An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

In the course of his research for "Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in

Exile" Joseph Pearce traveled to Moscow to interview the

Nobel Prize winning author. We are pleased to be able to

publish this interview in an

abridged form.

Joseph Pearce: In your work as a whole would

you say that the spiritual or the philosophical

dimension is more important than the political?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Yes certainly. First

would be the literary side, then the spiritual and

philosophical. The political side is required

principally because of the necessity of the current

Russian position.

Pearce: Do you feel that many of the problems

in the modern world are due to an inadequate

grasp of spiritual and philosophical truth by the

population as a whole?

Solzhenitsyn: This is certainly true. Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the

world but in the processes loses his soul. That which is called humanism, but what would

be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most

essential questions of our life. We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

Pearce: In Russia In the Abyss you say that "our frenzied government is stabbing to death

the future of Russia". Why did you chose to use such strong and provocative language?

Solzhenitsyn: We are exiting from communism in a most unfortunate and awkward way. It

would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has

been followed. Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms.

In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent

programme. The name of "reform" simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of

the national heritage.

Pearce: You have also written that "Russia has entered a blind alley and has nowhere to

go". What did you mean by this?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn: The central government possesses no plan of finding the way out of this

blind alley. They have been pursuing a course of simply trying to stay in power by

whichever means are possible. Across the country, Russians, whether political or otherwise,

have some kind of ideas about how to save the country, about how to find the way out.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere. They may suggest some project, some plan for

the future. I know this because a significant portion of these get mailed directly to me.

These people hope that I will be able to say something and move it upwards, but in these

circumstances I cannot do this.

Pearce: Do you believe that the West is in the same blind alley and also has nowhere to

go?

Solzhenitsyn: Over the last twelve years I have stopped viewing Russia as something very

distinct from the West. Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West

and to Russia. We could use the word "modernity" if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic

world, and partially China. With the exception of those areas we should not use the words

"the West" but the word "modernity". The modern world. And yes, then I would say that

there are ills that are characteristic, that have plagued the West for a long time and now

Russia has quickly adopted them also.

Pearce: You are often accused of "doom and gloom". How would you respond?

Solzhenitsyn: This is a consequence of the fact that people don't read, they just glance

through. Let me give you an example: The Gulag Archipelago. There are horrific stories in

that book but throughout, through it all, there is a spirit of catharsis. In Russia In the Abyss,

I have not painted the dark reality in rose-tinted shades but I do include a clear way, a

search for something brighter, some way out most importantly in the spiritual sense because I cannot suggest political ways out, that is the task of politicians, so it is simply

that those who accuse me of this do not know how to read.

Pearce: A British journalist recently stated that you believe that Russia has overthrown the

evils of communism only to replace them with the evils of capitalism, is that a fair

statement of your position and, if so, what do you feel are the worst evils of capitalism?

Solzhenitsyn: In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to

many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of

bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism

cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would

sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the

Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved

through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.

Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and

socialism are repulsive.

Pearce: Does the fact that modernity makes a virtue out of selfishness constitute one of the

keys to its enduring success?

Solzhenitsyn: That's very correct. It does make a

virtue out of selfishness and Protestantism made

a major contribution to this.

Pearce: Why Protestantism?

Solzhenitsyn: Of course, one cannot declare that

only my faith is correct and all other faiths are

not. Of course God is endlessly multi-

dimensional so every religion that exists on earth

represents some face, some side of God. One

must not have any negative attitude to any

religion but nonetheless the depth of

understanding God and the depth of applying

God's commandments is different in different

religions. In this sense we have to admit that Protestantism has brought everything down

only to faith.

Calvinism says that nothing depends on man, that faith is already predetermined. Also in its

sharp protest against Catholicism, Protestantism rushed to discard together with ritual all

the mysterious, the mythical and mystical aspects of the Faith. In that sense it has

impoverished religion.

Pearce: Is the only hope a return to religion?

Solzhenitsyn: Not a return to religion but an elevation toward religion. The thing is that

religion itself cannot but be dynamic which is why "return" is an incorrect term. A return to

the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely

impossible. On the contrary, in order to combat modern materialistic mores, as religion

must, to fight nihilism and egotism, religion must also develop, must be flexible in its

forms, and it must have a correlation with the cultural forms of the epoch. Religion always

remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for

people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern

man.

Pearce: Related to this, there are two points of view amongst members of the Catholic

Church about the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. One side says that it was good

because it modernised the Church, the other side saw it as a surrender to the modern values

with which the Church was essentially at war. What are your own views?

