SOLSHENITSYN:
PROPHET WITHOUT GRACE

written in 1994

Westerners gping to be aquainted with Solshenitsyn can choose between two ready points of view on Solshenitsyn's ideas: positive and negative. Negative thesis is prevailing, but there the positive attitude towards the writer is also quite respectable. It is nicely for,ulated in the book: Solshenitsyn and the Modern World, By Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Washington, 1993, 433 pages. The book was favourably reviwed by John Wilson in Christianity Today on February 7, 1994, pages 57-58.

The aim of the book is to reduce Western prejudice against Solshenitsyn. This prejudice is formulated by Ericson as the following:

"He is a reactionary, chauvinistic, messianic Russian nationalist. His preferred form of government is authoritarian--even monarchist. He has a utopian vision of a good old Holy Russia governed theocratically" (p. 5).

Ericson, however, defends another point of view: Solshenitsyn is more democrat than any Westerner; he is a progressive patriot of a free Russia who was misunderstood because of his Christian beliefs.

The truth may be somewhere between both extreme points of view. It may be simply outside the typical for the West field of thought--and I am sure it is.

Ericson maintains that Westerners were puzzled in 1974 when Solshenitsyn said that he would sooner or later return to Russia as a winner. They are even more puzzled now that the hopes of Solshenitsyn are close to realization (p.8). This realization is really only technical because the country where Solshenitsyn returns to is not the country from which he was expelled. It is indeed a miracle for him to return, but something fundamental here has changed.

The Christianity of Solshenitsyn is of crucial importance to Ericson. The legend about Solshenitsyn's faith is stated by Ericson as follows:

"It is supremely important to understand that Solshenitsyn was a Christian before he wrote any of the works which we now have available to read. Everything that we now have from him grows out of his Christian worldview...His move from Marx to Jesus occurred during his years of incarceration" (p.31).

Solshenitsyn emerged from the Gulag as "a faithful, repentant Christian" (p. 365). However, Solshenitsyn himself overestimates his closeness to Christianity in his childhood and before 1971--or he underestimates the mystical essence of Christianity.

His religiosity is also very undefined. An example of his hazy Christianity is given by Ericson himself: "it matters to him [Solshenitsyn] that all world religions, not only Christianity, teach the primacy of human personhood" (p.33). The only overtly "Christian" idea in the writings of Solshenitsyn is seen by Solshenitsyn himself as universal for all religions which, as he states, all "struggle with the evil inside a human being" (p.33). Mind you that this idea is not at all true from the point of view of the history of religions. He writes about history as "a global battle between world communism and world humanity" (cit. p. 131). This is certainly a non-Christian view though it is not necessarily anti-Christian.

Solshenitsyn was (and in some sense remains) a non-Christian humanist because he thinks about the world in terms of morals, not God-man relations. Sakharov was another sort of humanist, with an accent on the rational scientific side (p. 248). Yet both in their contradictory views were non-Christians. Solshenitsyn writes more often about a Superior Spirit (p. 148)--just as Robespierre did.

Solshenitsyn with great force speaks about "ecological catastrophes" (p. 227). But it seems that this overestimating of ecocide is more characteristic for humanists, than for Christians who should understand the subordinate place of ecological problems to truly spiritual issues and the utopianism of the ecological movement. He is against progress (p. 229) not from a Christian point of view but from the ecological. Environmentalism (p. 230) is not a part of the Christian Credo yet (though it may becoming so in the West).

The myth about the hypothetical early Christian views of Solshenitsyn is disproved not by his (or anybody's) personal statements (Fr. Alexander Menn in his unpublished memoirs definitely speaks about the non-Christianity of Solshenitsyn in the mid-sixties), but by Solshenitsyn's own literary works. His most popular of the early works in the West ("One day," "The First Circle," "Cancer Ward") are not dominated by any Christian ideas or specific ideological slogans of Russian Orthodoxy as most of his later works are. Certainly, "nothing in the early novels conflicts with what we later learned of his world view" (p. 54).

The problem with secularized humanism is that it contains nothing conflicting with Christianity. It doesn't say anything against it, it simply doesn't say anything pro. "Favorably disposed toward religion" in the early works of Solshenitsyn (which Ericson notes on page 62) is just a part of his opposition to Marxism (the enemy of my enemy is my friend....) Just the same may be said about his "unfavorable disposal toward Western liberalism" (p. 62).

For his entire life Solshenitsyn has criticized Western liberalism for being too friendly to Marxism. Ericson and his Western opponents have one system of thinking, and in this system religion and liberalism are in opposition to each other because they are estimated in terms of being pro- or anti-freedom.

Solshenitsyn has another system of thinking in which everything is estimated in terms of being pro- or anti- Marxist. These are two very different ways of thinking. Both ways can wrongly estimate the relations of religion, Marxism, liberalism, and freedom among themselves. (I believe Marxism and liberalism are wrong more often than right--while opposing, for example, religion to freedom.)

