TOTALITARIANISM’S 10 THINGS IN COMMON
/Brad Birzer paraphrases the ten typical features of “free” life under Communism that Solzhenitsyn enumerates in The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, part IV, ch. 3, “Our Muzzled Freedom”. Instructive reading.
Blog
CHOICE review of March 1917, Book 2
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From the May issue of CHOICE magazine:
“Most readers know the name Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but few have heard of—and even fewer have read—The Red Wheel, the author’s longest and most challenging novel, which comprises ten volumes in total. The present volume is book 2 of the March 1917 node, which dramatizes the tumultuous events of the March Revolution—a workers’ strike in Petrograd; abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and house arrest of the Romanov family; establishment of a provisional government to rule over Russia. Although The Red Wheel is fiction, Solzhenitsyn prided himself on the historical accuracy of his work. He spent ten years writing the March 1917 node, adding psychological depth, descriptive details, and, occasionally, his own views to bring well-known personalities and events to life. Solzhenitsyn’s decision to write the novel in vignettes, ranging from several pages to several lines, opens the book to a variety of readers and approaches to reading. Occasionally Solzhenitsyn advances the plot through authentic genres from the period, including telegrams, correspondence, slogans, and official reports. Schwartz’s translation is lively and contemporary. The appendix provides four maps and a helpful index of names that can serve as a reader’s guide through Solzhenitsyn’s maze of embellished historical encounters, which capture the events of March 1917 from many perspectives.”
Ivan Denisovich and COVID-19
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Over at the Cavendish Historical Society, Margo Caulfield has a fresh take on One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, suggesting it can be seen as a precursor to the emerging field of positive psychology and the modern understanding of “mindfulness”.
“As it turns out, a very successful and highly practiced form of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), has its roots in Stoic philosophy. Since one of the most famous Stoics was Epictetus, who was born into slavery, it’s not surprising that Solzhenitsyn would have drawn some similar conclusions. We may not have control over our circumstances, but we can control how we interpret them and how we respond to them.
In the midst of our “stay-at-home” order, “One Day in the Life” is definitely worth a read. It’s short, can be read in one sitting, and can help reframe this time of Covid-19 by reminding us that we do have control over how we respond as well as that there are positive things happening all around us that we can be grateful for.”
Interview with Richard Tempest on his new Solzhenitsyn book
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Slavic languages and literatures professor Richard Tempest has written a new book, Overwriting Chaos, about the literary artistry of Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Read his interview about it here.
“Every story, every novel is a complete imagined world unto itself, with a humankind, geography, climate, flora and its own logic. It can be very playful and magical. That’s the way I look at him,” Tempest said. “As an artist, he had tremendous fun writing. He liked all kinds of tricks and in-jokes and private witticisms.”
Solzhenitsyn's Warning
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C2C are reminded of Solzhenitsyn in light of COVID-19, re-posting their 2009 review of the Solzhenitsyn Reader.
“In our eagerness to do business with China, we have self-servingly overlooked the lies and dishonesty endemic in totalitarian societies. The Covid-19 virus – so renamed to conceal its origins in Wuhan, China – reminds us of the fatal dangers of the one-party state. In reviewing The Solzhenitsyn Reader, Colin May illuminates how the great Russian dissident and author warned the West.”
Cardinal Dolan, in Easter homily, quotes Solzhenitsyn
/Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, delivering his Easter homily yesterday to an empty St. Patrick’s Cathedral (but seen by thousands online), quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (see clip below).
Richard Tempest Online Book Presentation coming up on 9 Apr
/On Thursday, April 9 from 4:30–5:30 p.m., the Russian and East European Studies Programand the Department of Historyare inviting Seton Hall students and guests to participate in an online book presentation by one of the world's preeminent Solzhenitsyn scholars, Prof. Richard Tempest (University of Illinois). Professor Tempest will discuss his latest book, Overwriting Chaos: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Fictive Words (Academic Press, 2019).
Cavendish’s Best Known Social Distancer: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Over at the Cavendish Historical Society, Margo Caulfield points out that Solzhenitsyn sought the quiet of a small Vermont town in order to deepen and advance his art.
