There has been no more successful effort to discredit a great writer and thinker than that carried out against Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for over two decades. In his Letter to the Soviet Leaders (1974), Solzhenitsyn searingly criticized the role played by Marxist-Leninist ideology in the destruction of Russia and recommended that the government jettison communism while gradually altering the country’s political and social life. His measured advice was thoroughly misunderstood in the West and by a large part of the Russian intelligentsia. His call for gradualism was perversely read as an endorsement of authoritarianism. His recognition of Christianity as a spiritual force that could contribute to the healing of Russia was transformed into ” theocracy” (despite his repeated claim that he wished no special privileges for his own faith). Soon, Solzhenitsyn was Daniel J. MahontT is chairman of the departnent of politics” at Assttttption (- ol- Icrc, Worcter, Ma,’., and is author tf a fihwmhbook on Gitodes de atdie. denounced as a Russian ayatol- lah-the “Persian trick,” he called it.
By the time of his famous commencement address at Harvard in 1978, a legend was firmly in place that he was some combination of theocrat, czarist, anti- Semite, and imperialist. His criticism in that speech of the “anthropocentric humanism” of the Enlightenment and of the rampant litigiousness of the West was taken as further evidence of his anti-democratic politics, despite his accompanying defense of the rule of law and his expression of respect for the American founding. His continual chiding of the Free World during the 1970s and 1980s for its vacillation before Communist expansion did not help matters in journalistic and academic circles, where anti-communism was in sharp disfavor. By the mid-80s, Solzhenitsyn had lost much of what had been a vast readership.
Yet over the last 10 years, the writer has provided ample material for the definitive rebuttal of his critics. In the revised August 1914 (published in 1989), Solzhenitsyn sketches his own model of Russian statesmanship in the figure of Pyotr Stolypin, a principled centrist who fought for constitutional monarchy and land reform against reactionaries in both the czarist and revolutionary camps. Stolypin paid for these efforts with his life — assassinated by, quite fittingly, a double agent of the czarist secret police and revolutionary terrorists. Solzhenitsyn emphasizes Stolypin’s vision of a nation of individuals freed from the corruption of absolutism and the tyranny of the village collective, individuals whose love of Russia is not mystical but rather rooted in their status as property-owning, self-determining citizens.
In Rebuilding Russia (1990), Solzhenitsyn draws on Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville in an exploration of the preconditions of political freedom. In so doing, he reveals himself to be a partisan of a complex political system combining a Gaullist-style presidency with local councils and assemblies. He acknowledges enthusiastically the liberties evident in the Swiss and New England towns of his exile.
Repeatedly, Solzhenitsyn has demanded that Russians at all levels repent for the crimes and lies in which every inhabitant played some part. In The Russian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century (1995), he denounces pan- Slavic imperialism and notes: “There is some truth in the reproaches leveled at Russian ruling and intellectual elites for their belief in Russian exclusiveness and messianism.” For Solzhenitsyn, the country must find its own path of development, one that avoids imitation of the worst features of the increasingly relativist and decadent West. Yet he also praises what is truly universal in the Western purpose: “its historically unique stability of civic life under the rule of law — a hard-won stability which grants independence and space to every private citizen.”
Solzhenitsyn still has something important, even profound, to impart to us. He is a teacher of moderation, a chronicler of modern faith in progress gone awry, an anti-ideologue par excellence. He is also an elegant and moving writer. But will anyone still read him? For those willing to do so — whose minds have not been dulled by the intellectual “consensus” about him or the mistaken belief that the nature of communism is now but a historical question — Solzhenitsyn’s most recently published book, Invisible Allies, quite simply a gift for our time.
Invisible Allies (Counterpoint, 344 pages, SOME $ 29.50) was written in Zurich in 1974-75, IMPOIt/ immediately after the IMPAI author’s expulsion from the U.S.S.R., and updated with subsequent notes. It is an accompaniment to Solzhenitsyn’s great literary and political memoir The Oak and the Calf, in which he is mainly a lonely fighter, a St. George struggling valiantly against the dragon of “Progressive Ideology.” In Invisible Allies, by contrast, Solzhenitsyn tells of hitherto unknown allies who made this fight and ultimate victory possible. With the fall of communism, he can now speak freely without risking their lives or liberties (and many are already dead). In 14 moving sketches and accounts, he pays his debts, describing a small and idiosyncratic battalion of patriots united in their devotion to Solzhenitsyn and their hatred of Bolshevik tyranny.
