On October 2, 2018, the world honored Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th Birthday Anniversary.[1] Few weeks later, on December 11, there was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s first Centenary.[2] At about the time of Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom[3] by a bullet of an overzealous Hindu nationalist in January 1948, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn[4]  had just begun his Via Dolorosa going through all the circles of Soviet Hell. He started with the First Circle at a sharashka-style research lab for prisoners,[5] and then went down to hard labor at lower circles. After he had graduated from the GULAG to internal exile in Kazakhstan, he also survived a bout with cancer. Only after his exile was cut short in 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev’s rehabilitation program[6] for the unjustly sentenced, was he able to dedicate himself to healing Russia, from its own political cancer, by truthfully describing the affliction of totalitarian society.
​
[1] In 2007, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, the 2nd of October, was declared by the United Nations as the International Day of Non-Violence, now celebrated all over the globe. His was a life of austerity, tolerance, courage and struggle. https://www.gandhi.gov.in/gandhi-celebration.html

[2] SOLZHENITSYN CENTENNIAL. DECEMBER 11, 2018 MARKS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATE ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN’S BIRTHDAY https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/celebrating-100-years/

[3] Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 in the Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti). His assassin was Nathuram Godse, an Indian nationalist who in 1940  formed an armed organization. Godse and his accomplice were hanged on 15 November 1949. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahatma_Gandhi

[4] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist and philosopher of history. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he was obliged to publish in the West, most notably The First Circle, Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature." Expelled from the USSR in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994 after the state's dissolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn Edited by VK

[5] The Sharashka Phenomenon. Posted on March 10, 2011 by Asif Siddiqi
 http://russianhistoryblog.org/2011/03/the-sharashka-phenomenon/

[6] In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, denounced Stalinism in his speech On the Cult of Personality. Then the government began to “rehabilitate” political prisoners, allowing them to return home and reclaim their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(Soviet)

He won. In 1991 the USSR collapsed, and in 1994 he was able to return—now from an external exile in the USA—to his beloved Russia where he then began to describe what has gone wrong since 1991. He died on August 3, 2008. Dmitry Medvedev, then president, and his predecessor and successor, Vladimir Putin, were among the mourners who joined the Nobel laureate's family and friends for a funeral service held at Moscow's historic Donskoi monastery.[1] Thus one might say that Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn dominated the 20th century as two mighty spiritual powers for truth, justice, harmony, and Non-Violence in domestic and foreign affairs.

The name of Gandhi in Russia before the Bolshevik RevolutionThe name of Mohandas Gandhi[2] has been known in Russia since the time he had an exchange of letters[3] with Leo Tolstoy,[4] the world-famous novelist and the founder of “Non-Resistance to Evil by evil means” movement. Reading their correspondence one gets the definite impression that the two kindred souls found each other in 1909. However, the promising interchange was soon cut short by Tolstoy’s death in 1910. The Bolshevik Revolution and the bloody Civil war followed (1917-1921).

The Soviet Union lost no time in cancelling the very idea of Non-Violence, be it in a Tolstoyan or Gandhian form. To add injury to the insult, many of Tolstoy’s followers found themselves behind bars and in the far away regions of the GULAG. While Soviet school programs included the study of Tolstoy the writer, the wisdom of his later years was dismissed as “counter-revolutionary” and his writings untoward were not published. Thus, in my school years, I was able to read some, but only via the risky samizdat distribution.

Khazrat Inayat KhanAnother great line of Indian-Russian spiritual synergy that was cut off by the Bolshevik Revolution was embodied in Khazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927).[5] A Muslim-Sufi philosopher and musician, he came to Russia 1913 and stayed for several months. Inayat Khan gave several concerts in both Moscow and the Imperial capital Sankt-Petersburg. He also befriended such important cultural figures as the composer Alexander Scriabin,[6] the Symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov,[7] the composer Vladimir Pohl,[8] and Leo Tolstoy’s son Sergei.[9] As a result, Russian culture was enriched not just with Indian music, but also with the  first translations of Inayat Khan’s Sufi writings into Russian.[10]

Apparently, Gandhi and Inayat Khan were acquainted; at least, they knew and respected each other. Below is a short exchange between the two wise  men.[11]

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:
Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Our success or failure depends upon the harmony or disharmony of our individual will with the divine will.

— Hazrat Inayat Khan

What is just as important is that Inayat’s daughter Noor Inayat Khan,[12] the future heroine of World War Two, was born in Moscow.

Both Noor and Inayat’s son Hidayat Inayat Khan[13] were Gandhi’s followers.  The latter, the founder of Sufi movement in Canada and a composer, composed the Gandhi Symphony which has been performed world-wide.[14]

[1] On Solzhenitsyn’s funeral see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/06/russia
 
[2] Mohandas Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, he led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: "high-souled", "venerable") applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa– is now used worldwide. In India, he is also called the Father of the Nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
 
[3] Their correspondence during 1909-1910 is available both in English and Russian translation: Сергеенко А. П. ПЕРЕПИСКА Л.Н.ТОЛСТОГО С М.К.ГАНДИ http://antimilitary.narod.ru/antology/gandi/ghandi_tolstoj.htm
 
[4] Count Lev Tolstoy (1828 – 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a moral crisis, followed by a spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
 
[5] Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan (Urdu: عنایت خان‎; 1882 – 1927) was the teacher of Universal Sufism. He initially came to the West as a Northern Indian classical musician, but he soon turned to the transmission of Sufi thought and practice. In 1923 the Sufi Order of London was enlarged, under Swiss law, into the "International Sufi Movement". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inayat_Khan
 
[6] Alexander Scriabin (6 January 1872 – 27 April 1915) was a Russian composer and pianist. Influenced by the works of Frederic Chopin, he composed works that are in a highly tonal idiom. Independently of Arnold Schoenberg, he created an atonal and dissonant musical system agreeing with his brand of mysticism. He also associated colors with the harmonic tones of his atonal scale. He is regarded as the Russian Symbolist composer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin
 
[7] Vyacheslav Ivanov (28 February 1866 – 16 July 1949) was a Russian poet and playwright associated with the Russian Symbolist movement. He was also a philosopher, translator, and literary critic. He died in exile in Rome, Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Ivanov_(poet)
 
[8] Владимир Иванович Поль (1875- 1962, Париж) — русский композитор, пианист, педагог, музыкально-общественный деятель, художник.https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Поль,_Владимир_Иванович
 

