Happy Birthday, Aleksandr Isayevich!

Born today in 1918, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the «великий писатель Земли Русской» - "the great writer of the Russian Land". Born in the Soviet Union, an officer in the Army, then arrested and sent to the camps where he made the great discovery so many in the camps made: the essential sham nature of Stalinism, under the cult of personality and the excesses of ritual and blood. As Evgenia Ginzburg put it in her memoir "Into the Whirlwind": everyone thought that a mistake had been made in my case, but all these other people - they were guilty, they belonged here. It wasn't until later we learned that none of us - or all of us - did. [paraphrased because my copy is at my parents' place]

Solzhenitsyn became the voice of conscience - with novels like A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, history like The GULag Archipelago, and blends like The Red Wheel (August 1914 and its sequels), he explored and exposed Stalin's Soviet Union and its successor states. After his exile, he became a voice echoing the old Slavic culture that has always been at odds with the west, and was then at odds with Soviet Communism. Now, back in Moscow, he still argues that viewpoint. It's fashionable now to say that he's a great person, but not a great writer, or that he's out-of-date and out-of-touch, but he still speaks to many in Russia - and elswhere.

A few quotes from May 11 of this year:

• «…При Горбачеве было отброшено само понятие и сознание государственности. При Ельцине та же линия была продолжена, но еще отягощена безмерным разграблением России (…). При Путине стали предприниматься обратные усилия спасения проваленной государственности». Under Gorbachev the very understanding and consciousness of statehood was thrown away. Under Eltsin the same line was extended, but it was overwhelmed by the unstinted plundering of Russia.... Under Putin, efforts were begun to reverse course and rescue our lost country.

• «…Сбережение народа – выс­шая из всех наших государственных задач. (…) Все меры по поднятию общенародного жизненного уровня – в бытовом, пищевом, медицинском, образовательном и моральном отношениях – и суть действия по сбережению народа». Saving the people is the highest of all our national goals. ... All measures to raise the national level of standards of living - in daily life, food, medicine, education, and morality - are the essential action to save the people.

• «…Я считаю консерватизмом стремление сохранять и отстаивать лучшие, добрые и разумные традиции, оправдавшие себя в многовековом народном действовании. Консерватизм, дающий сейчас ростки в России (…), обнадеживает, но выглядит пока как бы «пробным», не разработанным по отношению к конкретной современности». I believe that conservatism is the struggle to preserve and maintain the best, decent, and wise traditions, those justified by centuries of people's actions. The conservatism which is now springing up in Russia... raises hopes, yet seems for the moment to be a "trial model", not yet developed with regard to the specifics of our modern here-and-now."

And a brief tribute to him from Lada Danilova, a blogger on geocities:

Казалось: он вернется - и все изменится. Сточные канавы обернутся благоухающими реками, жухлые травы - цветочными полями... "Не стоит село без праведника..." - наивно повторяла я финальную фразу "Матрениного двора". Да, да, он приедет, и все будет по-другому.

Вот он вернулся, и ничего не изменилось: потому, что не должно было измениться. Слишком велика инерция страны, катящейся в пропасть. Никто не захотел его слушать. В обоснование нежелания писались высоколобые статьи, где черным по белому доказывалось, что великий писатель пропустил свое время, опоздал с возвращениями, да и само общество становится у нас современным, и более не нуждается в духовных учителях и поводырях. И действительно - зачем нужен поводырь тому, кто и сам знает дорогу к пропасти?..

А мне нужен поводырь. Я не сверхчеловек, не рыцарь без страха и упрека. Мне легче и яснее на одной планете с Солженицыным.

Живите долго, Александр Исаевич.

It seemed like he would return and everything would change. Effluent canals would turn into fragrant rivers, smutty grasslands into flowering fields... "The village cannot stand without a righteous person..." naïvely I would repeat the final sentence of "Matryona's Home." Yes, yes: he would return and everything would be different.

And then he returned, and nothing changed: because nothing had to change. The country's inertia was too great, and it was plunging into the abyss. No-one wanted to listen to him. To support that unwillingness they wrote highbrow articles where they proved in black and white that the great writer had outlived his time, had returned too late, yes even that our society itself had become modern and no longer required spiritual teachers and guides. And indeed - what need of a guide has the man who knows full well the road to the abyss?..

But I need a guide. I am no superman, no chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. It's easier for me, and brighter, to share a planet with Solzhenitshyn.

Live long, Aleksandr Isayevich.