

sta\'

him

as

was no accident

in

notebooks were burned. But here

detail, the

oxer this terrain

man

fondness for military metaphors. As he

noted in Ibc GuUig Archipelago, his arm\' novel had "gone up

Lubvanka furnaces

were

service

n had not \et fiction-

experiences that

1944

—

but transposed backwartls

1-5,

w as noted

w hose neat

b\" readers), a

villages

an image of F.uropean

in time.

part of his heart had

and apple-pie farms were

U)

ci\ ili/.ation.

camunder the bareK disguised name of Isaaki (nicknamed "San\a ') Lazhenitsxn. Indeed, most ot the members of Solzhenitsvn's famil\- appeared in the pages dexoted to scenes behind the lines in proxincial Russia, including (irandtather Zakhar, Lncle Roman, Aunt Irina (all under their own (Christian names, though with Shcherbak metamorphosed into Fomchak), and abo\e all his mother laissia (here renamed Xenia). Also here were laissia's stern schoolmistress and patron, Alexandra Andreveva (Kharitonova in the no\el), w ith her husband, daughter, and son, and mixed up w ith them, the Fedorovsk\ s (Arkhangorodskx s) from Solzhenitsvn's own childhood. So his xouth that other untouched period was It

that Solzhenits\n\s father had also fought in this

paign or that he turned up

in the no\el

—

—

partly here too, especially in the descriptions of his paternal grandfather's

farm

in Sablia

and

his

reminiscences of Rostov. Rostov in the

period was hardh' different from what

New Economic

had been before the First \\ orld \\ ar, and it w as that atmosphere, those colours, and those sights and smells that Solzhenitsxn associated w ith w hat he now took to be the golden PolicN

age of pre-re\olutionar\ Russia. in his

\\ hat

visits to

known and

seen personalh'

conversations w

ith his relatixes

he had not

childhood he had made up for w

during

it

ith

Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Georgievsk, and

Arma\

ir

in

1956

and 1964.

Ihese

pastoral scenes of the

North Caucasus and southern Russia were

obviously the "peace" parts of w hat w as Solzhenitsvn's bid to w

War and

rite a

tw en-

man\ ways abandoned lOlstox' for Dostovevskx', but the old sage's influence on him w as still stnjng, as w as show n b\' Solzhenitsx n's argument in the pages tieth-centur\

Peace. Spiritualh

and

intellectually, he

oi August 1914 with Tolsto\'s theorx' of historx- (Isaaki ally

meeting and arguing with

or\'

of love) and above

all bx"

I Olstox'

is

had

in

portrax ed as liter-

about something else

—1 Olstox's the-

the force of Tolstoy's example.

He

xv

as, for

Solzhenitsx n, the very model of what a major Russian author ought to be.

hen August 1914 appeared, Solzhenitsx n was more than usuallx nerfirst time he had stepped out of his immediate experience and tried to deal x\ ith a period not his own. He had done his research w ith txpical thoroughness, right dow n to the studx of social minutiae. Andrei Sinvavsky's wife, Maria Rozanova, w ho \x as friendix w ith Natalia Sxetlova and had once trained as a jeweller, tells of being introduced \\

vous about readers' reactions. For the

SOLZHENITSYN

[732]

about this time and of being asked to advise him on what wore before the Revolution, and on what occasions. She told him w hat she knew, and he jotted her answers down on an elaborate chart

to Solzhenitsvn at

jewels ladies

he had compiled, coxering dress, jewellery, and various other aspects of

social

behaviour."^ This was for his next novel, March 1916, but the same technique

had evidently been applied

to August 1914.

The

winter before releasing August

1914, he had also distributed thirtv copies of the novel to friends with a

questionnaire that thev

\\

ere to

new

and

this

One

touching detail

is

sky's opinion of the novel,

out, detailing their criticisms

—"because

to me.""^ He had evidently anticipated more made him extra sensitive to it. that he w as particularly anxious to have Tvardov-

the historical novel was criticism than usual,

fill

and one reason

for his

dismay

Tvardov-

at finding

sky paralysed and unable to talk in February had been his disappointment not being able to hear Tvardovsky's verdict.

On

at

May, he move one

a return visit in

—

had found Tvardovsky considerably improved he was able to whole side of his body and to talk a little and Solzhenitsvn had been gratified to hear his novel pronounced "marvellous." Despite his patronizing attitude to Tvarclovsky's social and political views, he still respected the older man's literary taste, and nothing was more important to him than the latter's

—

approval.

The

initial impact of the book's publication on the West was inevitably and commercial. The boldness and originality of Solzhenitsyn's gesture (not to speak of its apparently impeccable legality) immediately caught the world's headlines: once again the intrepid and embattled author had outwitted his clumsy persecutors, while the book's appearance in Russian set off a wild scramble for translation rights among Western publishers that far exceeded the early competition for Cancer Ward and The First Circle. Solzhenitsvn w as under the impression that with a Western law ver in place and with himself releasing a single copy oi August 1914 for initial publication in Russian, he could control its translation, distribution, and publication in the West as successfully as any "normal" author from a "normal" country, ancl in a manner that would make up for the deficiencies in the publication of his earlier works. But the battery of obstacles extra-legal, legal, social, and psychological placed in the w ay of such an operation by the So\iet authorities proved to be too much for him. Without the possibility of direct and open communication, he was obliged to delegate everything to intermediaries, and above all to Dr Heeb, who, with all his industry, integrity, and dedication to Solzhenitsyn's cause, was unable to cope with the enormity of the task. Faced with an avalanche of telegrams, letters, and phone calls from

political

—

—

interested publishers, but inexperienced in literary matters, Ileeb took the

apparently sensible step of placing world rights to the novel in the hands of

Dr Otto Walter of the small, independent Clerman publishing firm of Luchterhand. Heeb was familiar with Luchterhand as the publishers of the German edition of (mincer Wan/. The preceding year he had confirmed their

— Thk Start

of a Vast Entfrprisf.

l7

3

3l

them the e.\ckisi\e new translation of Solzhenits\ n's short stories and prose poems in a single volume. Luchterhand had acquired their original title to Cancer Ward from the Bodlex Head in F^ngland, and Heeb had simultaneously recognized Bodle\' Head's world rights to (mincer Ward, as well as to Solzhenitsyn's play The Tendetfoot and the Tart (w hich the Bodley Head had recenth' published in a limp translation under the e\en limper title of The Love-girl and the Innocent). In doing so, I leeb seems implicit!) to ha\ e recogedition as the "official" one in his eyes and had granted right to bring out a

nized Pavel Licko's original claim to represent Solzhenitsyn in this matter a

claim with some justice, though Solzhenitsv n later denied

clear

whether that was part of Heeb's

plan.

It

w

it,

and

it

is

not

as a side-effect of his prag-

matic idea of finding someone capable of handling the matter, and

Heeb had

apparentlv been more pleased by his dealings with the Cancer Ward team

Head, Luchterhand, Farrar, Straus and Ciiroux, in America, and Mondadori, in Italv) than bv those with The First (Circle team, consisting of the Carlisles and Harper & Row Not surprisingly, the relevant rights to August 1914 went to none other than Luchterhand, the Bodley Head, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Mondadori. The decision was controversial at the time. It was well know n in America that Farrar, Straus and Giroux were far from being the highest bidders: Little, Brown, of Boston, had offered $600,000 for the U.S. rights, almost twice what Farrar ultimatelv paid. In Germany, Fischer (the German publishers of The First Circle) offered $80,000, Suhrkamp $165,000, and LangenMiiller an undisclosed amount that they claimed was "in any case more than anyone else had offered," but Luchterhand paid onlv $104,000 for the entire world rights. " The arrangement w as presented as a triumph for literary values and the integrity of the small companies over the cheque-wielding affiliates of conglomerates, and it is true that the personal qualities of the men (Bodle^'

.

heading these firms (Otto Walter,

Max

Reinhardt, of Bodle\ Flead, and Roger

Straus, of Farrar, Straus and Giroux) weighed heavily

obvious sincerity as translations,

Dr Heeb. But

it

\\\x\\ a

man

of such

cannot be said that the cause of better

which Solzhenitsyn had announced

as

one

ot his tw in aims in

Dr Heeb, had been noticeably served by the deal. The Bodleytranslation of Cancer Ward (Solzhenitsyn's easiest book) had been less

retaining

Farrar

than distinguished, their translation of Tenderfoot pathetic, and their "new"

w as an Germany, Luchterhand had produced a lacklustre Cancer Ward (distributing the work among three translators for speed), and the translator of a new Ivan Denisovich version had removed her name from the translation as a result of "editorial improvements" made by the publisher. In short, there was no existing rea-

version of Ivan Denisovich (prepared as a basis for the film script)

uninspired rehash of the two main existing translations.

In

son, other than the "niceness" of the proprietors, to expect any better translations It

was

result

from these houses than from others, or any improvement on the past. and the a cosy arrangement that, as the translation arrangements were ultimately to show, moved Solzhenitsyn not a whit forward in

—

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[734] his

quest for accurate versions of his works. Only in France was a sort of

progress made. Luchterhand sold the rights for August 1914 to Editions du Seuil, a committed Catholic publishing house \\ ith a strong interest in social and political issues. Apart from having recenth' issued a collection of documents on the "Solzhenitsyn affair," Le Seuil had had no contact with Solzhenitsvn's works until now but it w as to assume an increasingly important role ,

in the future.

Solzhenitsyn's other aim in publishing directly in the

an end to pirated editions of his works, but in

this, too,

brought out an unauthorized photocopv of the tions supplied b\' Flegon himself.

for

and

to put

Within two months the indefatigable Alexander Flegon* had

successful.

lation

West was

he was only partiallv

serial rights to the

He

YMCA original,

with

illustra-

then had the effrontery to offer trans-

very companies that had signed an agreement

them with the Bodley Head. At

same time, as a result of Heeb's and the deals he concluded at more

the

refusal of the highest bids for the novel

modest terms, rumours began to circulate, especially in Germany, that Heeb was not SolzhenitsN'n's true representative at all or that he was deliberately flouting Solzhenitsyn's interest for the sake of some other, more mysterious goals. So persistent were these rumours that Solzhenitsyn was obliged to issue two statements on the subject, one of which he sent to Heeb and the other to Per Hegge in Xorw ay, asking the latter to publicize it in the Western press. Among other things he denounced Flegon by name, and the Bodley Head was able to stop this illegal edition by means of a writ in the British courts.-^

Not long afterwards, on 21 October 1971, the Langen-Miiller Munich announced to a startled world its publication

ing house of

publishthat

day

of a complete Cierman translation oi August 1914 in a print run planned to

The translator, Alexander Kaempfe, hundred pages of dense and difficult Russian into eight hundred pages of German in about fifteen weeks if not a record, then at least a major feat of translation. Kaempfe, although he had worked in haste, was no hack. He was recognized as one of Germany's top translators from Russian, and the embarrassing part of it was that Luchterhand had also tried to commission him, but he had declined on the grounds that he was "too busy." His defection was a double blow, particularly since the German record of translating Solzhenitsxn was no better than the English. reach one hundred thousand copies.

had apparently translated nearly

six

—

*

Flegon specialized

Soviet

Union

in publisiiing

Russian-language editions ot

\\(irl;s

that

had appeared

in

the

samizdat and had no copsright protection. lie had earher pubhshed Russian

in

Ward and The First Circle (neither of them authorized) and had produced A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and "Matryona's Place" from the the case oi August 1914, Flegon argued that the work had circulated in

editions of both Cancer

photographic reprints of texts in

Novy Mir. In

YMCA Press and therefore did not fall under the copyw hen challenged in court by the Bodley Head, that in publishing no\el abroad, Solzhenitsyn had broken Soviet law and that he therefore could not claim

samizdat prior to right law his

s.

Me

copyright in illegal

it.

its

publication by the

also claimed,

Thirdly, he maintained that Solzhenitsyn's agreement w

under Soviet law and thus

null

and void.

He

lost

on

all

ith I)r

three counts.

Heeb was

also

-

The Start

of a Vast Kntf.rprisf.

[735]

Of

the two main Ivan Denisovicb translations, one had been translated not from Russian but from F.nglish, while the other was the work of four different hands. Ihe Luehterhand experienee w ith their Ivan Denisovicb and Cancer Ward has already been mentioned, and even The first CArcle, the w ork of only two translators, had been spoiled by haste. Luchterhand's embarrassment over the Kaempfe translation was eompounded by the fact that their ow n plan w as to bring out the translation the follow ing .\ugust, a w hole year hence, for somef)ne had concei\ed the curious notion that it would be a nice publicit\ gimmick if all hfteen planned translations of the novel w ere issued in the same month "August" in .\ugust. This, too, was to end up causing problems, but for the time being, Luehterhand tried to plug the dam b\" securing an injunction against Langen-.Muller. Herbert Fleissner, a swashbuckling Sudeten German who had made a fortune out of his popular new spapers and w ho was the managing director of Langen-Miiller,* also tried to claim that Solzhenitsvn's no\el had circulated in samizdat and therefore was in the public domain. \\ hen it was pointed out that samizdat did not constitute publication under the terms of the Universal Copyright Convention (Solzhenitsvn had been careful not to give it to samizdat anyway), he changed his tune and argued that Solzhenits\ n had had foreknowledge of his translation and approved it. Ihis w as easiK' demonstrated to be false, and Fleissner lost his case.-*^ A subsidiary reason of Solzhenitsvn's for wanting to publish his book openly in the West w as his desire to reach readers in the Russian emigration and to ask for their help. He w as aware that the older ones would not only remember many of the events he v\as describing but also see them from a perspective that was different from the accepted Soviet one. In the freer atmosphere of the \\ est, they would have been able to preserve documents, letters, and tamily archives that were too dangerous for Soviet citizens to possess. In a special postscript to the novel, after explaining how he saw his historical task, Solzhenits\n described his difhculties and concluded w ith the

—

follow ing appeal. I

am now

abroad w

ith

a

simultaneous plea for criticism, corrections, and supplements, especialh w

ith

publishing the

first

node of

regard to historical personages on I

but

would be strictly

grateful for

whom

1

have

for Russian readers

little

any unpublished materials

with respect to the following places.

* It appears that Fleissner

.

.

material.

.

.

relating to subsequent vears, .

had both personal and professional reasons

for

\\

anting to pull off his

German w ho had been expelled from the Sudetcnland after the war, he w as in anv bitterly anti-Communist. One compan\ in his publishing group had published one of the

coup. case

work

ni\

.\s a

original

Cierman translations of

personal interest

in

Ivaii Denisovicb,

and Fleissner seems

Solzhenitsvn. But perhaps the main motive

\\

to ha\ e felt that

as Fleissner's

w

he had

ish for a

a

major

scoop to afhrm his importance as a publisher. Sometime beforehand, he had been manoeuvred out of the exclusive German publishers' club known as Books of the Nineteen, supposedly on account of the flambovancy and sensationalism of his popular new spapers, and his place literary

had been taken by none other than Luehterhand. Luehterhand on this occasion.

to upstage

He

therefore had a double motive for wishing

SOLZHENITSYN

[73^] I

for

am hopeful that me anv material

the pubHshers that

is

sent

\\ ill

take on themselves the

work of collecting

in.-*^

There was an extra stroke of boldness in this appeal. 1 he Russian emigres had traditionally been regarded by the Soviet government as unmentionable. Every effort \\ as made to portray them as renegades and traitors, the personification of counter-revolutionary decadence and black reaction. To maintain contact with or

show an

interest in

them

\\

as in itself potentially seditious,

and Soviet citizens were encouraged to ignore the emigres' existence completely and regard them and their children as consigned to "the rubbish bin of histor\'." Publishing a book that not only might be read sympathetically h\ emigres but was specifically intended "for Russian readers abroad" was doubly provocative, and it announced vet another of Solzhenitsyn's ambimettious intentions, namely, to bring the departed Russian millions back aphorically, at least into the national fold, to heal the split caused by the Revolution and Civil War, and to show that it w as by no means irrevocable or irreversible. It was part of that same impulse that had informed his sympathetic portrayal of former Vlasovites and emigres in his early (unpublished) pla\s. The Russians were all one people and should be together. His passionate desire \\ as for national unity and harmony, matching his deeply felt religious impulse towards the old Russian ideal of sobonwst* in national life. Like all his other intellectual enterprises, it was vastly ambitious and, also like them, seemed to fly in the face of history. But that was not sufficient to deter him now. If one of his aims in publishing his big series of novels was to reverse the consequences of the October Revolution, the other was to restore unity to his divided and suffering people.

—

—

*SobonH)St

is

difficult to define. Brieflv,

it

suggests that

a familial, spiritual

replace formal legalism as the guiding principle of national nation's goal.

The

and bv the Russian

idea goes back to medieval times and

was

religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev.

life

consensus should

and that unity should be the

later

taken up by the Slavophiles

40

DEATH OF A POET IT

WAS solzhenitsyn's

fate to

launch

all

his

major books

after Ivan Denisov-

and Cancer Ward had leaked out in fits and starts to Russian readers through samizdat and then through foreign editions. There never w as a "publication date" \\ ith readers' and critics' responses flowing in as a natural consequence and in an even tempo. .

ich

into a critical

vacuum. The

First Circle

Instead, the responses arrived piecemeal, usuallv distorted

by

political pres-

sures of one kind or another, and the mass of Russian readers remained ignorant of his works. In the case of August 1914, there had at least been a

publication date in Paris, but apart from the responses of a small emigre readers (and critics in emigre journals)

once, there was again an unnatural silence.

would have

number

w ho w ere able to absorb it at Western reactions to the book

to wait until the translations appeared,

and Soviet Russian

responses until sufficient copies had trickled back to the homeland to find an

informed readership there. In the official Soviet press throughout 1971 there were not only no re\iews

but no responses of anv kind. Such silences

in the past

had usually been

short-lived, indicating a period of indecision until the Central Committee's

ideological department had determined what the official line should be, but on this occasion the silence stretched right through the summer and autumn and into winter. It began to seem that the authorities had grow n w iser and were going to try the more intelligent tactic of simply ignoring Solzhenitsyn's manoeuvre and waiting for the memorv of it to fade. But a disquieting incident in the summer indicated that this was probably not the case, and that something threatening was being prepared. As so often happens, the revelation of w hat w as afoot w as the result of a series of accidents. Deprived of the opportunitv of living at Rozhdestvo

737

SOLZHENITSYN

[738]

summer

that

(he had agreed to

let

NataHa have the use of

their cottage

and

because of the extreme tension betw een them was unwilhng to risk a meeting

and disoriented. At the same time, he childhood and youth and gather more material. The writing of August 1914 had returned his thoughts to this period with particular force, and even more to the years preceding his birth. As he mulled over his plans for the following novels in his series, dealing with the years of the Revolution and Civil War, he must have recalled the stories told him bv his mother and aunts and have tried to reconstruct their lives in Rostov, Armavir, and Kislovodsk, both before and after the Revolution. The stories that had awed and terrified him as a child, that had subsequentlv been dismissed as exaggerated old wives' tales and counterrevolutionary propaganda during the years of his confident orthodoxy, and that had returned to haunt and fuel his rage in the writing of The Gulag Archipelago, now awaited the direct efforts of his pen in his chronicle of the times. He felt a need for greater detail about the early experiences of his famih', and had accordingly written to Aunt Irina in Georgievsk now eightytwo and more eccentric than ever, but still vigorous and lucid to ask her to write down her memories for him. In August 1971 he set off for the south to visit her. He was travelling with a friend in the friend's car, and they had got as far as 1 ikhoretsk within spitting distance of his grandfather's old estate and half a day's drive from Georgievsk w hen the car heater came on and jammed. The two men tried to carry on \\ ith the windows open, but the heat in the North Caucasus in August is intense, and it was impossible to conwith felt

her), Soltzhenitsvn felt restless

an urge to travel south and

revisit the scenes of his

— —

—

—

Ihey got out of the car and attempted to disconnect the hoses. It was midday. Solzhenitsyn uas wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else. As the sun blazed down out of a clear blue sky, the temperature went up into the nineties, and Solzhenitsyn was smitten with sunstroke.* Well before evening his arms, legs, chest, and back had swelled up and become covered with huge blisters, and he w as vomiting. Kverv movement caused him intense pain. For the "walrus," heat was the deadliest enemy.' Frightened by the idea of booking Solzhenitsyn into a local hospital, the friend managed to get him to the nearest railw ay station and put him in a sleeper for Moscow. He then telegraphed Fkaterina Svetlova to meet the train, w arning her that she would have to take someone along to help carry tinue.

or support the stricken Solzhenitsyn. Fkaterina asked a league, Alexander Gorlov, to go with her to the

Kursk

young engineer colstation, w here they

found the swollen Solzhenitsyn prostrate in his bunk, barely able to move or walk. With difficulty they got him back to Rostropovich's. A doctor diagnosed an extreme form of heat allergy and commenced a course of treatment that had to be continued for four months before Solzhenitsyn was able to walk and move w ithout pain." It

w as now

that the accident led to unforeseen consequences.

*It appears that Solzhenitsvn's sensitixitv to heat and the sun

he had contracted

\\

hile

on

his

honeymoon

in 1940.

was

a

Once

the

consequence of the malaria

Death

of a Poet

[739]

swelling was down, Solzhenitsyn was able to turn his mind to evervdav domestic matters and asked Ciorlov to go to Rozhdestvo to pick up a spare part for his car

new

— he was planning

clutch plate at the cottage.

to repair the clutch

Armed w ith

key and a note ot explanation for Natalia set off

on the afternoon of

12

and there was

instructions on

in case

how

a

nearlv

to find the

she sh(juld be there, Ciorlov

August, planning to be back bv earlv evening.

When he reached the cottage, he w as surprised to find the outer door open and the inner one latched from inside, and to hear voices within. Suspecting nothing, he knocked loudlv once or tw ice, opened the inner door, and w alked in.

Almost

at

once two

men

ran

dow n

the stairs from the attic

room and

asked him roughlv what he w as doing there. Gorlov asked them the same question but was suddenlv seized from behind and hustled out of the door.

His arms were twisted behind his back, he was struck a heavy blow on the head that knocked him out for a few seconds, and when he recovered consciousness, he was being dragged face down in the direction of the surrounding woods. Convinced that he had stumbled across a gang of burglars and

was about to be killed as the only eyewitness, Gorlov shouted the onlv thing might give them pause for thought: "You'll answer for this! I'm a for-

that

eigner!"^

The ruse worked. The two men dragging him relaxed their grip, and Gorlov broke awav. He did not get far, however, before another group of men pounced on him. 1 here w as a fierce struggle, during w hich the corners of Gorlov's mouth were torn; he was repeatedlv punched in the face and was kicked and pummelled about the bodv. All this time he was veiling at the top of his voice for help (his m(^uth had been torn w hen the men tried to shut him up), and soon a crowd formed as people came running from the neighbouring cottages. The men were told to release Gorlo\ w hen their leader was threatened by one of the locals w ith a big stick. 1 he leader attempted to pass the whole thing off by pretending that Gorlov w as drunk; w hen this failed, he produced a red pass from his pocket and waved it under the nose of the man w ith the stick. He was a captain in the KGB; the "gang" w ere his men. In no time the crowd melted aw a\ and Gorlov w as taken to the Naro-Fominsk police station, where the captain gave his name as "Ivanov." Gorlov was ordered bv the police to w rite an explanation of his presence at the cottage, and Captain "Ivanov" demanded that he sign a statement swearing himself to secrecv. Gorlov refused. On their wav back to Moscow in Gorlov's car, "Ivanov" questioned Gorlov thoroughh" on his famih' and career, learning that he w as a doctoral candidate in engineering and had a wife and a tw elve-vear-old son. "I must tell vou this," said the captain. "If the owner of the cottage or indeed anvone else gets to know about w hat happened today, you will lose evervthing vou have. Not onlv w ill vou be putting your entire career at risk, and never get to defend vour doctoral dissertation, but your son and wife w ill suffer too. And if we consider it necessary, we'll send vou to jail."

SOLZHENITSYN

[740]

Gorlov got back to his home, shaken and weak, between nine and ten and told his worried wife he had been attacked bv some drunks. The following morning, he informed Ekaterina Svetlova of exactly what had happened, and she left the office where thev both worked to tell Solzhenitsyn. Later that dav, Gorlov was summoned to the personnel department, where he found Captain "Ivanov," in uniform this time, and a man in civilian clothes, who proceeded to "explain" to him the reasons for the incident at Rozhdestvo. The Naro-Fominsk police, they said, had been tipped off that a local burglar was planning to raid Solzhenitsvn's cottage, and had set an ambush for him. It was unfortunate that thev had not secured the owner's permission first, but since he was away, they had let themselves in and lain in wait. When Gorlov arrived, thev had mistaken him for the burglar and tried to arrest him, and it was only his violent resistance that had forced them to beat him. Having now investigated the matter and learned that Gorlov was an exemplary Soviet citizen, thev wished him to know that no charges would be pressed. It was transparently dishonest, but Gorlov was satisfied to have his honour vindicated and relieved to hear that the police had no intention of taking any further action. Solzhenitsvn, however, was far from relieved. The raid on the cottage showed that the official silence over August 1914 was only a tactical measure and that behind the scenes the authorities were looking for evidence to discredit him. Gorlov had told of seeing several men make off from the cottage with folders and boxes. It was possible that the boxes contained electronic equipment intended for eavesdropping, and the folders could have contained letters or manuscripts. He thought he had been careful to remove everything that could be incriminating before Natalia moved in for the summer, but it was alw ays possible that he had overlooked something (the follow ing year he discovered a full set of carbons of The Oak and the Calf in the cottage, and a similar set from The Tanks Know the Truth; they must have been there at the time of the raid he had meant to burn them and had forgotten; fortunately, the KCiB had overlooked them too). A Rozhdestvo neighbour later informed him that a group of policemen had returned at four the next morning either to finish the job or simply to tidy up the mess. Solzhenitsyn was still in bed and swathed in bandages w hen the news came, but he at once recognized the raid as a dangerous escalation of hostilities. The 1965 raid, resulting in the capture of his archive, had been accidental, as it were, and directed to other purposes, but this was a deliberate trawl for incriminating material, and the physical violence inflicted on Ciorlov contained a menace that had largely been absent till now. Following his old precept that attack was the best form of defence, Solzhenitsyn drafted and released into samizdat a furious open letter to Yuri Andropov, chairman of that night

—

—

the

Committee

for State Security

and head of the

KGB.

"P'or

many

years,"

the letter began, "I have borne in silence the lawlessness of your employees: the inspection of tracking

dow n of

all

my

correspondence, the confiscation of half of

it,

the

m\' correspondents, their persecution at work and by state

-

Death

of a Poet

agencies, the spying around niv house, the

174']

shadowing of visitors, the tapping

of telephone conversations, the drilhng of holes in ceihngs.

.

.

.

But after the

no longer be silent." Solzhenitsyn went on to give a summary of the Gorlov incident and concluded, "1 demand from you, citizen minister,* the public exposure of all the intruders, their punishment as crimcan only coninals, and a public explanation of this incident. Otherw ise raid yesterday

I

will

I

clude that they were sent by

yo//.""^

An open attack on the K(IB was something that Solzhenitsyn had not contemplated before, but on this occasion he was so enraged and upset that it came naturally to him. He capped it by sending a copy of the letter to the chairman of the (Council of Ministers, A. N. Kosygin, demanding that the government investigate Andropov if the latter refused to respond. He had contemplated demanding Andropox's dismissal, but friends talked him out of it, saying that he could only harm himself and make himself look ridiculous

if

he overplayed his hand. great interest for his psychology

Of

at this

time

is

the letter he sent to

Gorlov to explain his motives in making the incident public. Ciorlov w as in the country w hen the open letter v\as released, and returned to find himself a household name to readers of the w orld press and among Soviet listeners to foreign radio stations. It was a great shock, particularly because he had hoped, after his last meeting with "Ivanov," that he would be left in peace and the whole episode forgotten. Solzhenitsvn's open letter, howexer, ensured that this was not to be. (iorlo\- was caught in the cross-fire, and it was with mixed feelings that he read the copy of the open letter, which Solzhenitsyn forwarded to him via Ekaterina Svetloxa, and the accompanying letter of explanation.

Dear Sasha, I

am overv\helmed bv your

them

new

a sign of the

boldness, bravery, and firmness of purpose

times and a

new

your scratches and bruises, but

suffer for

generation. I

I

embrace you

hope that they

will pass

—

I

see in

sincerely!

I

—unlike your

action. I want you to understand and believe and trust me: only maximum publicity and noise can offer you any reliable defence \ou w ill stand in the world's spotlight and no one will dare touch you! That is w hy I took it upon myself to decide today I am u riting an open letter to Andropox- and will give the matter for vou

—

—

it

to samizdat.

Try

to believe

me

matter up and conceal

even

and convince your family that any attempt to hush the it x\ ill simply help them to smother you silently. I xxould

xour address and telephone number in the samizdat copies, so know who vou are and can telephone and xxritc to you. given to a man in a single day (after a sleepless night itself the

like to give

that people It is

x\ ill

rarely

—

good deed) to test and prove both his physical and moral courage, and not to be found wanting in either one. Once more I embrace you! Get better and be strong! result of a

* Solzhenitsvn's use of the

Soviet term

is

term "citizen" to address

''comrade minister."

a minister v\as a calculated

snub. The usual

SOLZHENITSYN

[742]

Solzhenitsvn's judgement on the benefits of publicitx'

undoubtedly weapon, and he had become a virtuoso in its deployment. But it is questionable whether it was of similar utility to an otherwise loyal and conforming Soviet citizen like Gorlov, whose ambition in life was not to oppose the political system or become a dissident but to defend his dissertation and flourish as an engineer. In the course of the next few weeks, his life was turned upside down. The foreign radio broadcasts (which nobody was supposed to listen to, but which everyone in Moscow knew about) had made him a celebrity. He was an intimate and confidant of Solzhenitsvn. Friend and family rallied round, but an increasing number of colleagues at work refused to speak to him or even acknowledge his presence. Anonymous letters began arriving at the office and at the institute, some supporting and some attacking him. He was summoned to the Lubyanka to give an explanation and told that Solzhenitsyn was wrong: the whole affair was the work of the Naro-F"ominsk police and had nothing to do \\ ith the KGB. When Gorlov decided to write an official complaint to thtTpolice and demand an apology and compensation, he was summoned to Naro-Fominsk and offered the same explanation as at the Lubyanka (and by "Ivanov" at his office before that): the police had been w aiting for burglars and had mistaken him for a criminal. Despite these persistent explanations that it was only the police, Gorlov invariably found someone present at these meetings who was dressed in civilian clothes and refused to give his name or rank and it was usually the same correct insofar as

it

\\

concerned himself. Publicity w as \irtualK'

as

his onl\'

—

person. Nevertheless, he was finally offered an apology by the Naro-Fo-

minsk police and decided too, received

to accept

an apology of

pov, someone from the

sorts.

KGB

it.

A

Somewhat

few days

surprisingly, Solzhenitsyn,

after his

open

letter to

rang Rostropovich's dacha and

left a

Andromessage

KGB but to the wrote to the Ministry of the Interior and about six received an official reph', w hich ended as follows:

that Solzhenitsyn should address his protests not to the police. Solzhenitsyn then

weeks

later

The

events you refer to

\\

ere the result of a misunderstanding and of the person-

nel in question exceeding their responsibilities.

The

punished for their misdemeanours. This incident that, as ist

you know great

legality,

,

efforts are being

made bv

reduce the incidence of violations of

w ill be severely more unpleasant in

guiltv parties is all

the

the police to strengthen social-

citizens' lawful rights,

and

raise

the cultural level of our employees.

We regret It

what has

occurred.*^

was the usual bureaucratic

culpability had been accepted, and

waffle, but at least the principle of police it

seemed

might well be and informed the

that the incident

regarded as closed. Gorlov was anxious to consider

it

so

Only in the months and years ahead was he to discover was not so easy after all and that, w hereas the police were w illing to police of this.

that

it

settle,

the gentlemen in civilian clothes had other opinions. Captain "Ivanov" had

Death

ok a Poet

not been joking

when he warned

innocent victim

in a larger struggle.*

(iorlox' to

[743]

hold his tongue. (iorlo\ was the

summer and autumn of September he recei\ed another

Solzhenitsvn's dealings with the police in the 1971 were not confined to the Gorlov

affair. In

from Anosov of the passport office and another man in plain clothes. Anosov wanted to know whether Solzhenitsyn had done an\ thing about registering his residence. Si.x months had passed since his last \isit, and the visit

Solzhenits\n was itching to cause had even laid his statement about not being a serf on the desk between them, but Anosov's tone was so mild and apologetic that it did not seem the right occasion. All he wanted was an assurance that Solzhenitsyn would at least go through the motions. Seeing what seemed like situation could not continue indefiniteK

a scene

and on

.

this occasion

an opportunity to exploit Anosov's concern, Solzhenitsyn brought up the subject of his new family and his desire to join them in Moscow. "Even when I'm legally married, they

still

won't give

me

a

Moscow

permit, will they?"

"What do you mean?" replied .Anosov. "They're obliged to by law ." The two policemen prepared to depart amicably, and Solzhenitsyn was not forced to make his public declaration, but he did decide to remind them of his intransigence just in case.

He

would, he

said, see to

it

that

any attempt

to

remove him from Rostropovich's received the maximum publicity: "I shall refuse to leave if the police order me to, and I shall refuse to attend the court, so you'll have to sentence

After this

little

able to turn his

again

—the

me

to internal exile."

incident Solzhenitsvn's excitement subsided, and he

mind

aw ard of

was

had suddenly become topical For nine months nothing had hap-

to another question that his

Nobel

Prize.

move had been made to arrange for the presentation of the the first week of September 1971, Per Hegge published a book

pened, and no prize, but in

in Oslo, called

Middleman in Moscoiv, in w hich he gave a detailed account ot go-between in the preceding year between Solzhenitsyn

his activities as a

and the Swedish embassy and of the abortive negotiations for the delivery of the prize. Hegge strongly criticized the Swedish diplomatic staff in Moscow and by implication the Swedish government, for refusing to accede to Solzhenitsyn's request for a presentation ceremony at the embassy. The Swedes had told him, he said, that they were aware that the refusal to present the prize "didn't look very heroic" but that the embassy's duty w as to "maintain good relations with the Soviet authorities, and a ceremony for the sharpl\ criticized author Solzhenitsyn might pro\e embarrassing." The Swedes had asked Hegge not to write anything about the negotiations, but Hegge had refused, saying that the embassy's servile attitude to the So\ iet Union deser\'ed ,

to be exposed.*^

Publication of the book provoked a stormy debate in the Sw edish parliament. Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, declared that Solzhenitsyn would have been w elcome to receive the prize at the Sw edish embassy it he *

Gorlov was subsequently dismissed from his institute and prevented from defending Me emigrated to the United States in August 1975.

toral dissertation.

his doc-

SOLZHENITSYN

[744]

had consented to do it without a ceremonv. But a ceremony "might have been interpreted as a poHtical manifestation against the Soviet Union." Subsequentlv, Palme was obliged to expand his remarks in a letter to the New York Times (after the Times had published an editorial critical of his position), and he repeated his view that presentation of the prize in the embassy, with any sort of audience present, was bound to have political repercussions.^ The timing of Hegge's book and the ensuing controversy struck Solzhenitsyn as particularly apposite. The United Nations was about to begin a new session and elect a new secretary-general: Gunnar Jarring, whom Hegge criticized, was known to covet the job, and his chances would be greatly reduced. Another advantage was that the announcement of the 1971 prize winners was only three weeks away, so that again the Nobel Foundation

would be in the public eye. And despite the extra work that this circumstance must have been causing him, the secretary of the Nobel Foundation, Karl Ragnar Gierow, chose this moment to announce that he was writing to Solzhenitsyn once more to see whether arrangements might still be made for him to present the prize in the Swedish embassy in Moscow. Solzhenitsvn replied to Gierow instantly on hearing news of the announcement on the radio (Gierow 's letter did not arrive until three weeks later).

In order to conceal this embarrassing discrepancy, Solzhenitsyn

left

West for forwarding at the appropriate time. In it he informed Gierow that he was still willing to accept the prize at the embassy, but not without a small ceremony. Ambasthe date open and dispatched his letter to a friend in the

sador Jarring had insisted on

could not see the point:

"Fo

a

purely private transaction, but Solzhenitsyn

agree to such a proposal seemed to

me

an insult

Nobel Prize itself. It would be as though it were something to be ashamed of, something to be concealed from people. As I understand it, Nobel Prizes are conferred publicly because the ceremony has a public significance."'" To ram home his point, Solzhenitsyn wrote separately to Per Hegge in similar, but blunter, terms, asking Hegge to make his letter public. "Palme's answer in parliament," wrote Solzhenitsyn, "is very surprising. Is the Nobel Prize actually stolen property that must be handed over behind to the

closed doors and without witnesses?""

Solzhenitsyn was anxious not only to have a ceremony but also to find

an opportunity to read his newly completed Nobel lecture. Having aban-

doned the original version at the beginning of the year, he had recently returned to it and rewritten it. " Ihis time I somehow succeeded in ridding the lecture of any otiose propaganda or political content, drawing it more tightly together round the theme of art." He still expected it to make a splash and wanted to ensure the best conditions for it. 1 hat was why, he wrote to Hegge, "the delivery of the insignia must be done in public and on condition that I am allowed to give my Nobel lecture."'" Gierow wrote to Solzhenitsyn again in November explaining that he had had a meeting with Gunnar Jarring, and that Jarring had told him that the embassy in Moscow had no room suitable for a public lecture. 1 here

I

Df.ath OF

A

Poet

1

745

J

could thus be no ceremony. "But," he added, ahnost as an afterthought, "I am naturallv always ready to come to Mosccm to hand over the Nobel diploma

and medal,

if

some

fitting form can be found, either any other place conyenient to you."

as possible, in

embassy

in the

or, as far

This gaye SolzhenitSN n the idea of holding the ceremonx not in

but

official institution

Lane

in a priyate flat

— and on 4 December he wrote

gratitude for the latter's generositv of

strewn situation

like a shaft

a

in Natalia Syetlova's flat in

some

Kozitsky

long letter to (lierow, expressing his

spirit,

"which shines through

this obstacle-

of light," and outlining his plan. After making

—

Ambassador Jarring "The whole yexing situation has apparonly because the Swedish embassy in Moscow simpl\- does not

sarcastic fun of

ently arisen

—

haye the accommodation for any other procedure (does this unfortunate circumstance mean that it neyer holds receptions?)" and suggesting that the whole thing may ha\e been the result of a "semantic misunderstanding" ("Do Mr Jarring and his superiors perhaps think that a 'public' or 'open' procedure necessarily implies a mass audience?"), Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the

—

real objection to his original proposal.

Alas,

I

fear that

it is

not superficial semantics that separates us from the tenants

of those premises but an unexpected discrepancy frontiers oi culture run.

and no doubt has within

and events

—

(regrettably,

but,

on

The Swedish embassy has purview

its

we may

all

ask, does

this occasion, to

draw our peoples together?

our views as to where the

a cultural

attache on

whole

its staft,

sorts of cultural questions, transactions,

regard the presentation of a Nobel Prize

myself) as an event in cultural

If not, if

that threatens to blight the

it

in

it is

life

that helps to

seen, rather, as an incriminating shadow-

activity of the

embassy, then, however spa-

cious the accommodation, no place can ever be found for the procedure that you

and

I,

Mr

Gierow, have

in

mind.

a ceremony in Svetlova's flat. no more spacious than the Swedish embassy, but forty or fifty people can be fitted in quite comfortably by Russian standards." What the ceremony lost in formality it would gain in warmth and cosiness. Besides, "can you imagine, Mr Gierow w hat a load we shall be taking off the mind of the Sw edish ambassador and indeed of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs?" If this plan failed, the insignia could remain in

Solzhenitsyn proposed his alternative of

"This

flat, it is

true,

is

certainly

,

Stockholm. "They day, eyen

if it is

will lose

only

after

none of

my

their value for that.

sense of the occasion, present the insignia to

The

And

death, your successors w

my

ill,

perhaps some

w

ith a

proper

son."

was again deliberately made public by Solzhenitsyn (thus Dr Gierow replied that he accepted the It remained only to fix a date, and after further correspondence in prithe first day of the they agreed to set the ceremony for 9 April 1972 letter

circulating around the globe) and idea.

vate,

—

Orthodox

Faster.

'-

In the midst of these negotiations

Tvardovskv had

died. In

November

came

the not unexpected

new s

that

1971 his condition had deteriorated so

SOLZHENITSYN

[746]

Kremhn Hospital, and his death December. Tvardovskv's status as one of the outstanding literary figures of his time was unassailable. News of his death was prominently featured in all the main Soyiet new spapers, and the official obituary listed nearly all his achieyements as a poet, public figure, and editor. In the many separate articles written in his memory, howeyer, yirtually no mention w as made of his triumphant editorship of \ovy Mir or of his more controyersial poems, "Tyorkin in the Next World" and "By Right of Memory."'"^ Nor would Soyiet readers haye learned from these obituaries of Tyardoysky's discoyery of the greatest Russian w titer of modern times, or of his many battles on Solzhenits\n's behalf w ith the Central Committee, the U titers' Union, and the censors. In death, as in life, he was pursued by the hostility and yindictiyeness of the \\ titers' Union and its satraps. It was thus a bitter and disgraceful irony that in death, according to immutable Soyiet custom, his body, too, w as giyen oyer to his enemies. In the USSR, where absolutely nothing that impinges on official life can be seriously that he had been readmitted to the

came on the night of

18

—

priyate or spontaneous, important people are inyariably giyen state funerals.

A "funeral committee" is formed by colleagues and functionaries, and this committee organizes the entire ceremon\- and pays the expenses. In Tyardoysky's case, it was a group of bigw igs from the \\ titers' Union, and the funeral ceremony was arranged for 21 December. The leaye-taking was to be held at the Central House of W titers, on Herzen Street, starting at noon, and the interment w ould be at the Noyodeyichy Conyent, on the banks of the Moscow Riyer, where many prominent Soyiet figures were buried. Zhores Medyedey has proyided us w ith a graphic description of the day of the funeral itself." Only members of the Writers' Union were supposed to be admitted to the ceremony, and the six hundred scats ayailable were filled up w ell before midday. But in addition to official yisitors, thousands of unofficial ones had come to pay their last respects, and the hall w here the funeral was to take place was jammed w ith people filing past the flowerstrewn coffin

in a

music playing

mony

The

itself.

ne\er-ending

in the

line.

This continued

all

morning, w

ith funeral

background, until the doors were closed for the cere-

speeches were lacklustre and perfunctory, deliyered

b\' third-

rate writers \yho o\yed their presence in the hall to their role as functionaries

Union

of the Writers' a close friend

of Tyardoysky,* and again

ten years of Tyardoysky's

mony was

Not one of them was no mention was made of the last

rather than to any literary merit.

life

or his achieyements at

Sergei Naroychato\-, asked e\er\one except the to leaye the hall.

Why

are

say that

*On

A

young woman

cere-

w titer's family and

close friends

rose to her feet:

you closing the meeting so

we are burying our civic

sf)onr Is

it

possible that no one

conscience here? That Ivardovskv

\\

is

going to

as forcibly

the contrary, the Tvardovskv family had specialh asked the Writers' Lniim not to inckide

in their delegation alive.

\ovy Mir. The

very short, and the union secretar\' in charge of the proceedings,

The union

Mikhail Suslov, one of Tvardovskv's bitterest enemies while the

ignored their plea and included Suslov just the same.

latter

was

Death OF removed from

poem was

his

work, that he

v\as

A

Poet

l"47l

compelled to leave Sozy Mit\ that

not published? That they shut his

mouth

before he shut

it

his last

of his o\\ n

accord? this point the official ushers on duty began to con\ erge on her and shout her down, but she quickl\- gathered up her things, pushed her w a\- tow ards

At

the exit, and was lost in the general crowd.

to

At the interment it was a similar storv. Medvedev boarded a trolleybus make his wav to the Novodevichy Convent, but although most passengers

rose from their seats as thev approached the cemetery, the bus drove straight past and did not stop for another mile or so.

The

had thought of

authorities

everything. Bus drivers had been told that the cemetery stop was "out of

use" that day and ordered not to halt there. the cemetery

(it

was

a bitterly cold

When Medvedev

day, with a heavy

frost),

arrived back at

he found

all

the

approaches cordoned off by phalanxes of policemen, while the main entrance, opposite the underground station, was barred by a row of soldiers. When he

he was grabbed and frog-marched back again, and from the Writers' and Journalists' unions were to be admitted. He eventually got in by tagging on to a group of schoolchildren and pretending to be one of the teachers (a school class is an obliga-

w

tried to

alk through,

told that only people with cards

tory part of the

window -dressing provided

for such occasions);

that about 250 people had got in to attend the interment.

ordinary-looking

man

One

he estimated of them, an

carrying a plastic bag, tried to push his w ay through

w hen earth w as sprinkled over the coffin. He said he had brought some of "Tvardovskv's native soil, earth from Smolensk, from the mound over the communal grave of the men w ho fell in the liberation of Smolensk. to the front

They

call

it

the

'hill

of heroes.'

"

Solzhenitsvn also attended the funeral, arriving very earlw Although no longer a

member of the

Writers' Union, he did not bother to

show

a pass

and

the ushers dared not keep him out. Throughout the ceremony he sat in the front row with Tvardovskv's w idow and children, and only at the end did he go over to Tvardovskv's open coffin and make the sign of the cross over

accompanied the family to the cemetery (on the insistence of Mrs Tvardovskv the ushers w anted to stop him), w here he stood bareheaded in the freezing wind, publicly kissed Tvardovsky before the coffin was nailed up, and joined in tossing some soil into the grave when the ceremony was him.

He

—

concluded.

His presence created in public these days

among

a sensation in its

—and was

other things, the entire

innumerable photographers,

own

—

right

so rarely did he appear

clearly recognized as symbolic.

It

attracted,

Moscow corps of foreign correspondents, and who captured Solzhenitsyn's expression and

at every significant stage of the ceremony. Solzhenitsyn was nataware of the stir he w ould cause and was later accused by Madimir urally having of exploited the funeral for his ow n ends: Lakshin

movements

It is now obvious means of making

that to Solzhenitsyn the death of a public

Tvardovsky was primarily

a

appearance and of show ing off under the arc-lights.

SOLZHENITSYN

[748]

we

Stricken bv our loss,

failed to realize this at the time.

1 he only thing that

odd w as Solzhenitsvn's reply to Tvardovsky's younger daughter, w ho inyited him to make his last farew ell to her late father in the small mortuary at Kuntseyo, w here only close friends were to assemble on the eye of the funeral and where there w ould be no pomp and no crow ds. "No," replied Solzhenitsyn, "my vyhole day is already planned out. I'll come to the lying-in-state at the Central House of Writers tomorrow, as I have already noted in my diary." And he struck us as

arrived, having skilfully stage-managed his entrance and attracted a horde of

photographers

—

w

insolent, sweating

with their backs to the casket and

ith zeal,

behaving offensively by standing

firing off flashbulbs point-blank at Solzheni-

tsyn as he sat in the front row beside the w idow sions of the

ceremony

gesture

ith a kiss

—w

in a

,

notebook and preparing

and the sign of the cross

—

hastily scribbling his impresto

make

to the

his theatrical farewell

man w ho

could no longer

answer him back.'^*

Despite the excessive bitterness, there

undoubtedK' an element of truth

is

Solzhenitsyn needed the publicity

in this accusation.

almost certainly calculated his egocentricitv. Solzhenitsyn

Tvardovsky's funeral into

juncture and

at this

But there was more

effects.

to

it

than cold

was well aw are of the authorities' efforts to turn what they feared above all was a a non-event

—

public demonstration, such as had taken place at Pasternak's funeral. Solzhe-

nitsyn was determined to thwart them and do just that

He owed

—turn

it

into a

dem-

Tvardovsky's memory, and to Russian literature, and he succeeded. Novy Mir had been cut down almost without a whisper.

onstration.

Its

it

to

had gone quietly; Tvardovsky had been shunted into retirement

staff

without the slightest hitch. His death was the

home

occasion, to bring

to those Russians

last

who

opportunity to mark the

cared, and to people in the

meaning of what had happened. Solzhenitsyn had a and exploiting publicity, but on this occasion it served not only his ow n cause but also a larger one, as he made clear in his farew ell eleg\' to Tvardovsk\', which he released nine days after the death (the traditional day of the memorial service in Russian custom). rest of the world, the

unique

flair,

it

is

true, for attracting

killing a poet. The method chosen for Tvardovsky was aw ay his offspring, his passion, his journal. 1 he sixteen years of insults meekly endured by this hero were as nothing so long as his journal survived, so long as literature was not stopped, so long as people could be published in it, so

There are many ways of to take

long as people could go on reading

it.

.

.

.

... In the guard of honour we see the same seedy dead-beats who hunted him down with unholy shrieks and cries. Yes, it's an old, old custom of ours, dating back to Pushkin's time: dead poets must

body

They

it.

Madmen! When *

According

to

it.

into the

1

hands of their enemies. The

w ith

glib speeches.

plant themselves round the coffin like a circle of stones and think they

have isolated

them ha\e

fall

speedily disposed of, and the situation saved

is

They break up our

only journal and think they have won.

the harsh voices of the

one source, Solzhenits\n

is

young

supposed

to

ring out,

how you

will

have said after the funeral,

e\en made the sign of the cross oxer him."

.

.

.

yearn for

"I

realK

let

Death this patient critic,

be

will

fit

bv then

A

it

u hose

gentle,

to tear at the earth

w

be

ill

\v

of a Poet

admonitory voice w

ith

your hands

Stirring elegv like this

made

as

heeded bv all! Then vou back again. But

to bring Irifonich

far too late.'^

and the dramatic appearance

things that onl)' Sol/.henitsvn could bring the\'

[749]

off.

at

the funeral

w ere

The\' w ere theatrical, \es, but

the historical point with unmatchable emphasis. \\ ithin hours

press photographs of the funeral had been Hashed round the globe, and Sol-

zhenits\n's words,

when

released a few

da\s

later,

traxelled abroad with

equal speed. Lakshin and 1 vardovsky's other lo\al friends were obliged to

mourn in private, at informal gatherings such as that described bv Zhores Medvedev after a \isit to his grave on the fortieth dav after T\ardo\skv's death. Most of those present were writers, and amid the eloquent tributes to Tvardo\ sky one w riter reminisced about Tvardovskv's foresight: "Do vou remember that meeting of the editorial board w hen it w as clear alreadx that the storm-clouds

But

it's

to put

w ere gathering and he said, 'Thev w ant to put out our hre. blown out or quenched with water. If thev are going

too bright to be

it

out, the\'ll ha\ e to scatter

four winds.

Then

it

will

all

the smouldering, red-hot pieces to the

be extinguished.'

"'^

Those present ma\" well have

entertained feelings for Tvardovsky stronger than Solzhenitsvn's, and certainl\- their

truth

was

sadness was keenl\- sensed (and shared) bv Medvedev. But the

had indeed been scattered and their fire extinguished, fire burned brighter than ever and w as intense enough up that melancholv landscape sufficientK- clearlv for evervone else to that they

whereas Solzhenitsvn's to light

see

it.

—

41

WHOSE IS

IT

SOLZHENiTSYN HAD GOOD

LIFE

ANYWAY?

rcason to prize the publicity that Tvardovsky's

him that winter, for he was beset with personal and political problems more serious and more numerous than ever. They were converging in a most alarming manner and threatened to become totally unmanageable unless he could do something to resolve them. funeral brought

*

In his personal

They had

life,

he continued to experience

difficulties

with Natalia.

not seen each other throughout the summer. After spending some

time in Rozhdestvo, Natalia had travelled south to the Crimea for her sum-

mer

holiday.

There she had struck up

ower, u'ho subsequently met her escorted her about

town

at

a friendship

the station in

with

a

middle-aged wid-

Moscow with

flowers and

for a while,* but although his attentions soothed her

battered pride, she did not take

him

as a serious alternative to

Solzhenitsyn

opposed to a divorce. When they met in Kuntsevo in October as formerly agreed on the first anniversary of her suicide attempt Solzhenitsyn offered her an ultimatum: either divorce amicably and remain friends, or he would take her to court. She countered with a reminder that he had said she could return to Zhukovka after a year, but Solzhenitsyn informed her it was too late: Natalia Svetlova had moved in with their baby, and he had no intention of turning her out.' About a week later, on 25 October 1971, Solzhenitsyn submitted a formal divorce claim to the district court in Ryazan on the grounds that his and was

still

—

—

* Solzhenitsyn seems to have suspected that Natalia's new friend was connected with the KGB and had been assigned bv them to court her, but Reshetovskava savs that this was not so and that her friend never asked her anv questions about Solzhenitsvn. On the contrary, he left when

the divorce proceedings started

up again because he

750

feared the publicity.

— WhoseLifeIsIt Anyway?

[7 5']

marriage to Natalia had irretrievably broken dow n, and that it could not be restored again. He had recently had a child (his first) by another woman Natalia Syetloya

—and

since his

first

reason w hy he should not be granted

He

of his child.

had

tried,

marriage was childless, there was no a

divorce in order to marry the mother

he said, to secure

a

divorce by mutual consent

over the past year, but Natalia had consistently refused. He also listed their joint property: his ancient Moskvich, bought with the royalties from Ivan Denisovich; a

new Moskvich

in a co-operative garage in

furniture.

that he had just

Ryazan;

a

bought

for Natalia's use; a share

grand piano; and various items of domestic

Apart from the ancient Mosk\ich, he was prepared to grant Natalia all these goods and of all the money in their savings account

possession of

and

to

renounce

The

his share of their flat in

hearing took place on 29

Ryazan.*

November

1971. Natalia did not oppose

Solzhenitsvn's application outright, but asked for a postponement on the

—

grounds that there were problems over the division of property namely, their cottage at Rozhdestvo, which could not be decided by the court in Ryazan but had to be resolved elsewhere. She delivered a long speech in w hich she described the history of their first marriage, separation, second marriage, life in Ryazan, and joint work on his literary projects. Quoting liberally from his letters to her, she tried to show that their love for one another was extraordinary and eternal, that their childlessness was his fault rather than hers, and that he had never wanted children anyway. As a climax she quoted the letter in w hich he had confessed to her his love for Svetlova and offered her the choice of what to do about it. This choice had apparently

been removed from her now because of her suicide attempt. "I have reconmyself to many things that are unavoidable, but I w ill never be reconand w ill alw ays ciled to the fact that the man w ho had been closest to me be closest in my life is now abandoning me. Abandoning me when I am past fifty and on the brink of old age. Leaving me alone with three old ladies, ranging from eighty-one to ninety-three years old. When my health has been ciled

—

—

completely undermined by our tragedy. Throwing me into a void." She expressed her conviction that this w as out of character for him, the result of a "temporary delusion" that could not last long, and that he would soon come to his senses.

Natalia concluded by asking for a six-month adjournment, which the court granted. Solzhenitsyn suspected that the authorities might have seized

on

his divorce case as an opportunity to harass

this delay,

but

it

seems

him, and might be behind

judge was influenced by the distraught was literally on the verge of hysteria. Solzheni-

likely that the

and w eeping Natalia, who tsyn was furious and informed Natalia that she had won "six dead months." During that time he would neither see her nor answer her letters, except on strictly business matters.^ *

According to Reshetovskava, Solzhenitsvn

up his petition. number of leading

tova in drawing in court

of a

Kaliistratova dissidents.

help of the advocate Sophia Kallistra-

fiad

had

tfie

w as

v\ell

known

in

Moscow

for her spirited defence

SOLZHENITSYN

[752]

He

attempted to

fulfil

his

vows, but Natalia seemed to

feel that

she

could use this six-month reprieve to get her husband back again. She resumed visiting their joint friends, to

tsyn's letters that she

whom

she quoted the passages from Solzheni-

had copied out

for the court.

She complained of

his

cruelty and despotism, of the fact that he had always overshadowed her,

exploited her, and sacrificed her to his work. She was indeed a pitiful figure,

and there was fitted.

An

sufficient truth in her accusations for the friends to

older

woman abandoned

for a

be discom-

younger, prettier one (whatever the

other reasons for the change) will always be an object of compassion, and a

number

of friends took her side, including Panin and the Etkinds. Natalia on trying to arrange meetings w ith Solzhenitsyn against his will, and put pressure on their friends to force him to see her.' In January 1972 Solzhenitsyn tried to gain a respite by writing to Natalia's mother, Maria, in response to her reproach that he was showing "unbelievable cruelty" by refusing to open Natalia's letters. All he wanted, he wrote, was "six months of peace," before the next court hearing, in order to get on with his work. Meeting Natalia literally made him ill for days afterwards and simply gave her an excuse to indulge in the pipe-dream that he would return to her. But that v\'ould never happen. Before the divorce hearing he had told her that after the divorce the way would be open for them to have human relations, but Natalia had preferred "a dead piece of paper," so insisted

let

her enjoy

it.'^

Just as Natalia delved ever deeper into the past to find signs of his love

more recent

one and differences to prove the opposite. Perhaps he should never have married her at all, he suggested. And how coolly Natalia had taken his departure for the front. And later divorced him and married another man when he was in the camps. And for her (and

had burnt

his letters of

years, according to

report), so did Solzhenitsyn drag out their past quarrels

when he had believed himselt to be and had wanted her to come and visit him. In short, he had reached the point where all he could think of was how to wound her. And yet, even now, Natalia clung to her marriage with a desperate tenacity that would have been pitiful, had not her abjection alternated with bouts of fierce

then spurned his frantic cry for help

dying

in exile

hatred.

Perhaps the nadir w as reached when Natalia passed on to Solzhenitsyn, through the medium of Panin, what she called her ultimatum: "If he doesn't save me from the humiliation of a divorce, I shall take my revenge on him." Solzhenitsyn was furious and answered her in

a postscript to his letter to

Maria. Natalia, he wrote, was possessed of an insatiable vanity, which dis-

She knew that he no longer loved her, but she insisted on clinging to the empty shell of their marriage long after its essence had disappeared. All she wanted was her "position" as his wife, and if she couldn't have that, she was obviously determined to revenge herself on him in any way she could. That was why she insisted on telling all their former friends that he was a despot and had mistreated her. Unfortunately, many torted her view of the world.

— WHO ot thcni

had hclicxcd her,

giving his side of the

S

F.

aiul

storx'.

L

I

F F.

1

S

I

A NYWAY ?

T

[753]

he sinipl\ did not ha\c the time to go around

Besides,

it

w

as

demeaning

man

tor a

time complaining to others about his suffering. The point was that riage to Natalia

was dead, and the reason she could not

simpiv did not understand him. In

fact,

see

it

was

to

\\

his

aste

mar-

that she

she had ne\er understooil him; she

had been too preoccupied with herself and her ow n affairs. le now Io\ ed woman; he had no doubts w hate\er about this new relationship and would not enter into negotiations ot any kind on the subject ot his dixorce I

another

from Natalia.'

To

the So\

iet

authorities, the divorce

w rangle must have seemed

a

god-

send, particularK' as Solzhenitsxn had appeared to hold the initiati\e in his

them with the surprise publication otWiignst 1914. It was months since the novel's appearance in Paris, and there had been not a word on the subject in the So\iet press. Nor had there been an\' other overt moves against him since the KGB agents' ill-fated encounter w ith Gorlov in Rozhdestvo the preceding August. It seemed almost as if the\' were preparing to leave him in peace. But the calm was, as usual, illusorv. In realitv, the struggle was about to shift and embrace another aspect of his private life his biographw It was here that the public and pri\ate counts against him fused, and in Januar\- the\ burst into the open. struggle against

now

over

six

—

On

januarv 1972 the Literatuniaya

(kizcta appeared with a banner Magazine on Solzhenits\n's Family." It turned out that in November the Hamburg illustrated weekK' had run a big stor\' on SoIzhenits\ n's ancestry, announcing that he had come from a wealth\- family, whose dispossession by the Revolution w as the reason for Solzhenitsyn's hostility to the Soviet regim.e. 1 he magazine's Moscow correspondent, Dieter Steiner, described how he had tra\ elled south to Georgievsk to locate and inter\iew Solzhenitsyn's aunt Irina. Accompan\ing the article was a picture of her, w rinkled and bent, standing in the doorw av of the ramshackle clay hovel that she had occupied for thirty \ears. Other photographs, some of them proxided b\' Irina, showed the big house in Kislovodsk where Solzhenitsvn had been born, Uncle Roman's Rolls-Royce, Irina in boarding-school uniform, and Solzhenits\'n as a student and on his first visit to Irina in 1956, after his return from exile. 1 he gist of the Stem article w as that Steiner, having recognized the autobiographical element in August 1914, had set out, like any good investigative Western journalist, to follow up an interesting storw He had discovered that the Irina lomchak of the novel was in fact Irina Ivanovna Shcherbak, a resident of Georgievsk, and had interview ed her there. Here is how Steiner 12

headline on one of

its

inside pages: "'Stem

describes their meeting.

1 he old

lad\

lives in the

—bowed and almost

blind, but vigorous

annexe of an old farmhouse. Her room

ith a

framed icon and

a

wooden

crucifix

still

complctch' lucid

bv nine, has an She sits on an iron bed, overhead. Her dog Druzhok ("Friend"),

earthen floor, a sloping ceiling, and whitew ashed w \\

and is

alls.

six feet

— SOLZHENITSYN

[754] a decrepit,

taken

shaggy mongrel

up by

bag of

flour.

As

I

teen.

From I

am

asleep under the bed.

down on

sat

yourself what sort of a sars.

is

A

quarter of the

room

is

oven, on top of which are a saucepan, two tin plates, and a

a brick

the state

I

life

I

a rickety

have now

,

bench, Irina said, "You can see for

after fiftv-three years

under the commis-

get ten rubles a month, and Sanva sends

me

another

fif-

his only living relative."^*

According to Steiner, Irina told him some of the history of the Shcherbak family and gave or lent him the account of her memories that she had written down at Solzhenitsyn's request. She seemed irritated that Solzhenitsvn had never

come

to pick

Solzhenitsyn's mishap on his

The

them up, and was apparently unaware of

way

to see her.

bulk of the article consisted of Steiner's

accompanied by juicy and damaging

titbits

summary

of her remarks,

from the "memoirs."

Irina appears

have spoken with some asperity of her in-laws, referring to them as "a family of boors" and describing the south Russian landowners of the time in general as "living like swine," with thought only for wine, women, and cards. She was sharply critical of Solzhenitsyn's mother, Taissia, and contempto

whom she called "the daughter of a Jewish businessman" and denounced as a loose woman for having left Solzhenitsyn temporarily for another man. Such opinions are compatible with what one knows of this cranky, short-tempered, and indomitable little old lady, but at the age of eighty-two, despite Steiner's praise of her lucidity, her mind was clearly wandering, and her rambling narrative was a mishmash of truth and imagination. Steiner was content to take most of what she said at face value, and by judiciously quoting from August 1914 to fill the gaps, he managed to paint a picture of Solzhenitsyn and his family that w as simultaneously patronizing and damaging. In this version of events the Shcherbaks had been reactionary barbarians, vulgarly squandering their ill-gotten wealth until it was removed from them by the Revolution. Solzhenitsyn's mother had been a haughty tuous of Natalia,

provincial

who

put on

airs, his father a tsarist officer

could not face the victory of the Reds. explanation

—probably

it

was suicide,"

who

died because he

"A hunting accident w as the official commented Steiner maliciously. Sol-

zhenitsxn himself, in Steiner's portrait, was heartless, ungrateful, grasping, bourgeois in his tastes and habits, and

a secret counter-revolutionary,

inside pages

w

bile

—

was frivolous and unfaithful and a Jew. This was the article that the Literatunmya Gazeta now splashed

his wife

—with

certain modifications. Irina's

boors" was used to introduce the

article,

comment about

and most of her

—and

in its

"a family of Steiner's

derogatory remarks were faithfully reproduced. But there was no reference

comment on the fiftv-three-year rule of the "commissars," economic achievements visible in her pension of ten rubles a month and miserable living conditions, or to the quotation from August 1914 with which Steiner opened his article: "Russia must now be governed by idiots;

to Irina's scathing to their

*This was not

correct. Solzhenitsyn hat! cousins living in

Moscow and an

uncle in Siberia.

— Whose

Life

Russia can never be any different." Steiner's Hmitation to only

It

Is

On

Anyw

ay?

