I just read on Yahoo News that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died today at age 89. For those in my generation who came of age in the 70s, his courage and perseverance in the face of Soviet persecution were an inspiration.
Ironically enough, I was just finishing the final paper of my graduate school career, a biography and exploration of the moral philosophy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Through that work, I developed enough of a connection and respect for Mr. Solzhenitsyn that word of his death brought me to tears.
The world has lost a brave and eloquent spokesman for truth and justice, and a vocal opponent of totalitarianism in all its forms. An excerpt from my paper is reproduced below the fold for those unfamiliar with his life and contribution.
I apologize for any errors; the paper has not been through its final proof.
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. For someone who came of age in the 1970s, his name evokes images of the cold war; of a powerful, controlling, and repressive Soviet Union; of the voice of one man brave enough to take on an empire. A generation has passed since his epic The Gulag Archipelago was first smuggled out from behind the Iron Curtain. The former Soviet Union lies shattered into its constituent states. Many countries once under Soviet dominion have joined Western alliances, and democracy and political diversity sometimes struggles and occasionally thrives in the remnants of the former Soviet bloc. Does Solzhenitsyn’s work retain any relevance today, in what seems to be a very different world? What lessons can be gleaned from Solzhenitsyn’s experience with the Soviet system? What moral values did Solzhenitsyn espouse, and are they applicable to modern life?
This paper attempts to explore those questions, and to provide an overview of Solzhenitsyn’s life, work, and philosophy for a generation who may not comprehend his significance. Many writers and critics have acclaimed The Gulag Archipelago as the most important literary work of the twentieth century (Stone, 1998). The book has been translated into at least 35 languages and sold more than 30 million copies, an impressive feat for a tome that comprises three 600-page volumes (Ericson, 2002). It is widely agreed that Solzhenitsyn’s work was a precipitating factor in the demise of the Soviet state. Prior to its publication, the author was confident about Gulag’s importance, stating: "Oh, yes, Gulag was destined to affect the course of history, I was sure of that..." (Solzhenitsyn, 1979). Solzhenitsyn provides recent history’s most compelling proof of the old adage "the pen is mightier than the sword.
Biographical Summary
Alexsandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born at Kislovodsk, in the Caucasus on December 11, 1918. His father was enrolled in philological studies at Moscow University, but gave up his studies when war broke out in 1914. He served as an artillery officer at the German front, fighting throughout the war, and was killed in a hunting accident during the summer of 1918, six months prior to Alexsandr’s birth. Alexsandr was raised by his mother in Rostov on the Don, where she worked as a shorthand-typist. Even as a child, Solzhenitsyn wanted to be a writer, but was unable to find anyone willing to accept manuscripts he prepared in his twenties (Frangsmyr, 1993).
It was not possible to obtain a literary education in Rostov, and a move to Moscow was out of the question because his mother was alone and in poor health. Solzhenitsyn enrolled in the Department of Mathematics at Rostov University, a subject for which he found he had considerable aptitude. Solzhenitsyn claims in his autobiography that had he received a literary education, he may not have survived his ordeal. He was later able to gain some literary education via correspondence with the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow (Frangsmyr, 1993).
Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Department of Physics at Rostov University in 1941, a few days before the outbreak of war. He was inducted into the army, where he initially was detailed to serve as a driver of horse-drawn vehicles due to his weak health. Because of his mathematical knowledge, he was transferred to artillery school and received a crash course, passing out in November 1942. He was immediately put in command of an artillery-position-finding company, where he served until his arrest in 1945 (Frangsmyr, 1993). Solzhenitsyn was twice decorated for valor (Rothberg, 1971).
Solzhenitsyn describes his arrest in 1945, on a pallid February morning, while with his brigade along the Baltic Sea:
"The brigade commander called me to his headquarters and asked my for my pistol; I turned it over without suspecting any evil intent, when suddenly, from a tense, immobile suite of staff officers in the corner, two counter-intelligence officers stepped forward hurriedly, crossed the room in a few quick bounds, their four hands grabbing simultaneously at the star on my cap, my shoulder boards, my officer’s belt, my map case, and the shouted theatrically:
‘You are under arrest!’
Burning and prickling from head to toe, all I could exclaim was:
‘Me? What for?’" (Solzhenitsyn, 1973, p. 18)
Solzhenitsyn was arrested based on what the censors had found during the previous year in his correspondence with a school friend who was serving on the First Ukrainian Front. In it, Solzhenitsyn had made disrespectful remarks about Stalin, even though Stalin was referred to "in disguised terms" (Frangsmyr, 1993, para. 3). Supplemented by drafts of stories and reflections contained in Solzhenitsyn’s confiscated map case, this evidence was used by a three-man military tribunal, one of the notorious "troikas" to sentence him "in absentia" to eight years in a detention camp, which was considered a light sentence at the time (Frangsmyr, 1993, Rothberg, 1971).
