Today his truth consists in the following: 'Properly speaking, there was [only] one revolution in Russia. Not the one in 1905 and not the October one It was the February Revolution that was the decisive one which changed the course of our history as well as that of the whole earth The October Revolution is almost an episode and, in any event a consequence of the February one.'3 As he explains in August 1914 'In the foreseeable time, Russia could not have moved or even survived if her monarchical image and foundations had been demolished 4
In other words there cannot be a Russia without an Orthodox monarchy is Solzhenitsyn's current truth In fact, a Russia which is not autocratic and not Orthodox is not recognized as Russia at all. It is painful for him to observe his liberal critics' attempts to immortalize the overthrow of tsarism, and he sees it as another of their efforts once more to unleash a 'February catastrophe' upon his country If suddenly tomorrow the party bureaucracy were to fal, , he warns, 'these cultural forces would also come to the surface — and we'd hear their constant wailing not about the peoples needs, not about land, end not about [our] extinction, ... but about rights, rights, rights . . . a i what s left of us they would see smashed apart in yet another February, in yet another disintegration [of the nation], 5 Ten years of struggle in the em gre world with liberals and opponents of Communism has conv.-iced him that the root of Russia's troubles is not at all in Communism but rather in the ruinous 'wailing about [human] rights.'
The Leont ev connection
The reader may perhaps recall that earlier I spoke of a paper I delivered at the 7th Congress of American Slavists in 1 975, called 'The Paradox of Solzhenitsyn: Halfway to Konstantin Leont'ev'. At the time, I had in mind the danger which Solzhenitsyn's political evolution faced from the moment he began to serve as spokesman for the reborn Russian Idea. He had begun by distinguishing himself in the 1960s by his struggle against political idolatry, like Konstantin Aksakov a hundred years before. Now his search for a 'truly Russian' alternative to the Soviet reg me threatened to slip into an apology for Orthodox monarchy that would be no different from Konstantin Leont ev's. For this metamorphosis to occur, all that would be needed was a crisis — the catalyst for deolog cal degeneration. I could not have known in 1975 just what that fateful catalyst would be. I knew only that he was then already half-way into this transformation. Now we know what happened: it was a decade of struggle Within the emigre community that acted as the catalyst. Solzhenitsyn was actually transformed into a latter-day Konstantin Leont'ev. The metamorphosis was complete.
God forbid that the majority of Russians reach the point that, step by step, already many Frenchmen have, i.e., [to become] accustomed to serving and loving any kind of France. What good to us is a Russia that is non-autocratic and non-Orthodox? What use is such a Russia? Such a Russia could be served only out of need and dumb fear.6
It was Konstantin Leont'ev who said that, and for just that reason he proposed 'freezing Russia, so that she won't decay.'7 He wouldn't have forgiven her a liberal, westernizing revolution. For him that would have been the beginning of the end of Russia. Yet isn't this just what we are now hearing from Solzhenitsyn?
Even if Russia freely voted tor a republic instead of an Orthodox monarchy (as she, in fact did do in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1917), Leont'ev would have refused to accept her choice. He had no need for a Russia that was not both autocratic and Orthodox. It wasn't Russia he loved, but the autocracy in Russia Solzhenitsyn in the 1980s, like Leont'ev in the 1880s, has no need of a non-autocratic, non-Orthodox Russia either. In August 1914 he himseU found the words which epitomize that branch of Russian thought to which he now belongs: 'the intolerant extreme right, which doesn't wish to see any development of society, any movement in thought, nor moreover, any compromises, but only the prayerful worship of the tsar and the country's stony immobility — one more century, one more century, one more century.'8
Sotznenitsyn ignored
One way or another, today's Solzhenitsyn does not doubt, any more than did Leont'ev before him, that his critics are enemies of the Russian people. Otherwise, why should they remain silent about his epic, which he offers as the main means of averting a new catastrophe for Russia? He has dedicated his life to this epic. He has renounced the world for its sake and, like the mythical Atlas, has taken the whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. Meanwhile, the critics take no notice. They squabble with him as if wilh some rank-and-file politician, judging him by his speeches and nterviews, but behaving as though his gigantic literary masterpiece, which unravels all historical riddles and answers all questions, simply did not exist.
Well there they are, my ten volumes. And there's a dozen historical chapters — attack them! Smash them! Such an expanse [of ideas] for you! Here is a complete program to be disseminated — Shipov's [program] (at present still deeper than anything which has been offered by our pluralists). Is the print too tiny? Don't their eves pick it up? No! They squabble with me like with some party propagandist They fall all over one single paragraph of some interview.9
As a human being one cannot but feel sorry for Solzhenitsyn. A man spends years in self-imposed confinement wriung volume upon volume of a gigantic epic masterpiece not just of literature, but of philosophy and history too, and a group of his fellow-countrymen — 'smatterers (among whom, by the way, number some of the best Russian editors and literary critics) — ignore the product of his labour — a work which includes within it a new War and Peace, a new Devils and a new Fathers and Sons. They can spatter him with 'two dozen [muckraking] oil-laden brushes' if they like, but what really hurts is that they «gnore his profound programme for Russia's rebirth as though it didn't exist.
Later we w.il examine more closely the Shipov — Solzhenitsyn programme for 'combining autocracy and self-rule'. More important however, is that, for the first time in all these years Solzhenitsyn has finally referred to the source of his inspiration. For now, we ask only one question: why are Solzhenitsyn's - stubborn countrymen so insensitive to the greatest literary masterpiece of our era? Why do they so doggedly refuse not only to acknowledge his spiritual leadership, but even to recognize his epic as 9 work of art? Is there indeed not a mystery in all tf s — especially since we're talking about the same people who just a few years ago were his most devoted and ardent readers and admirers? These are the same people who cried over his 'Matriona's Household', who felt Ivan Denisovich's grief as their own and who swore revenge when reading his Gulag Archipelago
Solzhenitsyn's explanation we already know: it is a conspiracy against Russia. 'Va: ous levels of development, various ages, various degrees of independent thought, but all of them,' he accuses, 'singing one deafening tune: against Russia! As if they had made an agreement.'10 But this is hardly an explanation. What reason would all these sons of Russia have to conspire against their homeland? Why should they renounce the new works of the respected and admired author of The First Circle and Cancer Ward? They might not have agreed with h з view in the 1960s either, but that didn't stop them from acclaiming him as the brightest new star in the Russian literary firmament and a new hope for a literary revival. So why do they avoid discussing his new books, and criticize, or even mention them?