("551

the other hand, not satisfied v\ith

one side of the family, the

Literatitrnaya Gazeta

had despatched a correspondent to the \illage of Sablia to gather incriminating material on Solzhenitsyn's father's side of the famil\' as well. "We are, of course, far from anv idea of making a direct, \ uigarlv sociological connectif)n between a man's origins, upbringing, and the circumstances of his \'outh, on the one hand, and his activities as a mature adult on the other," began the second article sanctimoniously and went on to assert that Solzhenitsvn's grandfather Semvon Solzhenitsxn had once owned five thousand acres and twenty thousand sheep, emploxed over fifty labourers, possessed, besides a couple of farmsteads, two big "manor houses" in the village of Sablia, and been a leading member of the board of a Rostov bank. Solzhenitsvn w as alleged to have been wealthy on both sides of the family, and therefore vulgar sociological considerations apart doubly damned. The writer of the second article had also come up w ith a potential "find" another relative of Solzhenitsyn's b\' the name of Xenia Zagorika, the daughter of his long-dead uncle Vasilv and hence his cousin. Perhaps disappointingly for the Literaturnaya Gazeta, Xenia had been only six months old w hen \ asily died, in 1919, and had been brought up bv foster parents. She knew

—

nothing of her celebrated cousin or his family. But because she w

as a

country

a

girl,

she did enable the Literaturnaya Gazeta to introduce

simple

touching

digression on the subject of the flourishing collective farm where she worked,

which now occupied the former land of the Solzhenitsvns, and

to underline

the high standards of living of contemporar\' \illagers ("every house has piped

water, 640 out of 800 houses have television

sets,

600 have gas, 1,112 news-

papers and journals are delivered per 1,000 of population"), w hile upbraiding Steiner for ignoring this It

modern miracle

might have seemed from

reprinting the Stern story in

all

this

in his story.

rebuke that the Literaturnaya Gazeta w as

innocence, as

it

were, and simph taking issue

bias. But it was more competent foreign correspondent of

with the Stern reporter over his alleged ideological complicated than that. Dieter Steiner,

a

wide experience, had little Russian and scant know ledge of Soviet society and literature. It is most improbable that he had spotted the autobiographical element in August 1914 himself; and he certainh- did not go to Georgievsk on his own initiative, if only because Georgievsk belongs to that three-quarters of the Soviet Union that is totally closed to foreigners. In fact, as Solzhenitsyn later discovered, three men had visited Aunt Irina in her hovel and had made a total of five calls. The notes she had given them to read were supposed to be given back, but they had been taken aw aw together with the photographs, and were never returned. From the fact that all three men were have spoken excellent Russian, Solzhenitsvn concluded that Steiner had not been there at all, but that was wrong. Steiner was there and had his photograph taken with Irina, although the photo was not published. Steiner was also briefly in Sablia, but despite the Literaturnaya Gazeta's mock indignation, he was not allowed to leave his car, and the only photographs he said to

SOLZHENITSYN

[756]

obtained were taken through the It

w as another example

car's windscreen.**

of the Soviet technique of sponsoring, or even

writing, an article for publication in a foreign newspaper and translating

back for Russian readers

as

an example of what "The

\\ est" thinks

it

about a

The Literaturnaya Gazetd's main feature \\ as full of inaccuracies and distortions, but these could be conveniently blamed on Steiner, and he in turn could blame them on the faulty memor\' of an eightv-two-year-old woman. What the Literaturnaya Gazeta added on its own initiative was equally egregious. In its early editions, the photograph of Irina's ornate villa in Kislovodsk was described as Semvon's village house in the Stavropol steppes, and Solzhenitsyn's father's name was rendered as "Isai" (a mistaken deduction from Solzhenitsyn's patronymic "Isavevich"), undermining the Gazeta's claim that its information had been gathered from eyewitnesses in Sablia certain topic.

itself.

According pro\oked

much

to

Zhores Medvedev, the

mirth in

Moscow

articles in the Literaturnaya Gazeta

Two

literar\' circles.

of Solzhenitsyn's chief

adversaries in the literary establishment, Alexander Chakovsky, the editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta, and Sergei Mikhalkov, the

nitsyn,

him

and Mikhalkov's grandfather

still

— Mikhalkovo. Clearly, the "vulgar

with

first

secretary of the Russian

much grander

Writers' Union, were descended from

had

a

families than Solzhe-

whole

village

sociological line"

named

after

had to be handled

care.'^

Solzhenitsvn, however, w as not amused.

had issued the

"official" version of his

Only

biography

a

few months earlier he form of an autobio-

in the

graphical sketch for the Nobel Foundation, to be printed in

its

year-book.

He

had mentioned the fact that his father had served as a volunteer officer in the First World War and had died in the summer of 1918, before his son was born, but had said nothing of the circumstances of his father's death or his origins. Similarly, he had written nothing more of his mother than that she had been a shorthand typist in Rostov-on-Don, had remained alone and in poor health, and had brought him up in modest circumstances somewhat fewer facts than he had conveyed to Pavel Licko in 1967. He w as exceedingly alarmed and annoyed by the Stern article and its sequel in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, w hich took him completely by surprise. Having disguised the surnames and changed the first names of many of the relatives described in the novel (was it significant that he could not bring himself to change just two: Isaaki, his father's name, and that of Aunt Irina?), he had felt sure that they would not be recognized and that no attempt would be made to track down the one important survivor.'" Up till now he had been able to exercise some sort of control over information about his former (and private) life, but things were beginning to get out of hand. First his divorce and now his origins were being turned against him, and he knew that the Soviet authorities would use any weapon they could to discredit him. Soon afterwards he learned that a Major Blagovidov of the KGB had been dispatched to check the files of Moscow University for 1914 and investigate

—

Whose

Life

Is

Anyuav?

It

[757]

the Isaaki's there, in the hope of proving that Solzhenits\ n was a Jew after

all all.

Once

name had misled

again his father's strange (christian

the investiga-

tors (and the\' evidentlv forgot to inform the Literal iirnaya Gazeta of their

w here the name appeared

inquiries,

drew

as Isai); and, of course, the\'

a

blank." Solzhenitsvn was equallv worried

another problem. C)\er the past

b\-

W estern authors to w rite whole he did not disapprove. Though he was On the b\preparation, of unwilling to participate directh' in their one the projects an American journalist, George Feifer, and an emigre journalist, David Burg (co-translator oi Cancer Ward) had received his tacit approval in the summer of the preceding year.'- Since then, Feifer had had manv conversations with Veronica Stein and other friends of Solzhenitsvn, but in July 1971 he had been detained at Sheremetyevo Airport, questioned, searched, and relieved year or two, he had become aware of projects b\

biographies of him.*

—

—

of his detailed notes.

much

contained too

A

draft text that he then sent to \'eronica for checking

speculation

—mixed w

information

ith accurate

—

for Sol-

more

zhenitsyn's comfort, vet to refute the speculative parts required

disclo-

sure than he was ready for. Solzhenits\n seems to have concluded that a

biography would cause more trouble than

KGB's

of the

stick to literar\- matters

to

go further and issue

tial

and leave

w as worth,

it

especialh in the light

Having already warned

fishing expeditions.

his private life alone,

a generalized

Feifer in Jul\- to

he now

felt

w arning, through Dr Heeb,

to

impelled all

poten-

biographers. understand that certain "biographies" of

I

me

are

due

to

appear shortlv

in the

West, including some that will contain information of a mainlv non-literar\ character. This information is being collected bv the authors without m\' know ledge or

my

agreement, often

w ho knew me

at

in

dark and roundabout wavs bv interviewing people

who are often not informed at all. Ihe supplemented with imaginary facts and moti-

one time or another, but

material collected in this

manner

is

which must be invented, since the true circumstances and motives of mv work cannot be known to anvone, ow ing to the isolation in which I live. The collection of "information" in this w av is no different from police sp\ing. I regard vations

the publication of such biographies during an author's lifetime as ill-mannered

and immoral, especially since thev are bound to involve living people who are exposed and have much to lose from such publicitv. I can defend m\self against such publications in no other w av than bv asking authors, editors, and publishers to respect

my

right to privacy."

At the same time Solzhenitsvn sought licly cles.

a

convenient means to refute pub-

the half-truths and distortions in the Stern and Literal iirnaya Gazeta arti-

His

first

reply was given to the

German new spaper *I, too,

writing

had visited Moscow a

Moscow correspondent

Die Welt, but for some reason in

June 1970 and had talked

to

it

of the \\ est

got lost in transmission.

Kopelev about the possibility of

biograph\ ot Solzhenits\n. Kopele\ and others con\ inced me, however, that

not the best

moment and

that Solzhenitsvn

w as unlikeK'

to co-operate

on such

a

\

enture.

it

was

SOLZHENITSYN

[758]

Solzhenitsvn then asked Zhores Medvedev to arrange an interview w ith the correspondents of the Neiv York Times and the Washington Post in Moscow (then Hedrick Smith and Robert Kaiser). The interview was shrouded in secrecv.

Medvedev put Smith and Kaiser through an elaborate series of prepcommunicated with them and Solzhenitsvn in mys-

aratorv manoeuvres and

The interview was originally set for 4 April 1972, but was moved forward bv Solzhenitsvn to 30 March, and took place in Svetlo-

terious codes.

then

va's flat in

A

Kozitskv Lane.

few davs beforehand, under the cover of dark-

final

Medvedev showed the correspondents the way and gave them their instructions. Thev were to bring tape recorders and cameras so that

the\'

could record and photograph Solzhenitsyn, but

ness,

at

the same time should

This they did by putting on old clothes and, in Kaiser s case, bv w rapping his modern equipment in old copies o( Pravda and carrving them in a typically Muscovite string bag.'"^ What followed was a memorable confrontation between Western and trv to look as inconspicuous as possible.

Eastern notions of news gathering, interview techniques, and the management of publicitv. Smith and Kaiser had prepared their questions in advance

while ice-skating

at

an outdoor rink

in

Moscow

(to

avoid the possibility of

KGB microphones).

They were fairly fresh to the Soviet Union, having been there but seven months, and had only a sketchy knowledge of the Russian language and of the darker reaches of Soviet societv. On the other hand, the\- were experienced newspapermen, well trained in the hard-nosed tradition of American investigative reporting, observant, adaptable, and well able, as thev thought, to tackle any assignment with confidence. Thev had not then encountered Solzhenitsyn's imperious will and steelv resolve, or imagined to themselves the full danger of the kniteedge upon which he w as living. The\- arrived at the flat shortlv after noon Solzhenitsyn himself unbolted and the encounter began affably enough. Solzhethe door and let them in nitsvn shook hands, introduced them to Svetlova and their son, Ermolai, now fifteen months old and babbling in baby language, and ushered them into his study, in w hich all the curtains were draw n. Smith later wrote that the easv informalitv of those first few minutes disarmed him, for he had being eavesdropped on bv

—

—

expected to be "over-awed bv this living classic of Russian literature." Sol-

arm and engaging. He was also physically more had expected, bounding out of chairs, moving with athletic ease across the room. His enormous energy was palpable. For a man who had suffered so much, he looked well." Smith noted that Solzhenitsyn's steel molars flashed w hen he smiled and that a dark tobacco stain on his index zhenitsvn, in fact, was "w

dvnamic than

finger

1

marked him

as a heav\'

smoker.

l^his accord quicklv \anished inal intention

had been

for the tw

once they got

o reporters

but thev had been prevented from doing

down

to business.

The

orig-

to send their questions in ad\ance,

this

w hen Solzhenitsyn brought the

interview forward. After apologizing for the sudden haste (but without explaining

it),

Solzhenitsvn took from his desk two copies of

a thickish

man-

I

Whose uscript and placed

L

i

Is

fk

I

i

.

\

n y vv ay?

I

them before the two correspondents.

I

his

w as

7 5

V

his "inter-

view," complete with questions as well as extensive answers. Soi/.henitsvn

wanted

it

published

Smith, who had been determined in adxance not bv Solzhenitsvn, was thrown completcK off balance.

in full.

to let himself be "used"

I

was stunned.

and here

W hat

against censorship, a

had dared

How

is

man

outrageous,"

thought. This

I

\\

ho

in

is

the

\\a\'

I

\

b\-

it

is

done

ith his

at I'ravda

furious battle

the great tradition of Pushkin ami Dostovevskv

ain?

I

producing

a

pre-packaged interx iew

.

thought of w alking out.

muttered to Kaiser.''

did not occur to Smith or Kaiser that a

being w atched a

,

to assert the writer's indepence,

could he be so blind or

"This

It

an ironx

SolzhenitsN n, w hose entire being reverberates w

is

man w ith

his

back to the wall,

all-pow erful enemies for the slightest slip, might ha\ c had

more than common

interest in an accurate portra\'al of his thoughts

views. Solzhenitsvn did not help, of course.

persuade or explain. His situation, he

felt,

It

w as

w as beneath

and

his dignit\- to

self-evident. .And despite his

extensive exploitation of the Western press in his struggles against the authorities, he hadn't the remotest idea

only previous interview had been w

ith

how

that press reallv worked. His

the obedient Japanese correspondent

Komoto

Sedze, and before that w ith Soviet correspondents in Rvazan. But Western reporters this w as a breach of journalistic ethics, a plant, a fake interview. The\' demanded the right to put their own questions (the\' had come with ten) and to select and edit the answ ers. There followed several hours of intensive bargaining. First, the two Americans read the "inter\iew " through painfulK slow l\ w ith assistance from Svetlova. Both were impressed w ith parts of it, but the long explanations of Solzhenits\'n's ancestr\' in answ er to the Stern allegations struck them as long-w inded and irrelevant. Both declared that no more than half could be used bv their respective new spapers ("Not even the American President gets more" w hich w as perfectlv true). Since the document w as oxer seven thousand words long, this w as eminenth' fair, particularh' for a dailv paper (even of the gargantuan proportions of American new spapers), but Solzhenitsvn wouki not budge: all or nothing. Later he offered a compromise. I he two reporters could use w hat thev liked if they promised to get the rest of the interview printed in other publications. The reporters said thev had no pow er to do that, and Solzhenits\n left the room. .\ moment later he returned and asked whether a Swedish correspondent could take the rest of the interview and print the parts the Americans omitted. 1 he two .Americans objected that there was no such Swede, at w hich Solzhenitsvn disappeared and returned w ith a blond voung man in his wake. Ibis was Stig Frederikson, the correspondent of the Scandinavian New s .\gencv in Moscow and he w as w illing to print the w hole of for

—

,

—

,

Solzhenitsyn's interview a da\' after

it

appeared

The two Americans were dumbfounded.

in .\merica.

IhcN' had had

no idea there

SOLZHENITSYN

[760]

was another correspondent concealed

in the flat,

though they concluded that

he had not come for an interview but was somehow involved in the negotiations that \\ ere then in full swing to hold a Nobel Prize ceremony. Solzhe-

way out of the impasse. The Americans quicklv agreed to this new suggestion, and the young Swede was hustled out again. The two correspondents still insisted nitsyn had simplv seized on his presence as offering a

And

it

did.

on putting some questions of

their

own, however.

A

few meshed more or

with Solzhenitsyn's text and were substituted for the novelist's simplistic and sometimes naive original proposals. Others were ruled out by Solzhenitsyn as being too broad or too political. "In general," he explained, less easilv

he agreed to let them why he could not which he explained tape one of his negative answers, in question, and after this he allowed them to repeat the proanswer a certain every answer with Natalia before cess question b\' question. "He discussed extensive meeting. "She offered Kaiser in his account of the giving it," writes him, The of it seemed to please which he accepted. sport advice, some of though he was obviously nervous about a situation he could not fully control. (We learned later that when he plaved back his tape, he was disappointed that his language wasn't more polished.)"''^ Kaiser offers one or two other interesting details about the photographic session pictures were taken of Solzhenitsvn, Natalia, and Krmolai separately and then together as a group. In posing with the family, Solzhenitsyn was all smiles, but when his own picture came to be taken he absolutely refused to smile: "It's time to be serious," he said, composing his face into a solemn mask for posterity. At one point he searched for a red pencil to underline something he thought important and would not accept Kaiser's offer of his blue pen for the purpose: it had to be red. At another he expressed conApril lest people think it was a cern that his interview not be published on hoax. Kaiser also noted the now bulging belly, pushing at his loose pullover, and the stubby, powerful, worker's hands with their scarred right thumb, but was overw helmed by Solzhenitsyn's "radiant smile" and the intense concentration of his bright blue eyes. Indeed, both correspondents were deeply affected bv Solzhenitsyn's dominating personality and steely will (and correspcjndinglv grateful for Natalia's diplomatic tact and sense of humour in the negotiations) and left with a sense that the afternoon had lasted far longer "a writer decides

w hat he

will talk about." Eventually,

—

1

than four hours.

The interview appeared full it

in

two separate versions on

3

April.

As the

first

interview that Solzhenitsyn had ever given to Western correspondents,

received front-page billing in both the Washington Post and the

Times,

and

in the

many

New

York

other nev\ spapers around the world that reprinted

one or the other version. Kaiser's article as it appeared in the Post was fairly short (the (iiiardicin in England ran it at considerably greater length) and was presented as a straight story, without the question-and-answ er format (except in the

Guardian again), whereas the

New

In addition to an introductor\ article

by

York Times story was I

ledrick Smith, there

much

longer.

was almost

a

— Whose

Life

Is

It

Anyway?

It'^iI

page of questions and answers. Both papers carried photographs of Sol-

full

zhenitsvn and his family.

The

printed stories concentrated on Solzhenits\n's current difficulties

with the authorities and on the campaign then being waged in the Soviet press against August 1914. Solzhenits\n, as usual, had been scathingl\' eloquent about the situation he found himself in. "A kind of forbidden, contam-

me and my

family," he was quoted as R\azan who have been dismissed from work for visiting mv home a few years ago."'' He went on to describe the cowardlv and illegal wa\' in which Svetlova had been dismissed from her job w hen it w as learned that she had borne Solzhenitsyn's son, the punishment meted out to Moscow housing officials for having allowed Svetlova and her parents to exchange their tw o former flats for the more spacious one in Kozitskv Lane, and the everlasting problem of surveillance. If he met anyone to work on his book, he said, that person would come under suspiinated zone has been created round

saving.

"10

verv dav there are people

this

mv house, he will be as closelv follow ed as if he and thev will investigate his background. And they find out w ho this man meets and then, in turn, w ho that man

cion.

"As soon

were

a state criminal,

then go on to is

in

he leaves

as

meeting." Solzhenitsvn told them

in detail

about the campaign of harassment and

threats he had been subjected to, starting with the confiscation of his archive in 1965,

and the

meetings.

mans

w hispering campaign conducted

official

"Thev

sa\-,

—no, he surrendered —

occupied territorv

that

is,

a

whole

for the

batter\'.

And

he served as

Germans. Or even

Vlasov. Even better, he worked right in the Gestapo. thing

is

no defamation, but under the crust

quiet,

against

him

at

Party

'Solzhenitsvn voluntariK ga\ e himself up to the Ger-

is

better,

On

a

policeman

in

he fought with

the surface, every-

the cancer of slander."

Solzhenitsvn also talked about the difficulties he had experienced over the award of the Nobel Prize, the publication oi August 1914, and in carrying October 1916. The fuss over the Nobel it w as an insult to all former w inners, including the Communist poet Pablo Neruda. In the case oi' August 1914, he had been accused of smuggling the manuscript abroad w ithout informing the Soviet authorities of its existence, whereas the truth w as that he had offered it to seven Soviet publishers without receiving a single response. As for researching and w riting

out his work for the sequel to Prize, he said,

October 1916, his status as a pariah and a "non-person" put unusual difficulties in his

as

wav.

hard for

"I live in

me

mv ow n

countrv,

to gather material as

I

it

w rite a novel about Russia, but it is w ould be if I were w riting about

Polynesia."

And what was real

it

all

out of the countrv, throw

me

for?

"The

reason for giving the interview, dissolved

The

'in

"is either to

drive

into a ditch or send

an alien fog' as thev w

me

me

out of

my

life

to Siberia, or to

or

have

rite."

huge success and attracted w orld-w ide attention to he had privatelv predicted. Readers in the West recognized

interview

Solzhenitsvn, as

me

plan," said Solzhenitsvn, revealing the

was

a

SOLZHEMTSVX

[762J this as

an unprecedented step, indicating a new threshold of desperation in and a need for even greater public support than before.

SoIzhenits\'n's situation

Solzhenits\n was not

1 he Washington Post editors had shrunk and Solzhenitsvn resented Hedrick Smith's presentation of their meeting as too novelettish.'^ True to his desire for journalistic autonomv. Smith had begun his storv with the questions and answ ers that he had insisted on recording from Solzhenitsvn at the end of their meeting, thus leaving less space for Solzhenitsvn's ow n questions and answ ers and framing them in (from Solzhenitsvn's point of view) "extraneous" material. Worst of all, there had been almost no room for Solzhenitsvn's detailed exposition of his ancestry. The Post had ignored this part of the interview w hile the Times had confined itself to some comments about his parents and childhood. Solzhenitsvn's feelings on this matter w ere conveved to Smith in a tart little note some davs later, '^ and the whole text But

still

satisfied.

Kaiser's article to a fraction of

its

original length,

,

was released text

into samizdat to rectifv the omissions. Shortlv thereafter, the

appeared

One interview

in

of the

was

Russian

manv

timing.

its

in the \\ est

It

nitsvn's pri\ ateh' arranged

been

set for

and w

as later translated in its entiretv.

things that had puzzled Smith and Kaiser about the

w as common know ledge ceremon\

Sundav, 9 April,

in

Moscow

just ten

da\s after

his

correspondents. Solzhenitsxn had insisted on talking about view

.

Dr Gierow he ,

said,

had agreed

close friends, Solzhenitsvn

w as

nent representatives of our

artistic

that Solzhe-

Nobel Prize had meeting with the two

for the deliverx of the

to

come on

inviting those

and

it

in his inter-

the ninth. In addition to

w horn he

called "the

scientific intelligentsia

most emi-

—some

writers,

the chief producers at our leading theatres, important musicians, actors, and

name them for fear of causthem unnecessarx" difficulties if the ceremonv failed to take place, but we know from his memoir that there w ere to be about sixtN altogether and that the selection criteria w ere as follow s: "We had to draw up the guest list so as to invite no one w hose civic behaviour w as in anv w a\ questionable, to omit no one w hose standing in the artistic or scientific w orld entitled him to an invitation, and at the same time to invite guests w ho reallv would come and not funk it." The list had been drawn up and the invitations prepared with Solzhenitsvn's usual attention to detail and regard for secrecy. Each invitation was handw ritten b\ Solzhenitsvn and included a detailed plan show ing exactlv how to get to Svetlova's flat (the block had about twentv entrances), w here the ceremonv was to be held. Ihe ceremon\ w as set for a Sunday so that it could take place in davlight (it w as due to start at noon), w hen the K(iB w ould be prevented from harassing the guests under the cover ot darkness, and even then some "fearless door-keepers" were appointed to keep certain academicians."-" Solzhenitsvn declined to

ing

overzealous

KGB

agents at ba\' (and to take care of stone throwing, the cut-

ting off of the electricit\-, or an\ thing else that might be

dreamed up and

attributed to "hooligans" or technical "accidents"). Deliverv of the invitations

had commenced on "I he

number

of

I

April, and Solzhenitsvn

w riters, producers, and

was gratified by the response. w ho accepted surprised me:

actors

Whose

Likf.

Is

It

Anyway?

[763]

to think that such courage, such a longing to stand upright, such a fecHng of to be slaves forever, still sur\i\ed in so man\ people." But "there were, of course, refusals too, sickeninglv in character, from people of inter-

shame

who had nothing to fear"-' (hut Zhores Medvedev writes one or two people w ho declined had entirely valid reasons tor doing so")." On the day when Solzhenitsvn met the two American correspondents, the arrangements were all complete and only the invitations remained to be delivered, so w hv did he choose this moment to speak out? Was it not national reputation

that "the

a deliberate

provocation to the authorities,

a

challenge to

—

them

just

when

ceremony was over? And w hv did he advance the interview at the last moment, as if to ensure that whatever the\ w rote w as printed before the ceremony was due Solzhenitsvn needed to keep quiet for

a

while

at least until

the

to take place?

no immediate was he who invited the correspondents in the first place (as if they themselves had asked to come) and makes no mention of the last-minute advancement of the interview. The answer is probablv to be found, however, in certain other aspects of the Soviet pres* campaign that was unleashed against him in the first three hi his

answer

ow n version of these events, Solzhenitsxn conundrum. He brushes over the fact

to this

months of

One

offers

that

it

1972.

of the most disturbing features of the original Stern

article, apart

from its biographical "revelations," had been a passage suggesting that August 1914 was not reallv a historical novel, but a thinly disguised allegory describing the Soviet armv as Solzhenitsyn had known it in the Second World War. "Cunninglv exploiting a w ell-tried method that has shielded him in the past from going to jail for treason, he has placed the action in pre-revolutionar\ times. Whoever reads August 1914, how ever, is at once aware that in depicting events from the past, the author is dealing with the problems of the present."-' The vulgar c\ nicism and stupidity of this remark suggest that it ma\- have been KGB inspired. Whatever the case, the Literaturnaya Gazeta inevitablv reproduced it, commenting that "many Western new spapers and magazines emphasize the anti-Soviet tendency of this novel" and quoting a review by Anatole Shub in the Washington Post to bolster this conclusion.-"^ On 23 Februarx', the Literaturnaya Gazeta had followed up with two

more

articles allegedlv

republished from foreign new spapers. One, by

Ma-

West German Deutsche Volkszeitung (the organ of the West German Communist Party), simply dismissed the novel as a "banal apologia for the theory of convergence," but the other, by a Finnish journalist called Martti Larni, was a far more poisonous affair. Picking up where Stern and Literaturnaya Gazeta had left off, Larni underlined rina Stiitz, said to have appeared in the

the "anti-Soviet" message of the novel, repeated Stern's allegation of allegor-

and carried the argument a stage further. Solzhenitsyn's sympaand discipline of the German army in the First World War vxith the inefficiencv, corruption, and disorganization of the Russians was intended as a barely disguised parallel w ith the Second World

ical intent,

thetic contrasting of the efficiencv

SOLZHENITSYN

[764]

War. In the Second rialist

aims as

\\ orld \A ar

in the first,

Germans

the

\\

onlv this time thev

same impebv Hitler and the

ere pursuing the \\

ere led

Nazis. Ergo (though Larni refrained from spelling this out) Solzhenitsvn

sympathized

\\

ith the

Nazis. In conclusion Larni reverted to the comparison

of Solzhenitsvn w ith another "denatured intellectual" w ho had abandoned his

the

homeland and "dissolved in a London fog" name was superstitiouslv omitted).

The

—Anatoli Kuznetsov (though

interesting thing about the Larni article

\\

although billed

as that,

Swedish newspaper called iSorrskensflamman (published b\- a faction of the Swedish Communist party in the provincial tow n of Lulea), it was nothing of the sort. In an interview given to the Finnish new spaper Lusi Suomi three da\s after his article in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, Larni re\ealed that he had never heard of Norrskeiisflamma)! and that his article had been commissioned directly bv the Literaturnaya Gazeta. Moreover, he had not read August 1914 himself but was as the translation of

an

article that

had appeared

in a

simply replying to the Anatole Shub review that the Russians sent to him. This information reached Solzhenitsvn too late for inclusion in his interview (though he w as able to get off a gibe

at the "alien fog"),

but

it

made no

difference to the gravity of the inference. Solzhenitsvn also had v\'hat he

regarded as reliable evidence that

a definite decision

had been taken

at

the

highest level to arrest and expel him. Chakovskv, the editor of the Literatur-

naya Gazeta, was reported to ha\e said as

much

at

an editorial meeting;-' the

operation was apparenth' intended to take place sometime in mid- April. it

Ihis,

seems, had been the real reason for Solzhenitsvn's sudden decision to advance

his

new spaper interxiew and make

a

the Nobel ceremony. Other factors Soviet pers),

pre-emptive

strike,

may have been

e\en

if it

did threaten

the impending visit to the

Union of President Nixon (hence the choice of American new spathe Soviet authorities w ould not w ant an international incident,

when

and Solzhenitsvn's developing theory of verbal guerrilla warfare. One of the best tactics, he had discovered, was to string a series of statements and moves together into a "cascade" in rapid succession to one another: "Events crowd in thick and fast at moments of crisis but you can also increase their density deliberately by exploiting the unique characteristics of our Soviet bigwigs: their obtuseness, their slow-w ittedness, their inability to keep two .

concerns in mind

The

.

.

at once."-*^

interview and the forthcoming Nobel ceremony constituted two

elements in the cascade; Patriarch,"

w hich

just

was Solzhenitsvn's "Lenten Letter to the a stir. Solzhenitsvn had con-

a third

then was also creating

ceived the idea of writing to the patriarch the preceding (Christmas Eve, after listening to the Christmas service

on

pastoral letter addressed to Russian

Patriarch

Western radio station and hearing a Orthodox Christians in the West bv

a

Pimen of Moscow Among other .

to parents to foster a love of the

church

things, the patriarch had appealed

in their children

and

to set

them

personal example. Solzhenitsvn, perhaps with the cares of fatherhood at

the forefront of his mind, was

moved bv

this appeal,

a

now

but also stung by the

Whose

Life

Is

Anyway?

It

[7^>5]

hypocrisy of a church that could address such words to emigres, ing completely silent in

its

own countrw Again

there

was

\\

hile

remain-

that stab of indig-

was fired to write to him! I had no choice but to write! "rhe task proyed a difficult one. Solzhenitsyn had to inform himself on the policies and possibilities of the ()rth(xlox hierarchy in Russia before he could write conyincingly, and then adopt the correct forms and tone in w hich a loyal subject of the church should address so august a personage. The latter was particularh hard for a man used to speaking out in Solzhenits\n's peremptory manner, but he had finally managed it and had sent his letter to the patriarch on 17 March. At the same time, he gaye it to one or two friends in the church to read, thinking that it would not become public before Easter and before his newspaper interyiew, but he had miscalculated. A copy quickly made its way abroad and was published there, whence it was broadcast back into the Soyiet Union b\ Western radio stations. To Solzhenitsyn's eyident surprise, it created something of a furore.-** The gist of the "Letter" was that it was hypocritical for the Russian Orthodox church to preach a course of behayiour abroad that it w as unw illing to embrace at home. "Why is your honest appeal directed only to Russian emigres? Why do you call only for those children to be brought up in the Christian faith? Why do you admonish only the distant flock to 'discern slander and falsehood' and be strong in truth and justice? And we what should we discern? Should we or should we not foster in our ow n children a loye of The Russian church has its indignant opinion on eyery eyil the church? eyer." Solzheniin distant Asia or Africa, yet on internal ills it has none tsyn's principal criticism w as that the church had sold out to the state, that it existed in a condition of abject subjugation to the secular authorities and had needlessly forfeited the right to propagate the faith. Solzhenitsyn comnant rage. "At once

I

—

.

.

.

—

pared the past half century of religious neglect with Russia's glorious reliand also w ith the yery different state of affairs in Poland. He

gious past

—

drew- attention to the wholesale destruction and despoliation of Russia's

churches, the material and spiritual poyerty of the Russian people depriyed of

all

beauty,

all

faith,

and

all

transcendence

strophic consequences for their future. the

first

w arning.

courageous

and the

cata-

priests.

he pointed out that his was not Father Nikolai Eshliman and Gleb

w arning seyen years earlier to Patriarch Pimen's and Archbishop Ermogen of Kaluga w as still sequestered in a

Yakunin, had w predecessor,

monastery

Two

in their liyes,

And

ritten a similar

for haying dared to forbid the closing of churches

and the burning

of icons and church books. Yet no action had been taken, and the Orthodox

church was

still

gious affairs.

secretly

"A church

managed by

a

quasi-goyernmental council for

dictatorially ruled

by

atheists

is

a sight

reli-

not seen in

two thousand years," commented Solzhenitsyn acidl) The consequences were that the church's mone\- was giyen aw ay for non-religious purposes, while there were no funds for the repair of churches; priests were powerless .

in their

own

parishes and had to seek special permission just to yisit the sick

or attend a ceremony.

SOLZHENITSYN

[766J

What

sort of reasoning can convince

spirit

and body of the church by

Preservation for

whom?

one that the consistent destruction of the

atheists

is

the best

means

for

its

preservation?

Certainlv not for Christ. Preservation bv v\hat means?

Falsehood? But after falsehood,

\\

hat sort of hands should perform the Eucha-

rist?

\ our Eminence! abl\'

Do

not hear one like

my unworthy cry. You will probDo not allow us to suppose, do not

not disdain completely it

every seven vears.

force us to think that for the bishops of the Russian church, earthlv authority

is

higher than heavenly authority, earthly responsibility more terrifying than responsibility to God.^*^

The "Lenten

Letter"

statement since his

\\

most eloquent and moving public Fourth Writers' Congress. In tone and form

as Solzhenitsyn's

letter to the

it was of a piece with his elegy for Tvardovsky, written shortly beforehand, and his recently completed Nobel lecture, \\ hich he planned to deliver on 9 April. And vet the responses to the "Lenten Letter," not only by government officials but also by some fellow Christians and dissidents, \\ ere more hostile than Solzhenitsyn could have imagined. On the government side, the hostility was clearly due to the fact that Solzhenitsyn had touched a sensitive nerve. Atheism is a corner-stone of the Soviet state (it is the "state religion") so that his attack on it was tantamount to heresy. By appealing to the Orthodox church to repeal or renegotiate its lopsided concordat w ith the state, Solzhenitsyn appeared to be attacking one of the sacred foundations of the Soviet system and attempting to turn the clock back to pre-revolutionary (and possibly even pre-Petrine) times. It \\ as, in conventional parlance, a counter-revolutionary proposal, though it could not be assailed as such, because it w as cloaked in ecclesiastical terminology. The hostility of fellow Christians and fellow dissidents was somewhat more surprising. 1 he attitude of the dissidents, most of \\ hom were liberals, seems to have been that the \\ hole appeal v\ as irrelevant. What was the point of the Orthodox church anyway, emasculated and muzzled as it had been for decades? And many seem to have been misled by the tone and language of the "Letter" into dismissing its concerns as a storm in an ecclesiastical teacup,

completely overlooking the

letter's far-reaching, political implications.

fellow Christians (and Christian dissidents), they were

split.

As

for

Some approved

a timely reminder of the church's present subjugation and duty to release itself in the future, but others saw in it only a gratuitous and self-serving attack on a patriarch and clergy who were doing their best under impossible conditions and were in no position to answer back. The weightiest exponent of this second view was Father Sergei Zheludkov, of Pskov, a leading Christian dissident w ho had lent his support in the past to "liberals" like Pavel Litvinov and Anatoli Marchenko but who had not hesitated to criticize Sakharov's ideas when he disagreed with them. Zheludkov had recentl)- \\ ritten a book on church reform* that ma\- have aroused Sol-

of the "Letter" as its

*The Church of People of (ioodivill, in which Zheludk()\- argued \\ ho did not belong to the church but u ho should be counted

that there as

were man\- Christians

members anyway. Zheludkov

Whose

Life

It

Is

zhcnitsvn's interest in the subject in the

Anyway?

first

ij^^']

place, but he certainly did not

share Solzhenitsyn's views. Solzhenitsyn had told the truth, said Zheludkov in an open letter to Solzhenitsvn, but not the whole truth, for the whole

was that it w as impossible for the Orthodox church in the So\ iet L nion become an island of freedom in a sea of unfreedom. It w as a miracle that

truth to

the church existed at

terms.

but

all,

did so only because

it

"What would you have

us do? Insist on

all

it

accepted the

or nothing?

state's

Try to go

underground, w hich is unthinkable given the present system? Or try to fit into the svstem and exploit those possibilities that are allowed? The Russian hierarchy took the second decision." According to Zheludkov, the patriarch w as powerless either to answer Solzhenitsvn or to act on his proposals, other than b\' abdicating. Solzhenitsyn w as further damaging the church b\' attacking it and w ould onl\ make its w ork more difficult and give comfort to its enemies. Solzhenitsyn had no right to trv to

compel people

to accept suffering

And

and martyrdom.

he

included tw o accusations that must have been particularly upsetting to Solzhenitsyn: that the "Lenten Letter" consisted of "talented half-truths that

could prove to be more harmful to

w

many

than outright

lies";

"The problem

and that Solzhe-

of providing children

nitsyn

w as out

with

Christian education arises today only in those few families w ho are

a

of touch

ith the people:

part of the rebirth of the Christian intelligentsia."^" In short,

it

was an argument

and modesty

for "realism," humility,

demands and martyrdom. As such, it was

in

seemed, heroism, a kind of recapitulation, on self-sacrifice, different territory, of Solzhenitsyn's former polemics w ith Tvardovsk) and Novy Mir. Solzhenitsvn, however, had come a long v\ay since his Novy Mir days, aided immeasurably by his work on The Gulag Archipelago and August the face of Solzhenitsvn's maximalist

1914 (not to speak of

and

for, as

it

his self-discovery in the writing of his

the Calf), as well as

by the experience gained

memoir. The Oak

in his struggle

with the

answ er to Father Zheludkov. Zheludkov had pointed out that, in times gone by, he and others had defended Solzhenitsyn when he was under attack and that Solzhenitsyn should not

authorities,

and he referred

to this in his brief

therefore attack the defenceless patriarch, particularly

when

now

the author

was

protected by his fame. "Are you saying that 'no one can act alone'?" wrote Solzhenitsyn. "Everyone can, and one person can so it's not true.

—

Had you even other extreme

heard of

—

me

that everything

about? Doesn't that

mean

And are you now going to the for me now? How did this come

nine years ago?

there

is

is

a

'safe'

way?""

For Solzhenitsyn there certainly had been

a

way

—

this

was

his

unique

w riting The Gulag Archipelago, and then the history of his rise to fame in The Oak and the Calf, he had perceived a pattern and a plot. The stories of Gleb Nerzhin,

achievement. Recapitulating his early

life's

history in the course of

Oleg Kostoglotov, and even Ivan Denisovich had been fragments of also published a religious journal in samizdat,

church and religious matters.

V puti (On

the Path), and

was

a larger

a prolific writer

on

SOLZHENITSYN

[768]

at the time to discern the grand design that behind those fragments or at best had glimpsed it only momentarily. In each of those fictional works the hero had struggled for moral selfhood, inner freedom, and spiritual understanding. 1 hey had been voyages of self-discovery, and at the same time searches for the holy grail. Now, in his mature years, he had himself become the searcher for the holy grail. His life was the storv, the work of art, and he was simultaneously its hero and its maker. But this wasn't sufficient for Solzhenitsyn. Every storv had to have a moral and

whole, but he had been unable

—

lav

and his life, too, bore a lesson if vou looked closely enough at its was the storv of a voyage from innocence to experience, from ignorance to knowledge, from sinfulness to moral improvement if not to moral perfection. And this was a lesson that should and could be brought to the notice of others and that others could learn from. The dawning of such a realization must naturally have been a slow process lasting over many years, but it seems that Solzhenitsyn's open letter to Father Zheludkov, written on 28 April 1972, was the first occasion on which he openly alluded to it in print. The "Lenten Letter" was imbued with the spirit of this discovery from beginning to end, which was presumably why Father Zheludkov had found it "pretentious" and why many other intellectuals took a dislike to its tone uithout quite knowing why. The faint whiff of an odour of sanctity had begun to rise from Solzhenitsyn's pages. Interestingly enough, this new note of exaltation was recognized by another of Solzhenitsyn's ecclesiastical admirers. Father Alexander Schmemann, dean of St \ ladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York a lesson, details.

It

—

State and a regular broadcaster of religious

over Radio Liberty.

It

may even have been

inspired Solzhenitsyn to

admired Schmemann over a year before, in the

YMCA

Solzhenitsyn that he

compose

his

at a distance,

Schmemann had

Vestnik in Paris, in

v\'as

the

first

major

was overwhelmingly

a

programmes a

to the Soviet

Union

broadcast of Schmemann's that

"Lenten Letter." Solzhenitsyn had long and the admiration was mutual. Well published

a

long article on Solzhenitsyn

which he had

natiotial

tried to

demonstrate that

writer to appear in the Soviet period,

Christian writer

w ho could not be understood

without reference to the philosophical and theological

beliefs of the

Russian

Orthodox church, and that Solzhenitsyn was in the great line of Russian classics stemming from Pushkin.'- Solzhenitsyn had read the article and liked it. "It gave me a lot," he later v\ rote to a friend in Western Europe, "and told me a lot about myself and Pushkin that I didn't know, explaining v\ hy I always felt such an affinity for his sense of the world and the key in which he writes. The article also formulated some important aspects of Christianity that I was unable to put into words.'"' Father it

Schmemann had

read Solzhenitsyn's "Lenten Letter" as soon as

reached the West and been deeply impressed with

its

his

elevated style and biblical rhythms, as

words not

just to

if

mere mortals but to all Old Testament,

identified the tone: "In the

it.

Above

all

he noted

the author had been addressing eternity,

and he immediately

in the history

of the ancient

Whose

Life

Is

Anyway?

It

chosen people, there was the astonishing phenomenon

and extraordinary men

who swam,

opening words to

draw the

ot

all

man

going on

\\

I.aster

proclaimed the heav-

in the heart

ho has

political

and he \\ ent proph-

radio,

this forgotten spirit of

of Christianity. \Ve hear the ringing

said in the hearing of

—concessions, submission, the

mising with the world and

sermon oyer the

"And now

comparison:

ecy has suddenly awakened yoice of a lone

tide, told the truth,

seit-satistaction,

untruth, weakness, and hypocrisy." These were the

Schmemann's

logical

Strange

of the prophets.

ho could not experience peace and

thev sav, against the

as

enly judgement oyer

on

\\

[7halidze, Shafarevich, Galich, and many others. At one time, w hile still a member of the Writers' Union, he had emploxed Bukovskv as his secretary to protect the latter from charges of parasitism, and it had been then that he and Bukovskv had discussed their plan for a new samizdat journal. After his expulsion in Juh Maximov wrote an angry letter to Solzhe-

close to dissident circles, tests

on human

rights,

,

,

* Solzhenitsyn

the cottage

w

was unable

ith

resolve this difficulty transfer

to

spend more than

Reshetovskaya and did not

by having an extra cabin

ow nership of the cottage

itself to

a part

like to

of his time there, because he

be there w hen she

\\

built in the grounds, after

as.

still

He w as

shared

hoping

to

which he proposed to

Reshetovskava. Late that summer, ho\\e\er, thev

quarrelled o\er a letter Reshetovskava had w ritten him, and Solzhenitsvn changed his mind.

SOLZHEMTSYN

[8o2]

nitsvn quoting Solzhenitsvn's \\

\\

ords in his Nobel lecture about the

ide solidarity of writers" and asking

one direction

—from other

\\

riters to

w hv

it

"\\

orld-

alw avs seemed to flow in onlv

Solzhenitsvn, but never from Solzhe-

nitsvn to other writers. If Solzhenits\ n's voice had been joined to the voices

of others protesting his expulsion, and

demanded from

if

Solzhenitsxn had manifested the

would have been immeasmore hampered in applving sanctions against him.-*^ In its wav it was a repeat of some of the charges made against Solzhenitsvn for refusing to join the protest over Daniel and Sinvavskv, but this time it carried more w eight, for Solzhenitsvn w as much more famous now and his immunity all the greater. It mav have been that he also sensed an implicit (negative) comparison w ith Sakharov, because on this occasion he answered the charge, although his resulting letter was evasive. solidaritv he

others, the impact

urablv greater and the authorities would have

He

Maximov

had, he wrote, interceded for

felt

though not

in private,

in public

(in his interview

with the two American correspondents, he had usedMaxi-

mov's

over The Seven Days of Creation to make

difficulties

literature's

a

general point about

Maximov himself), w ould devalue the impact of his

being above criminal sanctions, but not about

because he

felt

that public interventions

a further gloss on his posisame reason that I had not defended anv of the others: licensing mvself to w ork on the history of the Revolution, I had absolved mvself of all other duties. An artist has no other recourse if he does not want to overheat himself with ephemeral concerns and boil drv."""' Nevertheless, at his next interview w ith Western correspondents (for which, as before, he wrote both the questions and the answers), Solzhenitsvn made a point of mentioning Maximov h\ name: "He is an honest, courageous writer with a disinterested and self-sacrificing devotion to truth, and he has had great successes in his quest for it. So his expulsion from the King \\ titers' Union is perfectly normal."'" Another writer who briefly made Solzhenitsvn's acquaintance that summer was Andrei Sinvavskv. Sinyavsk\- had been quietly released from the labour camps two \ears earlier and was inevitabK w ithout a job. He was given to understand, however, that although neither he nor his wife was a Jew if the\- applied for exit visas to go to the West, the\- would not be refused. Accordingly, they were preparing to move to Paris. Sin\ avskv's

Oak and

protests. Later, in the tion. "I did not

the Calf,

defend him," he w

he offered

rote, "for the

.

.

.

,

wife,

Maria Rozanoxa, had been introduced to Natalia Svetloxa b\ their mutual was in the camps,* but their

friend Irina Zholkovskava while Sinvavskv

husbaneis had not met until Solzhenits\ n invited the Sinvavskvs to Kirsa-

novka

in the

summer

of 1973.

* Solzhenitsvn

and Svetlova's

he began to

at

ail

about

six

first

I

heir meeting

cordial.

1

he two

son, Krmolai, had been born slightly prematurely, and

months, Maria Rozanov

did not fear for his reputation u

was

a

ith the authorities in the light

.Moscow, and Natalia Svetlova helped organize

a

when

introduced Svetlova to a paediatrician

who

of Solzhenitsyn's notoriety. The

Sinvavskvs and the Solzhenitsvns subsequentiv sent their children to the same nursery in

men

summer camp

in

Koktebel. to which

of the dissidents, includint; the Sinvavskvs, sent their children in the holidavs.

sch(X)l

many

Coming into the Open strolled in the

woods

(to

evade

[803]

microphones), u here thev discussed

an\'

lit-

erature and related matters. Solzhenits\'n voiced his well-known sentiments

about the importance of history to Soviet writers and asked Sinyavsky whether

he contemplated w

on

riting

historical subjects

w hen he got to the West. So\iet burden for Russian v\ Tit-

distortions of history, he said, had created a heav\

and he implied that

ers,

to his

men

own

writers ought to share

all

account, replied evasively, but

that their attitudes to literature

so fundamentally that there

when

a

couple of months

was

later

and

little

to

it.^"

Sinyavsky, according

must have been clear to both the tasks of the w riter diverged

it

to discuss.

hardly surprising that

It is

Solzhenits\n came to

the contemporary

list

Russian writers he admired and to name those w ho constituted, the mainstream of Russian literature, Sinyavsky was not

among

in his view,

them.^^

Solzhenitsyn also had mixed feelings about Sinvavskv's decision to go

Ca/fht writes that he was "chilled and sadwere w illing to "endure Russia's desit might lead," and that he himself would have cut a poor joined those w ho emigrated after receiving the Nobel Prize. kinds of sentiments he had come to regard as correct of late, partially, it seems, under the influence of his second w ife and Shafarevich. But the very mention of the subject in those terms indicates a doubt, or an element of posturing. Elsewhere he reveals that about a month later, in a moment ot sudden candour when walking with Shafarevich, he had commented on the beauty of the Russian countryside and added, "How vividly West. In dened" to think tiny, wherever figure if he had These were the to the

we

shall

The Oak and

the

that ever-fewer people

remember

all

this if

.

.

.

ever

we

are

somewhere

else,

aw

a\'

from

Russia! "^'^ Shafarevich had reacted with predictable horror and reproached

Solzhenitsyn for such sacrilege, but the thought w as clearh' in Solzhenitsxn's mind and could not so easily be dismissed. Solzhenitsyn would have continued to keep a low profile that summer had events not conspired to alter his plans and to sw eep him aw ay on their current. The initial impetus came from Sakharov. At some point in June

OUe Stenholm,

1973 he gave a wide-ranging interview to

a

correspondent of

the Swedish radio and television network, it,

Sakharov revealed himself to be

far

w hich w as broadcast on 2 July. In more pessimistic about Soviet society

than ever before. "I'm sceptical about socialism socialism offers us anything

new on

in general.

organizing society." And: "There's nothing new it's

simply capitalism developed to

don't find that

I

the theoretical level, or a better

its

extremes.

.

.

.

.

.

.

about

We

.

.

wav

of

this socialism, .

have the same

kind of problems as the capitalist world, the same criminality, the same alienation of the individual.

The

difference

is

that our society

is

an extreme case,

maximum lack of freedom, maximum ideological rigidity, and, most typical of all, maximum pretensions about being the best society, though it is far from that." Sakharov admitted that there was not much anyone like with

himself could accomplish, but "one always needs to create ideals for oneself, even when one can see no direct w ay of realizing them," and he described himself in political terms as "a liberal, a gradualist if you like."'''

SOLZHENITSYN

[804]

Within two weeks Sakharov was violentK' attacked b\- Tass and accused a criminal charge. To underline its gravity, he was summoned on 16 August to the office of the deputy prosecutor general, M. P. Malyarov, and warned that he was giving comfort to the enemies of the Soviet state and being used bv foreign intelligence services. "Any state has the right to defend itself," said Malyarov repeatedly. "There are appropriate articles in the criminal code, and no one w ill be permitted to of "slandering the Soviet Union"

—

violate them."'''^

Sakharov denied having broken the law and, when he returned home, wrote out a transcript of the interview from memory and had it typed in multiple copies. Following Pavel Litvinov's earlier example, he released this document to foreign correspondents but w ent a step further than Litvinov by holding an impromptu press conference to denounce the government's tactics of harassment and intimidation. In his answers to journalists' questions, Sakharov touched on the intimidation of other dissidents, the harassment of his and Elena Bonner's children from their former marriages, his own professional and financial problems, and the larger political situation, but the most controversial statement he made was in connection with detente. w

Detente

ithout democratization, detente in

w hich the

W est

in effect accepts the

game would be dangerous, it would not reallv solve anv of problems. ... It would mean trading with the Soviet Union, buving

Soviet rules of the the world's its

gas and

oil,

while ignoring other aspects of the problem.

opment would be dangerous because

I

think such a devel-

w ould contaminate the w hole v\ orld w ith the anti-democratic peculiarities of Soviet societv; it would enable the Soviet Union to bypass problems it can't soh e on its ow n and to concentrate on accumulating still further strength. ... It would mean cultivating a closed country where anything that happens ma\' be shielded from outside eves, a country w earing a mask that hides its true face.'"

For

his press conference

it

Sakharov had deliberately chosen the

versary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, 21 August, and

fifth it

anni-

was on

this symbolic date that Solzhenitsvn also entered the arena. Having recently completed a fresh version of his letter to the Soviet passport authorities, he

X. \. Shchelokov. It was a prohim a permit to reside in Moscow and a declaration that Solzhenitsvn would ignore the ruling. In it he got off, at last, his bitter words on serfdom: "The demeaning, compulsory 'passport' system, in which his place of residence may not be chosen by the individual but is chosen for him by the authorities probably does not exist even in colonial countries today. However, take this opportunit\' to remind you that serfdom in our country was abolished 112 years ago, and we are told that the October Revolution w iped out its last remnants. Presumably, I addressed

it

test against

to the minister of the interior,

the April refusal to grant

.

.

.

.

.

am

.

.

.

.

I

neither a serf nor a slave and should be free to live wherever

I

find

it

necessary."'^ It is

typical of Solzhenitsyn's caution that, having

composed

this fiery

n

(]OMIN(; INTO THF. OpF.N

Statement and dated until he

it

21

had given another

August, he nonetheless held it haek for two dass interviev\ to Western correspondents. 1 le did not

care for these interviews very

you fall

He

f^*)5l

much, finding them

"a

poor genre for writers:

vour pen, the shape of vour sentences, your diction; you into the hands of reporters w ith no feel for the things that move you." considered that the two American correspondents Smith and Kaiser had lose control of

"made a hash" of his earlier interview, and this time he chose a different American and a Frenchman. Ihe results were no better: '"Le Monde shredded and even secreted the full text in the French But he was again able to release his ow version into samizdat, and that was sufficient to make the effort w orthw hile. 1 he interview marked an extension of and an advance on the previous one of eighteen months ago. Listing the various threats and harassments he had recentlv endured, including ancjnvmous letters and phone calls and threats and garbled

this interview, too,

Foreign Ministrv," he

to have

him

later wrote.^'''

killed in a car accident,

Solzhenitsyn

commented

sardonically

view of the round-the-clock surveillance he w as subjected to, it any harm came to him or he w ere killed, "vou can infalliblv conclude, with one hundred per cent certaintv, that I have been killed bv or w ith the approval

that in

of the

KGB." He

alluded brieflv to his difficulties in getting a residence

permit, to his progress on the sequels to August 1914, to the recent Soviet signing of the Universal Copvright Convention, and to other literary matters,

but the bulk of the interview, perhaps

in

response to Maximo\'s reproaches

(and the example of Sakharov), was devoted to social and political problems, the current state of the human-rights movement, and a spirited defence,

name

by name, of the individual victims of Soviet persecution. Maximov himself was mentioned again, together with Zhores Medvedev (who had just been deprived of his Soviet passport in London), Igor Shafarevich, Andrei Amalrik, General Grigorenko, Vladimir Bukovskv, Anatoli Marchenko, and well over a dozen others, including the most prominent members of the Ukrainian dissident movement. Solzhenits\ n showed himself to be a close reader of the Chronicle and took the opportunitv to defend that publication, too, and to deny persistent rumours that the authorities had succeeded in closing it down.

Among

other things Solzhenitsvn expressed his conviction that the

sit-

uation of Soviet human-rights campaigners and political prisoners was far

worse than that of similar victims in right-wing countries then in the humanrights spotlight Greece, 1 urkev, Portugal, and Spain and that many in the West were guiltv of hvpocrisy in equating the two sides. There had never been an amnestv for political prisoners in the Soviet Union in all its fifty vears of existence, and access for the press and outside observers was nonexistent, whereas all these things existed under right-wing regimes. In the light of the debate then in progress on the subject of jamming, he pointed

—

—

out that "the jamming of Western radio broadcasts in the Fast national agreements and guarantees of exist in the

minds of

.

.

.

robs inter-

meaning, because they cease to

mankind." And on Western attitudes to humanUnion, he stated, "It is important to understand

half of

rights abuses in the Soviet

all

SOLZHENITSYN

[8o6]

from public opinion in the and them alone but onlv when it is a matter of the united, mighty voice of hundreds of prominent personalities, the opinion of a whole continent. Our prisons retreat and ""^*' hide from the light of world publicity. that the East

On

West.

is

not

at all indifferent to protests

the contrary,

it

goes in deadly fear of them

.

.

—

—

.

Some

of these ideas were an elaboration of what Solzhenitsyn had writmore Delphic form, in his Nobel lecture, but at the end of his statement he offered a newly matured thought on the relative psychologies of those who lived in the West and those human-rights activists who lived in ten, in

the Soviet Union.

There is one psvchological peculiarity in human beings that al\\ avs surprises me. hi times of prosperity and ease, a man will shy away from the least little worrv at the periphery of his existence, try not to know about the sufferings of others (and his own in the future), make many concessions even in matters of central, of intimate

Vet

a

man w ho

is

importance to him,

approaching the

depriyed of everything that

may

just to

life

Because of the

We

all

quality,

first

and refuse

life,

a

naked beggar

can suddenly hnd

to take the final step, can

must not accept if it

man

has never been able to hold on to one single

Ihanks to the second quality, mankind has pulled

kinds of bottomless

that the Spirit,

already

is

but not his principles!

plateau he has attained.

out of

who

be thought to beautify

in himself the strength to dig in his heels

surrender his

prolong his present well-being.

last frontier,

pits.

.

.

itself

.

that the disastrous course of history cannot be corrected,

has confidence in

itself,

cannot influence the mightiest Pov\er

in the world.^'

A

sign of Solzhenitsyn's continuing caution

was

his request to the cor-

respondents of Le Monde and the Associated Press (the other new tion involved) to hold

up publication of his

s

organiza-

interview for one week.

He could

not have known, of course, that before the week had elapsed the authorities

would

stage the long-delayed

of the renowned Soviet

and shot by Stalin

trial

of Krasin and Yakir. Piotr Yakir, the son

army commander lona

in 1937,

and

Yakir,

his friend Victor

who had been purged

krasin had now been under

months in a case specifically intended to break the Both men had spent man\' years in prisons and camps and both confessed to underground activities both real and talse, including links they had had with Western f';w/^n' organizations. During the course of the investigation, over two hundred dissidents were questioned and in many cases obliged to undergo wrenching personal confrontations w ith Yakir and Krasin under the eyes of the KGB interrogators; some of them capitulated and gave evidence against the Chronicle. At the instigation of the KGB, Yakir wrote a letter to Sakharov urging him not to allow his name to interrogation for fourteen

Chronicle of Current Events.

be used "for purposes of propaganda against our homeland." Sakharov had not referred to this letter in his press conference but had foreseen that the

coming

trial

w ould undoubtedly be used

to link the dissident

movement with

"anti-Soviet organizations abroad," and he had publicized the

KGB

w arning

Coming into the Open that for each

new

L^oy]

issue of the Chronicle that appeared, a given

number of

and exeryone inxoKed gi\en punitive sentences/' Solzhenitsv n, too, had indicated his concern over the trial and had attempted to defuse its impact b\ rithculing it in adxance. It was "just a dismal repetition of the clums\' Stalin-\'\ shinsk\- farces," he told the Le Monde

would be

dissidents

arrested,

correspondent. "In the thirties

.

.

.

these farces, despite the primitive stage-

smeared grease-paint, the loudness of the prompter, were still a But if great success w ith 'thinking people' among Western intellectuals. no correspondents are to be admitted to the trial, it means that it has been craft, the

.

pitched two grades lower I

he

trial

.

.

""^'

still.

opened on 27 August,

less

Solzhenitsvn's interviews, and was gi\en

than

a

week

maximum

after Sakharov's

and

publicity in the Scniet

No

Western correspondents were admitted. 1 hev were, however, by the KGB and show n in part o\ er Soviet television. Yakir and Krasin repeated the charges thev had made against the Chronicle in their confessions, including the allegation that Solzhenitsxn had been a regular reader of the Chronicle and that "copies had been svstematicalK passed to him for evaluation.""^ A big campaign w as simultaneoush- opened in the Soviet press against Sakharov and Solzhenitsxn. The initial stroke was a letter in Pravda on 29 press.

invited to an extraordinarx press conference staged tor Vakir and Krasin

August signed bv fort\' members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, denouncing Sakharov for his "anti-patriotic" utterances and accusing him of jeopardizing detente. Two da\s later another letter appeared, w hich linked Solzhenitsyn's name with Sakharov's and accused the tw o of them of "slandering our social and state order" and summoning the West to return to the cold

w ar.

This letter

w as signed bv

thirtv-one

members

of the Writers' Union,

including such comparative moderates as Chingiz Aitmatov, \ asyl Bykov, Sergei Zalvgin, and Konstantin Simonov, in addition to predictable hardliners like Fedin,

Surkov, Chakovsky, and Sholokhov. During the next week mushroomed and spread from Pravda to Izvestia and the

or so, the campaign

On

September, Sakharov was attacked b\- members of the Agricultural Academy, on the second by members of the Medical Academy, on the third by composers and musicians (including Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and Oistrakh), on the sixth by artists, economists, and tech-

Literatiirnayci Gcizeta.

1

nologists.

Every

effort

the entire nation

w as made

—

to suggest that the entire intelligentsia

tioned less often) as a renegade and

As

—indeed

loathed and detested Sakharov (Solzhenitsxn was traitor, sabotaging detente

men-

and the Heltold Hedrick

on the Literaturnaya Gazeta later Smith, "we had lists of people to call some of them very important w Titand we would simplx' tell them what the Party expected them to say."^' ers Letters in support of Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, were simply ignored and handed over to the KGB (its officials made monthly inspection visits). But on this occasion the picture w as more complicated than sinki accords.

—

usual.

a staff writer

—

Perhaps because the public's hopes for

detente

had been raised unusually

— SOLZHENITSYN

[8o8]

high or because the authorities were more than customarily adept

in manipemerge a ground s\\ ell of popular opinion against him. Smith quotes a young and by no means blinkered Soyiet economist w ho explained to him during the campaign that it \\ as "quite natural for people to consider men like Sakharoy and Solzhenits\'n as traitors. It is yerv simple: Sakharoy and Solzhenitsyn are turning to foreigners for help. 1 he imperialists are using these two, and imperialism is our main enemy. So if our enemy is using these people, then naturally it must mean that they are traitors. Sakharoy called for the West to punish our country, to keep us from getting most-fa\()ured-nation tariffs from the United States. So of course he is considered a traitor and it is a normal duty for people to join a campaign to denounce him."'^'^ Curiously enough, Sakharoy receiyed painful proof of this attitude in a most roundabout \v ay. Immediately after giying his press conference, he had left for a holiday on the Black Sea. While lying on the beach near Sochi, he heard transistor radios pouring out a stream of inyectiye against him and had the uncomfortable experience of listening to people around him discuss the broadcasts and denounce the "traitor" for his oppositions to detente. At one point Sakharoy asked his neighbours whether anyone had actualh' read \\ hat this Sakharoy had said, and suggested that it might be worth finding out "perhaps he has good intentions after all" but nobody seemed interested, antl his vyife hustled him away. If the sunbathcrs discoyered his true identity, they might be tempted to assault him."^ The campaign was also successful in driying a wedge into the intellectual community tc> separate the sheep from the goats. Ineyitably there turned out to be yery few goats, either in the \\ titers' community or among scientists. The yast majority of those approached were dragooned into signing critical statements of one kind or another, making them accomplices in the repression. In this \\a\ they were compromised, and guilty consciences droye them to be eyen more critical of the outspoken few whom they blamed for haying forced them into making such painful choices. "1 he honest man makes the silent ones feel guilty for not haying spoken out," said \ alentin I urchin to Hedrick Smith w hen the campaign was oyer. "I hey cannot understand how he had the courage to do what they could not bring themselyes to do. So they feel impelled to speak out against him to protect their own consciences.""^^ Turchin spoke w ith some authority in the matter, haying been one of the few to defend Sakharoy publicly. As a result, he had been the object of unanimous condemnation at a mass meeting called by his computer institute, but open supporters could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Fortunately for Sakharoy and Solzhenitsyn, the world-wide interest in detente at that moment and the focusing of W estern attention on the Soyiet Union were to prove their salvation. In Britain, France, Germany, and the United States a growing body of public opinion began to (juestion w hether detente was worth the price, or indeed possible with "a dictatorial regime" and a "tyrannx ." V\\c non-persecution of Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn was

ulating Sakharov's

\\

ords, there really did

.

.

.

—

,

Coming into

thf. Opf.n

[809]

it w as emphasized at all levels them would put an end to detente. Perhaps the most influential intervention was that of the president of the American Acadenu" of Sciences, \\ ho deplored the attack on Sakharov by fortv Soviet academicians and sent his opposite number at the Soviet Academv a succinct telegram: "Harassment or detention of Sakharov w ill have severe effects upon relationships between the scientific communities ot the USA and USSR and could vitiate our recent efforts tow ard increasing interchange and cooperation.""^^ This was (^n 9 September 1973. A da\- later. Senator Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means (committee in Washington, remarked that he w as against increased trade w ith the Soviet Union until the persecution of people like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn ceased. Almost at once the Soviet press campaign against Sakharo\ and Solzhethe W estern threats seemed to be taking effect. The U.S. nitsvn was halted Congress w as just then debating the .Mills and Jackson amendments,* and the Soviet government w as reluctant to worsen its image still further. But Sakharov and Solzhenitsvn did not fall silent. Sakharov, as before, was the more outspoken and pugnacious of the two. Having returned from his holiday, he gave a press conference on 8 September on the Soviet abuse of psychiatry for political purposes. On the ninth he followed this up with an interview w ith a Dutch radio station on the same subject. On the twelfth he issued a statement refuting the main accusations made against him in the Soviet press, asserting that he w as not a w armonger and not against detente, but simph" for a genuine detente in w hich human rights would be respected and internal tensions relaxed. Finally, on the fourteenth he sent an open

made

in the

a

touchstone of further co-operation, and

West

that an\- sanctions against

—

letter to the

and a

to insist

U.S. Congress appealing to it to support the Jackson amendment on the Soviet Union's acknow ledging the right of emigration as

condition of receiving most-favoured-nation status.

capital letters in the Washington Post

and appears

to

The

have had

letter

w as

a decisive

set in

impact

on American congressmen, for the amendment was passed in the teeth of opposition from President Xixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger."'* Solzhenitsxn, meanwhile, was concentrating his attention on the two important, programmatic essays that he had begun that summer: ""Peace and X'iolence" and Letter to the Leaders. "Peace and X'iolence" was an amplification of some of the ideas he had advanced in his Nobel lecture ideas, he now felt, that had been missed or misunderstood because of the indirect w ay in which they were expressed. He thought the time had come to make them more explicit and to link them to the theme of peace and detente, much as Sakharov was doing in his public statements. He appears to have been much preoccupied w ith Sakharov and Sakharov's view s that summer and autumn.

—

* These v\ere

amendments to a bill proposed bv President Nixon to ease trade with the Soviet Union bv granting the latter "most favoured nation" status, a device to give the Soviet Lnion access to credits and to reduce tariffs on its exports to the United States. The amendments were intended to make this status dependent on the So\ iet Union granting freer emigration to the Soviet Jews.

SOLZHENITSYN

[8io]

In his interview with Le Motide and the Associated Press, he had discussed and defended Sakharov at some length, offering his o\\ n idiosyncratic interpretation of Sakharov's importance: "There is in his behaviour a profound significance, a loftv sxmbol, a logical working-out of his own destinv: the inventor of the most destructive weapon of our age has submitted to the overpowering pull of the World's Conscience, and the eternally afflicted conscience of Russia. Weighed down by our common sins, and the sins of each and every one of us, he has abandoned the abundantly good life of which he was assured and which destroys so many people in the world today, and has

stepped out in front of the jaw

s

of all-powerful violence."

The

Soviet govern-

ment's charges against Sakharox he called "absurd" and "shameless" and pointed

out that in his suggestions for reform Sakharov invariably showed himself to

be well informed and constructive. Nevertheless, said Solzhenitsvn, there

were many things he could not support in Sakharov's concrete proposals, and it appears that his tw o essays were an attempt to formulate these differences and offer alternatives." "Peace and \ iolence" was completed in August 1973 and was first offered to Le Aloude, but the French new spaper rejected it, and Solzhenitsvn was obliged to seek another publisher (a new experience for him). On 3 August he heard that the Nobel Prize committee in Oslo had short-listed forty-seven candidates, including Presidents Nixon and Tito, for the Peace Prize, which struck him as ridiculous (he had not then heard of the even more surrealistic nomination of the eventual w inners, Kissinger and Le Due Tho). He decided to adapt his essay into a proposal of Sakharov for the prize and sent it off to Per Hegge at Aftenposten in Oslo (showing Sakharov a copy to warn him). 1

Ihe essay appeared (m

1

1

September. Sakharox immediately signified

acceptance of the nomination, but there xxere procedural

his

The

difficulties.

late for 1973 and was rejected. The idea appealed and Danish parliamentarians, hoxxever, and to some people

nomination had come too to

some

British

in other countries,

1974

if

who

pressed for Sakharov's candidacy to be switched to

1973 was out of the question, and this \xas eventually done.

Almost simultaneously, Solzhenitsvn completed and sent off his Letter The idea for it had come to him while he xx as finishing the first draft of "Peace and \ iolence," but w hereas the latter xxas concerned xxith to the Leaders.

"foreign policy," Letter

to the

Leaders contained a set of proposals for the alter-

ation of Soviet policy in domestic matters as it

in a

such

mood

a pull

of high excitement.

on me,

I

w

as so

The

Letter

xxell.

