Joseph Pearce didn’t expect much when he wrote to Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1998. Why would the Russian dissident writer and Nobel Literature Prize winner bother granting an interview to a relatively unknown English biographer? And besides, the stern-looking bearded literary giant was famously reluctant to be interviewed.
What Pearce received in the mail surprised him. The biographer of several literary converts and writer-in-residence at Ave Maria University ended up spending a weekend in Moscow, interviewing Solzhenitsyn. The resulting biography, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, was published to mark the author’s 80th birthday. This year, Ignatius Press published an updated edition of the biography that covers the remainder of Solzhenitsyn’s life since the interview.
Today would have been the 93rd birthday of Solzhenitsyn, who was born one year after the Russian Revolution. He became an idealistic communist in his youth and served in the Soviet Army during World War II. He was arrested in 1945 for disrespectful remarks he made about Josef Stalin in private correspondence and sentenced to eight years in prison. While serving his term, and undergoing the suffering it entailed, he rediscovered the Orthodox faith of his youth.
He came to fame in the 1960s and 1970s, with works like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, and spent several years in Vermont, while exiled from his homeland. After the fall of communism, however, he returned to Russia and remained active until the time of his death in 2008.
Register news editor John Burger spoke to Pearce about his biography and what Solzhenitsyn has to say for Americans today.
Why Solzhenitsyn? How did you become interested, and why do you feel he’s important?
Solzhenitsyn was a major influence upon me as I was growing up. As a teenager, I read The Gulag Archipelago — the first two volumes of it — in the 1970s. It convinced me not only of the evils of communism, but of a deeper spirituality, which at the time I couldn’t articulate as Christianity. But I think Solzhenitsyn was one of those key figures who led me on the path to my own conversion, ultimately to Catholicism.
I rediscovered him a few years after my conversion, when I was in my late 20s, some of his more recent writings, which clearly showed Solzhenitsyn’s own Christian perspective on political and social problems, which seemed to me to reflect very closely the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which was also very influential upon my own conversion.
I once again saw in Solzhenitsyn a kindred spirit, and it was this knowledge of Solzhenitsyn as a great man and one who had been a great influence upon me, which animated my desire to write his biography.
What’s new about this edition?
The first edition was published by Harper Collins in the UK back in 1999, my having interviewed Solzhenitsyn at his home in Russia in 1998, when Solzhenitsyn was approaching his 80th birthday. But Solzhenitsyn would live for a further 10 years. … Most of the people I’ve written about have been safely dead, as it were; therefore, when you write the biography, you can tie up all the loose ends and put the final period as their life ends. But Solzhenitsyn lived a further 10 years, and not a further 10 years of dotage, but another 10 years of creativity and controversy. His star was very much in the ascendant in post-communist Russia. The leading politicians would actually ask him for his opinion, if they were to pass new laws. So he was a major influence in the last 10 years of his life, so clearly the first edition of my book was an unfinished work. The new edition, published by Ignatius this year, takes several new chapters at the end, bringing the story right up to date with Solzhenitsyn’s death.
How ever did you manage to get an interview with him?
I must confess, it’s something of a mystery to me, in the sense that, I can’t now remember how I got Solzhenitsyn’s mailing address.
He was very reclusive and a private man, and there’s no doubt at all that his private address near Moscow would have been something that was not widely known. But somehow or other I managed to get his mailing address, and I sent him a letter, basically saying that I didn’t believe that any of the existing biographies of him had done him justice in the sense that they all accentuated his politics to the ultimate detriment of his faith, his Christian religion, his Christian beliefs, and that I wanted to rectify that in writing a new biography.
I mentioned in my letter to him that I had written a biography of G.K. Chesterton, by way of giving some kind of weight to who I was. At the time that was the only book I had published. So, of course, being an unknown writer, I fully expected not to receive a reply. My hope was merely to maybe get a reply from him saying “Thanks but no thanks,” at least having his autograph, as it were, as a fan.
But to my astonishment, he wrote back in his own hand, saying, “Yes, please arrange to come to Moscow to interview me. I’ll happily cooperate with your book.” And he gave me the contact details of two of his sons and said they would act as intermediaries and translators etc.
