SOLZHENITSYN: A SOUL IN EXILE- Book Review by Freeper Rebuildus!

Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile
By Joseph Pearce.
Baker Books. 328 pages. $19.99.

I rented a video recently called Unbreakable starring Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson. The movie posed this question: “Do comic book heroes actually walk the earth?” The question hovered in my mind as I read Joseph Pearce’s biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. After reading it, I knew that the answer is “yes”.

We live among so much mediocrity. The quality of things is generally low, particularly the quality of our heroes. These days, if you’re famous enough, or crude enough, or rich enough, you’re going to be considered a hero by many. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a real hero, and amazingly, he’s still alive! To our discredit, however, he’s been largely forgotten, both in his native Russia and worldwide. Pearce’s excellent biography aims to change that.

Solzhenitsyn was raised in a traditional religious home in Russia. But as a youth, he was lured into the “Pioneers”, the Communist version of the Boy Scouts. He was soon on the road to becoming a fanatical Communist.

On February 9, 1945, while serving in the army, Solzhenitsyn was arrested. A subversive piece he had written years before containing derogatory remarks about Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had been found. The arrest was a shock, and led to years of brutal imprisonment.

Solzhenitsyn began to undergo a spiritual awakening in prison. A cellmate had tried to convince him to play it safe and stay quiet. Solzhenitsyn’s reaction was: “One wanted to agree with him, to serve out the time cozily, and then expunge from one’s head what one had lived through. But I had begun to sense a truth inside myself; if in order to live it is necessary not to live, then what’s it all for?”

Solzhenitsyn became determined to tell the brutal truth about Stalin’s camps. When finally released he was a changed man.

Solzhenitsyn began to ask himself questions about life. He wondered of the evil dictator Stalin, and the torturers in the camps. They appeared to prosper, and he could not understand it: “And the only solution to this would be that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but… in the development of the soul. From that point of view our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine, they are departing from humanity.”

In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”. The Soviet authorities were outraged. Others saw it differently: A message smuggled out of a Soviet labor camp said, “Barbed wire and automatic weapons prevent us from expressing to you personally the depth of our admiration for your courageous creative work, upholding the sense of human dignity…”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is undoubtedly one of the great writers of this or any other time. More importantly, he is a great man. His highest value to society has been the power of his example: “Solzhenitsyn’s courage was clearly contagious and was spreading to parts of Soviet society that the authorities had hoped it would never reach.” Other writers and citizens in Soviet society began to step forward and challenge the authorities, which increased the moral pressure on the Communist power.

In 1972 Solzhenitsyn went public with an open confession of Christianity and he was roundly denounced. In Solzhenitsyn’s own words: “I was received with ‘hurrahs’ as long as I appeared to be against Stalinist abuses only… [but] the time had come to speak more precisely, to go even deeper. And in doing so I should inevitably lose the reading public, lose my contemporaries in the hope of winning posterity.”

On August 23rd, 1973, Solzhenitsyn detailed death threats he had received, he believed, from the KGB. While Solzhenitsyn was speaking to the press, “the KGB was being implicated in the death of a frail old woman named Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, who was one of Solzhenitsyn’s most devoted supporters. She was arrested by the KGB and broke down under interrogation, divulging the whereabouts of a hidden copy of his finished manuscript, The Gulag Archipelago. Racked with guilt she returned home on August 23rd and apparently committed suicide by hanging herself, though there were rumours that the KGB had a direct hand in her death.”

Solzhenitsyn had done everything possible to keep the existence of the book secret from the Soviet authorities. Now that they had a copy of the book in their possession, he had no choice but to order publication in the West as soon as possible. It was to become his best-known, and perhaps greatest work.

Soon after publication, Solzhenitsyn was arrested at his Moscow home and taken to Lefortovo prison, where he was charged with treason. The next day, having been stripped of his Soviet citizenship, he was expelled from his homeland as a traitor. He and his family were to live in Switzerland, and later, the United States.

On June 8th, 1978, Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard University. In his uncompromising speech, he condemned the Western world as being morally bankrupt. Indeed, many in the West had loved Solzhenitsyn – as long as he was trashing the Soviet empire, not them.

On August 16th, 1990, Solzhenitsyn’s Soviet citizenship was restored nearly seventeen years after it had been taken from him. An announcement was subsequently made that the treason charges against him had been revoked. This had been the last official obstacle barring his return to Russia.

On the morning of May 27th, 1994, Alexander Solzhenitsyn set foot in Russia for the first time in over twenty years. The old Soviet Union had fallen: The truth of Solzhenitsyn’s works had attacked the foundation of the Soviet system, until it came crashing down under its own immoral weight, with the help of the policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Solzhenitsyn made a blistering attack on Russia’s new political leaders, saying they were no better than the communist rulers he spent much of his life opposing. Ironically though, the man who was most responsible for the newfound freedom of everyday Russians was now considered no longer relevant by many in the “New Russia”. Solzhenitsyn was to assume a diminished cultural role, and has semi retired to a home in the countryside.

In Solzhenitsyn: A Soul In Exile, Joseph Pearce has completed a labor of love, and chronicled a giant. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is more than a hero. This book had a powerful effect on my life. It reminded me of what human beings are indeed capable of – for good or ill, but particularly for good. Solzhenitsyn: A Soul In Exile has earned my highest recommendation.

Patrick Rooney is the Director of Special Projects for BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles whose purpose is “Rebuilding the Family By Rebuilding the Man”. He can be reached at Patrick@bondinfo.org or (323) 782-1980.