“However, even with our mountains and fresh air, as everything has been shutting down, people are expressing how they feel the world is closing in on them. I find myself turning to one of my favorite Solzhenitsyn quotes for comfort, “We are creatures born with inner freedom of will, freedom of choice-the most part of freedom is a gift to us at birth. External, or social freedom is very desirable for the sake of undistorted growth, but it is no more than a condition, a medium, and to regard it as the object of our existence is nonsense. We can firmly assert our freedom even in external conditions of unfreedom.” —From Under the Rubble”
COMING May 26: abridged Archipelago audiobook, read by author's son
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The new audiobook of the official abridged version of The Gulag Achipelago, read by the author’s son, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, came out last summer in UK/Commonwealth countries, and is coming to the USA on 26th May 2020, available to download wherever audiobooks are sold.
Tempest review of March 1917, Book 2
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Richard Tempest reviews the newly-appeared March 1917, Book 2 in the current issue of National Review.
“Contrary to Tolstoy in War and Peace, Solzhenitsyn means to demonstrate that, at the decisive “nodal” moments of history, the action or inaction of a single individual may have a decisive impact on the course of events. In March 1917, for example, Nicholas II, Aleksandr Kerensky, the future head of the provisional government, and Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, are the most important characters, though plenty of attention is paid to the doings and sayings of other prominent personalities from the theaters of war, politics, and culture, such as General Mikhail Alekseev, chief of the imperial GHQ; Pavel Milyukov, the foreign minister of the provisional government; and Maxim Gorky, the allegedly proletarian writer who supported the Bolshevik cause.”
Morson review of March 1917, Book 2
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Gary Saul Morson reviews the newly-appeared March 1917, Book 2 at the American Scholar.
“To capture such confusion as it was experienced, Solzhenitsyn divides nearly 700 pages into 182 brief chapters jolting among countless narrative threads. We witness decisions taken on the basis of rumors later revealed to be false. We see that Petrograd (as St. Petersburg became known after 1914) was not overrun by an organized group of class-conscious revolutionary workers, as Soviet historians later claimed, but by a rabble of drunkards, released criminals, and soldiers who murdered their officers. “That’s what’s freedom’s for,” one rioter explains. “I shoot wherever I want.” The result is a world reminiscent of Hobbes’s struggle of all against all: “In all the city, each person could protect only himself and expect an attack from anyone and everyone. … It was as if the capital itself were drunk.”
Only intellectuals who have read too many romanticized accounts of the French Revolution could celebrate this violence and expect anything good to come from it. With his trademark irony, reminiscent of Edward Gibbon, Solzhenitsyn describes the puzzlement of one government official unable to recognize in this mob “the noble Face of the People” idealized by thinkers across the political spectrum.”
Video of Harvard Address now available with English subtitles
/Ever since we uploaded, in 2013, the complete video of Solzhenitsyn’s seminal Harvard Address, it has generated over 170,000 views, hundreds of positive comments, and a few negative ones. But also—a persistent clamor amongst viewers for a solution to the dual Russian/English audio that makes it difficult to make out individually the Russian-speaking voice of Solzhenitsyn and the English-speaking voice of his translator, Irina Alberti. While isolating these audio streams is a task beyond our technical means, we are delighted to offer readers/viewers, as a New Year’s gift, an excellent alternative: carefully arranged subtitles that allow English speakers to follow the address much more easily. We are immensely grateful to Mr James Hooghkirk, who generously volunteered his time and expertise to bring this improvement to fruition. Happy watching!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Commencement Address at Harvard University-8 June 1978. {Russian audio with English-translation audio overlay; and English subtitles.} Full Russian text here: http://antology.igrunov.ru/authors/solzh/1121759601.html Full English text here: www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart
Just published: No. 7 of "Studying Solzhenitsyn"
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The 7th issue of Studying Solzhenitsyn is out.
Studying Solzhenitsyn, No. 7 (2019) 360 pp.
This issue presents, for the first time, Solzhenitsyn’s recollections of his school years; archival documents pertaining to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Solzhenitsyn 50 years ago; the author’s correspondence with Heinrich Böll (1968–82); photographic materials relating to Solzhenitsyn’s military career; and the reflections of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the author’s son, on Aleksandr Chaikovsky’s opera “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. Sections detailing current goings-on in the Solzhenitsyn space include information on the latest editions of Solzhenitsyn’s works, on new scholarly studies or conferences focused on Solzhenitsyn, on special exhibits or permanent museum installations bearing on the writer, on new or imminent theatrical, cinematic, or musical interpretations of his works, and on the latest (2017 and 2018) awards of the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Prize in Literature. The issue is rounded out by reproductions of handwritten manuscripts and by photographs.
Contents & Summary (English)
Law & Liberty review of March 1917, Book 2
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Over at Law & Liberty, Will Morrisey reviews March 1917, Book 2.