[9] Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy (10 July 1863, Yasnaya Polyana – 23 December 1947, Moscow) was a composer and ethnomusicologist who was among the first Europeans to make an in-depth study of the music of India. He was also an associate of the Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, and participated in helping the Doukhobors move to Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Tolstoy
 
[10] Хазрат Инайят Хан (англ. Inayat Khan; 1882 —1927) — индийский музыкант и философ, суфий, проповедовавший суфизм в западных странах и России, известен своими многочисленными книгами о суфизме, переведёнными на многие языки. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Хан,_Инайят
 
[11] Salaam and Greetings of Peace: https://darvish.wordpress.com/tag/hazrat-inayat-khan/.  I am not sure whether it was an actual letter exchange or a juxtaposition of similar philosophical attitudes. VK
 
[12] Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1914 –1944), aka Nora Inayat-Khan, was a British heroine of World War II renowned for her service in the Special Operations Executive. Under the name of Nora Baker she was a published author. Captured by the Germans, she died in the Dachau concentration camp, and posthumously awarded the George Cross for her service, the highest civilian decoration in the UK. She became the first female wireless operator to be sent from Britain into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during World War II, and was Britain's first Muslim war heroine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan 
More in Russian https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Нур_Инайят_Хан
 
[13] Hidayat Inayat Khan (1917 –2016) was a British-French classical composer, conductor and Representative-General of the International Sufi Movement. Hidayat was born in London to Sufi Master Inayat Khan and Pirani Ameena Begum; brother of Noor Inayat Khan. His musical education began in Paris in 1932 at the Ecole Normale de Musique, in the violin class of Bernard Sinsheimer; the composition class of Nadia Boulanger. He attended chamber music courses by the Lener Quartet in Budapest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidayat_Inayat_Khan
 
[14] At the centenary for Mahatma Gandhi, on November 21st, 1969, Gandhi Symphony (opus 25) was performed in a special concert organized by UNESCO in Holland. It was broadcast in 1971 by The Voice of America and the UN Radio and later recorded in a worldwide broadcast.. http://www.sufimovementincanada.ca/ABOUT/Inayat-Khan-Family-Sufis/hidayat/

​As for Russia, after 1921, all contacts with Inayat Khan were broken, and his name vanished until the collapse of the USSR. However, since 1991 Inayat Kyan’s books on Sufism have re-emerged to become a favorite reading of cosmopolitan Russians. Some of his music is also now available in Russia.[1]
 
Gandhi in the USSR
​
The name of Gandhi reappeared in Russia when the USSR and India under Jawaharlal Nehru[2] were forging mutual ties via the Non-Allied countries movement[3] to counter both Communist China and “Imperialist” America. Those ties were further strengthened under Nehru’s daughter and India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.[4] She was not related to Mahatma Gandhi, but his heritage was fundamental to India, both domestically and in foreign affairs. To be sure, Soviet respect was officially paid to the founder of India’s independence from the British rule. Still, in spite of the official proclamations of Indian-Russian brotherhood—the slogan of “Hindi –Russi bhai bhai” was ubiquitous in the USSR-- Soviet propaganda made it clear that Gandhi’s non-violent tactics were not just inferior but contrary to the Marxist-Leninist theory of violent world revolution of which the USSR was the first champion.

[1] Inayat Khan: Sakuntala before Shiva (Musical illustrations) Video #1 of 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6JPmGd9uUU
 
[2] Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964) was a central figure in Indian politics before and after independence. He emerged as a leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Gandhi. He was India’s Prime Minister from 1947 until his death in 1964. He is the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru
 
[3] The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a group of states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. As of 2012, the movement has 120 members. It was established in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. An initiative of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru led to the first Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries.  Its  purpose has been to ensure the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries to resist imperialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement
 
[4] Indira Gandhi (née Nehru; 1917 – 1984), was an Indian stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and only female Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. She served as Prime Minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian Prime Minister after her father. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi
​

Helena Blavatsky, Nicolas Roerich, and Rabindranath Tagore
​
Of course, the range of Russian-Indian cultural interface was considerably wider than that of Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Inayat Khan. Helena Blavatsky (1831 –1891),[1] thanks to her inroads into India, emerged a very significant conduit of cultural interchange with India and on a global scale.

Her creation of the Theosophical Society[2] affected not just India and Russia, but also the United States, United Kingdom and other Western countries. According to Wikipedia, “in November 1889 she was visited by the Indian lawyer Mohandas Gandhi”. Having become an associate member of Blavatsky's Lodge in March 1891, Mahatma Gandhi emphasized “the close connection between Theosophy and Hinduism throughout his life”. However, her dabbling with theosophy, ancient religions, and esoteric science virtually excluded her from the attention of Soviet-born generations of Russia.
 
Nicholas Roerich (1874 –1947),[3] the famed Russian painter and cosmopolitan philosopher, was more fortunate in the USSR, in spite of his early opposition to the Communist revolution. Later, he was partially “rehabilitated” due to his staying close to the Indira Gandhi family which promoted better Soviet-Indian relations. A lover of peace, Roerich was thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He worked for the creation of the Pax Cultura, a sort of "Red Cross" for art and culture.  On April 15, 1935 the United States and twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union signed the Roerich Pact at the White House. It was an early international instrument protecting cultural property for the benefit of mankind. There is the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York,[4] as well as in a number of Russian towns.

[1] Helena Blavatsky (1831 – 1891) was a Russian occultist, philosopher, and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy, the esoteric religion that the society promoted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky
 
[2] The Theosophical Society in America encourages open-minded inquiry into world religions, philosophy, science, and the arts in order to understand the wisdom of the ages, respect the unity of all life, and help people explore spiritual self-transformation. For more information visit us at theosophical.org
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheosophicalSociety
 
[3] Nicholas Roerich (1874 –1947) was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure, who in his youth was drawn to a movement in Russian society toward the spiritual. He was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression. A world traveler, he lived in India for long periods, as well as in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Roerich
 
[4] Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York http://www.roerich.org/museum-about.php

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941)[1], a poet, musician and artist, has also become not just an Indian cultural hero, but a pillar of universal culture. His opposition to racism, chauvinism and narrow nationalism made him friends with many world figures, including Albert Einstein[2] (1879 – 1955), who was also a great admirer of Gandhi’s Non-Violence. (Einstein called Gandhi "a role model for the generations to come.")  In the USSR Tagore was regarded as a friend, and his works were published, however, selectively. Einstein, on the other hand, was proscribed because Communists viewed Marx’s “science” so absolute that it could not stand any “relativism.” However, for the purpose of this essay, I have to leave these three personalities aside precisely because their great achievements require more space than what I can now offer.

