Dimensional Spaces in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Two Hundred Years Together

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Sep-Dec 2006 by Gimpelevich, Zinaida

ABSTRACT:

The history of Russian culture provides sufficient evidence that a renowned writer can also be a great historian. Indeed, Nikolai Karamzin (The History of the Russian State), Aleksander Pushkin (The History of Pugachev), and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (The Red Wheel), to name a few, have proven their exceptional erudition, historical intuition, and research capabilities in interpreting history. However, Solzhenitsyn's latest historical undertaking, Dvesti let vmeste [Two Hundred Years Together], despite its undeniable literary worth, has evoked strong reactions from many scholars, who doubt in particular his factual data and ideological approach to the history of Russian Jews and their history in the Russian and Soviet Empires. To consolidate the major questions raised about Solzhenitsyn's interpretation of this history, the present study provides a review of the critical literature inspired by Two Hundred Years Together. The article also addresses dimensional spaces in this work and examines how they influence the reader's views of the writer's socio-historic, literary, and cultural intentions. These issues include the nature of Solzhenitsyn's nationalism as illustrated by the realities of Belarusan Jews who were among the first en masse foreign settlers in the Eastern Slavic territories. This article also considers the literary devices and concentrates on Solzhenitsyn's concept of repentance. The above named topics are examined in conjunction with the notions of nationalism, anti-Semitism, faith, repentance, and responsibility, all of which are pondered on the pages of Solzhenitsyn's historical opus.

Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities. The very least of them wears its own special powers and bears within itself a special facet of divine intervention.

A. Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize speech, 1970

The injustice didn't start with us, and not with us will it end.1

Old Russian saying

Perhaps no other work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn has generated as much controversy as his two-volume opus Dvesti let vmeste [Two Hundred Years Together, hereafter THYT], an attempt at an epic chronicling of the uneasy relationships between Russians and Russian Jews.2 While most critics have hailed this 1,058-page work as a tremendous intellectual effort by the aging writer and some have compared it to The Red Wheel,3 many have also noted its biased discourse, dogmatic pronouncements, glaring omissions, and prejudicial interpretations. Oddly enough, Solzhenitsyn's detractors fall into opposing but numerically unequal camps: some find him guilty of pro-Jewish sentiment; many more, however, accuse him of varying degrees of anti-Semitism; and others consider him a typical Russian nationalist. These camps have fervent and learned followers, and a multitude of scattered Internet resources continue to complicate the perception of Solzhenitsyn's work.

The present article is framed by a review of recent literary and cultural critiques motivated by Solzhenitsyn's work. The "Jewish question" was treated in Solzhenitsyn's earlier creative and critical writings and has already been debated. The following outline of past critical views will aid in comparing the views expressed in THYT. The main task, however, is to analyze dimensional spaces in THYT and to examine how these spaces influence the reader's views of the writer's historic, literary, and cultural intent. This analysis will include an examination of Solzhenitsyn's nationalism in the context of the realities experienced by Belarusan Jews, who were among the first en masse settlers in the Eastern Slavic territories. In addition, this article addresses the literary devices used in THYT, concentrates on the concept of repentance, and positions Russian-Judaic spiritual and cultural connections. By pondering these issues, the reader may better understand Solzhenitsyn's aspirations and achievements, and some inevitable failures in his assessment of Russian-Jewish relations-as well as the various camps that oppose Solzhenitsyn's ideas.

DIMENSIONAL SPACES AND CRITICAL REVIEWS OF TWO HUNDRED YEARS TOGETHER

Igor Shafarevich-a brilliant mathematician, physicist, Russian Orthodox philosopher, publicist, Russian nationalist, and human rights activist-inspires the theoretical framework of this study.4 Indeed, this true friend, defender, and collaborator of Solzhenitsyn would often start his essays and treatises with reference to an axiom from physics. Thus, one of his extended socio-historical essays, Two Roads, Leading to the Same Precipice,5 starts with a rule of physics: "an appearance of some contradictions normally leads to a discovery of a new regularity." Shafarevich applies this formula to Stalin's ideology and to liberal Western ideas of progress. The third dimension of his new regularity is that both systems of thought rely on technical progress and, consciously or subconsciously, are bringing humanity to the ecological precipice that is one step from its end.

Physics recognizes a number of dimensional spaces, two- and three-dimensional spaces being the most commonly known. In two-dimensional space (flat and plain as a steppe or a shadow), order controls chaos and allows a very limited degree of freedom for modification. Two-dimensional space presupposes the presence of an axiom- or maxim-based system of beliefs that in theory does not require proof because it seems obvious to certain established ideas or formulas. One mathematical example of such an axiom states that two parallel lines cannot cross. This axiom, however, does not apply to parallel lines on a sphere where meridians, which are parallel lines, cross all over the globe. Both the axiom and its transgression (crossed meridians) can be found in orderly two-dimensional space. In the three-dimensional space where our life exists, the presence of perpetual motion produces a more complicated balance between order and chaos. When chaos prevails, it gives way to changes that in turn lead to other relationships between order and chaos. The evolution that exists in three-dimensional space is both infinite and free, providing constant openings to new and rather unpredictable changes; three-dimensional spaces are more complete representations of reality. By contrast, two-dimensional space represents an established axiom and, if applied to literary or socio-historical writings, lead to a rather established and dogmatic position.