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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918­2008), Russian writer and Nobel prize winner, looks out from a train, in

Vladivostok, summer 1994, before departing on a journey across Russia. (Photo by Mikhail

Evstafiev/Wikipedia)

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Revisiting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's warnings to theWestThe Russian author thought it was no coincidence that Soviet Russia shared certaincommon problems with the West, for he saw socialism and liberalism as kindredideologiesJuly 08, 2015 04:14 EST

Jerry Salyer

With tensions between America and Russia running high, it is worth reconsidering afigure who once cast a long shadow across both lands: Nobel Prize­winning authorAleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As a writer, Solzhenitsyn acquired renown through works suchas One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch and Gulag Archipelago, whereby he not onlyexposed the follies, pretensions, and crimes of Marxist­Leninism but also testified to thepower infused into the human spirit by its Maker. As a dissident, Solzhenitsyn provedsuch a nuisance to Soviet authorities that they deported him in 1974, leading him to takeup residence in Montpelier, Vermont. At first regarded as a hero by Americans, heeventually found his popularity waning, thanks in part to his controversial 1978commencement address at Harvard University.

Instead of heaping upon America the praise which might have been expected at the timefrom a dyed­in­the­wool anti­Communist, Solzhenitsyn used his Harvard platform towarn that he had observed phenomena in the United States disturbingly reminiscent ofSoviet life:

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas arecarefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, butwhat is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books orbe heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned bythe fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, aselection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequentlyprevents independent­minded people from giving their contribution to public life.

“The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries,” he also insisted,“more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then liketo ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?”

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According to Solzhenitsyn it was no coincidence that Soviet Russia shared certaincommon problems with the West, for he saw socialism and liberalism as kindredideologies. Both were rooted in a common utopian project that began during theEnlightenment, he claimed, and thus both were marked by anthropocentricity—the beliefthat man is the measure of all things. Each ideology began by rejecting tradition andtranscendent authority in favor of theories of liberation, and each was destined to afflictmankind with moral chaos. Although more economically efficient than socialism,liberalism will in the end prove just as unsatisfying, he concluded, for “the human soullongs for things higher, warmer and purer” than “commercial advertising, TV stupor, andintolerable music.”

Unsurprisingly, the Harvard address shocked Americans, particularly journalists, andeven struck some of them as ungrateful. How could a man who had escaped the jaws of adespotic regime have the nerve to criticize the country which had taken him in? WhileSolzhenitsyn insisted that his criticisms were meant to be constructive, coming “not froman adversary but a friend,” he alienated Americans across the political spectrum bycondemning a “destructive and irresponsible freedom” that had, in America, been granted“boundless space.” President Ford, put out by Solzhenitsyn’s intransigent anti­Communism, had already declared the dissident a “horse’s ass.” Now others agreed.

Asinine or no, Solzhenitsyn’s speech must be read in the context of Russianconservatism, a tradition which differs in key respects from its American counterpart.Whereas the American conservative imagination is typically informed by the USConstitution and the Founding Fathers, the Russian conservative takes his bearings fromiconography, liturgical music, and folk tales. For better or worse, Russian patriotism isbound up with Slavic heritage and the Orthodox Church, not the ideals enshrined in theDeclaration of Independence.

Following writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and N.M. Karamzin, the Russianconservative tends to interpret modern history as a struggle between those who wouldpreserve Russia’s spiritual integrity and those who would impose Western culture uponthe motherland. It is no coincidence that the most frenzied and destructive characters inDostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov, and Demons are those mostintoxicated with trendy European ideas. Nor is it a coincidence that in his Memoir OnAncient and Modern Russia Karamzin, fervent monarchist though he was, ventured tomake a negative evaluation of the celebrated Peter the Great. “We became citizens of theworld,” said Karamzin regarding Peter’s campaign to Westernize his empire, “but ceasedin certain respects to be the citizens of Russia.” To Karamzin the Europhile sovereign’sheavy­handed attempt “to transform Russia into Holland” reflected more zeal thanprudence.