Solzhenitsvn had

xx

ritten

"had suddenlx' begun to exercise

overw helmed bx the crush of ideas and phrases, August 1 had to abandon mx' main

that for txxo days at the beginning of

work,

doxx n, and order it in sections." ork on the Letter throughout August and completed it on the last dax of the month. His initial plan xxas to release it to the press at the same time as "Peace and \ iolence" and double their impact, but let

the spate expend

Solzhenitsxn continued to

itself, xx rite it all xx

Natalia Svetlova dissuaded him:

let

and have time

before

to think about

it,

the Soviet leaders receive the Letter it

became public knoxx

first

ledge. Other-

Coming into the Open

[8ii]

would l)c tempted to dismiss it as propaganda. 'Since most attention w as paid to the fact of Sol/.henitsyn's nomination for the Peace Prize, the ideas propounded in his essa\- were Sakharov of generally ()verlcK)ked, though one or two correspondents in Moscow to whom Solzhenitsvn had given the Russian text, did note that it w as Solzhenitsx n's most outspoken attack to date on Western liberals and what he called their wise, thev

,

polic\-

of "appeasement" towards the Soviet aggressor.

The correspondents

U.S. Senate and the British Labour party Harold Wilson) for "hypocrisy," and his bew il-

also noted his criticisms of the

Prime xVlinister derment over the burgeoning of the Watergate (especially

affair,

which,

in

common

with the vast majority of the Soviet population, he regarded as an incomprehensible self-inflicted wound. The essa\- was not widely translated or discussed, h()we\er, and

it

disappeared from the international press betorc

its

contents could become w idely known.

Throughout the

rest of

September, Western publicity

in

favour of Sol-

zhenitsvn and Sakharov continued to mount. Thousands of prominent scientists, w Titers, artists, and other intellectuals signed petitions and telegrams

The U.S. House of Representatives heard a motion proposing two men be made honorary citizens of the United States. A leading newspaper commented that "the Solzhenitsyn-Sakharov affair ... is fast

of support. that the

escalating into a major international incident.

And

.

.

.

[It] is

swiftly reaching into

seemed that the campaign was for once American 1973 the Soviet Union ceased jamming September On 13 having results. for the first time since the Second World broadcasts foreign radio certain War. In the same week General Grigorenko w as transferred from a mental hospital to a normal hospital, and Evgeni Barabanov, one of the participants in From under the Rubble, emerged unscathed from a press conference at Svetlova's Moscow flat, w here he had announced his refusal to respond to a KGB political life."'-

it

summons.

On

September the Soviet Union took another step tow ards co-oper2 West by signing the Universal Copyright (Convention and with the ation establishing its ow n special agency for handling copyright matters (\'AAP).* 1

Since the exact wording of the relevant legislation was kept secret, there w ere persistent rumours that the new Soviet agency would use its pow ers to cut off samizdat or blackmail

Western publishers

into renouncing unofficial Soviet

manuscripts. But Solzhenitsyn found an ingenious notion. For

some

way

of challenging this

time he had been trying to think of a wa\- to publish The First Circle that he had cut

when preparing

some

the novel

from Sovy Mir. Accordingh', he announced that he was nowreleasing tw o chapters (chapters 44 and S8) into samizdat. If the Soviet Union was serious about preserving the rights of Soviet authors, it would protect these chapters from "arbitrary publication in the West."^"* No action w as in

extra chapters

for publication in

fact taken

by

VAAP

or by the Soviet government, either to defend or to

* Vsesoyuziioye agentstvo avtonk'ih prav (All-union .\genc\- for Authors' Rights).

SOLZHENITSYN

[8i2]

encroach upon Solzhenitsvn's copyright, and subsequent events show ed that the fears of a censorship role for the new cop\ right agencx had been some-

what exaggerated.

I

he chapters were pubHshed

in the \\ est

without hin-

drance.

Bv mid-September 1973 the storm of publicity raging in both East and West around the figures of Solzhenitsvn and Sakharov w as beginning to die down. Their positions looked stronger than ever. Iw o lone individuals had severely shaken the monolithic Soviet government's policy on detente, had its pow erful adversarx the United and vet seemed immune from reprisals by virtue of their w orld-w ide fame and reputations, in The First Circle Solzhenits\n had written, "For a country to have a great writer don't be shocked, I'll lower mv voice is like having a second government."'"* Could it be that the prophec\' was coming

exerted a direct influence on the policies of

,

States,

—

—

true? *

An

interesting extension of the nineteenth-centur\- critic \'issarion Belinsk\"s

are Russia's parliament."

dictum that

"\\ titers

44 THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO Solzhenitsyn's mood was buoyant

in the

summer

of 1973, yet

at

the

back of his mind one unresolved problem continued to nag him: what to do about The Gulag Archipelago. 1 he original plan had been to publish in 1969, shortly after he completed it. The chance of receiving the Nobel Prize had caused him to put the matter off, and after the award was made know n, he had more than half expected to go to the West, where he could publish

had changed his mind about that too. The year 1970 had gone by, and 1971, and at the end of 1972, after much agonizing, he had decided to postpone the moment once again. His conscience was not he felt he had a duty to the millions of dead entirely easy with that decision the book at his leisure.

He

—

Gulag victims to publish at once. On the other hand, he could rationalize the postponement by envisaging the reprisals to which he (above all, he) and others of his two hundred witnesses would be subjected once the book appeared. But the determining factor was his desire to continue work on the and access to sources sequels to August 1914. For these he needed more time Archipelago at least The Gulag and he resolved to delay in the Soviet Union

—

—

until

Lenin began to play

a

major role

in the series.

Lenin had already appeared

one chapter of August 1914, but Solzhenitsyn had suppressed that from the published version and could easily do the same with the next two volumes. Only in volume 4 would Lenin play such a prominent role that it would be impossible to conceal the author's attitude to him, and that would come out, according to Solzhenitsyn's calculations, sometime in 1975.' It is possible that this decision was influenced by certain difficulties Solzhenitsyn was experiencing in arranging for foreign translations of The Gulag Archipelago. In October 1972 Solzhenitsyn had written to Olga Carlisle that in

813

-

SOLZHENITSYN

[814]

Harper & Row were to have the rights onlv to the Enghsh-language edition and that he was very concerned about the quality of the translation.

am

I

especially sensitive about the English translations

estlv,

am

I

not pleased with anv of the big translations.

.

.

.

and

to speak

Some of them

hon-

reduce

me

Meanwhile, a lot more will depend on how the translations of August, [Gulag] are understood and received. This is not simplv October, March, and my author's sensitivity, on this the whole solidity of mv legs depends, and I cannot vield to anyone out of goodwill. to despair.

.

He

did, he wrote,

He

.

.

still \\

ish

Olga

Carlisle to

be responsible for the English

and that he owed her a debt of gratitude for her work on The First Circle and her help with Gulag. But Carlisle was still dissatisfied and in Januarv 1973 had sent him an ultimatum: either she should have full control over the world rights or she would withtranslation.

felt

that she

wanted

this

altogether. It had taken two months for her letter to arrive, and he had answered her immediately: "Your letter has greatly saddened me, especially for its lack of keeping with the spirit of the book we are now talking about." He dealt with her objections to the new arrangement one by one and begged her to reconsider. "I w ill be sincerely happv if you keep the right of translation [into English] for yourself, to be ready at the agreed date and without going beyond the limitations of my conditions for all translators and publish-

draw

ers."

These "conditions" appear

to

have been arrived

at

by Solzhenitsyn only

slowly, in the course of thinking about Western publication, and he

knew

Western publishers would probably "cringe" when they learned about

that

them. "Under these conditions, the publishing house

\\ ill have extremely small This must be so, so that this book does not become a commercial commodity and will not be sold at demented Western prices ($10! This is 60 rubles. This cannot even be conceived of by our compatriots!)"' At the same time, Solzhenitsyn concluded that it would be helpful if the foreign translations appeared more or less simultaneously with the publication in Russian: the publicity would be much greater, and his own position thereby strengthened. But he was beginning to have serious misgivings about the American translation. According to his memoir, Carlisle had informed him in 1970 that the translation was "ready. ""^ Yet in her 1973 letter she had

profits.

uritten that only a in "a

more

was complete, while

"first draft"

"a substantial part" existed

and

finished style." For Solzhenitsyn (after four

a half years) this

was not enough. If

.

.

.

your decision

minating the

affair,

[to

withdraw] should be

just for

unfinished work (because

beginning of

a translation,

I

it

all

cannot consider being

a stage

I see one way of terno one: FIRE. Your greatly literal translation to be even the

irreversible,

and offensive a

to

which

is

usually completely unneces-

sary for translators) cannot be considered the "property of (as

vou write) since and

insofar as the

work

is

paid

for.

.

.

.

[Thomas Whitney]" Thus, upon comple-

GLi.\(i ARCiiir'F.i.xGO

I'ln:

tion of the

pavmcnt ...

the materials of the translation must he, hv vou

all

personally or hv xour representative,

of I)r

I

and

I|eeh|

HLRNKD,

left to

Knghsh bitter,

Olga

us sa\ inside the fireplace

let

presence.

in his

Whether the Russian manuscript tsvn

[Hi 5]

and

(>arlisle

I)r

I

Sol/hcni-

shotiltl l)c hiirncti as well,

lech to decide and suggested that a

new

translation be started "from zero." But he cotild not help feeling

he

\\

some completclv secondary, imnamed reasons vou

rote, "that tor

have determined to stain the mo\ ement of

this

book,

\\

hich

is

not

a literary

commodit\' but a link in Russian historx ."' It was as well he had decided to postpone publication for two more \ears, and perhaps it was a relief w hen he heard that the

had decided to withdraw from the project altohands of the man w ho had done the donke\ work homas \\ hitnew

(^arlisles

gether and to leave

it

so far, the translator

in the I

This was the rather unsatisfactory position in September 1973

Solzhenitsvn received electrifying news from Leningrad: the

down and

confiscated a cop\- of The Gulag Archipelago.

him on

September and was confirmed on the

1

The

first

when

tracked

message reached

His devoted tvpist,

third.

Elizaveta \'oron\anska\'a, had been interrogated b\- the

KCiB had

KGB and

had di\ulged

the whereabouts of one of the copies. \ oronvanskaxa herself was dead, prob-

ably a suicide.

was

in the

There w as

\'iolence" and Letter that the

game w as

onh' thing

little

he could do on the spur of the moment.

midst of completing and dispatching

left to

to the Leaders,

up:

do w

w

ith his

as to

but

a

its

in the

He

copies of "Peace and

few davs' thought con\inced

magiuiw opus

order

final

hands of the

KGB,

speed\' publication in the V\ est.

him the

The

Russian text was ready, and there was hope that the translations, if rushed, would not be too far behind. He sent word secretlv to Dr Heeb at once and on 5 September announced the existence of the book, and his decision to publish it, to \\ estern correspondents in Moscow He described the book as a history of the labour camps that contained "only real facts, places, and the names of more than two hundred persons w ho are still alive," but w as careful .

to specif\- that

it

covered the years "1918 to 1956" (that

is,

stopping short of

Brezhnev period).^ Ironically, although it was Solzhenitsyn's most important new s of the month, it was almost completely overlooked in the

the

flood ot indignant publicity about the press

campaign against him and the

merits and demerits of detente.

Solzhenitsvn did not dare go personally to Leningrad to investigate Voronyanskaya's death for fear of stepping into a trap, and it took him several weeks to piece together a haz\' picture of what must have happened. The sixtv-seven-vear-old typist, lame and in poor health, had been arrested in the first half of August. Her modest room in a communal flat had been ransacked, and she was taken to the "Big House" (the KGB headquarters in Leningrad), where she w as unremittingh" interrogated for five da\"s and nights. Eyentuallv, she cracked and revealed that a copy of the book w as buried in the garden of a dacha at Luga, not far from Leningrad. The dacha belonged

SOLZHENITSYN

[8i6]

Leonid Samutin, the former labour-camp prisoner and X'lasovite who had Ryazan (it was he w hom Solzhenitsyn had questioned in his car) and been one of his 227 informants for the book. The KGB had released \'oronvanskava but had kept her under some sort of house arrest to prevent her informing Solzhenits\'n, or anyone else, of what had happened.

to

visited Solzhenitsvn in

But

its

agents had not gone to collect the book.

They w ere

in^ for Samutin to leave his dacha, so that they could go

w

apparently w hile

ait-

he was aw ay

and keep their possession of the book a secret. Their plans had been upset by the unexpected death of Voronyanskaya some two w eeks after the interrogation. It is still not clear on which day she died. The bodv w as taken to the Leningrad morgue in strictest secrecy and

was not shown even

to the family before being sealed into a coffin for burial.

—

Voronyanskaya was said to have hanged herself. The funeral took place on 28 August 1973 and w as attended bv Samutin. The following day, Samutin telephoned Efim Etkind in Leningrad to inform him of Voronyanskaya's death, and the two of them arranged to meet at the cemeter\', w here Samutin informed Ftkind of the search of Voronvanskava's flat, the interrogation, and the confiscation of her "private archive." Etkind deduced from this that Samutin meant The Gulag Archipelago and telephoned Solzhenitsyn in Moscow to give him the

The

cause of death was given as "death by asphyxiation"

news. According to Solzhenitsyn's later reconstruction of events, however, Etkind had made a mistake. The manuscript had not yet been taken, and it w as Etkind's telephone call that triggered the search (both Solzhenitsyn's and Etkind's telephones were being tapped at this time). ()nl\ three days later was the loss of the manuscript finally confirmed.'* The most galling aspect of this tragic affair w as that Solzhenitsyn had thrice asked Voronyanskaya to burn her copy of the manuscript, and at the third time of asking she had assured him it was done. But, fearing that other copies might be lost, she had secreted her copy in Samutin's garden "just in case" (burial, burning, or confiscation seem to have been the fate of most of Solzhenitsyn's manuscripts at one time or another). The only source of information about \'oron\anska\a's last da\ s and hours was another w oman living in the same communal flat, who told lurid and contradictory stories of a hanging body w ith bloodstains and even knife wounds on it. It later emerged that this w oman w as the niece of one of Leningrad's senior prosecutors and

had only recently moved out of the flat to make way moved out again very soon after X'oronyanskaya's death, and Voronvanskava's room was sealed.^ SolzhenitsN n had no doubt that the KGB's capture of the book was a

that a family of workers for her. She, too,

*1 have tried to reconstruct the chronology of events surrounding \'oronyanskaya's death from

Solzhenitsyn's htcrarv

pubhshed in Efim Ktkind's

oir,

in

this

memoir (The Oak and the Calf), from his "sixth su]-)plement" to the memRKhD, no. 137 (1982), and from the fev\ fragments about it that appear

Vestnik .\'otes

of a Son-conspirator (Oxford

episode remain to be clarified.

That the

and

New

KCJB found

a

York, 1978), but man\- aspects of

copy of The Gulag Archipelago at is beyond dispute, how ever.

Samutin's dacha after interrogating X'oronvanskaya for several days

— Tin: (JLLAG

moment

decisive easily

in his life.

I

outdoing the notorious

lis

[Si-]

:\R(:iiii'i:i..\(,()

most outspoken work on the camps of the (J)ii(/itcrors in its excoriation

h'cast

—

e\ er

of Soxiet

it was hountl to bring retrii)Ution on his head. At first sight it seemed a greater disaster than the seizure of his archive in 196.^. .\nd vet his mood was tjuite different. "Not for a single hour, not for a minute, was down-hearted on this occasion," he later w rote.'^ he difference was that in 196.^ he had been taken completeK b\ surprise and had b\ no means hardened in his opposition to the So\ iet regime. On the contrarw it was the K(iB strike against him that had reawakened his worst fears and proxoked a re\er-

excesses

I

1

sion to the convict's paranoia that he hat! been slow

1\

he had conscioush embraced the role that the K(il5

casting off. Since then hatl, as

upon him, and had come successfulK" through a himdred stronger and more battle-hardened trom each one. H\ now

were, thrust

it

crises,

emerging

his fears, thoutih

ineradicable, w ere considerabh less than before, and he had acquired a faith in di\ ine

guidance: "I had enough experience ... to know from the prickling

of m\' scalp that God's hand was in

ne\er have mustered the strength, he while he w as unharmed and just as before, the all

at the

still

KCiB had taken

The

It

felt,

is

Th\- w

ill!"

Fa en so, he might

to publish Gulag \oluntaril\

had work to do

merc\' of a mightier force.

est thou, idle servant?

it!

,

not

in the Soviet

Union. But

the matter out of his hands.

Ihev were

"I

had glimpsed the finger of (iod: Sleep-

time has long since come and gone. Re\eal

it

to

the world!'""

When

the unthinkable happened, Solzhenits\n was

still

under the

ence ot the euphoria engendered bv his and Sakharov's successes

influ-

in their

a moment it seemed that the two Davids might succeed in thwarting (ioliath. Fhe entire U estern world appeared to be on their side. In his Rozhdestvo hide-out, Solzhenits\ n kept his ear glued to his short-wave radio for news of the battle. One more heave, it seemed to him, and some real changes might be on the w a\ Not so long ago he had w ritten of a ke\' character in August 1914: "Fver since his \ outh, \'orot\ ntsev had been obsessed b\' a profound desire to be a good influence on the history ot his countrv, b\' either pushing it or pulling it b\ the roots of the hair, if necessarv in the right direction." Fhat passage had ended w irh a rueful admission: "But in Russia that kind of pow er and influence w asn't granted to anyone who w asn't fortunate enough to be close to the throne; at whatever point \ orotvntsev attempted to exert pressure and however much he exhausted himself tr\ing, the effort was alwavs in vain."" Now, at last, \ orotvntsev-Solzhenits\ n must have felt that his hour had come. Towards the end of October, he drew up a list of possible courses of action the authorities might take. Gulag, he felt sure, w as being passed "directhtrom the experts to the top bosses, right up to Andropov himself," and its effect would be devastating: "The blood must have turned to ice in their

unequal struggle w th the Soviet authorities. For

.

—

its publication might be fatal to the s\stem."'So what would thev do? Solzhenitsvn foresaw half a dozen options. Ihe was to kidnap his children as hostages, but he w as readv for that. "We

veins;

first

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[8i8]

had the

.

.

made

.

memorv

a

superhuman

decision: our children

were no dearer

of the miUions done to death, and nothing coukl

to us than

make us stop the West bv

Thev might trv to intercept the manuscripts in and steaHng them, or bring legal pressures to bear, perhaps under the new copyright law Or simplv intensitx their efforts to blacken and intimidate him. For all these he w as equally prepared. But there was one last option that he secretly hoped they would choose to negotiate. "Against this that book."'

breaking

in

.

—

last

put

I

a large

question mark," he writes in The Oak and

remark of Demichey's that had once been passed along \\ ith

SolzhenitsNn?

adds defensiyely,

them

He

won't

liye to see the

"I didn't really belieye in

for myself, couldn't yisualize

the Calf,

quoting

day!" After w hich Solzhenitsyn

them

[negotiations], didn't

The

had been

latter

set

w

ant

them." But he had done eyerything he

could to prepare for them and make them possible. His foreign and policies

a

to him: "Negotiate?

out in "Peace and \ iolence" and Letter

home

to the Leaders.

had deepened and expanded upon the anti-Western sentiments

in

the former, and The Gulag Archipelago had been equipped with a deceptiye

chronological indicator,

"From 1918

to 1956."

It

appears likely that part

7,

would haye been held back bv Solzhenitsyn if Brezhney had really entered into negotiations (which was why Solzhenitsyn had announced the same chronology to the press). On the day he posted his Letter, Solzhenitsyn had felt that it "couldn't be more timely: they had realized at last that we were a force to be reckoned with." And he had

dealing with the

acceded to

camps

after 1956,

his wife's request that the existence of the Letter

be kept

hope that thev would read it."'' answer to his pravers, the day after he had draw n up

a secret

"in the infinitesimal

As

if in

of options, Solzhenitsyn did get a kind of offer to negotiate

his table

—not from the

government or the Central Committee but from Natalia Reshetovskava. He had seen her two davs beforehand at Rozhdestvo. Thev had had a furious row, and he w as not anxious to see her again so soon. But Natalia was insistent, and he deduced from the meaningful tone of her voice that it w as not just a personal matter but had some sort of political dimension as well. Thev met at the Kazan Station (the terminus for R\azan) later that same day, 24 September 1973. According to Solzhenitsyn, Natalia said that she had been speaking to "certain people" and had come to discuss the possible publication of some of Solzhenitsvn's suppressed works. Ihe prime candidate was Cancer Ward. Was Solzhenitsyn, she wanted to know prepared to negotiate for the publication of Cancer Ward? Would he sign a publisher's contract and keep quiet about the fact that she had come here to offer him this concession? After all, it had been his refusal in 1967 to go to Navy Mir and sign a "mild" letter on \\ estern publication that had led to the ban in the ,

first

place.

She told him he was wrong to keep attacking the security organs. It w as Ontral Committee that w as persecuting him, not the KCiB. "It w as the\" w ho published Feast of the Conquerors, and w hat a mistake that was!" She said she had recenth' made many new and influential friends in high places, and

the

The Gli.ag Archipelago

[Hk;]

thev were far cleverer than Solzhenitsyn gave them credit for being.

thev

If

had been searching for his manuscripts, it was Solzhenitsvn's fault: "\'ou tell the world that vour most important works are still to come, that the flow \\ ill continue even if you die, and that w av vou force them to come looking." Evidentlv with The Gulag Archipelago in mind, she asked him, "W'hv don't vou just make a declaration that all your works are in vour exclusive possession and that vou won't publish anvthing for twenty vears?"'"^ Solzhenitsvn writes that the bargain did not strike him as

a ver\'

good

one, though he plaved along with the conversation for the sake of appear-

ances and genuinelv wavered over Cancer Ward. Politicallv,

important to him, but the prospect of publication

He

—

it

was no longer Union w as

in the Soviet

would agree to publication in w ould agree to keep quiet about

and with nothing and her offer (though it appears he didn't intend to for one moment). The irritating thing from his point of view was that he was being obliged to conduct these negotiations on such a low level with his ex-w ife. On the other hand, he was exultant that "thev" had chosen to negotiate with him at all and w as sure that she had been dispatched bv someone in an official position. 1 his seemed to be confirmed when she cautiouslv asked him w hether he would agree to talk to somebodv "a bit higher up," and explained that her aim was to help him: "I believe that in the discussions I have had, and in particular chapters of mv memoirs which I have sent to certain people, I have succeeded in explaining vour character, defending vou, and making vour lot easier." Solzhenitsvn, she said, was surrounded bv fools: "Somebod\' is deceiving you, inflaming vour suspicions, practicing some terrible emotional blackmail on vou, inventing imaginarv threats." She said it was time for him alluring.

cut.

He

said he

also said he

full

their conversation

—

come

and talk, but Solzhenitsvn was not prepared to negotiand unsatisfactory wav, and told her that he would speak "only to the Politburo" and onh' "about the nation's destinv, not m\' own." The conversation then degenerated into another personal w rangle, and thev parted with nothing resolved." In his dramatic account of this meeting in The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsvn expresses his conviction that Natalia was acting under orders from the KGB (with whom she must have been put in touch bv Novosti) and that the two of them were being watched, photographed, and recorded by secret policemen in plain clothes on parallel platforms. Indeed, this scene forms one of the high points of his book and was the reason, he w rites, w hv he broke to

to his senses

ate in this indirect

off relations with her afterwards. Reshetovska\a, howexer, in a separate account

of this meeting, has thrown considerable doubt on Solzhenitsvn's interpretation.

The

entirely her

meeting, and the suggestion for negotiations, she writes, were

own

as a last feverish

*See note

idea, conceived in desperation after their

attempt to avert

a

row

at

Rozhdestvo

permanent rupture.*

to p. 801. After their quarrel over the

Rozhdestvo cottage

in the late

zhenits\ n had informed Natalia Reshetovskaya that he did not wish to see her or v\

ith

her again.

summer, Solcommunicate

SOLZHENITSYN

[82o]

She had begun by using her contacts

at

Novosti to approach someone

probably in the ideological department of the Central Committee, since that w as where most of Solzhenitsyn's problems had arisen. This person, whom Natalia promised not to name (and has still not named), was in the Party,

extremely cautious, and or

make

felt

that Solzhenitsyn

would not agree

to negotiate

concessions, but said that he would certainly agree to talk to Solzhe-

nitsN'n if the latter

chance of doing

came

a deal

that her sole contact

w

to the (Central

Committee and

oyer Cancer Ward. As for the ith that

that there

KGB,

might be

a

Natalia writes

organization had been shortly beforehand,

about The Gulag Archipelago and to w hether she knew of any further copies. As Solzhenitsyn's former wife, she w as an obvious target for questioning, especially since she was mentioned in V'oronyanskaya's diary as one of the typists. The diary had contained one or two other names as well, about which the KGB had also questioned her, and that was w hy she in turn was to mention these names during her meeting w ith Solzhenitsyn (leading him to accuse her ot haying given them away herself). This, then, w as the background to Natalia's meeting with Solzhenitsyn, and she had fixed it up in the fantastic and forlorn hope that if she could somehow be the instrument of his reconciliation w ith the government, she w ould earn his undying gratitude and thereby salvage their relationship. It was a pathetic enterprise, and she was hopelessly out of her depth, arousing his suspicions all the more and ruining their relations forever. But her assertion that she w as not the cat's-paw of the KGB rings true, and her belief that Solzhenitsyn later exaggerated his suspicions is supported by two further

when

its

agents had

come

to question her

try to discoyer

She had set their rendezvous, she writes, inside the stawas Solzhenitsyn w ho had insisted that they w alk to the far end of one of the platforms, from where he could see everyone for yards around and make sure that there were no microphones or eavesdroppers. If they were spied upon, it was not pre-arranged w ith her. In her view, Solzhenits\n arrived at the opinion that she was being pieces of evidence. tion building,

and

it

manipulated by the

KGB only much later,

his total rupture of relations.

The

probably as

a

way

of rationalizing

point was that she had written

him

a "ner-

about their differences over the Rozhdestvo cottage, in which she had taunted him w ith being a puppet of Svetlova. This letter she handed to him at the station. Three weeks later she recei\ed a bitter reply, breaking

vous

letter"

off relations

and informing her that he had withdraw n w as no mention

the cottage transferred to her. But there

Kazan Station meeting or of any suspicions

that Natalia

the KCjB.'^ This accusation did not arise until

his request to at that

have

time of their

had been acting for

later.

Solzhenitsyn could not go back to Rozhdest\o in these circumstances, running into Natalia (it was in any case the end of the season), nor

for fear of

Moscow without a residence permit, and he had promised Zhukovka for good. Fortunately, the Chukovskys came to the rescue

could he stay to leave

again. Lvdia

in

Chukovskava had followed the Sakharov-Solzhenitsyn

battle

Till

against in earlv

(iii.\(.

1^2

:\iross," a description that puzzled observers until Ciinzburg himself clarified the matter with a separate statement saving that he had taken charge of a fund to help the families of pc^litical prisoners and that the main source of money for the fund was Solzhenitsvn.'"^ In tact, the status of political prisoner no longer existed in the Soviet Union. It had been abolished by Stalin in 1937, and w ith it the (Committee to Aid Political Prisoners (headed in those days b\' (iorky's former wife, Lkaterina Peshkova), popularly known then as the "Political Red Cross." Aid to the victims ot political persecution had always been a Russian tradition, however, and it was revived again in the mid-sixties by members of the Democratic Alovement. In 1970 an attempt had been made to organize this aid on a more regular basis, and it was at around this time that Solzhenitsvn had begun donating a part of his royalties. He had alw ays intended the royalties from The Gulag Arcbipehigo to go to such a cause as well, and in Zurich he lost no time in setting up the Russian Social Fund to Aid Political Prisoners and Their Families, which was properly constituted as a charitable foundation under Sw iss law. Theoretically, other people were invited to contribute to the fund too, but in practice the overw helming bulk of the money consisted ot the proceeds from The Gulag Archipelago. Ihe fund was officialK' launched in April 1974, and (jinzburg was put in charge of collecting names and distributing aid within the Soviet Union. It was for this reason (not formally, but in fact) that he had been expelled from Moscow and obliged to leave his family and reside in Tarusa, a small town about eighty miles to the south, *

There were

several counts against Etkind, including his earlier defence of losif Brodsky, but

the Solzhenitsvn connection seems to have been the decidiny factor.

Taking Positions

[^75]

and placed under administratixc surxcillancc, hut it did not stop him from announcing the existence ot the tund and inxiting appHcations. The president of the fund, he said, would he not Sol/.hcnitsx n hut his w ife, NataHa Svetioxa. Solzhenits\n, nieanw hile, niatle a similar announcement in Zurich. Just as, since the heginning of the \ ear, Sol/.henits\ n had rexersed his former policx- and l)egun to speak out on hehalf of indi\idual dissidents, so he now hegan to speak openl\- and acti\el\' on the suhject of detente, hi a letter to the U.S. congressmen Donald Fraser and Benjamin Rosenthal, w ho had solicited his \iew s on detente, SoIzhenits\ n w rote that w hile true detente was "not only necessary hut mankind's only saKation," the "pseudo-rA'/f;;/f" being negotiated b\ Nixon and Brezhne\ w as a fraud, since onh' the United States was making concessions. The So\ iet Union was bound to cheat, just as North \ ietnam w as cheating on the truce arranged b\' Kissinger, since there w ere no guarantees built into it. Solzhenitsyn criticized not onh Kissinger but also Willy Brandt and his recent statement that he would haye attempted detente eyen w ith Stalin. Did that mean, asked Solzhenits\n, that Brandt would haye adyocated detente with Hitler as well?'' Tow ards the end of June, Solzhenitsyn repeated these yiew s directly to the American people in a lengthy teleyision inter\iew w ith Walter Cronkite. He had been bombarded w ith requests to appear on tele\ ision eyer since his arriyal in the West and had steadfastly refused. But the painful work of reyising the .American translation of The Gulag Archipelago w as now hnished, the book was timed for publication in the last week of June, and Solzhenits\n apparently w anted to erase from American minds the bad impression left b\his earlier criticisms of the American media. 1 he choice of Cronkite to do the inter\iew was presumabK dictated b\' Cronkites audience ratings in the United States, but in other respects it was unfortunate. Cronkite did not appear to be well briefed on life in the Soyiet Union and had little grasp of SolzhenitsN n's career and writings, so that the interyiew was rambling and unfocused and the questions yague, w ith no attempt made to follow up the answers or press for clarifications. Apart from detente, he again talked about his attitude to the press and explained why he had been shocked by the journalists' behayiour. But this time he was more conciliatory. He w as fully aw are, he said, that the \\ estern press had helped him to suryiye, for which he was "yery grateful." And he explained his position more precisely. "Not only

am

I

not

critical

of the

system of freedom of the press but, on the contrary, I consider it a great blessing that the West has a free press. But I feel that not only the press but eyery profession and every indiyidual must know how to use freedom, and

know where

to call a halt

and

set a

moral limit."

He

also pointed out, like

Amalrik before him, that the aggressive, inyestigatiye instincts of W estern journalists somehovy seemed to evaporate when the\' reached Moscow or at least underwent a rapid cooling: the press w as quite capable of applying dou,

its w ork. Another topic he returned

ble standards in

to

was

Letter to the Leaders, again insisting that

SOLZHENITSYN

[876]

he had been misunderstood. He had not said that he preferred an authoritarian system of rule, or that it was better than democracy, but simplv that under present Soviet conditions, he did not see a way of bringing democracy to Russia without a new revolution, and he w as against revolutions in principle. It was true he had criticized Western democratic methods, and to a large extent he stuck by that, but that had been written in the Soviet Union; having

now

seen the S\\

at least for

iss

system

Switzerland.

It

at

work, he

felt

he had to make an exception

did not mean, however, that the Swiss system

could be exported to England, France, or America,

Union. Every country was different and had

its

own

still

less to the

traditions

Soviet

and possibil-

ities.

Similarly, he did not erally.

He

make

liked to

whereas he was very

want

America to be taken too litbetween peoples and governments, and the American government's foreign policy, he the American people. his criticism of

a distinction

hostile to

did not extend this hostility to Please believe me, and

I

w ant

to sav this to

vou here todav,

that independently

among the Russian people a steadfast w hich has come into being despite the lies

of your government's policies, there exists

sympathy

first

kind of inner compatibility between the Russian and American

Your

generosity, for instance, and your magnanimity are very well

is

understood by our people, probably because also generous

The

we

are alike in this

— Russians

are

and magnanimous."^'

interview was

a great

success in America

other countries as well. Television, the

man

one thing and then another), and

a

that there

peoples.

American people, new spapers have written

for the

in the press (our

medium

—and was shown

in

many

of the masses, the eve of the

had been allowed into the mysterious Russian's home, and seen him revealed as a human being like the rest of us. Passionate, yes; vehement, yes, but also likeable and manageable, and very charming in close up. This was not the impression created by volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago, which had appeared in French a few weeks earlier and now came out in England and America. A dawning sense that this was possibly one of the great books of the twentieth century, fed in the first instance by reports of the Russian and German editions, now received massive confirmation as hundreds of thousands of copies of the book (soon to be followed by millions of paperbacks in America alone over two million) rolled out into the bookshops and thence into the hands of incredulous readers. Starting with its slitheringly evocative title (Arkhipelag Gulag sounds even more reptilian in the original Russian) and puzzling subtitle, .4/7 Experiment in Literary Investigation, it was perceived as strange and unique, a conducted tour of a chamber of horrors almost without parallel in modern literature. It was, of course, the contents that attracted most attention and comment. In principle, the story that SolzhenitsN n had to tell was not new to well-intormed Western intellectuals. \\ hat was undoubtedly new however. in the street,

shown

into his living-room,

—

,

Taking Positions

[877]

was the comprehensiveness of Solzhenitsyn's compilation, the intensits' and passion ot his formulation, and the devastating judgement he pronounced on These things were uttered with the unique fift\- years of Soviet history. authoritv of someone w ho had li\ed through and survived the sxstem (and even been a part of it for a while), who had seen it from the inside not bv one of the dozens of W esterners, or even emigres or refugees, w ho had chronicled these monstrosities from a greater distance. Ihe immediate comparison that sprang to reviewers' minds was the

—

similaritx', the I lolocaust had made minds than the Gulag because it was closer and had destroved millions of Westerners and people w ith connections to the \\ est, and also because Westerners were conscious of a certain complicitv. Solzhenitsvn's achievement was to impress on Western minds the horror of the Gulag w ith almost the intensitv that earlier discoveries had done for the Holocaust. A large part of his success was due to sheer literarv power. Critics agreed that it w as one of Solzhenitsvn's verv best books, citing the extraordinarv richness and complexitv of his central metaphor: an archipelago that stretched for thousands of miles, made up of islands, bavs, peninsulas, capes, promontories, and an ocean into w hich flowed hundreds of rivers, streams, and ri\ulets. To an English commentator, the sensation of reading Solzhenitsyn's prose was that of being "disconcerted by the shriek and roar of the high wind, the sustained passion of the ironv, the violence of apostrophe and in\ousins

not in the tradition of Milton, Paine, Mill, Jefferson, and "not exen" of I'dmund

Burke.* Similar misgivings were being voiced in Washington, to w hich Solzhenitsvn was due to return from

New

York. Oitics wondered whether the

Soviet government hadn't been exceptionally clever in allow ing Sol/.henits\n

come to the West. Speaking and w riting from inside the Soviet Union, he had possessed an unchallenged (and \ irtuallv unchallengeable) authorit\-, but his words now, coming from a free man in no immediate danger, seemed to have lost much of their pow er. He was percei\ed bv man\' as a "cold war-

to

rior," a stick-in-the-mud conservative

Meany and

with mvstical leanings, a cronx' of Cieorge

the conservative hardhats of organized labour, and no different

opinions from the hundreds of thousands of other embittered exiles from Eastern Europe whom many Americans regarded as defenders of obscurantism and reaction. These critics might have damaged Solzhenitsvn's reputation irrex ersibh in the political circles he hoped to influence, had he not been inadvertenth' saved by the blunderings of President Gerald Eord. Eord had informalK indicated, soon after Solzhenitsvn's arrival in the United States, that he would be amenable to a meeting with him if Solzhenitsvn should go to Washington. But on 2 July he had announced that he would not meet Solzhenitsvn, "on in his

the advice of the National Security Council."

some

When

pressed to elaborate,

aides of the president disclosed that questions had been raised about

Solzhenitsvn's mental stability, and someone had suggested that since Sol-

zhenitsvn was in the United States "to promote his books," the president

should not get mixed up

in

such commercial enterprises-'^ (having posed with

"the cotton queen" on the White

House

the Brazilian soccer player, a few days invitation to the

retary of State

AFL-CIO

Henry

law n the

later).

week before and w

The

ith Pele,

president had declined an

banquet, as had \ ice-President Rockefeller, Sec-

Kissinger, and the leaders of both the Senate and the

House of Representatives (Secretary of Defense Schlesinger and Secretary of Labor Dunlop had gone in the end, along with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Moynihan). It was Solzhenitsvn's views on detente that made him so unpopular w ith the Ford administration. In the very week that Solzhenits\n returned to Washington, American and Soviet astronauts w ere due to link up in space, symbolizing what was to be a the *

new

era of friendship and co-operation

two superpowers. The U.S. government was anxious not

Among

foreign critics of the

zhenitsvn,

between

to spoil the

American speeches were two former staunch supporters of

Raymond Aron and Milovan

Djilas.

Sol-

SOLZHENITSYN

[9i8]

atmosphere, which was

Some of Ford's Henrv Jackson

political

whv

Solzhenitsvn's presence was so inopportune.

opponents, however, notably Senators Jesse Helms,

(co-author of the Jackson amendment), and Clifford Case,

seized on this opportunity to embarrass the president

tsvn to Washington to address a group of

by

inviting Solzheni-

members from both houses

of

Almost immediately, on the eve of Solzhenitsyn's television appearance, Ford back-pedalled and let it be kno\\'n that if Solzhenitsyn was to seek a meeting with him, he would be happy to see him. But now Solzhenitsyn had the satisfaction of declining in his turn. "I am not here as the guest of the American government," he told his television audience, "but of the AFL-CIO. Mv purpose is to appeal not to the government but to the

Congress.

American people as a whole. "-^ It was a fitting response, but there can be little doubt that Solzhenitsyn was disappointed. Nor could he miss the irony that after having failed to meet (as he had hoped) the Soviet leaders in Moscow, he had now been spurned bv the American leaders in Washington as well. Perhaps for this reason he was at pains to emphasize, in his remarks to the congressmen, how pleased he was to be speaking for the first time to "participants in your country's legislative process, v\'hose influence in recent

years has spread well beyond the limits of American history alone," and he

was

particularly corrosive in his denunciation of the "loathsome and repul-

system with which America was hoping to come to terms. He equated with "diplomatic shovels" ready to "bury and pack down bodies still breathing in a common grave" and described himself as a messenger from the voiceless millions of the Soviet camps, sent to break through "that calamitous \\ all of ignorance or of unconcerned arrogance" that he had found in America. He appealed to the members present to rise above the narrow concerns of party and state and see themselves as leaders "on whom depends whether sive"

detente

w ill tend to tragedy or salvation." He had done warn and prepare them but was unsure whether he had succeeded. "I have done what I was bound to do, and what I could. So much the worse "-^ if the justice of my warning becomes evident only some years hence. The pantomime of the presidential invitation, however, was not over yet. In the course of the two w eeks since President Ford's original refusal to meet Solzhenitsyn, White House spokesmen had twice changed the official reason for the snub. First it was said that the president's timetable was too crowded for him to fit Solzhenitsyn in, and then that the president, not knowing \\ hat he v\ as supposed to discuss w ith Solzhenitsyn, had seen no point in a meeting "without substance." Most commentators concluded, even when they disagreed w ith Solzhenitsyn's views, that it had been a crass blunder on Pres-

the course of w orld history his best to

ident Ford's part not to see him, and a political and personal gaffe that reflected

more on President Ford than on the author (the president's mail on the subject was said to be unusually voluminous and unusually hostile). The debate rumbled on for the rest of the month, during w hich it emerged that Henry Kissinger was the person responsible for having advised the president against the meeting. In a speech defending his position, Kissinger declared that there

On the Move

(9 19]

was a great uas eonvinced that if Solzhenitsvn's views were adopted as the American national fK)licy, "we would be confronting a considerable threat of military conflict."-''' It was also suggested in the press that after changing his original decision. President Ford had sent numerous messages to Solzhenitsyn via Senators I lelms and Jackson to visit him, but that Solzhenitsyn had insisted on a w ritten invitation before was "no alternative" to writer whose suffering

and

detente

entitled

he would accept. Solzhenitsvn that

what he had wanted w

block.

From Alexandra

to be heard, he

denied this story but did make

later

the president

ith

but a discussion of the issue oi

said that while Sol/.henitsyn

him

detente,

and

was not

this

Tolstox's farm in upstate

a

it

clear

"svmbolic" meeting

had been the hnal stumbling-

New

York, w here he released

he denounced President Ford for agreeing to journey to Europe to sign the Helsinki Final Act, which had just been concluded by the thirtv-five nations participating in the European Security Conference in Fin-

this information,

Ford was going, said Solzhenitsvn, "to sign

land.

Europe, to acknowledge In the final analvsis

odds. Just as in

.

.

.

the betrayal of Eastern

officiallv its slavery forever."'" it

w as

Moscow he had

a

moral victorv for Solzhenitsyn against the meet the "leaders" but had broadcast

failed to

views to the world through the w orld's press, so now in Washington he had profited from the American government's blunders to get double the publicitv and attention his visit might otherw ise have merited. His charisma and his single-mindedness had again proved spectacularly (if misleadingly) effective, and Solzhenitsvn could be forgiven for thinking that his mission to the West had not been undertaken in vain. Solzhenitsvn's last port of call in the United States was Vermont. After his

spending three davs state,

in seclusion in a quiet inn in the

he travelled to Northfield to spend

western part of the

a further three

days

at

Norwich

Uni\ersitv, at the invitation of the Russian department there, headed by

Nikolai Pervushin. While on campus, he took the opportunity to play a rare

game of

tennis,

and

the end of his stay he complimented

at

"efforts to preserve Russian culture

Norwich on its He was

without the Soviet imprint."

reported to be impressed with both the climate and the countryside of \'er-

mont, and news that he had retained a prominent \'ermont lawyer to act for him provoked speculation that he was thinking of settling there." Certainly, Vermont had all the advantages of Canada, in addition to belonging to a political superpow er. It would be possible to be both physicall\- isolated and yet close to the centres of real influence

if

the need arose.

Vermont, Solzhenitsyn spent a part of his time writing a long article about his impressions of the two American branches of the Russian Orthodox church,* which was to involve him in yet another controDuring

his stav in

versv with his fellow Russians, a controversv that threw a

*The Orthodox Church church

in Moscov\-,

v\

in

America (OCA)

is

autocephalous but maintains relations with the

hereas the Russian Orthodox

Church Abroad does not recognize any other

Russian church. In Paris the Russian Orthodox church of Constantinople.

It

recognizes both

tireat deal of litjht

Moscow and

the

is

under the authority of the patriarchate

OCA.

SOLZHENITSYN

[92o]

The article appeared from America," and in it Solzhenitsvn criticized the two branches for their mutual hostility and for their inability to unite with the Ukrainian Orthodox church. Among other things, he reversed his position on the Orthodox Church in America and now berated it for having established relations with the Moscow^ patriarchate, for accepting orders from it, and, in effect, for making a deal with the Soviet Communist regime. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, on the other hand, \\ hich was separate from the Orthodox Church in America, was noteworthy for its "implacable hatred of Bolshevism" and its attachment to pre-revolutionarv Russian traditions, a stand that Solzhenitsvn now found infinitely

on

assumptions and intellectual processes.

his current

in no.

1

16 of the Paris Vestnik as "Letter

preferable to the posture of the other church.

Solzhenitsvn did not stop there, however. According to him,

"all

three"

branches of the Russian Orthodox church outside the Soviet Union (the two in America and the church based in Paris)* were guiltv of gradually moving aw ay from and forgetting the Orthodox population of Russia, and

churches

the resulting

split, if it

took place, could be catastrophic not just for Russia

but for the w hole w orld.

mv

have become more convinced than ever that

In the year

and

sufficiently

powerful hands and sufficiently stout hearts simply do not exist in

a half

of

the West: everyone here

increasing \\ ill

it

be found only

century, Russia sian

It

is

that either the

problems

is

is

in the

exile,

I

so enfeebled by prosperity and so preoccupied with

w orld

soon perish or else the hands to battle

\\ ill

enslaved East. For the w orld history of the

the key country.

.

.

.

That

not so very narrow after

all,

is

w hv

a

t\\

preoccupation u

hell

entieth

ith

Rus-

but of universal significance.

w as the duty of the Russian churches abroad

to preserve their links

with Russia and to carry the message of Russian Orthodoxy to the rest of the world. But to do that they had to be worthy of Russia, to sacrifice, to

atone for the sins of the past.

The

make

a spiritual

primal sin of the Orthodox

church was the great schism of the seventeenth centur\', when the Old Believers

He himself had visited the America and had been overwhelmed by

had been driven from the church and persecuted.

Old

Believers in their settlements in

their piety, their courage, their stamina, their fierce devotion to the old tra-

and their Russianness. Similarh', in Alaska he had been astonished by the tenacity of the faithful: "One has got to admit that the culture brought to them from 'backw ard' Russia has proved to be spiritually superior to that 'better' televisio-technico-consumer culture offered them bv today's United States." It was the duty of the Russian churches in exile to repent and take two major steps: one, to refuse to have any dealings v\ ith the satanic Communist regime and, two, to heal the schism with the Old Believers and welcome them back into the fold. For the Old Believers had much to teach the ditions,

*Technically speaking, there are not "three branches." See note

p. 919.

On the Move

[9^

•

]

other churches, and "in the Russia of the Old Believers the Leninist revolution

would have been impossible. "'It may seem that this obscure debate

assertions of

its

(if

we do

not take Solzhenitsyn's

global significance at their face value) about the fate of the

Russian Orthodox church abroad would not be of responses showed,

it

much

revealed, in a particularly clear

interest,

but as the

way, some of the preoc-

cupations and methods that Solzhenitsyn was bringing to his polemical declarations on both politics and religion, as well as some of the problems those

preoccupations and methods posed. Solzhenitsyn's apocalyptic view that the world was on the brink of a major crisis, for instance, had been voiced in

both Washington (we face "a threat to the w orld") and New York ("We are approaching a major turning-point in world history, in the history at civilization"), and in the latter he had repeated his view that the world faced a turning-point similar to that dividing the Middle Ages from the

modern

era.

In his speech to the congressmen, he had elaborated on this in speaking about

oncoming combination of a world political crisis w ith a shift in the spirvalues of a humanity exhausted and choked by the existing false hierarchv of values," and in his television remarks he had hinted at what was now fulh' spelled out namely, that it was the mission of Russia, which "has "the

itual

—

been forced to undergo such spiritual experiences, such spiritual burdens, and has had to undergo such growth that it has now, I think, more experience than any other countrv in the world" to speak to the West as "a voice from the future" and ultimately to save it from perdition. Responses to Solzhenitsyn's letter came from his tw o most faithful and fervent supporters in the West, Nikita Struve, editor of the Vestnik (and a director of the

YMCA

Press, Solzhenitsyn's Russian-language publisher),

and Father Alexander Schmemann, Solzhenitsyn's favourite preacher in America and the man who had once pronounced him a living literary classic and a prophet. Both men asserted that Solzhenitsyn had got many of his facts w rong, had exaggerated the seriousness of the squabbles between the churches, and had overestimated the virtue of the Old Believers. Struve pointed out that the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad had much in common w ith the

Old

Believers, for in both, hostility to evil tended to turn into intolerance of

fellow believers and steadfastness into bitterness, while a total rejection of the

modern world had

led to an

immoderate

idealization of the past,

and

especially of tsarist Russia (the fact that this also described Solzhenitsyn's

was not spelled out by Struve). Father Schmemann put his finger even more fearlessly on w hat was wrong w ith Solzhenitsyn's letter in the eyes of a convinced admirer. What saddened and perplexed him, he wrote, position

was Solzhenitsyn's

failure to

check his

facts, his willingness to repeat mali-

cious gossip, the unfoundedness of his accusations, and above inexplicable tone of exasperation. ity to

Schmemann

some delusion on Solzhenitsyn's

He

the letter's

part and to his having inadvertently

adopted the usual, condescending tone of Russian discussed church matters.

all

charitably ascribed this asper-

intellectuals

whenever they

could not refrain from pointing out, however,

SOLZHENITSYN

[922]

was comfrom the Solzhenitsyn of the letter. In the former he had done his homev\ork, mastered the facts, and written \\ ith a "creative conscience," none of which was in evidence in the letter. This increasingly common view of Solzhenitsyn's strengths and weaknesses carried all the more \\ eight in coming from one of his most dedicated champions, but Schmcmann went much further than that. It was clear, he wrote, that Solzhenitsyn's obsession with the Old Believers and their schism from the main church v\ as not fortuitous, but occupied a key position in his thinking, and this was because Solzhenitsyn was convinced that the great schism of the seventeenth century had been the reason for Russia's downfall and had led inexorably to the disaster (and second great schism) of the Revthat the Solzhenits\'n of The Gulag Archipelago and August 1914 pletely' different

olution.

Schmemann

\\

as inclined to agree

the opposite reasons. Solzhenitsyn's

Schmemann, could be divided ance for place

with Solzhenitsyn, but for quite

call for

repentance and reunion, wrote

—

two parts. With one of the parts repentthe harsh persecution of the Old Believers once the split had taken

—everyone could

agree,

into

and Schmemann pointed out

that, contrary to

Solzhenitsyn's self-righteous assumption that he was preaching something

new, it \\ as the consensus among Orthodox believers and had become official church policy. The second part of Solzhenitsyn's appeal, calling for repentance because the Old Believers had been right and were closer to the true faith, \\ as unacceptable to Schmemann, and in his view turned the truth on its head. I he Old Believers had not been the innocent victims of revolutionary zeal on the part of the main church. On the contrary, it was they who were the revolutionaries, \\ ho had rebelled against the church in the name of a false Utopia, and who had been the first in Russian history to succumb to the temptation of ideology. It was the first time that the Russian consciousness had given in to certain characteristic temptations a love of false absolutisms, a tendency to splits and alienation, an inclination to "escape" from history into apocalyptic fears and Utopias. For Schmemann, "ideologism," as he called it, was the chief fruit of the great schism, and ideologism inexorably led to "the absolutization of a single historiosophical schema, which, taken as an absolute truth, is no longer subject to verification by reality, but on the contrary, itself becomes the sole criterion for reality's understanding and evaluation." It was obsession with ideolog\- that had captured and torn Russia apart, and this was the result of the psychological temptations and "ambiguous maximalism" spawned by the schism. 1 his explained the attraction of the Old Believers for radicals of both the right and the left. "One day it will finally be admitted as a self-evident truth that all ideologies, w hether they be of the 'left' or the 'right,' directed tow ards either the past or the future, give birth to the same type of person: someone w ho is above all blind to reality, although he appears to be addressing it, tor the sake of radically changing it, with all his will and with the

—

totality of his ideological faith.

Schmemann stopped

"^^

there.

As he pointed out

at the

end of

his article,

On the Move

ly2

3]

Russian literature had generall)' avoided the temptations of ideologi/.ation, and that was one of the keys to its greatness. Solzhenitsyn was a part of Russian literature (indeed, Solzhenits\n's was the loudest contemporary voice

warning against the dangers of ideolog\). But although Schmemann drew no it was hard not to find certain parallels between the vehement ecclesiastical maximalist blinded by his Utopian visions and the thundering political prophet of the Washington and New York speeches, or not to see a SolzhenitsN-n who was both a part of Russian literature and a roistering preacher w ho quoted his opponents out of context and spoke with an accumulation of rancour and resentment that did not appear justified by the facts. The second Solzhenitsyn was not against ideology as such, but only against one type of

conclusions,

ideologN'.

some

"Those who do not have

a full

democracy,"

as

he delicateh' described

right-w ing regimes in his Washington speech, "should be protected by

USA from Marxism," humanitv." In other words,

the

for "that

"Mv

which

is

enemv's enemy

against is

my

communism is Was this

friend."

for

not

Marxist ideologv turned inside out, and equally an ideology ot its ow n? Simultaneously with this seemingly esoteric dispute, Solzhenitsyn w as

enveloped

in a

controversv of

a

more personal and

literary nature.

His

liter-

some mcmths now, had been read bv almost the entire emigre community, and, more importantlx', had had time to filter back to the Soviet Union and be read there. On one plane the book w as an intensely personal memoir ot Solzhenitsyn's literary career in his homeland and a blow-by-blow account of his ary memoir. The Oak and the Calf, had been in circulation for

epic struggle against the authorities, ending with his expulsion in 1974.

I

he

book gained enormously from being in a quasi-diary form, from the freshness with which Solzhenitsyn had been able to set down his impressions, and from the zest and gusto with which he had confided his thoughts, prejudices, hopes, and fears to paper, apparenth for himself alone (although, as emerged later, he had always had eventual publication in mind). The high points in the book described the climaxes of Solzhenitsyn's career: the publication oi Ivan Denisovich, his letter to the Writers' Congress,

the award of the Nobel Prize, and his expulsion, but there were other notable features as well, above

his portrayal of the Novy Mir editor, Alexander stormy friendship. There was also the question of all

Tvardovsky, and style. In its mixture of high-flown literary rhetoric, cool analysis, colloquial asides, and salty comment, it came closest to some of the racier parts of The Gulag Archipelago in the rest of Solzhenitsyn's oeiwre, but was unique in terms of its personal and autobiographical content and its certain element of gossipy immediacy. It was stimulating and exciting to read and must be accounted their

one of Solzhenitsyn's very best books. However, from the beginning there w as also a persistent note of unease in Russian readers' responses to the book, a substratum of discomfort that was expressed only verbally to begin with but that eventually surfaced in print. The grounds for the criticisms naturally varied, but they can be summarized more or less as follows. First, there was Solzhenitsyn's bv now

SOLZHENITSYN

[924]

it. Characteristic was his where he managed both to disparage the whole idea of literary memoirs, which he called "secondary" literature of little moment (perhaps \\ ith his o\\ n earlier detraction of Ehrenburg and Paustovskv in mind) and to pave the way for five hundred pages of explanation of his motives and actions from 1962 to 1974. Secondly, there uas the outsize egotism of the

ingrained propensity to have his cake and to eat introduction,

narrative. Solzhenitsyn

had placed himself squarely

at the centre

of the

lit-

erary and political universe of the sixties and seventies, and the entire world

was described

as rotating

this defiant fidelity to

around

what w ere

his axis.

There was

a certain

grandeur

in

clearly Solzhenitsyn's true feelings about

himself, but it lent itself too easily to hypocrisy and bathos to sit comfortably on the autobiographical narrator throughout 500 pages. Passages like the ones in \\ hich he solemnly described himself, without irony, as "a sword in Ciod's hand" sent to smite His enemies, and numerous other sentiments of that nature, \\ ere difficult to bring off in the mid-twentieth century. There were also the all-per\ading military metaphors. "I hey w ere lined up in battle array, but before they could sound the charge, I gave them a 144-gun salvo and meekly resumed my seat in the hanging smoke, "'"^ was how he described his initial

statement

Ward.

If

at the Writers'

Union

he could not be Samsonov in

Samsonov of the

secretariat

meeting to discuss Cancer

real life,

seemed, he would be the

it

Writers' Union.

But the aspect of the book that provoked most criticism was the consequent disparagement of almost everyone else w ith whom Solzhenitsyn came into contact, and above all of Tvardovsky. Solzhenitsyn's portrait of Tvardovsky \\ ill remain one of the finest things in Russian memoir literature ("I raised a monument to him," he protested as the tide of criticism began to rise),'' but it is also a prejudiced portrait in which Tvardovsky's weaknesses are exaggerated at the expense of his strengths, while Solzhenitsyn's picture of himself is exactly the reverse. Thus, in many parts of the narrative a drunken, unstable, erratic Tvardovsky, by turns arrogant and submissive, a Party grandee at the mercy of his political masters and without the courage of his convictions, is contrasted with a heroic, all-seeing, all-knowing (but cunning) Solzhenitsyn, hampered by the weaknesses of his friend and ally. This tone was carried over into most of the other portraits in the book. Friends were for the most part referred to neutrally or in words of faint praise, whereas enemies v\ ere pinioned and dispatched with merciless vigour. Among former friends and allies to suffer retrospective condemnation were Zhores Medvedev and, of course, his former wife Natalia Reshetovskaya, whose role last few years in the Soviet Union w as depicted as part of a sinister manoeuvre rather than the desperate flailings of an abandoned woman. Others to come under the lash were Valeri (>halidze, who v\'as accused, in so many words, of making a deal with the KCiB; Veniamin Teush and Ilya

during his political

Zilberberg, for criminal negligence in mishandling his literary archive; Vla-

dimir Lakshin, for influencing Tvardovsky

doxy; and most of the

rest of

Novy Mir\

in the direction

of Party ortho-

editorial staff, for putting their

C)

MOVE

N THK

I

9

2 5

I

magazine before Sol/.henitsyn's contributions to it. Kven Sakharov, whom Solzhenitsyn handled, on the whole, with kid gloves, was condescended to and

allotted a peripheral role in the struggle for

human

rights.

in a pained and not very coherent letter trom Tvar-

The responses came dovsky's daughter, Valentina Tvardovskaya, a much sharper and more penetrating article bv Rov .Medvedev, a long and detailed rebuttal by Vladimir Lakshin of Solzhenitsyn's description of Tvardovsky and Novy Mir, and eventually a whole book bv Ilya Zilberberg chronicling the events surrounding the confiscation of Solzhenitsyn's papers in 1965. The first three maintained that Solzhenitsvn's portrait of Tvardovsky

was

a travesty.

\o the extent

that some of their indignation was provoked by the "naturalism" of Solzhenitsvn's portraval, particularlv in the now-notorious scene of I vardovsky's

drunken reading of The

First Circle in

Rvazan,

it

can perhaps be ascribed to

the overall prudishness of Russian literarv taste. Nadezhda Mandelstam had provoked similar outrage with the frankness of some of her descriptions ot Russians like their \\ riters on writers in the second volume of her memoirs

—

But the weightier objections were to Solzhenitsyn's depiction of Tvardovskv as a powerless lightweight, and of Novy Mir as a Party journal a pedestal.

much

from the reactionary Oktyabr. Tvardovskava pointed out that in Solzhenitsyn's memoirs, he and Tvardovsky were made to represent opposed principles: Solzhenitsyn was the wise, far-seeing hero who understood everything, while Tvardovsky was blinded bv his Partv membership and doomed to vacillate. But in reality, she wrote, the opposition was of a different nature. It was Solzhenitsyn who was doctrinaire, who "craved simple solutions and unambiguous formulae," for whom a negation of the entire Soviet system was sufficient, w hereas Tvardovskv was a complex thinker, highly dissatisfied v\ith the life he saw around him, but not content just to dismiss it and throw out the baby with not

different, in principle,

the bath-water. Tvardovsky had been aware of Solzhenitsyn's simplistic notions

and extreme nationalism and had often had to exercise great self-discipline not to quarrel with him, wrote Tvardovskaya. She made many other points about her father and Novy Mir, but her most telling accusation was that of hypocrisv. "While asserting the supremacy of morality over politics," she wrote, "vou deem it possible ... to overstep all rightful limits. You allow yourself the unscrupulous use of things you have heard or seen through keyWhile inviting people to 'live not by holes and of third-hand rumours. lies,' you relate with unbridled cynicism, though not without a certain coquetry, how you made deceit a rule in your dealings not only with those you considered your enemies but also with those who held out a helping hand to vou, who trusted vou and supported you when times were hard."^*^ Rov Medvedev took a similar line but concentrated, in his article, on Novy Mirs political position. It was a travesty, he wrote, to describe Novy Mir as akin to conservative journals like Oktyabr or Ogonyok. It was never "on .

its

.

.

knees," as Solzhenitsyn had alleged, nor did

line.

On

the contrary,

it

persistently

it

blindly follow the Party

pushed against the

limits

and was

fre-

SOLZHENITSYN

[9^6]

quentlv successful, as

in the case

dovsky's had been the leading

role.

of Solzhenitsyn himself. In

"From

my

all

this

Tvar-

conversations with Tvardovsky,"

Medvedev, "I gathered that bv defending Solzhenitsyn before the highest was exposing himself to danger, but he also liked Solzhenitsyn and felt hurt when he was unjustly attacked by critics or his behaviour was worrisome." Medvedev pointed out, as had Tvardovskaya, how anxious Solzhenitsyn had been to receive the Lenin Prize, despite his protestations in The Oak and the Calf to the contrary, and how in conversation with other writers he had praised Lenin and the early days of the October Revolution.''^ Of a rather different order of authority was Vladimir Lakshin's extended essay "Solzhenitsyn, Tvardovsky, and Novy Mir.'' If Solzhenitsyn's memoir was in part the case for the prosecution against Tvardovsky and Novy Mir, Lakshin's was the case for the defence. He had been impelled to pick up his pen, he wrote, because he had been one of the main actors in the drama unfolded by Solzhenitsyn, and the closest witness to Tvardovsky's motives and actions. In his book Solzhenitsyn had "insulted the memory of a man who was very dear to me, whom I regarded as a second father," he had "offended" many of Lakshin's colleagues, but above all he had "poured arrogant sc(jrn on the journal \\ hich was the verv cradle of his own literary career" and had "besmirched the cause of that journal which, in the eyes of millions of people was a worthwhile and honourable cause."'** Lakshin's defence of Tvardovsky was more or less along the lines of those mounted by Tvardovsky's daughter and Medvedev, but he was able to furnish it with a wealth of illustration and of inside knowledge about the relations between Tvardovsky and Solzhenitsyn that were beyond the reach of the others, and, by analysing many of the episodes in Solzhenitsyn's book in minute detail, he was able to demonstrate quite convincingly the ways in w hich Solzhenitsyn had misunderstood the editor's character or misread simple gestures and phrases. But unlike his predecessors, Lakshin also went over to the attack. He had once considered, he wrote, that what Solzhenitsyn had said as a writer was far more important to men of goodwill than his "ill-considered interviews and improvised tirades on some burning political topic of the moment," and he had therefore thought it w rong to criticize him, but now it was time to speak out frankly and without restraint. The Oak and the Calf was "neither memoir nor history," because Solzhenitsyn preferred not to mention a great many things that had occurred, and described others in misleading terms. Many of the personages in his book were nothing more than "lampoons bearing the names of real people." As for Solzhenitsyn's three main charges against 1 \ardovsky of cow ardice, drunkenness, and pride Lakshin w rote, "I declare that everything said about Tvardovsky in this vein is either a blatant untruth, rooted in Solzhenitsyn's hopelessly obtuse incomprehension of Tvardovsky's \v

rote

authorities, he

.

.

.

—

nature and character, or

—

is

that nasty, slimy, slanderous kind of half-truth

worse than a conscious lie." Solzhenitsyn had violated all the canons of decency and good taste in his portrait of I'vardovskv. Therefore, wrote that

is

On the Move

[927]

Lakshin, "I shall be rude, too: supposing someone,

w ere

virtuous

in the role ot

and outs of the personal life of the 'calf himself and to expose what is known alx>ut him from hearsa\ ? Or started collecting stories of his meanness and ingratitude from people w ho ha\ e helped moralist,

him or It

to start discussing the ins

are close to his family?"

should not be ignored that Lakshin, too, had been criticized

Oak and the ow n scores in detail

Calf, albeit less harshl)'

in

The

than man\- others, and therefore had his

For the most part he declined to discuss these criticisms

to settle.

but maintained that man\- of them stemmed from

a failure

of ps\-

chological insight on Solzhenits\n's part and from Solzhenits\n's insinceritx'

Whereas Tvardovsky, according to Lakshin, had been and sincere, Solzhenits\n w as devious and cunning. "For a long time,

in personal relations.

direct in

mv

heart of hearts,

I

discounted the nagging feelings of distaste w hich

Solzhenitsvn's behaviour evoked in me, and

I

tried to explain

lessness as 'the foibles of genius,' eccentricities

aw av

w hose meaning

I

his tact-

preferred

not to examine too closelv in order not to be disillusioned." Solzhenits\ n,

how ever, brooked no half-measures: either one agreed with him and follow ed him unquestioninglv or else one was bevond the pale. "That is whv I think that, with all his tremendous gifts of artistic insight, he is doomed to be perpetually disappointed in other people, to live in a world of illusions and

phantoms, and

to be hopelesslv

political perspectives,

prone to error

in his

judgement of broader

because his criteria derive only from himself and his

immediate circumstances."* What Lakshin was describing was the classical disposition of the creative writer guided above all bv his intuition. In that sense, perhaps, this last criticism w as not necessarily so grave, though it did have a bearing on Solzhenitsyn's claims to political insight, and it identified a point of political

w as not irrelevant to the larger debate about Solzhenitsvn's memoir. For Tvardovskaya, Medvedev, and Lakshin could all be identified as belonging to a particular "partv" the "partv," if one mav put it that wa\', of the loyal opposition and of Sovy Mir. Whatever the merits of their criticisms of Solzhenitsyn's behaviour and his handling of the facts (and ihex were not all tair), there stood behind these criticisms the larger issue of political belief, t A clue to their attitude could be found in Lakshin's charge that Solzhenitsvn had besmirched "the cause" of Novy Mir the cause, in brief, of democratic scxrialism. What Lakshin, Medvedev, and Tvardovskv's daughter (and Tvardovskv himself) had in common w as that "we believed in socialism as a noble ideal of justice, we believed in a socialism that was human through difference that

—

—

* Solzhenitsvn replied to the

Calf" published

many

in Vestnik

of Lakshin's criticisms in his "Sixth Supplement to The Oak and

RKhD,

no. 137 (1982),

where he accused Lakshin of quoting him the Calf, and of being too bound

out of context, of not understanding the point of The Oak and

by his loyalty to socialism to be honest and open in his criticisms. t Other tormer friends of Solzhenitsvn u ho more or less shared these \ie\\s and had begun to move away from him included Boris Mozhayev, Efim Etkind, and, most notablv, Lev Kopelev, \\ ho had taken great exception to Solzhenitsyn's Letter to the Leaders and also found fault \\ ith The Gulag Archipelago.

