Roger’s Rules

August 4th, 2008 5:58 am

A footnote on Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died yesterday at 89, was one of our greatest chroniclers of Soviet tyranny. Beginning in 1962 with his short novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and continuing with The Cancer Ward and the multi-volume Gulag Archipelago, he unforgettably anatomized the inner workings of that hideous, soul-destroying engine of totalitarianism.

Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s life and work are appearing everywhere. For example, the London Telegraph and the London Times carry characteristically excellent obituaries.

There is one point, however, that deserves special emphasis, namely that the evil of Communism was, is, every bit as murderous, fanatical, and life-blighting as Nazism. A brief but illuminating editorial in The New York Sun observes that “once Solzhenitsyn had written, no one could any longer doubt that the evil of Stalinism was comparable to the evil of Nazism.”

I agree with the Sun’s editorialist that no right-thinking person should any longer be able to doubt that Communism and Nazism were but two faces of the same evil coin. But the myth of Communist “idealism” was, and perhaps still is, a hardly perennial. George Steiner, reviewing The Gulag Archipelago in The New Yorker in 1974, typified the attitude of the left-wing Western intellectual: “To infer that the Soviet terror is as hideous as Hitlerism,” Steiner lectured, “is not only a brutal oversimplification but a moral indecency.”

The real moral indecency is Steiner’s, and it is worth noting just how persistent is the temptation to excuse tyranny providing only that it comes from the left. There are few, perhaps, who would go as far as the odious Eric Hobsbawm. In 1994, Hobsbawm discussed the former Soviet Union with a television interviewer. What Hobsbawm’s position comes down to, the interviewer suggested, “is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?” Hobsbawm: “Yes.”

Probably there aren’t many who would express themselves as baldly as Eric Hobsbawm. But the specter of statism–what Hayek, hearkening back to Tocqueville, called “the road to serfdom”–is a continuing threat, all the more insinuating today because less obviously brutal. How easy it is to forget, to neglect, to ignore that threat. Solzhenitsyn did an immense amount to bolster our memory, but creeping socialism is like the “sweet oblivious antidote” Macbeth craves for his wife. I recall the story Kingsley Amis tells in his Memoirs about the reception of Robert Conquest’s classic indictment of Stalin’s tyranny, The Great Terror. “For many years,” Amis notes, the book was “ignored where possible or dismissed as propaganda.

Then, in 1988, favourable references to it began to appear in the Soviet media. . . . [A]n American publisher suggested a new edition of the book. “What about a new title Bob? We won’t pretend it’s a new book , but a new title would be good. . . .

Bob answered in terms that get a lot of his character into small compass. “Well, perhaps, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools. How’s that?”

Solzhenitsyn, like Conquest, did tell us. Let’s hope we have the wit to listen.

Update: Over at Armavirumque, my colleague Stefan Beck links to an interview–the first to appear in an American paper–that Solzhenitsyn gave to Hilton Kramer in 1980. Here’s the link.

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16 Comments

1. srlucado:

I would say that Stalinism in particular is worse than Nazism. The Nazis at least went to extreme lengths to rationalize their racist hatred; Stalin was far more arbitrary and paranoid in his exterminations. Das Herrenvolk knew they were safe with Hitler; under Stalin, no one was safe.

Anyway, the death of Solzhenitsyn marks the end of an era, to be sure. And who knows, maybe he was right to want a restoration of Orthodox Tsarism; Russia couldn’t be any worse as an monarchist empire than as its current kleptocracy.

Perhaps it’s time for me to re-read some Solzhenitsyn – “The Cancer Ward”, maybe, or “The First Circle”. Or the first volume of the Gulag (I admit to really struggling with the 2nd and 3rd volumes).

Scott

Aug 4, 2008 - 6:36 am 2. J.J. Sefton:

And of course the NY Times’ reporter in the 30’s who aided and abetted Stalin in covering up the forced starvation of the Ukraine. And they still refuse to return the Pulitzer prize he won for his “reporting.”