So I took the letter down to my publisher in England, Harper-Collins, and waved it in front of them, and I said “You have to give me a contract to write this book and an expense account so I can go to Moscow and interview him. Thankfully, Solzhenitsyn’s signature on the letter was sufficient to convince them that indeed they did need to do that.
How much time did you spend with him, and where?
I stayed for a long weekend, but it was pretty intense, from morning — just after breakfast, Yermolai, his son, would pick me up at the hotel, take me there. I’d spend the whole day there, including having lunch with the family and, I think, even the evening meal with the family, and in between, it was just solid interviews with him.
What was it like meeting him, interviewing him?
My initial reaction was one of almost awe because Solzhenitsyn, for the people of my generation growing up in the ’70s, his face was one of the most famous faces in the world. You just had to see his photograph in the newspaper, and you knew who he was without having to read anything. A very recognizable face.
So when he walks into the room, for a moment, I’m almost dumbstruck by the fact that here I am in Moscow in the home of this great hero against communism and Nobel Prize winner. I was sort of stunned into momentary silence, but managed to overcome that initial reaction and got down to business. I interviewed him mostly on the spiritual dimension of his life and work for the remainder of the time I was with him.
He certainly was a keen observer of what was going on in society. Thinking about his critiques of Russian society and politics in its various phases — from the Revolution to the fall of Communism and beyond — are there lessons Solzhenitsyn learned that we should be particularly alert to today in the West?
Absolutely. One thing he said in his Harvard address in 1978, which shocked everybody at the time but was profoundly true, is that the whole of secular fundamentalism and the murderous nature of the culture of death, if you like, of secular fundamentalism, is not restricted to communism. He said in that address that the same poisonous materialism also animated much of the philosophy of the West and its decadence.
I think what his life and experience shows us is that secular fundamentalism is deadly and poisonous and intolerant. When you take God out of politics you end up with a horror story, whether it be the secular fundamentalism of the French Revolution and the guillotines or the secular fundamentalism of the Nazis and the gas chambers or the secular fundamentalism of the communists and the labor camps or the abortion mills of modern America and Europe.
What we’re seeing is the culture of death killing millions of innocent people.
The Soviet Union disintegrated in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and most of the world believes that communism is pretty much dead and no longer a threat. Do you think that if Solzhenitsyn were alive today, would he be at ease with that assessment?
I think he would ask that we define our terms.
In one sense, of course, the secular fundamentalist experiment which was the Soviet Union floundered and fell after almost a century of bloody excesses culminating ultimately in the killing of tens of millions of people. But it did flounder and fall in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But what we’re really talking about here is big government, and big government animated by a secular fundamentalist philosophy. In other words, ultimately, that enemy is still very much present and we are still in danger of lurching blindly in a belief that problems can be solved by big government and that problems that are caused by the lack of God can be solved by a godless response.
So in that sense the lessons haven’t been learned, and the lessons haven’t been learned in the West, absolutely, that we could be lurching toward a secular fundamentalist big government, regardless of whether or not it quotes Karl Marx, it’s basically of the same spirit. That’s exactly what Solzhenitsyn was getting at in his Harvard address — that the spirit that unites communism and decadent materialism in the West is this secular fundamentalist materialism, this atheism at the root of politics and the root of society and how that leads ultimately to a culture of death.
Your book is a great introduction for someone who’s not read Solzhenitsyn. Where do you recommend one begins?
At the risk of sounding crassly like a salesman, I think that my own book is a good place to start because it gives the whole of the picture of his life in outline. It gives his life story. It discusses his major works in the context of when they were written and what they were about.
As regards Solzhenitsyn’s own works, I would probably recommend One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, just because it’s short, compact and powerful, and it’s a good introduction to the rest of his work.
John Burger is the Register’s news editor.
Tim Drake: The Infancy Narratives and The Hobbit
Jimmy Akin: Christianity = Communism ?