[1] Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) was a Bengali poet, musician and artist. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.

[2] Albert Einstein (1879 –1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics alongside quantum mechanics. His work is known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He is best known to the general public for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". Не received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

​Back to Russia’s National Identity

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it became necessary to find a new ideational, ethical and spiritual framework for Russia’s domestic as well as foreign policy. A general feeling was that the New Russia, in order to buttress its claim to sovereignty, had to fall back on its pre-Communist national past for inspiration, if not for the framework.[1] It was not an easy task, for the early Lenin government and its successors left no stone unturned in their efforts to erase Russia’s national identity, especially its Eastern Orthodox Christian heritage, as well as its ancient customs, art, and literature, both in Russian language and the languages of national minorities who identified themselves with Russian civilization.
​
After the collapse of the USSR, the triumphant USA was not interested in the New Russia’s sovereignty, much less in the revival of Russian civilizational identity. As convincingly argued by professor Janine Wedel among other authors, during the 1990s the USA spared no efforts to establish in Russia an economic system fully compatible with and subordinated to the neoliberal brand of economics that garnered then currency in the West.[2] Along with the shock therapy economic reforms the American cultural influence flooded Russia with mass advertisement, consumerism, “political correctness” in gender politics, drugs, cheap and sexy Hollywood products, etc.

Solzhenitsyn warned of trouble from the West

But the one man who had in advance warned the Russians against surrendering to Western cultural imperialism was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the foremost champion against Soviet totalitarianism, whom Soviet leaders kicked out of Russia. Of all countries, he chose the United States as a place of refuge from which he was best able to restore Russia’s true history from the sources unavailable in the USSR. Solzhenitsyn appreciated American liberties, but was also aware of the shallowness of its mass culture and the lack of commitment to spiritual values. Above all, he knew that one cannot simply export a form of government, no matter how “good,” from one country to another as a kind of commodity. That’s why, before he returned to Russia in 1994, he had warned fellow Russians “not to lift the Iron Curtain in a hurry, for as soon as you do, you will get flooded by a flow of sewage”.
​
[1] For background and more detailed discussion of Solzhenitsyn’s work please read my book: Vladislav Krasnov, “Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth,” (1991) https://www.abebooks.com/9780813383613/Russia-Beyond-Communism-Chronicle-National-0813383617/plp
and a recent  article “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today” International “Reading Solzhenitsyn” Conference in Lyndon, Vermont, September 7-8, 2018 . VLADISLAV KRASNOV • DECEMBER 17, 2018
http://www.unz.com/article/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/
 
[2] Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989-1998. Janine R. Wedel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. http://janinewedel.info/collisionreview_ForgnServ.html

Repentance and Self-limitation in the Life of Nations

Solzhenitsyn was more prescient than that. In 1973 he wrote REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS, an essay in the collection of several Soviet dissident authors. Titled “From Under the Rubble” the collection was circulated in clandestine samizdat as it was aimed to explore how Russia could exit from what they felt was the dead-end of Communism.  It was published by Russian émigré press in the West in 1974 and then translated into English.[1]

“The gift of repentance, which perhaps more than anything else distinguishes man from the animal world is particularly difficult for modern man to recover. We have, every last one of us, grown ashamed of this feeling; and its effect on social life anywhere on earth is less and less easy to discern. The habit of repentance is lost to our whole callous and chaotic age,” started the essay. Solzhenitsyn clearly aimed at Soviet citizens who knew about the need to confess political mistakes to Party officials, but not about the need to clear one’s conscience for trespassing on a fellow next door.

Expanding his message beyond the USSR, Solzhenitsyn predicted, like Gandhi, that “true repentance and self-limitation will shortly reappear in the personal and the social sphere, that a hollow place in modern man is ready to receive them,” because it is a psychological need for healthy human relationships. Addressing his clandestine readers he argued that “…the time has come to consider this as a path for whole nations to follow.”

Alarmed by the escalation of the Cold War he warned:  “Add to this the white-hot tension between nations and races and we can say without suspicion of over-statement that without repentance it is in any case doubtful if we can survive”.

Clearly, Solzhenitsyn’s concern was not only with the survival of his homeland but mankind as a whole.

“It is by now only too obvious how dearly mankind has paid for the fact that we have all throughout the ages preferred to censure, denounce and hate others, instead of censuring, denouncing and hating ourselves. But obvious though it may be, we are even now, with the twentieth century on its way out, reluctant to recognize that the universal dividing line between good and evil runs not between countries, not between nations … it cuts across nations and parties … It divides the heart of every man, and there too it is not a ditch dug once and for all, but fluctuates with the passage of time and according to a man’s behavior.”

Reading the above lines, one is bound to think that they could have been uttered by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Non-Violent philosophy. Though he did not mention Gandhi in this instance, Solzhenitsyn’s essay reveals an uncanny affinity with Gandhi’s philosophy of Non-Violence.  After all, do not great minds run in the same channels?

As much as Solzhenitsyn was concerned with Russia, he knew that the virus of Marxist-Leninist violence[2] had already affected a third of mankind and targeted the rest. He was intently looking for the antidotes and, ultimately, for the cure for this dangerous universal affliction.

Also remarkable is the fact that Solzhenitsyn was the initiator of this collection. It had been hand-copied and circulated in “samizdat” before it was published in the West. As early as the 1970s Solzhenitsyn was planning a peaceful evolutionary exit from the dead-end of Communism across the rubble left of pre-1917 Russia.

Letter to the Soviet Leaders

Not only did Solzhenitsyn initiate the dissident authors’ collection in 1973, but he also wrote his famous “Letter to the Soviet Leaders”.[3] To make it difficult for “the leaders” to plead ignorance and thus avoid personal responsibility, he mailed copies to each of a dozen Party Politburo members. Thus, he followed one of the principles of Gandhi’s non-violence philosophy: to appeal to the conscience and good reason of your opponent in order to make a friend out of a perceived enemy.

Indeed, he did not offend the Soviet leaders by asking them to resign. He did not insist on an open national election. He did not insist on disbanding the ruling Communist party. He just asked them to be more pragmatic and less dogmatic rulers. Just stay in power, he told them, but allow patriotic Russians of non-Communist persuasion, especially Orthodox Christians, into the governing bodies. Stop insisting on the purity of your ideology. Or, even better, since Mao Zedong[4] was then accusing Soviet leaders of revisionism, Solzhenitsyn advised giving away the whole ideological business to Communist China. As to the border republics, allow them to hold referenda to decide if they want to stay part of our country.  Clearly, all of Solzhenitsyn’s suggestions were conciliatory in a Gandhian sense as they aimed at a gradual and peaceful evolution of Soviet system away from its totalitarian dogmatism and inflexibility.

