as far as background, during the old days as a lost, self-righteous pharisee, i gave myself full credit for providing for my family and gave little or none to God. my method was being an 'hour hound'. in virtually every position i held, i worked hard, i advanced fast and soon came to a place where i was able to work overtime...sometimes it seemed as many or more hours than i wanted. (notice all the 'i's)
one of the key things God has put on my heart has been to live out matthew 6.33-4. after a year of virtual dearth of 'employment for pay'..a year in which God has miraculously provided...he tested me last week by giving me a perfect storm of work...three different for-pay jobs with another put off to the coming week. and what did i do. i refused to work only 8 hours a day (the rule impressed upon me) but went ba
Saturday, September 29, 2012
9.28.2012 JOHN KNOX AT THE END
taken from john knox apostle of the scottish reformation (g. barnett smith) rewritten by dorothy martin
1505? (near the village of haddington)-11.23.1572...
...'a student at saint andrews wrote of knox's appearance before the students in 1571.
'of all the benefits that i had that year was the coming of that most notable prophet and apostle of our nation, my john knox, to saint andrews...i heard him teach there the prophecies of daniel that summer and the winter following. in the opening of his text, he was moderate the space of an half hour. but when he entered to application, he made me so to thrill and tremble, that i could not hold a pen to write. he was very weak...and was lifted up to the pulpit where he behooved to lean at his first entry. but, ere he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous, that he was like to beat the pulpit in pieces and fly out of it.
j
k spent much of his time in saint andrews encouraging the students. he also wrote and published a vindication of the reformed religion in answer to a letter from a scottish esuit. he published this work as a farewell address to the world and as a dying testimony to the truth he ha so long taught and defended. along with it he published one of the letters he had written to his mother in law, who had just died. he now frequently confessed that he was 'weary of the world' and 'thirsting to depart'.
in august 1572 he wrote a..letter of farewell to the general assembly. from this time on, his health failed so rapidly that it seemed he would end his days at saint andrews. however, his old congregation at saint giles's wanted to hear him once more before he died. they begged him to come to edinburgh if his health would permit. he agreed to return..
...he began to fail perceptibly and was unable to read his customary scripture. either his wife or his secretary read regularly to him from john 17, isaiah 53, and a chapter from ephesians. he sometimes asked for certain psalms and for calvin's french sermons on ephesians. occasionally he seemed to be asleep, but when asked, he replied,
i hear, praise God and understand far better.
on his death bed, he seemed almost to have the gift of prophetic insight as he talked with those standing near. he sent urgent messages to kirkaldy, his former ally in the reformed faith, begging him to repent or else he would be 'disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment and hung on a gallows before the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life and flee to the mercy of god' he told those near him,
that man's soul is dear to me, and i would not have it perish if i could save it.
receiving kirk's contemptuous response, k grieved for him, trusting that
'his soul would be saved, though his body would come to a miserable end.
he continued to receive many visitors of every rank, though he had great difficulty breathing and spoke only with pain. all who came to him received loving counsel suited to their needs....
on friday, nov. 21, he ordered his casket made. during that day he spent much time in meditation and prayer. listeners heard him day,
come, Lord Jesus;
into Thy hand i commend my spirit.
be merciful, Lord, to Thy church, which Thou hast redeemed.
give peace to this afflicted commonwealth.
raise up faithful pastors who will take charge of Thy church.
grant us, Lord, the perfect hatred of sin, both by the evidences of Thy wrath and mercy.
he often spoke to those who stood by, saying,
oh serve the Lord in fear and death shall not be terrible to you. nay, blessed shall death be to those who have felt the power of the death of the only begotten Son of God.
on sunday the 23rd, the first day of the national fast, he suddenly exclaimed,
if any be present, let them come and see the work of God.
after a moment he exclaimed again,
i have been these last two nights in meditation on the troubled state of the church of God, the spouse of Jesus Christ, despised of the world, but precious in the sight of God. i have been called to God for her, and have committed her to her head, Jesus Christ. i have fought against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things and have prevailed. i have been in heaven and have possession. i have tasted of the heavenly joys where presently i will be.
when someone asked if he felt much pain, he answered that he was willing to lie there for years if God so pleased. he slept very little, but was constantly active in meditation and prayer and exhortation.