Solzhenitsyn was initially confined in a series of correctional work camps (described in his play, The Tenderfoot and the Tramp), but in 1946 was transferred to Mavrino, a prison research institute near Moscow, due to his background in mathematics. His book The First Circle is based on the four years he spent in this "special prison". However, he apparently refused to cooperate with Mavrino authorities because "I... could not make moral compromises" (Rothberg, 1971, p 6), and in 1950 was transferred to a forced labor camp in Kazakhstan, a remote mining region. He served the remaining three years of his sentence here, working as a miner, a bricklayer, and a foundryman. His experiences at this "special camp, intended only for political prisoners, formed the basis of his first published novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Frangsmyr, 1993).
One month after the end of his eight-year sentence, an administrative order was issued without any new judgment that Solzhenitsyn would be "exiled for life" to Kok-Terek in southern Kazakhstan. This type of measure was a usual procedure at the time. During his exile in 1953, Solzhenitsyn had a recurrence of an earlier tumor that had been operated on previously. This stomach cancer left him unable to eat or sleep, and he was and near death at the end of 1953. He was able to receive treatment at a cancer center at Tashkent, where he was cured in 1954. Experiences here led to the novels Cancer Ward, and Right Hand (Frangsmyr, 1993).
Solzhenitsyn returned to Kok-Terek, where he spent a lonely and impoverished existence, teaching physics and mathematics, and devoting himself, in secret, to his writing. During all his years until 1961, he was convinced that he would never see a line of his writing in print, and would never receive the satisfaction of having his work judged by people with literary training. Finally, at age 42, his secret authorship began to wear him down. In 1961, following Tvardovsky’s speech at the 22nd Congress of the U. S. S. R. Communist Party which criticized Stalinist ideals and restrictions on literature, Solzhenitsyn decided to emerge and offer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for publication (Frangsmyr, 1993).
Such an emergence was deemed quite risky by Solzhenitsyn; he ruminated that publishing his writings might lead to the confiscation of his manuscripts, or worse, his own destruction. However, after a year of protracted efforts, Editor A. T. Tvardovsky was able to publish One Day... in the literary magazine Novy Mir (Frangsmyr, 1993) with Kruschev's express approval over Politburo objections (Rothberg, 1971). The unique circumstances surrounding the publication provided a unique start to Solzhenitsyn’s publishing career. "Within a day, all ninety-five thousand copies of the November issue of the magazine were snapped up by eager Russians. Within a week Solzhenitsyn skyrocketed to international fame" (Kalb, 1963, p. 5).
Solzhenitsyn’s troubles were, unfortunately, far from over. The printing of his work was stopped almost immediately, and the authorities stopped both his plays in 1964, and seized his novel The First Circle in 1965, along with all of his papers. During these months, it seemed to Solzhenitsyn that he had committed an unpardonable mistake by releasing his work prematurely, and because of this, he would not be able to carry it to a conclusion (Frangsmyr, 1993). Beginning in 1968, his works began to appear in the West, allegedly peddled abroad by the Soviet secret police. His vociferous protests led to his expulsion from the writer’s union in 1969. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but the government would not allow him to travel to accept it, and it denounced the awarding of the prize as politically motivated, and "contributing to anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation" (Rothberg, 1971). The prize was awarded to Solzhenitsyn in absentia. The first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was published in 1973, and Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He emigrated to the United States in 1976, where he continued to write about Russia while becoming a strong critic of western excesses and materialism. A controversial commencement address at Harvard University in 1978 laid out his criticisms of western society, and gave offense to many of his liberal supporters.
In 1990, Mikhail S. Gorbachev offered to restore his citizenship, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994, he returned to his native land for the first time in twenty years, receiving a hero’s welcome (Kaupunginkirjasto, 2002). Solzhenitsyn passed away as this paper was being finalized on August 3, 2008.
UPDATE: Thank you everyone for the comments, and for sharing your insight on what Solzhenitsyn's work meant to you personally. Coming of age in the 70s, I was vaguely familiar with his writing and history, but only in the last couple weeks of studying him and writing this paper did I become fully aware of his impact on the 20th century. It was very jarring to have taken a break from writing my paper only to come back and read the news that he was gone. Despite the controversy surrounding some of his work, he was clearly a hero of the highest order. The world could use more with his bravery and talent. I just discovered him, and now he's gone. I'm saddened. RIP.