Alas, the Soviet leaders proved to be back-sitting bureaucrats. Even worse: soon they voted with Leonid Brezhnev[5] and his Politburo to deprive Russia’s brave and wise son of his native land. A real chance for a gradual and peaceful evolution of the USSR into a Russian nation-state was missed.

Solzhenitsyn invokes Gandhi in his Commandment: Live Not by Lies

Solzhenitsyn knew that his immediate task was to free his fellow Soviet citizens from Fear: the fear to be deprived of social privileges, to lose job, even to be imprisoned. For, as soon as one expressed doubt about the Marxist-Leninist ideology, the official faith of all Soviet people and the guiding star for the “liberation” of mankind, one became a pariah. On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn penned a short Manifesto titled “Live Not by Lies”[6] in the hope to have it circulated among Moscow's intellectuals.

It is dated the same day when secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The next day he was exiled to West Germany. The essay is a call to moral courage. It serves as light to all who value truth. “Live Not by Lies” is the only text, as far as I know, where Solzhenitsyn invokes the name of Gandhi.

Painfully aware that the means to resist the totalitarian state for Soviet citizens were extremely limited, he could not ask them to participate in non-violent Gandhi-style protests and acts of disobedience. He knew that all attempts to organize or participate in such protest would immediately end in arrests. He could not even ask journalists, professors or teachers to truthfully describe what they saw in the country. No such acts were tolerated. So, “Let the (official) lie cover and possess the whole country. But the least one can do is not to repeat it. Let the lie rule, but not via my mouth. And this would be a real break-through out of our habitual inaction. Such a decision is the easiest one can take, and yet the most effective in destroying lie. For when people step away from a lie, the lie loses its nourishment. For, like any virus, the lie uses people as its carriers”.

Solzhenitsyn states the dilemma of Soviet citizens: “When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: “I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you.” But violence quickly grows old. It has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies—all loyalty lies in lies”.

Western sovietologists, as the profession was then called, failed to understand everyday Soviet reality because they judged the USSR by the standards of an authoritarian Tsarist Russia and could not imagine that Marxist-Leninist ideology, imported as it was from the “progressive” West, could degenerate into a much more brutal and efficient totalitarian police state.

It was to explain the difference that Solzhenitsyn had to invoke Gandhi’s name: “No, we are not called yet to city squares to proclaim the truth or just say aloud what we think. We are not mature enough to do so because it is scary. Therefore, let us just resist the compulsion to say something that our mind refuses to accept. This is OUR WAY, the easiest and most accessible in view of our ingrained cowardice. In any case, it is much easier than—do I dare to say--Gandhi’s acts of civil disobedience. All we can do under the circumstances is not to consciously support the lie”.[7]

Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

Failing to respond to a growing pressure of dissident groups in the USSR, ignoring what Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents had published in the samizdat and abroad, Soviet leaders continued to waste time until finally Mikhail Gorbachev[8] initiated perestroika and glasnost in an effort to start the country moving again. Alas, Gorbachev still held onto Communist ideology. But Solzhenitsyn proved steadfast. When the USSR was about to collapse, in 1990 he wrote the essay, “Rebuilding Russia : Reflections and Tentative proposals.”[9]

Let me repeat what I wrote about Solzhenitsyn’s essay shortly after[10] it had appeared: “Solzhenitsyn’s central idea is that the particular form of government and economy is secondary to a nation’s spiritual foundations. ‘If the spiritual resources of a nation have dried up’, he says, ‘then not even the best form of government, nor any sort of industrial development, can save it from death.’ One of the chief sources of the present malady is precisely the fact that the Communists reversed the order of priority by putting the ‘cart’ of economic and political power before the ‘horse’ of spirituality of human relations. As a result, not only the country’s political institutions, economy, and ecology but also ‘the souls’ of the people were destroyed in the name of the Marxist Utopia”.[11]

As he did in the early 1970s, Solzhenitsyn again eschewed Western emphases on democracy in his suggested alternatives to the Soviet regime. He rather favored a benevolent authoritarian government morally bound by Russia’s remaining traditional Christian values. This does not mean that he was “against democracy.” No. He rather defended the right of Russia--or any country for this matter-- to sovereignty, that is, the ability to work out a social and political system that suits best its geography, geopolitical situation, historical and cultural traditions, and, yes, democratic aspirations of its people that are best implemented when the country is free from foreign meddling.

[1] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, From Under The Rubble.
https://archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynAleksandrIsaevichFromUnderTheRubble/page/n3https://archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynAleksandrIsaevichFromUnderTheRubble/page/n3
 
[2] Manifesto of the Communist Party. By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. February 1848
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can
be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes
tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They
have a world to win”. p. 34. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
 
[3] Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, LETTER TO THE SOVIET LEADERS, 1973
http://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Solzhenitsyn-LettersSovietLeaders.pdf.
See its discussion in Krasnov, “Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth,” and “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today” https://www.unz.com/article/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/
 
[4] Mao Zedong  was a Chinese communist revolutionary and the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he ruled from 1949 until his death in 1976. Wikipedia

[5] Leonid  Brezhnev was a Soviet politician of Ukrainian ethnicity, who led the USSR from 1964 until his death in 1982 as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Wikipedia

[6] Live Not By Lies. By Alexander Solzhenitsyn. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolhenitsynLies.php
 
[7] Translated by Vladislav Krasnov from the Russian original posted on the site http://www.solzhenitsyn.ru/proizvedeniya/publizistika/stati_i_rechi/v_sovetskom_soyuze/jzit_ne_po_ljzi.pdf

[8] Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) was the last leader of the USSR, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985 until 1991. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991, and President of the USSR from 1990 to 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev (edited by VK)

[9] “Rebuilding Russia : reflections and tentative proposals https://archive.org/details/rebuildingrussia00solz

[10]  Vladislav Krasnov, “Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth,” p. 53, and my recent article “Solzhenitsin’s Relevance Today” https://www.unz.com/article/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/

​
​Vladimir Putin and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Ever since I founded in 1992 the Russia & America Good Will Association (RAGA.org), I have argued it is in both countries’ national interests to have friendly, at least, normal relation. More than once I urged US presidents, most recently in exchange of letters with President Barak Obama, to respect Russia’s sovereignty as the foundation for good relations.[1]  In a 2016 interview with Veterans Today I called attention to President Putin’s favorable attitude toward Solzhenitsyn, in particular, to his vision of Russia’s path of development.[2]