And even after his conversion Solshenitsyn preserved his understanding of Ideology (Marxism) as the main enemy--even more understandable and important than abstract "sin", or "evil" (p. 231). Freedom for Solshenitsyn is a "moral," not a spiritual phenomenon (p. 239).

Kent Hill has written that "the person who best epitomizes the victory of the Russian religious spirit over Soviet communism is Alexander Solshenitsyn" (p.345). But it would be more correct to say that Solshenitsyn epitomizes the victory of common sense, of democracy, of humanism.

The weakest point is the opposition of Solshenitsyn to only Western scholars and Russian contemporaries. That means, for example, that in the question of the struggle with Marxism, Solshenitsyn was more correct than those Western Marxists who tried to say that Marx was OK, only Stalin was a bad chap.

But Solshenitsyn is not correct when he, as Ericson writes, believes that the main culprit accountable for the dehumanization in the Soviet period is Marxist-Leninist ideology" (p. 13). Not "the main culprit!" That is becoming especially obvious now when there is no more ideology and yet dehumanization is still very much at work.

The main culprit is common to the West and Russia: it lies in the non-ideological field, it is deChristianization.

Ericson and the West together give only two choices for the dehumanization of the Soviet period: (1) Marxism, or (2) "some defect in the character of the Russian people." However, this choice is not at all the only one. And these two choices mask the truth.

The weakness of Solshenitsyn as a Christian-neophyte can be seen in his attempt to make Christianity a new ideology. His famous phrase "People have forgotten God" is very representative. He means this phrase in the spirit of the Old Testament, not in the spirit of the Gospels. For Solshenitsyn Christianity is just "a stable spiritual system" (p.19)--a kind of baptized humanism. This view is simply too utilitarian for the religion of Crucifixion. He just changes his understanding of one scheme to another, because the Marxist scheme seems inhuman to him. But Christianity in its heart cannot be a mere scheme.

Ericson writes that a "moral vocabulary... predominates in his world of discourse" (p. 21). But morality cannot be equated with Christianity! Moreover, Ericson describes the Christian worldview as follows:

"The goodness of the ever-merciful God does not end with the provision of redemption by Christ. It continues in the present through God's providential care ... It is a steadfast assurance that the story which had a good beginning will have a good ending" (p. 24).

This a very popular version of Christianity, but it lacks the truth of the inner tragedy of the world of sin, the reality of the Cross, not the throne, as the dwelling place of Christ the Saviour when He was on earth and when He is in our souls. Such an oversimplification of Christianity is excusable for Solshenitsyn but not for Ericson, or to any modern Christian. It is a great temptation to forget about the Crucifixion in this religion we call Christianity.

Here is one example of how Ericson makes Solshenitsyn "religious." He cites the words written by Solshenitsyn during his pre-Christian years--in 1969: "Man has separated himself [italics mine--JK] from the animal world by thought and speech" (p. 27), and Ericson concludes that Solshenitsyn accepts "man as God's creature" (p. 27).

But man is either created by God or has created himself. He cannot be both. In the best tradition of secular humanism the early Solshenitsyn accepts a theory of self-created man! He also speaks about his faith in the Supreme Being. But this conception is very foggy and is far from the Christian understanding of a "Supreme Being."

Most precise is the analysis of Solshenitsyn's worldview made in 1970 by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, cited by Ericson on p. 29. He admits that "at the bottom of Solshenitsyn's art" lies "the triune intuition of creation, fall, and redemption." But Ericson seems not to notice the meaningful words of Schmemann that such a "perception of the world, man, and life" is "possibly unconscious." There are too many powerful objections from Solshenitsyn's own works to regard Solshenitsyn as a consciously Christian writer.

It is not an easy matter to distinguish where Solshenitsyn acts as Christian and where as simply an honest man. The Western mistakes in evaluating Solshenitsyn are not puzzling when we see how naive Westerners are on the question of Yeltsin. Ericson writes about Yeltsin's Russian Orthodoxy as a matter of fact. But in Russia such an assessment born by a Western journalist from merely one phrase of the President is simply ridiculous. Everybody here knows that Yeltsin is absolutely a non-believer, and that he uses his contacts with the Patriarch for political advantage (cf. p. 349).

The struggle of Ericson for the rehabilitation of Solshenitsyn is unsuccessful as he tries to explain Solshenitsyn to the Western mind. To understand Solshenitsyn Westerners must first understand themselves. In particular, they must understand the limits of their secularism. They do not really struggle with religion, they are not Voltaires. They struggle with hate and boycott only overt religiosity.

This is a very cowardly position. You can be Christian but don't let Christianity appear in your novels, or political position etc. This explains partly the wildest paradox: Americans extracted their love from Solshenitsyn and gave it to Gorbachev. They have preferred Caiaphas to Gamaliel simply because Caiaphas doesn't speak about God too often. Ericson is closer to the truth when he writes that Solshenitsyn became the victim of "social etiquette" (p.156).

