open Democracy, 5 August 2008
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, combined the gifts of a novelist with the stature and ambitions of a prophet. He may not have matched their achievements as a writer of imaginative prose, but he was their equal when it came to insight into evil and its collective manifestation. Moreover his literary monument - The Gulag Archipelago - was an achievement little short of the miraculous, given the circumstances under which the information was collected and digested, and given the obstacles that stood in the way of the work's seeing the light of day.
It is fair to say that the three-volume The Gulag Archipelago did more than any other publication to cause the scales to fall from the eyes of those who had been tempted to believe that communism would have been fine, had it not been perverted from its true course by Stalin. Solzhenitsyn showed the way in which, once accountability has been set aside, as it was set aside by Lenin in 1918, and once society had as a result been conscripted to a single goal, with all institutions gathered up into the collective advance, it is not "corruption" that leads to the triumph of evil. The conditions are now in place for evil to prevail, since there is nothing to prevent it. (the rest of the article can be read on open Democracy)
August 06, 2008
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4 comments:
I must be one of the few in the world who do not believe the late Solzhenitsyn to have been either a genius, a prophet or a lay saint. Yes, he survived the Gulag and got to tell of it, and he fought the Soviet authorities to publish his work. He was also intentionally ignorant, given to posturing, and unpleasantly anti-Semitic. He was deified by the same people - the dissident Russian intelligentia - whom he famously dismissed as 'educated dregs'. His crude, unapologetic anti-Semitism found a wide following among the similarly-minded Russian academics of both Moscow and Leningrad universities, and still does to the best of my knowledge. I am surpised that anyone would wish to buy into his myth at this late stage.
I read all three volumes of the Gulag, and found nothing anti-semitic in it. I am aware of this charge against him - how about giving an example?
Dear Mr. Scruton,
Years ago I saw an episode of 'on beauty and consolation' made for the dutch TV. In a long and captivating interview you spoke about your life and beliefs, and what motivated your choices.
It was my favorite episode in a generally intersting series. I am currently reading 'Gentle regrets', and find the Helsinky chapter in particular quite hilarious. I was laughing out loud to see the medal awarded during your stay there listed on your internet curriculum.
I guess I just wanted to say thank you. It is not often in this often drab world you find someone who has the mental sagacity and harmony of voice to lift one's spirits enough to gain the strength to face another drab day:)
My greatest, and in fact only regret in life is that I could not manage to become a writer; a moral educator, day by day restoring meaning and beauty to a world that -while constantly in peril- is constantly glorious.
Did you yourself never lay down your pen in resignation, with a feeling of 'not quite interesting enough'?
I got a law degree a few years ago, but it's quite a boring business, really, with lots of inflated ego's and general emotional and social confusion. How I would love to sit at my desk giving birth to beauty for a living!:)
I digress.
Thank you, and know that your work matters.
Henri Kwakman, the Netherlands
henrikwakman@hotmail.com
Dear Mr. Scruton,
Years ago I saw an episode of 'on beauty and consolation' made for the dutch TV. In a long and captivating interview you spoke about your life and beliefs, and what motivated your choices.
It was my favorite episode in a generally intersting series. I am currently reading 'Gentle regrets', and find the Helsinky chapter in particular quite hilarious. I was laughing out loud to see the medal awarded during your stay there listed on your internet curriculum.
I guess I just wanted to say thank you. It is not often in this often drab world you find someone who has the mental sagacity and harmony of voice to lift one's spirits enough to gain the strength to face another drab day:)
My greatest, and in fact only regret in life is that I could not manage to become a writer; a moral educator, day by day restoring meaning and beauty to a world that -while constantly in peril- is constantly glorious.
Did you yourself never lay down your pen in resignation, with a feeling of 'not quite interesting enough'?
I got a law degree a few years ago, but it's quite a boring business, really, with lots of inflated ego's and general emotional and social confusion. How I would love to sit at my desk giving birth to beauty for a living!:)
I digress.
Thank you, and know that your work matters.
Henri Kwakman, the Netherlands
henrikwakman@hotmail.com
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