[1] OFFICIAL REPLY FROM PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: To An Open Letter - From Vladislav Krasnov Ph.D.
http://www.raga.org/news/an-open-letter-to-barack-obama
TO:  Mr. Barack Obama, POTUS. http://www.raga.org/news/to-mr-barack-obama-potus
 
[2] Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Truth Can and Will Destroy the New World Order and Satanism. By Jonas E. Alexis/ Interview with Vladislav Krasnov -July 14, 2016
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/14/alexander-solzhenitsyn-truth-can-and-will-destroy-the-new-world-order-and-satanism/ Also on http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4040

Putin defined patriotism by quoting Solzhenitsyn, that it is not any sort of state ideology but a feeling of attachment to Mother Russia. Putin invoked Solzhenitsyn again when he recently spoke in favor of “nationalism in a good sense,” that is, not any sort of xenophobia toward other nations, but the need to affirm one’s national identity, nurture the roots of one’s national traditions, including religious beliefs of non-Russians, while affirming the secular foundations of its Constitution.

Also, to celebrate Solzhenitsyn’s Centenary on December 11, 1918, the Putin government supported scholarly conferences in a number of Russian towns. Russkiy Mir Foundation worked jointly with Northern Vermont University to sponsor Solzhenitsyn’s Centenary in Lyndon, Vermont, in September 2018.[1]  On December 11, 2018 Putin was present during the unveiling of a statue of Solzhenitsyn in Moscow.

But let me quote Joseph Pearce, the author of a brilliant 2001 book “Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile,”[2] about his observations on the fate of Solzhenitsyn in Putin’s Russia-- and the USA: “In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the greatest classic of anti-communist literature is now compulsory reading in all high schools. If the same could be said of the high schools of the United States, we would not have the endemic historical and political ignorance that has led to the widespread sympathy for communism among young Americans. In light of this, and in light of Mr. Putin’s evident admiration for Solzhenitsyn, let’s not try to pretend that Russia is a communist nation. We don’t need to like Vladimir Putin. We don’t need to admire him. But we do need to acknowledge that Russia has moved on from the evils of socialism, even as we are in danger of embracing those very same evils”.[3]

As I have lived long in both countries, I can confirm that Pearce’s observations largely coincide with my own. I certainly witnessed “the widespread sympathy for communism among young Americans” when I taught Russian and Soviet studies in the States from 1966 to 1991. Now those sympathies seem to have grown in the USA and other Western countries, albeit in different forms, such as the Neo-Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and so-called “Cultural Marxism”.[4]

The only disagreement I have with Pearce is about “the evils of socialism” that he seems to equate with Communism. I think the ideals and practices of socialism need not be evil per se. However, in the reality of the USSR, they became “evil” because socialism was imposed by violence. Solzhenitsyn did express his criticism of socialism for being imposed by force in the USSR, most eloquently in his polemic with Andrei Sakharov. [5]  But this does not mean that he rejected it in principle. In fact, both Russia and the USA have elements of socialism in healthcare (mostly in Russia), progressive taxation (more so in the USA) and US social security system. Moreover, the ESOP (Employee stock ownership plan)[6] enterprises seem to be a form of socialism that is more widely spread in the USA and UK than in Russia.

Putin recently said he did not think that socialism could be restored in Russia. But at the same time he defended some socialist practices in Russia today.[7] I think those practices are more needed to restrain oligarchic crony capitalism that perpetuates social injustice as it hampers economic vitality in both the USA and Russia.
​
However, I am much in sympathy with both Pearce and The Imaginative Conservative when they proclaim “the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility.” This agrees with Solzhenitsyn’s philosophy of polyphony and respectful dialogue that he proclaimed both as an artist and as a social healer.[8]

[1] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today. International “Reading Solzhenitsyn” Conference in Lyndon, Vermont, September 7-8, 2018. By VLADISLAV KRASNOV
https://www.unz.com/article/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/
 
[2] Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile https://www.amazon.com/Solzhenitsyn-Soul-Exile-Joseph-Pearce/dp/1586174967

[3] Joseph Pearce, "Vladimir Putin and Alexander Solzhenitsyn". The Imaginative Conservative. Aug 20, 2018
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/08/vladimir-putin-alexander-solzhenitsyn-joseph-pearce.html

[4] Cultural Marxism Is the Main Source of Modern Confusion. Having largely disappeared from the workers' movement, Marxism flourishes today in the academic world and in the mass media. October 18, 2018
https://fee.org/articles/cultural-marxism-is-the-main-source-of-modern-confusion-and-its-spreading/

[5] Александр Солженицын. На возврате дыхания и сознания. (По поводу трактата А. Д. Сахарова "Размышления о прогрессе, мирном сосуществовании и интеллектуальной свободе") http://www.lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/s_revial.txt
 
[6] The ESOP, Employee stock ownership plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_ownership_plan
 
[7] МОСКВА, 20 декабря, 2018. /ТАСС/. Президент России Владимир Путин считает невозможной реставрацию социализма в стране. https://tass.ru/politika/5935598
 
[8] Vladislav Krasnov, “Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel” (1980, Athens: Georgia)
https://www.amazon.com/Solzhenitsyn-Dostoevsky-Study-Polyphonic-Novel/dp/0820304727
and Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth (a 1991 book) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today. https://www.unz.com/article/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/

​Putin on Gandhi, Mandela, and Solzhenitsyn​

Once, during an international press-conference at the G8 Summit in 2007, when asked whether he was a true democrat, Vladimir Putin, answered in the affirmative. But then, pointing out the wave of violence across the USA and Europe, he made Western infatuation with democracy sound hollow. Then he made the impromptu remark that “There is no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died”.[1] A few years later on December 8, 2016, he admitted that his oft quoted remark was made in a jovial mode. Yet, there is no doubt that Putin admires Gandhi as a prophet of Non-Violence just as he admires Solzhenitsyn as a man who challenged the mighty Soviet state with truth and courage—and won!

Western mainstream media failed to report on Putin’s courtesy visit to the South African Embassy in Moscow when Nelson Mandela,[2] once an ardent Marxist-Leninist guerilla fighter, passed away on December of 2013.  But The Economic Times of India did. That’s what it said on December 10, 2013 under the heading: Mandela's magnitude compares to Gandhi, Solzhenitsyn: Putin. [3]

<<Russian President Vladimir Putin today paid rich tribute to Nelson Mandela, comparing the colossus of 20th century politics to Mahatma Gandhi and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Mandela "is undoubtedly one of the outstanding world figures in the 20th and 21st centuries, and his magnitude compares to that of Mahatma Gandhi and Alexander Solzhenitsyn…" Putin hailed Mandela as a "great humanist of the 21st century" and said his policy should become an example to follow…(He) compared Mandela to both Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn. "Courageous and wise, Nelson Mandela always fought consistently for his convictions but remained a great humanist and peacemaker. This approach is needed in today's world: the search for compromises is the best basis for consensus and cooperation," the Russian President wrote in the condolence book at the South African embassy here >>. 