“Although in one sense a historical novel—most of the characters are real people, and Solzhenitsyn deploys them not as mere cameos but as men and women in full—of all his novels so far, this one feels the most immediate, the most current. The freneticism, violence, confusion, and disorientation of Russians in Petrograd from March 13 through March 15 of 1917 can also be seen in minds and actions of Chinese in Hong Kong, right now. No one knows exactly what to do, although many suppose they do. And even if we didn’t know how the revolution did end, we can see it won’t end well. No one surpasses Solzhenitsyn in conveying a sense of what it feels to live at and near the center of this kind of vortex.”
New Richard Tempest book on Solzhenitsyn
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Solzhenitsyn scholar Richard Tempest has just published Overwriting Chaos: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Fictive Worlds (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019), a welcome new study examining Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s evolution as a literary artist from his early autobiographical novel Love the Revolution to the experimental mega-saga The Red Wheel, and beyond. Tempest shows how this author gives his characters a presence so textured that we can readily imagine them as figures of flesh and blood and thought and feeling. The study discusses Solzhenitsyn’s treatment of Lenin, Stalin, and the Russian Revolution; surprising predilection for textual puzzles and games à la Nabokov or even Borges; exploration of erotic themes; and his polemical interactions with Russian and Western modernism. Also included is new information about the writer’s life and art provided by his family, as well as Tempest’s interviews with him in 2003-7.
Mr. Tempest’s book is available directly from the publisher, in hardcover or e-book from Amazon, or wherever books are sold.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translations and Transliterations
Preface
Timeline of Solzhenitsyn’s Life and Works
Part One: The Writer In Situ
1. The Quilted Jerkin: Solzhenitsyn’s Life and Art
2. Ice, Squared: “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
3. “Turgenev Never Knew”: The Shorter Fictions of the 1950s and 1960s
4. Meteor Man: Love the Revolution
5. Helots and Heroes: In the First Circle
6. Rebel versus Rabble: Cancer Ward
Part Two: The Writer Ex Situ
7. Twilight of All the Russias: The Red Wheel
8. Return: The Shorter Fictions of the 1990s
9: Modernist?
Appendix. Three Interviews with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (2003–7)
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Mahoney speaks about The Red Wheel in Washington, DC
/Russian Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is the author of two great “literary cathedrals,” The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel, the latter of which is an account of Russia’s path to revolution and totalitarianism in the years culminating in 1917. In the third volume of The Red Wheel, entitled March 1917, the story arrives at “the revolution at last.” At the Kennan Institute a few days ago, Professor Daniel Mahoney discussed March 1917 in relation to The Red Wheel as a whole – that is August 1914, October 1916, the four books of March 1917, and the two books of April 1917. The just published English-language version of March 1917, Book 2, a work of both literature and dramatic history, chronicles the fateful days of March 13-15, which led to the collapse of the autocracy and the origins of the Russian Revolution.
Listen above.
New Russian edition of Two Hundred Years Together
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Moscow publisher Prozaik has issued, in two volumes, a new Russian edition of Two Hundred Years Together, illustrated with paintings and photographs relating to the entire period (roughly 1772-1972) covered by the book. The text is the canonical final authorized text, as published in vols. 26 & 27 of Solzhenitsyn’s Collected Works in 2015.
English readers are reminded that an authorized translation of the full work is firmly in the plans, but awaits the completion of English publication of The Red Wheel. Therefore, no information is yet available regarding a specific publication timeline.
Meanwhile, readers need to be forewarned that any and all English versions available on the Internet are illegal, pirated, and/or entirely unauthorized; often poorly and loosely translated; and redact passages, and indeed whole chapters, that apparently do not support the prejudices of those behind these illegal editions.
On Solzhenitsyn's 101st birthday: never-published-before autobiography
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Today, on 11 December 2019, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 101st birthday, Rossiskaya Gazeta [Russian-language] publishes an excerpt from Chapter 2, “School”, of Solzhenitsyn’s never-published-before autobiography. Chapter 1 appeared last year in Studying Solzhenitsyn, vol. 6, while this Chapter 2 will appear in full in the forthcoming vol. 7.
Solzhenitsyn books on Christmas list
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Between Two Millstones, Book 1, and March 1917, Book 2 have both made the Christmas list over at VoegelinView.
“Magisterial depiction of the long, slow collapse of the Tsarist regime in which everybody gets a voice, but nobody feels that he or she can prevent the worst of it. Eerily prescient for the binary confusions of the present. The main character is Petrograd itself.”