“The death of one is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.” Stalin

Aug 4, 2008 - 7:49 am 3. BizzyBlog » Special Pajamas Media Column (’Alexander Solzhenitsyn Set the Stage for Reagan and Walesa’) Is Up:

[...] The New York Sun’s obit makes an all-important comparison (HT PJM’s Roger Kimball) — Solzhenitsyn did not play the same kind of political role in that struggle as some of the [...]

Aug 4, 2008 - 11:23 am 4. Bleepless:

Unfortunately, the “Sun” editorialist compares apples and oranges. He essentially equates Naziism with Stalinism, thereby letting off the hook such monsters as Lenin and Stalin’s successors.

Aug 4, 2008 - 6:33 pm 5. Mr Walker:

Why aren’t Nazis known as Leftists?
There’s been an idea going around for a long time that something about Nazis qualifies them as right-wingers. Wasn’t “Socialist” their middle name? Can anybody shed light on this?

Aug 4, 2008 - 7:23 pm 6. dragonfly:

It is good time to reflect on the now fully revealed horrors of Stalin’s USSR. Obama’s parents were bonded only in their devotion to Communism, and from the day of his birth, throughout his childhood and young manhood he was immersed in the culture of radical Leninism. His mentor and surrogate father during his years in Hawaii was Frank Davis, black Comunist rabble-rouser who steered him on is course. He fantasizes to this day on his father, who devoted his life in Kenya to furthering Stalinism. He continues to be drawn to extremist Socialists, like Ayers and Wright. These are the people he identifies with.

His is a second rate intellect, but his time in Chicago politics has informed him that overt loyalty to Castro-style Socialism would destroy any chance of political advancement. So he pretends to be a “center-leftist”. But his conditioned reflexes lead him into gaffes and flops and misstatements. And his pathological megalomania inspires vacuous flights of Socialist Utopian oratory that transfixes those attracted to serfdom.

He has reason to revile those who criticize him and try to make voters “fear” him. Just thinking of the possibility of his eelection should make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Aug 4, 2008 - 11:32 pm 7. John Cunningham:

Mr. Walker, Jonah Goldberg’s recent book, Liberal Fascism, goes into exhaustive detail on the affinities between Fascism and socialism/progressivism. A great read.

Aug 5, 2008 - 9:44 am 8. Steynian 217 « Free Mark Steyn!:

[...] DAVID WARREN on Solzhenitsyn; Roger Kimball has “A footnote on Solzhenitsyn“; Alexander Solzhenitsyn: His final interview …. [...]

Aug 6, 2008 - 11:40 am 9. Polemicscat:

The differences between Stalin and Hitler were not so much in their effects as in their modes of behavior. Stalin was psychotic, volatile and thus less predictable than Hitler. His top generals were at as much risk as anybody. By contrast, there was more method to Hitler’s cool, calculating malevolence.

Aug 8, 2008 - 9:47 pm 10. Robert Conquest, Being “Non-Judgmental,” and Jihadism:

[...] past August, in commemoration of Solzhenitsyn’s passing, Roger Kimball described the following anecdote [...]

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:14 am 11. Geert Wilders and Totalitarian Islam:

[...] past August (2008), in commemoration of Solzhenitsyn’s passing, Roger Kimball described the following [...]

Mar 11, 2009 - 4:30 pm 12. Geert Wilders and Totalitarian Islam :: International Free Press Society:

[...] past August (2008), in commemoration of Solzhenitsyn’s passing, Roger Kimball described the following [...]

Mar 12, 2009 - 10:14 pm 13. Photomaniacal » Blog Archive » Geert Wilders and Totalitarian Islam:

[...] past August (2008), in commemoration of Solzhenitsyn’s passing, Roger Kimball described the following [...]

Mar 17, 2009 - 12:41 pm 14. Analysing Islam - Part 1: Bostom on Jacoby & Wilders « Tony Blair:

[...] past August (2008), in commemoration of Solzhenitsyn’s passing, Roger Kimball described the following [...]

Mar 17, 2009 - 2:11 pm 15. Geert Wilders and Totalitarian Islam « ACT Northern Virginia/Richmond/DC Metro Chapter. Dedicated to the Defense of our freedom from Islamic Ideology.:

[...] This past August (2008), in commemoration of Solzhenitsyn’s passing, Roger Kimball described the following [...]