Reading these lines, especially, when Putin compared Mandela with both Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn, one has to hope that the three sages have served as guiding stars for Putin’s domestic and foreign policy. To be sure, wishing to follow somebody’s example, sincere as it might be, does not necessarily lead to adequate implementation of the goal. However, in the very least, Putin’s statement “the search for compromises is the best basis for consensus and cooperation” can serve as a bench-mark by which he and other world leaders will be judged. It is all the more remarkable because in the USSR where Putin was educated the very word “kompromis” was disdained as a bourgeois trick.

Recently, Rudolf Siebert, professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University,[4] my friend and associate, wrote an article in honor of Gandhi for the Global Harmony Association.[5] He convincingly argued that Martin Luther King, Jr.,[6] the American champion of human rights and peaceful resistance, who died a martyr’s death, was also inspired by Gandhi’s teaching of Non-Violence.

Siebert knows that Jesus preached the Christian commandment:  “You have learned how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you; offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well; if a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone orders you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give to anyone who asks, and if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away”.  (Exodus 21: 24-25; Matthew 5: 38-42; 7: 12).

Siebert concedes, however, that Christian countries have largely ignored this commandment through centuries of history. Then Siebert resolutely credits Gandhi for reviving this Christian commandment in modern world: “The Christian Martin Luther King came to the Christian commandment of non-violent resistance through the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi, and both practiced it, and both died for it a violent martyr's death of freedom, like the one who preached the Sermon on the Mount in the first place”.

Among all world leaders, Siebert singles out for praise Vladimir Putin for following the precept of Non-Violence in Russia’s foreign policy: thus Russia “did not retaliate, when in recent years its plane was shot down over Turkey, and its ambassador there was assassinated, and last Christmas its diplomats were sent back home from Washington D. C. to Moscow. That non-retaliation is moral progress in world history!”

It is hardly surprising then that the Gandhi theme has been central for the latest exchange of visits between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi [7] and President Putin. In December 2015, during Modi’s visit to the Kremlin,[8] Putin presented him a page of Mahatma’s handwritten note. Putin’s second gift to Modi was an 18th century Bengali sword, alluding, perhaps, that the two countries, committed as they are to peaceful co-existence, do not forget about the need of military cooperation in defense. Three years later, when Putin arrived to New Delhi, Modi honored him by the presentation of Gandhi’s favorite bhajan ‘Vaishnava Jana To’ [9] performed by a Russian artist Sati Kazanova on a mobile phone – a gesture that reflected the close friendship between the two leaders.[10]

[1] President Putin’s Interview with G8 Newspaper Journalists. 06/09/07 "ICH" - 06/06/07  Mathaba News Network http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17855.htm
 
[2] Nelson Mandela (1918 –2013) was a South African anti-apartheid political leader, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a democratic election. He dismantled the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. An African nationalist and socialist, he presided over the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997. Alongside Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. he was one of the 20th century's exemplary anti-racist and anti-colonial leaders, promoting toleration, liberal democracy and social justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela
 
[3] Mandela's magnitude compares to Gandhi, Solzhenitsyn: Putin. //economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/27182771.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
 
[4] Rudolf Siebert, Western Michigan University https://wmich.edu/religion/directory/siebert See also https://www.rudolfjsiebert.org/  http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=51
 
[5] Global Harmony Association front page http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=home
 
[6] Martin Luther King Jr (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister who became the leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, he advanced civil rights through Non-Violence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
 
[7] Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister of India since 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014.  Modi is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narendra_Modi
 
[8] Putin presented the items to Modi while they discussed issues of mutual interest for both countries.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/mahatma-gandhi-s-notes-and-an-indian-sword-putin-s-gift-to-modi/story-zOZWp6cAvL0xTfHrTyWC3N.html
 
[9] Vaishnava Jana To is a Hindu bhajan, written in the 15th century by the poet Narsinh Mehta. The poem speaks about the life, ideals and mentality of a follower of Vishnu.This song became popular during the life time of M.K.Gandhi and was rendered as bhajan in his Sabarmati Ashram. It was popular among freedom fighters throughout India. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaishnava_Jana_To
 
[10] PM Narendra Modi shows Russia President Vladimir Putin rendition of Gandhi’s favorite bhajan
written by PTI October 6, 2018 https://www.freepressjournal.in/headlines/pm-narendra-modi-shows-russia-president-vladimir-putin-rendition-of-gandhis-favourite-bhajan/1369629
 

​After talking about a whole roster of outstanding wise men who dedicated themselves to the ideals of peace, justice, and harmony in domestic and foreign affairs—Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Solzhenitsyn, it would only be fair to conclude with a New 2019 Year Greeting I got from an American woman who has been just as dedicated to the same ideals. Sharon Tennison, the founder and work-horse of the Center for Citizen Initiatives of San Francisco (CCISF.org), has been an energetic promoter of peace since the old Cold War.[1]

Best Wishes to You for a Wonderful Creative Year in 2019 upon which we are now embarking!
    I wonder if you are deeply grateful as I am that our planet has survived this past tumultuous year? Given the numbers of surrogate war-making threats and incursions in numerous areas of the world, i.e. Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, the Baltic states and others … we are lucky that none have ignited an all-consuming conflagration. Perhaps parity of nuclear weapons and instant delivery systems maintained the tenuous peace between the two nuclear giants of the world––our nation and Russia.  For whatever the reasons, I’m deeply grateful that we have a bit more time ahead to develop beyond the warring mentalities among us.

Sharon’s letter was not personal and did not need to be. I just happen to be on her list as she is on my RAGA.org list. Sharon knows Russia, as she has been taking American group to Russia every year. It still helps to send such letters to hundreds of kindred souls to alert them that we live in a world that is more dangerous now than it ever was during the Cold War of the 20th century. Our Planet, abused, injured, neglected and defamed as it has been, is still Our Beautiful Mother Earth. Its Beauty is in the eyes of the beholders who are now urged to hurry to her rescue. First of all, we should call for an extra-ordinary UN General Assembly session with one item on its agenda, Arms Control and Nuclear Disarmament, starting with the reductions of nuclear stockpiles and delivery systems. I am sure that all of the great men I mentioned above would support the agenda. But they need help! So I say “Planetarians of the World, Unite!”--before it is too late.