'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy church that purity of doctrine may be retained.
restore peace again to this commonwealth with godly rulers and magistrates.
then, stretching his hands toward heaven he said,
Lord, i commend my spirit, soul, and body and all into Thy hands. Thou knowest, o Lord, my troubles; i do not murmur against Thee.
his exclamations were so frequent that those standing near could not remember all that he said. he was only silent when someone was reading or praying.
monday, nov. 24, was his last day on earth. that morning he insisted on getting up. he sat in a chair for about half an hour and then was put to bed. as the day went on, it was clear that the end was near. his wife and three of his closest friends took turns sitting beside him. one asked if he had any pain. he answered'
'it is no painful pain, but such a pain as shall soon, i trust, put an end to the battle. i must leave the care of my wife and children to you, to whom you must be a husband in my place.
about three in the afternoon he asked his wife to read I corinthians 15 to him.
'oh what sweet consolation the Lord has given me from that chapter..then he asked her to read the 17th chapter of john and a par of calvin's sermons on ephesians.
after this he seemed to fall into a deep sleep, interrupted by heavy moans. when he awakened, he was asked the reason for the deep sighs. he answered,
i have often during my frail life sustained many assaults from satan. but now he as assailed me most fearfully, and put forth all his strength to devour and make an end of me at once.
'often before he has placed my sins before my eyes,
often tempted me to despair,
often endeavored to ensnare me by the allurements of the world.
but these weapons were broken by the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and the enemy has failed.
now he has attacked me in another way. the cunning serpent has tried to persuade me that i have merited heaven and eternal blessedness by the faithful discharge of my ministry.
but blessed be God, who has enabled me to beat down and quench this fiery dart, by suggesting to me such scripture as
'what hast thou that thou hast not received?
and 'by the grace of "God i am what i am. not i but the grace of god in me.
upon this, as one vanquished, he left me.
'wherefore, i gave thanks to my God through Jesus Christ who has been pleased to give me the victory.
i am persuaded that the tempter shall not again attack me, but, within a short time, i shall, without any great pain of body or anguish of mind, exchange this mortal and miserable life for a blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.
he then lay quiet for some hours. when asked if he had heard those with him reading the evening prayers, he replied,
would to God that you and all men had heard them as i have heard them.
i praise God for that heavenly sound.
then he gave a deep sigh and said,
'now it is come.
his friends realized that he could not speak and asked him to give them a sign that he heard them and died in peace.
in answer, he lifted up one of his hands.
k was onl67 when he died, but in that time he had lived more than many men.
his career had been distinguished both for its extraordinary labors and
for its equally extraordinary cares and anxieties.
probably few men passed through so many dangers and yet lived to finish the course in peace and honor.
in the brief eulogy...
'here lies one who never feared the face of man.
on the north side of an imposing monument to his memory erected in glasgow in 1825...
'to testify gratitude for inestimable services in the cause of religion, education and civil liberty;
to awaken admiration of that integrity, disinterestedness, and courage, which stood unshaken in the midst of trials, and in the maintenance of the highest objects; and , finally,
to cherish unceasing reverence for the principles and blessings of that great reformation, by the influence of which our country, through the midst of difficulties, has risen to honor, prosperity and happiness-
this monument is erected by voluntary contributions to the memory of john knox, the chief instrument, under god, of the reformation of scotland..
1505? (near the village of haddington)-11.23.1572...
...'a student at saint andrews wrote of knox's appearance before the students in 1571.
'of all the benefits that i had that year was the coming of that most notable prophet and apostle of our nation, my john knox, to saint andrews...i heard him teach there the prophecies of daniel that summer and the winter following. in the opening of his text, he was moderate the space of an half hour. but when he entered to application, he made me so to thrill and tremble, that i could not hold a pen to write. he was very weak...and was lifted up to the pulpit where he behooved to lean at his first entry. but, ere he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous, that he was like to beat the pulpit in pieces and fly out of it.
j
k spent much of his time in saint andrews encouraging the students. he also wrote and published a vindication of the reformed religion in answer to a letter from a scottish esuit. he published this work as a farewell address to the world and as a dying testimony to the truth he ha so long taught and defended. along with it he published one of the letters he had written to his mother in law, who had just died. he now frequently confessed that he was 'weary of the world' and 'thirsting to depart'.
in august 1572 he wrote a..letter of farewell to the general assembly. from this time on, his health failed so rapidly that it seemed he would end his days at saint andrews. however, his old congregation at saint giles's wanted to hear him once more before he died. they begged him to come to edinburgh if his health would permit. he agreed to return..