Comments
Post a Comment
i saw him in person in an ordinary way that was special ...in the ordinary. i was walking down the sidewalk, turned the corner going east, then north on a lengthy sidewalk that passed in front of the Hoover Institution, noted for its studies and indeed actual artifacts from the Russian Revolution. THe great man was obviously researching in these Hoover artifacts. He was walking the other way, heading south. If it were a western it would have been “High Noon.” FOr there was just the two of us walking toward each other and you’re struck at this big hairy fellow, not as in California hippee - he did not convey that at all, for his clothing was much more “Vermont.” But the hair was blowing in the wind and the beard bespoke, ‘this is a serious man.’
i didn’t have much time to know what i might do, whether to say hello or not even. it WAS obvious to me that i was not going to disturb him, for he DID seem serious, as in serious thinking. i made a split second decision really, that i was NOT going to bother him…And so our eyes did meet and I just tried to speak kindness with them. I knew one thing - we were both believers in Our Lord. And so we just gave a sort of normal smile, a kind of army officer smile I’d learned from my uncle.
And we were passed one another and i knew we would never see one another again; just one high noon smile at your vladyka smile…twinkling eyes like lightening, army officer to army officer, cossack to cossack, beard to beard…just that he was forty years older, another war entirely…or was it?
Excellent article - I was at Harvard during the late 1970’s and remember Solzhenitsyn’s visit at Commencement. He spoke in Russian, which was somehow translated, but his presence was awesome, like an anchorite coming in from the wilderness of communism. I was too young at the time to appreciate his comments. I will buy the book in hopes of learning more. We need to alert our brethren who are ‘asleep to the hope of Christ’ - now is the time to restore our culture!
Great article John ... was particularly startled by the insightful “I think he would ask that we define our terms.” One thing all of the “ism’s” of the present and last century seem to have in common is the exploitation of sloppy language. Think what a world of confusion would be eliminated if everyone using the words “Social Justice” were required to clearly define their terms. The Notre Dame debacle was founded on the sands of a naive misunderstanding of so called “Social Justice” issues that is readily exploited by the forces of secular fundamentalism. Left undefined each hearer sees “apples” while the politician speaks “oranges”. Such sloppy language destroys and nullifies moral reasoning—e.g. there is a difference between committing a positive evil and being forcibly prevented from doing some positive good. A Solzhenitsyn would expect and demand clear definitions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-cables-solzhenitsyn-vladimir-putin
This link should remind us that Solzhenitsyn, while vigorously anti-communist and a Christian, was a Russian nationalist who favored Putin. Solzhenitsyn was suspicious of democracy and seemed to be enamored with the “strong leader” type, which usually leads to despotism.
After a military career during the Cold War, with Communism as our nation’s number one enemy compounded by Yalta where FDR admitted some of his best friends, that later infiltrated our government, were Communists, I bacame an ardent fan of Solzhenitsyn after I read his address at Harvard in 1978. There is an unmistakable quality of genius in his ideals and literary prowess. He was able to clearly see the bane on civilization provided by the many forms of Communism and Socialism. And I am sure he could see its impact in our nation beginning in the middle Thirties when the Communist John Dewey began his assault on prayer in schools and public education. American voters have been so brainwashed by Dewey’s success in our public schools that they used it as a venue for treason and made a hero of Norman Thomas who said after the 1936 election that his socialists would take over our nation without firing a shot. We need to purge our current socialist government in the next election or our nation will wind up on the scrapheaps of history. We need to honor Solzhenitsyn’s warning.
To say that Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Speech is meant to attack “big government” is an outrageous travesty. The Harvard Speech condemns unregulated capitalism when it is seen as the solution to all problems.
Solzhenitsyn said in this speech : ” We have placed too much hope in political and social transformations, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our inner life. A party mob attacks it in the East, and the commercial marketplace does the same in the West” ! Read that again : he said that the commercial marketplace as it existed in the West, unregulated and seen as the source of happiness, was as destructive as the Communist Party in the East ! Solzhenitsyn was not a defender of unrestrained capitalism and an denouncer of “big government”. Just like every Popes since Leo XIII, including John-Paul II and Benedikt XVI (see every single texts constituting the social doctrine of the Church (encyclicals, Vatican II (Gaudium and Spes),...) he was a staunch critic of the evils of unregulated capitalism and a defender of an important role of public authorities (associations, local and national governments,...) in the economy. In one of his book (“Cancer Ward”) the protagonist (Kostoglotov) who is an obvious analog of Solzhenitsyn (Kostoglotov, just like Solzhenitsyn, is an ex-political prisoner (a “zek”), exiled in Soviet Central Asia and suffering from cancer) even argues that the best political system would be a kind of “Christian Socialism” (for instance, he praises one of Lenin policies that was quickly abandoned : a State limitation on wealth, so that a doctor would earn about as much as a factory worker) ! And since 2000, Solzhenitsyn was a supporter of Mr Putin, who rolled back unregulated capitalism (which was about as destructive to Russia as communism) and restored an important role of government in the economy.