Solzhenitsyn: This question stands also now before the Russian Orthodox Church. It also

has two currents within it. The one which is hierarchically dominated does not want to

develop at all whereas the reformers seek change. For instance, a question peculiar to the

Russian Orthodox Church is should we continue to use Old Church Slavonic or should we

Joseph Pearce and Alexander Solzhenitsyn

start to introduce more of the contemporary Russian language into the service. I understand

the fears of both those in the Orthodox and in the Catholic Church, the wariness, the

hesitation and the fear that this is lowering the Church to the modern condition, the modern

surroundings. I understand this fear but alas I also fear that if religion does not allow itself

to change it will be impossible to return the world to religion because the world is incapable

on its own of rising as high as the old demands of religion. Religion needs to come to meet

it somewhat.

Pearce: Does this pessimism, for want of a better word, apply to society's prospects of

rediscovering, or rising to, religion?

Solzhenitsyn: I would have to say that the road is very difficult and the hope is very small

but it is not excluded. History has in different questions laid out some tremendous

turnabouts and curves.

Pearce: In that case do you see the likelihood that religion will continue much as it is at the

moment as being practised only by a minority?

Solzhenitsyn: Yes I do. But that doesn't mean that believers should let their hands drop or

that they should give up. I am deeply convinced that God is present both in the lives of

every person and also in the lives of entire nations.

Pearce: What is the present position of Christianity in Russia?

Solzhenitsyn: After the permission was freely given for people to practise their faith the

number of Christianity's adherents has grown. Many under an atheistic press, a vice grip,

had forgotten their faith so there is now something of a return to Christianity yet

simultaneously there is a decay of values which accompanies the rise of consumer society.

It is a simultaneous process.

Pearce: Do you feel that the future of Russia is bound up with Christianity and, if so, is it

bound up with the future of the Russian Orthodox Church?

Solzhenitsyn: The Orthodox Church is the central current of Christianity in this country. I

would say that the Christian parts of Russia will not abandon this path but I would hesitate

to predict to what extent this would influence the development of events for the whole

country. For the entire future of Russia, I would say that the situation is in a balance and it

is unclear which way this balance will go. As this is true for the whole of Russia, and all the

issues to do with Russia, it is also unclear to what degree the development of Christianity

will be intertwined in Russia and will influence the way the whole country goes. We cannot

predict that now.

Pearce: If Christianity is the will of God and at the same time is destined to perform a

minor role in the future of humanity, is this the will of God or is it the result of human free

will turning to evil, which God permits?

Solzhenitsyn: It is a result of the free will of man and one must not detach that from the

predictions of the end of the world in the Gospels. In the Scriptures let us note that which

predicts the future always talks of the road toward the anti-Christ and not the triumph of

God's will.

Pearce: In retrospect, what were the most important and defining moments in your life?

Solzhenitsyn: I will try to answer. Firstly, army and the front because I lived without a

father. My father died before I was born and so I had lacked upbringing by men. In the

army I went away from that. That's first. Second would be the arrest because it allowed me

to understand Soviet reality in its entirety and not merely the one-sided view I had of it

previous to the arrest.

Pearce: How would you like to be remembered to posterity?

Solzhenitsyn: That's a complex question. I would hope that all that has been said about me,

slandered about me, in the course of decades, would, like mud, dry up and fall off. It is

amazing how much gibberish has been talked about me, more so in the west than in the

USSR. In the USSR it was all one-directional propaganda, and (laughs) everyone knew that

it was just Communist propaganda.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Joseph Pearce. "An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn." St. Austin Review 2 no. 2

(February, 2003).

This article reprinted with permission from St. Austin Review. From England's Catholic

publisher,The Saint Austin Press, the Saint Austin Review (StAR) is a magazine which

brings together scholars, journalists, poets and spiritual leaders from around the English-

speaking world. People such as Joseph Pearce, James Schall SJ, Robert Asch, Benedict

Groeschel CFR, Janet Smith, Patrick Riley, and many more. Each month 12 pages of this

44-page magazine are devoted to a particular cultural or spiritual theme.

THE AUTHOR

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian author and

historian, was awarded the Nobel Prize for

Literature in 1970. From 1945 to 1953 he was

imprisoned for writing a letter in which he criticized

Joseph Stalin "the man with the mustache." Solzhenitsyn served in the camps and prisons near

Moscow, and in a camp in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan

(1945-53). In his work Solzhenitsyn continued the realistic tradition of Dostoevsky and

Tolstoy and complemented it later with his views of the flaws of both East and West. He is

the author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago,The First

Circle, Warning to the West, Alexander Solzhenitsyn speaks to the West, and The

Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947- .