SOLZHENITSYN

[928]

and through, and not

human

had once believed had indeed once shared them), his "apostasv" in their eyes w as all the greater and more painful, especially since his authority v\'as so high. And now their differences with him about his interpretations of the past were also part of a debate about what Russia's just

\\

ith a

face." Since thev

that Solzhenitsvn shared these views (he

future should be.

Somew hat

apart from these responses to The Oak and the Calf stood Ilya

Zilberberg's book

mer

A

Necessary Conversation with Solzhenitsyn. Zilberberg, a for-

Zionist activist in the Soviet Union, had emigrated to Israel in 1971 and

moved

then

to England,

where he found work

Zilberberg was

as a lecturer.

impelled to write his book by a sense of outrage over Solzhenitsyn's dis-

saw

torted, as he

it,

account of the confiscation of his papers and over his

Veniamin Teush. The book and w hat made it especially interesting was the yiev\of Solzhenitsyn it offered from the vantage point of a younger generation of human-rights activists. Starting from Solzhenitsyn's own comment to Tvardovksy that, as a writer, he owed "as much to the Russian forced-labour system as to Russian literature," Zilberberg pointed out how important a role the psychology of a son of Gulag had played in the memoirs of the "calf": "extreme caution, secretiveness, distrust of others self-camouflage, timeserving, a willingness and ability to dissimulate and lie, to be cunning and brazen, constant fear, an exaggerated sense of danger and belief in the worst slighting of his friend (and Zilberberg's mentor)

w as

far

from

a diatribe,

.

.

.

.

fear of

making mistakes," and so on. All

this,

.

.

wrote Zilberberg, was the

poison with which Solzhenitsyn had been infected in Stalin's camps and which

he had involuntarily brought back

w

ith others in the

sixties.

mould allies

It

was

this

\\

ith

"normal" world of

camp psychology

in his thinking

and

him and imported

Moscow and Ryazan that had forced

his obsession

v\

ith

him

into his relations in the fifties

and

into the military

dividing everyone he met into

or enemies, helpers or wreckers, fellow spirits or traitors.

Of course,

Solzhenitsyn had laboured mightily in his

life

to find an anti-

dote to these poisons, and his book was the story of his search for such an antidote, yet the poison

younger human-rights

was

still

activists

there,

and

it

was

just

such

a

poison that the

had been able to eliminate and transcend thanks

to their youth. In this sense, Solzhenitsyn

was an anachronism, not because

he had nothing to teach the younger generation, but because he had taught

them only too

well, while remaining incapable of assimilating his

own

teach-

ing.

You, an old camp hand who had waited for years for a final struggle with the system of tyranny that vou had written an encyclopaedia about and condemned to death when it came, at last, to the final clinch, before the eyes of the whole world and having the support of millions of living and dead allies, you proved so helpless and hew ildered that vou stood up at the first command of a representative of the prison system that vou had damned. Yet a totally unknown Jew who was struggling for his right to go to Israel veiled down the telephone to a representative of the same system summoning him to the KGB: "To see you? Vol-

—

On the Move untarilv? Never!

What

.

.

Onlv when vou

.

has happened

is

this:

deliver

I929I

me

handeuffs!"

in

both personally and as

a representative of the "ter-

bv vour life, your torments, your inexpressible agonies, and then b\ your works, you have liberated us representati\es ot "the present" more ijuickly and suecessfully than you have liberated yourself. rible past,"

This "failure"

\\

as a tragic personal failure

but Aso the price of Solzhe-

had demonstrated were sketches of such, "a searing exposure

nitsyn's success, the price of his survival, as Solzhenitsyn in

The Oak and

"normal"

Vov these "sketches of literary

the Calf.

literary life in the Soviet

Union and,

as

life"

and merciless condemnation of those forces of evil that ha\'e seized your country and threaten the world. Thev are a condemnation of the state order, political system, and ideology that proclaim a conspiratorial activity

to dissemble, intriijue,

crime, turn

artistic creation a

riting into

\v

and the writer into an underground plotter, obliged lie, tjo into hiding, fight and almost commit sui.

.

.

cide.""^

Zilberberg's point about the damage to Solzhenitsyn's psychology had been made by Lakshin: he uas "the offspring of our terrible century, the As well prodigy who has absorbed all its inspiration and its degradation. .

as the best

and

loftiest

of

human

qualities, his

.

.

psychology also bears the

stamp of the concentration camp, of war, of totalitarianism and the atom

—the chief

bomb

features of this age.""^"

Although they came near to

—

to

it

in

some of their comments, none of

— supporters,

Sol-

for that matter)

seems

have grasped the essentially didactic purpose behind Solzhenitsyn's

mem-

zhenitsyn's critics (nor his

oir,

which was

to

less

voluble

demonstrate to the whole world, but particularly to his

how it was possible in practice to "live not by lies."* In a was making the supreme sacrifice. In his book he had wholly renounced his own ego, the personal Solzhenitsyn, w ith w ives, friends, fellow Russians,

sense, Solzhenitsyn

and

relatives,

with private hopes,

and

griefs,

Solzhenitsyn as exemplar, as the knight on the holy grail.

Hence

his ability to write

a

fears, in

favour of the public

white charger, the searcher after

about himself virtually

in the third

person, to describe himself, without blushing, as God's instrument. indeed, in his

own

He was

eyes, only an instrument, and he seems to have taken

what Lakshin wrote of him in anger: "He is leading us towards the and no one is supposed to ask questions we must believe in him. If Solzhenitsyn summons us to humility and repentance, then naturally everyone must repent. ..." Lakshin added, "except him," and asserted that in literally

—

light,

spiritual matters, "Solzhenitsyn

does not recognize equality, ""^^ but the essential

point remained. Solzhenitsyn had been writing in the tradition of the old

*Ilva Ziiberberg perhaps came closest: "Your book is about hov\ at a certain stage in your life, you were able to struggle free, and therein lies its unique value. Rising from your knees v\'as not easy for you at times it was sheer agony, for vou were whipped to your feet. After each blow you winced \\ ith pain and groaned, but vou slowly stood up, and after each blow you felt yourself freer, bolder, and stronger. ..." ,

—

SOLZHENITSYN

[930] saints' lives, life

was

his

but he had taken on more than mere hagiographv: the exemplary

own.* And the

result

personal of his books, with

its

was

a final irony: this in

vivid colloquial style

expression of his emotions and prejudices, was trolled in the service of a practical

that extra twist of tension that

and

made

it,

at the

same time

spiritual message.

from the

many ways most

and seemingly

free

rigidly con-

Perhaps here lav

literary point of view,

one

of his best.

*One

reminded of a seventeenth-century predecessor and Russia's first "modern" Avvakum, whose Life Written by Himself has more than a feu similarities with Solzhenitsyn's memoir. Grigori Pomerants, a historian who has circulated many essays in is

irresistibly

writer, the archpriest

samizdat, has also pointed out in his samidat essay

"A Dream

of Just Retribution" (later pub-

lished in Syntax [Paris], no. 6 [1980] that for a million people Christianity

'.Matryona's Place.' .\ million people

(if

not more) took the

Solzhenitsyn (and not with Tvardoxsky or Novy Mir).

we

It is

first

began with reading

step tov\ards the light with

not for Solzhenitsyn to say so, but

can and must: Gulag alone means more for the moral development of our country than the

whole of Novy Mir." Lakshin, writes Pomerants, was more or less correct in his appraisal of Solzhenitsyn the man, and fair to his talent as a writer, but he failed to appreciate the spirit that had spoken through Solzhenitsyn. .'\n American critic, Maurice Friedberg, has indicated another apt parallel with Solzhenitsyn's book: the

memoirs of Russian revolutionaries of the turn of the saints' lives in form and intention).

century (which Friedberg compares to medieval

'

50

TALKING TO

THE EUROPEANS OCTOBER 1975 volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago appeared in translation into a number of languages, including English. After the sensation caused by volume 1, it was inevitablv something of an anticlimax, especiallv since volume 2 was longer than the first volume (in English, 712 pages as opposed to 660) and contained more analysis and less description, with a consequent

IN .

loss of its

immediacy. Understandably,

it

sold considerably fewer copies than

predecessor and suffered, in market terms, from having the same

volume

title as

1.

its publication was an event, and it held a particular interAmerican readers, so recently exposed to the force of Solzhenitsyn's personality and rhetoric. Professor Leonard Schapiro in The New York Review of Rooks remarked that an "intellectual era" had elapsed since the publication of volume 1, just over a year before. Solzhenitsyn had then been a mystery to Western readers, an enigma wrapped in the aura of martyrdom created by his expulsion, and for many months after that a silent hermit in the heart of Switzerland. But now he had begun to travel and to reveal himself to reporters and the television cameras, had voiced and published a great many opinions, and had become the subject of a vast literature of comment and criticism. Me had also become known as the most vocal, controversial, and perhaps influential opponent oi detente, all of which had created a new climate for the appearance of volume 2 of his master-work. For some the publication came as a welcome antidote to the dismay and doubt sown by Solzhenitsyn's American speeches among many of his admirers. As Patricia Blake (a long-time admirer) put it in Time, "The passage from inquiry to advocacy, from exposition to exhortation, from literature to poli-

Nevertheless,

est for

93'

SOLZHENITSVX

[932]

proselvtism) has disabled man\" a Russian \\ ritcr, including Gogol and Tolstov. Gulag Tn'o comes to us as a reminder of Solzhenitsvn's immutable achievements."- For others it was an opportunity to look for clues that would throw light on Solzhenitsvn's present attitudes. 1 he subject matter ot volume 2 was, above all, the pervasive network of labour camps created bv Stalin as the basis of a vast and elaborate system of slave labour, intended to hasten the industrialization of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsvn's exhaustive anatomy of this system, resting parth on oral accounts bv ex-prisoners and partly on obscure and hard-to-obtain archival material, w as difficult going in parts, but the bill of indictment was formitics (or

dable.

From

start to finish the

Gulag had claimed 66 million

lives,

according

to Solzhenitsvn's calculations (25,0()0 perished in the construction of the \^hite

Sea— Baltic Canal alone), and in its hevdav there w ere never few er than 10 to 15 million men, women, and children behind barbed wire. W hile these figures were high, thev did not provoke much dissent among commentators, and most of Solzhenitsvn's documentation w as confirmed as generally accurate. But considerable controversy was caused bv his underlying thesis that the camps were by no means solely a phenomenon of Stalinism but were implicit (and, in a small w aw explicit) in Lenin's political philosophy as well. Stalin w as but a blind follow er and executor of Lenin's w ill (who in turn was carrying out Marx's prescriptions) and not at all an originator in this field. Furthermore, those who defended Lenin and heaped all the blame on Stalin were guilty of bad faith, and did so only to save their beloved Marxism from disrepute.

These views had already caused something of

a furore

among

dissident

Union, especially among those who took the "loyal oppositionist" view of Roy Medvedev and his sympathizers and still spoke of a possible return to "Leninist norms" (Medvedev had already written a wellpublicized rebuttal in a review of the Russian edition), and thev now provoked further debate in the U'est. Thev certainly went a long wav towards explaining the vehemence of Solzhenitsvn's present animus against all forces of Marxism and communism and provided a theoretical framework for what had formerly seemed like arbitrary and provocative statements. Equally revealing were Solzhenitsvn's account of how these view s had been formed in (and by) the camps, the description of his rites of passage as a loyalist trust\ at Xovv lerusalim and Kaluga Gate, the stunning admission of his brief enlistment as an informer at the peak of his conformist period, and the unfolding of his long, slow path to enlightenment in the Marfino sharashka and at Ekibastuz. The picture of Solzhenitsvn that emerged was of an inciividual w ho had heard, seen, and suffered much but w ho had been saved bv his religious faith and a return to traditional Russian Christian values. First had come his discovery that "the line separating good from evil passes not through states or between political parties, but through each human heart." then the conviction that the struggle with evil must therefore take place "w ithin each circles in the Soviet

.

.

.

'

Talking to the Furopfans

human

being," and Hnalh an implacable

for their falsification of these truths

not in individuals but in societw offering The

(jiihig .Archipelago

[933]

hostilitx- to all

forms of materialism

and their location of the moral battleheld

It v\

as for this reason that

Solzhenitsyn was

not onlx as an act of national repentance and

contrition but also as a personal confession of guilt and complicity in the larger crime.

As

in

The Oak and

the (aiI{\

he called on others to emulate this

and contrition. Gulag 'Ttvo \\ ent a long w av towards rehabilitating Sol/.henitsyn's reputation with English and American readers, but there were still problems. Even Professor Schapiro, a profoimd admirer, was obliged to concede that feat of "self-limitation"

Solzhenitsvn's counsel of "uncompromising perfection" held difhculties for most normal mortals (though he absolved Solzhenitsyn of the charge of hvpocrisv). He conceded that Solzhenits\n's "fanaticism" often led him to exaggeration, especiallv in the political sphere, that his "extreme intolerance"

towards dissidents (not to speak of others) with opinions at variance with his calculated to make him more enemies than friends, and that Solzhenitsyn was "not entirely free from the irritating tendency of so many Russian

own was

emigres to dismiss

all

the

w ork of Western

historians of Soviet Russia ... as

—

as one of the better Western historians. Professor Schapiro was sensitive to (and resented) this charge. So long as the debate was restricted to Russian subject matter, however, and to a discussion of Soviet policies and Soviet societw dialogue w as possible, for Solzhenitsyn had thought profoundly about these questions and was writing from long and bitter experience."* As if to confute the apologies and exegeses of his admirers, Solzhenitsyn immediately jumped back into the w hirlpool of American politics. From his home in Zurich he sent the Neiv York Times an article on the dismissal, in November, of the American secretary of defense, James Schlesinger, by December and blamed Henry President Ford. The article appeared on Kissinger for Schlesinger's downfall, alleging that the defense secretary had little

more than

a regurgitation

of Soviet propaganda"

1

been sacrificed on the

altar of a false detente.

Solzhenitsyn accused Kissinger

of being ignorant of Soviet psychology, of presiding over

a

policy of "unend-

ing concessions," of bringing about the West's "worst diplomatic defeat" in

and of arranging at best only a shaky peace in the Middle East. Kissinger was a "capitulator," a loser, a diplomatic simpleton, who was turning the West's "surrender of world positions" into "an avalanche." As for President Ford, he had acted without decency or foresight and should at least have consulted his allies first, for Schlesinger, "a man of steadfast, perceptive, and brilliant mind," had been responsible for the defence of the entire free world. His dismissal, though an event of a different order of magnitude, had caused in America's friends feelings of "pain, bewilderment, and disillusionment" akin to those produced by the assassination of President Kennedy and by the "inability or lack of desire of the American judicial authorities to uncover the assassins and clean up the crime." The bathos, lack of proportion, and clumsiness of Solzhenitsyn's analogy with thirty years (in X'ietnam),

SOLZHENITSYN

[934]

the Kenned\' assassination and the tone of contemptuous dismissal

\\

ith

w hich

Solzhenitsvn discussed the failings of the not necessarily popular Kissinger

were resented by most Americans, who found his remarks "naive," "clumsy," "outrageous," "interfering," and "self-destructiye." They consoled themsehes with the thought that Russian novelists \\ ere not the only ones with a penchant for making crass political statements. Mark Twain, Dos Passos, and Steinbeck (to name only three) had been equally silly in their time,' and they were perhaps relieved that the proposal to grant Solzhenitsvn honorary American citizenship had been allowed to lapse by Congress. In the course of the

autumn of 1975 Solzhenitsvn made

several state-

ments denying new spaper reports about one or another aspect of his private life, congratulated Sakharov on the award to him of the Nobel Peace Prize, expressed public support for X'ladimir Osipov and Igor Shafarevich, and in early December issued an appeal to Russian emigres who were "older than the Revolution" to write to him with their reminiscences of the period 1917-22.

Also in December he gave

a long and interesting interview on mainly literary and autobiographical topics to Georges Suffert, editor of the Paris-based magazine Le Point, which had just made him "man of the year." And in February 1976 he was off on his travels again, first to England, then France, and then Spain. Solzhenitsyn arri\ed in England on 19 February and stayed for ten days. His visit was in most respects a rerun of his earlier forays to France and the United States: a prime-time television interview a radio broadcast, visits to one or two universities, a talk with his publishers, and the rest of his movements shrouded in secrecy. In contrast to his stay in America and Canada, however, there was no travelling, apart from a visit to Oxford and Stratfordupon-Avon, and Solzhenitsyn showed remarkably little curiosity about the country he was visiting. For most of the time, he and his wife staved in their small hotel in Windsor under false names (later they moved to London for a few days), and except for early morning walks by the Thames, they spent most of their days, when not occupied with official duties, in their room. Indeed, they virtually camped there, refusing to go down to the dining-room for meals, consuming bread and salami that Solzhenitsyn bought in nearby shops, and drinking glasses of tea made with a portable electric element. This element caused a minor crisis at the beginning of their stay, because it was French and wouldn't plug into English sockets; the manager offered to send to Solzhenitsyn's room as much tea as he desired, but Solzhenitsxn would not hear of it: he sometimes drank tea in the middle of the night, he said, and would not dream of troubling the maid (in similar fashion he had insisted on carrying his own suitcases on arrival at Victoria Station)."^ ,

The

English countryside,

it

appears, did not impress Solzhenitsyn, nor

did Stratford-upon-Avon. In Oxford he declined to tour the colleges and

spent most of the day closeted with his

latest

(and best) English translator,

Harry VV'illetts. In Windsor he seemed equally unimpressed with Eton, and in London, v\hen taken to the National Gallery and Trafalgar Square to do

Talking to the Europeans some

location shots for his television

gallery's pictures.

falgar tal.

I

le

His

summoned

gallery's steps,

proclaimed

it fit

the gallerv led to an incident that also

to a side door

Solzhenitsvn

programme, had no time

is

to inspect the

did like Windsor (>astle, however, and surveying Tra-

Square from the visit to

[9351

and informed

for an imperial capi-

amused him.

in re\ erential

On

here," the gallery's caretaker responded curtly that

Sundav, adding, "I don't care

if it's

God

being

tones that "Alexander

himself, he's not

coming

it

was

in."

a

The

v\ as w rong, of course: telexision can accomplish many things beyond power of God, and one of them was to open the National Gallery on a the

caretaker

Sunday.^ Solzhenitsyn found time to

visit

the

House of Commons during ques-

tion time, when Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the Tory party leader Margaret Thatcher were debating the best means to help people emigrate from Eastern Europe, and to visit the BBC's Television Centre and Russian Service. At the Television Centre he scandalized the top brass by preferring to watch the end of a videotaped film on Eastern Europe to lunching \\ ith them in the executive dining-room upstairs, and at the Russian Service startled the staff by declining wine and requesting Coca-Cola, which no one had thought to provide. At the Russian Service he produced from his pocket a detailed list of criticisms of the w ay the service was run, together with a correspondingly long list of suggestions for improvement, and read them to

the assembled

The

*^

staff.

high point of his stay was undoubtedly the hour-long television

interview broadcast by the BBC's top news and current affairs programme,

"Panorama." Solzhenitsyn repeated his conviction that Russia was about "seventy to eighty years" in advance of the West, spiritually speaking, that the West had declined more rapidly and catastrophically in the two years since he had arrived than before, but that he was not "a critic of the West," simply a critic of the West's weaknesses. The West had given up not just "four, five, six countries" in the last two years but "all its world positions" and had done a great deal to strengthen Soviet tyranny. "At the moment the question

is

not

how

the Soviet

Union

will find a

way

out of totalitarianism

be able to avoid the same fate." The nuclear-disarmament debate v\'as a side-issue, he said, irrelevant to the main threat. "Nuclear war is not necessary to the Soviet Union. You can be taken simply \\ ith bare but

how

hands."

the

And

West

detente

will

was meaningless without an

Union could reverse left

change, which

made

policy of detente overnight, and the

its

floundering, for the

ideological detente.

West required a

it

at least a

year or

t\\

The

Soviet

West would be

o to make the same

very dangerous path to enter upon. Solzhenitsyn

more for trivializing and misrepresenting what he had had to say earlier, and in some interesting comments on The Gulag Archipelago, he reaffirmed his belief in the power of the seriously written word to attacked the press once

today the three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago were widely published in the Soviet Union and u ere freely available to all, then in a very affect history. "If

short space of time no

Communist

ideology would be

left.

For people

who

SOLZHENITSYN

[936]

would simplv have no more room in their He added that, in his view, the Soviet authorities had expelled him out of weakness but that whereas, two years ago, he had hoped to return home "verv soon," the Soviet Union had since grown so strong that it \\ ould take longer if thev did not assassinate him had read and understood

minds

Communist

for

this

all

ideology."

—

"^

first.

The

response to Solzhenitsvn's

in the Times printed a breathless

\\

Bernard Levin

as astonishing.

partv ("There was no need to ask him where he gets such inner

at a cocktail

strength and integritv; this

understand

inter\'ie\\

account of a prior meeting with Solzhenitsvn

\\

a

is

man who

walks with

hat 'Holv Russia' once meant") and

God and makes one

went on

to

compare

Sol-

zhenitsvn's television performance with Martin Luther nailing his manifesto to the doors at

Wittenberg (with references to Thor, Dostoyevsky, and Soc-

rates along the wav).

You could

an angel.

seem

to

hover

The

Guardian

hear the great

a foot or

two

perhaps with tongue slightlv

s

television critic wrote,

whoosh of w

ings that

"He

talked like

makes great orators

off the floor." Michael Davie in the Observer, in

cheek, likened Solzhenitsvn to Charlton Hes-

ton playing Moses, and the Sunday Telegraph wrote that Solzhenitsvn's

appearance was an event

who had

w hose magnitude

heard him would never forget

it

it.'*^

—

was impossible to grasp those The BBC's weeklv magazine,

the Listener, containing extracts from Solzhenitsvn's interview, sold out first time in its historv.* But the improbablv theatrical climax was undoubtedlv the public resignation from the Labour partv of Lord George Brown, formerlv foreign secretarv and once one of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's closest confidants. For long a sharp critic of the direction his partv was moving in, Lord (ieorge Brown quoted Solzhenitsvn's interview as the reason for his decision and said he

immediatelv and had to be reprinted for the

was now readv

to join "Solzhenitsvn's

army."

In this orgv of masochistic euphoria, state of British

which

said as

much

half a century of decline as

it

insight, a cialists

low

did for the truth of Solzhenitsyn's assertions,

w ere slow to make themselves heard. But after the novelist's power as an artist and to the keenness of

dissenting voices

ances to

for the

morale and the multiple inferiority complexes engendered by

number

on Russian

ritual obeis-

his spiritual

of critics did indeed begin to question his diagnosis. Speaffairs like

Edward Crankshaw

in the Observer

and Profes-

sor Richard Peace in a letter to the Times pointed out that Solzhenitsyn's

knowledge of historv was weak and that his disillusionment with the West and apocalvptic warnings of doom were in a ver\' Russian tradition that encompassed Herzen, Dostoyevsky, and many other thinkers in the not too distant past. Others pointed out that Solzhenitsyn was essentially in the same millenarian tradition as the hated Marx himself and that his vision of an allconquering Soviet Union and the onward march of its armies owed more to Soviet propaganda than to Western perceptions of the world. His under*The

interview

was

later

shown on

television in

America,

albeit

w

ith rather less success.

TALK

I

NG TO THE EUROPEANS

[93?]

Standing of the West, and of such concepts as democracy and of freedom

under democracy, seemed sketchy at best, though this w as hardly surprising giyen vyhat was know n of Solzhenitsyn's Hfe and habits in the West. "A man now committed to working 16-18 hours a day on his historical noyel series about Russia, who speaks Cierman but Httle Knglish or French, and who relies on Russian sources, emigre or otherw ise, for his information is not going to be in the best position to pronounce on the fate of the West."" Opinion was thus diyided betw een those who yalued his moral and spiritual ical

message and his appeal accuracy and the daily

to higher yalues

aboye

all

quibbles about histor-

detail of politics, and those

who

that his

felt

inadequacies in these spheres inyalidated the main message. But

w

hat

was

incontestable was the impact of Solzhenitsyn's personality and the indubitable charisma he possessed.

He

had become the yery thing he claimed

to

and his Garbo-like games of hide-and-seek with the press

abhor: a media star, only intensified this quality. As the debate about his interview

roomed

—and

w

mush-

—the BB(^

capinewspapers filled "Panorama" devoting the next talized on the interest it had created by programme to a discussion of Solzhenitsyn's ideas on detente between a foras the

ith readers' letters

Dutch secretary-general of NATO, Dr. Joseph Luns, an American presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, and the former defense secretary whom Solzhenitsyn had praised, James Schlesinger. On 24 March the BBC broadcast a radio talk by Solzhenitsyn hastily commissioned during his stay at Windsor (he had sat down in his hotel room and written it), then a radio discussion of the talk by two English professors and a French radio journalist, then the original interview on television again, and finally another television discussion between two journalists (including Bernard Levin), a historian, and the chairman of Amnesty Inter-

mer prime

minister,

Edward Heath,

the

national.

None main

lines

of this added very

much

to

what had gone before or

of the debate, but Solzhenitsyn did introduce

a

altered the

new dimension

of

invective into his radio broadcast, which was cijnsiderably shriller than his television interview.

He

elaborated on his charge that Britain had "treacher-

ously disarmed and bound" those w ho had fled Soviet oppression and "had

who on seventy-year-olds were being hastily handed over to be murdered."* He excoriated "your free, independent, incorruptible press" and its conspiracy of silence, charged that the democracies were fully capable of using "Fascist techniques" to promote

not shrunk from using the butts of your

rifles

.

.

.

same breath accused Britain of being unfair to Franco's Fascist Spain. Twice the Russians had helped to save the freedom of Western Europe, "and twice you repaid us bv abandoning us to our slavery." Europe was "nothing but a collection of cardboard stage sets, all bargaining with one another to see how little can be spent on defence in order to leave more for

their ends,

and

the comforts of *

A

in the

life."

And

there

reference to the Russian emigres

v\

was more

in a similar vein.'-

ho were forcibly repatriated

after the

Second World

W ar.

SOLZHENITSYN

[938] It is difficult

to account for the high-pitched tone of Solzhenitsyn's radio

outburst, rising as

it

did in places to a veritable scream of rage and frustra-

set himself, he must Washington he had failed to alter the course o{ detente. He must have seen and felt himself to be a prophet crving in the wilderness each time he preached his message of repentance, regeneration, and rearmament to apparentlv deaf ears. The talk had not been his idea anywav; it had been pressed upon him bv the BBC; perhaps he had not expected it to come out the way it did. Was it the solitude of his hotel room, the solitude of the studio, and the consequent sense of isolation from his audience, that had

tion. It

have

is

understandable that, given the high goals he

felt frustrated.

In

Or could there have been another psychological work? The British, after all, had received him with more and with more modestv and humilitv than any other nation.

caused him to be so extreme?

mechanism enthusiasm

Had

at

—

—

this national self-abasement

produced the opposite

effect to that intended?

In the Soviet Union, and often in Russia beforehand, sweet reasonableness

and self-effacement have

Had

all

too frequently invited bullving and humiliation.

Solzhenitsvn, almost without realizing

it,

vielded to the temptation to

kick the up-ended bottoms of his prostrate hosts?

One

distinguished profes-

contempt was

sor in a letter to the Times, suggested that Solzhenitsvn's realitv a sign of the special favour

and therefore

a

with which he had

earlier

in

regarded Britain

token of his special disappointment." National masochism

could hardly go further. Solzhenitsvn, meanwhile, had moved on well before his talk was broadand well before the debate about his ideas was even half over. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he had slipped unnoticed into France, and on 9 March he appeared in another television marathon in the series "Les Dossiers de I'Ecran," in which he answered viewers' questions. The programme proper was preceded bv a showing of Caspar Wrede's film of .4 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which Solzhenitsvn was seeing for the second time. The interview part of the programme was not as exclusivelv political as most of Solzhenitsvn's previous interviews had been, and perhaps because the questions came directly from the public (though transmitted and translated via intermediaries in the studio), both they and Solzhenitsvn's answers had a directness and freshness that had been lacking in his earlier performances. A great many of the questions were biographical or related to Solzhenitsyn's works, and he was able to answer unaffectedly about the experiences that had inspired him and his intentions in writing this or that particular book. In discussing the political context oi Ivan Denisovich, he made the somew hat startling claim that Khrushchev had authorized publication as part of his campaign against China (instead of against his opponents in the Party), and added that whereas Khrushchev had been oblivious of the danger the book posed, others in the Politburo had seen it clearly but been powerless to stop it. Another answer dealt w ith the alleged contradiction between the labour-camp system of slave cast

labour and the Soviet Union's status as an industrialized nation. There was

no contradiction,

said Solzhenitsvn.

"The

existence of the

Gulag

is

contrary

Talking to the Europeans to ethics

and humanitv,

it

[9391

affronts the soul and the heart, but

it

not in

is

opposition to industrial might." The reason the Soviet authorities had eventualK dissolved most of it had nothing to do with ethics; rather, it was the

had outlived its usefulness. Slave labour West and by the import of Western

result of a rational calculation that

it

had been replaced bv commerce w

ith the

technology as the engine of industrial progress. The rational and relativelv unemotional tone of these early exchanges

in

programme eventualK had a l)enehcial effect on the more pt^litical discussion that came later. In answer to a question about Leonid Flyushch, the the

iet dissident w ho had announced on French television w as still a Marxist (w hile detesting the Soviet regime),* Solzhenitsyn was eminenth fair. He pointed to certain contradictions between Plyushch's view of Marxism and his negative assessment of the Soviet variety, reminded

recenth- arri\ed So\ that he

Plvushch himself had said he still needed time for study and and hinted (not without foundation) that Plyushch was being manipulated bv the French Left for domestic political purposes. Another subject of dispute w as Chile. Le Monde, among others, had recently printed a storv saving that Solzhenitsyn had either visited or was about to visit Chile listeners that

reflection,

the invitation of General Pinochet, and a view er

at

Solzhenitsvn w as aw are that Chile had

its

own

w anted

to

know w hether

concentration camps. Solzhe-

n replied that the story was false. He had never been to Chile and had never been invited. Unfortunatelv, the question provoked him to mount one of his favourite hobbv-horses, and from there on the temperature rose to nits\

Not onh was

the storv wrong, exclaimed Solzhenitsyn, it from beginning to end ... a journalistic invention." He attacked Le Monde for having misrepresented him, and the Western press in familiar levels.

was

"a complete

general for

lie

knowing how

to

lie

subject of Chile in general he

Chile that had offered to free

"just as skilfullv as the So\iet press."

w as reasonably all its

On

sober, pointing out that

it

the

w

as

Union did mentioned the little-

political prisoners if the Soviet

same and that the Soviet Union had refused. He also know n and little-discussed fact that a number of Chilean exiles had emigrated to Rumania, had been appalled by what they found there, and had experienced the greatest difficultv in getting out again and moving to West Berlin.

the

But he could not

resist

remarking provocatively that he kept hearing the

often than he heard references to the Berlin Wall or the

word Chile more

occupation of Czechoslovakia and that

"if

Chile hadn't existed,

it

would have

been necessary to invent it." After that, the questions reverted to detente, the future of the Soviet Union, the alleged decline of the West, and subjects on which Solzhenitsvn had already voiced his well-known opinions.'"^

The curious *

Plvushch,

hospital,

who

was

result of

all

this

w as

that, despite the vast difference in tone,

arrived in France in 1976, after having been incarcerated in a Soviet psychiatric

at that

time very popular with the French Lett as

Marxist; since then he has Carnival (London and

New

moved somewhat away from York, 1979)

is

a dissident

his earlier views.

who was

His book

also a

History's

one of the more interesting and original autobiogra-

phies to have been published by a dissident.

SOLZHENITSYN

[94o]

and

for the

most part

between

in substance,

this

and Solzhenitsyn's

earlier

interviews in England and America, the public response was almost identi-

—

Again there were the hxperbolic headlines "One Man against an Empire"; "Solzhenitsvn, a Saint of Olden Times"; "Is God Russian?" the extravagant comparisons to Joan of Arc, to David against Goliath and the grancal.

— —

—

Once again there was a between the Left and liberals, on one side, and his conservative supporters on the other. And almost the entire attention of the press was concentrated on the last "political" quarter of Solzhenits^n's remarks, at the expense of his more ruminative statements earlier in the programme. Matters were made worse, in this respect, bv accusations against the Erench television network (which is fairlv closelv controlled bv the French government) of having chosen the programme date w ith an eye to the P rench cantonal elections and bv charges made in the course of the programme itself that the whole thing was part of an orchestrated compaign against the Left. The editors of Le Monde were infuriated b\- Solzhenits\n's public attack on their newspaper. Thev had printed a retraction of the Ghile story that (contrar)' to Solzhenitsvn's claim) w as longer and more prominently positioned than the original storv, thev asserted that the other misrepresentation he complained of had not been nearlv so bad as alleged and had also been follow ed diose claims for his powers of prophecv and vision. split

bv

a clarification,

and

the\' revealed that

Was

proceedings against them.

legal

Solzhenitsvn had recently instituted

this

not an attempt at censorship, asked

former Moscow correspondent oi Le Monde who had written favourabh' about Solzhenitsvn in the past, and was it not a relic of bad old "Soviet" habits? Elsewhere in the same issue Le Monde indicated its views on Michel Tatu,

a

the matter in the headline to a

commentary by Bernard Feron

—"Erom

—

Intransigence to Intolerance" and later lodged a formal protest with the Erench Television Service, demanding the right of reply to Solzhenitsyn's "prejudicial" presentation of the case.

One

was w av he w as inevitably draw n into local political squabbles. Solzhenitsvn had repeatedlv emphasized in his interviews and speeches that he w as not a politician and not a political thinker. He was an artist and a moralist, he said, appealing to a higher sphere of action, and in a separate interview in Paris, given to Nikita Struve, the editor of the Vestnik, he repeated his astonishment that "everybody who talks to me pushes me in the direction of politics and wants to hear my political opinions.

made out

I

find

place

it

is

tempted

of his

very

to pitv Solzhenitsvn for the political capital that

visit

irritating,

and

but

for the

it's

so."

"almost accidentallv."'''

I'Ecran," in explaining

w

h\ the

He claimed

But

his

that his press interview

television

host on

programme had not been intended

ence the cantonal election, revealed that the date had been

set

s

took

"Dossiers de to infiu-

by Solzheni-

tsvn three months in advance; and Solzhenitsyn himself, in yet another interxiew (with Jean-Claude

Lamy

oi Le Soir) disclosed that one of his prin-

aims in agreeing to do the television programme had been to express his views on the new relations recently established betw een Moscow and foreign

cipal

Talking to the Kuropkans Communist

parties (including the I'Ycnch party).

intended to inter\ene

French poMrics,

in

anti

[941]

In other

words, he had

he was disappointed, according

programme had gone. He had been softened up, "The memories of my imprisonment came surging back to me. Soon found m\seH in a lyrical mood; my soul was vibrating." lie hatl been disoriented by the multiplicity of microto

Lamv, bv

he said,

the

b\' his

way

the

view ing of Ivan Denisovich. I

phones and blinded

was

properly.'''' it

tone of

many

1)\

arc lights

and had not been able

to marshal his thoughts

accounted for the unusually

this that

of his remarks, which Solzhenitsyn

now

soft antl meditative

regretted; in discount-

ing them, the French press had correctK' divined the author's true intentions.

A

w as given

last political t\\ ist

who

Paris,

lodged

a

to the affair

by the Soviet ambassador

in

formal protest with the French authorities against Sol-

zhenitsyn's television appearance. Solzhenitsyn's views, the note said, "confirm that he to the cold

is

an

enemy

oi detente

to spread his "hate-filled

who

declares himself in favour of a return

French television had given him a chance slander" w as incompatible w ith France's promise to

war," and the

fact that

promote mutual understanding. The French government rejected the protest its internal affairs and revealed that the Soxiet embassy had interxened with the telexision authorities to get the programme banned before it even took place.'' When news of the Soviet demarche was released, it naturalh had the opposite effect of that intended and increased sympathy for Solzhenitsyn's case, even among those w ho basically disagreed with him. as interference in

A

contributory reason for Solzhenits\n's choice of early March as the

date of his Paris

visit

was the publication there of the

third

and

final

volume

of The Gulag Archipelago in Russian. His vast chronicle of the "Soviet holo-

was at last before readers in its entirety, although it would be many months before enough people had read it to debate its merits, and w ell over a year before its appearance in translation into other languages. Another reason was the publication in French, F.nglish, and Cierman oi Lenin in 'Zurich,

caust"

an extract from his series of historical novels. In his interview with Struve, Solzhenitsyn explained ist

ot the

camp world

how to

he had involuntarily become "the trusted annal-

whom

everyone brought their truth"

atter the

appearance oi Ivan Denisovich and how he had evolved his method of "literary investigation" to deal with the material. I

had never thought about the form of

me by

a litcrarv investigation;

the material in The Gulag Archipelago.

A

literar\'

it

was dictated

investigation

is

to

the han-

dling of factual (not transformed) real-life material in such a w av that the separate facts

and fragments, linked bv artistic means, yield a general idea that is totally in no wav inferior to that produced bv a scientific investigation.'*

convincing and

Work on

camp no\els and on The Gulag Archipelago had postponed his "main theme," the history of the Revolution, but when he eventually got there, he found that the methods evolved for Gulag w ere suitable for his historical novels too, and this had been one of his guiding principles in w riting the chapters that made up Lenin in VAirich. his

arrival at his

SOLZHENITSYN

[942]

In an interview already recorded for the Zurich, Solzhenitsvn I

should sav

its

it is

a

expanded on

BBC

on the subject of Lenin

form of creative research.

fullness, in its authenticity, in

its

Mv

aim

is

to reconstruct historv in

complexity, but for this

have to use the

I

much of which from witnesses, most of whom are no can see farther and deeper, thanks to the force

artist's vision,

because a historian uses only documentary material,

has been

The

lost.

longer alive

.

.

.

\\

historian uses evidence

hereas the artist

of perception in the artistic

means

in

his approach.

artist's vision.

available to

me

I

am

not writing

a novel.

I

am

using

all

the

to penetrate as deeply as possible into historical

events."

The

use of the word "novel" here was in response to

not describe the form of Lenin

in Zurich.

a

question and did

Solzhenitsvn shared the traditional

Russian reluctance to be bound by West European concepts of genre (the a novel was The First Circle), as was show n by his invention of the term "knot" to describe August 1914 and the volumes planned to follow it. Lenin in Zurich was not a "knot" but "fragments of an epic," unified only by its subject the personality of Lenin and by its

only one of his works he described as

place

—

—

— Zurich.

Solzhenitsvn's fragments dealt with Lenin's

life

in

Zurich during the

World War and on the eve of the Revolution. It was in most respects a peculiarly empty and frustrating period for Lenin. The war had cut him off from direct communication \\ ith Russia, and there was little he could do to exert any influence anywhere. Indeed, according to Solzhenitsvn, Lenin was on the verge of giving up his revolutionary hopes entirely and retiring to America \\ hen the opportunity arose for him to return home. Solzhenitsyn described what that life had been like, with its frustrated hopes and extravagant dreams. Lenin was shown experiencing emotional difficulties with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskava, and longing for the company of his former mistress, Inessa Armand. He was shown as short-tempered with his Swiss and First

Russian Social Democratic colleagues, intolerant of the opinions of others, incapable of friendship, and addicted to plotting and scheming.

came

The

climax

meeting betw een Lenin and another notable revolutionary (more famous than Lenin at the time), Alexander Helphand, alias Parvus, a \\ ealthv Jew who was said to have played a major role (along with

of the action

Trotsky)

\\

ith a

in the abortive revolution of 1905

and

who had

subsequently gone

abroad and made his fortune. Helphand was depicted by Solzhenitsyn as Lenin's evil genius, his satanic tempter, and his superior in cunning and

Karamazov's vision of the Grand Helphand offers to help Lenin get to Petrograd by persuading the Germans to give him safe passage in a sealed compartment of a train and to supply him with money. Lenin remains non-committal when the offer is foresight. In a scene reminiscent of Ivan

Inquisitor,

made but later capitulates and accepts it.-'' As fiction Lenin in Zurich showed Solzhenitsyn returning to top form. The best chapters were up to the best in August 1914, and if there were

— Talking to the Europeans longueurs,

due

these were

names and mass of

to the welter of untaniiliar

felt

bv most

he

critics to

I943] historieal detail,

hiemish that would fade when the

a

Ihe book had,

chapters took their place in the complete epic.

in addition,

some

intriguing features. Solzhenitsxn's portrait of Lenin was highl\' per-

sonal,

w

autobiographical overtones.

ith

he picture of

I

a loneK'

prophet, self-centered, short-tempered, mi.serlv with his time

and unheeded

("a single

wasted

hour made Lenin ill"), suspicious of others, virtualK friendless, cut off from his homeland, and dreaming of leaving his w ife for another woman seemed uncannily close to certain biographical details in the life of the author breathtakingK so to those who knew him well and there was much comment among Russian readers about Solzhenitsvn's psxchological identification with his revolutionarv predecessor and ideological opponent. Solzhenitsvn seems not to have been undulv upset bv these speculations, but he xigorousK' rejected them w henever thev were put to him directlv. To the BB(> interviewer he said he had invented nothing in his portrait of Lenin, had endowed him \\ ith no characteristic that Lenin had not possessed in real lite. "Mv aim is to give as little plav to the imagination as possible and

—

to re-create as closelv as possible

w

hat he

w as

reallv like.

Ihe w Titer's imagwhole and, bv

ination onlv helps to forge the separate elements into one

how these elements intersame occasion, Solzhenitsvn declined to answer the question of whether he admired Lenin or not ("Read the book" w as his classic author's answer to the challenge), but the fact of his long preoccupation w ith Lenin was no secret, and in speaking to Struve he was more explicit about the form penetrating into the character, to trv to explain

act."-'

On

the

his fascination

Lenin I

is

had taken.

one ot the central figures

in

mv

epic and a central figure in our historv.

moment

have been thinking of Lenin from the verv

I

conceived the idea of

mv

and have collected everv crumb and fragment that

epic, for forty years already,

know n about him, absolutelv evervthing. Throughout the years I gradualK- came to understand him; even compiled catalogues listing his actions throughout his life according to w hich characteristics they illustrated. Evervthing I learned about him I read in his books and in memoirs. ... I don't use this directlv at the moment of w riting, but it is all systematized and sorted in my head. Now w hen I regard mvself as ha\ ing matured to the point where can write about Lenin, am describing his concrete vears in Zurich, while retrospectivelv including events from his private and political life. I have no other task than to describe the living Lenin exactlv as he was, is

.

.

.

I

,

I

abjuring

all

official

I

embellishments and

superficial to sav that I'm writing

of his

ow n

reached

characteristics

a certain level

understand another

man

.

.

.

official

legends. .\nd

him out of mvself.

[but]

I

I

it's

absolutelv

am w riting him

onlv out

cannot describe him w ithout mvself having

of psvchologv and experience, w ithout being able to in his particular

circumstances and w

ith his particular

aims.'-

Lenin, of course, was his old hero. Long after his

with Stalin, Lenin had remained

total

disillusionment

his idol, the shining knight of the

Revolu-

SOLZHENITSYN

[944] tion,

tear

and

had taken him

it

him from

had been the

a

long time before he plucked up the courage to

his pedestal. Stalin

first

was torn down

in 777^ First Circle. Stalin

father-figure to go (other writers, like

Mandelstam, Pasterwas a

nak, Bulgakov, and Grossman, had tackled Stalin as well), but Lenin

bigger challenge, and Solzhenitsvn had few predecessors in this particular act of literary regicide.

He was

quite explicit, however, about his intentions.

down from his mythic dimencounter-mvth to the official Soviet legend of the avuncular idealist with the heart of gold and the cares of mankind on his shoulders. He had once thought, he told Struve, of waiting until his entire epic was complete before publishing any part of it, but he couldn't His aim was

sions to

to

human

resist starting

demystify Lenin, to cut him

size

and

to create a

now, because

it

was "impossible not

to try to influence the

thinking of one's contemporaries."-^

Not

surprisingly, Solzhenitsvn's iconoclastic treatment of

one of the great

new point of controversy. The principal objections were set out at great length in the French magazine Est et Quest by Boris Souvarine, a founder member of the French Communist party and leading member of the Comintern who later broke with both, became a distinguished historian, wrote a critical biography of Stalin, and eventually came to oppose Leninism as well. Souvarine had known Lenin (and some of heroes of twentieth-century history became

a

the other individuals described in Solzhenitsvn's book) personally, and insisted

had misrepresented Lenin's character and actions. While acknowledging Solzhenitsvn's enormous merits as a novelist, moralist, and chronicler of Gulag, and admitting that "Solzhenitsvn's sincerity was beyond question," Souvarine advanced a variety of charges against him. Solzhenitsyn, he wrote, had been misled by over-exposure to tendentious Communist historiography. As an example, he quote Solzhenitsvn's authorial note on "events which have been carefully concealed from history and which, because of the development of the West, have received little attention." On the contrar\', wrote Souvarine, they were the subject of a vast and still-growing literature, w ith only a part of which Solzhenitsyn had familiarized himself before w riting his book. This must have been why Solzhenitsyn had accepted and was promulgating two pernicious myths: that Helphand was a friend and helper of Lenin's (on the contrary, wrote Souvarine, Lenin detested him and repeatedly rejected his help) and that Lenin had accepted German money and had travelled through Germany in a "sealed carriage" in order to return to Russia. There was no evidence at all, according to Souvarine, that Lenin had ever accepted a penny of German money, and the journey by train had been perfectly open and legal, and conducted in such a way that Lenin's compartment (and those of his companions) w ere officially regarded as "extraterritorial" formalh' speaking, Lenin never set foot on enemy territory. Souvarine deploxed a wealth of references and invoked an array of scholars to support his point of view and accused Solzhenitsyn of over-reliance on tainted and discredited sources. Solzhenitsyn was said to be guilty of selective quotation and distortion, and Souxarine drew attention to a passage about that Solzhenitsvn

.

.

.

—

Talking

to th k

I

uropkan

',

s

f

among Russian

94

5

1

Lenin that had

ahx-atlv acc]uirctl a certain notorietx'

"just because

quarter oliiis blood was Russian, fate had hitched him to the

a

ramshackle Russian rattletrap.

A

readers:

cjuarter of his blood, but nothing in his

w ill, his inclinations, made him kin to that slovenK slapdash, eternalK drunken people." Ditl this mean, asked Souxarine, that the whole of Russian historv should be examined to determine w hat its chief characters' racial origins were and how much Russian blood ran in their \eins? hi that case, things would go badlv with the entire Russian ro\al famih', not to character, his

,

speak of writers

Pushkin (part Ethiopian), Lermonto\-

like

(of Scottish descent),

Karamzin (of Tartar stock), and dozens of others.-"^ It was to be three years betore Solzhenitsvn got around to repKing to Souvarine, but it is worth mentioning the main lines of his "defence" here. Souxarine was guilt\' of forgetting that Leniii in Zurich was first of all a work of literature, although Solzhenitsvn w rote that he had endeavoured to make it "historically irreproachable," and Souvarine had not found anv factual distortions. Secondh', the book "stood or fell" bv its characterization of Lenin as a psychological type, and again Souvarine had not questioned this. As for research and sources, in the end it came dow n to w hom vou believed, and he preferred

ones Souvarine had cited, just as he firmlv

his authorities to the

believed that

I

German monex'

lelphand had channelled

had thereby helped

to bring

and had not himself

to the Bolsheviks

about the October putsch.

He

used the xxord "sealed" xxith reference to the train Lenin had travelled but

how

in,

Germany as "legal" Germany had permitted

could Souvarine describe the journey through

and legitimate? Germany and Russia

\x

ere at war;

the journey precisely to bring about subversion and collapse in Russia and

forward her war aims. Lenin's acceptance of the guarantee of safe passage was treachery (Solzhenitsvn later amended this to "high treason").^' Finally:

You can let slip

scarcely conceal your admiration for this great villain. Sexeral times

vou

such expressions as "Lenin-denigrators," "Leninophobes," "slanderers,"

And how can anyone blacken What can anyone sav about Lenin

but only virtue can be slandered or denigrated.

name more than he

Lenin's

and Trotsky

did himself?

.

.

.

that x\()uld be xxorse than simply recalling h()x\ thev created and greatest totalitarianism the xxorld has seen and hox\- thev dexised their methods of mass terror. Your article is morally dangerous in that it

the

.

.

.

first

.

.

.

seeks to whitewash the crimes of this pair

tem

As

—w

itself

in

hile laving the xvhole

most such disputes, the

past one another. Souvarine (and

—and w

blame on tvxo sides

many

ith

them the Communist

svs-

their disciple [Stalin].-'^

other

were

to a certain extent talking

critics,

including, in the Soviet

Union, Roy Medvedev) was accusing Solzhenitsvn of manipulating the facts and distorting history in the service of a tendentious interpretation of it, while Solzhenitsvn maintained, on the one hand, that he xxas straightening out an already tendentious version of historx' and, on the other, that his ics

were raising quibbles that did not detract from

central interpretation.

The

crit-

his essentially correct

dispute continued in the pages of the French and

SOLZHENITSYN

[946]

emigre press (and in samizdat) for

new was added by Long on again

many months more,

but nothing essentially

either side.

moyed

before this debate had got truly under way, Solzhenitsyn had

—

time to Spain. After ten days of travelling around the country

this

came the usual prepared television interview and, later that same March 1976, a press conference, at which he spontaneously answered journalists' questions. Both were extremely interesting and among his better performances. In the interview he explained how important a place the Spanincognito

day, 20

war had occupied in Soviet mythology during his youth. "We were caught up in your civil war. Names like Toledo, the university campus in Madrid, the Ebro, Teruel, and Ciuadalajara were totally familiar to my generation, and if anyone had summoned us and allowed us to go, we would have dropped everything to go and fight for the Republicans." However, that had been long ago. He now realized that, compared with the Russian Civil War, the Spanish war had cost far fewer lives. More importantly, the outcome had been completely different. In Spain "the ish civil

passionately

.

.

.

Christian world view" had triumphed, leading to peace and reconciliation,

whereas the triumph of communism in Russia had meant the start of a longer and more bloody \\ ar the war of the state against the population and this had cost, according to statistics he trusted, sixty-six million lives* (against "a

—

—

half-million" for Spain).

Solzhenitsyn went on to say that he had heard

porary Spain as

a "dictatorship"

and

critics

describe contem-

"totalitarian" but that after travelling

around the country, he could say that these critics did not know what the words meant. No Spaniard was tied to his place of residence. Spaniards could travel abroad freely, newspapers and magazines from all over the world were on sale in the kiosks, everyone had free access to photocopying machines, even strikes (with some exceptions) were permitted, and there had recently been a limited amnesty for political prisoners. "If we had such conditions in the Soviet Union today, we would be thunderstruck, we would say this was unprecedented freedom, the sort of freedom we haven't seen in sixty years." It w as natural, he said, that progressive circles in Spain should want to have as much freedom as possible and to give their country the status of the other countries of Western Europe, but he wanted to too cjuickly.

The democracies were on

Spain could avoid the danger of

warn them

the retreat, and

it

against

moving

wasn't certain that

falling into a true totalitarianism in the not

too distant future.

He

also clarified his view of the

a lesson for the

way

in

which Russia's experience held

West.

Russia's social experience has placed her ahead of the rest of the world.

saving she has become

a

leader of nations.

*'rhe figure was provided bv an migre calculate Soviet losses

pro\ided

statistics.

from the

No, she has become

statistician. Professor

terror, purges,

I.

a

I

am

not

nation ot slaves

A. Kurganov, w ho has tried to

and other repressions by analyzing the

officially

Talking to the Europeans that calls itself the Soviet Lnion. But

we have gone through an

experience that

West has gone through. And v\e now lf)()k w ith pit\ on the W est. strange feehng, as if we were looking back on the past. And in relation to

nobodv It is a

[947]

in the

the V\ est one can sav

v\

e are looking at

happening here now happened

He wanted

vou from vour

future. Evervthing that

is

to us along ago."'

from the txrannv of "left" and "right." .Manwas not political but spiritual, and the opposition "East-\\ est" was relative. Both communities suffered from the same disease: "the ailment of materialism, the ailment of inadequate moral standards. It was precisely to escape, he said,

kind's crisis

the absence of moral standards that led to the appearance of such a horrible dictatorship as the Soviet one, and of such a greedv

West's.

On

the one hand

we

consumer society

as the

get totalitarian socialism, and on the other,

indifference to the unhappiness and suffering of others."

He

traced the origin of mankind's malaise back to the great leap that

man had made from

the .Middle .Ages to the Renaissance. .Man had done so

as a protest against the

impoverishment of

his material nature

and the exag-

grown more and more materialistic, more and more neglecting his spirituality, ending w ith the universal triumph of materiality, together with a decline in spiritual life. "The picture today's world presents to the eye strikes me as appalling. think that if mankind is not doomed to die, it must restore a proper appreciation of \ alues. In other

geration of the spiritual. But then he had

I

words, spiritual values must again predominate over material \alues. This does not is

mean

that

we

enriched by time.

The

I

should return to the Middle .Ages. F.verv development

am

speaking of new horizons, or so

it

seems to

me."-*^

thoughtful tone of these and other answ ers bv Solzhenitsxn was

greatly at variance with the stridency of the thunderbolts hurled in \\ ashington, Paris,

and London, perhaps because he

away from

the centres of

felt

he had to shout

less

loudly

pow er or perhaps because Spain had evoked in him a genuine spontaneity and warmth that informed his w hole attitude. .At all events his sincerity, his sense of commitment, and his social ease w ere w ideiy commented on bv Spanish journalists w ho attended the press conference. But it was tactless, to say the least, to lecture the Spaniards so directK' on the nature ot true dictatorship and to admonish a nation just emerging from a dictatorship

know

(however mild

nearly enough to

Soviet standards

b\'

make

a

—and Solzhenitsvn did not

true comparison) on the failings and dangers

of democracy. Solzhenitsvn was

w

and

idely perceived as interfering again;

while a few commentators concentrated on the apocahptic nature of his vision (one newspaper likened

were

political.

him

to a

mixture of Job and

Isaiah),

most responses

Solzhenitsyn's views were said to have been "gleefulh" recei\ed"

by the Spanish Right, up

to

and including the neo-Nazis, and

to

rassed Spain's conservative prime minister, Carlos Arias, w ho

seeking a commercial agreement with the Soviet Union. Left alleged that Solzhenitsvn

must "be suffering from

.A

have embar-

w as

just

then

spokesman of the

a serious

ness" that had destroyed his political judgement and caused

mental

him

ill-

to allow

SOLZHENITSYN

[94«]

himself to be "exploited as a figure-head and used by right-w ing extremists

democracy, human rights, and workers' freewords on dictatorship were widely misLe Monde (still smarting, it seems, from flagrantly bv quoted, most Solzhenitsvn's Paris attack), which carried the headline "Solzhenitsyn Thinks to attack the cause of social

dom."-*^ Perhaps predictably, his

That the Spaniards Live sels,

in

'Absolute Freedom.' "

A

few days later, in Brus-

the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (to

w hich the

AFL-CIO

belonged) issued a "strong protest" against Solzhenitsyn's statements on tele\ision and announced that in his "exaltation of the Franco regime" he w as "abandoning his ow n cause" of respect for human beings and their

right to

freedom and democracy.'" Few commentators had the perspicacity, if anything, endorsed the

or temerity, to point out that Solzhenitsyn had,

Spanish reforms and had merely cautioned against going too fast. Interestingly enough, Solzhenitsyn had foreseen some of these reactions in his press conference. One of his questioners had asked w hether he did not fear that his attacks

on

left

totalitarianism

w ould

give encouragement to sup-

porters of right-wing totalitarianism. After repeating his conviction that there

was totalitarianism onh of the Left (in his view the dictatorship of rightwing regimes w as less than total), Solzhenitsyn replied that a w riter could not worry about whether his words pleased someone or not, and emphasized that his allegiance w as only to Russia. "I never intended to become a Western w riter. I came to the West against my w ill. I write only for my homeland. ... cannot w orrv about w hat someone somew here makes of what I write and if he uses it in his own way." At another point, when asked why he lived in Sw itzerland, he replied, "I do not live in Sw itzerland, I live in Russia. All mv interests, all the things I care about, are in Russia."" Earlier, on television, he had been more explicit about his teelings. I

...

in the

prosperous countries of the West

we

live like captives.

possible for us tomorrow to return to our starving, beggarh- countr\all

go back

like a shot.

The Communist

press

is

If

were

it

we

\\

ould

very fond of speculating about

w ho went to the West and became a millionaire. When I w as home, thev didn't w rite a w ord. \\ hen we w ere all starving there (and thev still are todav), thev lied that we had full bellies. Yes, of course, I get big rovalties here, but the major part of them goes to the Russian Social Fund to help the persecuted in the Soviet Union and their families, and we send this aid

that Solzhenitsvn

starving at

h\-

various channels into the Soviet Union.

'-

end of his press conference, Solzhenitsyn asked to make and pleaded w ith reporters either to use his answers in full that experience or to omit certain topics altogether. "I know from newspapers usually take onh w hat they need. I hey tear some phrase out of Leave the scissors context, destrox all proportion, and distort my ideas. Just before the

a little digression

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

do you understand w hat I mean?'"' His plea was in vain, of course, w ith the result that his Spanish visit and Spanish speeches caused, if anxthing, more scandal than his earlier state-

alone,

his

.

.

Talking to the Europeans merits and certainlv did

more

to discredit

him with the "established Lett"

than anything that had gone before, lie hardiv deserved

make

[949]

it,

but few eared to

the effort to find out what he had realK said. Unfortunately, this

all

too predictable reaction to his words served onl\ to strengthen Solzhenitsvn's

prejudices as well. Both sides of the ideological divide were becoming locked into stereotypical attitudes that not onlv misrepresented their true positions

but were increasintjK

difficult to

break out

of.

51

THE SAGE OF VERMONT AMONG THE VARIOUS explanations that Solzhenitsyn had given for living L in Zurich, the latest (mentioned by

w as

that he

had wanted

him

in

both Paris and Madrid)

on Lenin for on the quesgood friends. In

to stay there while writing his chapters

his series of historical novels. Lenin in Zurich

tion of his future plans Solzhenitsyn

was

was now

out, but

evasive, even to

Paris he had admitted that he did not like Zurich and told Jean-Claude that he

w ould probablv

retire to the countrvside,

Lamy

while "definitely remaining

Switzerland." But in early May 1976 he surfaced unexpectedly in the United States, and it w as announced that he would spend some weeks at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, to carry out historical research. In Spain he in

—

had disclosed that the next two novels in the sequence begun by August 1914 were already complete, but it seems there October 1916 and March 1917 were archives at Hoover that he needed to consult before he could consider

—

\\ orks ready for publication. For three weeks he worked quietly, but on 20

these

May

he suddenly called

a

denounce a new Soviet campaign of denigration against him. 1 he Soviet press, under orders, had been more or less silent about him since the propaganda outburst accompanying his expulsion two years beforehand. It appears, however, that his speeches in America, and his latest round of appearances in Britain, France, and Spain, with his persistent attacks on detente, had had some effect in Moscow. In mid-March the Soviet press had broken its silence w ith a series of attacks on Solzhenitsyn's remarks in Spain. Tass and Pravda had quoted left-w ing circles to the effect that Solzhenitsyn was a total reactionary, and had joyfully picked up the allegation, cited in the English Guardian, that Solzhenitsvn was "mentally unbalanced." A week press conference to

950

The Sage Pravda had carried

later

a

oe \

'

erm

ont

[

round-up of the left-wing Spanish press

in

9

5

i I

which

Solzhenitsyn's speeches were inchgnanth rejected as interfering and Sol/henitsyn himself was denounced as opposed e\erv form of progress.'

A

completely different tack

Danilov

a

bourgeois chau\

hatl

been taken, also

in the Literaturnaya Gazeta. Sol/.henitsvn

w

and

inist

in

a

nn

stic

w ho

March, b\ Boris

as alleged to

ha\e paid

a

Madrid, to Grand Duke Vladimir Romanox the senior surviving male of the Russian roval famil\ and thus heir presumptixe to the Russian throne. Nothing is known of what passed between them, and visit,

while

in

,

Solzhenitsyn's

visit is easily

teratttnuiya (lazeta

restore tsarism,

from

explained

1)\'

chose to portray him as

and

as

hoping

his grandparents.-

It

his historical interests, but the Lia

con\ inced monarchist anxious to

to recover the estates

was pathetic

and propertv confiscated on a regurgitation of

stuff, rel\ ing

the IJteratunuiya Gazeta\ earlier rehash of the Stern article, but

approach, and

a side reference to the origin

that the "biographical line" of attack a fact that

emerged even more

its

general

of Solzhenitsvn's scar, indicated

on Solzhenitsyn was far from exhausted, from Solzhenitsyn's Stanford press

clearlv

conference.

He

had decided to

call

it,

he

said, after learning that the

KGB

had forged

show that he had been an active informer in the camps and had betrayed his friends. Ihe allegation w as not entirelv new. A vear earlier, the Novosti press agency had prepared a filmed interview w ith one of Solzhenitsyn's informants for The Gulag Archipelago, Mikhail Vakubovich, called "Postscript to the Archipelago," in which Vakubovich had accused Solzhenitsyn of being a "religious hypocrite" for marr\'ing "his ow n god-daughter" (a reference to Natalia Svetlova)* and of having been an active informer. Vakubovich, an elderly ex-Menshevik and ex-Bolshevik in infirm health, w as one of dozens of Solzhenitsyn's sources w ho had been tracked down, interrogated by the KGB, and subjected to threats, but he was the onlv one to co-operate, partly as a result of his advanced age and partlv because he felt Solzhenitsyn had slighted him.t Vakubovich's allegation was founded on Solzhenitsyn's admission in volume 2 of llje Gulag Archipelago that he had agreed to become an informer w hile at Kaluga CJate and on the supposition that this was the reason he had been sent to the sharashka. "It is absolutelv unlikely that a man \\ ho agreed to inform on his fellow prisoners and did not produce any information should be sent to such a special camp. It is out of a letter trying to

the question."''

tion,

Vakubovich's accusation had obvioush' given the KGB some inspirabut it had not followed his suggestion slavishlv. The forgerv was dated

*It

not clear

is

Moscow

how or with

whom

this

w

rumour

originated, but

it

gained

a certain

currenc\ in

no truth in it. t Apparently, Novosti made another "documentary" film about Solzhenitsyn containing allegations of anti-Semitism and a false version of how he sustained the scar on his forehead. This would suggest that it contained an interview w ith Simon\an, and perhaps others, but the confor a while, although there

tents are not clear

as

from the information

availal)le to

me.

SOLZHENITSYN

[952]

20 January 1952, that tsyn was

was

rebe^llion that

in

volume

advance.

is,

from the period

3

to break out there

when

after the sharashka

show him betraying

Ekibastuz, and purported to

at

Solzheni-

the prisoners'

on 22 January (which Solzhenitsyn

extols

of The Gulag Archipelago) b\ informing the security officer in

The

\\

way

ords were phrased in such a

as to suggest prejudice

on

Solzhenitsvn's part against the Ukrainian Banderites involved in the uprising,

and

also against a Polish colonel, while the proof of his complicity

alleged to be his

immediate transfer

request that the

camp

criminals

who

camp

me

authorities "protect

me

recentlv troubled

ws signed "Vetrov"

to the

was

hospital (in response to a

against the outrages of the

with suspicious questions").

The

—the Kaluga Gate pseudonym Solzhenitsyn had

letter

cited in

The Gulag Archipelago."^ Solzhenitsyn did not quote from the

among

lated

him

photocopv.

a

was being

circu-

agents must have used the collection of his

Natalia Reshetovskaya (which they had tried to

sell

West), including letters from Ekibastuz, as a model for their forgery,

in the it

KGB

The

letters to his first wife,

but

letter directly. It

foreign correspondents, he said, and a Swiss journalist had sent

did not stand up to close analvsis, neither reproducing his phraseology

accurately nor reflecting his mental

make-up

the rebellion in l^he Gulag Archipelago.

among Ukrainians and

The

as

it

appeared

in his

account of

attempt to sow suspicion of him

Poles was a crude failure.

What more

pathetic confes-

weakness could there be, he added sarcastically, than "this accusation against their mortal enemv that he had collaborated with themselves"? In short, the Soviet authorities would stoop none other than to an\thing to discredit 77je Gulag Archipelago but had nothing to answer it sion of their ridiculous

.

.

.

with, "no facts or arguments

Pour days

.

.

.

only

lies."'

after his press conference, the Fioover Institution

vate dinner in Solzhenits\'n's

honour

at

gave

w hich he spoke on the

a pri-

subject of

Russian and Soviet studies. He did not, as might have been expected, speak about his ow n research at all, but used the occasion to criticize the work of Western, and above all American, scholars working in the field and to correct w hat he saw as their misconceptions and historical research in the field of

errors.

The

source of man\ of these errors, he said, lay in the very abnor-

malitv of contemporarv Russian historv. Although the country was very real

and existed

in the present, to

history: "the spine of

its

studv

it

w as

like

studying archaeological pre-

history has been fractured,

its

memory

has failed,

it

pow er of speech." The truth was obscured by a torrent of "programmed lies." Even this might have been surmountable but for two further obstacles. One was that the historian was disoriented by "a hurricane" of propaganda about the Soviet Union whipped up by "committed socialist cirhas lost the

cles,"

and the other that revolutionary and opposition-minded emigres from

an earlier era had unfairly blackened pre-revolutionary Russia. As "tendentious generalization" had

Revolution was

a logical

come

into being, according to

continuation of Russian history and

to "perennial Russian slavery"

owed

and "the Asiatic tradition." As

a

a result, a

which the its

origins

prime exam-

TH

F.

