Carl Wells Books

This is the fourth segment of my discussion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones: Book I: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978. The two millstones between which S was being crushed were the Soviet Union (in which the KGB was powerful and dangerous) and the “often frivolous forces” of the West (Foreword by Daniel J. Mahoney, p. ix). This is a book we all need to read. The frivolous forces are more dangerous than ever in 2020, and we are going to have to learn how to defend Christian civilization. Admitting we have gotten ourselves in a pickle, with our careless thinking, would be a good start. S’s book warns us.

S saw his true duty as being his writing. He was not a politician. He understood, however, that a sort of contradiction was taking place in his life. His duty and his temperament would have to work out how to get along!

“I do not want to be dragged into never-ending political debates, into a series of issues that to me are redundant–what I want is to choose my issues and when I will discuss them. My temperament leads me not to remain aloof, to hide in the wilderness, but on the contrary to enter the densest crowd and shout with the loudest voice.” (p. 113)

S said that those struggling in the Soviet Union never ignored the West, but at the same time “we had no sense of how things really work in the Free World.” (p. 115) S had long acknowledged the brave and self-sacrificing help of ‘”invisible allies”‘ who were instrumental in assuring that his books were available to the world. Eventually he would publish a book with the title Invisible Allies, in which he paid tribute to those people. This self-sacrifice eventually was touched by the corrosion of greed,

“but it came from a Western world set up according to a very different set of rules. It might also have reared its head in our oppressed world, but surprisingly it did not. In our hopelessly rotten society, as it is often called, greed, betrayal, and defilement did not come among us.

“While we fought unto death, suffering the weight of the Soviets’ idol of stone, from the West a unanimous cry of approval came to me, and from that same West there stretched grasping hands, seeking to make a profit from my books and my name, not caring a fig for my books or our struggle.” (pp. 115-116)

S had expected that the main problem in getting his books published in the West would be in smuggling them out. That proved to be incorrect. The smuggling was “simple enough” eventually.

“what was difficult, but vital, was to find honest hands in which the manuscript would land, individuals who would further the book without trampling on the author, without skewing him in their rush for sensation and profit.” (p. 116)

One thing he learned while still in the Soviet Union was that journalists could change the thrust of an interview, by commentary they added to the interview. This taught him “the importance of expressing ideas that mattered to me in my own articles and statements, rather than relying on journalists.” (pp. 117-118)

When back in the Soviet Union, S had been shocked at how slowly publication of his books occurred in the West, with nothing getting done for long stretches. Things were done differently in the West. Everything had to be on a solid financial basis That was strange to the ears of those suffering under Soviet tyranny. In the Soviet Union,

“it was impossible to imagine how incompatible our boundless, self-sacrificing straightforwardness was with the mistrustful, corrosive, litigious approach in the West.” (p. 125)

After a time he began to see that publishers had reasons for caution. (pp. 125-126) Meanwhile, translations were often very bad. This was shocking. S and colleagues were risking their necks, expecting “trusted friends in the West” were standing with them, but the reality was considerably different. (p. 131) “These two so different worlds could simply not understand one another!” (p. 133)

Making the right choice in whom to trust is quite difficult. (p. 135)

“That any step, the simplest step, you take in the West can lead to a court case was a complete surprise to me, and extremely unpleasant: this tense atmosphere of civil suits was something we lacked altogether.” (p. 137)

S was puzzled at the Western world, and “simply could not get used to the cold wind of litigation in the West.” (p. 160) Happily he would eventually find publishers who “did keep to a moral compass” (p. 160), but not quickly or easily.

The ways in which S’s Russian Social Fund, generously set up by him to aid Russian prisoners, was cheated, makes depressing reading. (pp. 160-162)

S landed in the West in Canada. But finding a place to settle down proved impossible. “You must listen to your heart, it helps you intuit the right place to live.” (p. 168) In fact, his experience with Canada made him more open to the idea of settling in the U.S.! (p. 171)

In Oregon he found some Russian Old Believers. At a meal they had excellent conversation, but S and his wife were seated with the children rather than the adults! This was the result of a three hundred year old divide between Old Believers and others of the Orthodox faith. S does not complain about this; he simply notes it. (p. 177)

“The children–that was the challenge! They were particularly preoccupied by the problem of raising their children here, and we talked about that a great deal. Notwithstanding the power of spiritual influence from within the Old Believer families, the children inevitably went to American public schools, and were assailed from all sides by every kind of permissiveness. How else were these children going to engage in American life one day?” The Old Believers tried to strengthen the children spiritually at home. (p. 177) My response is: jolly good luck with that! When will Christians of any type, Old Believers or the rest of us, accept the fact that we are responsible to educate our own children at our own expense? Then maybe we can avoid having our children be assailed by every kind of permissiveness. And we will also be setting an example as to the practical necessity and value of obeying the Eighth Commandment, ‘”You shall not steal.”‘ (Exodus 20:15)

Back in Canada, S still felt unwilling to try to live in that country. He suggested they should look in the United States. Vermont was very close.

