Remembering Solzhenitsyn

I read this evening that Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died at age 89. So much has been said and written about this giant of Russian letters, I don’t feel it necessary, or even desirable, to add to the pile, but I do feel compelled to remember him here, in all of his confusingly idiosyncratic greatness.

Already, as obituaries pour forth, it has been noted several times over that Mr. Solzhenitsyn ground some bizarre political axes during his lifetime. The author who was able to command language and reason to write masterpieces, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, could also fall prey the pettiness of antisemitism and the temptations of reactionary nationalism. It is especially puzzling how Solzhenitsyn could write so truthfully about the gulag, but could fail to implicate its precursor -- the czarist regime that the Marxist-Leninists overturned.

Of Solzhenitsyn, the Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin wrote:

“For what it’s worth, I think that while Solzhenitsyn was wrong to excuse and overlook the crimes of czarist Russia, he was right to emphasize that the oppression of the Soviet Union was rooted more in communist ideology and institutions than in Russian cultural tradition.”

I’m afraid I can’t agree. For me, having read not a little in Russian history, “communist ideology” and the “Russian cultural tradition” begin to lose their distinctiveness, such that they merge, a little here and then a little there. While Soviet Communism was certainly revolutionary, I’m afraid its leaders learned a great deal of their viciousness from the czars, much as the Marquis de Custine claimed the czars themselves learned oppression from the Asiatic hordes to the east. I cannot consider Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s affection for the czars as anything but an intellectual defect. But we should also conclude that our great writers need not be angels or fall on the winning side of our arguments. May Mr. Solzhenitsyn rest in peace.