“I'm surprised you didn't ware a black arm band into work today”, a college quipped; he was referring to the sad news that broke this morning, the dead of the Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
A few years ago, I remember picking up a book from a dusty bookshelf. I wasn't expecting much, in-fact I was just looking for something to read but as I went through 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' I slowly realized that the very thinly disguised subtext of the story was put there by someone who was nothing less than a genius.
It was while fighting in the closing years for World War II that he wrote a letter criticizing Stalin, this, in turn, had him sentenced to hard labor in the Gulags. Here, while he toiled in this 'special camp', slowly starving and freezing, he 'wrote' a book. That is to say the thought up the story and worked on it in his mind (not having access to paper or pencils).
Some time after his release (1961), he submitted the manuscript for 'One Day...' to a magazine, at this time people were only 'allowed' to refer to the Gulags in the most general terms but here was a story about the day of a prisoner described in great detail, it was unheard of! The book was published, perhaps because, at the time after Stalin's death, the Russians were trying to play down the whole Stalin system so anything that would criticize him and his regimen as openly as this book was considered good propaganda. Maybe it was for this reason, maybe not, in 1962 Krushchev himself gave to go ahead for the story to be published.
After publication, the world could finally see what was going on in these camps. Such are (were) the pitfalls in the Soviet system that after Krushchev was ousted the KGB moved on Solzhenitsyn and pretty much ended any publication of his from getting out. From than on, his works were only ever seen (legally) in the west.
His most famous work, The Gulag Archipelago, was not published in his home country until after the fall of the Soviet Union. He was a man who was never afraid to openly criticize the government from the oppressive regime of the Soviet Union to US involvement in the Vietnam war (another brave move as he was living in exile in the US at the time).
He was a great political writer and I don't, for a second, think I can do justice to the life or indeed, the sear genius of this man so I hope that you (if you haven't already) pick up something of his and discover him for yourself. Though he never lead or effected a revolution, he was a revolutionary.
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3 comments:
He sounds fascinating - thanks for writing about him. I'll certainly pick up one of his books next time I'm in the library.
I remember reading The Gulag Archipelago a number of years ago and marvelling at the humanity of a man to whom so many inhumane things had been done...
Solzhynitzin was truly a genius, able to make the personal universal, speak openly about what was unspoken, and tell truths that no-one wanted to believe...
It's good to know there are voices that cannot be silenced, that have things to say that must be heard and that imagination can never be imprisoned...
Indeed. He was a revolutionary. What you say at the end makes me think of the Taoist (or is that Zen?) saying that one is most powerful when others believe one is least powerful. Some such thing.
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