Author: Dr. Vladislav Krasnov (aka W George Krasnow), former professor and head of the Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, currently runs the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org ). He is the author of Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel and Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth

Email: President@raga.org

January 21, 2019, Moscow             
 © W.G. Krasnow, 2019 

[1] CCI Vision and Mission: Our world has never faced a more challenging era than today. Massive nuclear arsenals are once again pointed between the United States and Russia. Misunderstandings, fallacious accusations, false flags and demonizing propaganda dominate our print media and television screens.  At CCI, we experienced one other such dangerous period in 1980. We flew in between the two enemy nations and dared to try to understand the challenges on both sides…. our citizen-to-citizen programs began to soften the environment between the two Superpowers of that era. Other American groups also got involved. War was averted and good relations began to grow in the 1990s.  https://ccisf.org/
 
[2]New 2019 Year Greeting from Sharon Tennison  https://ccisf.org/happy-new-years-2019/#more-3676

​
All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

“Russian literature vs. Marxist maculature”
Now we come to the alternative title of my presentation: “Russian literature vs. Marxist maculature”. I first used this juxtaposition in my next book “Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth” published in the USA just before the fall of the USSR. This juxtaposition had a double entendre. First, it alluded to Marshall McLuhan’s notion that the medium is the message. Marx’s teaching was touted as a “science” of economics which dictated the need for a violent world revolution to conform to allegedly objective law of social development. Thus, the appeal was seemingly to reason.

Russian literature, on the other hand, like any other literature,  only more so, appealed to the heart and soul of the reader, that is to the whole, holistic, human being. It appealed to his ethical and esthetic sense, indeed to Truth, Goodness and Beauty. To be sure, it also appealed to his rational mind and imagination, the latter being an important source of scientific discoveries, as Albert Einstein testifies. Such holistic view of life has animated Russian literature. That view of life may appear less “rational,” “clever,” and more “idealist” than Marxism, but it is still much wiser because it is true to life.

Second, the “maculature” (makulatura in Russian) alludes to an overload of Soviet propaganda materials, especially the works of Marxist-Leninist “classics” (Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin), which Soviet readers simply could no longer absorb. So they turned them into a second-use, blotted paper – makulatura in Russian - to be dumped in garbage cans. However, in the waning years of the USSR, there were organized campaigns to collect the unused works of the “classics.”  They were sorted out by weight in kilograms and exchanged for a volume or two of “old-fashioned” Russian or foreign classics.

The point here is not to denigrate Marx’s economic theory or the “law of added value”. The main issue is an excessive, almost demonic obsession of Marx that he had discovered a fail-proof key to the happiness of mankind, if only the proletariat would obey the iron-clad “scientific” laws of history that dictate violent world revolution.

Dostoevsky, Bakhtin and Solzhenitsyn were familiar with both sides of the issue. Dostoevsky faced an execution squad for his sympathy for the “poor and downtrodden” and for his alleged participation in revolutionary circles. Bakhtin was active in Marxist study groups. Solzhenitsyn, during his university years regarded himself a Marxist and Communist. But all three, like thousands of their readers, came to the conclusion that the world revolution, after shedding rivers of blood, sweat and tears, failed to get rid of exploitation and injustice – and then covered up its failure by mandatory falsehoods.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, the first dystopia
One of the first Russian writers to notice that the October 1917 Bolshevik revolution went astray was Yevgeny Zamiatin (1884-1937), whom Solzhenitsyn mentioned in his Nobel Lecture as an example of Russian visionaries. Zamyatin was a prominent author before 1917 and was also active in, and imprisoned for, Bolshevik revolutionary activities. This did not prevent him from writing in1920 the novel “WE,” a vision of a sterile and inhumane totalitarian society where all individual life was suppressed. Published in Germany in 1921, “WE” became the first dystopian novel in history of Europe. Soon it was followed by such Western classics as Aldous Huxley, Brave New World;  Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, and George Orwell’s Animal farm and Nineteen Eighty Four. Zamyatin’s novel was banned in the USSR and he barely succeeded in leaving the country.

Were Zamyarin’s novel timely published in Soviet Russia, would it not have saved millions lives in Russia allowing it evolve as a normal country where heterodoxy is tolerated? Would not the whole the 20th century have been less bloody?

Zamyatin’s favorite notion in the novel “WE” was entropy as a measure of energy that is needlessly dispersed in any given endeavor. It appears that mankind learned nothing from the bitter fate of the “rationalist” French Revolution which degenerated into revolutionary self-terror and Napoleonic wars of conquest. Alas, Lenin enjoyed his Bolsheviks to follow the French extremists, just do it “more decisively”.  The entropy of the Bolshevik dystopia in Russia was countless times higher.

Let me say a few words about my essays that Solzhenitsyn liked. One was on Marx’s poetry debut. Two others are about the role of national character in a country’s history.

Karl Marx as a romantic poet
After I chose a voluntary exile from the USSR in 1962, I tried to read as much as I could the authors who were suppressed. But what I discovered was that censored were not just the works of anti-Communists, but even “classics” of Marxism-Leninism, including Marx himself. Certainly, his Jewish origin was barely mentioned and deemed irrelevant. His article “On the Jewish question” was not known at all. Then I discovered that at youth he was an ardent Christian, more so than his newly converted parents. Later, he came to see himself as a romantic poet. That’s what Oulanem, the young Karl’s romantic hero and alter ego, proudly proclaims in his poem of the same name:

The world which bulks between me and the Abyss
I will smash to pieces with my enduring curses!
I will throw my arms around its harsh reality.
Embracing me, the world will dumbly pass away
And then sink down to utter nothingness.
Perished, with no existence - that would be really living.

As you now see, in terms of my presentation, it was Marx, not Solzhenitsyn, who imagined himself as a god, not just in youth, but also when he wrote “Manifesto of the Communist Party”.

Karl Marx as Dr. Frankenstein
I quoted these lines in my 1977 essay “Karl Marx as Frankenstein: Toward a Genealogy of Communism”.  It was based on Mary Shelly’s 1818 horror story “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus”. My intentions was not to put the young Marx down but rather to investigate how a prima facie Romantic poet transforms himself to a modern Promethean economist and ruthless political leader ready to endow the oppressed proletarians with the “gift” of world revolution fire.