“Every time I cross the border from Canada to the United States I have the impression of entering an ordered, well-managed space. It was becoming clear that the United States was the right place for me to settle down; and it was not at all crowded, as I had imagined it to be, not in the least! Nature here is robust, and the forests have not been logged and are in excellent condition.” (p. 182)

We will hope to continue this discussion of Between Two Millstones: Book I, next week. If you want to eliminate the middle man, you can obtain a copy of this important book for a moderate sum. Anyone who loves freedom and responsibility and honesty will love this book.

We are taking a leisurely stroll through Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones: Book I: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978. There are countless passages which are thought-provoking.

S tells us what hurt the NY “Times” the most.

‘What hurt them most was that I was not a passionate admirer of the West, “not a democrat”! And yet I am much more of a democrat than the New York intellectual elite or our dissidents are: in my view, democracy [democracy is italicized by S] means the genuine self-government of the people, from the bottom up, while these people see it as being the rule of the educated classes.’ (p. 33) And, I will add, only the educated classes which agree to believe in humanist, leftist orthodoxy are supposed to be in charge. Educated but believe in freedom and responsibility and Christianity? There’s no room at the inn.

S describes a deeply moving scene. Out walking alone on a hill above Zurich in Switzerland, he tells us:

“(I will not forget meeting an elderly Swiss man, also walking alone. It was shortly after my arrival. He was astonished to see me, came up to me and with both hands took me by the elbow, looked at me with emotion, and kept looking at me, tears flowing down his cheeks. At first he could not speak. One has to know the restrained, buttoned-up Swiss to understand how surprising it is that someone would suddenly come up to you, take you by the arm, and weep.)” (p. 40) Who knows, perhaps God went out of His way to grant that elderly Swiss man a meeting with S, a man for whom he obviously had a deep love and respect. We, as well as S, rejoice in such a meeting.

By contrast, we hear of about thirty photographers descending on the property of S’s Swiss neighbors:

‘roughly pushing and elbowing each other in an attempt to get closer to our fence, trampled all over the flowerbeds that had been tended with such care. And these were Europeans? (Had Russians gone on such a rampage, the world would have said: “What do you expect, they’re Russians!”) I shouted at them, trying to make them see reason; to no avail. Not one of them stepped back from the flowerbeds, and they were utterly destroyed. I was amazed at the extent of their harassment, and they were amazed at the extent of my arrogance. [. . .] And so my conflict with the Western press kept growing–and it was to keep growing for a long time to come.’ (p. 41; the ellipsis is mine)

S had publicly declared that his royalties from The Gulag Archipelago would go to the aid of Russian prisoners. The money, he said, was not his–it belonged to Russia, especially to political prisoners. (p. 48)

S recounted his experience of giving a speech in Italy which was completely ignored. Four years later his speech at Harvard covered essentially the same ground, and this time was at least heard, if widely criticized by many. At Harvard,

“my words resounded throughout America and the entire world. In the Western world the place where something is spoken or printed has a very diverse effect: something that is printed or said in the most refined European countries, such as France or England, has difficulty reaching the United States, while anything said in America, for some reason, resonates throughout the whole world.” (p. 58)

S felt that in his first months in the West he continued “to make one mistake after another, both tactically and in my affairs. My only consolation was to keep leaving Zurich to write–or rather to try to write.” (p. 58) Finding the place where he could write day in and day out with diligence would take him some time!

S was surprised to learn that his Letter to the Soviet Leaders had created a storm back home. The Letter

“was vehemently and passionately attacked, which to me was proof that I had taken a more vital step than I had realized, that I had touched on something essential.” (p. 70)

A scheduled meeting with the famed Russian expatriate writer Vladimir Nabakov (author of Lolita, among many other well-known books) misfired due to a misunderstanding, and thus did not take place. S regretted not having met Nabakov, whom he considered “a writer of genius.” But, probably wisely, S “did not foresee us establishing a rapport.” (p 74) I think the two men were too different in their attitudes toward life and literature to reach a “rapport.” But who knows?

