Literary critics call writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn the “Tolstoy of our time.” Such comparison with the Russian classic of the 19th century is not coincidental. After all, Solzhenitsyn, as once his predecessor, artistically interpreted the unique experience of the Russian history in the new, 20th century. The 100th anniversary of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is included in the UNESCO Calendar of memorable dates for 2018.
A Set of Circumstaces
In November 1961, an editor of prose department at a literary magazine Novy Mir received a typescript from someone he knew. It was a story named “SHCH-854”. One Day in Life of an Inmate, by a A.Ryazansky.
The typescript was re-read several times, and when the editor-in-chief of the magazine, writer Alexander Tvardovsky, returned in the beginning of December after a month absence, he was immediately handed a folder with A.Ryazansky’s work with the words, “It’s a forced-labor camp from a peasant man’s perspective, a very strong thing.”
“At 5 o’clock that morning reveille was sounded, as usual, by the blows of a hammer on the length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sounds barely penetrated the windowpanes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they’d begun. It was cold outside, and the campguard was reluctant to go on beating out the reveille for long.” in the evening Tvardovsky read the first few lines of the text. He stayed up all night reading and the next morning he sent a telegram to Ryazan to invite the author to Moscow as soon as possible.
As it turned out the pseudonym “A.Ryazansky” was used by a school teacher of physics and astronomy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He lived in Ryazan for several years after returning from exile to Kazakhstan. Before that, he spent eight years, from 1945 to 1953, in forced-labor camps and secret design bureaus for using inappropriate words about Joseph Stalin in correspondence with his school friend when he was in the front-line of the Second World War.
Given his biography and the topics he touched in his stories, Solzhenitsyn could not even hope that his works would ever be published. He later recalled: “Since I was a child, I experienced a desire to write, a desire that no one instilled in me, and I wrote a lot of ordinary nonsense typical of young people. In the 1930s, I tried to have my works published, but my manuscripts were rejected everywhere… Before 1961 I was not only sure that I would never see a single line of my writings in print, but I didn’t dare even to let my close acquaintances read anything…”
However, Tvardovsky was determined to publish the story of a common man who went through forced-labor camps for the first time ever. First, he agreed with Solzhenitsyn on changing the name and the genre — the story became the novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. Then the editor-in-chief decided to gather the support of his fellow writers who at that time had weight in professional circles. Tvardovsky sent the manuscript to famous writers Korney Chukovsky, Samuil Marshak, Konstantin Paustovsky. They all came back with very positive reviews. For instance, Korney Chukovsky described Solzhenitsyn’s main character as follows, “Shukhov is the generalized character of a simple Russian man: tough, persevering, enduring, a handyman, crafty — and kind.”
But Tvardovsky felt that this was not enough. He wrote the preface and a letter to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Nikita Khrushchev. The letter said: “This is about the amazingly talented story by A.Solzhenitsyn, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. The name of this author is still unknown, but tomorrow it may be one of the remarkable names of our literature.”
N.Khrushchev approved the story, and in 1962, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in the November issue of Novy Mir. Later, Solzhenitsyn himself said, “In order to print a story … an unbelievable set of circumstances and exceptional personalities was required. It is absolutely clear: if Tvardovsky had not been the editor-in-chief of the magazine, this story would not have been printed … And if Khrushchev had not been there at that moment, it would not have been printed either.”
Once “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in the magazine, the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn became known throughout the country as well as abroad.
Old Themes, New Genres
From 1962 to 1966, Solzhenitsyn’s stories are published in Novy Mir magazine, and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published as a separate book. The work was nominated for the Lenin Prize, Solzhenitsyn was accepted to the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1970, he received the Nobel Prize “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.”
But the main result of his professional success, perhaps the one that came as a surprise to Solzhenitsyn himself, were the letters, letters from ordinary people. According to the writer, “when Ivan Denisovich was published, it was as if the whole Russia blasted with letters to me, and in those letters people would tell what happened to them, what they lived through. Or they insisted to meet me in person to tell their story, and this is what I did. Everyone asked me, the author of the first labor camp story, to write more, and more, to describe this whole world of camps. They did not know my ideas and did not know how much I had written, but they kept bringing me the material that I was missing… It was like a pedestal for The Gulag Archipelago.” As a result, the Archipelago is based on recollections of 257 people including the author himself.