The most intriguing aspect of Shelly’s work was that she let the well-meaning German scientist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, create an artificial human being. Successfully! To be sure, Shelly’s artistic vision was spurred by the rapid advancement of science in Europe.  However, as soon after the talented Victor celebrated his scientific victory, his creature started to misbehave turning doctor’s scientific Victory into a crushing defeat. His creature became The Monster so lavishly serialized in numerous Hollywood productions.

To be fair to Miss Shelly, she portrayed Frankenstein as a responsible man who tried to restrain his Creature. That failing, he tried to remove the Monster from densely populated centers of Europe. But where to? He found no better place than “the wilderness of Russia and Tataria” as it was known in Europe since Napoleon’s attempt to conquer it.

Russia as a Dumping ground for Western “science”
Something similar happened to Marx’s “creature”. He designed his world revolution for the most advanced countries, but no country in Europe wanted to serve as a lab. Finally, in 1917, a small group of international Bolsheviks of various ethnic backgrounds forced Russia to volunteer, in spite of the fact that the proletariat there was a small minority. Whether by a conspiracy or bad luck, Russia became the first lab for the Marxist experiment in building what was paraded as the first ever equitable and happy society since the Noah’s Ark. Thus Russia took upon itself the “Promethean”, God-fighting, theomachic, or Luciferan, if you will, task of re-making the world in defiance of any hitherto established religions, be it Christian, Judaic, Moslem or whatever.

I wrote this essay in 1976-1977, when the United States were swamped with thousands of Jewish immigrants fleeing from the USSR after a special deal between Brezhnev and Kissinger was made to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate “for family re-unification.”  I saw this as a further irony of the Marxist dystopia transplanted in Russia. Because of his own Jewish background, was it not likely that Marx himself, had he lived in the country of his dream, would seek an exit visa? To Israel?  Or the United States? In any case, Mary Shelly’s 1818 horror fiction turned into reality exactly one-hundred years later.

Max Weber undermines Karl Marx
Two other essays that Solzhenitsyn liked dealt with the role of national character in history. Of course, since I was trained as ethnologist and anthropologist in the USSR, I knew that any attention to national character was pretty much under a taboo lest it undermines the international solidarity of working people. But as soon as I defected, I hurried to read the forbidden books, including Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . I readily agreed with much what he had to say. Indeed, national character fostered as it has been by a belief system (religion, customs, habits, geography, history etc.) of a nation had considerable bearing on its economic standing in the world. It certainly had more influence on the disparity of income levels of different groups of population than the Marxist notion of exploitation of all working people.

Even though Weber’s thesis seemed to favor Protestant nations, he did not imply any racial or religious favoritism. He was good enough to point out, for instance, that Russian Christian Old Believers on the eve of Revolution had considerably better working habits than the rest of the population. Ironically, this was due to the thrift and communal spirit they had fostered thru centuries of official persecution. As it happens, the majority of most successful Russian entrepreneurs – and arts benefactors - before 1917 were from the families of Old Believers. Had the Russians read Weber’s works on a scale of one to a thousand Marxist makulatura volumes, would they not have been better prepared to the challenges of neoliberal economics imposed on them since 1991?

Whose fault: The Russian Mind or Western Cultural Marxism?
Soon I challenged Ronald Hingley (1920 – 2010),  a prominent British historian and specialist on Russia, for suggesting in his book, The Russian Mind that Communist Totalitarianism was due to the disorderly national character of ethnic Russians whom he had observed both in the USSR and among Russian immigrants in UK.

Rather than objecting to his observations, I argued that the expansion of Totalitarian rule in Europe and elsewhere was mostly due to the defeatist state of mind of Western intellectual and media establishment who were either tacitly or openly pro-Marxist. They protected their Idol by blaming the brutishness of Communist takeovers on innate boorishness of ethnic Russian apparatchiks rather than the inherent inhumanity of Marxist ideology they followed. Did Marx not enjoined his followers to reject all existing morality, especially Christian, as rooted in “bourgeois” mentality?

Richard Pipes’s Russophobia
One of Marx’s protectors was Harvard professor of Russian history Richard Pipes (1923 – 2018). He had the reputation of anti-Communist hard-liner, but argued that Soviet leaders cannot be trusted not due to their different ideological precepts but because they were usually descendants of Russian peasants who were cheats because their ancestors were serves who could survive only by cheating. It was an ethnic slur, I thought, and challenged him in my article “Richard Pipes's Foreign Strategy: Anti-Soviet or Anti-Russian?”  

In case the link fails to download, here is its summary in my 1991 book “Russia Beyond Communism”. “A respectable historian, (Pipes) has exerted considerable influence on U. S. foreign since he was National Security adviser in the Reagan White House.  He has also been one of the chief purveyors on an essentially russophobic conception of Russian history... he blames, for instance, the brutality of Soviet regime chiefly on Russian national character as embodied in Russian peasants. Pipes is an avowed Solzhenitsyn opponent. Not only did he allege that the writer was “anti-Semitic” but ruled out any positive role for Solzhenitsyn in Russian future” (p. 281).

Earlier, on November 13, 1985, in a paper I read at the World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies in Washington, DC, I publicly defended Solzhenitsyn from the charges of “anti-Semitism” coming from Pipes and his ilk. This was duly reported by The New York Times. As the reporter Richard Grenier noted, I was not alone. “Prof. Adam Ulam of Harvard, another Soviet specialist, said Professor Pipes's characterization of Mr. Solzhenitsyn was ''very unfair.'' Grenier went on: “Conquest, author of ''The Great Terror,'' called the charge of anti-Semitism ''ludicrous.''

Grenier also pointed out that Solzhenitsyn got support also from a number of prominent people, including Jews, from the USSR and abroad: Mstislav Rostropovich, Mikhail Agursky (Soviet dissident, then professor at Hebrew Universty) and Elie Wiesel. Finally, Grenier said, “Willing to go further in his defense than Mr. Solzhenitsyn himself was his wife, Natalia, who is herself half-Jewish. The charge of anti-Semitism is ''nonsensical'' and ''absolutely absurd,'' Mrs. Solzhenitsyn wrote in a letter. Her husband was surrounded by Jewish friends in Russia, she said, both in and out of the Gulag”.
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In 1989 I was able to arrange for an interview with Solzhenitsyn by David Aikman for Time magazine. David was my friend and colleague in the Department of Slavic and Far Eastern Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. The interview was introduced by the publisher: "One Word of Truth: A Portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn… a courageous man devoted to the battle for truth in the context of the distinctive disorders of modern, post-Christian culture”. ​

​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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