There was a comical episode as S drove south from Switzerland into Italy. Inexplicably, “the Italian border guards detained us for a good half hour with no explanation, though it turned out they had all hurried off to get my books for me to sign.” (p. 76)

Henry Kissinger, fearing to offend the Soviet Union, was instrumental in seeing that S was not granted an honorary citizenship in the U.S. Solzhenitsyn came to see this as beneficial to himself.

“My failure to receive an honorary citizenship in the United States followed the same pattern (and just as beneficially to me) as my failure back in the Soviet Union to receive the Lenin Prize: I do not fit in with either system, which is why at crucial moments opposing forces come to the fore.” (p. 77)

S speaks on the Nobel Prize for literature which he had won in 1970:

“Probably, in the seventy years of its existence, the Nobel Prize for Literature has not rendered any laureate such a dynamic service as it has rendered me, helping me like a resilient spring to overcome Soviet power.” (p. 83)

S never put down roots in Switzerland, and knew he had to find another long-term home in which to write.

S says, “I have never had enough time in my life.” (p. 103) I think I understand him: so much to do, so many important books to write, so little time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished–such a comment can only come from a man who understands the value of life and the value of work.

S gives us several pages in which he describes his attendance at the Swiss Canton of Appenzell (pp. 107-112) with admiration for Swiss democracy in action. All these pages are informative for those of us used to the way things are done in the U.S. The people were able to carry two ideas in their head at one time–that the man they elected as leader (called a Landammann) was worthy of election and respect, but some of his proposals needed to be rejected as inappropriate.

“Having unanimously reelected their beloved Landammann, entrusting him with the formation of the kind of government he wanted, they immediately rejected all his major proposals. And now he is to govern! I had never seen or heard of such a democracy, and was filled with respect (especially after Landammann Broger’s speech). This is the kind of democracy we could do with.” (pp. 111-112)

All this prompts S to remind us:

“How great is the diversity of the Earth, and how many unknown, unseen possibilities it offers us! There is so much for us to think about for a Russia of the future–if we are only given the chance to think.” (p. 112)

Well, maybe we in the U.S. need to think about unseen possibilities for the future. Maybe our baby-killing, warmongering empire could be split up, and we could live in peace with our neighbors near and far by leaving them alone. Sorry, I got carried away.

Next week I will plan to bring us a bit more from Between Two Millstones, Book I.

Last week we began looking at Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones, Book I: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978. It is a book brimming with information that we in the West need to ponder. I will quote a few of the places I marked during my recent reading of the book.

Solzhenitsyn was appalled at the behavior of the western press, and at one point early on in his freedom in Switzerland he told them, ‘”You are worse than the KGB!”‘ (p. 13) An exaggeration, no doubt, but an understandable one in view of their aggressive behavior toward him. Not, of course, to mention their dishonesty. When S visited the house in which Lenin lived during Lenin’s time in Zurich, “the newspapers then wrote that I had come to pay homage to Lenin!” (p. 13)

After one lie by a foreign correspondent–a lie which resulted in an ally of S losing his Soviet visa–S requested an apology for the misinformation. Nope.

“I was naive in thinking that the reporter, his agency, or his newspaper might show any remorse. Their fly-by-night trade, as long as it lasts, is to outdo one another in snooping, conjecturing, and snatching at whatever they can. Every encounter I had with the media in my first days in the West filled me with bewilderment; I was taken aback. An ill-defined feeling of resistance to their cheap tricks arose within me: my book about the perishing of millions had just burst onto the scene, and they were nipping at some puny weeds. Of course it was also ungrateful on my part: was not the Western media, whatever its shortcomings, the force that had offered me a pedestal to the world, rescuing me from persecution?” (p. 14; the book bursting onto the scene was The Gulag Archipelago, Volume I)

The media kept demanding statements from S, but they received from him mostly silence. Why was he silent?

“It was the writer’s protective instinct, which had realized, even before my mind had, the danger of becoming a blatherer. I had been carried to the West on such a sweeping wave that I could now talk endlessly, repeating myself every which way, straying from the gift of writing. Political passion, of course, is embedded deep within in me, and yet it comes after [after is italicized] literature, it ranks lower. And if in our unfortunate land so many resourceful and active people had not perished, with physicists and mathematicians having to take up sociology and poets having to take up political oratory, I would have remained within the bounds of literature.” (p. 14)

S was exhorted to go to the United States “while things were on a roll.” (p. 22) “But I am a sedentary person by nature, not a nomad.” (p. 23) So he didn’t hurry to us. He wanted to “continue working steeped in silence, not allowing the flame of my writing to expire, not letting myself be torn to pieces, but to remain myself. My international fame seemed to me boundless–but no longer all that necessary.” (p. 24)