Certainly, Solshenitsyn later overtly exposed his new (!) Christian faith with all the clumsiness of an ardent neophyte. Western critics began writing about his "deep religious faith" after August 1914 (cf. p.71). But "deep" is not a very precise word. Certainly his faith was rooted deeply in his heart. But the history of literature shows genuine Christians writing novels without mentioning Christ at all. Moreover, the best Christian novelist is not a novelist who necessarily mentions Christ most often. A novelist is not a preacher, and he must create the metaphysical reality to demonstrate his/her ideas. The novel must not be a slogan. Solshenitsyn failed to do this because he was too new a Christian. That is why his readers were only irritated by his too straight-forward exposition of newly gained Christian ideals.

The main misunderstanding of Solshenitsyn lies in the primitive understanding of Christianity which seems to also characterize Western intellectuals. They cannot distinguish a newly-converted person with little Christian experience and primitive ideas about relations of Christianity and the world, from a Christian with genuine and mature Christianity. They falsely and most primitively oppose "an open, urban, scientific society" to the "mystic vision of a future-past" (Hedrick Smith, 1976, cit. from Ericson, p. 97), thus making a caricature both of Christianity and their own views about a supposed "scientific society." Their spiritual baggage is as poor as the spiritual baggage of the "boat people." Rosalynn Carter, for example, has stated that she doesn't sense "the pressure of evil" in the world.

Ericson and other Westerners who understand Solshenitsyn are a minority. They understand things which seem to be quite simple: that Solshenitsyn is "an avatar of the West's most ancient and honorable principles" (Charles Kesler, cit. on p. 105.) He "wants the West to be more the West" (p. 126). But he and they are not heard. Why? Because to be "more Western" is to be more Christian, and there is some invisible barrier which prevents Christians from becoming a real, active majority in the modern Western world. This barrier is so great that Christians themselves can not think about it as non-Providential. Secularization is certainly part of God's will, as well as our attempts to overcome secularization.

It is very easy to defend Solshenitsyn as a humanist and Ericson is quite correct in this matter. But Ericson is very weak when he defends Solshenitsyn as a "moderate," "normal" nationalist. It must be stressed that Christianity and nationalism in Solshenitsyn's life are of a different origin and age! Nationalism in Solshenitsyn is older than his Christian faith. Solshenitsyn too often has spoken about the Russian nation in terms of some exclusiveness, and this is what makes a person nationalistic. An example can be found in the texts cited by Ericson. Solshenitsyn writes: "No country in the twentieth century has suffered like ours" (p. 179).

First, how does he know? Second, how can you measure and compare sufferings? Third, this is simply untrue: Jews, Chinese, and practically all African countries have suffered more that Russia and Russians have.

Solshenitsyn, as all nationalists, commits a naive psychological trick: he praises his nation by diminishing the merits (or sufferings) of others. This act is tantamount to the propaganda of the brutal Russian Nazis. Certainly, Solshenitsyn is correct when he criticizes the West for thinking about communism as a Russian idea, but that doesn't mean that Russians are not guilty of any communism at all.

Solshenitsyn doesn't use Russian Orthodoxy as the basis for his nationalism (as Osipov and Shimanov--p.185) do, but he is far from the really Christian position nationalistically speaking. He is a non-Christian nationalist when he states that before the revolution Russian people preserved their "physical and spiritual health." Which nation can't say this about herself at any moment of history? He contradicts the historical truth and Christian humility when he writes that Russian people under Bolshevism preserved Christian faith "not undermined" (p. 301), while the majority of the nation is now overtly atheistic.

He is not Christian when he calls religion (in the best style of the Soviet newspeak) to "make an appropriate contribution to the spiritual life of the nation" (p. 242). A nation must give adherence to God! (Such nationalism is too widespread to be called "ultra"--yet ultra it is.) Certainly, Letter to the Soviet Leaders was misinterpreted by the West (Ericson proves that in Chapter 9), yet this text is not the best manifesto of democratic ideas. But practically all Russian dissidents (Solshenitsyn, Sakarov etc.) had only theoretical ideas about democracy.

The practical meaning of Solshenitsyn's return seems to be merely symbolic. He returns too late and he is too old (old-fashioned may be the best word). Solshenitsyn is very bothered by the decline of the Soviet Empire. He can not think about Ukraine and Belorus as independent states. Such thinking now in Russia is quickly becoming marginal.

Here it seems to me is the main and the only result of Perestroika--the result absolutely unplanned, undesirable to all, and therefore the most truthful: imperialistic thinking is disappearing even towards Ukrainians. Ukraine in Russian public opinion is moving from the status of Wales to the status of Ireland, slowly but firmly.

Now Russia does not bother struggling with Bolshevism. Russians experienced that there can be no Marxism, no Ideology, and yet the problems are larger, and the enemy becomes more subtle. Solshenitsyn is too moderate for all who sympathize with him. Nationalists and Russian Orthodox believers, ecologists and humanists have gone a long way in his absence.

It can be prognosed that he will be venerated by everybody; nobody will criticize him. He will be a national hero as George Bernard Shaw was after World War II. It is a most tragic role for those who are always in need of an enemy...