Solzhenitsyn, Still: The writer and his latest challenge - Two Hundred Years Together - Review

National Review, Sept 17, 2001 by Jay Nordlinger

Because Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the great men of the 20th century, it is possible to overlook how prolific and varied he has been as a writer. In his 82 years, he has produced historical novels, "regular" novels, novellas, short stories, "two-part stories," poems, prose poems, plays, autobiographical memoirs, literary memoirs, political essays, philosophical essays, speeches, and that unique, world-shattering book called The Gulag Archipelago, which the author described as "an experiment in literary investigation." And now he has produced a history: Two Hundred Years Together, a chronicle of "Russian-Jewish interrelations" from 1795 to 1995. The first volume of this work has just appeared in Russia; more will come out in a matter of months. Thus does Solzhenitsyn continue to work, comfort, and incite.

It was in 1990, when he was still in his Vermont exile, that Solzhenitsyn completed The Red Wheel, his weighty cycle of novels on the Russian Revolution. While preparing these books, he found that he bumped up repeatedly against "the Jewish question," the role of Jews in Russian history and in what might be called the Russian mind. Yet he did not want to explore this question in The Red Wheel, because it is an incendiary one, and because he did not wish to give the cycle the wrong "accent" or "slant." If he had gone deeply into the Jewish question, this may well have engulfed the entire work, causing people to see or argue over nothing else. But he knew the importance of the question, and was reluctant to leave it unaddressed. So he devoted much of the time between 1990 and 2001-essentially the years of his seventies-to Two Hundred Years, to this business of the Russians and the Jews.

Which has puzzled more than a few people. Why, they ask, would Solzhenitsyn dabble in this, allotting precious time-twilight time-to this subject, of all the subjects under the sun? David Remnick, in a recent piece in The New Yorker, expressed his own puzzlement, saying that "there are books in Solzhenitsyn's uvre that are arguably dull or minor but never tangential." The new history, he wrote, "seems anomalous, not at all essential." Many others wish that Solzhenitsyn had never gone near this book for other reasons, which we will take up shortly. But we should at least consider that Solzhenitsyn himself is the best judge of how he ought to spend his time, of what his service should be, of what is important in his writing about Russia, and for Russia, and what is not. Puzzled-even annoyed-as some people may be, the mere fact that Solzhenitsyn thinks this work important should be enough to arrest us and make us think a little along with him.

The author has made abundantly clear that he did not wish to write this book-far from it. As he says in his Introduction, "I never lost hope that there would come before me a writer who might illumine for us all [the Russian-Jewish question], generously and equitably. . . . I would be glad not to test my strength in such a thorny thicket . . . For many years, I postponed this work and would even now be pleased to avert the burden of writing it. But my years are nearing their end, and I feel I must take up this task."

But why? Does "the Jewish question" in Russia burn across the landscape, requiring a quenching? Again, Solzhenitsyn speaks well for himself: "What leads me through this narrative . . . is a quest for points of common understanding, and for paths into the future, cleansed from the acrimony of the past. . . . Alas, mutual grievances have accumulated in both peoples' memories, but if we repress the past, how can we heal them? Until the collective psyche of a people finds its clear outlet in the written word, it can rumble indistinctly or, worse, menacingly."

These words were translated by Solzhenitsyn's son Stephan, who lives in Boston. (The book is not yet available in English; Stephan has translated key parts of it.) Another son, Ignat, lives in Philadelphia, and a third, Yermolai, is in Moscow. The sons, along with their mother, Natalia, have participated heavily in the making of the book, helping Solzhenitsyn with such chores as typing (he writes by hand), research, quote-checking, footnoting, and indexing. Rarely has a man been so lucky in his family as Solzhenitsyn has. All are touchingly devoted to him, committed to his work, understanding of his purposes, willing to make sacrifices. It was perhaps the circumstances of exile, and of Solzhenitsyn's unique position in the world, that forged such bonds. The family, like the author, would have preferred that this project not go forward, with all its sundry headaches, and perils-but each one accepted the need for it.

Elaborating on his father's words, Ignat says that the new history is meant to "bring us back to the past, make us care about it, and own up to it." National Review, he points out-particularly senior editor David Pryce-Jones-is always calling for an honest accounting of the past, if only for the sake of the present and future (in fact, only for that). This, says Ignat, is part of what Two Hundred Years should do. Ideally, it will occasion a kind of "collective repentance," or at least reflection. The Solzhenitsyn view goes essentially as follows: For ages, Russian nationalists have blamed Jews for all sorts of woes, chiefly the 75 years of Communist rule; others, meanwhile, have ignorantly or maliciously damned the (pre-Bolshevik) Russian state, the Russian people, and "Russianness" itself. Solzhenitsyn attempts to be an arbiter (and it is this very "evenhandedness" that will bother many critics). The new book is meant to be largely devoid of art or argument, presenting this history in a dispassionate, factual, even dry way. In a recent interview with Moscow News, Solzhenitsyn said, "I could not have written this book had I not absorbed myself in both sides."