An ally made a foolish suggestion as to what S should do, and S gives us a thoughtful evaluation of the episode: “(God, what an example of how such a long period of isolated thought can send people veering off on a tangent!)” (p. 24)

He met in Zurich with some Czech emigrants. These are people who, like S, had experienced life in a communist country. The gathering went well. About forty people were there,

“among them many fine people, and there was a warm and pleasant atmosphere of complete mutual understanding. (Trying to reach such a point with Western Europeans, on the other hand, is like trudging seven miles up a mountain–through the underbrush.) What a joy when like-minded people can get together and talk in freedom unhindered.” (pp. 26-27)

And yet within the same paragraph we learn that some of the same people got permission from S to translate Archipelago–and they translated it “badly and incompetently,” dragging the project out and keeping a good quality publishing house from doing the work. (p. 27) It is so typical of S that he always tries to speak the truth. As much as his gathering with the Czechs had been enjoyable, S recognized that his decision to grant permission to translate to some of those people had been a mistake. Perhaps the most important key to his greatness as a writer is his honesty.

When S wrote his Letter to the Soviet Leaders, one point he made was that it was actually to the leaders’ disadvantage to persecute religion:

‘”to set useless good-for-nothings to hounding their most conscientious workers, innocent of all cheating and theft, and as a result to suffer from universal cheating and theft”; I did not ask for any special privileges for believers, but only that they “be treated fairly and not suppressed,” and that the leaders “allow competition on an equal and honorable basis–not for power, but for truth!–between all ideological and moral currents.”‘ (p. 30)

He sent the letter to the leaders of the Soviet Union while he was still in the Soviet Union, I think possibly in 1973. He did not realize that the letter would be “misunderstood and misinterpreted in the West” (p. 28), but would have sent the letter even if he had known (p. 31). He was trying to avoid a destructive and bloody outcome for Russia and the Soviet Union. Who knows what effect his letter had? We do know that the end of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 was achieved without widespread violence. The leaders had not been able to moderate their behavior enough to stay in power, but at least great violence was avoided. My guess is that perhaps during the 18 years from 1973 to 1991, the practical wisdom of the Letter to the Soviet Leaders was absorbed by the people in control, at least to some extent. The West, of course, was incapable of appreciating the Letter. Anything other than instantaneous democracy is incomprehensible to our democommunazi elite. (Well, that is, if democracy is defined as a form of government in which the elite pretends to listen to the ordinary people, then does whatever it wants because it is wise and good and the rest of us are deplorable buffoons. Now that’s real democracy!)

When the Letter to the Soviet Leaders reached the West in translated form in 1974, just after he had been thrown out of the Soviet Union, the response was

“a flood of abuse from the Western press, an about-turn in just three weeks! If they had at least read the letter carefully! But from the reviews and the invective, it quickly became clear that these newspapermen had not taken the trouble to read the letter in its entirety [italics from had not through entirety]. It was the first time that I had encountered such a thing, but dishonesty of this kind quickly proved to be a steadfast characteristic of the press.” (p. 32) You will be shocked, shocked to learn that “The New York Times,” “which had refused to print my letter, was among the most violent critics.” (p. 32)

The NY “Times” called him a “reactionary and a nationalist.”

‘I had suggested that the Soviets stop all aggression, withdraw their occupational forces from everywhere–where was the harm in this? I had written: “The aims of an empire and the moral health of the people are incompatible.” But no, I was a nationalist!’ (p. 32)

Well, if the pace I am moving in my coverage of Between Two Millstones, Book I, is too slow for you, get your own durn copy of the book, ignore these blog posts, and read it for yourself. It is a most important book, including for what it tells us about the West. I hope to be back with more next week.

The full title of the book is Between Two Millstones: Book I: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978. It was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer who may be the most important man to live in the twentieth century. He was born in the Soviet Union on Dec. 11, 1918 (a year after the communists took over in 1917) and died in Russia–the Soviet Union died on Christmas day, 1991–on August 3, 2008, age 89. How fitting that the Soviet Union would die on Christmas Day! God probably was having His little joke at the expense of the communist murderers. God and His Christ had overthrown the evil Soviet Union. God uses means, however, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a large part of the means by which the Soviet Union was overthrown.

Solzhenitsyn is one of the rare writers who is equally gifted in both fiction and non-fiction. Millstones is non-fiction. The first English publication is very recent–2018. Kudos to the University of Notre Dame Press for taking on this project. Book I is an impressive hardcover edition, translated from the Russian by Peter Constantine.