In short, what Solzhenitsyn (and John-Paul II and Benedikt XVI) thought was that capitalism can be a secular materialistic illusion as evil and destructive as communism. The global crisis of capitalism that destroyed the world economies since 2007 proved them all right.
I don’t think I’d like the mind of a factory worker, (as much as they and all professions or vocational jobs make up a working society), operating on me! Ergo, some vocations take more education, lots more. I don’t think your comparison, Thibaud, makes horse sense. Football players and major athletes make more than most doctors, except they don’t get sued (athletete, that is). I think justice or some type of measure of salary should not be controlled by government. Yet, there is something to be said for the absurdity of millions and millions made by CEO’s ....I really don’t know how to get a handle on correcting salaries, but I do know greed is one of the capital sins. Greed invades every government, especially the Godless ones. Herein lies the problem.
Thibaud is certainly correct on the writings of the Popes’ cautioning against unregulated markets, as well as the most recent document from the Vatican which calls for a world institution to be established that regulates all markets.
To say that there is either communism/socialism or capitalism is too simplistic and completely ignores our our Catholic contribution to economics, with movements such as Distributism and the work of Father José María Arizmendiarrieta Madariaga to establish worker own cooperatives—where the treatment of the worker is central, and not divorced from “profit.”
Sara, your comment above completely misses Thibaud point—which has nothing to do with the government determining salaries, but rather points to the work of Pope since Leo XIII, John Paul the Great, and the Holy Father Pope Benedict.
He also quotes the actual speech which is the topic of this article! The criticism of unregulated markets is also echoed in the work of Thomas Merton as well as Dorthy Day. Not to mention the personalism and Thomism of Jacque Maritain—who worked to establish the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (which certainly asserts the essential role and accountability of governments in protecting people’s rights and recognizing that even food and health care are essential human rights and not mere commodities to be traded).
I respect the work of Joseph Pearce but this seems to be far from our own Catholic Social teaching on the role of government and man in economic regulation.
Thibaud is certainly correct on the writings of the Popes’ cautioning against unregulated markets, as well as the most recent document from the Vatican which calls for a world institution to be established that regulates all markets.
To say that there is either communism/socialism or capitalism is too simplistic and completely ignores our our Catholic contribution to economics, with movements such as Distributism and the work of Father José María Arizmendiarrieta Madariaga to establish worker own cooperatives—where the treatment of the worker is central, and not divorced from “profit.”
Sara, your comment above completely misses Thibaud point—which has nothing to do with the government determining salaries, but rather points to the work of Pope since Leo XIII, John Paul the Great, and the Holy Father Pope Benedict.
He also quotes the actual speech which is the topic of this article! The criticism of unregulated markets is also echoed in the work of Thomas Merton as well as Dorthy Day. Not to mention the personalism and Thomism of Jacques Maritain—who worked to establish the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (which certainly asserts the essential role and accountability of governments in protecting people’s rights and recognizing that even food and health care are essential human rights and not mere commodities to be traded).
I respect the work of Joseph Pearce but this seems to be far from our own Catholic Social teaching on the role of government and man in economic regulation.
Great article. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a great hero to all mankind. “Secular Fundamentalism” is a term that hits the nail on the head. This is the religion of the Liberal Establishment with the stench of death. The Secular Fundamentalists are pinning the USCCB’s backs to the wall and threatening our Freedom of Speech. We Catholics can change this next November 2012.
I believe it is crony capitalism, rather than deregulated markets, allowing the likes of MS Capital and Madoff, the former SEC chair, (or market overseer and enforcer), to bring down the system. In God’s economy there is no revolving door between justice and greed, they remain opposed. Please read one of Ron Paul’s books while thinking about Isaiah’s 2 witnesses. Alexander, I wish we had met. You had no small part in my formation.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.