GroshLink

In the Weekly Bulletin from the Editors of Books & Culture Magazine, I came across the WSJ article Solzhenitsyn, Optimist.*  This will serve as an excellent article for our family as we continue dinner conversations on Thou Shall Not Lie, Jesus as the Truth, & following Christ in the real world (at home, on the bus, at school, and beyond). I'd encourage you to take some time to chew on the piece, here's the quote which I'm going to share with my family:

Solzhenitsyn, for his part, instructed us early in the book [The Gulag Archipelago] that if all we expected from it was a political exposé, we should "slam its covers shut right now." It is more than a history of Lenin's concentration-camp system; it is a literary investigation, the work of an artist. An "ordinary brave man" could decide "not to participate in lies, not to support false actions." But "it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph!" Solzhenitsyn was not the first witness to speak truthfully about the gulag. But because he was an artist, he was the first one able to make us all hear it and believe it. There is no answering "the many-throated groan, the dying whisper of millions" that he transmitted.

The Soviet establishment proved supremely vulnerable when no one, not even the leaders, any longer believed in the ideological myth. The New Soviet Man never got created. The classless society never materialized. Government was certainly not withering away. Democratic centralism was all centralism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was all dictatorship. What the Soviet system produced, after three generations of trying, was a self-perpetuating, sclerotic regime hanging onto power for power's and comfort's sake. No one will die for that. Solzhenitsyn, more than anyone else, delegitimized the Soviet experiment at home and discredited it abroad. It helped to have people pushing against the tottering tower from the outside, but external pressures are of less consequence than demolition charges ignited from the inside.

What could the guardians of "the lie" do with this truth-telling renegade? They could kick him out of their paradise. It is a real loss for a literary artist not to be surrounded by his native language. Yet, in the end, exile was a paltry, pathetic punishment for the enormity of his offense. The Soviet leaders did guess correctly that this sometimes-prickly fellow would become a burr under someone else's saddle. The West of course welcomed him like a conquering hero. But soon enough he alienated some; he had his cultured despisers. The impatient man's tone too readily turned stentorian, peremptory; he was inattentive to the social niceties that lubricate good relationships. Still, he was much more sinned against than sinning.

*Note: Article written by Mr. Ericson, professor emeritus of English at Calvin College. Among his works on Solzhenitsyn are the abridgment of The Gulag Archipelago (1985, 2007); The Solzhenitsyn Reader, co-edited with Daniel J. Mahoney (2006); and The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzhenitsyn, with co-author Alexis Klimoff (just now reaching bookstores).

Earlier posts on Solzhenitsyn:

Solzhenitsyn on Democracy
Solzhenitsyn's Unchained Faith