Until very recently, this book was quite pricey to obtain. That is changing, I am glad to say. Today on Amazon the book could be obtained for about $16.58 (total, not counting sales tax). Still not cheap, but much better than a year or so ago. If you think the book might be something you would want to read, and you feel a temptation to read it for free via inter-library loan, nip the temptation in the bud. Many books are usefully obtained by inter-library loan, but not this one. There are too many passages you will want to underline. If you own the book, you can underline away. It’s worth paying out a few dollars to own this important book.

Here’s more good news: Book II is scheduled to be published on Nov. 15, 2020. The pre-publication price is, you guessed it, once again pricey, even worse than was Book I a year or so ago. Hopefully with a little patience that volume also will be available at a reasonable cost. I think I can out-wait and out-live the high price. We’ll see.

Solzhenitsyn did not want to leave the Soviet Union. The authorities threw him out in 1974. They had tried to kill him via the KGB, at least once, but he recovered. In 1974 the Soviet authorities said he had to go, and put him on a plane for the West.

The two millstones are one, the KGB, and two, the Western intelligentsia. The latter was corrupt even then. Yes, it is even more corrupt now, but looking back we can see that things were horrific even then. Perhaps we should not be surprised. After all, Roe v. Wade came in 1973, to the joy of our “elite.” An intelligentsia which is willing to kill unborn children is already pretty far gone morally.

One of the encouraging things about the book Millstones is the contrast between the Western intelligentsia and the ordinary people. Many of us in Flyover Country respected and loved Aleksandr Solshenitsyn, and AS discovered that as time went on. A very early example comes on page 12. In a store in Switzerland, AS “chose a good magnifying glass, but the shopkeeper categorically refused to take any money from me; we kept protesting, but I finally had to accept the gift, which was to become such a valued object.”

Millstones is typical of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He speaks the truth as he sees it. That truth includes the folly of his enemies, but it also includes his own mistakes. Moreover he doesn’t whine. He somehow always was optimistic that the Soviet Union would die and that he would be able to return to Russia one day. Bullseye. The phrase I long ago concocted for him, many years before the fall of the Soviet Union, is that he is a springtime writer. He senses the spring coming, even in the depths of winter, and he is able to convey that feeling to the rest of us. It is a lesson all of us in the bedraggled Christian West need to learn: spring can and does come, despite the winter. God is sovereign, and wins in the long run. I don’t say it is an easy lesson to learn. Our wicked acquiescence in dispensationalism, amillennialism, pietism, and antinomianism have disarmed us intellectually and emotionally. Solzhenitsyn’s example encourages us to take up arm again, and to hope.

Here are two of the keys to the character of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: 1/he loved truth; 2/he was incredibly diligent to work. The results were spectacular. He wrote numerous books which will live forever, and which helped in the overthrow of the Soviet Union. Few of us can match his intellectual and artistic brilliance. Fine. Readily granted. But if we only love truth, and work hard, might we ordinary people also accomplish a great deal more than one might expect given our modest gifts? I really think we could. AS’s example is out there. He did it, despite life-threatening opposition. He did it, despite the mindless attacks of the powerful Western intelligentsia.

What I plan to do in writing about Between Two Millstones, Book I, is to quote large portions of the book. I will move at a leisurely pace, and simply have a lot of fun quoting things that struck me. I’ll begin with a comment from the Foreword by Daniel J. Mahoney:

‘Solzhenitsyn thought Americans welcomed criticism but soon discerned that intellectual elites only welcomed criticism that came from the Left. Yet he received many encouraging letters from the American heartland, from ordinary Americans who had not forgotten the indispensable moral foundations of democracy. So once again, Solzhenitsyn held on to a “glimmer of hope” that the truth could win out over the cultured despisers of the “rich reserves of mercy and sacrifice” that defined both Russia and the West at their very best.’ (p. xiv)

Now I will begin with a quote from AS himself. He was in Switzerland at the time.

“Then it was time for the whole party to have lunch, and I surprised everyone (except Betta) by refusing to go to a restaurant. I found the sedate atmosphere of restaurants, the laborious and sluggish cult of dining, savoring–a waste of time and extremely exhausting. In all my fifty-three years of Soviet life I believe I was in a restaurant only two or three times, and then because I had to go. (Besides, I had always lived on the sidelines and was constantly short of money.) For me to appear in an elegant restaurant now that I was the center of attention filled me with shame.” (p. 12)

They ended up going to some sort of factory cafeteria.

Enough for today. I hope to add several more parts to my discussion of Between Two Millstones, Book I.