...he began to fail perceptibly and was unable to read his customary scripture. either his wife or his secretary read regularly to him from john 17, isaiah 53, and a chapter from ephesians. he sometimes asked for certain psalms and for calvin's french sermons on ephesians. occasionally he seemed to be asleep, but when asked, he replied,
i hear, praise God and understand far better.
on his death bed, he seemed almost to have the gift of prophetic insight as he talked with those standing near. he sent urgent messages to kirkaldy, his former ally in the reformed faith, begging him to repent or else he would be 'disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment and hung on a gallows before the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life and flee to the mercy of god' he told those near him,
that man's soul is dear to me, and i would not have it perish if i could save it.
receiving kirk's contemptuous response, k grieved for him, trusting that
'his soul would be saved, though his body would come to a miserable end.
he continued to receive many visitors of every rank, though he had great difficulty breathing and spoke only with pain. all who came to him received loving counsel suited to their needs....
on friday, nov. 21, he ordered his casket made. during that day he spent much time in meditation and prayer. listeners heard him day,
come, Lord Jesus;
into Thy hand i commend my spirit.
be merciful, Lord, to Thy church, which Thou hast redeemed.
give peace to this afflicted commonwealth.
raise up faithful pastors who will take charge of Thy church.
grant us, Lord, the perfect hatred of sin, both by the evidences of Thy wrath and mercy.
he often spoke to those who stood by, saying,
oh serve the Lord in fear and death shall not be terrible to you. nay, blessed shall death be to those who have felt the power of the death of the only begotten Son of God.
on sunday the 23rd, the first day of the national fast, he suddenly exclaimed,
if any be present, let them come and see the work of God.
after a moment he exclaimed again,
i have been these last two nights in meditation on the troubled state of the church of God, the spouse of Jesus Christ, despised of the world, but precious in the sight of God. i have been called to God for her, and have committed her to her head, Jesus Christ. i have fought against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things and have prevailed. i have been in heaven and have possession. i have tasted of the heavenly joys where presently i will be.
when someone asked if he felt much pain, he answered that he was willing to lie there for years if God so pleased. he slept very little, but was constantly active in meditation and prayer and exhortation.
'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy church that purity of doctrine may be retained.
restore peace again to this commonwealth with godly rulers and magistrates.
then, stretching his hands toward heaven he said,
Lord, i commend my spirit, soul, and body and all into Thy hands. Thou knowest, o Lord, my troubles; i do not murmur against Thee.
his exclamations were so frequent that those standing near could not remember all that he said. he was only silent when someone was reading or praying.
monday, nov. 24, was his last day on earth. that morning he insisted on getting up. he sat in a chair for about half an hour and then was put to bed. as the day went on, it was clear that the end was near. his wife and three of his closest friends took turns sitting beside him. one asked if he had any pain. he answered'
'it is no painful pain, but such a pain as shall soon, i trust, put an end to the battle. i must leave the care of my wife and children to you, to whom you must be a husband in my place.
about three in the afternoon he asked his wife to read I corinthians 15 to him.
'oh what sweet consolation the Lord has given me from that chapter..then he asked her to read the 17th chapter of john and a par of calvin's sermons on ephesians.
after this he seemed to fall into a deep sleep, interrupted by heavy moans. when he awakened, he was asked the reason for the deep sighs. he answered,
i have often during my frail life sustained many assaults from satan. but now he as assailed me most fearfully, and put forth all his strength to devour and make an end of me at once.
'often before he has placed my sins before my eyes,
often tempted me to despair,
often endeavored to ensnare me by the allurements of the world.
but these weapons were broken by the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and the enemy has failed.
now he has attacked me in another way. the cunning serpent has tried to persuade me that i have merited heaven and eternal blessedness by the faithful discharge of my ministry.
but blessed be God, who has enabled me to beat down and quench this fiery dart, by suggesting to me such scripture as
'what hast thou that thou hast not received?
and 'by the grace of "God i am what i am. not i but the grace of god in me.
upon this, as one vanquished, he left me.
