None of these people were 1 Jerals or Jews, or terrorists. None were, in a word, 'demons'. They were not given their positions of authority by Lenartovich s aunts, by Lenin or even by Parvus. The principal 'fairies', 'ruminants' and 'milksops' were appointed personally by the Orthodox monarch himself.44 They, in turn, chose people like themselves to command the fronts, the armies and the corps in their charge. As for tne 'living corpse' and 'gravedigger', 'he was close to the court of Maria Feodorovna',45 the dowager empress and Stolypin's only supporter at court.
How did it happen that they all — from the corps commanders right up to the High Command - represent in Solzhenitsyn s portrayal at any rate, a total freak show, a collection ot monsters - to use the author's phrase, a 'sack of shit'? Who destroyed the Russian army in the woods and swamps of Hast Prussia in August of 1914 - and with it Russia herself? Was it the 'demons' with their 'endless wailing about rights'? Shouldn't they be the ones to bear the blame, according to Solzhenitsyn the propagandist and the imperative of the Russian Idea? Or was it the monsters, created and placed at the helm by that very same Orthodox monarchy which Solzhenitsyn and his cohorts behind the Russian Idea now present as the political ideal for Russia's future?
Solzhenitsyn the novelist answers this question unequivocally: tsarism is to blame. It's this answer by Solzhenitsyn the novelist that turns the book August 1914 into a personal August 1914 for Solzhenitsyn the party propagandist
Novelist or propagandist?
Incompetent military and political leadership is by no means the monopoly of Orthodox monarchy. Such things can happen under any kind of political system, including under Solzhenitsyn's hated 'parliamentarismHowever, it is hard to imagine a democratic government that would not be removed from office mrnediately, if its policies led to a military debacle and the loss of a major war. Under 'parliamentarism' there exist legal procedures which make such a change of government minimally damaging to the country in a crisis situation. In other words, a military disaster does not at all necessarily become a catastrophe for the nation. The fatal flaw of medieval Orthodox monarchy is that there is no painless way of correcting major mistakes in state policy. That's why it makes a national catastrophe inevitable.
Solzhenitsyn the novelist demonstrates this graphically in the final scene of his novel in which the monarchist monsters achieve total and complete victory over Vorotyntsev, a character who was nourishing the faint Utopian hope (Solzhenitsyn's) that the Orthodox monarchy could still be saved at the last minute — from itself. This proved to be impossible.
Solzhenitsyn the novelist knows all too well, just as Konstantin Aksakov did, that the Orthodox monarchy represented a social institution under which 'universal corruption or relaxation of moral principles reached enormous proportions He knows that this corruption became no longer a private sin but a public one', and '[therein lies] the immorality of the whole social structure.' Solzhenitsyn the novelist furiously denounces this immorality as follows: 'The higher the headquarters ... the sharper and more immediately one expects to J-'nd narcissists, careerists and fossils there . . . Not singularly, but whole mobs of them, who think of the army as a comfortable, carpeted and shiningly polished staircase, on the steps of which stars and medals are handed out.'46 This 'carpeted staircase of promotions', constructed under the Orthodox monarchy, is such that 'it isn't the independent ones who move"up so much as the obedient, not the smart, but the meticulous and dependable, and whoever manages to please 1 s superiors more.'47 Promotion, here, is governed by seniority of incompetence and court influence'.48
However, for Solzhenitsyn the novelist, the most deadly condemnation of the Orthodox monarchy is that 'the key tone for it all was set by His Majesty.'49 Therefore, even if by some miracle (or, more precisely, in the event of an extraordinary national crisis) a genuine statesman, like Petr Stolypin, rises to the helm of the Orthodox monarchy, he remains unappreciated, unprotected and, ultimately, is betrayed. He is then remembered in history as a 'hangman' by the Left and a 'traitor' by the Right:50 'Russia will inter her best head of government in a hundred or two hundred years amidst derision, hate, and abandonment by left-, semi-left-, and right-wingers alike. From en igre terrorists all the way to the pious tsar.'51
For Solzhenitsyn the novelist, the Orthodox monarchy 'is a slough ar water. It doesn't even go around in circles',52 no matter what its loyal servants do to save it. Vorotyntsev 'threw himself into the operation because he thought the army's fate and victory would be decided in the ranks on the field. But when they felt the way they did at the top, that was already beyond the limits of tactics and strategy.'53 Thus, Solzher tsyn the propagandist's truth in the realm of politics, which he judges to be so conclusive and irrefutable, is insistently, line by line and word by word, dislodged from its position by Solzhenitsyn the novelist.
Solzhenitsyn's entire criticism of 'our pluralists' is based on the assertion lhat 'the truth is one' (and therefore pluralism is a lie and an unnecessary one). Yet clearly in August 1914 there are at least two truths: one possessed by Solzhenitsyn the novelist and another by Solzhenitsyn the party propagandist. Which of these two Solzhenitsyns, each merc.iessly contradicting the other, should we believe?
A final appeal
At the very end of August 1914, one of these Solzhenitsyns unexpectedly blurts out 'Suddenly 1 have a distressing feeling about all of us — we're in the wrong place . . . Lost. We're doing the wrong thing.'54 This is ust what 'our pluralists' have been saying to Solzhenitsyn and his comrades of the Russian Idea: You're lost You're doing the wrong thing You're calling the country in the wrong direction. Russia's Orthodox monarchy has already once pushed her over the brink. So why should you expect salvation from this monarchy in the awesome age of nuclear weapons? Might not another Nicholas U, not to mention another Paul and Peter, annihilate Russia once and for all so thai not even a memory of her remained
To conclude my picture of the conflict between the two Solzhenitsyns, I can quote nothing more apt than Solzhenitsyn's appeal.
I have written all this in one last hope and I appeal [to \ou] . . . gentlemen comrades, wake up! Russia is not ust a geographical expanse, a picturesque backdrop for your 'self-express.on If you continue to expound yourselves in the Russian language, then [at least try to] bring in addition something good sympathetic, just a bit of love and an attempt at understanding to the people who have created that language.55
But no. They just continue to go on and on about monarchy and Orthodoxy. Don't they know that 'to apply ont's own values m evaluating someone else's judgement is ignorance and violence Yet all they do is to continually apply then own values, repeating after Leont'ev, 'What good to us is a Russia that isn't autocratic and isr t Orthodox? What use is such a Russia to us0
Notes
Vestnik RKhD, No. 139, 1983, p. 134.
Ibid., p. 133.
Ibid., No. 138, p. 162.
Л I. Solzhenitsvn, Collected Works, Pans: 1983, v. 12, pp 188 — 9.