V

SAGE OF

F.

RMONT

[953]

to "an

American scholar, for " w ho had pub-

pie of

what he meant, S()l/hcnits\n referred

many

years the director of one of your 'Russian (>entres,'

"pseudo-academic book" that w as full of "mistakes, exaggerations, and perhaps premeditated distortions" premeditated, said Solzhenitsyn, because the book's illustrations included cartoons, although it w as supposed to be scholarly.* Solzhenitsxn's objection to the book w as that it postulated a natural con-

lished a

—

tinuit\- between Old Russia and the Soyiet Union that w as not present. "Soviet deyelopment is not an extension of Russian development, but its diversion in a completely new and unnatural direction w hich is inimical to her people. Not only are the terms 'Russian' and 'Soviet' not interchangeable, not they are irreconcilably contradictor) and equivalent, and not unilinear completely exclude each other." To think otherwise was a "gross mistake" and "scholarly slovenliness" and was disastrous for Western understanding .

.

.

—

As antidotes to this kind of misunderstanding, Solrecommended two samizdat works: What Is Socialism? by his old friend Igor Shafarevich, to w hich he had just w ritten a preface for the Russian-language edition and w hich he hoped to persuade one of his American publishers to bring out,t and a new work by the jailed physicist Yuri Orlov that had just arrived in the West. Shafarevich, said Solzhenitsyn, had demonstrated that socialism w as an ancient and supranational system of beliefs

of historical perspective.^

zhenitsyn

that had always existed independently of

any one country, and both Shafa-

shown

that consistent socialism could not

revich and Orlov had convincingly

be anything else than totalitarian and inevitably led to "the total suppression of individuality and the

human spirit." many onlookers

Solzhenitsyn seemed to

to

be

tilting at

w

indmills,

w hile

the American historian at the centre of his attack went on to become a personal adviser on Soviet affairs to President Reagan, not generally known for his softness It is

on communism or a tendency to bow to the "socialist hurricane." were (and are) many historians of Russian and Soviet

true that there

society

who

tsyn would

hold views more favourable to the Soviet Union than Solzheni(or than is perhaps compatible w ith a sober appreciation of

w ish

the facts) and that some are sympathetic to socialism (the one position does in all the millions of words that have been West on the subject of Marxism, Bolshevism, and the Soviet Communist Party, one would be hard put to it to discern a prevailing distortion of the sort espied by Solzhenitsyn.

not always entail the other), but spilled in the

In a sense, of course,

it

hardly mattered, for the nature of Solzhenitsyn's

dyspepsia was not such as to be dispelled by a mere recital of facts and statistics (he had specifically rejected "meaningless statistics" early on in his address),

*The

and he had neither the time nor the inclination

reference was to Russia under the Old Regime,

a.

formerly director of the Russian Research Center

to subject

Western

work of historical inquiry by Richard Pipes, Harvard, in which Pipes sought to define

at

some enduring characteristics of Russian history. tThe book was eventually published by Harper & Row

in

1980 as The

Socialist

Phenomenon.

SOLZHENITSYN

[954]

and Western codes to anything like the intense scrutiny he was used on his o\\ n country. This became clear at a second address delivHoo\ er Institution a w eek later, in response to the award to him the ered at Friendship Medal from the Freedoms Foundation of Valley American the of Forge, PennsvKania. Haying stated his admirable belief that the aim of life was "not to take boundless pleasure in material goods" but for men to leave "better than our inherited the world as "better persons" than they entered it for w hich freedom was a necessary, but not instincts would have made us" a sufficient, condition, Solzhenitsyn w ent on to draw a startling picture of how Western freedom looked to him. society

to training

—

—

To

Freedom!

people's mailboxes, eves, ears, and brains \\ith commercial

fill

rubbish against their

with

account of their right not to accept

To

programmes

will, television

watch

that are impossible to

sense of coherence. Freedom! Fo force information on people, taking no

a

spit in the

it

or their right to peace of mind. Freedom!

eves and souls of passersbv w

ith

advertisements. Freedom! For

publishers and film producers to poison the younger generations

w

ith

corrupting

Freedom! For adolescents of fourteen to eighteen to immerse themselves in Freeidleness and pleasure instead of intensive study and spiritual growth. Freedom! to deprive all other citizens of a normal life. dom! For strikers FOr speeches of exoneration w hen the law ver himelf is aw are of the guilt ot the Freedom! For vulgar, casual pens to slide irresponsibly over the accused. Freedom! To divulge the defence secrets ot one's surface of an\ problem. filth.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

as

.

.

.

.

country for personal

It \\

.

.

.

political gain.

.** .

.

at his demagogic \\ orst again, passing off a bar-room w ent into bars himself) as profound comment worthy of attention. At the root of all this evil, as he saw it, was America's

Solzhenitsyn

tirade (not that he

respectful

and the elevation of juridical rights over moral and to the "empty," external freedoms he had he inxoked the "inner freedom" granted by God, and implied

devotion to the rule of law

,

rights. In opposition to these,

in\eighed against, that the

two w ere incompatible.

After this his

it

may have come

as

audience to learn, three months

settle

permanently

ceding year. In leaving the

June he w

in

fact,

Hoover

as at

America

—

in \

something of

a surprise to

later, that Solzhenits\'n

ermont,

as

members of

had decided to

had been rumoured the pre-

he seems hardly to have returned to Switzerland after Institution (except for a brief formal visit), for in mid-

Vale University to stud\- the historical archives there, before

returning to California, and in mid-July he w as booked for speeding (Natalia Svetlova w as drixing) in Kansas on his

way

east.

We

told the patrolman that

he and Natalia w ere on their w ay to see "Natalia's brother" in Vermont, and

was eventually paid from Vermont (though not by Natalia's "brother"). 8 September from the United States immigration authorities. I \ picalK', Solzhenitsyn was already in residence, having quietly moved in on 30 July w ith no fanfare. Ihe house found for him had been the summer residence of an American businessman (recently

the fine

The official announcement came on

The Sage deceased);

it

was

of N'ermont

situated outside the sleepy small

New

south-eastern corner of \ ermont, near the architect

named

w

ith tiftx

and

a

autumn

(the sale

was completed on

31

programme estimated

thousand

the propertv

of barbed w

\

October

dollars).

UndoubtedK

,

have cost

to

quarter of a million dollars (the house and land had cost

tift\'

in the

A oung

acres of land surrounding it,* and since then had

supervised a renovation and rebuilding

about

town of C^avendish,

lampshire border.

Alexis Vinogradov had purchased the house on Solzheni-

tsyn's behalf the preceding 1975), together

I

[955]

a

hundred

the most controversial feature of

w as the ire that

eight-foot chain-link fence topped with a single strand surrounded the entire propertv. Fences are unusual in

\ ermont, and usuallv unw elcome, for the\' obstruct hunters, used to ranging more or less where they wish, and get in the w a\' of the snow mobiles that have become the almost universal mode of cross-countr\ transport in snowbound \ ermont in w inter. The accepted explanation for the fence was that it was part of Solzhenitsvn's securitv arrangements against incursions bv the KGB. Some Sw iss newspapers w riting about his departure reported that Solzhenitsyn had been

increasinglv concerned about

KGB spving and harassment in Zurich and had He had allegWhatever the true proved its worth in

recentlv received another threatening letter posted from Bern. edl\-

asked for police protection, but not been granted

reason, or combination of reasons, the fence quickl\-

another direction.

The announcement

brought crow ds of reporters

it.

of Solzhenitsyn's

to the picturesquely

named

move immediatel) \\

indy Hill Road,

where the house was situated. Alexis \ inogradov, inveigled reluctantly to the main gate, denied all know ledge of Solzhenitsxn's w hereabouts, and insisted that the house belonged to him. He had no plans to transfer the house to Solzhenits\n, he said, and e\ en if he had, "I would give you the same answer." Since the main gate w as about half a mile from the house dow n a w inding drive, and since bulldozers had pushed up high mounds behind the fence to block anv view of the house from open ground, the reporters w ere totally frustrated and had to content themselves w ith the cr\ptic descriptions of the few locals w ho had been inside.^ That security against reporters w as more or less the true purpose of the fence w as admitted bv Solzhenitsvn w hen he attended the annual Cavendish town meeting the follow ing Februarv to explain himself and confirm for the first time that he w as actuallv living there. B\' now his main gate had been equipped w ith an electric-e\e alarm device and closed-circuit television cameras that could be monitored in the main house, and he w as aw are that these Citizen Kane-tvpe precautions had caused some concern to his tight-lipped but free-spirited neighbours. Revealing that death threats had already been slipped under his gate since his arrival in Vermont, he conceded that there was "no doubt the fence cannot protect me against Soviet agents," and added, "but it keeps away people who just want to see me." In Zurich he had been *It appears that Solzhenitsvn did not even bother to look at

it

before buving

photographs to Sw itzerland, and Solzhenitsvn said yes from there.

it.

\'inogradov sent

SOLZHENITSYN

[956]

inundated with unwanted

from Soviet agents, journalists, and sightthere. ... In those two years there was a real procession: hundreds of people came, people I didn't know, people of different nations. They came without invitations and without w arning. And so for hundreds of hours I talked to hundreds of people, and my work was ruined." His only interest, he said, was work, and the character of his work did not permit interruptions. "Sometimes there is a five-minute interruption, and the whole day is lost." Solzhenitsyn apologized for any inconvenience he was causing his neighbours. He had chosen to live in Cavendish, he said, because of "the simple way of life of the people, the countryside, and the long winters with the snow which remind me of Russia." He liked it there, and he did not want his presence to upset others. "Mv fence prevents your snowmobiles and hunters from going on their way I am sorry for that and ask you to forgive me, but I had to protect myself from certain types of disturbances." He also invited their sympathy w ith an account of his difficulties in the Soviet Union, saying that "I shall soon be sixty, but in all my life before, I have never had a permanent home." The Soviet authorities had chased him from one place to another until they threw him out. "God has determined that \s a growing everyone should live in the country where his roots are sometimes dies when transplanted, the spirit of a human being is also tree stunted when it is removed from the place of its roots. It is a very bitter fate to think and look back at one's own country. What is perfectly normal for those who live there is strange for one who is exiled." seers.

visits

"Anybodv and everybody could come

.

.

.

,

—

Solzhenitsyn did not

once more and repeated

let this

his

opportunity

admonition

at

the

slip to attack the

Hoover

Soviet

Union

Institution not to con-

fuse "Russian" with "Soviet," and his warning that the "sickness" of

com-

munism might spread to America. "The Russian people dream of the day when they can be liberated from the Soviet system," he said, "and when that day comes, I will thank you very much for being good friends and neighbours and will go home."'"

words were translated was greeted with loud applause. His eloquence had been more than enough to win over the dour Vermont townsfolk, even those who had grumbled about the fence and Solzhenitsyn spoke for about twenty minutes

by

his

newly acquired

threatened to

make

(his

secretary, Irina Alberti) and

holes in

it.

After shaking a few hands, he

left

the meeting,

Cavendish was well known for its spirit of local independence. Its annual town meeting w as an excellent example of traditional, grass-roots American democracy in action, and as in Switzerland, all business was transacted by voice vote from the floor. Had Solzhenitsyn stayed, he would have seen something to remind him of Appenzell, would have increased his understanding of the land he had come to and perhaps modified his gloomy, media-fed view of America's stumbling democracy. y\s it was, his visit to the meeting v\as not as spontaneous as the rest of the proceedings, or as improvised as it had seemed. It had been arranged in advance by the

w hich w

as

perhaps

a pity:

,

The Sage

of

Vermont

195 7)

governor of Vermont, Richard Snclling, and the town manager, Quentin Phelan. Once Sol/.henits\ n had stated his case, he was too busy to sta\' on

and

listen to the rest of the

meeting.

people of (>avendish were pleased that he had come, however, and with their conservative w avs and belief in each man's minding his ow n business, were quite happv to have this ultra-recluse as a neighbour. In the ne.xt

The

were no complaints of substance against him. Solzhenitsyn had chosen the perfect place in w hich to disappear into the landscape. But if he w as invisible iocallv, Solzhenitsyn was still highly visible in international affairs, and the peace of Vermont was not matched by any lessening in the intensit\- w ith which the Soviet authorities continued to tollow his activities. At the beginning of February 1977 the Literaturnaya Gazeta few- vears there

article bv a known prison-camp informer, Alexander Petro\ some of the better-know n dissidents, including Yuri Orlov and

published a long attacking

Sakharov's wife, Elena Bonner, and in particular accusing Alexander Ginzillegal currencv transactions. Ciinzburg had been singled out because

burg of

of his work for the Russian Social Fund, which Solzhenitsyn was supporting with the rovalties from The Gulag Archipelago, and the article revealed that

had been raided and 5,000 rubles confiscated, along with lists, and allegedly some foreign currency." (iinzburg responded bv calling an impromptu new s conference in his flat, at w hich he revealed, for the first time, the dimensions of the fund. Since April 1974, when Solzhenitsyn had set it up in its new form, the fund had helped 120 political prisoners or their families in the first vear, 720 in the second year, and 630 in the third. About 270,000 rubles (equivalent to $360,000) had been expended during that time, of which just over a quarter had been raised

Ginzburg's

flat

various documents and

inside the Soviet

Union and the

rest supplied

bv Solzhenitsyn. The Solzhew ith the Soviet govern-

nitsyn funds had been sent legallv in the beginning,

ment siphoning

w hen the authorities had discovered monev, thev had blocked further payments, and atter that

off a third in taxes, but

the purpose of the

'had been sent in through unofficial channels. The raid on Ginzburg's flat w as obviously an attempt to prevent the fund from continuing its work. This w as confirmed by other prominent dissidents who attended the Ginzburg press conference, such as General Grigorenko and \'alentin Turchin, chairman of the unofficial Moscow group of Amnesty International. They revealed that there had been growing police pressure on the families of political prisoners not to accept aid from the fund,

it

and Turchin

said that he himself

following day. Later that dav, nitsyn, as a

who

3

had been summoned

for interrogation the

February, Ginzburg was arrested. Solzhe-

kept in close touch with Ginzburg and the activities of the tund

matter of course (Natalia Svetlova w as the fund's president),

issued a protest and characteristically

with the

fate of the

—

if

exaggeratedly

at

— linked the

once arrest

West. "This act of violence concerns Western people

more than can be imagined

at first glance.

unflinching total preparation of the Soviet

It

home

is

an essential link in the it should not

front so that

SOLZHENITSYN

[95H] in

any w av hinder the external offensive conducted so successfully during

these vears, and which will yet be broadened, against the strength, the spirit,

and the very existence of the West."'^ A week or two later he announced that he was retaining the prominent American lawyer Edward Bennett Williams to take on the legal defence of Ginzburg, and declared that he was in a position to affirm that Ginzburg had had no dealings \\ ith foreign currency and that the currency allegedly found in Ginzburg's flat had been planted there by KGB agents. "I belieye that legal counselling in the Ginzburg case will open up a new world even to a lawyer with your yast experience and world prestige," he vyrote to Williams, and expressed himself ready to supply the lawyer with all the facts necessary for undertaking the case.'^ Unfortunately, sanctions against the fund continued throughout the spring

and summer of 1976. Ginzburg's place as administrator of the fund in Moscow was taken partly by his wife, Irina Zholkovskaya, and partly by two less prominent dissidents, latyana Khodoroyich and Malya Landa, to whom Solzhenitsyn sent a message of support in Maw In June, Khodoroyich revealed in an interview that the campaign against supporters of the fund was unprecedented and that she was appealing to President Carter to save the fund from "annihilation." Meanwhile, Solzhenitsyn himself was not neglected. At the beginning of April the Supreme Soviet of the USSR announced that Natalia Svctlova had been stripped of her Soviet citizenship by a decree passed the preceding October, and new s came of a new attack on Solzhenitsyn by his old school friend Kirill Simonvan. It

appears that, having escaped V'itkevich's fate of being obliged to give

interviews and appear on television after Solzhenitsyn's expulsion in 1974,

Simonyan had nonetheless agreed

now

to co-operate

keeping his side of the bargain.

The

w

ith

the authorities and

w as

co-operation took the form of a

twenty-three-page pamphlet published, for some unfathomable reason,

in

Danish by an obscure left-wing publishing house called Melbyhus in the small provincial town of Skaerbaek. Its title was Who Is Solzhenitsyn? and in it Simon)'an concentrated on what he regarded as three crucial incidents in Solzhenitsyn's life. One was the episode of the scar acquired at school, which Simonyan described as a consequence of Solzhenitsyn's anti-Semitism. The second was Solzhenitsyn's arrest, w hich according to Simonyan had been engineered by Solzhenitsyn himself out of cowardice to avoid further fighting at the front. And the third w as the incident of 1952, when Simonyan had been called in for questioning by the KGB and show n Solzhenitsyn's interrogation record. There was also a reference to Solzhenitsyn's later letter to him and the futile attempt to renew their friendship in 1967, and an allegation that Solzhenitsyn's mother had once told him that her husband, Isaaki, had committed suicide in 1918 in a funk over the victory of the Reds.''' Ihe story of how the pamphlet got to Denmark is a mystery, and the director of the publishing house refused to divulge his source when questioned on the subject. 1 he fact that it was nexer translated into any other language

may

indeed indicate that not even the

KGB

felt

comfortable with

The Sage of

\

ermont somew

these charges, although thev were to surface in a in later "exposures" of Solzhenitsyn's earl\

Simons in the

I959]

an, he did not live to see his essa\' in print.

summer

of 1976, shortly before

hat

modihed guise

Perhaps fortunately for

life.

I

le

died of

a heart attack

publication.

its

Attacks on Solzhenitsyn by the Soviet authorities or their surrogates

were not surprising, nor were the objections raised to some ot his political views bv prominent dissidents such as Roy Medvedev, Sakharov, Litvinov, and others, or the criticisms of his handling of history in August 1914 and Leni)7 in lAirich. But in the summer of 1977 fresh currency was gi\en to a disquieting question that had hrst been raised in 1972 and that had been discussed on and off ever since: \\ as Solzhenitsyn an anti-Semite? The immediate occasion this time \\ as the publication of volume 2 (A The Gulag Archipelago, in which Solzhenitsyn had included si.x photographs of six notable scoundrels responsible for some of the worst excesses of the Gulag administration. Illustrations in The Gulag Archipelago were very rare, so that the photographs stood out starkly in that vast expanse of text, but what particucaught the eve of Russian readers (ever sensitive to such niceties)

larly

that

all six

villains

happened

be Jew

to

s.

\\

as

Solzhenitsyn later explained that

these were the only photographs available and that these bloodthirst) Jewish

executioners really had existed.

He was

only telling the truth. Sceptical read-

were many more purely Russian administrators in Gulag than Jewish ones, that they w ere not a w hit less cruel or sadistic

ers pointed out that there

the

than their Jewish colleagues, and that

it

could hardly be

a

coincidence that

much emphasis on the Jews, not onl\' in his phototext. The question w as, Did Solzhenitsyn do it delib-

Solzhenitsyn had laid so graphs, but also in his erately,

and

had

it

come about

unconsciously, or had he been "fed" this information

fallen into a trap?

1 he question was naturalh bound up w tsyn's

known

ith

other aspects of Solzheni-

views. His nationalism, for instance, was obviously founded

deep and passionate love of the Russian people. But did not this passion, its logical conclusion (as Solzhenitsyn was all too prone to do), imply either exclusion or at least second-class status for non-Russians in the

on

a

carried to

Russian state? Solzhenitsyn had repeatedly expressed his support for the right of Jew

s

to emigrate to the

Jewish

state

and seemed

to

gration (as opposed to the emigration of Russians), but tionist

wish

Jews who

felt

Then

w hat about

assimila-

themselves to be more Russian than Jewish and did not

to emigrate, not to speak of the

assimilated?

approve of such emi-

there

was the

Russian Orthodoxy guided

all

Jew

s

w ho w

ished to stay

w

ithout being

religious question. In a country in

moral and spiritual

life

than that, for moral and spiritual questions transcended political ones

what was

to be the status of the

which

(and perhaps more in Sol-

Jews? In the pre-revolutionary Russia that Solzhenitsyn admired, their status had been difficult and in many respects pitiful. Solzhenitsyn had rarely mentioned this, or the existence of pogroms, in his literary works and statements. These and similar concerns led critics back to Solzhenitsyn's w orks. and zhenitsyn's view),

SOLZHENITSYN

[960] in the

summer him

against

of 1977 a translation appeared in the United States of the case

b\' a

jew

ish scientist

who had

recently emigrated

from the Soviet

named Mark Perakh.* Perakh analysed Solzhenitsyn's entire output from A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich up to and including Lenin in Zurich, and came to some negative conclusions. In Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Union

to Israel

Ward, there were no Jewish characters of note and the Jewish question was w rote, but that yer\ omission, in a w riter as uncompro-

entirely missing, he

mising in his search for truth

mon know ledge w ord "Yid" was and that such

a

a

w as surprising. It w as comw as rife in the camps, that the

as Solzhenitsvn,

that eyervda\" anti-Semitism

universal term of abuse not reserved exclusively for Jews,

word would have sounded

Ivan Denisovich, particularly obscenities. In Central Asia,

when

entirely natural in the

mouth of

Solzhenitsvn had allowed him to use

where Cancer Ward was

set,

there had been a

big purge of Jew ish doctors just two years before the time of the novel's action, life

and again

it

was inconceivable

had not

that this

left its

of the hospital, vet there was only one fleeting reference to

it

mark on the in the entire

book.

As

for the rest of Solzhenitsvn's works,

w here

either

Jews or the Jewish

question appeared in some form or other, Perakh w rote that Solzhenitsyn's

Jews were generally fair and that in describing them, all his great powers of observation and his ability to depict character into play, for the\' w ere vi\id and lifelike. How ever, w hen one scrutinized their role in Solzhenitsyn's works, no matter how sympathetic they seemed individually, it w as alw avs negative. In The First Circle, for instance, there w ere three main Jew ish characters: Lev Rubin and Isaak Kagan among the prisoners, and Adam Roitman among the administrators, and all three w ere in one w av or another the defenders of evil. The larger phenomenon of anti-Semitism w as certainh' discussed and denounced at some length in The First Circle, but it was also treated as a purely Stalinist manifestation, hence as a product of the Communist system and not linked to deeper portraits of individual

Solzhenitsvn had brought

Russian attitudes. It w as in certain of Solzhenitsyn's other works, however, that Perakh found the most to criticize, notably in Solzhenitsyn's early pla\' The TenderArnold Gurvich, Boris foot and the Tart. Again the three Jew s in the plav Khomich, and the bookkeeper named Solomon were all representatives of evil, but this time grossly and disgustingly so, and Solomon was the very

—

*The

—

debate about Solzhenitsvn's alleged anti-Semitism had begun with an

salem Post in 1972

h\ the newK' arri\ed So\iet

were answered

three prominent Jew ish dissidents

b\'

Mikhail Agurskv), and

at greater

length

b\-

emigre Mikhail still

in the

Roman Rutman

article in \\\e Jeru-

Grobman. Grobman's charges Soviet Union (one of them was

in Soviet Jen-ish Affairs

(London)

in

same magazine published another defence of Solzhenits\ n by the .\merican scholar Edith Rogovin Frankel, and in 1977 more allegations of anti-Semitism by the Soviet emigre critic Simon Markish. .\11 these articles, except Frankel's, had appeared in Russian first. Perakh's article, a kind of stimma of those that had gone before, had appeared in Russian in the f>«/^/Y magazine Vremia i My (Time and We) in February 1976 before being published in English 1974. In 1976 the

in

M

ills t

ream.

— The Sage

of

Vermont

[9^)1]

incarnation of the greedv, craftv, influential "court Jew," manipulating the

"simple" Russian camp commandant and oozing guile and c(jrruption. As it happened, Solomon was modelled on the real-life prototype of Isaak Bershader, whom Solzhenitsvn had met at Kaluga Gate and later described at length in xolume 3 of The (iiilag Archipelago, and Ferakh dwelt on this description too. It w as not that the facts w ere necessarily false (though Perakh found the lip-smacking portrait of the dirtv, fat, and greedy Bershader definitely excessive), but that the naming of onlv Bershader among the numerous members of the camp elite w ho were allowed to choose mistresses from among the prisoners made it seem like a generalization and certainly left the reader with that impression. It w as noteworthy that both in Solzhenitsyn's play and in The Gulag Archipelago, "most" of the Jews portrayed were negative characters and "most" of the heroes were Russians, w hich certainly did not match realitv, and Perakh made a damning comparison of Gulag w ith Robert (con-

which dealt with much of the same material. Though behind Solzhenits\n's book in artistic forcefulness, wrote Perakh, Conquest's w as inhnitelv more impartial in its dealings w ith Russians and Jew s

quest's The Great Terror, far

and made no attempt to single out one nation at the expense of the other. Finallv, Perakh turned his attention to August 1914 and Lenin in Zurich. August was notable for avoiding the Jew ish theme altogether, although it also had a "completely positive" portrait of the Jewish engineer, Ilya Arkhangorodskv, the onlv one of its kind in Solzhenitsyn's entire oeuvre. Perakh hazarded a guess (correctlv) that this character must have been based on someone Solzhenitsvn knew. In Lenin in VAirich, on the other hand, he tound that Bershader-Solomon had surfaced again in the person of the fat Jew ish businessman and Lenin's evil genius, Israil Lazarevich Helphand (Parvus): "There he stood such as he w as, in his flesh and blood: w ith an immense gut, an extended dome-shaped head, flesh\' bulldog-like phxsiognomy, w ith a wedged

—

beard

.

.

Aryans).

.

,"

with

Not onlv

a taste for

Bershader and "Solomon," but

him

to bring

"openlv cavorting with plump blondes"

did Helphand manipulate others from the shadow it

w as he who

about his main goal

(i.e.,

s,

like

stood behind Lenin and exploited

—the collapse of the Russia he hated.

'^

Perakh did not deny that Solzhenitsyn w as the "greatest contemporary Russian writer" and that The Gulag Archipelago was "a superb book," an felt far be)ond Russia, and he conceded that Solzhenitsvn might have selected his heroes and villains "subconsciouslv," w ith no overt intention to distort reality. He also conceded that there w ere problems with what some might call a "percentual approach"

impressive work whose "enormous impact" w ould be

simplv adding up the positive and negative Jews portrayed in Solzhenitsyn's works and draw ing crude conclusions. Nevertheless, he felt that his analysis had gone beyond percentages and that it w as possible to express "enthusiasm

and respect

and as a champion of truth and encouragement (perhaps unconscious) ot anti-

for Solzhenitsyn both as a creator

justice," while regretting the

Semitic attitudes generated bv

Perakh was not alone

in

many

of his works.

harbouring such sentiments, nor was he the

SOLZHENITSYN

[962]

voice them in print, but he was the most thorough, and was followed bv other commentators. But Solzhenitsvn also had his defenders, not least among the Jews, and allegations of anti-Semitism were met with counterarguments. Representative of these was an article by Roman Rutman, a Jewish phvsicist then living in Israel. Rutman wrote some three years before Perakh and was taking issue with some rather crude articles accusing Solzhe-

first to

nitsvn of anti-Semitism that had appeared in the Jerusalem Post as early as

1972 and 1973* (he also revealed that he had been asked

same subject when lecturing

the

to Soviet

Jewish emigres

many in the

questions on United States

in 1972).

Unfortunately, Rutman's article w as not as detailed as that of Perakh

and notablv axoided dealing

volume

1

made out

at

anv length with The Gulag

was out by then. Rutman's case to

be an anti-Semite onlv

if

Archipelago, although

v\as that Solzhenitsvn could

one took

be

as one's starting point the

uniqueness of the suffering of the Jew s (especiallv in the twentieth centurv) and the necessity of stressing this fact and demonstrating one's desire for atonement at every possible opportunitv. In the Russian context this meant accepting three propositions: that the extraordinarv fate of the Jewish people had made them the svmbol of the suffering of mankind, that the Jew s in Russia had always been the victims of one-sided persecution, and that Russian societv was in debt to the Jewish people. Rutman had little difficult\' in demonstrating that Solzhenitsvn accepted none of these propositions. Solzhenitsvn had written of the Second World War in The Gulag Archipelago that "in general, this war had revealed to us that the worst thing in the world was to be a Russian." In his Letter to the Leaders, he had written of "the incomparable sufferings of our people," and elsewhere in Gulag he had described the horrors of collectivization as a precedent for Hitler and the Holocaust. In other words, Solzhenitsvn did not accept that anv one people had a monopoly of suffering; he maintained that in the twentieth century Russians had suffered as

Jews

in

much

as

Jews. With regard to the second proposition, that the Rutman found that

Russia had endured extraordinarv persecution,

Solzhenitsvn had resolved the problem bv concentrating on the sufferings of all

the people in the Soviet Union, absorbing the trials of Soviet

the greater ordeal of the entire population.

And on

Jewrv

into

the question of whether

owed a debt to the Jew s, Rutman concluded that the proposiwas too shallow and that those Russians w ho had publiclv embraced this position (such as Gorkv or Evtushenko) were guiltv of hypocrisy. Rutman's essential argument was that Solzhenitsyn was too "big" to be encompassed bv the pro- or anti-Jewish label and that to take the statistical approach to the Jewish characters in his works w as to adopt a new "party line" and show how influenced Russian readers had been by the official and censored Soviet press. This, wrote Rutman, made all allegations based on the virtual absence of Jewish characters and the Jew ish theme Irom Ivan the Russians tion

*See note

to p. 960.

The Sage

of

Vermont

[9*^3]

and Cancer Ward meaningless. Nevertheless, he did agree to play by dwelling on the glow ing portrait of Arkhangorodsky in and praising the characterizations of Lev Rubin and Adam RoitAugust 19 man in The First Circle. The portrait of Roitman was particularly important for Rutman because it was sympathetic to one of Solzhenitsvn's natural enemies, yet did not hesitate to condemn Roitman for being misled by his Party loyalties. It was a complex and true-to-life picture, whereas an author guided by "the Jewish question" w ould have been less objective and thereb\ have

Denisovich

the

game

in part

M

falsified reality.

In conclusion

Rutman

dealt with the

argument that the

"logical exten-

sion" of Solzhenitsyn's Russian patriotism and love of patriarchal custom was

He quoted the example of the nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox philosopher Vladimir Solovyov to show that a deep and almost mystical love of Orthodoxy and Russia was not incompatible with love of the Jews, and he referred to recent statements in support of Solzhenitsyn by the Jewish samizdat writer Mikhail Agurskv and the Jewish literary critic Grigori Svirski, both of whom felt that to draw such conclusions was unw arranted. '^ Svirski, indeed, later elaborated his views on this point (and criticized anti-Semitism.

Rutman

inadequacy of

for the

his defence) in his History of Post-ivar Soviet

Writing, published in Russian in 1979 (and in English in 1981). that Solzhenitsyn

had been

silent,

he wrote, on

many

It

was true

outstanding Soviet acts

of persecution of the Jews. But Tolstoy had w ritten that "every writer has his sore point," and Solzhenitsyn's sore point was the sufferings of the Russian people,

which hurt him more than the

sufferings of the

Jew

s.

It

w as

a

question of selection and personal preference, and perhaps the main problem was that there was "only one Solzhenitsyn." Everybody wanted to have him their side and have him write about their sufferings with the same eloquence and vividness that he had brought to the sufferings of the Russians.

on

'**

Vermont, Solzhenitsyn was gradually getting his new newspaper speculation about the kind of luxury that could be bought for a quarter of a million dollars (a modest enough sum, in truth, by American standards), a very large part of the money had been spent not on the house but on the construction of a modern and w ell-equipped Meanwhile,

in

estate in order. Despite

annex to house Solzhenitsyn's personal papers and literary archive as w ell as an independent library. In September 1977 Solzhenitsyn announced the establishment of the All-Russian Memoir Library, to be financed by him and

on his estate. It was to be an extension of the Russian Social Fund and would have as its aim the collection of all possible material, but mainly personal memoirs, pertaining to Russian history of the twentieth century. It was another reflection of Solzhenitsyn's desire to rescue the national memory of the Russian people before it w as too late. He appealed to those w ho had situated

written their memoirs, no matter be, to send

him

copies.

The

how

library

brief,

w ould

modest, or unliterarx' they might

accept

all materials,

even those of

two to three pages, and would attempt to publish some of the longer and more interesting ones (Solzhenitsyn already had a functioning type-setting

SOLZHEXITSVX

[964]

machine on the premises, so he \\ as in an excellent position to fulfil his promise). He w ould ensure that all materials w ere catalogued and filed s\ stematicallv and in time made available to scholars \\ ho desired to consult them, and he emphasized that photographs, letters, and other memorabilia were equalh' of interest to him. "I call upon mv fellow countrymen to sit down at once and w rite their recollections and send them to me so that our grief does not vanish w ith them, leaving no trace, but is preserved for Russia's memorv as a warning to the future." He solemnlv promised that his heirs would take over the dutv of preservation even after he w as gone and that as soon as a favourable moment arrived, the entire contents of the library would be transferred to "one of the cities of central Russia," where it would be merged w ith similar archives written bv people still inside the Soviet Union to form "a concentrate of our national memorv and experience."''^ Curiouslv enough, Solzhenitsyn's obsession w ith national historv and his emphasis on the need for everv nation to examine its past and repent of its misdeeds was just about to find another echo in England. Of all the countries he had visited in the past vear and a half. England had greeted him w ith the greatest enthusiasm and had responded the most generouslv to his calls for self-examination and contrition. Alreadv in 1974 Nicholas Bethell had published a short book. The Last Secret (w hose title was taken from a phrase

—

in

The Gulag Archipelago), about the British role in the forced repatriation to

the Soviet

gees from

Union after the Second W orld \\ ar of innocent emigres and refucommunism, along with Russian troops w ho had fought for the

Germans.-" BethelTs book had sparked off a debate about both the ethics and the politics of British policv at the time (Bethell had suggested that the principal villain of the piece w as Britain's then-foreign secretar\ Anthonx" Eden, and stressed the realpolitik behind the minister's actions), w hich had later died dow n, but it was revived all the more fiercelv in the first months of 1978 bv the publication of a second and much longer book. Victims of Yalta, bv Nikolai Tolstov (a distant descendant of the great novelist but born and bred in Britain). Tolstov demonstrated at great length the full consequences for hundreds of thousands of Russian emigres and refugees of the agreement reached at Yalta to repatriate them to the Soviet Union, and he described in harrowing detail the violence inflicted on them bv Allied (primarih- British) troops.-' Publication of his book led to calls for a public inquirv, and for a whole week the Times carried out its ow n investigation, w hile its correspondence columns w ere filled w ith anguished letters for or against. .

Solzhenits\n's

and above set the

all

his

tone for

name

rarelv figured in this second debate, vet his figure,

monumental book, loomed

manv

in the

background and clearlv

of the participants. Nicholas Bethell

summed up

the

case for an inquirv in almost Solzhenitsvnian terms. "In 1944 the British

government took a decision which cost manv lives. It killed not onlv war criminals and traitors, but also innocent prisoners-of-w ar, displaced persons, torced labourers, women and children. W as it reallv necessary "Perhaps a fuller and franker account from those personally involved .-

The Sage

OF \'ermont

[y'^.^l

a grow ing sense of collective guilt. accomplices in a massive crime. were we

would convince the nation and quieten might show that

Alternatively,

it

... In either

case, the nation

.

.

.

now needs

all

the available evidence."'^

Washington. in 1976, award at Stanford When he had received the Freedoms Foundation Washington snub for his President Ford had sought to make slight amends on congratulating it its foundation bv sending a personal telegram to the Solzhenitsvn had likewise been

an invisible presence in

w as an open struggle at the Republican National Convention in Kansas between the pro-Reagan faction and the pro-Ford faction over whether to endorse Solzhenitsvn's view s as part of the Party's official election platform. In the end, the pro-Reagan faction won, and Sol/.henitsyn was extolled as a "great beacon of human courage and morality,"-^ though decision. Later that vear, there

not before

Henrv

Kissinger had reputedly threatened to resign.

was won by Carter, and

a

few months

later,

The

electi(jn

ex-President Ford publiclx

admitted that he had made a mistake in refusing to see Solzhenitsyn. "It is regrettable that the meeting did not take place," he told a gathering of history students and professors at Yale University in February 1977. "It history were

would take place. "-"^ The new ly victorious President Carter had had no mention of Solzhenitsyn in his platform at all, but after his election he had been pressed bv Malcolm Mabry, a Mississippi state representative, to sav whether he w ould meet the Russian novelist or not, and in a note

ever rewritten,

it

had written that he would. More than that, the president had said it was his "intention" to meet Solzhenitsyn, and in the course ot 1977 was publiclv pressed to do so bv journalists and political figures, just as his pre-

to Mabr\'

decessor had been.

Like President Ford, however, Carter was quickl) caught up in the conand never got around to issuing an invitation. But in

tradictions of detente

1978 the opportunitv arose for Solzhenitsyn himself to take the initiative not by securing an invitation to the \\ hite House but by putting his

again

—

views before the American nation from a nationally respected platform. He was asked whether he would accept an honorary degree from Harvard Lniversitv and make the annual commencement address in early June. I he com-

mencement address was

traditionally used as the occasion for important

first time was to be carried on nation-w ide telewas Solzhenitsyn's first opportunity to address, in effect, the entire American nation since his AFL-CIO speeches three years earlier and since becoming an American resident. In conditions of the usual secrecy he accepted the invitation, and the announcement of his participation was not made public until tw o davs before the speech was scheduled to take place. This secretiveness about the speaker, though not unusual for Harvard

speeches, and not for the vision. It

commencement

addresses, naturally created an air of expectancy, and the

announcement of Solzhenitsvn's name guaranteed assemble to

listen to his

speech

(it

that a large

turned out to be

W'ith television carrying the entire address

live,

it is

a

crowd w ould

record 22,000 people).

fair to

say that the atmo-

sphere was one of considerable excitement. Solzhenitsyn could hardly have

— SOLZHENITSYN

[966]

had more favourable circumstances in \\ hich to express his ideas. The speech he dehvered proved to be a kind of summation of the things he had been saving virtually since the day of his arrival in the West. Entitled "A World Split Apart," it consisted of an introduction and fifteen short sections whose headings summarized his main themes: (>ontemporarv Worlds; Convergence; The Collapse of Courage; Prosperity; Juridical Life; The Direction of Freedom; The Direction of the Press; Fashions in Thought; Socialism; Not a Model; Short-sightedness; Loss of Will; Humanism and Its Consequences; Unlikelv Bedfellows; At the Turning-point. An interesting aspect of the title, which did not emerge from the official English translation, \\

as that

schism.

it

expressed Solzhenitsvn's preoccupation w

The Russian word

from the Russian word have been "The World

for "split apart" (raskohty)

for "schism" (raskol), in

Schism."* In

and

ith the is

phenomenon

of

the adjective derived

would whole speech could be

a better translation

a sense, the

read as an impassioned plea against schism of anv kind, an appeal for unity,

and Solzhenitsvn began and ended \\ ith this idea, although it was not carried through v\ith any consistency indeed, many of the ideas contained in the body of the speech could just as easily be interpreted as serving to widen

—

splits instead

of to heal them. Nevertheless, some sort of vision of unity

undoubtedly underlay Solzhenitsyn's often harsh and wounding formulations, and his intention (or his hope) was clearly to foster the elimination of schisms of one kind or another. The speech contained few surprises. Again it consisted of variations on the Spenglerian

world was

split

theme of the decline of the West. He pointed out

that the

not just into East and West but into multiple, self-sufficient

"worlds" or civilizations, such as China, India, Africa, and the Islamic world.

He

added that

Western "specialists," its own, separate and different from the West. The West had once been monolithic and allconquering, and in the period of colonization had seemed about to take over the entire world, but now the tide had receded and the West was in retreat. Therefore, it was an illusion that w here the West led, all other countries had to follow, and that the Western way of doing things was best. That was why the theory of "convergence," among others, was a false one. to these, despite the misconceptions of

belonged Russia, which possessed a cultural identity of

ern

From there Solzhenitsvn proceeded to his familiar litany of the West's The "collapse of courage" was particularly noticeable among Westintellectuals and the ruling circles. The preoccupation with prosperity

was

a result

tailings.

of the fact that the "modern" states of the

included Prance, England, Germany,

way

Italy,

West

and Spain,

(these apparently

all

of which in one

or another were considerably older than Russia, but Solzhenitsvn did

not specify) had been founded on the principle of the government's serving the people and had set the pursuit of happiness as one of their goals

example, the American Declaration of Independence). But * In his /,

Russian text Solzhenitsvn

since in the

v\

rote the

modern orthography mir

also

\\

ord tor "peace"

means "peace."

mir

this

(in, for

happiness

—with an old-style Russian

The Sage

Vermont

of

[967]

was deceptive, for the faces of many people in the West showed how worried and oppressed they were by the herce struggle to possess more goods, "even though it was considered proper to try to conceal these expressions." "Juridical life" in the West was a cold and formal system that could not satisfy people's deeper desires or prove strong enough to \\ ithstand the strains that lay ahead. By placing law above all other values, this system was actively w ill say that a detrimental. "Having passed all my life under communism, society in which there are no impartial judicial scales is abominable. But a society in which there are no scales other than the judicial is also little worthy 1

of man."* In his section on freedom Sol/.henitsyn expressed the exact nature of his

charge against the West with his first sentence: "In today's Western society there has opened up a disequilibrium between the freedom to do good deeds

and the freedom

do bad." One consequence of

to

this

was

that "a truly out-

with extraordinary, surprising policies cannot make his influence felt he will be tripped up a dozen times before he can even get started," while statesmen were hamstrung by "thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics and the constant intervention of press and parliament." standing, great

—

man

Another consequence was the corruption of youth by pornographic an inevitable growth

in crime. "It

is

a strange thing,

the very best social conditions have been created, there

crime than press, this

films

and

but in the West, where is

.

.

much more

.

impoverished and lawless Soviet Union." In the case of the freedom had simply degenerated into licence. The press had the in the

chance to "simulate" public opinion and corrupt it, and was a product of the main "mental illness of the twentieth century haste and superficiality." It was indicative that the longest of all Solzhenitsyn's sections w as devoted to

—

and

his old bete noire, the press,

has

become the

strongest of

all

this

because of his conviction that "the press

forces in

Western

states,

of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

them and

to

From

whom

here

it

exceeding the powers

And

yet

.

.

.

who

elects

are they responsible?"

was

a short step to a

consideration ot the dominance of

fashion in intellectual matters and the tyranny of the consensus.

And

this

consensus, according to Solzhenitsyn, was far too favourable to socialism, which the academician Shafarevich had already exposed in his "brilliantly argued

book." There was also the West's "short-sightedness," demonstrated by

its

and disarmament as instanced in the writings "loss of will," demonstrated by the American

attraction to the ideas of detente

of George Kennan, and

its

profitable to turn man's intellectual and moral and use them to produce well-being, it you think that reason is more use to men than genius, if your object is not to create heroic virtues but rather tranquil habits, if vou would rather contemplate vices than crimes and prefer fewer transgressions at the cost of fewer splendid deeds, if in place of a brilliant society you are content to live in one that is prosperous, and finally, if in your view the main object of government is *

Compare

Tocqueville: "But

if

vou think

it

activity tov\ ards the necessities of physical life

not to achieve the greatest strength or glory for the nation as a whole but to provide tor every individual therein the utmost well-being, protecting

then

it is

good

to

make conditions

him

as far as possible

from

all

equal and to establish a democratic government."

afflictions,

SOLZHENITSYN

[968] capitulation in neereti

Vietnam and the diplomatic manoeuvres of those who

swipe

it (a

at Kissinger,

engi-

although the former secretary of state was

The West had become conservative and wedded to no matter how well armed it might be, it could never

not mentioned by name). the status quo, but prevail status

For

mend

ithout

\\

quo was

its

people's

\\

illingness to die for a cause. Preference for the

a sure sign of decline

and impending collapse.

those reasons Solzhenitsvn declared that he "could not recom-

all

todav's

spirituallv far

West as a model" for his countrvmen. Eastern Europe was ahead of the West. "The complex and deadly pressures bearing

lives have developed characters that are stronger and more profound and interesting than those developed by the prosperous, ordered life of the West." For the East to become like the West would be for it to lose

upon our

more than

it

gained.

Solzhenitsvn did not say what he stop there.

The whole

crisis

i^^o;//^

recommend, but neither did he

of mankind, he said, could be traced back to the

heritage of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

had led man and this was

to reject

why

God and

The

spirit of rationalism

place himself at the centre of the universe,

he no longer understood the nature of good and

evil. In

were communism and capitalism, for thev \\ ere both logical products of the development of humanism and materialism. But since it seemed to be a social law that the radical always won out over the liberal and that political movement was alwavs to the left, communism was in the ascendant. But this was not necessarilv the end of the storv. Whether a militarv catastrophe was imminent Solzhenitsvn could not say, but the demise of irreligious, humanist consciousness was already at hand, and mankind was at a turning-point. Both East and West were sick of the same disease, and the values of the Renaissance no longer had anv efficacy. We were at a "turning-point" analogous to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. There was no question of going back to the Middle Ages, but we should seek to unite the best that the Middle Ages had given us in the spiritual sphere with the best that the Renaissance had brought in the human and phvsical sphere and rise to a higher plane. There was nowhere else to go but up."^ Solzhenitsvn's speech was greeted, as on so many occasions in the past, by a standing ovation. Not evervone in the audience applauded, and it is not clear how much the ardour of the general response had to do with Solzhenitsvn's personal magnetism and the passion with which he spoke (which, as usual, passed the barrier of simultaneous translation). But it was in a sense a sort of apotheosis. Harvard was a more distinguished and more elevated forum than the Hilton Hotel in Washington, the audience was more influential, more representative, and less partisan than that provided by the AFL-CIO, and television carried the speech to all sections of the population who cared to watch, on a scale vaster than anything since the Cronkite interview. Whatever his difficulties with the political establishment, Solzhenitsvn had succeeded in getting his message across to the American people as never before. this context, the "unlikelv bedfellows"

The

He would

much

have

Sagf. of

Vermont

ly'^n;]

own

preferred, of course, to he speaking to his

people,

was poorh understood for a while that his words had indeed been directed as much to them as to his listeners in America. But he had done his best, as he saw it, for both, and was able to retire in triimiph to Vermont to and

it

savour the impact ot his words. That he was not indifferent to that impact visited lic

is

attested

him soon afterwards and found him "intenselv

Of

reactions to his speech.

by

a friend

w ho

interested" in the pub-

the thousands of letters he

was

said to ha\e

received, the majoritv v\ere said to be "o\ erw helmingly favourable;" but that

the newspapers and magazines to

still left

w

hich, despite his professed con-

tempt, Solzhenitsvn as usual paid close attention. 1 he consensus here was not favourable

The

ervation.

at all,

though some endorsed

his

speech almost w ithout res-

conservative National Revieic perceived that the true drift ot

Solzhenitsvn's message was "antimodern" but found in

who was

hostile to the

West but

him not someone

rather "the greatest living representative of

the West, an avatar of the West's most ancient and honourable principles,"

because he was appealing for

a return to the

modernity: classical and early Christian lic

magazine Commouiveal found more

exposition of his views but

and morality

spirituality

still

"almost forgotten alternative to

political philosophy."-"^

to quarrel

with

The Catho-

in Solzhenitsyn's detailed

supported his overall plea for more room for

in daily life

and rejected the idea (put forw ard by political system and cen-

some) that Solzhenitsyn favoured an authoritarian sorship of the press.-'

balance of press and published opinion, however, w as decidedly

The

against Solzhenitsyn.

The

Neiv York Times saw Solzhenitsyn participating in

an argument that w as as old as the American Republic

— between

itself

gious enthusiasts sure of their interpretation of the divine will and

reli-

men

ot

the Enlightenment trusting in the rationality of mankind. Solzhenitsyn's role in forcing the

been that

West

to

understand the

full brutalit\-

beneficial, but his crusade against

we

happy

are

of the Soviet regime had

communism bespoke

to forgo in this nation's leaders."

"an obsession

James Reston,

in the

same newspaper, wondered whether Solzhenitsyn's exaltation ot Russian spirituality as being far in advance of the West did not indicate the wanderings of "a mind split apart," despite the many brilliant passages elsewhere in his speech.

The

Washington Post explained his view as "very Russian," arising

remote from modern Western summoning Americrusade and speaking on behalf of a "boundless cold war." The

from "particular

religious

and

political strains

experience." Solzhenitsyn, wrote the Post, was bent on

cans to a

Christian Science Monitor, spirituality,

w

hile praising Solzhenitsyn's call for a return to

his claims for

Russian spiritual superiority preposterous

ignorance of America and American ways deplorable, and a columnin the same newspaper found him squarely in the tradition of earlier for-

and ist

found

his

eign visitors

who had come and denounced what

they ft)und in America,

such as Dickens and Alexis de Tocqueville.-'^ It

was the more

serious

commentators who had the most

to say,

how-

SOLZHENITSYN

[970]

Arthur Schlesinger, the Hberal historian once associated with President Kennedy, Hkened Solzhenitsyn to early generations of Harvard men, whose fundamentaHst Christianity had led them to thunder from the Harvard rostrum in tones, and even in words, remarkably similar to Solzhenitsyn's (Schlesinger quoted a few to drive his point home). Solzhenitsyn's charges against America were familiar, many would have no difficulty in agreeing with his strictures against American excesses, and his "challenge to American smugness and hedonism, to the mediocrity of our mass culture, to the decline of self-discipline and civic spirit," was "bracing and valuable." To this extent Solzhenitsyn was at one with America's Puritan founding fathers. But Solzhenitsyn's faith was suffused by the "other-worldly mysticism of the Russian church" and by a strain of quietism and passivity that was entirely alien to America. "Even the New England ministry had to temper its conviction of divine sovereignty with concessions to the rough democracy of a nonprescriptive society where men made their way in life through their own labor." The two traditions were divergent and alien to one another. Solzhenitsyn had remarked at Harvard that the West has "never understood Russia." One could respond that Solzhenitsyn had never understood America. All he knew was what he had learned from television, the newspapers, and gazing through a car window; he did not know enough to recognize television's "depressing parody of American life" for what it was. If prophecy was one human virtue, humility was another. "Knowing the crimes committed in the name of a single Truth, Americans prefer to keep their ears open to a multitude of competing lower-case truths." While they welcomed Solzhenitsyn in their midst and honoured his presence, the message of his Harvard address was ever.

irrelevant to them.^*^

Notable among the many other critics of Solzhenitsyn's speech was the once iMarxist and now right-wing political philosopher Sidney Hook, a professor emeritus of New York University and research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hook found far more in Solzhenitsyn's speech to agree with than

had the

liberal Schlesinger but, he, too, felt that the

"profound truths" Sol-

zhenitsyn had uttered were likely to be cancelled out by his equally profound errors.

Hook

erful East

agreed with Solzhenitsyn's warnings against an ever more pow-

and the

vacillating

the degradation of Western

weakness of the West and with

scx:ietv.

He

also agreed

his analysis of

with Solzhenitsyn's notions

of the importance of morality and the need to balance various freedoms, but that Solzhenitsyn was "profoundly wrong" to identify the sickness of West with the heritage of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and a loss of belief in God. Belief in a Supreme Being was entirely compatible with the worst excesses and atrocities the history of organized religion was too full of examples for there to be a need to enumerate them. Nor was such a belief a necessary foundation of morality. It was Dostoyevsky who had propagated that idea, but more eminent thinkers such as St Augustine, Kierkegaard, and the unknown authors of the Book of Job had shown that morality was logically independent of religion. Solzhenitsyn also misunderstood the

he

felt

the

—

Thk Sage

of

Vermont

[97']

nature of freedom, for freedom of ehoice meant the freedom to err, yet Solzhenitsvn could not bear the eon.stH|uences of error.

Hook made one further point in his capacity as one of those "who have manv decades beeen fighting the monstrous evil of totalitarianism, even

for

before Solzhenitsvn himself discovered

true nature," and that

its

potential divisiveness of Solzhenitsyn's attempt to lay

dow n

a

was the

"party line"

engaged in this fight. "There are legitimate grounds for fear that anv attempt to base the broad struggle against the grow ing menace ot (Communism on one special doctrine or premise w ill result in demoralizing the common effort. It ma\' convert the contenders into w arring, ineffectual sects. The principles of moralitx are more trulv universal and more generally for those

.

.

.

considered valid than anv religious principle. ilv

.

.

.

They can

as a unifving bond than any parochial conceit about

Hook,

manv

like

before and after him, cited Sakharov as

figure than Solzhenitsvn in the opposition to

Hook

first

serve

and

more read-

last

things."

more unifying

a

communism.^"

was accusing Solzhenits\n of doing, in effect, the opposite of

w hat

he had set out to do, of being responsible for splits and causing his ow n particular schism in the ranks of dissidents and others opposed to Soviet

communism, and

his

words were prophetic.

Letter to the Leaders, The

Oak and

the Calf, From under the Ruhh/e, and Solzhenitsyn's speeches in the West had alreadv created the beginnings of a schism, which until now had remained

muted sal

or indirect, out of respect for Solzhenitsyn's reputation and his colos-

From now

achievements.

on, however, dissent from his views was des-

grow louder and stronger, until it broke out into charges that Solzhenitsvn w ished to become "the Russian AyatoUah" and to impose his

tined to

own form both

of theocracy on a future Russia.* Meanwhile, his

oi'

attacks,

and public, on other members up since the early seventies ensured w ould w iden and deepen until it w as virtually unbridgeable, new version of the philosophy that "he w ho is not w ith us is

in private

varietv

own

of the emigration and on a

emigre journals that had sprung

that the split

resulting in a against us."

There were manv precedents tude to the West.

The

in

Russian history for Solzhenitsyn's

superioritv of Russian over

atti-

Western ways had been

a

theme in Russian thought ever since Peter the Great's forcible Westernization of Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and an essential strand of the Slavophiles' thinking in the nineteenth century had been the view that the West was *The comparison

in decline.

in

it

with

first

occurred in a

New York new spaper Sozvye Riisskoye Sloiv (New

October 1979. In the body of the

the newspaper provided

—

Slavophiles, while aware of the

of Solzhenitsyn's views with those of Ayatollah Khomeini

long article by \alery Chalidze in the

Word)

Some

article,

a sensational

Russian

Chalidze w as reasonably circumspect, but

headline

—"Khomeinism or

National

Commu-

was reprinted in Koiitineiit no. 10 (under a different title) and answered by Bukovsky in Kontinent no. 11. Meanwhile, Efim Etkind entered the argument on Chalidze's side, in an article that was published in UExpress and Die nism"

Zeit,

that stirred

up

a lot of

bad

and Solzhenitsvn published

Slovo in

November

1979.

feeling. Chalidze's article

his rebuttal of these charges in UExpress

and Sovoye

Riisskoye

SOLZHEMTSYN

[972]

pow er and vigour of the United

rising

States,

had nonetheless assimilated and had unfavourably

that country to the general decline of western Europe,

contrasted American materialism and legalism w ith the higher spiritual qualities

allegedly to be found in Russia.* But distaste for the coldness and

emp-

European life had not been limited to the Slavophiles. Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy had all been repelled in differing degrees by western Europe, and even such a pronounced W esternizer as the socialist Alexander Herzen had been reduced to despair by his experiences there. Indeed, Herzen's responses had been strikingly similar to Solzhenitsvn's a hundred tiness of

years later.

do not know w ho could

I

find in

Europe

sadness expressed in every line of malignitx mingles

ith love, bile

\\

my

toda\' happiness or rest.

letters; life

with

here

is

.

.

.

You saw

very hard, venomous

tears, feverish anxiety infects the

organism, the time of former illusions and hopes has passed.

I

w hole

believe in nothing

here, except in a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest the for

movement.

I

anything that now

And

I

sta\"

.

.

.

sta\-

that of this world;

see the inevitable

exists, neither the

to suffer doubly, to suffer

w hich w

destruction towards which

Some

ill

it is

b\'

tion to the parallels fully share the

of old Europe and feel no pitv its

culture nor

m\ ow n

perish, perhaps, to the

racing at

of this was pointed out in

Harvard speech

doom

peaks of

a

full

ith

institutions.

sound of thunder and

steam."

perceptive essay on Solzhenitsyn's

the French w riter Alain Besan^on,

w

its

personal anguish and

Herzen. But Solzhenitsvn,

who

felt

also

drew atten-

Besangon, did not

pessimism about the West of Herzen and other nineteenthstill had some hope, as was evidenced by his very

century thinkers, for he

illingness to make such speeches and to continue to exhort the West to improve itself. Solzhenitsyn's essential intention was not to construct a theory about Russia and the W est he was more practical than that but to warn the West of the unprecedented dangers of communism. In Solzhenitsyn's view, communism was not something particularh' Russian, nor w as it external to the \\ est: it was inherent in the cixilization common to both Russia and the West. Solzhenitsyn's message, according to Besangon, was that communism had triumphed in Russia because Russia was more vulnerable, but that it had not been born in Russia. The forces that had brought communism to power there were the same ones that had racked Europe in the nineteenth century and that were still at work all over the world. If the West did not heed the w arnings of Solzhenitsvn and others, it, too, would be devoured by this anti-life and change its very nature. The decision as to whether this would happen or not lay in the West's own hands. 'The debate about Solzhenits\n's Harvard address continued for a long time, both in America and in Europe (and, most interestingly, in Japan). As

w

—

—

*

There

is

an interesting discussion of the history of

son, "Solzhenitsvn's Revieii-

(S>pnng 1978).

this

Image of America: The Survival of

concept

in

an article by Dale E. Peter-

a Slavophile idea," in the Massachusetts

The Sage late as the

of

Vermont

[97 31

winter of IVSO, an entire book was published on the subject,'' and

the speech has continued to be regarded as Solzhenitsyn's most authoritative

word on

these matters and as a major contribution to the debate about

Amer-

ican foreign policN' and detente*

Whatever the individual \ iew s expressed about the speech (an enormous emerged in the usual flood of comment and letters to the press), one thing was undeniable: Solzhenitsyn had again fulfilled his selfchosen function of draw ing attention to the subjects and ideas that preoccupied him and putting them on the public agenda. Since the day when Ivan Denisovich was published, that agenda had steadily widened: Stalin's labour camps, the So\ iet labour-camp system in general, Soviet history, the history varietv of opinion

of the Revolution, Russian histor\' before the Revolution, the nature of Soviet societv, and now the nature of Western society and the conflict (and also the similarities)

voice his

mav

between the two.

He ma\

have been overreaching himself, his

ha\ e been growing shriller and less convincing as he tried to extend

range further, but the sheer nerve, the sheer courage, and the sheer ambiman commanded attention and admiration. They had made him

tion of the

what he was. There was to be no changing him, and no going back. He would continue to proclaim his vision from the roof-tops come what may, and because of his fanatical dedication, the immense strength of his w ill, and, above all, the magnitude of his past achievements, the world would continue to listen.

*One consequence of the address was House. Tv\o weeks (barter

ardly,

The

v\

later, in a

ent out of her

and

way

that

it

ruined Solzhenitsyn's chances of visiting the White

speech to the National Press Club

in

Washington, Rosalynn

to reject Solzhenitsyn's allegations that .\merica

spiritually exhausted"

and gave

a

long

"intention" to invite Solzhenitsyn to a talk

w

list

ith

of reasons

why

was "weak, cow-

she regarded him as wrong.

President Carter was quietly forgotten.

—

52

EPILOGUE

THERE CAN BE no end to the biography of chronicle of an extraordinary and unfinished missing, and that

is

a

in their nev\ habitat;

Hving man.

a

moment

address would seem an appropriate sense of the domestic

life.

life

at

which

Yet there

The Harvard

to interrupt this

is still

something

of Solzhenitsyn and his family

and certain loose ends should perhaps be secured before

letting the story go.

One might

start

with Vermont.

The

journey up to Solzhenitsyn's house

how sucEngland is through a Leaving Boston, the road passes chosen. cessfully the spot was shopping freeways, American landscape that is characteristically urban plazas, filling stations, motels, a riot of billboards and shrieking neon signs not the sort of thing to appeal to Solzhenitsyn (or anyone in his right mind). But after a while the asphalt and concrete begin to thin out, green v\oods and fields appear, and the countryside gets hillier. Wisps of cloud cling to the one can see why it highest hills, and the light grows soft and luminous through

New

yery beautiful and gives one a sense of

—

—

reminded the early settlers Along the striking valley of the Connecticut River, the changes grow more pronounced. The houses are poorer and smaller, the filling stations are down to two pumps standing in the open air, and the farms behind them are fewer and farther apart. The hills get higher, until they turn into thickly wooded mountains with swift, rocky rivers rushing between them. After the ugly regional centre of Ludlow comes Cavendish, which seems idyllic by comparison a modest village of neat clapboard houses, some white and some of England.

—

in soft

hues of red and green, scattered along the shallow valley of the Black

River.

974

F.PII.OGUE

Solzhcnits\n's house

is

[975]

situated about four miles past (Cavendish,

up

a

mountain stream. I he road is paved at first but soon gives wav to gravel. Ihere are a few scattered houses and farms, a gravexard chngs to a hill above the road to the left, a few local narrow, w inding road that runs beside

a s\\ itt

people wave w hen the Solzhenits\n family car drives past. Then the road narrows and runs through dense, darkening woods. The undergrow th is tangled; dead trees lie where thev have fallen. At the top of the rise, one comes to a single steel gate covered in wire mesh, with a modest sign that says "No Trespassing." Awav to either side stretches the chain-link fence about six to a real barrier, but hardlv formidable. I ligh above the gate is eight feet high a tele\ision monitor, and just in front of it an electronic box mounted on a pillar, as at the entrance to car-parks. One inserts a card into the box, and

—

w ith a loud buzzing sound. Inside there is another mechanism the gate has already shut itself auto-

the gate opens automaticalbelectronic box to reset the

—

matically again.

A a

narrow dirt track winds up betw een denselv crowded trees and round Down to the left is a small stream dammed to form a large

sharp bend.

pond and a waterfall, and beside it is a kind of rustic summer-house. At last one comes to the main house, a two-storev, smoothlv boarded rectangular structure w ith modern w indows somew hat in the Swiss or German st\ le, w ith two w ings added in the same material. Inside, the house is as simple as it looks from outside. The entire shell and some of the rooms have been lined with foot-w ide cedar boards polished to a taw n\' reddish brow n. The floors are covered w ith w orsted cord carpet in plain solid colours, and the furniture unobtrusivelv modern.

is

Having been completeh' remodelled, the house has a feeling of light and it. The centre-piece is an enormous lounge from which the ceiling has been removed to allow the room to rise to the roof the former upstairs landing has been turned into an open gallery that links the two new wings. At one end of this lounge is a w ide brick chimney running its full height, w ith an open hearth facing into the room, and a picture window gives spaciousness about

—

a

view of the N'ermont mountains. The simple furnishings include a couple modern couches, a piano in one corner, a photocopier in another, and

of

some bookshelves containing, among other nitsvn's

works

the gallerv.

nor

in Russian.

From

The only problem w ith

feels lived in.

It is a

visitors, rather like the

things, foreign editions ot Solzhe-

vet another corner this spacious

a spiral staircase rises to

room

is

that

it

neither looks

space, comfortable but impersonal, for receiving

one the Solzhenitsyns had

in

Zurich, but more ele-

gant and spacious than the rented accommodation there. In 1977,

when

I

paid

mv

one and onlv

the house proceeded elsewhere, and

first

of

visit to all

\'ermont, the

real life ot

modern American long table w ith a view ot the

in the big,

kitchen, w here the famih' meals w ere taken at a garden through the picture w indow Then there were the study of Solzhenitsyn's secretarv and the children's class-room, where they were taught variously by a Russian tutor, bv Solzhenitsvn himself, and by his w ife, Natalia. .

SOLZHENITSYN

[976]

Natalia also had, her work-room in the house, and there

room near

the secretary's study

\\

\\

as a separate Httle

here the television monitor and intercom

situated. Every time it buzzed or crackled, someone (usually the secrehad to go and answer it. This was about a year before the Harvard speech, when nine people were lixing permanently in the house. The noisiest and most visible were Solzhenitsyn's three young children: Ermolai, Ignat, and Stepan (Ermosha, Igonya, and Styopa, to the family). Ermolai was then seven, Ignat five, and Stepan only three. The day for them began with breakfast with their grandmother at seven-thirty, which was preceded by a long Orthodox prayer, recited in unison to the accompaniment of much fervent crossing of the heart and ending w ith a plea for Russia to be saved from her oppressors. To a nonRussian the prayer had a slightly archaic flavour; given the unchanging (and unchanged) nature of Orthodox ritual, it was probably the same prayer that Solzhenits\n himself had recited as a child in Kislovodsk. From eight-thirty to ten-thirty for the tw o younger boys, and for Ermolai during the holidays, there w ere lessons with a young Russian tutor in the schoolroom (Ermolai had already started at the local school, and since then the other two have

were tary)

started as well).

W ith

the tutor thev studied reading, writing, arithmetic,

and geography. As they grew older, Solzhenitsyn himself began giving lessons in elementary mathematics and physics (he remains an excellent teacher), and Natalia taught them Russian literature. The aim was to keep them in a purely Russian atmosphere for as long as possible and to give them a thorough grounding in Russian culture before they started attending American schools to prepare them, as Natalia put it, for an eventual return to Russia. The children also had a spacious nursery downstairs, a sand-pit, swings, and a heap of rocks to pla\' on outside and fifty acres of woodland to roam through when they felt like it. During the holidays a fourth child w as in the house Natalia's son by her first marriage, Dmitri Tiurin. By 1977, when he was fifteen, Dmitri history,

—

—

—

had grow n into a broad-shouldered, dark, and handsome boy about six feet with his mother's prominent Russian cheek-bones and broad forehead. During the school year he was away at boarding-school, as a result of which his English w as fluent and idiomatic. When at home, he liked to spend most of his days dow n the road, driving tractors, diggers, and bulldozers for the neighbouring contractor who had done much of the w ork on Solzhenitsyn's estate (as is the way in Vermont, the contractor w as also a farmer and supplied the Solzhenitsyns daily with fresh milk from his small herd of cows). In addition to Natalia and the children's tutor, two other women were in the house. Solzhenitsyn's secretary (Solzhenitsyn had conceded the need tall,

for a secretary onh' after his

because he

felt less

move

a reliable interpreter)

was

a

America

—

to a large extent, ith

it

seems,

German and needed

Irina Alberti, a middle-aged Russian lady, the

daughter of Russian emigres of the

Cossack and

to

comfortable with English than w

first

emigration (her father had been a

lawyer, her mother the daughter of

a

Don

Russian general), and

.