'wherefore, i gave thanks to my God through Jesus Christ who has been pleased to give me the victory.
i am persuaded that the tempter shall not again attack me, but, within a short time, i shall, without any great pain of body or anguish of mind, exchange this mortal and miserable life for a blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.
he then lay quiet for some hours. when asked if he had heard those with him reading the evening prayers, he replied,
would to God that you and all men had heard them as i have heard them.
i praise God for that heavenly sound.
then he gave a deep sigh and said,
'now it is come.
his friends realized that he could not speak and asked him to give them a sign that he heard them and died in peace.
in answer, he lifted up one of his hands.
k was onl67 when he died, but in that time he had lived more than many men.
his career had been distinguished both for its extraordinary labors and
for its equally extraordinary cares and anxieties.
probably few men passed through so many dangers and yet lived to finish the course in peace and honor.
in the brief eulogy...
'here lies one who never feared the face of man.
on the north side of an imposing monument to his memory erected in glasgow in 1825...
'to testify gratitude for inestimable services in the cause of religion, education and civil liberty;
to awaken admiration of that integrity, disinterestedness, and courage, which stood unshaken in the midst of trials, and in the maintenance of the highest objects; and , finally,
to cherish unceasing reverence for the principles and blessings of that great reformation, by the influence of which our country, through the midst of difficulties, has risen to honor, prosperity and happiness-
this monument is erected by voluntary contributions to the memory of john knox, the chief instrument, under god, of the reformation of scotland..
9.29.2012 IS MY FAITH REAL OR JUST A PASTE ON?
'fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole duty of man.' ecclesiastes 12.13-4
'go forth therefore and make all nations My disciples..' matthew 28.18
taken from glimpses of christian history #273...john wesley
-when 7 snatched from a fire in his home by a neighbor..his mother, sussanah wesley, called him 'a brand plucked from the burning'...felt that he had been spared for a God ordained purpose
-while at oxford he became the leader of a group called the Holy Club, which included a young george whitefield. this small group of students sought to reinforce faith through
scriptural study and
by measuring the quality of holiness of each member's life.
their regimen required
periodic fasts,
regular study meetings and
self-examination.
only much later did wesley realize that they followed more the letter than the spirit of christianity.
-providentially, he had made contact (on his way to be a missionary in georgia) a a small band of moravian christians on a voyage over to the colony. these men and women peacefully sang hymns during dreadful storms at sea while he was gripped by fear. after returning to england, john and charles (his brother) sought the counsel of peter boehler, a moravian, who told them that a proper faith will result in a clear sense of assurance of salvation. one cannot have one without the other. and such a faith will be accompanied by love, peace, and joy in the Holly Spirit. such a heart-centered experience was necessary for one to become a true christian...may 24, 1738 john had a deep experience of faith and assurance.
-he decided to live on a stipend of 28 pounds annually, which was well below the poverty level..any additional earnings wer used to fund his various ministries.
-began itinerant preaching in the 1740s in england
-rode over 250,00 miles on horseback and preached over 40,000 sermons
-his rule for living:
Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can!
-last letter, february 24, 1791, at age 87, six days before his death..was addressed to william wilberforece. .
'unless the dive power has raise you up to be as 'athanasius against the world', i see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of england, and of human nature. unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. but if God be for you, who can be against you are all of the stronger than God? o be not weary of well doing! go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even american slavery(the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor african, i was particularly struck by the circumstance, that a man who has black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress: it being a LAW in all our colonies that the OATH of a black man against a white goes for nothing. what villainy is this!
that he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things is the prayer of, dear sir,
your affectionate servant,
john wesley
-
'go forth therefore and make all nations My disciples..' matthew 28.18
taken from glimpses of christian history #273...john wesley
-when 7 snatched from a fire in his home by a neighbor..his mother, sussanah wesley, called him 'a brand plucked from the burning'...felt that he had been spared for a God ordained purpose
-while at oxford he became the leader of a group called the Holy Club, which included a young george whitefield. this small group of students sought to reinforce faith through
scriptural study and
by measuring the quality of holiness of each member's life.
their regimen required
periodic fasts,
regular study meetings and
self-examination.
only much later did wesley realize that they followed more the letter than the spirit of christianity.
