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scudjoe@wellesley.edu
Russia’s
last conscience
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Outpouring of grief for Sol-zhenitsyn reflects well-lived
life.
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Democracy cannot grow until it cultivates an edu-cated
citizenry.
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A country cannot be great unless it embraces its writers
and thinkers.
London
Independent described the last rites of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
in a solemn manner: “The air was thick with the scent
of incense and freshly cut flowers, as more than a dozen
white-robbed Orthodox priests sang hymns and recited prayers
in a three-hour service at the funeral of Alexandra Solzhenitsyn
in Moscow.”
As his last remains descended into the earth, an elderly
man intoned: “There goes Russia’s last conscience”
(August 7).
I did not meet Solzhenitsyn formally although I shared the
stage with him when he delivered the commencement address
at Harvard University in 1979. Many expected a conciliatory
speech but he would have none of it. He castigated the West
for its materialism and Russia for the callousness towards
its citizens.
In 1994, he returned to his beloved Moscow after having
been exiled in the US for 20 years.
The grief that poured out from around the world after Solzhenitsyn
death on August 3 (Russians were notably restrained) reflected
a well-lived life.
DM Thomas, his biographer, captured Solzhenitsyn’s
uniqueness when he observed: “He was a writer, and
he was given a great theme, nothing less than his country’s
most tragic century” (London Times, August 5).
His Nobel Prize citation praised “the ethical force
with which he has pursued the indispensable tradition of
Russian literature.”
Others within that tradition were Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (hereafter One Day),
the memoir that catapulted Solzhenitsyn into fame, re-captures
men’s unbelievable cruelty and the length to which
some men go to prove the infallibility of their systems?
In 1945, Solzhenitsyn criticised Stalin. He ended up in
the Soviet labour camps for that indiscretion.
In one gripping detail after another, Solzhenitsyn revealed
the attempt to strip him (and the other prisoners) of every
last vestige of humanity while they were imprisoned in that
camp.
In One Day there is a notion that the free expression of
speech and standing up for what one believes are indispensable
prerequisites of freedom, especially in a state that became
so stultified that “even the sun in the heavens must
kow-tow to their (the Soviet’s) decree.”
At least that is what the authorities wanted its people
to believe. Every action of the State, inside or outside
of the prison, was destined to make citizens submit to its
power. It was “better to growl and submit. If you were
stubborn they broke you.”
Stalin and his henchmen controlled every activity of the
State and demanded that Russian citizens go against their
conscience to survive.
One Day pleaded with Russians to find a space to stand up
for their truth before its walls of tyranny came tumbling
down. In a gripping scene Solzhenitsyn differentiated between
“an ar---licker, obeying a vile dog’s order”
and those who stood up against the system.
“Geniuses,”
he said, “don’t adjust their interpretations to
suit the taste of tyrants.”
Literature is more than the telling of a nice story. At
its best it captures what is most noble about a people and
adumbrates the soul of the nation. Nathaniel Cobham’s
Rupert Gray: A Tale in Black and White (1907), Ralph de
Boissiere’s Crown Jewels (1952), VS Naipaul’s
A House for Mr Biswas (1961); Merle Hodge’s Crick,
Crack, Monkey (1970), Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t
Dance (1970) discern what is most courageous in our people
and capture important emotional moments in our nation’s
history.
In T&T, our educators are yet to understand that it
is important to promote our intellectual culture. While
we applaud our authors and intellectuals when they achieve
success, we do not always value their efforts. We show our
appreciation for what they do when we study what they have
written. Our school curriculum needs to teach their work
to our students.
The work of writers and scholars represent the uniqueness
of a people. In One Day one of the oldest prisoners declares
that to deny the contributions of their writers is to make
“a mockery of the memory of three generations of Russian
intelligentsia.” The same holds true for us.
After laying roses on Solzhenitsyn’s casket, Vladimir
Putin, Russia’s Prime Minister, called on his nation
to include Solzhenitsyn works in the Russian school curriculum
and observed: “By his works and his entire life, he
inoculated our society against tyranny in all of its forms.”
Our democracy cannot grow unless it cultivates an educated
citizenry that is willing to criticise those who have the
responsibility to guide our affairs. Nor, for that matter,
can it hope to survive if it seeks to promote any ignoble
cult of personality. That is one of the dangers against
which Solzhenitsyn warned in One Day and The Gulag Archipelago.
A nation cannot be great unless it embraces its writers
and thinkers, nor can it know itself if it does not know
the names of those who wrote the country into being.
Our writers and thinkers must have the courage always to
speak truth to power. They should always remember Solzhenitsyn’s
commandments: “Don’t lie! Don’t participate
in lies! Don’t support
a lie!” It’s the legacy that he left all of us.
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