All I can say is that you MUST READ THIS BOOK if your love liberty, truth and justice. If you want to be inspired, if you want to know what one human being is capable of READ THIS BOOK. THE ONLY AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF SOLZHENITSYN IN EXISTENCE!! Thank you rebuildus for this great review, although I know you were constricted by space from going into more detail...I will here! I love Alexander Solzhenitsyn and so will you I gaurantee!! (Quotes from this book to follow).

"The Soviet persecution of the Orthodox Church had now begun in earnest. Over the the following weeks and months there were a further twenty-two church trial in the provinces"..."The grim irony of the situation was that religious faith, technically speaking, was still not a crime. The crime was in mentioning it. In the twenties, for instance, the religious education of children was classified as a political offence under Article 58-10 of the Code-in other words, counter-revolutionary propaganda."

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Thanks much for posting this.

I can very much appreciate the comparison with comic book heroes: as a profound intellectual, the man's life has truly been THAT great.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is indeed more than a hero: he is a great novelist in the Russian tradition. I heartily recommend "August 1914" to anyone who wishes to truly understand the genesis of the Russian revolution and "Gulag Archipegalo" and "Day in the Life of Ivan Desonovich" to understand its consequences.

our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine, they are departing from humanity.

The sentiment of a person of deep Christian faith. As is this from Solzhenitsyn:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passed not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”
The Gulag Archipelago

"but I could not make the connection between the lack of bread and the ruin of the countryside, or understand why it had happened. We were provided with another formula: 'temporary difficulties'. Every nite in the large town where we lived, hour after hour after hour people were being hauled off to jail-but I did not walk the streets at nite. And in the daytime the families of those arrested hung out no black flags, nor did my classmates say a word about their fathers being taken away.

According to the newspapers there wasn't a cloud in the sky. And young men are so eager to believe that all is well."

The fact that they used to say everything at home and never shielded me from anything decided my destiny. Generally speaking...if you want to know the pivotal point of my life, you have to understand that I received such a charge of social tension in childhood that it pushed everything else to one side and diminished it...inside me I bore this social tension-on the one hand they used to tell me everything at home, and on the other they used to work on our minds at school. Those were militant times, not like today...And so this collison between two worlds..somehow defined the path I was to follow for the rest of my life."

I remember watching a documentary on PBS "FRONTLINE" called The Homecoming.
Here's a little blurb about it I found on the net:

In February 1974, Nobel prize-winning author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his Soviet citizenship, and expelled from his country. Nearly twenty years after exiling himself in Vermont, FRONTLINE accompanies Solzhenitsyn on his emotional return to his homeland, journeying by train across Russia into his past even as his thoughts turn toward the current troubles plaguing Russia. Followed--and often frustrated by--leagues of journalists, photographers, and camera crews, Solzhenitsyn urges the factory workers, businessmen, and ordinary villagers he meets along the way to have courage.

It's an awesome documentary that will bring tears to your eyes and make your heart ache.
But I'll be darned if I can find out how to purchase a copy of it anywhere.

I put this in 'breaking news' because it is SO relevant to what our young people are going through today. Solzhenitsyn was a Bolshevik until his imprisonment and 'awakening', he was a war hero and a great admirer of Lenin. His schooling made him cast aside his religion, even though he came from a good, religious family. He tells exactly how that happened. We need to hear this if we are to save our young people from the brainwashing they are receiving.

If you are 'uninterested', well, I feel sorry for you. You are in for some big surprises in life.

He has been one of my favorite authors for many years. I sort of forgot him til this review by rebuildus. It just struck such a cord in me of what we are in for if we don't wake up...

"Solzhenitsyn bowed under the combined force of peer pressure, and Soviet propaganda, turning his back on the 'reactionary' teachings of his family and embracing Marxist dogma...Soviet education ...as part of its indoctrination strrategy, had virtually abolished the teaching of history except in a highly selective and slanted way, and replaced it with propaganda and ideological training. Faced with such unscrupulous ingenuity the youth of Russia quickly succumbed to the mythology surrounding the Revolution...so it was that Solzhenitsyn, and his schoolfriends learned to 'wave flags, beat drrums, blow trumpet's, taking their place in the ranks of those destined to 'complete the Revolution'.

"And on the whole, do you now, I have become convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in this live on earth which is undeserved. Superficially it can have nothing to do with what we are guilty of of in actual fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and ponder it deeply, you will always be able to hunt down that transgression of your for which you have now received this blow."

When did I so utterly, totally,
Strew the good grain like chaff to the winds
And shun those same temples where all through my youth
I was lulled by Your radiant hymns?

My dazzling book-garnered wisdom proved more than
This arrogant brain could withstand
The world with its secrets spread open before me
And Fate was but wax in my hands.

Each new surge of blood as it pounded within me
Lured me on with its shimmering hues.
While the faith in my heart, like a building deserted,
Crumbled, soundless and slipped into rruin.

But picking my way between life and extinction,
Now falling, now scrambling back,
I gaze through new eyes at the life I once followed
And gazing, I shudder with thanks.

It was not my own intellect, not my desiring
That illumedeach twist in my path
But the still, even light of a Higher design,
That only with time I could grasp.

And now, as I sip with new-found moderation
From the life-giving waters-I see
Taht my faith is restored, O Lord of Creation!
I renounced You, but You stood by me."

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