-providentially, he had made contact (on his way to be a missionary in georgia) a a small band of moravian christians on a voyage over to the colony. these men and women peacefully sang hymns during dreadful storms at sea while he was gripped by fear. after returning to england, john and charles (his brother) sought the counsel of peter boehler, a moravian, who told them that a proper faith will result in a clear sense of assurance of salvation. one cannot have one without the other. and such a faith will be accompanied by love, peace, and joy in the Holly Spirit. such a heart-centered experience was necessary for one to become a true christian...may 24, 1738 john had a deep experience of faith and assurance.
-he decided to live on a stipend of 28 pounds annually, which was well below the poverty level..any additional earnings wer used to fund his various ministries.
-began itinerant preaching in the 1740s in england
-rode over 250,00 miles on horseback and preached over 40,000 sermons
-his rule for living:
Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can!
-last letter, february 24, 1791, at age 87, six days before his death..was addressed to william wilberforece. .
'unless the dive power has raise you up to be as 'athanasius against the world', i see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of england, and of human nature. unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. but if God be for you, who can be against you are all of the stronger than God? o be not weary of well doing! go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even american slavery(the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor african, i was particularly struck by the circumstance, that a man who has black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress: it being a LAW in all our colonies that the OATH of a black man against a white goes for nothing. what villainy is this!
that he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things is the prayer of, dear sir,
your affectionate servant,
john wesley
-
Monday, September 24, 2012
9.24.2012 QUEBRANTANDO...DESESPERACION
my life proceeds peacefully, uneventfully in the outer world, but inwardly i am numb, in deep trauma spiritually. i've given up things, but i have not yet given myself completely to God.
last night at spanish church a person was preaching about God being high and lifted up, about God reaching down to the humble and broken. he had us turn to maybe as many as 50 passages to read, again and again, in various words this message. he cried..i think genuinely. the people, usually very vocal and, at times, boisterous, fell into a hush toward the end. he preached and then he appealed as if he were desperate. he used the word, desesperacion, at least twice that i heard and he appeared desperate. even in my spiritually comatose state i remember the thought something like,
'how i wish i had what he has
...but my heart seems to be dead. i do all the activities of living, spending time with God, even talking to God and about God and 'worshipping' God...but it's all done in a drugged state..inwardly. i live out my days this way now.
in spite of this, i was moved enough to take time when i came home to read the articles in the church paper
the first had the head line,
'to pray is to talk with God
it is for everyone and not only a few
you don't need words pretty or complicated.
we can all pray
the article finished with:
'God gives you this promise today:
'cry out to Me and I will answer you
and teach you things great y ocultas (this word got my attention. it means 'hidden') that you do not know
my mind went to what i have said to God many times in recent days,
'what is wrong?!
and i get no light.
then the thought came again (it comes every once in a great while.),
i haven't given myself to You. (He wants all, with nothing left over for anything or anyone else.)
the inside article was titled
there is nothing more discussed and less practiced than prayer..and starts
we like to talk about it.
we like to preach about it.
and we like to study it
i speak of prayer..
we know that there is..power in prayer.
it is the key that opens the heavens in order that power and blessing may come down...
the prayer of the righteous..does much...(that leaves me out. i cannot be righteous and refuse to give myself 100% to Him ...can i? ...i desperately want some control.)
the article ends,
dare to pray (in my case, dare to repent, give myself...and then pray)
you will see how your life will change!
the devil will try to dishearten you because he doesn't want you to discover the power of prayer.
what are you going to do?
9.29.2012 addition....i don't know what i'm going to do? salvation is of the Lord. this morning woke up to a fierce battle which raged nearly eight hours. salvation is not just intellectually agreeing with what God says..the proof of genuine belief is in the doing, is it not!?