Epilogue

[977]

widow of an Italian diplomat. As a result ot her diplomatic peregrinations Mrs Alberti was reputetl to speak nine languages, a tremendous help for

the

Solzhenits\ n w ith his world-w ide contacts and correspondence, and she had

considerable experience as patriot, deeplx

and to SolzhenitsN n himselt. The fourth woman w as taken charge, as

a

dexout Russian

all

and genius

English, learned the

in ik'lgrade)

F.katerina S\etlo\a, Natalia's mother,

Moscow, of most of

in

the linchpin that held intelligence

She w as, moreoxer,

a journalist.

dexoted to her natixe land (though born herselt

its

disparate elements together.

for practical matters, Kkaterina

wa\s of American

w ho had was

the domestic arrangements and

life,

her cjuick

\\ ith

had soon picked up

and got the household tunction-

ing efhcientlw She did most of the dri\ ing and shopping, the fetching and

and saw

carr\'ing,

out w orr\"ing too

As

to

it

that the others

much about

w ere able

to

go about their

j(jbs

w

ith-

dailv details.

had the most difficult job of all. .Apart from her and mother, w hich she took verv seriousK she acted as a confidential secretar\- to her husband. She w as (and is) the onl\' person in the world he trusts completelv, and for that reason w as constanth on call for consultations, reading and w riting letters, or simph' seeing to his ph\ sical well-being. Natalia also carried an enormous burden as chairman ot the Russian Social Fund, particularh after the arrest of Ginzburg. w hen she initiated and carried through an international campaign for his release, travelling to a variet\ of countries and appearing on public plattorms in his detence. On for Natalia, she

normal duties

these and

as

manv

sentative and

w

ife

,

other occasions, she acted as Solzhenitsx n's personal repre-

ambassador and often attended hearings and committees

tifv on dissident matters that Solzhenits\n considered important.

to tes-

Not

least

among her duties that of literarv assistant and adviser. She w as personw ith setting and proof-reading the entire nine-volume etiition ot alh' chargecl w as

Solzhenits\n's Collected \\ orks that he had begun to prepare soon after arrix ing in

\ ermont, and she performed similar duties on

much

else that

he wrote."^

Finalh', she had to deal w ith Solzhenitsvn's social engagements and visitors,

manv

work programme ran smoothly and was not

and ensure that his b\" unw elcome intrusions.

interrupted

At the centre of this professional and domestic web w as Solzhenitsvn, vet there was a svmbolic appropriateness in the fact that for two-thirds of the vear he was phvsicallv removed from the house and spent most of his waking hours in the little summer-house beside the pond. It was an exceedingh" prettv spot. A footpath wound down from the main house through a dense coppice of birch, svcamore, and pine trees. In the summer, w ild flowers grew on the edges of the coppice, and the scent of the blossoms, mingled *The works ha\e

since

grown

to twelve

volumes, with more to come. Meanwhile, since the

children ha\e grow n older, thev too have begun to assist

w ith

Solzhenitsvn's literary chores. In

1983, at the age of twelve, Ermolai began using Solzhenitsvn's IB.\I composer and set the type for a

volume of memoirs

Librar\

that

w as due

to appear as part of Solzhenitsvn's .\11-Russian

.Memoir

SOLZHENITSYN

[978]

with that of the pine needles, \\as overpowering, particularly towards evening. A wooden foot-bridge traversed the rushing stream that fed the pond.

The

waterfall

was never

still,

in contrast to the stillness of the

pond, whose

mirrorlike surface reflected the trees that crow ded to the shore on three of

four sides.

On

the fourth side was the summer-house,

wooden cabin with

it,

two windows overlooking the pond, and a on which stood a rustic w ooden bench and table.

a small landing-stage jutting into the

and

summer

abilitv to

withstand

the children

It is

amusing

swam

that

much

it,

pond, Solzhenitsyn liked to swim

autumn. His love of the remained undiminished by the years. In the

everv morning, even in earlv spring and cold,

its

simple creosoted

a tin roof,

small terrace in front of

From

a

in the

pond

late into the

too.

plav has been

made

in the press

about the alleged

luxurv of Solzhenitsvn's surroundings and the extravagance of his domestic arrangements, such as the supposed existence of a secret tunnel from the

house to his studv. Such speculation was fed bv Solzhenitsyn's reclusiveness and inaccessibilitv, but it also rested on a total misunderstanding ot his character. Solzhenitsvn detests formality, luxury, elaborateness of any kind. He genuinelv prefers the simple life not only on principle but also as a matter of practical comfort and convenience. It is w hat he has always been accustomed to. There were (and probably still are) no servants in the house, not even a

woman. The four women* did evervthing themselves in addition to As for Solzhenitsyn, he was perfectly capable of taking of his o\\ n domestic needs, and actively preferred to do so. The sum-

cleaning

their other duties.

care

mer-house was equipped with an ancient refrigerator and

a hotplate.

He

had

the food for most of his meals brought to him, so that he could prepare

it

bed and a modest bathroom, making it convenient for him to stay the night in his summer-house. In short, he retained manv of his bachelor ways, and his style of life \\ as hardly different from what it once had been in Kok Terek, and then again in his various hide-outs in Solotcha, Rozhdestvo, Rostropovich's and Chukovsky's dachas, himself.

There was

also a high old-fashioned

mountain retreat in Sternenberg. There \\ as one sense, however, in which the popular myth was accurate. The picture of the former Gulag prisoner surrounding himself with a fence of his own making and shutting himself in behind tight security expressed and

his

an essential psychological truth. In his interview with Nikita Struve in 1976, Solzhenitsvn had attributed his choice of closed institutions for the action of

most of

his no\els

—the labour camp

for Ivan Denisovich, the sharashka for The

First Circle, the cancer clinic for the Cancer

—

Ward not only to a psychological much of his life in confinement

quirk but also to the fact that he had spent so himself.

Whatever the primal source of

his behaviour, his retreat to the tin\'

cabin by the lake inside his stockade only confirmed this deep-seated ten-

dency. Wherever he found himself, safe

from intruders, he

*Irina Albert!

left

felt

it

seems, even in the

obliged to retreat

still

bosom of his family

further to peace and soli-

Solzhenitsvn's service in 1980. Since then his secretaries have been men.

RPILOGUE tude.

The

on the

spacious house

floors,

up the

hill,

with

its

[979]

comfortable armchairs, carpets

an ultra-modern kitchen stocked with e\er\ kind ot food, and

well-appointed bedrooms and bathrooms, was as nothing to him compared

with floor,

this

draughty summer-house without curtains, with bare

an oilcloth-covered table to eat from, and

a

tiles

on the

chipped enamel basin and

shower cubicle for his ablutions. These monkish conditions enabled him to concentrate to the fullest on his work and to stick to his preferred routine. Rising between five and six, he would take a dip in the pond, eat breakfast alone, and do domestic chores or read until eight o'clock, when his w riting da\ began. He would then \\ ork uninterrupted!}' until five,* except for short breaks for lunch and to give the children their lesson, after which another break was taken for dinner. If guests were present, Solzhenitsvn would often go up to the house for the evening meal, but not invariably. The evenings would be given over to correspondence, consultations with Natalia and w ith guests if their business could be put off until that time, and to extra background reading. If he needed to do research that could be carried out at home, he could repair to the modern annex beside the house that held his papers and library and the beginnings of the Russian Memoir Library. This modernist structure, consisting of a cluster of cubes of unequal height and featuring ingenioush' angled sk\ lights and an air-conditioned interior, was at the opposite pole from the cabin in its conveniences and was intended to provide space for one or two permanent archivists, as well as for visiting scholars. But whatever his evening occupation, Solzhenitsvn strove to be in bed b\- ten o'clock. He w as a man of strict and rigid habits, and hated disrupting his timetable. There were, however, one or two physical relaxations (besides sw imming) he indulged in occasionally. One of these was tennis, and the one luxury he had permitted himself w as the construction of a tennis court in a clearing in the pine woods. It had been an old childhood dream of his to play, vet he had never found an opportunity until his arrival in \ ermont. He acknowledged that it was something of an absurdity to start learning at the age of sixty, but he was determined to try. The problem w as that he had no regular partners. Ekaterina, his mother-in-law would pla\ occasionally, and he tried to press Xatalia to do the same. In her youth she had represented the Soviet Union in sculling and had been a talented basketball plaver, but now she practised no sports and would rarely play. Occasionally, she teased her husband that it was "a bourgeois game" that he had no business playing, but mainly she w as simply too loaded dow n w ith w ork. 'it's not that I don't want to play," she said one day; "I just don't have the time. He doesn't realize how franticalh- busy I am, and when I have a bit of time to spare, especially with him, I don't w ant to spend it pla\'ing tennis." Solzhenitsvn w as graceful on the tennis court but slow and inexpert. He had put on some weight over ,

*

Owing

to

doing

to the sciatica

much

for himself

from which he had suffered since the mid-sixties, Solzhenitsvn had taken

of his writing standing up

—

at a

kind of lectern he had had specially constructed

—which made the long hours he v\orked an even more impressive

feat of

endurance.

SOLZHENITSYX

[980]

the vears and this impeded him.

He \\ as also

impatient, considering a quarter

of an hour plenty of time for practice.

He

also continued to enjov certain kinds of ph\sical labour.

The one

was sawing

that he invariably permitted himself to be photographed at

logs,

sometimes with the children, but he also persisted with the scything that he had learnt at Rozhdestyo. A stainless-steel sc\the leaned against the rear \\ all of his cabin not for Solzhenitsyn were the nois\', stinking motor mowers of his \ ermont neighbours. For almost all the rest of the time Solzhenitsyn worked, as did everyone

—

else in the house,

\\

hich gave an aura of seriousness to the

\\

hole establish-

ment. There was no solemnity. Indeed, the atmosphere was an appealing blend of the informal and the formal. Meals and mealtimes, except for the

evening meal, w ere entirely informal. Each person pursued his or her time-

was preferred, ate w henever necessary, and washed At the same time, great punctiliousness and formality w ere observed in arranging meetings or consultations between an\" tw o or more people, and punctualit\ was obligatory. Everyone knocked on doors before entering (except the communal rooms, of course) and w aited to be invited in. The central purpose of these arrangements w as clearly to protect Solzhenitsvn's w orking hours as much as possible and to see that not a minute of his time w as wasted, and it seemed to work surprisingly well. It also table at whatever pace

the dishes afterw ards.

lent a sense of purposefulness

and order

to the entire household,

w hich had

the cohesiveness of a kind of informal monastery, each individual working tor the common good approved of and encouraged.

away

—

situation that Solzhenitsyn emphatically

a

At the same time there w as a It w as not

myster\" about the place. secrecx" it

ot

and conspiratorial

relations

slight

but noticeable

that Solzhenitsxn's

made

limits.

of suppressed

ell-known love of

the atmosphere oppressive (though

ma\- have had this effect in the long run), but there

boundaries and

air

\\

For instance, nearly

w as

a general

to the

all visits

awareness

house had to

be made in secret, and extensive precautions were taken to see that each visitor

concealed from the outside world the very fact of his having been

w ere clamw ho w ere refused or to fortunate friends and admirers. There

there. Solzhenits\ n's rationale for this

ouring to

visit

him

that he didn't

cause undue jealousy

w as

among

a certain sense in this,

w

his less

but the

w as

that so man\' people

ish to upset those

real

reason seems to have been Solzheni-

tsvn's twin obsessions of maintaining absolute prixacv

everything that had to do with his ot exercising that control

w

as to

life

and

career.

One

and of controlling

of the simplest

ways

ensure that his various friends, helpers, and

know who the others were. Another feature was that certain conversations on Russian themes would suddenly run into an evasion or a silence, and it would be suggested that further discussion of that theme was unwise or unwelcome. Then there were the comings and goings of members of the household, especially Natalia, leading to w hispered huddles and sometimes the sudden breaking off of one activit)' to deal w ith some urgent matter that had just arisen elsewhere. Finall\', advisers never got together, since the\ did not

Kpilogue

[9H1]

humming of the elosed-cireuit television monitor in room, the periodie explosions ot the loud buzzer announeing that someone was at the gate, and the crackling ot the intercom as the visitor was interrogated. All this created a certain air of excitement that enhanced one's sense of participating in an enterprise ot great moment, something that was purposeful, relevant, and perhaps of great importance to the outside world. there were the robot-like its

Httle

The main

w as (and

point of that enterprise

still is)

Solzhenitsvn's series

of novels. August 1914 had been completed in 1970 and published in 1971.

From under

In the six years since then, apart from the essays in

the Rubble, his

Calf {most of which had been written bv 1973), and

memoir, The Oak and

the

Leuiii in Zurich (also

parth written before Solzhenitsxn's expulsion), there

had been onlv speeches and interviews. It was not a great deal in terms of literature, and Solzhenitsvn w as aw are of it, for he had not forgotten where his true vocation law He had felt drawn in the other direction by duty, but his real work w as still literature, as he made clear in 1977. an interest in [politics] owing to the appalling circumstances Whenever I am attacked, m\ would much prefer not to. opponents alwavs insist on regarding me in political terms, under this or that \\

I

as obliged to take

of our

But

life.

I

.

mv

terms.

A

task,

such and such that

is,

a

mv

and not

A

partv"

And

tradition of his people.

.

.

.

When

it is

I

It's

the

call

to his tradition

simplv impossible to cast

or there.

And

sav this, thc\'

bound

necessarilv

language

is,

svstem for himself

is

such

a

\\

—

all

mv

frame-

in political

politician or "I

w

ill

accept

his language,

mightv, living thing that

a

through language the writer

There cannot be

nationalitv or to his countrv.

is

from that of the

differs in kind

—and off he goes. A writer chooses above

his people's language.

not

is

cannot be regarded

I

politician chooses a political

subjugates one even more. That

tradition.

dimension.

view of the w orld

\\ Titer's

the philosopher.

.

completelv missing the point that this

political classification,

work, not

.

riter

\\

ho

is

is

bound

it

to the

indifferent to his

there cannot be a writer indifferent to his

me

and

a reactionar\-

and

his nation;

terms

a writer in political

wrong wav of going about

a nationalist.

A

writer

cannot be otherwise.

it

—

to sav

And

he belongs here

things, a pointless occupation

and

a

waste of time.

Solzhenits\n elaborated on this theme on the same occasion as tollow

My my

W est

critics in the

exchange?" Well, job.

people.

.

Is

.

.

I

The w riter's

that not

what

are constantlv saving, "But

could offer plentv

if

ultimate task

enough

for a single

I

is

w

is

s:

he offering us

wanted, but I'm not obliged

to. It's

in

not

memory of his murdered Thev murdered mv people

to restore the riter?

.

.

.

and destroved its memorv. And I'm dragging it into the light of dav all on mv own. Of course, there are hundreds like me back there w ho could drag it out too. Well, it didn't fall to them; it fell to me. And I'm doing the w ork of a hundred men, and that's all there is to it. I'm no philosopher, I'm no politi.' cian, I get mixed up in this politics, but I loathe it. .

.

.

.

.

There was an element of disingenuousness in these protestations. Solriijht about himself insofar as he w as describing the Solzheni-

zhenitsvn was

SOLZHEMTSVN

[982]

tsvn of the novels, of The Gulag Archipelago, and even of his memoir, but the ven' genre of the press conference, the new spaper

article,

the polemical

essa\',

and the public speech seemed to preclude, in his case, the sensitivitv that informed his literary works and to bring out the w orst in him. It w as not that there w ere "two Solzhenitsvns" w ith tw o different philosophies but that the crudit\' and coarseness of his journalism failed to convince because it lacked the complexity and integrity of his literary prose. These statements w ere "political" in the sense that was ascribed to them, and Solzhenitsyn could have avoided them had he so wished, and chosen to appear before his public onh' as a "w riter." He did not, howe\er, and perhaps could not, for he returned to the genre of the polemical article again and again, and alw avs w ith the same dismal results. It w as like an addiction that he could not throw off and that w as slowly killing not him but his reputation. It is

possible that Solzhenitsyn had got

his expulsion not

only out of

a

more mixed up

in politics since

sense of compulsion but also as a subconscious

escape from some of the problems he w as encountering in his historical nov-

The

like a

flood of

godsend

new information

him

had seemed w ritten volumes 2 and ? of his scries w as proving to be ver\' difficult, and new light had been thrown on the events depicted in volume 1, August 1914. A further problem was connected w ith the development of one of his principal fictional personels.

ages, Lenartovich. to

available to

but integrating

at first,

The

it

in the U'est

into the largely

figure of this Marxist pro-Bolshevik, once intended

be the hero of the epic (identified with Solzhenitsyn himself) and now cast

as a negative character,

was destined

to plav a

major role

in

volume

3,

1917, and Solzhenitsyn was w restling w ith the task of depicting him pathetically

enough

to

make him convincing, w

March s\

m-

hile not concealing his nega-

and actions. In doing so, he was engaged in a kind of re-e\aluation of his ow n youth, a process that appears to have caused Solzhenits\ n considerable difficulties. There was also perhaps the larger question, which Solzhenitsxn has nowhere touched on, of the appropriateness of the whole enterprise. Solzhenits\ n has freeh- admitted that the example of Tolstoy w as decisive in leading him to undertake his historical epic. "This is the meaning of literary tradition," he said in 19~~, but he implied that he would have come to this tive exaluation of Lenarto\ ich's opinions

form in

scx^ner or later e\"en

without Tolsto\' and

e\"en

it

he had been

less

steeped

purely Russian literature (and correspondingh better versed in foreign

literatures).

But the question remains whether the genre of the

historical epic

has the same meaning and the same validity in the second half of the tw en-

—

century that it had in the nineteenth and w hether Solzhenitsyn has been w ise to cling so faithfulh" to a concept first evolved in the thirties, w hen he w as still voung. Apart from the century that has elapsed since War and Peace, the nearh" fifty \ears since 1936 have been among the most turbulent and exigent of modern times. Solzhenitsyn has rarely admitted to w riting

tieth

difficulties, its

but

it

w ould seem

that the transition

from East

to

West, w

ith all

attendant complexities, caused him more problems of this kind than he

had ever experienced before.

Kpiloguf.

One and

sign of

it

was

his decision to

add

[9H3]

second volume to August 1914

a

to rewrite parts of the existing xolume.

the domestic details of the

Tomchak

I

le

had learned that certain of

family (based on his mother's family)

were wrong, owing to his too ready acceptance of certain family legends; and he also wished to incorporate many of the criticisms that discerning readers had made of the first yolume and passed on to him in letters. It seems that by 1978 the task was finished and that he was also well advanced on the revision of October 1916 and March 1917, regarding parts of them as complete, for in that year he started publishing individual chapters of historical analysis

from the former (which he be

known

that the overall

called "survey chapters") in the Vestnik

title

Wheel.* In the same year, he began to publish, through the collected edition of his

works

and

of the series of novels was now to be to date, beginning

chapter version of the The First

Circle,

the text of

YMCA

w ith the full w hich he had

let it

I'he

Red

Press, a

ninety-six-

personally

checked and revised.

One

should not, perhaps, make too

much

of Solzhenitsyn's delay in

publishing the succeeding volumes to August 1914, for there were practical difficulties in the

the chaotic

way

way

in

of bringing out more books very quickly.

which the

texts of The First Circle

Owing

to

and Cancer Ward had

many errors and deviations from the origiwas anxious to have accurate texts on record. He also wanted to have a complete and accurate text of The Gulag Archipelago in print (when the new edition came out, he had added some new notes based on fresh information, and it was copyrighted to the Russian Social Fund instead of to Solzhenitsyn personally). Finally, he was anxious to publish his early plays and screenplay, written while in exile, and accurate versions of Candle in the Wind and The Tenderfoot and the Tart. All this constituted a backlog that he felt he had to clear before publishing his new er works (even if they v\ ere ready), and the position was complicated by an additional backlog in the reached the West, incorporating

nals, Solzhenitsyn

translations into other languages.

Volume

3

of The Gulag Archipelago, for

June 1978, just after the Harvard be 1980 before the Fnglish and American publication

instance, did not appear in Fnglish until

address, and

it

was

to

of The Oak and the Calf.

There were no financial pressures on Solzhenitsyn to publish. He was one of the world's best-selling authors, and his income was commensurate. In 1976, when Publishers Weekly published an informal investigation into Solzhenitsyn's sales, it found that approximately thirty million copies of his books has been sold throughout the w orld in upwards of thirty languages. The first volume of l^he Gulag Archipelago alone had sold eight to ten million copies, and the three volumes were expected to sell in the region of fifteen million altogether. Volume had sold about two and a half million copies in the United States alone, just over a million in Germany, and just under a million each in Britain, France, and Japan. Sales of the early novels were 1

*The

was taken from one of the cinematic scenes

title

portrayed

a

detached carriage v\heel revolving

control and on the path to destruction.

in

in flames, a

August 1914 in which Solzhenitsyn

symbol of

a collapsing

Russia out of

-

SOLZHENITSYN

[984]

almost impossible to compute because of their piecemeal publication, but there had been a distinct drop in Solzhenitsyn's sales after volume

X'olume

2

had sold about

quarter as rnzny as volume

a

1,

1

of Gulag.

and volume

3

fewer

than that. August 1914 and The Oak and the Calf hid both achieved best-seller status on the continent of Europe, but August 1914 had done less well in Britain and America, and The Oak and the Calf was destined to do likewise.

Meanwhile, according to UNESCO's 1976 guide Translationum (which was four years behind with

to translations, the Index its

figures),

Solzhenitsyn

had "tied w ith Shakespeare" in 1972 for the number of languages into which his v\orks had been translated, which means that by 1976 the number was probablv higher. Solzhenitsyn was outperformed in the matter of translations onlv by Marx, Engels, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Gorky, Pearl Buck, and Balzac.^ When one stops to consider that the figures for the t\\ o classics of Marxism and the Russians on the list were certainly inflated bv the inclusion of figures for translations into and betw een the various languages of the USSR (which may well have accounted for the high positions of Jules Verne, Pearl Buck, and Balzac too), and that Solzhenitsyn, on the contrary (unlike Shakespeare), suffered from an absolute absence of such

was

a remarkable tribute to his popularity. consequences were obvious, but since Solzhenitsyn was generally as guarded about his financial affairs as about other aspects of his private life, the figures could only be guessed at. One of the penalties of life

translations,

The

it

financial

West, however, was that income-tax statements were open to public June 1977 a Zurich newspaper "insulted," it claimed, by Solzhenitsyn's "arrogant" description of Switzerland in Lenin in Zurich as a

in the

—

scrutiny, and in

—revealed

"republic of lackeys" (these words were Lenin's, not the narrator's)

had declared earnings of $3 20, 000 and savings of $1.8 million.* Two years later his income was said to have halved to $155,000 and his savings gone down slightly to $1.4 milthat in 1974, the year of his exile, Solzhenitsyn

lion,

but they were

still

very substantial."^

The reason for these disclosures became apparent a few months later, w hen it \\ as reported that the Swiss tax authorities were investigating Solzhenitsyn's wealth with a view to claiming a large sum in back taxes. The sum mentioned varied from $1.8 million to $2.5 million according to which source one consulted, and word got out because someone in the Swiss Central Taxation Office had leaked confidential documents to the left-wing Zurich newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.The sum at issue related to money deposited by Solzhenitsyn in the Russian Social Eund and consisted mainly of royalties from the sale of l^he Gulag Archipelago. Since the fund was charitable, Solzhenitsyn and his lawyers maintained that no income tax w as payable on it, whereas the Swiss tax authorities were questioning this fact. The Tages-Anzeiger, which had long been hostile to Solzhenitsyn, exploited the leak to run a whole campaign on *The

Neil'

York Times put

uncertainty indicates how

it

at

$401,000 and $2-$3 million, respectively, but the margin of known about Solzhenitsyn's real income and financial w orth.

little is

Fpilogue some

the issue, leading

critics

[985]

of the paper's conduct to conclude that the

KGB was

behind the leak and that it was all part ot that same Moscow campaign to crush the Social lund w hich had led to the arrest of Ciinzburg. There were suggestions that a host of KGB agents were operating in Sw itzerland to unearth details about the w orkings of the fund and the names of the beneficiaries, and one of Solzhenitsyn's Swiss lawyers, Hans-Rudolf

demanding to w as helping.*^ It is not clear whether the KGB was trul\ in\ oK ed (though it could only have been pleased bv the outcrv, and there w as some publicity about it in the Soviet press). According to Mavor W'idmer, there w as no investigation. The Swiss authorities had simply reacted to a request from the American tax w as

Staiger,

know

said to have received threatening telephone calls

whom

the fund

authorities for clarification of the fund's status

block on anv

w ithdraw al

determined.

The

ited the

'

of

monev from

other point was that, unlike American law,

amount of donations

that could be considered tax free,

that Solzhenitsvn, or his advisers, his

income.

and had automatically put a its status had been

the fund until

When

had overlooked

this fact

Sw iss

law lim-

and

appeared

when

it

calculating

the dust finallv settled, Solzhenitsyn was found to

owe

back taxes and was cleared of anv imputation of bad faith.** Meanwhile, the editor and five reporters of the Tages-Anzeiger were charged bv the Zurich cantonal authorities with "aiding and abetting the prevention

about $90,000

in

of criminal proceedings" bv refusing to hand over the leaked documents, and

were subjected to modest fines when tound guilt). Monev had a lot to do w ith the next controversv to burst over Solzhenitsyn's head as well. In June 1978 Olga Carlisle published a short book detailing her relations w ith Solzhenitsyn and her efforts to ensure the publication of The First Circle and The Gulag Archipelago in the West. It w as a defence against his charge, made w ithout naming names, in The Oak and the "^

and her husband had been responsible for delaying the publiAmerica and thereby, indirectly, for his expulsion ("two or three soulless, mercenary products of a Western upbringing made a mess of everything that I had sent out at the Feast of Trinity in 1968. The American edition would be six months late and would not help me to hoist myself over the abyss"). "^ The wording, as usual in Solzhenitsyn's memoir, was gratuitously sharp, and the generalization about a "Western education" simply shallow (it w as a gibe at Olga Carlisle as a Westernized Russian, implying an unfavourable contrast with her Russian parents), nor was it self-evident that his fate would have been different had the American Calf, that she

cation of The Gulag Archipelago in

edition of The Gulag Archipelago appeared on time. Nevertheless, his basic

charge of procrastination seemed unassailable: he (or in

had not received it

for translation.

a

this case his

lawyer)

publishable text of Gulag five years after having delivered

Olga

Carlisle's

answer

to this

was

that she (and to a lesser

extent her husband) had spent seven years working selflessly on Solzheni-

had cut herself off from "the land of her parentage" as and that her marriage had been "strained by the pressure." Solzhe-

tsyn's behalf, that she a result,

SOLZHENITSYN

[986] nitsvn's charge

w as therefore black

ingratitude.

As

to

whether the work of

editing The Gulag Archipelago had been done or not, she maintained that she

had offered Dr Heeb

of volume

a finished version

Thomas

ferred to take

W hitnev's

1

but that

Heeb had

pre-

unpolished rough translation instead.

good deal of svmpathv from the fact of Solzhenitsyn's and unpredictabilit\',* and this was strengthened when Solzhenitsvn added a footnote to the English-language edition of The Oak and the Calf, adducing an additional reason for his criticism. For her "services, expenses, sacrifices, losses, sleepless nights, and those of her husband and their lawver" described in her book, w rote Solzhenitsvn, Carlisle had taken pavments equal to "about half the rovalties from the world-wide sale" of The First Circle A "That's the way it alw ays happens: those w ho perform the main task are not the ones w ho seek glorv. The selfless Western people who aided Carlisle derived a

well-known

me

irascibilit)'

ways in West

in substantial

publications in the

The (for

Carlisles

.

mv .

.

who

struggle,

are

responded to

all

modestlv

assured the steady flow of silent to this

this footnote

by

filing a

my

day.""

$2 million lawsuit

"exemplar)- and punitive damages") against Solzhenitsyn, charging him

American publishers (Harper & Row) with libel and invasion of prithat the pavments made to them had been "entirely reasonable," that thev had "worked expeditiously" in preparing The Gulag Archipelago for publication, and that Solzhenitsyn's description of them had "injured their good names and employment prospects and caused them humiliation and anguish." It seemed to confirm Solzhenitsyn's worst suspicions about Westerners and their obsession w ith invoking the law, but the law in fact vindicated itself. The action was dismissed by a San Francisco judge on the grounds that, even if what Solzhenitsyn had written about the Carlisles had been false, the matter was not actionable because the material and

his

vacy.

They maintained

complained of constituted an expression of opinion and not allegations of misconduct.'"

Long before the law suit had run its full course, Solzhenitsyn was obliged w ith some new sallies from his old friends at the KGB. Least disturbing w as the publication by the small Hamburg journal Neue Politik in Feb-

to deal

ruary 1978 of the allegations that he had been an informer in Ekibastuz,

complete with

a

photocopy of the

signed as "Vetrov."

The

he was supposed to have written and

letter

publication was accompanied by a circumstantial

account of the supposed investigation of

this

matter in

deceased Swiss journalist called Walter Arnau.

The

Moscow by

w as so swathed in mystery and ambiguity what Solzhenitsxn had alreadx' divulged himself, and

sational" discoveries little

to

a recently

account of Arnau's "senthat it

it

added

sank with

hardly a ripple.'^ * \\

Some

of this

svmpathv

ho had "risked her

lite

v\

as oxerdone.

Advance

publicitv described Olga Carlisle as

smuggling Solzhenits\n's works out of the So\

iet

Lnion."

someone It is

true

that (Carlisle herself did not urite this in her book, but out of an understandable concern tor her father,

w ho w as

might, and

many

still

alive at the time, she did not describe his role in the affair as fully as she

readers were

tThe amount charyed

left

with the impression that the danger to herself had been great.

to Solzhenitsvn

was $169, OOO, of which $50,000 was

for lawvers' fees.

Epilogue Potentialh'

Tomas Rezac

more damaging w

into

Zurich, Rezac had

tiic

rc-emergence of the

C//.cch

\\

riter

public c\c. After returning to O.echoslox akia from

made

then been taken up

as the

[9^7]

b\"

a

pubHc recantation on O.ech

telex ision.

Novosti and "encouraged" to write

biograph\' of Solzhenitsvn.

The book appeared

first in Italian,

a

He

hatl

So\iet-st\le

published In

Teti (the specialists in anti-Solzhenitsvn literature), and soon thereafter in Russian, entitled Ihe Spiral of Solzhenitsyiis Betrayal.

the Novosti press agenc\' to

^^

Rezac had been afforded

the So\ iet Union, tra\ el and schooldavs, and inter\ iew fcjrmer friends and acquaintances. Judging bv the list of people mentioned in the book, the overw helming majorit\ must have refused to ha\ e an\ thing to do u'ith Rezac. He did, however, manage to get a few words w ith Alexander Kagan, the bo\- Solzhenitsxn had tussled w ith at school, and pretlictabK met the thoroughh' frightened \ itkevich and Simon\ an, although the\ added little to w hat the\- had said already. Rezac had also called on Natalia Reshetovskaxa under the pretext of being the Czech translator of her book, later passing oti his question-and-answer session with her (on the subject of her book) as an independent interview and claimed to have interview ed a friend of Solzhenitsvn's referred to as "L.K." a transparent reference to Le\- Kopelev. Kopelev categoricallv denied ever having spoken to Rezac and affirmed in an '" open letter that everv word attributed to him in the book was a fabrication. The book w as published in Russian in the spring of 1978 (on 1 April, to be precise, an appropriate date) bv the Progress publishing house in Moscow and was billed as a translation from the original Czech. The publisher claimed in a foreword that Rezac had belonged to the "inner circle of Solzhenitsxn's

every assistance

b\'

visit

to the places of Solzhenitsvn's birth

,

—

,

book w as

friends" while in Zurich, that his

the image of Solzhenitsyn

.

.

.

ith Solzhenitsvn's

it

"exposed

assiduouslv propagated bv contemporary

bourgeois propaganda" and constituted,

polemic w

"strictlv objective," that

among

other things, "a powerful

most feted publication

in the

W est,

The Gulag

Archipelago.''^^

Rezac's bf)ok

w as

a predictable tissue

of innuendoes, quotations out of

w hose tone can be gauged from the author's opening statement that he had w ritten "not the biography of a vxriter but an autopsy of the corpse of a traitor." Rezac's "case" against Solzhenitsyn was a shakily cobbled together patchwork of earlier statements bv \ itkevich and Simonvan, the shadier parts of Reshetovskaxa's memoirs (mostly interpolations bv Novosti), some new allegations bv Burkovsky (the prototype of Buinovskv in Ivan Denisovich), the resentful Yakubovich, and the terrified Samutin, and a mass of fantastic speculation and invention presumably bv Rezac himself. According to this picture, Solzhenits\'n had been a cunning dodger at school, a cow ard in the arm\', an informer in the camps, a lecher in exile, a thief after his rehabilitation, a betrayer of his friends, a committer of incest w ith his second w ife, a talentless hack w ho had not even mastered the Russian language, a traitor to his country, and a context, invented dialogue, and unfounded speculation

warmonger It

in the

seems not

West. to

have occurred to Rezac that

this "portrait"

may have

SOLZHENITSYN

[988]

readers as a shade exaggerated.

struck

its

to sav

who

its

On

the other hand,

was

it

difficult

readers were, for the Progress edition was very small, being

given onlv a restricted circulation

among

senior Partv

members

(even such a

relentlesslv black picture of Solzhenitsyn as this could be trusted only to a

and there were no translations into languages other than it seems to have touched a sensitive nerve in Solzhenitsvn. Just before the book's appearance, Natalia Svetlova gave an interview to the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag in which she denied

handful of

lovalists),

the Italian.

Nevertheless,

met Rezac. She also claimed that the Holub couho had been Rezac's friends, had soon been exposed to Solzhenitsyn Soviet agents, but Solzhenitsyn, "at the request of the Swiss police," had

that Solzhenitsvn had ever ple,

as

\\

concealed his knowledge of the fact and fed tiem disinformation.'' In early

1979 Solzhenitsvn published an entire booklet, Skvoz' chad (Through the

Fumes), about Rezac's book, having spoken to him.

The and

in

which

booklet was described as a sequel

the Calf.

met Rezac or

he, too, denied having

'**

Solzhenitsvn had subtitled

it

to, or

continuation

of.

The Oak

"the sixth supplement" (the

fifth

few months in the West and Svetlo\ a's feat in smuggling out his archi\es under the noses of the KGB), and it marked a departure from his former practice of not answering attacks.

supplement evidentiv described Solzhenitsvn's

He

first

explained his reasons for this as follows.

Goodness know s how nian\ have w ritten against me all these years, but I never replied; I kept doing mv ow n work. And that same Novosti agency distributed two collections of slanders against me free of charge in a variety of languages, and I didn't reply. But put yourself in the place of our countrymen now anyone who wants to find out the truth about me in the Soviet Union can't lay his hands on either Gulag or the Calf, but onlv the Progress publication. And when I die, lots more will sink without a trace or simply die away, and [the slander] w ill stick all the more. And w ho is behind the slanders? The mightiest power in the modern world, with excellent chances of expanding further.'*^ :

Solzhenitsvn appears to have been particularly stung by the fact that Rezac was slandering not onlv himself but also his parents and family and that, unlike most of the other attacks on him, this one was intended for circulation inside the Soviet Union (and perhaps among Russian emigres). He was ultrasensitive to his reputation with the Russian people.

was to be two vears before another major attack on Solzhenitsyn was launched bv the Soviet authorities; it is \\ orth mentioning, however, not only It

for the indication of a

consequence.

complete change of tack but also

The change

political scurrility.

for

one unexpected

of tack was simplv from personal to

Whereas Rezac's muck-raking

depicting Solzhenitsyn as a moral degenerate, a

effort

new

had concentrated on

book, published

beginning of 1980, tried to show that Solzhenitsyn had been agent since before the publication of his

first

story.

more general

The

at

an active

the

CIA

subject of the book

was indeed the wider one of the insidious influence of the

CIA on

the Soviet

Epilogue

[989]

movement. Written hv Solzhenitsvn's old adversary Professor Nikolai Yakovlex and entitled The CIA against the i'SSRr" the hook was a cold-war manual purporting to show that all the unrest in the So\ iet L nion since 1957 and all the unofficial art and literature produced during that time were the fruit of CIA infiltration and manipulation, .\hout tift\ pages of the b(jok were devoted to Solzhenitsx n, and the tract was meant to serve as a warning to Soviet citiz.ens not to get invoked in protest or the reading and distribution of samizdat. Those w ho did so were the w illing (or unw illing) dupes of the dissident

CIA

and

traitors to their country.

One

seemingh- unlikelv outcome of the book's publicaticjn was the reappearance on the public scene in Moscow of Natalia Resheto\ska\a. Since Solzhenitsvn's expulsion she had dropped out of sight; the publication of her

book and the threatened publication of Solzhenitsx n's letters tf) her had been handled mostly bv Novosti, without her direct participation. But in April 1980 she released a blistering attack on ^'akovlev (a friend passed it to the Los Angeles Times, explaining that Resheto\ skava w as afraid to meet Western corresondents herself), accusing him of having produced "a pack of lies" that travestied Solzhenitsvn's life and career, completely distorted the meaning of Solzhenitsvn's works, and hopelesslv misjudged Solzhenitsyn's character. Her detailed refutation of some of Yakovlev's cruder arguments could not affect the Soviet publishers, since the purpose of the book w as not truth but propaganda, and Reshetovskava's unfeigned indignation merely demonstrated vet again her naivety in the face of the cvnical manoeux ring of the Soviet authorities (according to the Los Angeles Times, Reshetovska\a had personally

and embarrassed Yakovlev at his home). The letter also demonstrated her deep and continuing interest in the affairs of her ex-husband, and a surprising willingness to defend him in view of the damaging nature of her ow n earlier book and the harsh delivered a copv of her nine-page letter to

a startled

things Solzhenitsyn had had to sav about her since.-' In fact, her attitude had for

some time been ambiguous. She had begun

rewriting and expanding her memoirs, and the ver\" process of rereading Solzhenitsvn's earlv letters to her and of recalling their

have somewhat softened her bitterness.

On

deeplv upset bv his comments about her

in

life

together seem to

the other hand, she had been

The Oak and

the G///' (particularly

him at the Kazan Station by the KGB and that she had published her memoirs with KGB help) and even more bv his remarks in Through the Fumes, w here Solzhenitsyn had again

the allegation that she had been sent to meet

accused her of aiding and abetting the

As

KGB

and of helping

its

agents to fake

had sent Solzhenitsyn a letter in 1979 in the form of a chapter from her new memoirs, in which she denied any connection with the KGB and described some of the problems that she herself had had w ith Novosti over the preparation and publication of her book. This

the "Vetrov" letter.

a result, she

had been given to an American new spaper correspondent in the spring of 198(J and was apparentlv sent on to Solzhenitsyn via New York.-According to what Reshetovskaya wrote there and elsewhere, she had letter

SOLZHENITSYN

[99o]

refrained from protesting about her problems with Novosti out of regard for

her friend Konstantin

Semyonov and because

of her depressed condition in

the aftermath of the divorce and Solzhenitsyn's expulsion. She had not real-

how badly her book was being mutilated and manipulated by the Novosti copy of the Teti edition in Italian, published in Milan in 1974 (predating the Russian edition). When she saw that her manuscript had been cut bv a quarter and its sense distorted in many places, she had written Teti a complaint (in November 1974), and six months later had followed it with an even stronger letter to Novosti. She revealed that she had been prevented from reading either the final typescript sent to Teti or the proofs of the Russian-language edition, on the preposterous grounds that the\' were "secret," and accused the agency of a varietv of sharp practices, ranging from handing out the foreign rights to her book without consulting ized

editors until she received a

her to pocketing the royalties and failing to furnish her with accounts. After a

considerable struggle she had,

it

seems, succeeded in getting some of the

distortions eliminated and had been able to introduce a

number

ments into the American and French editions of her book. She

of improvealso asserted

had been Semyonov's, not Father Shpiller's, as Solzhenitsyn had alleged, but that she herself had refused. Finally, she disclosed that Tomas Rezac had been to see and that they her only once instead of many times, as he had insinuated had discussed only the contents of her book, nothing more. When she had read Rezac's final text, she had been absolutely disgusted and had protested energetically to Progress Publishers, demanding that it be withdrawn from

that the idea of publishing a collection of Solzhenitsyn's letters

—

—

circulation. It is

not clear whether Solzhenitsyn received Reshetovskaya's chapter.

came

too late to modify the harsh remarks published in Through seems unlikely that Solzhenitsyn would have withdrawn them publicly, in the light of his previous comments in The Oak and the Calf (and of his known reluctance to recant or apologize). Reshetovskaya suggested another reason why that was unlikely: Solzhenitsyn needed to paint In any case,

the

it

Fumes, and

it

her in black colours and to assign her a negative political role, in order to justify his

the

name

behaviour towards her and assuage

a

bad conscience.

If

it

was

in

of the "cause," his conduct was easier to justify.

wide of the mark. on her summer visits to the cabin recalled the past and grieved over the irre\'ocable wrong turns at Rozhdest\o and mistakes, so did Solzhenitsyn, in his Vermont seclusion, meditate on that same past and regret the painful dissolution of his marriage. As he remarked in 1977:

There

are indications that she

Just as she, alone in

—

Moscow

As always, every family

—or

story

is

was

not, perhaps, too

especially

incredibly complicated and confused. Each side

can marshal a thousand arguments, and each person

always that vvav. That's vvhv

it is

is

unavoidably guilty

—

it's

the sort of thing that doesn't allow of a simple

solution or a simple paraphrase. All that can be said in the most general terms,

Epilogue when vou

take a bird's-eye view of

But of course, so manv

And

.

.

and

.

the last five vears.

wouldn't have

we would

And w hen

we

it,

that

is

we were both wrong

should never have done

and memories are invested

Yes ...

to get

twice.

.

.

.

in an\ joint life together.

.

.

.

I

never

split

up.

he w as obliged to give reasons, his words more or

Reshetovskav

it

w hen it breaks up. w ould never have parted if we hadn't had such an aw tul lite ... I w as readv for any sort of peaceful coexistence, but she she couldn't imagine the seriousness ot the danger, she was

terribly painful

it's

Natalia

sure

feelings

...

it

married, espeeialh the seeond time;

[991]

less

confirmed

a's fears.

it

is

a great pitv

she took the line she did.

It

only she had taken up

position of non-resistance in the course of our family breakdown,

w e'll

a

only she had

if

would never have done it. But she immediately wage war against me in almost the same w av I w aged w ar against the state, the w av I describe it in the Calf, is sent word that she w ould get her also prettv hopeless. You see, she literally revenge, that she would find Solzhenitsvn's enemies, and it's well known who said,

right,

all

live apart,

I

declared war on me, and in a big way. Well, to

.

Solzhenitsvn's enemies are.

And

it's

.

true that

would have simplv staved on good terms, and

.

if

possible

separated. But she immediatelv started that wa\", grabbed

using them against me, using m\'

letters

and

we

she hadn't chosen that path,

it's

we w ould

mv

never have

papers, and started

in general entering into battle against

me. Well, doing battle against me is a waste of time; it's bound to end badl\ But if she had simplv said, if she had behaved, so to speak, like a wounded bird, I would never have throw n her over; it w ould have been impossible. I understand .

that

it's

wrong

terrible. It's a

to

abandon

weight that

women will

at that age,

be w

ith

vou

till

I

know

It's

it.

terrible, absolutely

the end of your days; you'll never

and it's very conscience again. It will always be here inside But it's easier, too, because she went to the KGB when she cooperates with the KGB and publishes her book, it makes it easier tor me. .-' Then I no longer feel that remorse, that aw tul remorse. have

hard.

a clear .

.

.

.

.

—

.

.

.

At times world

like these

with Reshe-

tovskaya and the breakdow n of their marriage, he remarked on the the old

men

ith

him

as

\\

ith

way

a

he grows older: "In our Orthodox religion

are always furiously trying to pray

age has caught up

.

Solzhenitsvn was apt to grow gloomy and view the

in dark colours. After discussing his difficult relationship

man's sins catch up w

.

.

them and

is

away

their sins, because old

beginning to strangle them. There

wonderful Russian proverb: You are born

in a clear field, but

you die

is

a

in a

dark wood."-"^

were

For Solzhenitsyn, both the Orthodox religion and the Russian proverbs a form of consolation, and it would be difficult to say that one was more

important than the other. Religion w

as certainly

important to him. Everyone

house in Vermont wore a cross. Lent was rigorously observed, Easter was more important than Christmas, and the children's saints' day w ere celin the

ebrated as enthusiastically as their birthdays. There was also an Orthodox

SOLZHENITSYN

[992]

chapel in the library annex, and services were said there whenever a priest

came to the house. But, according to a priest who knew Solzhenitsyn well, it w ould be a mistake to call him devout. The nearest Orthodox church was onlv titteen miles aw av, in nearby Claremont, and was in the charge of an acquaintance of Solzhenitsvn's (Father Tregubov), vet Solzhenitsyn never

w ent there and would w Religion for him,

members

of

God

is false.

seems,

it

gent tool and even

is

come

house to see him

to the

of the family attended church regularly).

not an essential part of his being, but a contin-

weapon.

a

the priest to

ait for

(despite the fact that other

he sentimental picture of him as

1

Solzhenits\n certainh' belie\'es in God, though

pious

a

man

not alw

it is

a\'s

whether it is a Christian God, but he experiences insuperable difficulin humbling himself. He is a deist and does not understand mysticism

clear ties

or the

of the church.*

life

There

is

also a sense in

which the Orthodox church appears

to Solzhe-

nits\n as just another attribute of Russia, (^n one occasion he informed an

American

priest of Russian origin that he should stop his pastoral

serve Russia, and was taken aback w hen the priest replied that

w ork and was his

it

duty to serve God, not Russia.-' Solzhenitsvn's love of Russia is passionate and profound, the deepest emotion of his life, and \ ermont, if anything, given its superficial resemblances to his homeland, only intensifies his nostalgia. W hat he misses most is the enveloping w armth of human relations in

badh

Russia. "Absoluteh" everybody lives

occasion, "but vou only have to

call for

was helped by dozens of people absolutely to ask myself;

Can

w hy Russians

back?

I

here are

atmosphere, and sphere

if

It is

uncomfortable here.

feel

it.

I,

for

And

I

when

you're

w

ith

example, never had feels that

which do we all strain to go very good. But it's a different

a different style of relations,

"W hy

of other countries- that are

lots

you need

disinterestedly.

pay?" In the West, on the other hand, he

I

everything has to be done for money. is

our country," he said on one

in

help

else

Nour ow n kind,

that's a different

atmo-

again."-'''

So strong is his yearning that at one point he suggested he would have a deal w ith the Soviet authorities in order to be able to stay. All he w anted w as to live peacefully in his ow n country. "I would have come to an agreement w ith them you don't touch me and I won't touch you. Just let me work. But they wouldn't let me go anywhere not to the library, not

made

.

.

.

—

to the reading-room. The\' stole

How

arrested m\' friends. that?

It's

A

impossible,

consolation

my

papers, followed

me

everywhere, and

can you come to an agreement with people

like

isn't it?"-'

is

his relationship

with Natalia Svetlova. Whate\er the

true nature of his marriage to Reshetovskava, this second marriage has every

appearance of being *This reading of

a

love-match. Svetlova has

S()lzhenits\n's attitude to religion

levelled at Solzhenitsyn

bv Panin

in the sixties.

all

the qualities he

was look-

close to some of the reproaches Another well-placed source assures me that

comes extremely

Solzhenits\n has taken the criticisms of certain Orthodox friends to heart and has wrestled miyhtih' to bend his will to that of the church.

Epilogue ing for in a helpmate. She

[993]

intelMgent, c|uick-\\itted, energetic, ph\ sicailv

is

enormous work-load. She is dexotetl hodv and she is warm and ph\sicallv attractive, capable of pro\iding a solace that was bexond the powers of the elderK, and now ailing, Reshetox skava. But be\ ond that she seems trul\' in lo\e w ith her husband, and he w ith her. He is inevitabh strict and demanding, but he also shows her great tenderness, calling her b\- her pet name of "Al\a," or "m\little girl," w hen called upon to offer s\ mpath\' and consolation. She also shares his patriotism and his \earning for Russia. 1 heir entire life in \ ermont has been organized with a view to getting the maximum amount of work done, but also in such a w av that the\- are readv to abandon everything and return to Russia at a moment's notice. Thev regard themselves as onl\ temporary visitors to the West. Solzhenits\n is even sure that strong, and capable of carrying an

and soul

this

is

I

to her husband's cause,

so.

am

firmly convinced

business. a

You know

few years before

premonition, will turn out,

w hen

and

still

.

.

I

And

I

a

I

I will be in time for this seems to me it is only a matter of have no proof of it, but I have a

will return, that

optimistic that

know

that's the

have

that

return to Russia. ...

I

a feeling.

phetic feelings,

Russia and

.

feel so

I

,

it 1

have very often had these accurate feelings, proin

way

chance to

advance w hat it is.

I

think

—

is I

going to happen,

am

sure

—

that

I

w

how ill

things

return to

live there.-**

Meanwhile he watches and waits

—and

still watching and waiting. impending publication of the second volume of August 1914 was announced,* to be followed fairly soon by October 1916 and March 1917, with further volumes in the pipeline. When they appear, they w ill mark a new period in Solzhenits\n's long and productive career, a period that in a sense is onh' just beginning. Readers are w aiting to know whether this w ill represent a falling off from the achievements of the past or, as everyone hopes, a step farther and higher. He regards it as his last and most important task in life. "I am writing a kind of 'Gulag Archipelago' ot 1917. If I can do it, I require no more of life. And nothing more can be demanded of a w riter.""*^ One thing seems reasonably certain. If he himself does not return to Russia, his books undoubtedly will.

And working on

*It

was published

is

his great epic. In 1982 the

in 1983,

together with a revised version of volume

1.

NOTES

These notes sition of this

mind by

are intended as a guide to the sources

employed

in the

readers using them.

The

first is

that certain individuals,

outside the Soviet Union, provided

some of

me

whom

are inside

and some

with information on the express

understanding that their names not be revealed. In such instances, listed the tity

compo-

biography, and there are three points that should be borne in

source as "private information," but in every case

I

I

have

know the iden-

of the person concerned.

The second

point concerns translations. In quoting from Russian origi-

some may regard as idiosyncratic. Where I have simplv made mv own. Where the translations into English exist and are accurate (e.g., in the Nobel lecture, The Oak and the Calf, and a few other items), I have quoted them verbatim. In most other cases I have made mv ow n translations from the Russian but have nals,

I

have adopted

no translation

a policy that

into English exists,

referred to existing English-language versions for the convenience ot readers.

There

is,

however,

a

category of translations in which the English version

is

word or phrase has been rendered in such a way as to obscure its precise meaning or nuance for the biographer. In these cases I have taken the liberty of amending the relevant words or phrases to bring out the point that needed making (specialists may easily check this procedure by comparing the text with the original Russian). Thirdly, I should point out that whereas in some notes a reference is

generally accurate but in which a key

made I

am

to

page numbers,

in others the reference

is

to a chapter.

This

is

because

often dealing with a text that exists in several versions, and in particular

because these notes are meant to serve both English and American readers.

995

Notes

[996]

Since the paginations in British and U.S. editions of the books in question rarely coincide,

seemed more

it

satisfactory to indicate chapters than to give

preference to a particular set of editions.

Chapter

1

chap.

August,

Solzhenitsvn

has

12.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

confirmed to the author that the opening

13.

Shkuro, 55, 67-77.

chapters of the novel (and other chapters deal-

14.

Information on the

1.

ing with the

2.

Tomchak

family) contain a true

Some

account of his ancestry.

of this infor-

mation was repeated and enlarged upon

in his

itary situation in the

and mil-

political

North Caucasus

incor-

porated into the remainder of this chapter and into

Chapter

drawn from

2 is

the following

Mar. 1972 interview with the two American

sources (in addition to Zernov and Shkuro):

correspondents Robert Kaiser and Hedrick

J.

Smith. For the

1920 (London, 1975); David Footman, Civil

appendix 22 2.

fullest text

of the interview see

War

to Oak.

Leo Tolstoy, The

and Aylmer Maude,

Cossacks, trans.

Louise

is

recorded in N. N. Gusev,

tvorchestva

Uva Nikolaevicha

of the Life and

4

in Collected Works, vol.

(Oxford, 1932), 281. Tolstoy's journey this

Works

way

Letopis' zhizni

i

Tolstogo (Chronicle

of Lev Nikolavevich

Tolstoy) (Moscow, 1958), 45. 3.

of Solzhenitsyn's grandparents and aunts and uncles in this and the next paragraph

author in Vermont

in

in

v\

as pro-

an interview uith the

June 1977 (hereafter

War

(New York, 1961); M. Philips War and Revolution in Asiatic Russia London 9 8 and My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution (London, 1921); W. H. Chamin Russia

(

)

The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921

berlin. vols.

1

1

,

(New

shevik Revolution,

V

.

1917-1923,

1918 godu (Soviet Republics casus) (Rostov,

New

1969).

7.

Solzhenitsvn referred to the manner of

15.

Zernov, 289-90.

death in his interview with Smith

16.

Shkuro, 192.

it

of other interviews.

account given here

nitsyn's description of

Bori-

let

osvohozh-

it

obliquely in

The circum-

based on Solzhe-

is

Chapter

2

to the author. 1.

Zernov, 322.

geln" (A Family of Boors), Stern, 21 Nov. 1971,

2.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

pp. 105-10. This tendentious article, based in

memoirs,

is

not very reliable on

the v\hole, but does contain

some accurate

information on Solzhenitsyn's mother's side of the family (see

mv

discussion of the circum-

stances in uhich the article

uas written,

in

chap. 41. 9.

I.

York, 1969).

Dieter Steiner, "Eine Familie von Fle-

Irina's

Dona (A

Belykh (The Twentieth

denia StavropoFia ot

(London and

on

(London,

North Cau-

in the

1930); Dvadtsat'

Ibid.

and Kaiser and has mentioned

part

2

senko, Sovetskie respubliki na severnom Kavkaze v

Ibid.

8.

1

Istoria

History of the Don) (Rostov, 1967);

5.

number

vol.

Kuznetsov, ed.,

I.

6.

stantial

,

York, 1965); E. H. Carr, The Bol-

the Whites); Philip Longworth, The Cossacks

4. Ibid.

his father's

1917-

in Russia,

Anniversary of the Liberation of Stavropol from

referred to as Solzhenitsvn interview).

a

Civil

Price,

1950);

Information about the names and ages

vided by Solzhenitsvn

N. Bradley,

F.

Nikolai Zernov,

Na

perelome (At the

(Memoirs of

250.

6. Ibid. 7.

Georges

An

Suffert,

a

White

Partisan)

(Buenos Aires, 1961), 62, 64, 66, 71, 74,

76.

"Solzhenitsyn

in

Interview," Encounter, Apr. 1976,

pp. 9-15.

Information for

ceding paragraphs

and A. D. Shkuro, Zapiski

to the

Solzhenitsvn interview.

5.

8.

286-88.

11. Ibid., 289;

belogo partizana

4. Ibid.,

Zurich:

Breaking-point) (Paris, 1970), 286. 10. Ibid.,

H. N. H. Williamson, Farewell Don (London, 1971), 166. 3.

is

this

and the two pre-

taken from

my

with Solzhenitsyn. 9. Ibid. 10.

Gulag, vol.

3, pt. 5,

chap.

2.

interview

.

.

.

.

.

Notes 11. Stephen Graham, (London, 1915), 25-26.

Rhoda Power, Lnikr

12.

and

(Cossack

Hol-

shevik {Loniion, 1919), 19. 13. 7"Ae \\V/v

poem

know n b\

also

is

(unpublished), chap. original

its

This

1.

Vol-

title,

Skvoz chad, 29-3f).

11.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

12.

Ibid.

13.

This story of Zakhar's

me bv

death was told to

The Way, chap.

14.

August, chap. 59.

14.

15.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

15. Gulag, vol. 1, pt.

16.

August, chap. 59.

16. Encounter, .\pr.

Information on Taissia's situation

17.

Rostov

is

mv

taken from

in

18.

Conversation with Anna \ Oloshina,

davs and It

is

1.

chap.

1,

1.

1976, pp. 9-15; and

17.

The Way, chap.

18.

Gulag, vol.

19.

Solzhenitsyn interview

chap.

Apr. 1983.

3.

1, pt.

chap.

1,

;

1.

and The W'ay,

3.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

19.

"Jedneho

20. Pavel Licko,

u .\le\an-

diia

dra Isajevica Solzenicyna" (One Da\

with

Alexander Isavevich Solzhenitsvn),

Kiil-

turni Zlzot

1967.

last

Solzhenitsvn.

Solzhenitsvn interview

interview with Sol-

zhenitsvn.

A

(Cukunl partial

Labedz, ed.,

in

Life) (Bratislava), 31 .Mar.

translation

A

Solzhenitsyn:

Chapter 4

21. Solzhenitsvn interview.

Encounter, Apr. 1976, pp. 9-15.

2.

Robert Conquest, The Great (London, 1968), 22. 4. 7'/;«f.f (London), 21 Peb. 1976. 3.

Conversation

5.

23. August, chap.

the Shcherbak family

The

3.

is

description of

based on chaps.

3

nova,

and

with

25. The W'ay, chap.

and Solzhenitsvn

1;

interview.

.\routu-

June 1977.

Solzhenits\n interview

7

Skvoz'

Solzhenitsvn

41;

chad,

inter-

pt.

1,

chap.

June 1977; and unpublished letter to the author from Natalia Reshetovskava, 16 Mav 1982. Skvoz' chad, 41-42.

8.

5.

27. Solzhenitsyn interview.

9. First Circle,

28. Ibid.

10.

chap. 24.

Natalia Reshetovskava, Sanyo:

My Life

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, trans. Elena Iva-

ii-ith

noff (Indianapolis, 1975), 11. Skvoz' chad.

Chapter

Bavara

Terror

view; conversation with Natalia Svetlova, 17

24. Ibid., chap. 9.

1,

1 1

6.

(one-volume edition).

26. Gulag, vol.

15

19-0.

22. Ibid.

this novel

Conversation with Lev Kopelev,

1.

May

Leopold

in

is

Documentary Record,

(Bloomington, Ind., 1973), 32-38.

enl. ed.

9 of

10.

also briefly referred to in I'he Way.

unteers' Highivay.

17

Solzhenitsvn interview.

9.

Russia

Chuni^'ini/

.997

3

Unpublished

12.

19.

42-43. letter to the

May

Natalia Reshetovskava, 16

author from

1982.

1.

Gulag, vol.

2.

Solzhenitsvn interview; private infor-

13.

Skvoz' chad, 42-43.

mation; and Solzhenitsyn's extract from the

14.

This discussion of Solzhenitsvn's earlv

1,

pt.

1,

"sixth supplement to The

published in Russian as Skvoz' chad 3.

chap.

5.

Oak and

a separate

(Through the Fumes)

the Calf,''

pamphlet,

(Paris, 1979).

5.

6.

Vladimir Bukovskv, To Build a

Castle,

Skvoz' chad, 22.

7. Ibid., 29. 8. First Circle, all

15.

Solzhenitsyn interview Sights,

quest (London and

Michael Scammell (London, 1978), 95.

indicated,

based on the author's examination of June 1977.

is

in

16. Prussian

Solzhenitsvn interview.

4. Ibid.

trans.

works

them

chap. 68. Unless otherwise

references to First Circle are to

the shorter, 87-chapter version, which translated into English.

v\'as

New

trans.

Robert Con-

York, 1977), 16-11

This long poem originallv formed chap. 9 of The Way. chap.

17.

Gulag, vol.

18.

Solzhenitsvn interview

19.

Unpublished

1,

pt.

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

conversation

w ith

1,

31

5.

author from

Oct.

.\nna \ oloshina.

20. Solzhenitsvn intervievw

1982;

and

.

. .

..

..

Notes

[998j

The Way, chap.

21. Ibid.

31.

22. Encounter, .\pr. 1976, pp. 9-15.

32. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 5, chap.

23. Ibid.

33. Ibid.;

24. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 6, chap. 7.

34.

2. 1.

and Reshetovskaya, 36-37, 40.

Reshetovskava, 21.

25. Solzhenitsvn interview 26. Ibid.;

chap.

and

Gulag,

vol.

1,

pt.

1,

Chapter 6

2.

27. Ibid.

1.

28. Encounter, .\pr. 1976, pp. 9-15.

2.

29. First Circle, chap. 34. 30. Gulag, vol.

1,

pt. 1,

The

Reshetovskava, 23. contains

lation

chap.

First Circle, chap. 61.

mistake:

a

English trans-

"inappropriate"

should read "appropriate."

4.

31. Ibid.

3.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

4.

"Incident at Krechetovka Station," in

.\lexander Solzhenits\n, Stones and Prose Poems,

Chapter

Glennv (London and New York,

trans. .Michael 5

1971), 171-73. 1.

The Way, chap.

2.

/^/m

3.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

4. T/^e

Circle,

Way, chap.

Ibid., 173.

5.

1.

chap. 61.

6.

Solzhenitsvn interview

7.

Gulag, vol.

5.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

9.

6.

Reshetovskaya,

10. Ibid.,

7. Ibid.,

1.

5-6.

pt. 1,

chap.

4.

Reshetovskava,

34.

33-34.

11. Ibid.

8. Ibid., 7.

9.

1,

8. Ibid.

1

Natalia Reshetovskava, Russian edi-

12.

Unpublished

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16 .\lav 1982.

tion, 26.

This phrase does not appear

in

the

English translation.

10. Ibid.

36-37.

Reshetovskava,

13.

.\dditional

11.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

information from Reshetovskaya, Russian edi-

12.

Reshetovskava,

tion,

6.

13. Ibid., 8.

14.

Solzhenits\n interview

15.

Reshetovskava,

8-9; and

Solzheni-

tsyn interview.

27-29; and Solzhenitsvn interview

Reshetovskava, Russian edition, 26.

15.

The Way, chap.

16. Ibid.,

chap.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

17.

Solzhenitsvn interviev\

18.

Reshetovskava,

17.

Reshetovskava,

19.

Quoted

18.

Conversation with \ eronica Stein,

11

Sept. 1976. 19.

War: 1941-1945

37.

in .\lexander \\ erth, Russia at

(New

York, 1964), 682.

Solzhenitsyn interview

20.

The Way, chap.

5.

8.

16.

9.

.

14.

21. Reshetovskaya, 55-56.

2.

20. Ibid. 21. Solzhenitsvn interview;

and Reshe-

Chapter

tovskava, 10. 22. The

Way, chap.

23. Reshetovskava,

1.

of the quo-

2.

Ibid., 45.

V

3.

Ibid.,

Dispute with Time)

4.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

5.

Reshetovskaya, 50.

11; part

tation appears only in the Russian edition, spore so

iremenem (In

(.Moscow, 1975),

15.

24. Solzhenitsvn interview 25.

45-46.

and Russian edition, p. 39. 24-25; Solzhenitsyn interview; and unpublished letter to the author from 6. Ibid., 50;

Reshetovskaya, 59; and Solzhenitsvn

interview. 26. Reshetovskava, 12.

7. Skvoz''

chad,

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16

27. Solzhenitsvn interview 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Gulag, vol.

7

Reshetovskaya, 26, 44, 53, 96.

2.

May

8.

Solzhenitsvn interview

9.

Unpublished

1982.

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 31 Oct. 1982. 1,

pt. 1,

chap.

5.

10.

Solzhenits\n interview

.

.

.

Notes Reshetovskaya, 56; and uiijiublishcd

1 1

author from Nataha Kcslietov-

letter to the

skaya, 16

May

1982.

Reshetovskaya, 55.

13.

Gulag, vol.

14.

The Way, chap.

chap.

1.

chap.

6.

23.

chap.

1,

4.

Reshetovskaya, 59-60.

is

60-61.

in the

chap. 83.

(London,

Citation

11.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

12.

Gulag, vol.

chap.

pt. 1,

1,

The entire

5.

first cell

taken from that chapter. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 61.

Unpublished footnote

made

days

following description of Solzhenitsyn's

20. Ibid.,

1,

his descrip-

first

1955).

18. ibid.

22.

own

James Allan, No

10. 1,

17. Gulag, vol. 1, pt.

19.

have therefore utilized

9. Ibid.

5.

Labedz,

in

I

tion in chronicling his

8. First Circle,

3, pt. 5,

15. (itilag, vol. 1, pt.

Quoted

to him.

prison.

12.

16.

19991

to Gulag, vol.

available to the author

by Solzheni-

Chapter 9

tsyn. 23. Solzhenitsyn interview.

1.

24. Reshetovskaya, 58-59.

2. Ibid.

Quoted by Solzhenitsyn

25.

chap.

The Way,

in

3.

26. Ibid.

5.

27. Reshetovskaya,

The comment

62.

about the listening-posts appears only

pt.

chap.

1,

5.

Ibid.

in the

28. Ibid., 63.

This

adventure

account

of

Solzhenitsyn's

in East Prussia is taken

31. Gulag, vol.

1,

chap.

Solzhenitsyn interview. Gulag, vol.

9.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

6.

Werth, 969. Gulag, vol.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

16. Ibid.

Reshetovskaya, 64.

35.

This account of Solzhenitsyn's

17. Ibid.,

chap.

and

famous, Solzhenitsyn had with Travkin,

who was by

a

1,

chap.

3.

6.