Some of the incidents could be lifted from the pages of spy thrillers. A Russian-born French nun arranged single-handedly to have microfilmed copies of Solzhenitsyn’s works transported to the West. A diverse group of foreigners schemed and dared to bring Solzhenitsyn to the attention of the outside world, and some were intimately involved in the translation and publication of the anti-totalitarian epic The Gulag Archipelago. The American general William Odom, while stationed in Moscow, saw to it that a large portion of the Solzhenitsyn archive left for the West under diplomatic cover. Others played smaller but critical roles in aiding Solzhenitsyn as he was relentlessly pursued by the Soviet dqT TO leviathan. About these ro us. generous foreigners who risked comfort and safety to help a seemingly forlorn cause, Solzhenitsyn states, “Whenever ! remember them or see their faces, my admiration knows no bounds.”
Two particular chapters stand out in this most accessible and revealing of Solzhenitsyn’s works. One is the story of Elisaveta Denisovna Voronyanskaya, code-named “Q,” an energetic but increasingly frail old woman deeply affected by the misfortunes of Russia and prompted to contact Solzhenitsyn by an encounter with his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). A Leningrad native, she wrote to Solzhenitsyn, who was impressed by her determination and love of country. Soon she was a member of his conspiracy, typing and retyping many of his works, including The Gulag Archipelago. Although wholly devoted to Solzhenitsyn and his cause, she was too zealous, too much of a talker to be discreet in carrying out her tasks. She rambunctiously shared his top- secret works with a small circle of friends. More tragically, she disregarded Solzhenitsyn’s advice to destroy her remaining copy of Gulag after a text had been spirited away to the West. In August 1973, her indiscretions led to arrest and interrogation by the KGB. Under torture, she revealed the location of her copy of the book and set into motion the chain of events leading to its publication and the eventual fall of the regime. (In Solzhenitsyn’s dramatic formulation, the publication of Gulag meant that “Birnam Wood was moving.”)
Solzhenitsyn clearly loved poor eccentric Q, who died either at the hands of the KGB or by committing suicide shortly after her interrogation (the evidence is not clear).
His appreciation for her profound contribution to the common cause and his pity for her death exemplify the gratitude that he expresses throughout Invisible Allies for his “loyal companions in arms.” While in Vermont, Solzhenitsyn played a recording of Verdi’s Requiem, given to him by Q, every year at the end of August “in her memory.” He confides that, as he wrote the book, all his “invisible allies” gathered around in his mind like ” affectionate shadows.”
The other revealing portrait is of Elena Tsezareva Chukovskaya, known as ” Lyusha.” She became, after his wife Alya, Solzhenitsyn’s closest collaborator and co-conspirator.
From 1965 to 1970, she was centrally involved in all of his enterprises, including the writing, research, and preservation of Gulag. She remained loyal to him until his exile in 1974 and during the glasnost period was the first to call in the Soviet press for the restoration of his citizenship and the publication of his work in their homeland. But her sympathies paradoxically lay with the secular, liberal intelli-gentsia, and she disliked the increasingly religious and patriotic tone of Solzhenitsyn’s writings.
In one of the most important sections of the book, Solzhenitsyn discusses how Lyusha’s increasing reservations about his project mirrored the growing hostility of secular intellectuals to his openness to religion and his disdain of progressivism. Even as far back as 1972, Solzhenitsyn sensed that he would eventually lose much of the audience that had been with him in the fight against Stalinism.
Invisible Allies is the memoir of one of the greatest men of our century. It is also his account of a band of decent souls who came together to loose their country from totalitarianism. Some were believers, others unbelievers, and all had different prescriptions for the future of Russia. This memoir reminds us of the honorable voices that remain in Russia, just as it reveals the humanity and courage of the much-maligned Solzhenitsyn. One measure of the vitality and maturity of our own intellectual life can be found in our response to his witness.
Daniel J. Mahoney is chairman of the department of politics at Assumption College, Worcester, Masws., and is author of a forthcoming book on Chareles de Gaulle.