'not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of his father who is in heaven...i quebrantado (broken), i have desesperacion (desperation) in my heart and spirit but is still lack that deep inner assurance...i continue to cry to You Lord..only You can save me.
last night at spanish church a person was preaching about God being high and lifted up, about God reaching down to the humble and broken. he had us turn to maybe as many as 50 passages to read, again and again, in various words this message. he cried..i think genuinely. the people, usually very vocal and, at times, boisterous, fell into a hush toward the end. he preached and then he appealed as if he were desperate. he used the word, desesperacion, at least twice that i heard and he appeared desperate. even in my spiritually comatose state i remember the thought something like,
'how i wish i had what he has
...but my heart seems to be dead. i do all the activities of living, spending time with God, even talking to God and about God and 'worshipping' God...but it's all done in a drugged state..inwardly. i live out my days this way now.
in spite of this, i was moved enough to take time when i came home to read the articles in the church paper
the first had the head line,
'to pray is to talk with God
it is for everyone and not only a few
you don't need words pretty or complicated.
we can all pray
the article finished with:
'God gives you this promise today:
'cry out to Me and I will answer you
and teach you things great y ocultas (this word got my attention. it means 'hidden') that you do not know
my mind went to what i have said to God many times in recent days,
'what is wrong?!
and i get no light.
then the thought came again (it comes every once in a great while.),
i haven't given myself to You. (He wants all, with nothing left over for anything or anyone else.)
the inside article was titled
there is nothing more discussed and less practiced than prayer..and starts
we like to talk about it.
we like to preach about it.
and we like to study it
i speak of prayer..
we know that there is..power in prayer.
it is the key that opens the heavens in order that power and blessing may come down...
the prayer of the righteous..does much...(that leaves me out. i cannot be righteous and refuse to give myself 100% to Him ...can i? ...i desperately want some control.)
the article ends,
dare to pray (in my case, dare to repent, give myself...and then pray)
you will see how your life will change!
the devil will try to dishearten you because he doesn't want you to discover the power of prayer.
what are you going to do?
9.29.2012 addition....i don't know what i'm going to do? salvation is of the Lord. this morning woke up to a fierce battle which raged nearly eight hours. salvation is not just intellectually agreeing with what God says..the proof of genuine belief is in the doing, is it not!?
'not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of his father who is in heaven...i quebrantado (broken), i have desesperacion (desperation) in my heart and spirit but is still lack that deep inner assurance...i continue to cry to You Lord..only You can save me.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
9.23.2012 SOLZHENITSYN III
the third blow of the cascade...a letter to the KBG on 31 august 1973
'in my earlier letter, which your received on 3 july, i warned you that the farce of the gangsters was only too transparent, and that it would be more sensible to stop it. by its third, extremely unpleasant letter, your department has compelled me to give an interview to the press.
if you see ivan pavlovich abramov (head of KBG), plese pass this on to him.
the fourth blow, as a result of the KBG taking a copy of sol's gulag archipelago in leningrad, was that sol released the book for publication in the west.
according to a statement made by sol in leningrad at the end of august, the KGB confiscated a typewritten copy of his book the gulag archipelago, an investigation in several volumes of soviet prison camps from 1918 to1956, containing only authentic facts, the names of real places and the names of persons still living (more than 200 of them). the author fears that they will all now be persecuted for their testimony, given ten years ago, to the torments that they suffered in stalin's camps.
information as to the place in which the book was concealed was given by elizaveta voronyanskaya, who was interrogated by the KGB for five days and nights without a break. when she got home she hanged herself. 5 september 1973
349.'last..i had been fortunate:
i had come unscathed from the brink of disaster many times-
the problem with circle 96 (the first circle) a year earlier,
the unauthorized distribution of the oak and the calf six months before that,
when i had been denied light and air and the free use of my limbs,
when i could not rise quickly to my feet.
but now i was in the saddle,
at full gallop,
the moment was of my own choosing (some premonition had made me begin my campaign while all was quiet and there was no apparent need for it)
and others were galloping furiously beside me;
all we need do was turn aside slightly and have at them! this latest upset had come while a great historic upheaval was in progress:
europe was for the first time seriously alarmed and the hands of our masters were tied by their hope of an improvement in terms of trade with the americans, and by the european conference, so that before me there was smooth expanse of several months, begging me to act! whereas only a month ago i seemed to be 'putting my head on the block', i could now raise a defiant battle cry:
victory is ours!
with God's aid we shall yet prevail!
(note: the beginning of the end of solzhenitsyn's gold. we all lust for 'power' and 'freedom' and 'rights', not knowing that the genuine variety of these and all other 'blessings' can only be retained only by those who ARE suffering for truth..not WERE..)