20. Ibid., chap. 7.

made him

a cordial

then

chap.

pt.

19. Ibid.

the author's interview with Solzhenitsyn. After the publication of Ivan Denisovich had

1,

3.

18. Ibid.

arrest 1,

3.

chap.

14.

34.

1,

1,

13.

33.

pt.

1, pt.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

15. Ibid^

1,

chap.

1,

12.

Reshetovskaya, 63-64.

vol.

pt.

Reshetovskaya, 84.

32.

based on Gulag,

1,

11. Gulag, vol.

22-11

pt.

1,

7.

8.

10.

from Skvoz'

chad, 34-39. 30. Prussian Nights,

Ibid.

6. Ibid.

Russian edition, 47.

is

I,

4. Ibid.

8.

29.

Gulag, vol.

reunion

Chapter 10

general in

retirement.

1

The

Special Board

was evidently abol-

ished in 1953, soon after Stalin's death, but is

Chapter 1.

2.

chap. 3.

8

Kulturni Zivot

31

,

Mar. 1967.

Solzhenitsyn interview, and The Way,

characteristic that the

news of

its

my

emerged only three years

later.

of the Special Board,

have drawn on Con-

I

For

Gulag, vol.

1,

pt.

1,

chap.

1;

and Sol-

zhenitsyn interview. 4.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

5.

The Way, chap.

(London and Chester Springs, Pa., 1968); Uavid Dallin and Boris Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven, 1947); and

6.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

7.

I

have

it

Gulag, vol.

11.

on Solzhenitsyn's authority

that

1.

chap.

2.

Gulag, vol.

3.

Ibid., pt. 2, chap. 4.

1,

pt. 1,

4. Ibid.

the description of Volodin's induction into the

5.

Ibid.

Lubyanka

6.

Reshetovskaya, 65-66.

is

based

literally

on what happened

account

quest, Great Terror; Ivo Lapenna, Soviet Penal Policy

10.

it

abolition

7.

I

ooo] 7. Ibid., 66. 8.

Ibid., 68.

Notes

.

Notes 7.

Reshetovskaya, 116-17, 124-29.

88-89; and conversation with Peretz

8.

Ibid., 131, 133.

berg.

9.

Ibid.,

116-17.

1

14. Ibid.

1

13.

Kopelev, 72-76.

Kopelev, 93-94.

14.

Panin, 270-73.

17.

Panin, 284.

15.

Kopelev, 59.

Kopelev,

chap. 53. 12,

3,

16. Ibid.,

18-19; and First Cir-

39.

90-92.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

17.

chaps. 24, 61, 62.

18. First Circle,

chap. 26.

20. Reshetovskaya, 107.

19.

21. Ibid.

20. First Circle, chap. 5.

Kopelev, 16-17.

Reshetovskaya, 116.

21. Reshetovskaya, 148. 22. Ibid.

26. First Circle, chap. 5.

23. This detailed account is largely based on information provided by Lev Kopelev in Ease My Sorrows, 88-92, and on a conversation

27. Reshetovskaya, 114-15.

with Kopelev.

24. Ibid.

Kopelev, 24.

25.

28. Kopelev, 23.

24. Kopelev, 91.

Reshetovskaya, 132.

30.

Circle,

The two

32. First Circle, chap. 42.

tences beginning with

"What did

sen-

the state ..."

and ending with "matter" were omitted from

Chapter 16

the shorter version of the novel that circulated

They appear

in

published

in

that

was

Russian in Paris in 1978 (chap.

in Sobranie sochinenii, vol.

as yet

—

no English

1,

p. 362).

pt. 2,

Gulag, vol.

5.

6. Ibid.;

Reshetovskaya, 132-33.

3, pt. 5,

Gulag, vol.

7.

3, pt. 5,

9. Ibid., vol. 1, pt. 2,

10.

Quoted

A

toevsky:

in

(Indianapolis and

Kopelev, 34-35; and conversation with

11.

New

Gulag, vol.

Kopelev, 37-38.

13.

Panin, 293.

3.

First Circle, chap. 14.

14.

Gulag, vol.

4.

Kopelev,

and conversation with

Peretz Hertzenberg.

Kopelev, 59, 83-84; and conversation

with Peretz Hertzenberg. Kopelev, 47-49, 67-68.

7. First Circle,

chap.

chap.

2.

2.

Mary

trans.

.\lackler

York, 1975), 173.

3, pt. 5,

chap.

2.

12. Ibid.

2.

6.

2.

Leonid Cirossman, Dos-

Biography,

15

Peretz Hertzenberg.

chap.

and Panin, 290-91.

35. Ibid., 136.

5.

Testimony,

chap. 85.

4. First Circle,

translation of the full ver-

38;

My

16.

There

8. Ibid.

1.

4.

Michael Scammell (London, 1969), 15-

34. Ibid., 134.

Chapter

chap.

chap. 85.

Marchenko,

Anatoly

3.

trans.

sion of the novel. 33.

1,

2. First Circle,

the longer ver-

chapters instead of 87

Gulag, vol.

1.

samizdat and was translated into foreign

—96

First

chap. 87; and conversation with Peretz

Hertzenberg.

31. Ibid., 136.

languages.

273-74; Kopelev, 90-92;

25. Panin,

29. First Circle, chap. 37.

is

1

12. Ibid., 143.

23. Solzhenitsvn interview.

46

Reshetovskaya,

1

16.

18. First Circle,

sion

Veronica Stein; and

ith

Conversation with Peretz Hertzen-

berg.

in

v\

15.

22.

lertzen-

Reshetovskaya, 137.

13. Ibid.

cle,

I

39-45; and conversation with

Conversation

10.

12. Ibid.

19.

I

Peretz Hertzenberg.

Solzhenit.svn interview.

1.

I

()()

Kopelev, 44.

8.

9. Ibid.,

10. Ibid., 117.

1

[

chaps. 43 and 74; Kopelev,

3,

pt.

5,

chap.

2.

The

description of Ekibastuz and of Solzhenitsyn's first

days there

of vol.

is

taken from chaps.

2

and

3

3, pt. 5.

15. Ibid.,

chap.

3.

16. Ibid, (the translation

adjusted).

has been slightly

.

[

I

Notes

002] 17.

Reshetovskava, 150.

18.

Gulag, vol.

28. Reshetovskava, 160.

chap.

2, pt. 3,

19. Ibid., vol.

.3,

chap.

pt. 5,

Ata, 1982), 41. 2

talia's

Reshetovskava,

1

30. Ibid.

22. Gulag, vol.

chap

3, pt. 5,

May

is

letter to the

based partly on her author of 16

May

1982

and partly on her memoirs.

23. Ibid. 24. Ibid.

31.

Reshetovskaya, 169.

25. Ibid.

32.

Unpublished

letter to the

May

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16

26. Ibid.

33.

28. Panin, 296.

34. Ibid., 167.

Conversation with Dimitri Panin, 10

Notably

35.

a

former friend and col-

who

league of Simonyan's

Dec. 1980. 30. Gulag, vol. 2, pt. 3, chap. 5.

author from

1982.

Reshetovskaya, 161.

27. Ibid.

29.

Na-

relationship with Vsevolod and of their

unpublished

5.

1982.

following account of

subsequent marriage

54.

1

The

the author from

letter to

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16

3.

Shevchenko, Ekibastuz (Alma-

20. S. P.

Unpublished

29.

9.

prefers not to be

identified at present.

Both the poem and the extract from

36.

The

Chapter 17

Way

are in Vestnik

RKhD,

no. 117 (1976).

37. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 6, chap. 7.

Gulag, vol.

1.

3, pt. 5,

chap.

5.

2. Ibid.

Chapter 18 3.

Ibid.

4.

The

storv of Tenno's escapes

is

found

ibid.

and Panin, 297-317.

5.

Ibid.;

6.

Panin, 310-11.

7.

Gulag, vol.

8.

Panin, 314.

Gulag, vol. Ibid^

3.

Ibid.

3, pt. 6,

chap.

3, pt. 5,

chap. 11.

Cancer Ward, chap. 20.

5.

6.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

7.

Leninskaya Smena, 10 Jan. 1965.

8.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

11. Ibid^

9.

Gulag, vol.

12. Ibid.

10. Leninskaya

10.

13.

Gulag, vol.

3, pt. 5,

chap.

II.

Panin, 315-17; and conversation with

Dimitri Panin. 14.

Ward, chap.

2, pt. 4,

chap.

1;

2, pt. 4,

chap.

1.

16.

Reshetovskava,

150

and

letter to the author, 16

Gulag, vol.

2, pt. 4,

chap.

May

and 1982.

1.

Solzhenitsvn interview. chap.

5.

Unpublished

17. Ibid. 18.

Dimitri Panin, Zapiski Sologdina (The

19. Index letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskava,

16Mav

author from

1982.

21. Gulag, vol. 2, pt. 4, chap.

1.

22. Ibid.

Reshetovskava, 166.

and

Anna Akhmatova,

English translation,

156-57, and unpub-

lished letter to the author, 16

Mav

1982.

Victory Cele-

Helen Rapp and Nancy Thomas

(London, 1983),

31.

24. Ibid., 79. 25. Solzhenitsvn interview;

1969), 23. 27. Reshetovskaya,

Sochineniia (Works),

(Munich, 1968), 343.

23. In

the Innocent, trans.

no. 2

21. Solzhenitsvn interview.

brations, trans.

Nicholas Bethell and David Burg (London,

1,

20. Oak, 66.

vol. 2

25. Ibid., 167.

(Frankfurt, 1973), 479.

on Censorship (London),

(1972), 149-51.

22.

23. Ibid.

26. The Love-Girl

Solzhenitsvn interview.

16. Ibid.

Memoirs of Sologdin)

19. Ibid.

24.

6.

13. Ibid^

15.

152,

18. Ibid^

20.

chap.

Smena, 10 Jan. 1965.

14. Ibid.

Gulag, vol.

17.

and Can-

6.

15.

unpublished

11.

3, pt. 6,

12. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 6,

Gulag, vol.

5.

4. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

cer

1.

2.

lished letter to the author

tovskava,

1

Dec. 1982.

and unpub-

from Natalia Reshe-

.

.

..

. .

s

.

Notes 26. Part of the

poem's preface was quoted

by V'eniamin Teush

"A. Solzhe-

in his article

nitsvn and the Writer's Spiritual Mission."

The

translation appeared in Index on (Censorship,

1,

[1003]

Reshetovskava's original draft of her memoirs before thev v\ere edited by the Novosti new

They

agency.

are

much

Arkhiv

Russian,

in

27. Reshetovskaya, 175.

Archive),

Document

28. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 6, chap. 6.

1973), distributed

29. Solzhenitsvn interview.

nich.

no. 2 (1972), 149-51.

than the pub-

fuller

lished version. Veche, no. 5, can be found, in

(Samizdat

Samizdata

.\S1230 (18

no.

bv Radio Liberty

30.

Reshetovska\a, 176-77.

31. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 5, chap.

31.

Shown

32.

tsvn.

Its

by Solzheniaccuracv has been confirmed by to the author

Unpublished

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskava,

1

May .Mu-

1.

author from

Jan. 1983.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

33.

Natalia Reshetovskava.

1

in

34. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 6, chap. 6.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

35.

Chapter 19

and unpublished

36. Ibid.;

Solzhenitsvn interview. Solzhenitsyn

1.

later

introduced the root and the story of his

excursion into the plot of Cancer Ward. 2.

Gulag, vol.

3.

Unpublished

chap.

2, pt. 4,

May

4.

Cancer Ward, chap.

5.

Unpublished

Reshetovska\a, 185.

38.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

Chapter 20

1983.

author from

May

1983.

and conversaand w ith Lev Kope-

Solzhenitsvn interviev\

1.

3.

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

37.

3.

the author from

letter to

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

tions with Dimitri Panin

;

lev.

and Prose Poems,

6.

Oak, 3-4.

2. Stories

7.

Solzhenits\n interview

3.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

8.

Cancer Ward, chap.

.\.

4.

Gulag, vol.

^'ork,

5.

Unpublished

Knaus,

and William

6;

Medicine

Russian

Inside

(New

Reshetovskaya, 179. Cancer Ward, chap.

6.

1.

"The Right Hand,"

in Stories

7.

and Prose

Poems.

Cancer Ward, chap. 22.

13. Ibid.,

chap.

14. Ibid.,

chap. 35.

Reshetovskaya, 186. Solzhenitsvn interview

11. Ibid.;

Nekrasova,

Oak.

16.

Solzhenitsvn interview

7

author from

10. Ibid.

11.

15.

1

6.

8. Ibid., 187.

9.

12.

chap.

letter to the

6. Ibid.

10. 1

3, pt. 6,

4.

Natalia Reshetovskava, 16 .\Iav 1982.

1981), chap. 14. 9.

letter to the

author from Natalia Reshetovskaya.

12.

4.

Leninskaya Smena

,

1

Jan

11

and conversation with Galina Dec. 1980.

Solzhenitsvn interview; and unpub-

lished letter to the author .

tovskaya,

1965.

13.

18. Ibid.

1

from Natalia Reshe-

Dec. 1982.

Solzhenitsvn interview; private inforauthor

19. Ibid.

mation; and unpublished

20. Oak, 4.

22. Ibid.

from Natalia Reshetovskava, 16 .May 1982. 14. This account of Solzhenitsyn's arrival is based on his fictional reworking ot it in

23. Ibid.

"Matrvona's Place."

21. Solzhenitsvn interview.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.; 26.

15.

and Reshetovskava,

16.

183.

Conversation with Lev Kopelev.

1

w

ith

Veronica Stein.

29. Oak, 29. 30.

Quoted

unpublished samizdat

magazine Veche (Assemblv), no. 1972).

Veche

published

Reshetovskaya, 188.

Unpublished

letter to

5

(25

May

two chapters from

1

the author from

Jan. 1983.

18. Ibid.

19.

in the

Solzhenitsvn interview.

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

27. Solzhenitsvn interview

28. Conversation

7

letter to the

Reshetovskaya, 192.

20. Solzhenitsvn interview. 2

1

Unpublished

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskava, 31 Oct. 1982.

1

..

Notes

[1004]

33. Ibid.,

22. Ibid. 23.

Labedz,

24.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

35. Ibid., 226.

25. Reshetovskaya, 193-94, 198.

36. Oak, 12.

26.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

27.

Reshetovskaya, 196.

28. Stones

224-25.

34. Ibid.

22.

Chapter 22

and Prose Poems, 243.

1.

Reshetovskava, 222.

2.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

3.

Reshetovskava, 222.

Chapter 21

1

1.

Gulag, vol.

2.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

3.

Uchitel'skaya Gazeta (Teachers' Gazette),

2, pt. 3,

chap.

11.

5.

Reshetovskaya, 199-200.

6.

Unpublished

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 7.

Panin, 285.

8.

Oak,

9.

7. 8.

Oak, 12-13.

9.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

3

Gulag, vol.

1

author from

Licko.

10.

Reshetovskaya, 232-33.

1

Conversation with Ilva Zilberberg,

1

12. Ilva s 3, pt. 6,

chap.

Zilberberg, Neobkhodimy razgovor

Solzhenitsynym (A Necessarv Talk with Sol-

zhenitsyn) (Susse.x, Eng., 1976), 50.

7.

and conversation with \ eron-

ica Stein. 11. Gulag, vol. 2, pt. 3, 12. Ibid., vol. 3, pt. 6,

Reshetovskava,

lished letter to the author

chap. chap.

9.

13.

Oak, 10.

14.

Quoted

207-8; and unpub-

15.

The

15.

One Day

in the Life of

Ivan Denisovich,

Hingley

16.

York, 1963), 98.

in

manv

other Soviet news-

Robert Conquest, Courage of Genius

17. Ibid., 42.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

17.

Reshetovskava, 225.

19. Ibid.,

18.

Oak,

20.

19.

Reshetovskava, 225.

18. Ibid., 160.

6.

2

"Panorama" interview with AlexanBBC Television, London,

der Solzhenitsvn,

1

1

WII

vetskogo Soyuza nist

in

Labedz, 28.

s'ezd kommunisticheskoi partii So-

(22nd Congress of the

2, p.

transcript,

Commu-

Party of the Soviet Union) (17-31 Oct.

1961), stenographic record

p. 5.

22. Licko.

interview

133-35, 164, 169.

Autobiographical note to the Nobel

committee, quoted

20. Ibid., 211.

"Panorama"

York,

(London, 1961), 138.

16.

23.

Soviet Rus-

(New

papers.

Max Hayward and Ronald

Mar. 1976, transcript,

and Problems

speech was printed in Pravda, 28

Aug. 1957, and

Reshetovskaya, 209-10.

Marc Slonim,

1964), 299.

from Natalia Reshe-

14.

in

sian Literature: Writers

7.

tovskava.

.

7

Mar. 1976.

Dec. 1982.

6.

10. Ibid.;

1

and Prose

and

Jan. 1963.

2

Stories

1963; and

Sovetskaya Kirgizia (Soviet Kirgizia), 30

(New

"Matrvona's House," in

6. Ibid.

4. Literatuniaya Rossia, 25 Jan.

trans.

Ibid.

5.

Poems.

Dec. 1962.

13.

4.

(Moscow,

1962), vol.

584. 22. Ibid.,

531-32.

23. Oak, 14.

p. 8.

24. Ibid.

24.

25.

Reshetovskaya, 211-12.

26.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

27. Veche, no. 5, p. 81. 28. Reshetovskaya, 213. 29. Ibid., 219. 30. Ibid.,

220-22, 224.

31. Ibid., 224.

32. Ibid., 226.

Conversation with Lev Kopelev, 22

June 1982. 25. Unpublished

Lev Kopelev,

letter to the

author from

Aug. 1981. Kopelev's wife, Raisa Orlova, has since confirmed most of these details in her book Vospominania neproshedshem 31

vremeni (Recollection of

Arbor, 1983), chap. 21. 26. Oak, 16-17.

Time Not

Past)

(Ann

.

Notes Chapter 23

on

account given

in this

chapter draws

the well-known published sources, on

all

conversations

ith

v\

the Kopelexs, Victor

Ne-

krasov, 11 Dec. 1980., and Veronica Stein, and

especially

Ibid., 101.

3.

The

1

[1005]

on

Reshetovskaya's

two unpub-

4.

Ibid.

5.

Oak, 38.

6.

Veche, no. 5, p. 102.

7.

Oak, 38.

8.

Veche, no. 5, p. 102..

9. Ibid.

lished chapters that appeared in Russian in

10. Ibid., 103.

Veche, no. 5. 1

2.

Details are given

by

P'.fim

Etkind

1.

12.

introduction to the Russian edition of the novel

published

in

Conversation with Victor Nekrasov.

in his

Veche, no. 5, p. 106.

13. Ibid.

Switzerland some twenty years

14. Ibid. later.

See Vasily (Jrossman, Zhizn

i

sttdlm {\J\ie 15. Ibid., 108.

and Fate) ([.ausanne, 1980), v. 3. Conversation with Lev Kopelev.

16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 110.

4.

Oak, 20.

5.

Veche, no. 5, p. 85.

Michel Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, Helen Katel (New York, 1967), 248. 19. Peter Benno, "The Political Aspect," 18.

6.

Conversation with Victor Nekrasov.

7.

Veche, no. 5, p. 97.

8.

Victor

Nekrasov,

Isaichu

.

.

.

(To

trans.

Max Havward and Edward

L.

Crowley,

eds., Soviet Literature in the Sixties

(London,

in

Isaich), in Kontinent, no. 18 (1978), SpetsiaPmye

prilozheuiye (Special Supplement), 3-5.

1965), 191. 20.

9.

Oak,4\.

Veche, no. 5, p. 97.

10. Ibid.,

21. Time, 27 Sept. 1968.

85-86.

22.

Benno,

191.

11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 13. Ibid.,

23. Veche, no. 5, p.

87-88.

S9-ind Oak,

22.

25. 14.

10.

1

24. Oak, 42.

Zhores A. Medvedev, Ten Years

Veche, no. 5, p. 87.

after

Ivan Denisovich, trans. Hilary Sternberg (Lon-

15.

Oak, 26.

16.

Veche, no. 5, pp.

90-92.

don, 1973),

17.

26. Ibid. 17.

Oak, 35. 27. Veche, no. 5, p.

18. Ibid.

HI.

28. Ibid. 19.

Veche, no. 5, p. 93.

29. Ibid., 113. 20. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 111.

21. Oak, 30. 31. Ibid.

22. Ibid. 32.

Chukovskaya,

Zapiski,

449-54.

An

23. Ibid.

English translation can be found in Solzheni24. Veche, no. 5, p. 95. tsyn Studies

1

25. Ibid., 96.

(1980), 177-78.

33. Gulag, vol.

1,

pt.

1,

chap.

7.

26. Ibid. 27.

34.

Reshetovskaya, 232.

28. Veche, no.

Chukovskava,

5,

36.

Akhmatove (Notes

115-16.

Veche, no. 5, pp.

37. Ibid.

(Paris, 1980), vol. 2, pp.

38. Ibid.

608-9. 29. Veche, no. 5, pp. 30. Ibid.,

9.

35. Ibid., lln.

pp. 97-99; and Lydia

Zapiski oh Aiiiie

on Anna Akhmatova)

Oak,

39. Ibid.,

97-99.

1

18-19; and Oak, 44-45.

40. Veche, no. 5, pp.

95-97.

1

19-20; and Oak, 45-

46. 31. Ibid. 32.

41. Oak, 46.

Oak, 34.

33. Veche, no. 5, p. 98.

42. Veche, no. 5, pp. 121-22. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid.

Chapter 24 1.

Veche, no. 5,

2.

Ibid.

45. Ibid., 117-18. 100.

46. Gulag, vol.

sian edition only.

3, pt. 7,

chap.

3, in

Rus-

[

I

Notes

006] 47. Reshetovskava, 255-56.

9. Stories

48. Ibid.

10. Gulag, vol. 1, pt. 1,

Chukovskava,

49.

zhenitsyn Studies

Zapiski,

474n; and

Sol-

11. Ibid.,

(1980), 178.

1

50. Oak, 46. 51.

Labedz,

38.

chap.

chap.

7.

4.

12.

Oak, 58.

13.

Conversation with Andrei

14.

The

Sinyav-

skv.

41-42.

52. Ibid.,

and Prose Poems, 114.

author of this appreciation

lives in the Soviet

53. Ibid.

Union and

still

prefers not to be

identified.

Oak,

15.

Chapter 25

-[9.

16. Ibid. 1.

These and the other Soviet reviews

quoted

in this

17. Ibid.,

chapter have been collected in a

66-67.

18. Ibid., 68.

samizdat anthologv devoted to Solzhenitsyn's

19.

Conversation with Victor Nekrasov.

career and entitled Slovo probivaet sebe dorogu

20.

Johnson, 240-71.

(The Word Hews

21. Oak,

in

Russian oniv.

a Path for Itself), .\11

which

exists

quotations are from Slovo

68-69.

22. Slovo, 192.

unless otherwise indicated.

23.

Johnson, 71.

2.

Benno, 192.

24.

.Medvedev, Ten Years, 20-21; and

3.

Priscilla

Johnson, Khrushchev and

the

Arts

Lit-

eraturnaya Gazeta, 26 Dec. 1963.

(Cambridge, .Mass., 1965), 102-3. 4.

Feifer,

Quoted

David Burg and George

in

(London, 1972), 195-96.

5'o/2;?)ew//.fyw

Chapter 27

5. Oak, 53."

1.

6. Ibid.

2.

Reshetovskaya, 256.

3.

Oak, 70.

4.

Johnson, 75.

5.

Slovo,

6.

Sovy Mir, 40, no.

7.

Conversation w

8.

Oak, 53.

9.

Ibid.,

ith

\ ictor Xekrasov.

50-51.

10. Ibid., 52. 11. Literaturnaya Rossia, 25 Jan. 1963;

and

Conversation with .\ndrei

Sinvav-

skv, 8 Dec. 1980.

1

(Jan. 1964).

226-28.

8.

Labedz, 79.

9.

D. Blagov (pseudonym of Veniamin

Teush),

.4.

sat ely a (.\.

13. Ibid.

225-26.

7. Slovo,

Sovetskaya Kirgizia, 30 and 31 Jan. 1963. 12.

Oak, 69.

Solzhenitsyn

i

dukhovnaya missia pi-

Solzhenitsyn and the Writer's Spir-

14.

Both

15.

Oak, 61.

Sobranie sochinenii (Collected

16.

Johnson, 102-3.

furt,

articles are

reproduced

in Slovo.

17. Ibid., 117.

in

Alexander Solzhenitsyn,

Works) (Frank-

1969-70), vol. 6, pp. 483-551

(in

Rus-

sian).

18. Ibid., 121. 19.

.Mission),

itual

10. Ibid.

Conversation

with

Evgenia

Ginz-

burg, 15 .May 1970.

11.

Gulag, vol.

3, pt. 7,

chap.

2.

12. Ibid^

13. Ibid. 14.

Chapter 26

Solzhenitsyn interview.

15. Index on Censorship, 1, no. 2 (1972). 1.

2. Ibid.,

36-37.

3.

Oak, 62.

4.

Johnson,

.March meeting 5.

Quoted

is

in

of the 1962-1963

Crowley,

140.

This account of the

based on Johnson, 140-81.

8. Ibid.,

64.

poem

did not find

For its

and Prose Poems, but appears

(in

Sobranie sochinenii (Collected

Works)

1978-83), vol.

3, p.

Russian) in (Paris,

174.

Burton Rubin, "Highlights

16.

Reshetovskava, 261-62.

Hayward and

17.

Conversation with Efim Etkind, 10

Thaw,"

153-54.

Oak, 60.

this prose

v\av into the standard English edition. Stories

in

Soviet Literature in the Sixties,

6. Slovo, 7.

some reason

Slovo, 36.

94-95.

Dec. 1980. 18.

Reshetovskaya, 251-52.

19. Ibid., 250.

20. Ibid., 268.

.

.

1

.

.

.

Notes 21. Ibid., 268-74.

[1007] This passage does not appear

6.

shorter, 87-chapter version that

22. Ibid.

in the

translated

Russian, in

23. Ibid., 276.

into Knglish.

24. Ibid., 278.

chap. 60 of the longer version, published in

Medvedev, Ten

25.

the Collected

Years, 25.

26. Oak, 11. .

28. .\Ied\ede\

on Medvedev

Ten

,

Years, 26.

have relied

I

account of the

for the rest of this

Lenin Prize committee's meeting.

1.

Oak, 72.

2.

Reshetovskava, 259-60; and unpub-

Solzhenitsyn interview Collected

from Raisa Orlova,

Aug. 1981. 3.

Reshetovskava, 259-60.

This unpubHshed

letter

to

Panin,

and

274;

12.

Conversation with llva Zilberberg. Oak, 97-99.

Oak, 73-79.

7.

Conversation

8.

Oak, 80-84.

\\

Zilberberg.

86-87.

10. Literaturnaya

Gazeta,

Mav

Ma\' 1964;

12

1964; Literatur-

juW

naya Gazeta, 4 June 1964; and Moskva,

Medvedev, Ten

Pictorial Record

(Lon-

Oak, 105-6.

and conversation with \'eron-

18. Ibid.;

1964

1.

Oak, 103-4.

2.

Gulag, vol.

3.

Oak, 104-5.

5.

Ibid., 108-9.

6.

This account

Conversation with \ eronica Stein.

7.

12.

Oak, 73.

8. Ibid.

Conversation

56 (Oct. 1964).

with

Zhores

.Med-

vedev, 2 Dec. 1981. 15. Private

information.

Carlisle, Solzhenitsyn

and

the Secret

chap.

is

taken from Medvedev,

9.

Private information.

Conversation w

Conversation w

11.

Oak, 111-12.

12.

This

told to

is

Zhores .Med\edev.

ith

Ehm

Etkind.

the version that Solzhenitsyn

Zhores Medvedev and that Medvedev

Ten Years

1.

ith

10.

incorporated into the

York, 1978), 23-24.

17. Gulag, vol. 3, pt. 7,

1.

Ten Years, 39-42.

}'ears, 30).

13. Gra;;7 (Facets), no.

chap.

2, pt. 4,

4. Ibid., 110.

11.

(Sew

A

16. Solzhenitsyn:

with

conversation

ith llva

Literaturnaya Rossia, 29

Circle

99-102.

Conversation with \ eronica Stein.

15.

Chapter 30

6.

Olga

chap. 55.

Oak, 1-2.

ica Stein.

Dimitri Panin.

16.

chap.

11.

17.

show n

as

\\

the author b\ Lev Kopele\

14.

(Paris), vol. 2,

61 (in Russian).

don, 1974), 60.

4.

(cited in

Works

73-74.

55

8.

14. Ibid.,

lished letter to the author

in

(Paris), vol. 2, pp.

chap

9.

13.

9. Ibid.,

Works

10. First Circle,

Chapter 28

5.

It

First Circle,

7

11 Johnson, 76.

31

can be found,

w as

after

initial text

of his book

Iian Denisovich. .\fter meeting

London

Medvedev

18.

Reshetovskava, 247.

Zilberberg in

19.

Medvedev, Ten

slightK modified his text and added a caution-

Years, 2-3.

orv to stand.

21. Oak, 59.

Conversation

with

vedev. 23.

Oak,9\.

Zhores

.Med-

13.

Oak, 101-2.

14.

Zilberberg.

15. Ibid., 75.

24. Ibid., 95. 25. Ibid.,

16. Ibid., 80.

96-97.

17.

Oak, 101-2.

18.

Conversation with \ eronica Stein.

19. Private information.

Chapter 29

20. Oak, 118. 1.

Oak, 202.

2.

Solzhenitsvn interview

3.

Ibid.

4. First Circle, 5.

Ibid.

1973,

arv footnote but allowed Solzhenitsyn's the-

20. Ibid., 5.

22.

in

chap. 5S.

Chapter

3

1.

Oak, 114.

2.

Blagov. 511.

.

.

Notes

[ioo8] Oak, 113-14.

3.

Chapter 32

4 Nov. 1965.

4. Literatiirnaya Gazeta.

1.

Oak, 135.

until 1978,

2.

Ibid., 137.

his

3.

Ibid., 139.

Scjlzhenitsvn did not publish this storv

5.

when it was included in vol. 3 of Collected Works (Paris). It has not so far

been translated into English. 6.

Oak, 122.

7.

Ibid.

8.

Private information.

9.

Oak, 126-27.

4. Sloiv, 297; 5.

lation of the proceedings 6. .\.

Quoted in Bukovskv. 192-9.V Quoted in Russia's Other Poets, ed. Janis Sapiets (London, 1969), xx. 12. These events are described in Bukov10. 1

1.

\

13. .\ detailed

trial

trans. .Max

On

Conversation

with

Carter, of Collins in London, 17 June 1982.

w

as

Bonham

Carter

w ho

flew to

.Medvedev,

Ten

Years,

\oz-y Zhurnal

in

359-67;

and

Labedz,

366-67.

Oak, 146-49.

12.

Conversation with \ eronica Stein.

13.

Oak, 142-45.

14. Ibid..

It

Stockholm.

144-45.

15. Ibid.

and

16.

Solzhenits\'n interview.

17.

Reshetovskaya,

memoirs made

tsyn:

available to the author.

16.

Solzhenitsvn interview

17.

Hans Bjorkegren,

A

60-61;

18. Pavel Litvinov, ed..

Eneberg (New

8

in

18.

On

19.

Conversation with .Maria Rozanova,

290-91.

don, 1969), 1-7, 13-49. For an account of the

Hilary

19.

and Simonede Beauvoir,

All Said and Done, trans. Patrick O'Brian

(New

".\'(k;v

BBC

Oak, 151.

and Licko inter\iew with

Licko affidavit to the Bodley Head,

5

Sept. 1968. 25. Carlisle, 18-19.

and ed. Robert Dessaix and .Michael Ulman (.\nn Arbor. 1981), 172,

Saiiet Writing, trans,

175.

W'eissbort

Television, 14 .Mar. 1969.

24.

History of Post-ii-ar

Daniel

York, 1972).

23. KulturniZivot, 31 .Mar. 1967.

.Mass., 1980), 51-52.

A

Litvinov,

el

21. Ibid., 156-58.

Mir," trans, and ed. .Michael

23. Grigori S\irski,

26. Reshetovskaya,

unpublished

chap-

ters.

24. Gulag, vol. 2, pt. 3, chap. 25.

"Panorama"

inter\iew

27. Ibid.

3.

26.

28. Oak,

transcript,

164-65, and notes; and Reshe-

tovskava, unpublished chapters.

p. 14.

a

New

22. Ibid., 155;

22. \'ladimir Lakshin, Solzhenttsyn, Tzar-

and

see Pa\

20. Ibid., 156.

York, 1974), 321.

Glennv (Cambridge,

trial,

and

Sternberg,

(London and

20. Oak, 98, 128.

dovsky,

The Demonstration

ed.. The Trial of the Four, trans. Janis Sapiets,

Dec. 1980. 21. Ibid., 119n;

chap-

Pushkin Square, trans. .Manya Harari (Lon-

Galanskov-Ginzburg

York, 1972), 80-81. Trial,

unpublished

ters.

Aleksandr Solzheni-

Biography, trans. Kaarina

102

text).

unpublished chapters from Reshetovska\ as

15.

(New

11. Ibid., 458.

Bonham

.Mark

from

Labedz, 104.

10.

Havv\ard (New York

details

York), no. 93 (1968).

Shrco,

9. Slovo,

and Lxjndon, 1967). 14.

(New

(abridged

and of

.\ trans-

Labedz, 83-105.

Belinkov, "Delo Solzhenitsyna" (The

Solzhenitsvn Case),

7.

in

is

labedz, 98—101; additional

8.

account of the

the defendants' speeches can be found in

and

.

Journal)

skv, 160-63, 234-41, 249-56.

Trial, ed.

and Oak, 141n.

Oak, 306; and Labedz, 87-90.

Quoted by Natalia Reshetovskava

in

statement to the press, 9 .\pr. 1980. Parts of

Chapter 33

Reshetovskaya's statement appeared in the Los Angeles Times, 22 .Ma\ 1980.

appears

in Russia

(New

.\ full

York),

1,

translation

no. 2 (1981).

27. Ibid. in

1

.Medvedev, Ten

2.

Pravda, 26 .May 1967.

3.

The

full text

Years,

68-69.

of the letter can be found

Oak, 458-62, and in Labedz, 106-12. 4.

Reshetovska\

a,

unpublished chapters.

.

Notes The

41.

5.

Ibid.

6.

Mcd\tdc\

Ten

,

)'cars,

70;

and (Jxlverty

vse-soyuzny s'ezd sovetskikh pisaleki (Fourth All-

Union Congress of Soviet Writers), stenographic record (Moscow 1968), 197-98.

full

text of

I

009]

Tvardovskv's

letter

appears in Labedz, 155-67. 42. Oak, 203;

and Reshetovskava, unpub-

lished chapters.

,

7.

Labedz, 112-13.

8.

Oak, 164.

9.

Conversation with Efini F.tkind.

10. Private

Chapter 34

information.

11.

Reshetovska\a,

12.

Oak, 164.

1.3.

Ibid.,

unpublished

chap-

ters.

1.

Oak,

2.

Letter

Praeger, date

and Reshetovskaya,

16.S-66;

14.

Oak, 169-74.

l.i.

Ibid., 174-76.

16.

Reshetovskava,

4.

Litxinov, Trial, 219-20.

5.

Ibid., 227.

7. Ibid.,

unpublished

chap-

from

289.

302-3.

8.

Ibid.,

9.

Conversation with Pavel Litvinov, 10

Dec. 1981.

17. Ibid. 18. Ibid.

Gulag, \ol.

pt.

1,

Simonyan,

1,

14-1.>;

chap.

note;

^S'^io;:'

and private

infor-

3

mation.

10.

Oak, 405-6.

11.

A

translation

The

the secretariat meeting tsvn's transcript of

a\ ailable in

Labedz,

482.

13. Ibid., 206.

21. Oak,'\6l. 22. Ibid., 181.

is

44-62. 12. Otf/^,

20. Carlisle, 72.

it,

following account of

is based on Solzheniwhich appears in the

appendix to Oak, 463-80. 183-85.

Resheto\ska\a,

14. Ibid.,

206-9,483.

15. Ibid.,

483-84.

Time, 11 Sept. 1968.

16.

17. Private

information.

Oak, 204.

18.

19. x\

copy of this

letter

was show n

to the

author in 1968.

24. Ibid., 186. 25.

.\Iede\edev

n.

6. Ibid.

ters.

23. Ibid.,

Zhores

don), 29 .Mar. 1970.

unpublished chapters.

chad, 50;

to

unknou

Karei van het Reve in Observer (Lon-

3.

19.

7, 196.

unpublished

chap-

20. Oak,

213-16.

21. Ibid., 214, 218.

ters.

26. Oak, 186,

27.

475-76.

22. Ibid., 219.

Labedz, 152-53.

28. Litvinov, Demonstration, 125, 127.

Chapter 35 29. Ibid., 137-38. 30.

Reshetovskaya,

unpublished

chap-

ters.

31. Ibid. 32.

Labedz, 151.

33. Oak, 186.

34. ters;

Reshetovskava,

unpublished

chap-

1.

Labedz, 189-92.

2.

Ibid., 192-96.

3.

Ibid., 199.

4.

.\ledvedev. Ten Years, 94.

5.

Quoted

6.

Oak, 227.

and Solzhenitsvn interview

7. Ibid.,

35. Ibid.

8.

36.

Conversation with X'ictor Nekrasov.

37.

Reshetovskaya,

unpublished

chap-

in Slovo,

443-44.

239.

Chronicle of Current Events, no.

3

(30

.\ug. 1968). 9.

The

full

storv

is

given in Natalia Gor-

banevskava. Red Square at Soon, trans. .\Iex-

ters.

38. Ibid. 39.

This account of Solzhenitsvn's move-

ments and decisions during this crucial episode is based on Reshetovska\a's description in her

unpublished chapters.

40. Oak, 200-201.

ander Lieven (New York and London, 1972). 10.

Oak, 220.

11. Ibid., 222. 12. Ibid., 370. 13.

Unpublished

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskava, undated [Feb. 1983].

.

[ I

O

Notes

o]

I

Medvedev, Ten

14.

15. International

Alexander Solzhenitsvn

Years, 97.

Herald Tribune, 17 Mar.

supervision

1969; reprinted in Labedz, 181. 16.

Oak, 240.

17.

The

Works vet

appears in the Collected

text

519-89. There

19.

Oak, 223.

18-19.

3

and 9

(1968).

29. Ibid., 406.

Andrei .\malrik, ".\n Open Letter

30.

20. Carlisle, 126.

Medvedev, Ten

Kuznetsov,"

Years, 98.

in

Andrei Amalrik, Will

Union Survive until 1984? rev. and

22. Oak, 224-25.

Veronica Stein.

23. Conversation with

Medvedev, Ten

US,

the Rubble, \, 12,

28. Oak, 294.

'

25. Oak,

the

under the

26. Oak, 111.

27. Molodaya Gvardia, nos.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

24.

al.

Scammell (Boston,

of .Michael

From under

25.

as

is

translation.

18.

21.

From under

1975), vi.

(Paris), vol. 8, pp.

no English

et al..

Rubble, trans. A. Al. Brock et

trans. Peter

enl.

ed.,

Reddav\av, ed. Hilarv Sternberg

(London, 1980), 64-74.

112-16.

Years,

to

the Soviet

31. Oak, 294.

484.

293-94.

26. Ibid., 272.

32. Ibid., 273,

27. Vozrozhdenie (Rebirth), no. 205 (Jan.

33.

-Medvedev, Ten Years, 110.

34.

Quoted

1969).

from

Solzhenitsyn's

A

script of the meeting.

tran-

translation appears in

the appendix to Oak, 484-93, from which the

Chapter 36

follow ing account

is

taken.

Medvedev, Ten

107.

1.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

35.

2.

Reshetovskava,

36. Chronicle of Current Events, no. 12 (28

3.

Licko interview,

p. 251.

BBC

Television, 14

Feb. 1970). 37. Oak,

Mar. 1969.

493-94.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

4. 5.

Private information.

6.

Conversation

7.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

8.

Private information.

9.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

v\

ith

Chapter 37

Dimitri Panin.

Unpublished

1

letter to the

2.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

3.

Unpublished

Conversation w

11.

Reshetovskava,

4.

Oak, 269.

12.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

5.

Quoted

13.

Conversation with Natalia Svetlova.

6.

Oak, 494.

14.

Abraham Brumberg,

7.

Medvedev, Ten

8.

Oak, 267.

ith

Veronica Stein.

unpublished

chap-

ed.. In Quest of

(London, 1970), 137-38.

17.

in

Years,

Conversations with Lev Kopelev and

Current Events, no.

10.

12.

Medvedev, Ten

13.

Labedz, 11\-U.

(formerly Solzhenitsyn's secretary), 25 Oct.

14.

.Medvedev, Ten

1978.

15.

Labedz, 225.

Grigorenko,

toFko krys

.

.

.

(In the

V podpoVye mozhno

16. Ibid.,

Underground You

17.

Meet Only Rats .) (New York, 1981). 21. Medvedev, Ten Years, 100-101. .

22. Ibid.,

99-100.

introd.

Quoted bv Max to

the

I

lay ward

in

Years,

}'ears,

his

English-language edition of

109-10.

109.

225-26.

Quoted

in

.Medvedev, Ten

ll.

.

23. Ibid., 102. 24.

(31

Oak, 111.

author from Irina Alberti

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

20. Petro

11

11. Ibid.

19. Letter to the

vstretit'

107-8.

Dec. 1969).

information.

Veronica Stein. 18.

author from

Labedz, 217-18.

9. Chronicle of

Solzhenitsvn interview.

16. Private

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 31 Oct. 1982.

ters.

15.

author from

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 31 Oct. 1982.

10.

Justice

}'ears,

124-25.

18.

Ibid.,

19.

Oak, 175.

20. Ibid.,

275-77.

21. Ibid.,

278-89.

22. Ibid., 121-22, 282.

Years,

Mi-

Notes 23. Chronicle of Current Events, no. \S

Aug.

20. Ibid.,

(.^I

22. Conversation with X'eronica Stein.

24. Ibid.

Medvedev, Ten Years, 130. 27. The whole affair was later described in great detail b\- the Medvedev brothers. See Rov Medvedev and Zhores .Medvedev, A Question of Madness, trans. Ellen de Kadt (Lon26.

25. Ibid.;

26. Ibid.

494-95. Question of

29.

Conversation w

30.

Unpublished

n.

Ten Years, 128.

York Times Magazine,

12

.\pr.

Unpublished

33. \\

ith

Per Hegge, June

the author from

Jan. 1983.

1970.

1970.

Conversation

1

Conversation with Veronica Stein. Daily Telegraph (London), 12 Oct.

31.

32. .\led\edev.

ith \'eronica Stein.

letter to

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

31. Oak, 325.

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

1

author from

Jan. 1983; and con-

versations with \eronica Stein and Lev Kope-

1976.

155-56.

35. Carlisle,

lev.

36. Oak, 324.

37. Times

Unpublished

34.

the authf)r from

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

36. Ibid.;

Chapter 38

and unpublished

letter to the

author from Natalia Reshetovskaya,

1.

.\malrik, 91-92.

2.

Andrei Sakharo\-,

1

Jan.

1983. Sakharoi- Speaks

(New

York, 1974), 116-34. 3.

letter to

Natalia Reshetovskaya, Jan. 1983.

(London). 14 .\pr. 1970.

35.

June

Veronica Stein.

28. Solzhenitsyn interview.

Madness, 30,43-49, 155-57.

34.

and conversation with \ eron-

ica Stein.

27. Conversation with

Medvedev and Medvedev,

.Vfci'

the author from

Jan. 1983.

1

24. Ibid.

28. Oak, 298.

33.

letter to

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

don, 1971).

30.

Unpublished

23.

25. Ibid.

29. Ibid.,

495-96.

21. Ibid., 303.

1970).

37. Oak, 293. 38. Ibid.,

Chronicle of Current Events, no.

14 (30

295-96.

39. Ibid., 304.

w ith Per Hegge. and Labedz, 301. 42. Conversation with Per Hegge.

40. Conversation

1970). 4.

Oak, 298-99.

41. Ibid.;

5.

\evc York Times Magazine

6.

Oak, 290-92.

43. Oak, 306.

7.

Labedz, 141.

44. Ibid., 496.

8.

Oak, 285.

45. Ibid., 497.

,

12 .\pr. 1970.

Medvedev. Ten Years, 131. 10. Per Egil Hegge, Mellommann i Moskva

9.

(Middleman

in

Moscow)

(Oslo,

1971).

.\n

extract appears in Labedz, 298-99. 11.

Oak, 300.

12.

Labedz, 299.

Chapter 39 1.

New

2.

Conversation with \ictor Sparre, 6

York Times,

1

1

Dec. 1970.

June 1979. Observer (London), 13 Dec. 1970.

13. Ibid., 240.

3.

14. Ibid., 241.

4.

Times (London), 13 Nov. 1970.

15. Ibid., 242.

5.

Neiv York Times, 10 Dec. 1970.

136-38; L/Vera-

6.

Conversation with Zhores .Medvedev.

1970; and

7.

Conversation with Natalia Svetlova.

16.

.Medvedev, Ten

tumaya Gazeta,

14,

21,

Years,

28 Oct.

Medvedev sums up the arguments of the Soviet press very w ell but slightly confuses the dates on w hich the var-

8.

Oak, 305; and .Medvedev. Ten Years, 138.

9.

Oak, 285.

ious articles appeared.

11. Ibid., 311.

Pravda, 21 Oct. 1970.

17.

.Medvedev, Ten Years, 135.

18.

Labdedz, 244.

19.

Oak, 307.

10. Ibid., 317.

12. International

1971. 13.

Oak, 338.

Herald Tribune, 27 .Mar.

Notes

[lOI2] Unpublished

14.

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

author from

4. Ibid.

Jan. 1983.

1

Ibid.

5.

Nov.

1971.

15. Ibid.

6. Stern, 21

16. Ibid.

7.

Literaturnaya Gazeta, 12 Jan. 1972.

8.

Conversation with Dieter Steiner, 18

Oak, 310-11.

17.

May

18. Ibid., 321. 19. Ibid.,

313-14.

20. Ibid.,

320,

1977; and Steiner letter to Die Zeit,

Sept.

1

1972.

and note;

Carlisle,

159-

Medvedev, Ten

9.

Years, 173.

10.

Conversation with Solzhenitsyn.

Alberti, 25 Oct. 1978.

11.

Oak, 508.

21.

New

12.

Zhores Medvedev

22.

"Panorama" interview

23.

Conversation with Maria Rozanova.

60, 164-67;

and

letter to the

author from Irina

York Times, 14 Apr. 1971. transcript.

25. Newsweek, 19 July 197 6;

and Die

Zeit,

and

29 Oct. 1971.

'f/we.f

Conversation with Per Hegge; and

27.

Conversation with Michael Gienny.

(New

28.

Neue

Times,

Zilrcher Zeitung, 22 Sept. 1971.

29. August, afterword to the

in

The

An

Russian edi-

3

15.

18.

3.

Conversation with Veronica Stein.

Gorlov,

Apr. 1972; and Washington

Gorlov's adventures

152;

The is

New

Post, 3

York

Apr.

Smith, 421. excerpts from the interview are

New

York Times,

Apr. 1972.

3

Smith, 424.

19. Kaiser, 435.

Sluchai na dache

20. Oak, 513. 21. Ibid., 332.

(Paris, 1977), 9. 12.

(Sew

16. Kaiser, 432.

Chapter 40

(Dacha Incident)

based on Oak,

York, 1976 and 1977), 428-33;

quoted from the

and A. M. Gorlov,

is

1972.

English translation can

Labedz, 260-61.

2. Ibid.;

also

418-24; Robert Kaiser, Russia

1976),

17. All

1.

following account

331, 503-14; Hedrick Smith, The Russians

York,

(London), 13 Oct. 1971.

be found

is

9-10.

Feifer, 14.

tion (Paris, 1971).

It

York

quoted, in English, in the introduction to Burg

24. Oak, 315.

26.

New

in the

Review of Books, 19 July 1973. 1971. 13. Die Zeit, 24 Dec.

following story of

22.

based on his book.

Medvedev, Ten Years, Nov. 1971.

179.

23. Stern, 21

4.

Oak, 497-98.

24. Literaturnaya Gazeta, 12 Jan. 1972.

5.

Gorlov, 24-25.

25. Ibid., 23 Feb. 1972.

6.

Ibid., 43.

26. Oak, 329.

7.

Oak, 339.

8.

Labedz, 300-302; Medvedev, Ten

27. Ibid., 327. 28. Ibid.,

Years,

and conversation with Per Hegge. 9.

New

10.

York Times, 17 Sept. 1971.

"To

(London), 20 Oct. 1971.

mentaiy Materials (Belmont, Mass., 1973), 47278.

13.

and Oak, 328. Oak, 500-502.

14.

.VIedvedev, Ten Years, 161-63.

no. 103 (1972).

15. Ibid.,

Pimen of Russia," trans. Dunlop et al., eds.,

Alexis Klimoff, in John

Ibid.;

12.

329-30.

Patriarch

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Docu-

Oak, 500.

11. r/wfj-

29.

30. Vestnik

163-66.

RSKhD (YMCA

Herald)

(Paris),

31. Ibid.

16.

Lakshin, 84-85.

32. Ibid., no.

17.

Oak, 499.

33. "Letter to a Friend," in

18.

Medvedev, Ten

Years, 169.

skoye Slovo

(New

98(1970).

Russian Word)

Novoye Rus-

(New

York),

9 Aug. 1972. 34. Vestnik

Chapter 41 1.

Unpublished

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskava,

I

author from

Jan. 1983.

2.

Ibid.

3.

Solzhenitsvn inter\iew.

RSKhD,

no. 103(1972), 150.

35.

Novoye Russkoye Slovo, 9 Aug. 1972.

36.

Oak,H9,

356, 367, 379.

.

.

Notes

lonl

I

33. Ibid.

Chapter 42

34. Ibid.

1.

Oak, 330, 334.

2.

"Nohel Lecture,"

Alexis

trans.

Kli-

Chapter 43

nioff, in Aleksandr Solzhetiilsyii: (j-itkal Essays,

483-97.

4. Ibid., 515. 5.

Ibid., 333.

6.

TrW

2. Ibid.,

(Labour), 7 Apr. 1972; and

I.ite-

7.

Medvedev, Ten

Literaturnaya Gazeta, 12 Apr. 1972.

Years,

5.

"Panorama" interview

Medvedev, Ten

Apr. 1972.

10.

Medvedev, Ten

11.

Veche,

no.

Years,

in Samizdat Archive,

transcript, p. 12.

Years, 156.

7.

Oak, 111.

8.

Michael Glennv quoted

187-88.

May 1971), reprono. AS 1020 (12 Jan.

(19

2

Years, 157.

6.

9.

Bernard Williams

13.

1971), in Samizdat

(Jan.

1

AS1013 (11 Sept. 1972). Quoted in .Mikhail Heifetz, Vremia

10.

(A Time and

a Place),

i

unpublished chap-

14. Ibid.

Veche, no.

15.

dat Archive, no.

4 (31 Jan. 1972), in Samiz-

ASl

140 (28 .Mar. 1973).

ries,

World (yiew York), 26 Sept. 1972.

12.

Saturday Reviev:, 16 Sept. 1972.

13.

Conversation

May 1972), in SamizASI230(18 May 1973).

18. Veche, no. 5 (25

19.

14.

Oak, 371-73.

15.

See Edward Kuznetsov, Prison Dia-

Howard

trans.

Spier (London and

a detailed

ingrad "hijacking" and

17. Heifetz.

Smith and Kaiser did not reproduce in their newspaper articles or

comment

own

X'ladimir Maxi-

v\ith

16 Dec. 1980.

York, 1975), for

16. Ibid.

dat Archive, no.

Nev: York Times, 6 Sept. 1972.

11.

mov,

ters.

16.

its

consequences.

Joshua Rubenstein,

Soviet Dissidents

(Boston, 1980), 174. 17.

New

York Times, 9 Feb.

18.

Rubenstein, 187-88.

19.

The Press on

in the

appendix to Oak, 512. Conversation

Medvedev

\\

Veronica Stein; and

ith

(Paris), 3

in Nev: York Revieiv of Books, 17

20. Chronicle of Current Events, no. 29 (31

May

21. Oak, 373.

22. Ibid., 373-75.

MysF

Aug. 1972.

was published

in

Thought)

23. Ibid., 335.

abridged translation

24. Ibid., 336,

(Russian

An

26. Kaiser, 426.

23. Xeii- York Times,

Apr. 1972.

3

27. Oak, 515.

24. Ibid., 11

Dec. 1972.

25. Ibid., 21

Dec. 1972.

26. Ibid., 18

Dec. 1972.

lished. It

27. Ibid., 21

Dec. 1972.

mov

28. Kaiser, 437. 29.

32.

32.

Mar. 1973.

Unpublished

letter to the

Natalia Reshetovskaya,

1

text of the letter

was shown

was never pubby Maxi-

to the author

Dec. 1980.

31. Ibid., 521.

9 Mar. 1973.

31. Ibid., 28

in

The

30. Oak, 343.

8Jan. 1973.

29. Ibid., 26 Feb. 1973. 30. Ibid.,

339-40.

25. Ibid., 340-41.

the Sev: York Times Book

Reviev:, 17 Sept. 1972.

28. Ibid.,

(.Moscow,

July 1973).

and 19 July 1973. 22. Russkaya

Solzhenitsyn

1972).

20. Conversation with Dimitri Panin. 1

1972; and

.Medvedev, Ten Years, 170.

text of

books, but Solzhenitsyn sent his

New

account of the Len-

the interview to the West and later reprinted

2

Guardian (Lon-

in

don), 21 Sept. 1972.

12. Veche, no.

it

in the Sev: York

Times Book Reviev:, 24 Sept. 1972.

Archive, no.

this

(Paris,

43-48.

.Medvedev, Ten

3.

182-89.

1972).

mesto

na rodine

4. Ibid.

8.

9. Ibid., 19

chit ay ut

Homeland)

in the

1973), 8.

raturnaya Rossia, 7 Apr. 1972.

duced

Avgust chetyrnadtsatogo

1

(Reading August 191-i

Oak, 332.

3.

Con\ersation

with

Andrei

Sinvav-

sky.

author from

Dec. 1982.

33. Interview

with

AP

and Le Monde, 23

.\ug. 1973. Reprinted in Oak, 521.

.

Notes

[IOI4] 34. Ibid., 342, 406. 35. SikhsLTOv, Sakharo-i Speaks,

166-78.

386-87.

26. Ibid.,

530-31.

27. Times (London), 29

36. Ibid., 191.

204-5.

37. Ibid.,

25. Ibid.,

Quoted

28.

38. Oak. 515.

29. r/we.f (London),

39. Ibid., 345.

30.

40. Ibid., 517-27.

31. Ibid..

41. Ibid., 529.

32. Ibid., 170.

42. Rubenstein, 142-45.

33.

Chukovskava,

and 4 Jan. 1974.

3

Protsess, 140.

141-43.

York Times,

.\>'^-

Dec. 1973.

in Oak, 389.

and 14 Jan. 1974.

11

43. Oak, 522.

Chapter 45

44. Xezi- York Times, 31 .\ug. 1973. 45. Smith, 3^2.

Literatumaya Gazeta, 16 Jan. 1974.

1.

46. Ibid., 309-10. 2.

Washington Post, 16 Jan. 1974.

3.

Oak, 390-91.

47. Ibid., 451. 48. Ibid., 452.

Times (London); and Sen- York Times,

5.

and Index on

50. Oak, 354;

Censorship,

1,

25 Jan. 1974.

no. 4 (Winter 1973).

Times (London), 25 Jan. and 10 Feb.

6.

51. Oak, 524.

1974; and Oa/t, 535.

52. Ibid., 342. 7.

Private information.

8.

Unpublished

53. Christian Science Monitor, 13 Sept. 1973.

7/w« (London),

54.

532-34.

4. Ibid.,

49. Ibid., 451.

22 Sept. 1973.

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16 .May 1982.

55. First Circle, chap. 57. 9.

Seii York Times, 4 Feb. 1974.

10. Christian Scietice

Chapter 44

1

Unpublished

1

Monitor. 31 Jan. 1974.

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16 .May 1982. 1.

Oak, 312-14.

2.

Carlisle, 173.

3.

Ibid.,

Oak, 320n.

5.

CarHsle, 179.

6.

Oak, 530.

7. Ibid..

348;

Skvoz' chad,

Skz-ozchad, 59-60.

9.

59-60; and

Oak, 349.

Feb. 1974.

unpublished

chap-

537-38.

Times {London), 13 Feb. 1974.

17.

unaltered text

is

Hilary

A copy of the orig-

in the author's posses-

sion.

August, chap. 25.

19.

Oak, 409. This account of Solzheni-

tsvn's arrest follows the

360-61.

14. Ibid.,

363-66.

self ibid.,

one he has given him-

409-43.

20. Pravda, 14 Feb. 1974.

Reshetovskaya,

and unpublished

unpublished

chap-

letter to the author, 16

.May 1982.

21. Oak, 538. 22. Seii- York Times, 14 Feb. 1974.

23. Washington Post, 14 Feb. 1974.

Unpublished

letter to the

author from

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 16 .May 1982. 17.

Oak, 396.

inal,

13. Ibid.,

f/?>f«w

15.

5

18. Letter to the So-iiet Leaders, trans.

12. Oa):, 360.

16.

Reshetovskava,

Sternberg (London, 1975).

10. Ibid.

ters,

14.

16. Ibid.,

8.

15.

Le Figaro,

ters.

conversation with Efim Etkind.

1.

Oak, 536.

13.

176-78.

4.

1

12.

Lvdia Chukovskava.

Protsess

isklyii-

(Process of Exclusion) (Paris, 1979), 133.

18. Ibid., 134. 19. Private

24. Ibid.;

and

\ezi-

25.

.\>-^-

26.

Der

York Times, 14 Feb. 1974.

Spiegel, 12

Feb. 1974; and conver-

sation with Heinrich Boll

information.

York Times, 14 Feb.

1974.

11

.

La Fiera

3

Letteraria,

Jan. 1976.

24 Feb. 1974.

20. Oak, 403. 21. Ibid.. 530.

Chapter 46

22. Ibid., 375-77. 23.

Chukovskava,

24. Oak,

383-84.

Protsess, 135.

1.

\eii'

Feb. 1974.

York Times And Washington Post, 14

.

.

Notes

[1015]

2.

Conversation with Heinrich

3.

(conversation with Per Flcgge.

4.

New

4.

Conversation with Janis Sapicts, 26

5.

Solzhenitsyn's preface was restored

Biill.

Nov. 1982.

York Times, 4 Mar. 1974.

5.

Kaiser, 434.

6.

Washington Post,

6.

Oak, 45

7.

Available

7.

Conversation with

8.

Press conference in Stockholm, 12 Dec.

1

[)r

\

kch.

3

June 7Vwe.f

9.

New

8.

Apr. 1974. P.nglish-language

York Times, 15 Mar. 1974.

New

10.

1975).

York Times, 15 Mar. 1974.

195-97.

11. Carlisle,

Solzhenitsvn interview with Walter

12.

Sun, 19 Feb. 1974; and Rus-

skayaMysV, 28 Feb. 1974.

Monitor, 8 Mar. 1974.

9. (Christian Science

(London), 17 Feb. 1974.

10. Baltimore

2

the

in

anthology Kontinent (Garden (jty, N.Y., 1976).

Olgin (Radio Liberty Research Supple-

ment,

"CBS News

Cronkite,

Special Report: Sol-

zhenitsvn," 24 June 1974.

11.

Reuter dispatch, 19 Feb. 1974.

13.

Times (London), 6 Apr. 1974.

12.

Conversation with Nikita Struve, 9

14.

Baltimore Sun, 27 Apr. 1974.

Dec. 1980.

15.

Washington Post, 28 Apr. 1974.

13.

Conversation with \ ictor Sparre.

16.

Oonkite

14.

Victor Sparre, The Flame

17.

See Stephen

ness, trans.

Alwvn and Dermot

in the

Dark-

.VlcKav (Lon-

Times Book Review

don, 1979), 36-37. 15.

in

later editions of the Letter.

1974, trans. Christopher Barnes and Constantin

Letter to the Soviet Leaders.

3

,

16

F.

Cohen

in

New

York

June 1974.

Fdward Oankshaw

18.

Conversations with Per Hegge and

interview.

in Observer

(Yon-

don), 30 June 1974.

with Victor Sparre.

19.

New

Sparre, 42.

20.

17.

Press conference in Stockholm.

2

Sunday Times (hondon), 17 Feb. 1974. Conversation with Nikita Struve.

18.

Conversation with Victor Sparre.

22. Sparre,

19.

Conversation

16.

mer,

2

May

20.

Sigmund Wid-

with

York Times, 28 Mar. 1974.

21. Ibid., 30

24.

La Fiera

23. Washington Post

author's

and Baltimore Sun,

15

MysF

25. Golos rodiny (Voice of the

are based on the

the Stapferstrasse, in Sept.

1974.

Conversation with Natalia Svetlova.

13 (Feb.

1974).

Motherland)

An

abridged

Chapter 48

version appeared in the Literaturnaya (iazeta,

1.

20 Feb. 1974.

2.

Unpublished

3.

Oonkite

26. Krokodil (Crr)Codiie)

(Moscow ),

7 .Mar.

1974. 27. Baltimore Sun, 15 Feb. 1974. 28.

Chukovskaya,

29.

New

ProZ-Vdw,

Not bv

Conversation with Sigmund Widmer.

Lies) (Paris, 1974),

160-

65.

(Youth) (.Moscow),

18

Levy, 12-13.

5.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "Otryvki

(F.xtracts

7Mt' nepo

Izhi, 103.

iz

literatumoi zhizni'

iz "

from the Second Volume of ".Mem-

oirs of Literary Life"), in Vestnik RKhl), no.

Feb.

1974.

32. Ibid.,

by Alan Levy.

4.

137 (1982), 120-30. 30. Yunost

article

interview.

vtorogo toma 'Ocherkov

170.

York Times, 18 Feb. 1974; and Zhit'

Izhi (Live

31.

24 Feb. 1974.

18 Apr. 1974.

,

York Times, 16 ^'eb. 1974.

(Moscow), no.

nepo

Feb. 1974.

Letteraria,

first visit to

27.

New

41-42.

Spiegel, 12

These impressions

26.

Mar. 1974.

Feb. 1974. 24.

Der

25. Russkaya

Mar. 1974.

22. Times (hondon), 30

.

23.

1980.

^ew

1

York Review of Books, 21 .Mar. 1974.

I.e., a

continuation oi Oak.

Sigmund U'idmer.

6.

Conversation

7.

Conversation with Petr Pasek, 28 ,\pr.

v\

ith

1980.

194-98.

8.

New

9.

Conversation with Oskar Krause, 26

York Times, 17 Feb. 1974.

Apr. 1980. 10. Ibid.

Chapter 47 11. 1.

7Mt" ne poVzhi, 174 and 192.

on

2.

Sparre, 49.

de plume.

a

A. Lidin, Trpaslik na

Swing) (Cologne,

hotipacce

1973). Lidin

(Dwarf a nom

was

..

..

Notes

[ioi6] 12.

Conversation with Oskar Krause.

13.

Conversation with Petr Pasek.

14.

Conversations with Oskar Krause and

with Petr Pasek. 15.

Cronkite interviev\

16.

Time, 11

17.

New

May

Alexander

5.

34

(.31

,\.

Solzhenitsvn,

"Iz

32-

1974),

I.

Sol-

Conference with Madrid

Press

Correspondents) (20 Mar. 1976),

19. Heifetz.

press-

Solzhenitsvna korrespon-

I.

dentam .Madridskikh gazet" (From A. zhenitsvn's

(Mar. 1975).

20. The Last Circle (.Moscow,

in Kontinent,

no. 11 (1976). 6.

Conversation

v\ith Natalia Svetlova.

21. Reshetovskava, 84.

7.

Unpublished

article

22. Ibid.

8.

Le Monde, 12 Apr. 1975.

34.

9. Chronicle of

23. Solzhenitsvn interview.

Mar. 1975),

24. Cronkite interview 25.

Vladimir .Maxi-

Conversation with

mo v. 27. Vest II ik

RKhD,

28.

Conversation

29.

Conversation

1

Current Events, no. 35 (35

Med-

Zhores

Mysl\ 26 Sept. 1974.

Conversation with Natalia Svetlova.

32.

Roy Medvedev, quoted

in Washington

Abram

Tertz, "Literaturny protsess

"The

1

Trans-

(1974).

Literar\' Process in Russia," in

the English-language anthology Kontinent. 34.

incomplete in

RKhD, no. 114 (1974). An summary of these letters appeared

Le Monde, 12 Apr. 1975.

Dve press-konferentsii

(Two

:

k sbornikii ''Iz-pod

Press (Conferences:

ogv From under

The

.\nthol-

36. Gulag, vol.

1,

pt.

Sapiets,

1,

chap.

"Conversation

with

November 1974," BBC CARIS Report, no. 16/74;

External Services,

reprinted in Encounter, .Mar. 1975, pp. 67-72.

"Does Russia Have

39. Igor Shafarevich, in

Washington Post, 7 June 1975.

16. Ibid.

New

17.

York Times, 17 June 1975.

Shragin

18. Boris

of Books, 26

.\FL-CIO

19.

in .Alexander

(New AFL-CIO

New

tsvn's

From under

the Rubble, 294. Sol-

Reprinted in

transcript

New

York Times,

24.

NBC

1

transcript of

"Meet the Press"

Stockholm Press Conference.

York Times,

16july 1975,

sess.,

New

Aug. 1975.

July 1975. transcript.

Chapter 49 3

Times,

p.

1

1st

July 1975.

Christian Science Monitor

1

Cong.,

22959.

York Times, 17 July 1975.

30. Ibid., 22

.\lexander Solzhenitsvn, "Interviu na

3

28. Congressional Record, 94th

29.