Solzhenitsyn went further and openly detested the reformist tsar, for he doubted that Peterhad really appreciated anything about Western culture aside from its most superficialtrappings: wealth, glamor, gunpowder. The Petrine program had caused Russian elites toabandon their roots, and had even set the stage for Bolshevism. How could thoseincapable of relating to their own people hope to understand those of faraway lands?

Solzhenitsyn believed little good would ever come from the effort to remake everyculture in the image of the West, and he broadcast this conviction loud and clear atHarvard. There, he denounced

the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature tothe level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and inpractice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are onlybeing temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by theirown barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralisticdemocracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged onthe merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception whichdeveloped out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out ofthe mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick.

The preceding passage deserves especially close attention, as there has been a closing ofthe American mind vis­a­vis nuance and complexity: for many American conservatives,imposing “the American way” over the entire planet is deemed the only possiblealternative to amoral relativism. The Solzhenitsyn position, in contrast, is that there isnothing per se relativist about respecting differences between civilizations and politicalorders. To admit that justice does not manifest itself in precisely the same forms in everycountry is not to doubt the universal quality of justice, anymore than recognizing Earth’s

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breathtaking diversity of ecosystems is to doubt the fundamental laws of chemistry andbiology. Just because everyone should be healthy does not mean everyone should adoptprecisely the same diet, habits, and lifestyle. Each particular people has its own uniquecharacter, along with its own specific strengths and weaknesses. The statesman willacknowledge this fact not only when dealing with other nations, suggested Solzhenitsyn,but also when governing his own.

Solzhenitsyn outlived the Soviet regime and in 1994 was finally able to return to hisnative land. He made a stop in Europe along the way to take part in a commemoration ofthe War of the Vendée—one of the most catastrophic episodes of the French Revolution.As the Vendée loyalists have been almost entirely forgotten in the West, even by theirown co­religionists, it may seem odd to find a Russian Orthodox offering honor to theirmemory. For Solzhenitsyn, however, few stories could hit closer to home than that of theheroic peasants who paid the ultimate price for defying the decrees of the totalitarian,anti­clerical French revolutionaries. The parallels between France’s experience with theJacobins and Russia’s experience with the Bolsheviks were for him much too obvious toignore.

Far from being something to glorify, the legacy of revolution is usually unwholesome,Solzhenitsyn explained in remarks at the Vendée memorial:

That revolution brings out instincts of primordial barbarism, the sinister forces ofenvy, greed, and hatred—this even its contemporaries could see all too well. Theypaid a terrible enough price for the mass psychosis of the day, when merely moderatebehavior, or even the perception of such, already appeared to be a crime. But thetwentieth century has done especially much to tarnish the romantic luster ofrevolution which still prevailed in the eighteenth century.

As half­centuries and centuries have passed, people have learned from their ownmisfortunes that revolutions demolish the organic structures of society, disrupt the naturalflow of life, destroy the best elements of the population and give free rein to the worst;that a revolution never brings prosperity to a nation, but benefits only a few shamelessopportunists, while to the country as a whole it heralds countless deaths, widespreadimpoverishment, and, in the gravest cases, a long­lasting degeneration of the people.

Arriving home, Solzhenitsyn devoted his final years to helping Russia recover from thewounds inflicted by her own revolution. Like many Russians he was appalled by theYeltsin era, which had allowed unscrupulous oligarchs and foreign financiers to loot thenation in the name of freedom. Regarding his earlier themes he became even morestrident, especially when, in his words, the US “launched an absurd project to imposedemocracy all over the world.”

Yet however critical he remained with respect to the American government, press, andpopular culture, Solzhenitsyn also remembered with affection and respect the people ofMontpelier, among whom he had lived for so long, and hoped to see his countrymenmanifest some of the neighborliness and civic­spiritness he had encountered in Vermont.With Americans finding themselves increasingly subject to a revolutionary­mindedjudiciary regime, perhaps they also have something to learn from their former guest.

About the AuthorJerry Salyer

Catholic convert Jerry Salyer is a philosophy instructor living in Franklin County,Kentucky.

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