It is hard to define the genre of this multifaceted artistic canvas, and Solzhenitsyn himself described it as the “experience of artistic research”, the research of Soviet-era forced-labor camps, their history, operations and the existence of people within this system.
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of this work not only for the Russian literature, but also for the history of the country itself. In a situation where any open study of this topic was out of question, when neither the archives nor the vast majority of historical documents were available, Solzhenitsyn attempted to look into the monstrous phenomenon of the Soviet repressive and penal system in its historical development, relying on all documents and historical materials available at that time, but first of all, on numerous testimonies of prisoners themselves. That is why “The Gulag Archipelago” has become a unique and scorchingly truthful historical and psychological monument to the totalitarian period of the national history. “The Gulag Archipelago” is a terrible and at the same time tragically bright book. The writer seeks not only to reveal the truth about the most terrible pages of the Russian history, but, above all, seeks the nationwide spiritual purification or insight, according to the famous literary scholar Pavel Spivakovsky.
By the time Solzhenitsyn finished “The Gular Archipelago”, he had already written the novel “The First Circle” about a special facility for the imprisoned engineers, and a short novel “Cancer Ward” about the oncology ward in a hospital in Tashkent where the writer was treated while in exile. The author failed to have these works published. In 1967, Solzhenitsyn writes his famous “Address to the Meeting of the Union of Writers”, in which he claims, “Our writers are not given the right to express forward-looking ideas about the moral life of a person and the society, to have their own explanation of the social problems or historical experience that was gained through suffering in our country. I suggest that the Meeting strives to achieve abolishment of any, both obvious and concealed, censorship over artistic works.”
The letter gave rise to a discussion about freedom of speech, and the openness and courage of this discussion had never before been seen in the Soviet Union. The letter became another milestone event in the life of the writer himself. The congress did not accept, and could not at that time accept, his suggestions. Solzhenitsyn illegally transfers his manuscripts abroad, and in 1967 “The Cancer Ward” was published in the West, followed by “The First Circle” in 1968 and “The Gulag Archipelago” in 1973. The writer was offered to leave the USSR, but he refused. As a result, in 1974 Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the country.
Recognized Classic
In emigration, Solzhenitsyn travels around the world, delivering speeches, writing two books of memoirs, “The Oak and the Calf” and “The Grain Between the Millstones”. Almost immediately after his departure, he established the Russian Public Fund to Aid Political Prisoners and their Families. The writer made it beneficiary of all fees for publishing “The Gulag Archipelago” worldwide. In 1976, together with the family, Solzhenitsyn settled in the American town of Cavendish, Vermont. He continues his writing and practically cuts his contacts with the press, which earned him a nickname of the “Vermont recluse”.
By 1991, Solzhenitsyn finishes what he called “the main work of my life … the narration in measured terms” — “The Red Wheel”. The main theme of this saga are the origins of the October Revolution, which the writer sees in the First World War and the February Revolution. This is what the author said about his idea, “I came to the conclusion that this saga should be written using the Node method. In mathematics, there is a notion of nodal points: in order to draw a curve, you do not need to identify all points, you only need to find specific points of its twists and turns … And there is nothing in between the Nodes. I only provide the points, and they are later turned into a curve in the reader’s mind.” The nodal points of history, according to Solzhenitsyn, are: August 1914, October 1916, March 1917, and April 1917. The writer describes the events that took place in these months with documentary accuracy, almost by the hour. According to Pavel Spivakovsky, “so far there is not a single historical study in the world that would consider the February revolution with such scrupulous accuracy and detail as Solzhenitsyn did in the epic saga “The Red Wheel”.”
By the time Solzhenitsyn finished his saga, his perception in the USSR changed. His artistic works and political essays begin to be published in his motherland, his Soviet citizenship is restored, and he is awarded with the RSFSR State Prize for “The Gulag Archipelago”. In 1994, the writer returns to Russia through the Far East, taking a tour on the train across the whole country.
In his last years, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a recognized classic. He continues his work: creates new genre categories for a story and a novel, finishes a collection of prosaic miniatures, the krokhotki (“breadcrumbs”) that he began in 1958–1960, works on his Literary Collection, essays on the writings of famous Russian authors, and becomes the founder of an award named after himself. But most of the time Solzhenitsyn dedicated to the preparation of the utmost collection of his works in 30 volumes, the first of which saw the light before his demise in 2008.
A.Shlomina
Illustrations by Victor Britvin for collection of stories “Matryona’s House”