1.

"Meet the Press,"

vol. 19, no. 28.

27.

42.

July 1975.

1

lOJuly 1975.

New

Dec. 1974.

1975.

Conversation with Raissa Scriabine.

1

22.

26. 1

Solzheni-

of

York speech, 9 July Warning to the West.

25. Saturday Review, 23

1

1975.

York, 1976).

ing directly.

41. Solzhenitsvn interview.

Solzheni-

30 June

Solzhenitsyn, Warn-

zhenitsvn was paraphrasing rather than quot-

40. Washington Post,

York Review

of

transcript

Washington speech,

tsvn's

2

New

in the

June 1975.

23. Ibid.,

38. Ibid.

5

8 Feb. 1980.

20.

2.

Solzhenitsyn on 17

Future?"

Conversation with Raissa Scriabine,

ing to the West

35. Ibid.

37. Janis

Montreal Gazette,

14.

Reprinted

the Rubble) (Paris, 1975).

.May 1975.

13.

15.

24 Sept. 1974.

v Rossii," in Kontinent, no.

glyb"

in

Vestnik

11.

v\ith Dimitri Panin.

31.

lated as

appeared

12. Encounter, Sept. 1975.

30. Russkaya

33.

letter

York Times, 6 .Mar. 1975.

(1974).

vedev.

Post,

An New

Novoye Russkoye Slovo, 6 Mar. 1975.

10.

nos. 112-3(1974).

with

by Alan Levy.

p. 150.

abridged version of the 26. Kontinent (Pins), no.

a

Ibid.

Conversation with Dr Heeb, 29 Apr.

konferentsii

18. Chronicle of Current Events, nos. 3.5

3.

4.

1980.

1974.

York Times, 17 Mar. 1974.

Dec. 1974) and

Conversation with Paul Fritz, 30 Apr.

2.

1980.

and New York

.\ug. 1975.

literaturniye temy s N. A. Struve" (Interviewon Literary Topics with N. A. Struve) (Mar.

32. Vestnik

1976), in VeslnikRKhD, no. 120(1977).

34.

RKhD,

no. 116(1975).

33. Ibid., no. 117(1976).

Oak, 182.

,

.

!

..

1

Notes 36. \ alentina

Tvardovskava, "Open Let-

ter to Solzhenitsvn," printed in cast

/-'oreiirn

liroad-

Borisu Suvarinu"

Rov Medvedev,

(Not-

,

and^'SovyMir"

Tvardovsky,

rechi" (Spanish Speeches), Kontinent, no.

plement), 19-28.

165-83.

29. Guardian, 21 .Mar. 1976.

40. Lakshin, 75.

(Confederation of Free

30. International

41. Ibid., 58.

Trade Unions, press

release, 25 .Mar. 1976.

31. Kontinent, no. 11 (1976),

Chapter 50

32. Ibid., no. 8 (1976),

Leonard Schapiro Nov. 1975.

1

1

Sup-

(1977), Spetsial'noye prilozheniye (Speciil

15, 20, 27, 58, 66.

39. Zilberberg,

"Ispanskoye

Kontinent. no.

),

28. .\lexander Solzhenitsyn, "Ispanskiye

Lakshin quotations are from Lak-

shin, Solzhenitsyn

10-11,

interv'iu" (Spanish Interview

8(1976), 429-40.

tingham, 1976), 110-20. 38. All

Letter to Boris Souva-

27. .Alexander Solzhenitsyn,

Political Essays

"Pis'mo

Solzhenitsyn, (.\

i(»i 7]

RKhl), no. 131 (1980).

rine), Vestntk

Information Service, 16 July 1975. 37.

.Mexander

26.

Solzhenitsvn interview.

35.

I

in

New

19-28.

33. Ibid., no. 11 (1976),

York Review

19-28.

429-40.

of Books, 13

2. Patricia

Blake in Time, 26 Oct. 1975. chap.

3.

Gulag, vol.

4.

Schapiro.

5.

Washington Post, 6 Dec. 1975; and

2, pt. 4,

Chapter

Sew

York Times, 10 Dec. 1975. 6.

Conversation

and

7. Ibid.;

\\

5

1.

1.

Pravda, 24 and 30 .Mar. 1976.

2.

Literaturnaya Gazeta, 17 .Mar. 1976.

3.

International Herald Tribune,

Observer, 29 Feb. 1976.

photocopv of

4. .\

8.

Conversation with Janis Sapiets.

published in facsimile

9.

"Panorama" interview transcript. Times and Guardian, 2 Mar. 1976;

burg), 15 Feb. 1978.

10.

Observer, 29 Feb. 1976; Sunday Telegraph, 7

Mar.

this letter

May

12.

Untitled speech,

Mar. 1976; reprinted 13. Times, 14.

in

BBC

Radio

Warning

3,

24

to the West.

29 Mar. 1976.

Mar. 1976, transcript; and

Z.f

ORTF,

J/oWf,

9

11 .Mar.

had

and

Hoover

2

(Apr. 1977).

w hich book Solzhenitsyn was probably Orlov's essay

not clear

7.

It is

in

mind. li

It

netotalitarny sotsializm? (Is a

15.

VestnikRKhD, no. 120(1977).

totalitarian Socialism Possible?)

16.

LeSoir, 12 .Mar. 1976.

1976).

17. Baltimore

Sun, 12 Mar. 1976.

18.

VestnikRKhD, no. 120(1977).

19.

"The Book Programme," BBC

Solzhenitsyn Speaks at the Hoover Institu-

TX

9.

Washington Post, 18 Sept. 1976.

Rutland Herald,

transcript.

1 1

Reported

H. T. Willets

(London, 1976), 178-85. tran-

VestnikRKhD, no. 120(1977).

24. Est et Ouest, no. 570 (Apr. 1976). .\n

25.

Alexander g.

York Times,

in

3

Feb.

Solzhenitsvn,

Mr

1

1

Feb. 1977.

.Mar. 1977.

er Solsjenitsyn ?

Midstream (New York), no. 6 (June-

July 1977). 17.

Roman Rutman,

"Solzhenitsyn and

the Jewish Question," in Soviet Jewish Affairs

1977).

Suvarina" (On

Monitor,

Washington Post,

Hvem

5

16.

abridged version was published in English

mentakh

13. Christian Science

1

23. Ibid.

(Summer

Mar. 1977.

1

New

1977.

14.

Dissent, no. 108

in the

12. Ibid.

"Book Programme" interxieu

script.

22.

NonYork,

8.

10.

21.

(New

tion.

"Interview with Solzhenitsvn," 27 Apr. 1976,

20. Lenin in Zurich, trans.

Institu-

1

Review 36, no.

Vozmozhen

1976.

and

1976;

June 1976) (brochure published bv the Hoover Institution, Stanford, 1976). The first speech was published in Rus-

sian

"Les Dossiers de I'Ecran,"

May

tion (24

Society, 11 .Vlar. 1976.

later

(Ham-

1976.

6. Solzhenitsyn Speaks at the

New

was

Politik

20 .May

Washington Post,

5.

Neue

in

Novoye Russkoye Slovo, 23

1976. 11.

8-9 Mar.

1975.

ith Janis Sapiets.

"O

trag-

Souvarine's

Fragments), VestnikRKhD, no. 132 (1980).

4, no.

2(1974).

18. Svirski,

19.

New

180-81.

York Times, 23 Jan. 1977.

.

Notes

[ioi8] 20.

Nicholas

Victims

(London, 1977). Published

{New

Secret Betrayal

Last

3.

New

4.

Ibid.,4june 1977.

Yalta

5.

Conversation with Sigmund Widmer.

as The

6.

Times (London), 22 Feb. 1978.

7.

Conversation with Sigmund Widmer.

Secret

1974).

Tolstoy,

21. Nikolai

The

Bethell,

New York,

(Lxjndon and

in

of

America

York, 1978).

22. Times (London), 19

Mar. 1978.

23. Washington Post, 2 Sept. 1976. 24.

New

25.

Alexander Solzhenitsvn,

Apart, trans. Irina Alberti

(New

World

27.

Commonweal,

28.

New

1

10.

Washington Post,

1

1

1 1

and

June 1978;

13

29. Washington Post, 25

12.

1

14.

15.

June 1978.

the

Moura Budberg (London,

Quoted by

.\lain

Tomas

Feb. 1978.

Rezac, Spiral' izmeny Solzheni-

Other

Russkaya Mysl\ 26 Oct. 1978.

16.

Rezac, 3-4.

17.

Bildam Sonntag,

18.

Skvoz' chad.

2

Apr. 1978.

19. Ibid.

1956).

20.

Besangon in Commentaire (Paris), no. 4 (Winter 1978-79); reprinted as "Solzhenitsyn at Harvard," in Survey, no. 106

(The

(Winter 1979), 133-44.

tracts);

N. N. Yakovlev, TsRU

CIA

33. Solzhenitsyn at

Harvard: The Address,

Responses,

and

Six

Reflections

21. Los Angeles

reprinted in

full in Russia, 1,

22.

Unpublished

letter to

Natalia Reshetovskaya, 19

SSSR

no. 2 (1981).

the author from

May

23. Solzhenitsyn interview.

(Washington, D.C., 1980).

24. Ibid. 25. Private information.

Chapter 52 1.

Solzhenitsyn interview.

2.

Conversation with Claude Durand,

Dec. 1980.

protiv

USSR) (xMoscow, 1980). Times, 22 May 1980 (ex-

against the

(1981).

32. Ibid.

Early

1980; and

Nov. 1980.

tsyna (The Spiral of Solzhenitsyn's Betrayal) (Moscow, 1978).

Humanist (Schenectady), Nov. -Dec.

Shore, trans.

Twelve

320n.

York Times, 25 Oct.

13. NeuePolitik, 15

June 1978;

Christian Science

Alexander Herzen, From

New

Publishers Weekly, 21

1978. 3

Oak, 394.

11. Ibid.,

York, 1978).

Monitor, 12 June and 25 July 1978.

30.

Washington Post, 19 Sept. 1978. .^P news agency dispatch.

Sept. 1978.

York Times,

Mar. 1976.

8.

Split

26. National Review, 15 Sept. 1978.

5

9.

York Daily News, 8 Feb. 1977. ^4

York Times,

26. Solzhenitsyn interview. 27. Ibid. 15

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

1982.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY No

attempt has been made here to be comprehensive. Apart from Solzheniworks in Russian, all the books listed are in English. For

tsyn's collected

fuller information, including a listing of articles and of sources in other languages, readers should consult Donald Fiene's Alexander Solzhenitsyn: An International Bibliography of Writings by and about Him (Ann Arbor: Ardis,

1973).

An

update of

zhenitsyn in 1976:

this material

A

can be found in Michael Nicholson's "Sol-

Bibliographical Reorientation," in the Russian Literature

Triquarterly, no. 143 (Winter 1976),

bringing out

zhenitsyn Studies, ter,

462-82. Since 1980, Nicholson has been

survey of literature by and about Solzhenitsyn, Solwhich is currently published by the University of Lancas-

a quarterly

England.

Works Sobranie sochinenii (Collected

Works)

most up-to-date and complete

bv the author.

A

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Russian). 11 vols. Paris:

YMCA

works

in print,

(in

collection of Solzhenits\n's

Girou.x, 1972. This

reissued

it

The new

in

is

a translation

in the

York: Farrar, Straus

Russian in two volumes instead of one

(vols. 10

and

1 1

of the Collected Works).

version has not yet appeared in English.

New

York: Farrar, Straus

&

2 vols.

London: Bodley Head,

Giroux, 1969.

The Cancer Ward. Translated bv Rebecca Frank. Candle

New

of the original text of the novel. In 1983 Solzhenitsyn

Cancer Ward. Translated bv Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.

1968-69;

The

further four volumes have been announced for 1985-86.

August 1914. Translated by Michael Glennv. London: Bodley Head;

&

Press, 1978-83.

checked and approved

New

York: Dial Press, 1968.

Wind. Translated bv Keith .\rmes, with .\rthur Hudgins. .Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota; London: Bodlev Head, 1973. Decembrists without December. Translated

by Helen Rapp and Nancy 1 homas. London: Bodley

Head, 1983.

1019

Select Bibliography

[io2o] The First

Translated by

Circle.

Thomas Whitney. New

A

of the original, 87-chapter version of the novel. is

&

York: Harper

Rou', 1968.

Translated by Michael Guvbon. London: Collins/Harvill, 1968. Both translations are

.

translation of the longer, 96-chapter version

said to be in preparation.

The Gulag Archipelago. Vol.

Thomas Whitney. New

Translated by

1.

York: Harper

&

Row;

London: Collins, 1974. Vol.

.

Translated by

2.

Thomas Whitney. New

& Row

York: Harper

London: Collins,

;

1975.

Vol.

-.

Translated by Harry Willetts.

3.

New

York: Harper

&

Row; London:

Collins,

1978.

Lenin in Zurich. Translated by H. T. Willetts. London: Bodlev Head; ik

A

New

York: Farrar, Straus

Giroux, 1976.

Lenten Letter

Pimen, Patriarch of All Russia. Translated bv Keith Armes. Minneapolis: Bur-

to

gess, 1972. Letter to

Soviet

the

The Love-Girl and

Translated by Hilary Sternberg.

Leaders.

New

ship/Fontana;

York: Index on Censorship/Harper

the Innocent.

& Row

London: Index on Censor1975.

,

Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg. London: Bodley

Head; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. This book as The Tenderfoot and the Tart.

is

the play referred to throughout this

The Mortal Danger: tloiv Misconceptions about Russia Imperil America. Translated

and Michael Nicholson.

New

York: Harper

& Row

b\'

Alexis Klimoff

1980. Contains Solzhenitsyn's article in

,

the spring 1980 issue oi Foreign Affairs and his reply to critics of that article.

The Oak and

Row, One Day

Translated by Harry Willetts. London: Collins;

the Calf.

New

York: Harper

&

1979. in the Life of

Ivan Denisovich. Translated by

Max Hay ward and Ronald

Hingley. New-

York: Praeger, 1963.

New York: Dutton, 1963. These are two others have been made since. Translated by Robert Conquest. London: Collins/Harvill; New York: Farrar,

Translated by Ralph Parker. London: GoUancz;

.

the

two

and best-known

first

Prussian Nights.

At

translations.

least

Straus Sc'Giroux, 1977. Stories rar,

and Prose Poems. Translated by Michael Glenny. London: Bodley Head; Straus

&

Giroux, 1971. Contains

two prose poems. There

at least

one alternative for each of the other

1983. Better

York: Far-

alternative translations of "Matryona's Place"

and

stories.

1 ranslated by Helen Rapp and Nancy Thomas. London: Bodley Head,

Victory Celebrations.

known under

New

Warning

to the West.

to the

AFL-CIO

World

Split Apart.

A

many

tion of

are

New

Solzhenitsyn's shorter prose works with the excep-

all

in

its

alternative title oi Feast of the Conquerors.

York: Farrar, Straus

Washington and

New

&

Giroux, 1976. Includes Solzhenitsyn's speeches

York

Translated by Irina Alberti.

in 1975.

New

York: Harper

& Row,

1978.

The

text of

Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address.

(With Mikhail Agursky, A.B., Evgeny Barabanov, Vadim Borisov, farevich).

From under

the Rubble.

Translated by A.

M. Brock,

F.

Korsakov, and Igor Sha-

Vlilada Haigh, Marita Sapiets,

Hilary Sternberg, and Harry Willetts, under the direction of Michael Scammell. Boston: Little,

Brown; London:

Collins, 1975.

Biographical Works Bjorkegren, Hans. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

Eneberg.

New

A

York: Third Press, 1972.

while Solzhenitsyn was

still

Biography. Translated

A

in the Soviet

from the Swedish by Kaarina

slender and not very informative essay published

Union. Quite good on the

literary politics of the

period.

Burg, David, and George Feifer. Solzhenitsyn. London: Hodder

&

Day, 1972. The

first

&

full-length biography of Solzhenitsyn

Stoughton;

New

and the best so

York: Stein far.

Because

Select Bibliography Solzhenitsvn was

Union when

in the Soviet

still

able shortage of facts but Carlisle, Olga. Solzhenitsyn

accurate as far as

is

and

the Secret (jrcle.

essav about the author's involvement

u

ith

it

[io2i|

was written,

suffers

it

from an understand-

goes.

it

New

York: Holt, Rinehart

&

V\ inston, 1978. .\n

Solzhenitsvn and intended to refute Solzhenitsyn's

charges of incompetence and material greed.

Good on

the conspiratorial side of Solzhenitsyn's

character.

Grazzini, Giovanni. Solzheiiitsyn. Translated from the Italian by Fxic .\losbacher. London: .Michael

A

Joseph, 1973.

biographical sketch.

My Sorroivs.

Kopelev, Lev. Ease 1983.

Vdume

sharashka

Translated by Antonina

W.

New York: Random House,

Bouis.

of Kopelev's memoirs, dealing mainlv with his imprisonment in the .\Iarfino

3

and containing much valuable information about Solzhenitsyn's stay there and

his

friendship with kopelev.

and ".Vovy .!/;>." Translated and edited by .Michael .MIT Press, 1980. .\ translation of Lakshin's critique of Oa^, with some additional information on Tvardovsky and Sovy Mir by Linda .\ld\\ inckle and .Mary Chafhn. .Medvedev, Zhores. Ten Years after Ivan Denisovkh. Translated by Hilary Sternberg. London: Lakshin, Vladimir.

Soizheiiitsyn, Tvardoi'sky,

Glennv. Cambridge,

Macmillan, 1973;

and tribulations

.Mass.:

New

York: Knopf, 1974.

in the Soviet

A

sympathetic account of Solzhenitsyn's

Union from 1963

to 1973

bv an

trials

insider personally acquainted

with most of the protagonists. Panin, Dimitri. TheSotebooksofSologdin. Translated bv John .Moore. London: Hutchinson; New-

York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Panin's reminiscences of his

and camps, including the time he spent w Reshetovska\

a,

My Life

Natalia. Sanya:

ivith

ith

memoirs of Solzhenitsyn's

Soviet prisons

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Translated by Elena hanoff.

The

Indianapolis: Bobbs-.Merrill, 1975; London: Hart-Davis, 1977. tiously edited

lite in

Solzhenits\ n in the sharashka and at Ekibastuz.

first \\ ife,

w hich

heavily cut and tenden-

nevertheless contain a lot of inter-

esting detail about Solzhenitsyn's domestic and personal affairs. Solzhenitsyn:

phy.

New

A

Pictorial Record.

York:

from childhood

P'arrar,

to the

London: Bodley Head, 1974.

Straus

&

A

Solzhenitsyn:

Pictorial Autobiogra-

Giroux, 1974. \x\ album of photographs of Solzhenitsyn

time of his second marriage, selected bv the author.

Literary .and Specialist Studies Barker, Francis. Solzhenitsyn:

New

and Form. London: .Macmillan;

Politics

^'ork:

Barnes

& Noble,

1977.

Carter, Stephen. The Politics of Solzhenitsyn.

New

York:

Holmes

&

.Meier;

London: .Macmillan,

1977.

Dunlop, John, Richard Haugh, and Alexis Klimoff, eds. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary .Materials. 2d ed. New York: .Macmillan; London: Collier .Macmillan, 19"5. Ericson, Edward E. Solzhenitsyn: The .Moral Vision. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980. Feuer, Kathrvn, ed. Solzhenitsyn:

A

Collection of Critical Essays.

Englewood

Cliffs. N.J.: Prentice-

Hall, 1976'

Kodjak, Andrej. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Boston: Twayne, 1978. nitsyn's

main

literary

Krasnov, Vladislav. Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: sity

.\

short critical study of Solzhe-

works.

A

Study

in the

Polyphonic \o-vel. Athens: Lniver-

of Georgia Press, 1980.

Labedz, Leopold, ed. Solzhenitsyn:

A

Documentaiy Record. Enl. ed. Bloomington: Indiana Lni-

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,

versitv Press, 1973;

Lukacs, Georg. Solzhenitsyn. Translated from the .Merlin Press, 1970;

Cambridge,

.Mass.:

.MIT

1974.

German by William David

Press, 1971.

Two

critical

Grat. London:

essays on Solzheni-

tsyn's relation to socialist realism.

Moody, Christopher. Noble, 1976. best to date.

A

Solzhenitsyn.

2d ed.

rev. Exiinburgh: Oliver

&

Boyd; New York: Barnes & up to August 1914, the

short critical study of Solzhenitsyn's literary works

,

Select Bibliography

[io22]

Thomas Nelson,

Nielsen, Niels Christian. Soizhenitsyns Religion. Nashville:

Mowbray, 1976. Rothberg, Abraham. 1971.

A

1975; London:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Major Xovels. Ithaca: Cornell Lniversit\' Press,

superficial examination of Ivan Denisozich, Cancer

Ward, and

First Circle.

Rzhevskv, Leonid. Solzhenitsyn: Creator and Heroic Deed. Translated by Sonja Miller. University: University of Alabama Press, 1978. An interesting study of Solzhenitsyn's literary works by a

Russian

critic living in

the United States.

Berman, Ronald, et al. Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Tv:elve Early Reflections. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1980.

Responses,

and Six Later

General Background .\llan,

James. So Citation. London: .\ngus

man's incarceration

&

Robertson,

19.>5.

Absorbing account of an English-

Lubvanka during the Second World

in the

on suspicion of being

\\ ar

a

spy.

Amalrik, Andrei. Sotes of a Revolutionary. Translated by don: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982.

Guy

Daniels.

New

York: Knopf; Lon-

Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? Rev. and enl. ed. Translated by Peter Redda-

.

way, edited by Hilary Sternberg. London: Pelican Books, 1980;

New

York: Harper

& Row

1981.

Brumberg, Abraham, ed. In Quest ofJustice. New York: Praeger; London: Pall .Mall, 1970. Bukovskv, \ ladimir. To Build a Castle. Translated b\' .Michael Scammell. London: Deutsch;

New

York: \'iking Press, 1978.

Chamberlin,

W. H.

New

The Russian Revolution. 2 vols.

York: Grossett

Conquest, Robert. Courage of Genius. London: Collins/Harvill, 1961.

A

&

Dunlap, 1965.

history of the "Pasternak

affair."

The Great Terror. London and

.

Dallin, David,

New

York: Macmillan, 1968.

and Boris Nicolae\skv. Forced Labor

in Soviet Russia.

New

Haven: Yale University

Press, 1947.

Etkind, Efim.

New

York:

Press, 1978.

Gorbanevskaya, Natalia. Red Square

New

Translated by Peter France. O.xford and

.\otes of a Son-conspirator.

Oxford University

York: Holt, Rinehart

&

at Soon. Translated

by Alexander Lieven. London: Deutsch;

Winston, 1972.

Grigorenko, Petr. The Grigorenko Papers. Translated by A. Knight, .Marita Sapiets, and Peter

Reddaway. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1976. Hayward, .Max, ed. and trans. On Trial. London: Harvill; New York: Harper & Row 1967. A translation of .\lexander Ginzburg's "White Book" on the 1966 trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky. Hayward, Max, and Edward L. Crowley, eds. Soviet Literature in the Sixties. New York: Praeger, ,

1964;

London; .Methuen, 1965. Priscilla. Khrushchev and

Johnson,

Kaiser, Robert. Russia.

New

Kuznetsov, Edward. Prison

New

York: Stein

Lapenna,

&

the Arts.

Cambridge, Mass.: .MIT Press, 1965. & Warburg, 1977.

York: Atheneum, 1976; London: Seeker

Diaries.

Translated by

Howard

Spier.

London: Vallentine,

.Mitchell;

Day, 1975.

Ivo. Soviet Penal Policy.

London: Bodlev Head; Chester Springs,

Pa.:

Dufour, 1968.

Litvinov, Pavel, ed. The Demonstration in Pushkin Square. Translated by .Manva Harari. London: Harvill; Boston: ,

Gambit, 1969.

ed. The Trial of the Four. Translated b\' Janis Sapiets, Hilary Sternberg,

Weissbort. [London]: Longman;

New

and Daniel

York: \ iking Press, 1972. .Mall;

New

.Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. Translated by Colleen Taylor. London: .Macmillan; "

New

.Marchenko, .\natoly. .My Testimony. Translated by .Michael Scammell. London: Pall

York: Dutton, 1969. York: Knopf, 1971.

.Medvedev, Roy, and Zhores Medvedev.

London: .Macmillan;

New

A

Question of .Madness. Translated b\ Ellen de Kadt.

York: Knopf, 1971.

Sklect Hibliographv

[1023]

Medvedev, Zhores. The Medvedev Papers. Translated by Vera Rich, l^uiidun: Macniillan, 1971. Reddaway, Peter, ed. and trans. Uncensored Russia. London: Cape; New York: American Heritage Press, 1972. Based on nos. 1-11 of the Chronicle of Current Events. Rubenstein, Joshua. Soviet

Sakharo\ Times. .

,

Dissidents.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1980.

.\ndrei D. Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.

London: Deutsch;

New

Translated b\ (iuy Daniels et

Sakharov Speaks.

by the

.Xeiv

York

York: Knopf; London:

(Jol-

I'ransiated

York: Norton, 1968. al.

New

lins/Harviil, 1974.

Smith, Hedrick.

'The Russians.

Svirski, Grigori.

A

New

York: Quadrangle Books; London: Times Books, 1976.

History of Post-war Soviet Writing.

Translated and edited by Robert Dessai.x

and .Michael Ulman. .\nn Arbor: Ardis, 1981. 'Tatu, .Michel. Power in the Kremlin. Translated from the French by Llelen Katel.

New

^ork:

censorship has been exercised and

how

Viking Press, 1969.

For civil

a detailed

and human

account of

how

rights have been suppressed

to the present dav, readers

mav

like to

Current Events (Khronika tekushchikh

in the Soviet

Union from 1968

consult the incomparable Chronicle of 1-11 (covering the years

sobvtii). Issues

1968-69) form the substance of Peter Reddaway's book Uncensored Russia (see above). Issues 12-64 (the latest to appear to date) have been published in full in

an English translation by Amnesty International, London

(1

t^ston Street,

London WC1X8DJ). Other publications used the

numbered notes

as sources for this

to each chapter.

biography w

ill

be found in

1

INDEX

Abakumov,

Andreyev, Daniil, 246, 509 Andreyev, Leonid, 509, 582 Andreyev, Nikolai, 45 Andreyev, \'adim, 509-10, 582-83, 629 Andreveva, Alexandra Fvodorovna, 45-47,

\'ictor, 274, 473, 497, 501;;

Abashidze, Irakly, 597 Abdumomunov, Toktobolot, 597 Academv of Fine Arts, Soviet, 453, 461 Academy of Sciences, Soviet, 646, 807 Adamova-Sliozberg, Olga, 41 "Adenauer amnesty" (1^55), 351-52 Adzhubei, Alexei, 441

Andreveva Gymnasium, Rostov-on-Don, 30, 39, 45-47 Andropov, Yuri, 530, 740-41, 817 Andzieuski (Polish Bolshevik), 37 Anosov (passport official), 724-25, 743, 800 anti-Semitism, 28, 46, 669-70, 778, 795, 958-63 in slander campaign against Solzhenitsyn, 65-66, 958-59

"A.E.,"625

AFL-CIO, 871-72, 911-15,

918, 948

Aftetwosten (Oslo), 810, 896 Agafva's cottage, Solotcha, 488, 510, 612 Agitator s Sotehouk, An, 373 Agurskv, Mikhail, 793-94, 797, 871, 896, 960«,

963 aircraft industry, Soviet, 225

Aitmatov, Chingiz, 578, 807 Akhmadulina, Bella, 405, 556 Akhmatova, Anna, 326, 401, 440-41, 447-48, 484, 559 expulsion of, from Writers' Union, 403, 664 Akimov (prisoner), 195-96, 348 Alaskan Orthodox church, 91 1, 920 Alberti, Irina, 956, 976-77, 978« "Alexandrov, I.," 722 Alexei, Father (priest at St. Panteleimon's), 39 "Alien Hands" (Stein), 781-83 Allan, James, 152

Jorge, 404

Amalrik, Andrei, 619, 672, 697-98, 721-22, 798, 875 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 663 American Academy of Sciences, 809 Amnesty International, 900, 937, 957

Anand.'Mulk

Raj,

404

anarchists, 29

Stalinist, 361, 368, 473n Antokolsky, Pavel, 618 Appenzell, Switzerland, election at, 884 Arias, Carlos, 947 Arkhangorodskaya, Lyuba, 47 Arkhangorodsky, Alexander, 47-48, 57 ArmanJ, Inessa, 942 Armavir, 40, 43, 53, 68-69 Bolshevik fighting at, 32, 35, 36, 41 Solzhenitsvn's research trip to, 520-21 Arnau, Walter, 986 Aron, Raymond, 909-10, 917;; Arsenveva, Irina, 335 "As Breathing and Consciousness Return" (Solzhenitsyn). 667-68, "94, 798 "\. Solzhenitsyn and the Writer's Spiritual Mission" (Teiish), 483-85, 535-36, 538, 552, 621.

Aliiluyeva, Svetlana, 597, 624, 631 All-Russian Congress of Soviets (1917), 31 All-Russian Memoir Library, Cavendish, Vt., 96364, 977«, 979 All-Russian Writers' Association, 403 "Along the Oka" (Solzhenitsyn), 381 "alphaoet articles" (categories of crime), 177, 183

Amado,

56, 71,

731

22

Associated Press, 806, 810,851 atom-spy project (Ivanov spy case), 262-63, 265, 496-97, 499 August 1914 (Solzhenitsyn), 27-29, 85, 195, 67677, 729-36, 787-93 allegorical content ascribed to, 763-64 battle scenes in, 139, 730-31, 791 Jewish character in, 961, 963 language and literary devices in, 789-90, 792 Lenin portrayed in, 682, 813 as literary "knot," 7 30, 942

Andersen, Erik Arvid, 273-75

patriotism

1025

theme

in, 713,

792

1

Index

[I026] August 1914 (continued) Rostov depicted in, 45, 731 second volume of, 983, 993 Solzhenitsvn's appeal to emigres in, 735-37 Solzhenitsyn's assistants on, 655, 662 Solzhenitsvn's family portrayed in, 16, 28-29,

50,53-54,478,731 Solzhenitsyn's friends portrayed in, 45-47, 57, 731 Solzhenitsyn's hopes for Soviet publication of, 688-89,' 704-5, 729

Solzhenitsyn's past inferred from, 753, 754—55 Solzhenitsvn's research for, 592, 601, 665-66,

731-32 Soviet response to, 737, 753-57, 761, 763-64, 774-75, 787-88, 797, 858 translations of, 732-35 unofficial criticisms of, 787-91,

959 War and Peace compared to, 731, 788 Western publication of, 693, 729-36, 791 Western reaction to, 732, 791-93 writer's block in completion of, 612 Augustine, Saint, 970 Avtonomov (Bolshevik commander), 35, 36

Avvakum

(archpriest and writer), 930;; Axyonov, Vasilv, 405, 462, 466, 468, 470

dissidents defended by, 615-16, 618

Babayevskv, Semyon, 469 Babitsk\', Ronstantin, 641 "Babi Var" (Evtushenko), 461-62 Bahi }'(//• (Kuznetsov), 672 Babvonishexa, Sara, 827 Baklanov, Grigori, 451-53, 470, 610 Banderites (Ukrainian nationalists), 273, 294, 296-

97, 350,

429-30

(Solzhenitsvn), 81 Banquet, Barabanov, Evgeni, 795', 811, 896 Barabash, Yuri, 478, 506 Baranov, Alexander, 91 77)f

Barinov (prisoner), 196-98, 214 Baruzdin, Sergei, 597 Battleship Potemkin, 379,

429

BBC,

228, 258, 351-53, 575, 589-90, 635 dissidents' trials covered by, 550-51

Gulag Archipelago broadcast on, 831 Nobel Prize announcement, 724 publication ot Gulai{ Archipelago announced on,

824

programmes on, 848 Solzhenitsyn interviev\ed on, 935-38, 942-43 Solzhenitsyn's conflict with Writers' Union covered by,' 599, 622, 676 religious

Beame, Abraham, 916 Beauvoir, Simone de, 558 Beckett, Samuel, 699 Beethoven, Ludvvig van, 584 Bek, Alexander, 567, 569 Belgorodtseva, Elena, 62 Behavcv, Alexander, 204-6, 208, 215 Belinkov, Arkadi, 569-70, 571, 572« Belinskv, V'issarion, 414«, 812« Belov, Victor Alexeyevich ("Emperor Mikhail"), 164-65, 190 Benckendorff, Alexander, 530 Berd\ave\', Nikolai, 666, 736«, 823« Berezko, C, 568-69 Beria, Lavrenty, 350 Berlik, 319, 321 Berlin, Soviet blockade of (1948-49), 275 Bershader, Isaak, 213-14, 347-48, 961

Bershadskv, Alexander, 66, 891 Berzer, Anna, 410-15, 421, 425, 429-32, 434-35, 555, 566 Besan(;on, Alain, 972 Bethell, Nicholas, 626, 643, 693, 699, 899«, 964-65

"Big House," Leningrad (KGB headquarters), 815 "Big Losers in the Third World War, The" (Solzhenitsyn), 912 Bild am Sonntag, 988 Biolofjical Science and the Personality Cult (Medvedev), ^5 13- 14, 691 Biorkegren, Hans, 848 "Black Hundreds," 669-70 black market, samizdat manuscripts on, 613 Blagovidov, Major, 756-57 Blake, Patricia, 626,

"Blue Arrow "Bluebottle,

931-32

The" (Solzhenitsyn), 80-81 The" (Tarsis), 549' ,

BIyukher, Marshal, 164 Bobrov, peasant colony at, 25 Bodley Head, 625-26,' 642-43, 733-34 Bogatyrev, Konstantin, 861 Bogor'az, Larisa, 615-16, 618-19, 636, 641, 660 Bogorodskoye, Solzhenitsyn's reading at, 587 Botl, Heinn'ch, 842-45, 847-49, 851, 879 Bolshevik Revolution, 30-31, 45«, 48, 74, 156-58 Jews in, 47-48, 237-38 reactionary view of, 669-70 in Solzhenitsyn's fiction, 84-85, 94-95, 108-10, 235-36, 329-30, 393, 505, 518, 941 see also Russian Civil War Bolsheviks, 29, 31,943-45 in Civil War, 25, 3 3-37 economic policies of, 41, 43-44 Jews favoured by, 47-48, 64-65

Stalinist persecution of, 89, 156 Bolshoi Theatre, Rostov-on-Don, 79-80 Bondarev, Yuri, 470 Bonner, Elena, 796, 804, 823, 957

Book-of-the-Month Club, 642 Borisoglebsky (Judicial Councillor), 366 Borisov, \adim, 795, 890, 896 Borodino, Battle of (1812), 598 Boroniuk, Pavel, 272-73, 281, 286, 295-96, 300, 304 Borovikov, Nikolai, 289 Borshch, Captain, 172-73 "Borzovka," see Rozhdestvo, Solzhenitsyn's summer

house

at

Both Sides of the Ocean (Nekrasov), 462-63 "bourgeois specialists," 56-58, 70-71, 224, 229 "box" cells, 149, 151-52, 157, 161, 174 Brandt, Willy, 843-45, 875 Bratislava, Cancer Wa/v/ published in, 580-83, 627, 637 "Breathing" (Solzhenitsyn), 371, 383 Breslavskava, Anya, 217, 348 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918), 31 Brezhnev, Leonid, 503, 556, 605, 611, 861, 871, 875 liberalization ended by, 636, 639 Solzhenitsvn's protest letters to, 530, 561, 590-91 "Bricklayer, The'* (Solzhenitsyn), 281, 285-86 Brigade Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies, 30 British Expeditionary Force, 41 Brodnitz, Solzhenitsyn imprisoned at, 146-47, 171, 285, 311, 328 Brodsk\ losif, 456, 484, 664, 845, 890 Brogher, Raymond, 884-85 Bronevitsky (former prisoner), 110-11, 131 Brothers Ershov, The (Kochetov), 402 Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoyevsky), 942 Brovman, Ci., 506 ,

Brow n, Cieorge, 936 "Buddha's Smile" (Solzhenitsyn and Semyonov), 234;;, 375

Budenny, Semyon, 40, 318, 360 Bukhanov, Victor, 457-58 Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich, 89, 353, 403, 423 Bukovskv, Vladimir, 550-52, 600, 615, 664, 72122, 775, 845,971;; samizdat journal proposed by, 793, 801

1

Index Solzhenits\n linked to, 797 in Soviet mental hospitals, 552, 6H')-90, Bulashevich, Kirill, 910 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 54«, 605, 660

BulgakoN Sergei, 666 Bulganin, Nikolai A., 35 3 Bulgarian FKN Centre, 700 Bunin, Ivan, 4()l,46H-69 Burg, David (Alexander Dolberg),

Civil

Ml

16, 643, 757,

780-83 Burkovskv, Boris, 384-85, 482, 987 Butvrki Prison, Moscow, 148, 171-84, 220-25, '227, 259, 269, 284 at,

l"2-74, 178-

80, 223

Solzhenits\n's sentencing at, 174-78, 187 Solzhenitsvn's visit to, 378 "special-assignment prisoners" at, 221-25, 514 Buzuluk, Solzfienitsvn s militarv service at, 12-13, 1

120-21 Bvkov, Vasvl, 807

"By Right of Memory" Tvardovsky), 684-87, 764 (

Calendario del Popolo, ll-\-lS Camus, Albert, 581 Canada, Solzhenitsvn's visit to, 910-1 Cancer IVa/v/ (Solzhenitsvn), 97, 316-17, 344-45, 422, 562-72, 576-82 aesthetic criticism of, 566-67, 570-71, 597 attempts at publishing of in Soviet Union, 326, 480-81, 556, 566-67, 576-80, 594-95, 598,

603-5 cancer clinic as microcosm in, 563, 570-71 Cf)pvri2ht disputes over, 625-27, 643, 648, 695 de-Stalinization theme of, 565 ideological criticism of, 579-80, 597, 600, 633, 889« ideohtgical debates in, 330, 563-64 intellectuals caricatured in, 564, 569 Jew ish characters absent from, 960, 963 Natalia in negotiations over, 818-20 public readings and discussion of, 562, 568-74, 581

samizdat circulation of, 567-68, 571-72, 598, 601, 610 sexual longing expressed in, 345, 569«, 577 Slovak publication of, 578-83 Solzhenitsvn's appearance described in, 340 Solzhenitsvn's cancer treatment described in, 301, 304, 333«, 335-39 Solzhenits\n's research on, 491-92 Soviet's writers' praise of, 569-70 translations of, 643-44, 700, 73 3 Western publication of, 610, 622-29, 645, 733, 781 Western reception of, 642-43, 663 Writers' Union debate over, 591-92, 594-99, 602-11, 622-24, 632, 924 Candle in the VV/W (Solzhenits\n), 104, 506-7, 543,

573,581,983 Captives, T/if (Solzhenitsvn), 311w, 328

Henrv, 594, 6r3-14, 630, 647-48, 985-86 582-83, 594, 626, 630, 985-86 publication oi Gulag Archipelago entrusted to, 613-14, 647-48, 694, 728-29, 813-15, 872 Solzhenitsvn's distrust of, 693-94, 728 Solzhenits\n sued bv, 985 Carter, J imniy, 958, 965, 973« Carter, Rosahnn, 973« Case, Clifford, 918 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, 26, 44, Carlisle,

Carlisle, Olga,'

176,

Cato

276

79 cattle-cars, prisoners transported in, 270-71 Caucasus: Bolshevik rule in, 34-37, 41-42 (local poet),

War

in, 3

country estates

3-41 in, 5

Cierman inxasion

,

prisoners' defiance at, 272 Solzhenits\n's fellow prisoners

11027] 3-54

118-19, 123 Solzhenitsyn's bicycle tour of (1937), 82-84, 98 C^avendish, \'t,, Solzhenitsvn's residence at, 95457, 963, 974-83. 991-92 securitv precautions at, 955-56, 975, 978-79 censorship, 412, 435-36, 452-53, 461, 508 Solzhenits\n's public denunciation of, 574, 58384,

of,

586-87

Central Archive of \lilitar\ Elistorw Moscow, 487 Central Asia, prisoners deported to, 224 Central Committee, Communist Fart\ of the Soviet Union, 466, 470, 553, 585, 615, 631 Natalia's contact with, 818-20 publication oi Cancer HV/r^ blocked bv, 591-92, 604, 608 in publication oi Ivan Denisovich, 433-34, 446,

448

Tvardovsky persecuted by, 679, 681, 684-87 Tvardovskv's membership in, 407, 41 1, 423, 556 Writers' Union statement on Solzhenitsyn submitted to, 590-92 Central Writers Club, Moscow, 543, 562, 568-72, 581 CES (cultural and educational section), 215, 290-92

Chaadavev, Piotr, 52 3 Chadova's hut, Kok Terek, 317 chai^a (cancer remedv ), 379, 422 Chagall, Marc, 883' Chaikovskava, Olga, 446 Chakovskv,' Alexander, 462, 481, 617, 756, 764, 807 Chalidze, \alery, 698, 795-96, 823, 924, 97 In

Chalmavev,

\'ictor,

669-70

Chasovo!, 703

Chefranov, Nikolai, 62, 88 Cheka (Extraordinary Commission

for

Combating

Counter-revolutifjn, Sabotage, and Specula-" tion), 61, 91«, 394 Chekhov, Anton, 347, 50 1«

Cherednichenko, Major (camp commandant), 300 Chernousova, Frieda, 341 Chernov, \ictor, 582 Chicago Tribune, 642 Chicherov, I, 452, 483 Chile,

939-40

China, People's Republic Christian Science Monitor,

of,

865, 868, 913

969

Chronicle of Current Events, 619, 636, 660, 684, 796.

889n suppression of, 689, 797-98, 805-7 Chu-Ili Mountains, Solzhenitsvn's excursion into,

334

Chukovskava, Elena, 555, 653-57, 661, 665, 672 Chukovskava, Lvdia, 413, 440, 448, 555, 576, 624, 680, 820-24 birthdav message sent bv, 649 Solzheiiitsvn defended bv, 633, 681, 820-21, 832, 86() Writers' Union expulsion of, 827-28, 830 Writers' Union investigation of, 674 Chukovskv Kornei, 405, 510, 532-33, 553-55, 648, 654, 783 dissidents supported bv, 556, 618 funeral of, 673 Ivan Denisovich supported bv, 424-25, 432. 451, ,

482 Solzhenitsv n's open letter and, 583, 587 Churchill, Winston, 912

Church of People of Good Will, T/'e (Zheludkov 6'n ("hurch of the Holv Trinitv (proposed), 641 CIA against the L'SSR, The (^'akov lev ), 989

"66«-

),

—

1-2

"Cit\ on the Neva, The" (Solzhenitsvn), 381 Club of Rome, 870

Collected

Works

(Solzhenitsvn), 587, 977, 983

Index

[I028] Cologne, Solzhenitsyn's visit Columbia University, 915

to,

849-50

COMES (Community of European 76, 579, 628,

Committee

Writers),

475-

686

for Cultural Links v\ith Compatriots,

Soviet, 858

Committee Committee

for

to

Human

Aid

Rights, 795-97

Political Prisoners ("Political

Red

Cross"), 874 Communii'eal 969 ,

Communist Communist

European, 873, 877n, 941 Party, Soviet Union, 61, 70-72, 32324, 353, 618 artists and writers distrusted by, 403, 467 parties,

bureaucratic aristocracy created by, 48, 76, 91,

Daily World, 703 Daniel, Jean, 909 Daniel, Vuli, 526, 530, 538-39, 549, 842

emigration defended b\', 908 Danilov, Boris, 951 Dark Side of the Moon, 7 he, 271 "Darling, The" (Chekhov), 347, 358, 365, 374 Davie, .Michael, 936 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, A (Solzhenitsvn), 196, 215;;, 282, 326, 408-95 aesthetic expressed in, 379 camp survivors' response to, 479, 482-83, 485,

510 early versions of,

678

of,

Central Committee, Communist Part\' of the Sox iet Union factional struggles within, 406, 42 3, 464-66,

Central Committee

88h-89;/,

in

tenm

in, 248-49, 383, 424, 429-30, 457 Prize controversy, 481-83, 485-86,

493-96, 506 428 Party promotion of, 448-50, 462-63, 861, 938 peasant protagonist of, 384, 413, 416, 424-26,

450

2,

464-65, 468-69, 482-83, 494, 506, 515, 889n readers' letters in response to, 456, 483-86, 489, 510, 542-43, 579, 621-22 real people portrayed in, 290, 296, 384-85 removal of, from Soviet libraries, 590, 594, 596 reprints of, 463 ro\alties earned from, 471, 650, 683, 783 Sfilzhenitsvn's reaction to publication of, 416-17,

political objections to, 452, let-

Solzheni-

tsyn's lecture at, 377-78 Cossacks, 26, 29, 36-37, 53-54, 99, 120, 236

Don, 34, 99, 112-13, 120, 236, 901 Kuban, 26, 36-37, 53, 74 Terek, 26 Council of Ministers of the USSR, 532 Council of People's Commissars, 31 Court of Memory (Isavev), 481

Cousins, Norman, 916-17

Edward, 936 Crepeau, Frank, 851-52

Crankshaw

854

of,

obstacles to publication of, 417-18, 421, 422-23,

Komsomol

Congress, U.S., 871 Congress of Soviet Writers, Solzhenitsyn's open ter to, 576, 580, 582-91 appeal to Writers' Union in, 586-87 censorship attacked in, 583-84, 586-87 letters in support of, 588-89, 614, 618-19 Solzhenits\n attacked in response to, 631-33 Western reports of, 589-90, 596, 632 Writers" Union reaction to, 589-91, 594, 596, 610, 632 Conquest, Robert, 74, 179;;, 961 Constituent .\ssembl\', Russian (1917), 31, 40 Constitution, Soviet, 586, 600 Corrective Labour Colony Camp No.

reviews

language

—

of, see

for publication

287-88

internationalism of, 237-38 pervasive influence of, 64, 85 puritanical spirit in, 93-94 Solzhenitsvn praised by, 448 1-9 Solzhenits\n's deportation considered by, 699 Solzhenits\n's early involvement with, 64, 72, 86-94, i04-8, 180, 182 written laus interpreted by, 550-51

youth mo\ ement

demanded

444, 446, 448, 450-53, 458, 610 Jev\ ish characters absent from, 960, 963 labour camp as microcosm in, 431-32, 452, 563, 651 labour-camp brigade-leader's job described in, first

507-8 b\-, 75,

Shch-8S4

429-32, 437, 439-40, 463

film adaptations of, 471, 719, 733,

of, see

information sources controlled 110

see

editorial concessions

,

Oimea,

Solzhenitsyn's visit to, 386-87 Crime and Punishment (Dostove\sk\), 168

Criminal Code, Soviet, 153-55, 176-77, 822 anti-Soviet propaganda (.\rticle 58), statutes in, 153-55, 165, 170-71, 205, 208, 267, 318, 445 treason (.\rticle 64), statutes in, 839-40 "critical realism," 421, 468-69 Cronkite, Walter, 875-76, 878, 907, 915-16 Cuban missile crisis (1962), 439, 464, 466, 508 Current of "The Quiet Don," A (13.), 837, 901-2 Cvt7;;;4/.Vo/« (Solzhenitsvn), 82-84, 127

Czaps^i,Jozef, 893 Czechoslovakia, 582, 619, 626, 886 Soviet invasion of (1968), 635-40, 680, 713, 795

Dahl, \ladimir, 52, 227, 233, 383, 391-93, 545 Russian proverbs collected by, 52, 227, 392-93, 542 Dahl's dictionary of the Russian language, 227, 248, 266, 269, 290, 391-92 Solzhenitsyn's linguistic exercises based on, 227, 231. 391'

425, 432, 434-37 Soviet writers' support of, 424-25, 428-32, 482, 532 translations of, 467-68, 625, 644, 733-75 Txardovskv's preface to, 423-24, 432, 448, 45051 thrilled with, 413-18, 442 unofficial copies of, 425, 428, 434, 440, 444, 507

Tvardovskv

Western reception Day in the Life of Ivan

of,

468

Denisovich,

A

(film), 719, 854,

938 "Death of Ivan Ilyich" (Tolstoy), 565, 569, 571 Decembrist conspiracy (1825), 147, 172, 275-76, 530;;, 856 Decembrists icithout December (Solzhenitsvn), 311, 328-30, 347, 349, 404 Declaration of independence, U.S., 966 Delaunav, \adim, 600, 641 Dementvev, .Alexander, 412-413, 455, 505, 547, 578', 623 Chalma\ev articles attacked by, 670 firing of, 578, 669, 685 SolzWnitsyn's dislike of, 415, 503, 669 Solzhenits\n's works opposed

b\',

417, 421, 429-

566-67 Demichev, Piotr, 514-16, 543, 585, 818 30,

Solzhenitsyn's protest letter to, 526, 529, 543,

590 Solzhenits\n's relations with, 515-16, 591-92 Democratic .Vlovement (Human Rights .Movement), 549_51, 619-20, 636-638, 663-64, 697, 79596, 798 aid to political prisoners organized by, 874

(Czechoslovakia invasion protested bv, 636-38 Demonstration in Pushkin Square, 7"Af (Litvinov), 601,

616-17 1., 40 "Denis" (Solzhenitsyn's automobile), 488, 592, 645

Denikin, .\nton

Index DeProfundis(StTU\e. et al.), 667, 670-71, 794 Descartes, Rene, 157 Deserted House, '/"iit' (Chukovskava), 41 3«, 557» de-Stalinization. 321, 350-54, '356-60, 400-408, 448-53, 516, 861 censorship under, 435-36, 452-53, 461, 467-68 conservative opposition to, 402-3, 405-6, 423, 453, 456, 464-68, 470, 483, 508 end of, 523-24, 556, 635-36, 675 Khrushchev's retreat from, 465-68 labour camps under. 350-51, 427-28. 485-87, 510-11 p)litical prisoners rehabilitated under, 357-60, 367, 4f/a^o completed at, 517, 547, 612-13 journalist's visit to, 645 KGB awareness of, 531, 614, 628, 645 KGB break-in at, 739-42, 753

Rozhdesrv'o. Solzhenitsvn's 17,

,

Solzhenitsvn's divorce settlement, 75], 785, 801n, 821 Rozsas, Janos, 290 /?-/ 7 (Solzhenitsvn), 517-18, 728, 791-92, 993 in

'

aims

84-85, 108, 735-36, 792-93, 942 sought in research of, 735-36, 934 ideological transformation of, 518, 982 Lenin'^in, 728, 813, 904-5. 950 "nodal points" in history examined in, 730 Solzhenitsvn's father recreated in, 478, 522 Solzhenitsyn's research on, 478, 487, 904-5, 91 of,

emigres'' aid

writing difficulties in. 982-83 Rudchuli. Vladimir. 291. 296

Rumvantsev, Alexei. 525. 529, 530, 553 Russell. Bertrand. 404 "Russia?" (Solzhenitsyn), 311-12

Russia, Stalinist:

anti-Semitism artistic purges

in, 361, 368, in, 80, 368.

473n

562

annexed bv, 273

Baltic states

British return of emigres to, 899, 937,

964-65

class liquidations in, 62, 67, 74 collectivization in, 67, 74-75, 89, 97, 134, 68, 177, 224, 318, 353,403

engineers persecuted extortion in, 68

in,

167-

70-71. 90, 111, 224, 229

industrialization in, 74, 89, 224, 363, 403 judicial svstem in, 154-55, 170, 174-77 man-made famine in, 74-75, 134, 167, 910-11 police terror in. 61. 68-71. 88-92, 111. M2-?3, 176-77, 179n, 353

postwar atmosphere 308

show

240-41. 260,

war persecuted

prisoners of

purges 806

of, 182, 238,

in, 115. 132,

trials in,

in, 141, 146, 163, 171 156«, 177, 179. 190, 35^

70-71. 89-90, 94, 224, 615, 807

Russia, tsarist, 25-30, 161, 278

anti-Semitism intellectual

669-70, 959 99 in, 28-29, 39, 666-67 25-27

in. 28.

Cossack societv

in, 26, 53,

movements

land ownership in, secret police repression

in,

61, 176, 271

Russian calendar, 27n, 31» Russian Civil War. 25, 32-41, 99 emigres from 172-73 political executions in, 34-35, 37, 40, 41, 394 political freedom in wake of, 58 spiritual renaissance engendered by. 39 "Russian messianism." 794 Russian National Association. 889 Russian Orthodox Church, 38-39, 55, 105, 124, 764-69, 894 Jews and, 959, 963 Soviet suppression of, 42, 43. 68. 339, 360, 380, 765 ,

,

.

Index Russian Orthod.ix Church Abroad. 894, 919-21 Russian Orthodox Church ol America, X94, 919-21 Russian Social Fund to Aid Political Prisoners and Their Famihes, 727, 874-75, 905, 948, 963, 977, 983 Soviet actions ayainst, 874-75, 957-58, 984-85 Russia under ihe ()l(l Rtxime (Pipes), 953/; Russkaya .\i\sH\iuss\An Thoutiht), 664, 898

Rutman, Roman,

960//,

962-64

684, 761 Natalia's isolation in, 374, 387, 488, 554, reporters' visits to, 457-59, 580-81, 834

656-58

secret psharashka, 243-46. 254, 259w, 512 political interest lost l)\ 244-45. 379, 385-86 political involvement (if, 79, 94-95, 107-8. 12223. 130. 136-3". 166 .

rehabilitation teared b\ 359-60 return from prison of. 352. 354 in Rvazan. 422, 511-12 Solzhenitsvn denounced bv. 15, 832-34, 892. .

987 Solzhenitsvn's arrest and. 142-43, 153, 155. 165 66. 188,'370. 833 Solzhenitsvn's correspondence with, 121, 126, 136-37.' 153, 155, 165-66. 366-67, 398 Solzhenitsvn's estrangement from, 244, 385-86, 422. 511-12. 555 Solzhenitsvn's literar\ treatment of, 246, 259«,

\'ache. Jacques, 9

\alentin (prisoner). 173-74, 178, 186-87 \'asilenko. \. I., 320 \'asiliev. Anton, 255-57. 263. 268, 497 Vastly rvor/t;« (Tvardovskv), 125, 250. 285, 324, '408.413 Veche, 775-80. 786-88, 793, 797-98, 891 Vermont. Solzhenitsvn's residence at. see Cavendish. \'t.. Solzhenitsvn's residence at

1932-36 (Solzhenitsvn),

81

Vestmk RSKhD, 768, 794, '873, 920, 983 "N'etrov" (Solzhenitsvn's pseudonvm), 211, 952,

989

Solzhenitsvn's wartime reunion with. 121-23, 136 \ itko\sky. Dimitri, 411, 548 \ ladimirescu. Lieutenant (prisoner). 190 \ ladimir High Road. 250-51 \'ladimiro\ SeniNon, 784. 786 .

\ladimov. Ceorg'i. 588-89 X'lasov. Leonid. '136. 167w. 398. 433.

437

\lasov. \asilv. 290 X'lasovites. 132-33. 139, 146-4", 163-64. l"l-"2, 327-29, 351 \ oice of America. 6"6, " 3 Voice of the Motherland, 858 \oinovich, \ladimir, 431, 445«, 468. 556, 842 Writers' Union fought by, 827-28, 860-61 \ olga. Solzhenitsvn vo\age along (1939), 96-97, '105. 108, 354 X'oloshina. Anna. 86 Volunteer s Highi:: ay (So\z\\tin\ls\x\), 250-51 X'orkuta, labour camp at, 350 Voronezh, peasant rebellions at, 25 Voronezh \otebooks (Mandelstam), 660 Voronkov (Writers' Union official), 590. 596. 6057, 622, 681 Voronvanskava, Elizaveta, 490-93, 654, 657, 8151

16,

820

V'oroshilov amnestv (1953), 351 V'oznesenskv, Andrei, 405, 466, 472, 557 Vozrozhdeniye, 651 V puti, 767"

Vremia i My, 960/; "V v." (Solzhenitsyn), 80-81 V'vatka. renaming of, 363 V'\ shinsky. Andrei, 274. 689 .

for Authors' Rights),

811-12.824

Verse

579, 686

,

Ukrainian Orthodox Church, 910, 920 Undset, Hans, 853 L'nita, L\ 625. 627-28, 675 United Nations. 619, "16, 744, 772 United States, 808-12. 857, 870-74, 917-19 Orthodox church in, 894, 919-21 Solzhenitsvn's first visit to, 91 1-19

\"AAP

official),

396,512

T'j:entieth Century, 81

Twentieth Congress of the CJommunist Part\(1956). 353". 401-2, 404, 40"-8, 42i, 448, 466 1\\ entv-first Congress of the Communist Fart\ (1959), 404 Tiveniy Letters to a Friend Alliluvex a), 597«, 624 Twentv-second (Congress of the Communist Part\ (1961), 406-7, 408, 418, 423, 448, 466 Twentv-third Congress of the Communist Fart\ 556-57, 576, 639 Tvnanov, Yuri. 179, 195 "Tvorkin in the Next World" Tvardovskv). 4".

97, 350,

(COMKS

inogradov. Alexis, 955 inogradov, Igor, 567. 637, 685 inogradov, \ ictor. 544 ishnevskaNa, (ialina. 706. 800, 908 itkevich. \ntonina, 78. 181, 243. 254 itkevich. Nikolai, 76, 78-79, 82, 87, 94-9H, 102

Tverdokhlebo\-, Andrei, 795

L'chitelskaya Gazeta,

049

Victims ofValta (Tohluy), 899h, 964 I ictory Celehnitions {Solzhenitsvn), see Feast of the ('.(inquerors (Solzhenits\ n)

401,

405-8 Shch-HS4 manuscript subniittt-d to, 4(IS-1 ? Solzhenitsvn ad\iscd b\ 441-44, 456-57, 4"

I

"w agonettes" (labour camp bunks). 193-94, 198 Wallenberg, Raoul, 900 wall new spapers, 88-89, 94, 106-7 Walter. Otto. 732-33, 883 War and Peace {Tolswv), 52, 85, 104, 125. 382. 501«. 598n Auirust 1914 compared to, 731, 788 Solzhenitsvn's annotated copv of, 249, 308, 369

War Communism,

41. 44. 58

War Diaries (S'lmonoy), 567 "Ward 7" (Tarsis). 549. 689 Warren. Robert Penn, 784 Washington. O.C., Solzhenitsvn's sp)eech 91

2'-

14

in,

91

1,

—

1

Index

[1050] Post, 758-63, 782, 809, 844 Solznenitsvn's Harvard address criticized

Washwaton

in,

969

Watergate affair, 8 Way, f,b? (Solzhenitsvn), 44-45, 57, 96, 324-26 composition of, 250-51, 283, 285. 311, 324 1

patriotic feelings depicted in, 121, 312 Solzhenitsvn's arrest described in, 147-48 Solzhenitsvn's Marxist faith recalled in, 104-5

Solzhenitsvn's w artime experiences depicted in, 121, 132, 134, 138 writer's mission stated in, 325-26, 3 30 "Wav We Live Now, The" (Solzhenitsvn), 690-91

(Zamyatin), 4()3h, 789 W'egierski, Jerzy, 299 "Weightlessness" (Markin), 674«

690

Welt, Die, 757-58 Willi, 847

Wever,

a Pity" (Solzhenitsyn), Is

545-46

Justice?" (Barabash), 478

What is Socialism? (Shafarevich), 95 3 When They Lose Track of the Years (Solzhenitsyn), 330

"W

695-96,713 Solzhenitsvn's membership in, 456, 511, 512, 540, 62 3 SolzhenitsN n's open letter against, 676, 679-82,

We

"What "What

Nobel Prize decision attacked bv, 702-3 nonconformist writers expelled from, 403 \, 552, 618, 664, 801-2, 827-28, 860-61 publication of Cancer WWr;/ debated in, 591-92, 594-99, 602-1 1, 622-24, 632, 924 Solzhenitsvn's complaints to, 561-62, 586-87, 594-98," 605, 675, 827 Solzhenits\n's deportation urged by, 699 Solzhenitsvn's expulsion considered bv, 599-600, 646 Solzhenitsvn's expulsion from, 673-77, 680-83,

is Solzhenits\ n (>\ ini; For?" (Frok774 "white books," 576, 600-601, 616, 618-19 "White Buov, The" (Markin), 674w White Sea— Baltic Canal, 560, 932 White Volunteer Armv, 33, 36-37, 39-41, 47, 99,

hich Russia sha),

Solzhenitsvn's open letter to Congress of Soxiet Writers and, 586-87, 589-91, 594, 596, 610, 632 Solzhenitsx n's publication of dealings uith, 622-

23,628' Fvardovskx

's

funeral arranged by, 746-47

criticized b\', 470 Wrocluivski Tygodnik Katolikoiv, 774

younger generation

\enia (commissar's wile),

35, 37

172

Whitlam, Gouijh, 898 Whitnev, Thomas, 594, 630, 644, 815, 831, 872 "Who Calls the Tune?" (Ferrari), 774-75 Who Is Solzhenitsyn? (Simon\an), 958-59

Who Lives Happily in Russia? (Nekrasox 250;/ "Whose Side are ^ ou On?" (Mikhalkov), 698 Widmer, Sigmund, 851, 854-55, 882, 885, 906, 985 ),

Wild Honey (Pervomaiskv), 481 Harrv, 889;;, 934 Williams, Edward Bennett, 958 Williams, Ravmond, 643 Williamson, H. N. H, 41 Will the Soviet Union Survive until 19S4? (Amalrik),

Willetts,

672, 697-98

Wilson, Harold, 811, 898, 935 "Without a Righteous Person No Village Can Stand" (Solzhenitsvn), see "Matrvona's Place" Woe from UVMGriboyedov), 83;;, 215-16, 326, 378 Tale, A" (Solzhenitsyn), 126 Workers' Educational Ontre, Stockholm, 719-20 "World Split Apart, A" (Solzhenitsvn), 965-73

"Woman's

World War World War

29-31, 84, 138, 666-67 II, 109-25, 169 collaborators in, 131-33, 146-47, 163-64, 17172, 182, 327-29, 351 German retreat in, 120-21, 123-25, 129, 138 looting in, 137-41, 230-31 prisonersof war in, 141, 163, 171-72, 182,247, I,

351

propaganda in, Russian retreat

110, 115, 123-24, 132, 134-35 in. 111, 114-15, 118-19

World War

III, Solzhenitsvn's conception of, 912 Wrangel, P\otr N., 40 "wrecker-engineer" trials (1928-30), 70-71, 90, 224 Wrede, Caspar, 854, 938 Writers' Oingress, see Congress of Soviet Writers,

Solzhenitsvn's open letter to Writers' Union, Czech, 886 Writers' Union, Soviet, 179, 326, 390;;, 405, 455, 580, 807 anti-Western letter demanded of Solzhenitsvn bv,

597,605,608-10,623-25,632-33 Cx)ngress of Soviet Writers organized by, 583 Feast of the Conquerors read bv, 592, 595^ 597-98,

604 international protest over Solzhenitss n's expulsion from, 682-83, 686, 700 liberalism in, 401, 461 literarv prizes and, 481-82

V, Yuri, 163-64, 171-72, 223 Yablochkov Passage, Ryazan, Solzhenitsvn's flat on, 553, 555-56, 580

new

Yakhimovich, Ivan, 689 Yakir, lona, 806 Yakir, Py(>tr, 618, 797-98, 806-7 Yakobson, Anatoli, 637 Yakovlev, Nikolai N., 858-59, 989 Yakubovich, Mikhail, 951-52, 987 ^'akunin, (ileb, 765 Yalta t:onferencc (1945), 912 \'anchenko (camp surgeon), 301 Yasevich, Colonel, 17'2-73

Yashin (w riter), 468 Yasnava Polana, Solzhenitsvn's visit to, 478, 645 Yeisk, Shcherbak residence at, 51-55, 66

YMCA

Press, 667, 693, 730, 734, 794, 869n, 873,

983

Young

Pioneers, 64-65, 68, 87 Yudina, Maria, 659, 726 ]unost, 684, 685, 861

Z, Leonid, 158-59, 161-62, 165 Zagorika, Xenia, 755 Zagorsk, sharashka in, 226-27 Zakharova, Matrvona, 362-65, 367-68, 386, 393-

94 "Zakhar the Pouch" (Solzhenitsvn), 478, 545-47 Zamvatin, F.vgeny, 381, 403, 789 Zava'dskv, Yuri, 80, 455 Zeit,Die, 692, 695,971;; Zernov, Nikolai, 34-35, 37, 39 Zernov, Sophia, 36

Zhdanok, Kolva, 292-93 Zhdanov, Andrei, 473;;, 524 Zheludkov, Sergei, 766-68 Zhiobin, Solzhenitsvn stationed at, 125-31 Zholkovskava, Irina, 660, 661, 802, 958 Zhukov, Yuri, 828 Zhukova, Rostropoxich dacha at, 678-79, 681, 701, 706, 799-800, 820 police harassment of Solzhenitsvn at, 724-25, 743 Zilberberg, Ellva, 522 Zilberberg, Ilya, 522, 534-39, 924-25, 928-29 "Zima Station" (F.vtushenko), 405 Zimvanin, Mikhail, 529, 599-601

Index Zinoviev, Grieorv, 61, 89 Zinoviev, Pavel, 204-6, 215 Zionists, Russian, 793n, 795-97, 909 Znamya, 128, 135, 166, 402, 412, 468 Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 277, 401, 4(J3, 664 Zubov, Nikolai and Elena, 343-44, 349, 354, 358, 386, 522 fictional treatment of, 344, 564 Solzhenits\n's correspondence with, 371, 376, 418, 422, 427-28, 430, 436-37

[

I

< )

s

I

Zurich, 849-52. 854-55, 879-91, 955-56 Elastern Eurofjean emigres in, 885-88, 893-95 KGB plots in, 885-90, 910, 955, 985, 988 Solzhenitsvn's daily routine resumed in, 879-82 Solzhenitsyn's Lenin research in, 904—5, 950 Solzhenitsvn's press conference in, 897-98

Zvedra, Olsja, 593 Zvenigoro