...if i look back, it has been the same all these years, the same in all things. all the blows they have rained on me have only helped to break my chains, to set me free!
this is our assurance that they are doomed.
i heard the news on the evening of the third, and on the evening of the fifth i sent off not only an announcement that gulag had been seized, but orders to publish it immediately!
on the same day i posted my letter to the leaders. it could not have been more timely..i get carried away at such moments..my wife stayed my hand: it was pointless...
367.1 (speaking of his first wife and her current liaison with the KBG..)'whatever she might do on her new path, and for her new masters (she had not managed today's conversation at all well:she should have induced me to meet the geebees privately and, instead, we were 'awaiting' a publisher's offer; still, she had certain proof that i was not on the offensive, that i wasn't publishing gulag, that i was pacifically disposed)-whatever she might do in the future, i should not be able to isolate myself from it, to fling at her:
'that's all your doing! whatever she did i should be doing it with her...whatever evils poisoned the future their roots were in the past.
i had myself to blame.
in jail i could see righ through a man as soon as he entered a cell; yet
never once had i looked into the heart of the woman at my side.
i had allowed the evil to fester and flare up.
this is how we pay for mistakes in the neglected secondary sphere, that sphere which local party committees, in their holiday greetings to us, refer to as our 'private lives'.
378.1 (sol very strategic) 'for me, the purpose of the whole fight so far-i could see it now-was to secure a defensible base for attack in readiness for the next, the main battle, with flashing helms and clashing swords.
i could see where battle would be joined,
sketch out some of my tactical moves and how i must deploy my forces:
form a preliminary plan of operations....
..'if i had not published gulag till i got to the west, its destructive force wouldn't have been half so great...
389.1.. as it is, i am astonished to see how clearly its significance was realized:
'a burning question mark over 50 years of soviet power, over the whole soviet experiment from 1918 on...vorwarts
'sol tells the world the truth about the cowardice of the communist party...guardian
'the time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the soviet system from the appearance of gulag...frankfurter allgemeine
'so calls for repentance. this book can become the seminal work of a national renaissance if the men in the kremlin know haw to read it..deutsche welle
424..charged
'for...and for...you are charged under article 64.
that new code, eh? i don't know a thing about it. article 64-what's that , then?
treason!
sign here!
...i made a statement i had planned long ago:
'i shall take no part either in your investigation or in your trial.
you must carry on without me.
document 37 (while sol is in prison his wife remembers and find a statement he had previously written based upon the believe that the soviet government had no say over literature...types and sends it out for publication through 10 sources)..
'i declare in advance that any criminal proceedings against russian literature,
against any single book in russian literature,
or against any russian author
are improper and invalid.
if such proceedings are taken against me,
i will not go to the court on my own two legs.
i shall have to be delivered with my hands bound and in a black maria.
i shall not answer a single question put by such a court.
if i am sentenced to imprisonment, i shall only submit to the sentence in handcuffs.
in confinement, i who have already given the eight best years of my life to forced labor for the state,
and by way of wages contracted cancer,
will never do another half hour's work for the oppressors.
in this way i leave them the simple recourse open to all arrant bullies:
to kill me quickly for writing the truth about russia's history.
a solzhenitsyn
'in my earlier letter, which your received on 3 july, i warned you that the farce of the gangsters was only too transparent, and that it would be more sensible to stop it. by its third, extremely unpleasant letter, your department has compelled me to give an interview to the press.
if you see ivan pavlovich abramov (head of KBG), plese pass this on to him.
the fourth blow, as a result of the KBG taking a copy of sol's gulag archipelago in leningrad, was that sol released the book for publication in the west.
according to a statement made by sol in leningrad at the end of august, the KGB confiscated a typewritten copy of his book the gulag archipelago, an investigation in several volumes of soviet prison camps from 1918 to1956, containing only authentic facts, the names of real places and the names of persons still living (more than 200 of them). the author fears that they will all now be persecuted for their testimony, given ten years ago, to the torments that they suffered in stalin's camps.
information as to the place in which the book was concealed was given by elizaveta voronyanskaya, who was interrogated by the KGB for five days and nights without a break. when she got home she hanged herself. 5 september 1973
349.'last..i had been fortunate:
i had come unscathed from the brink of disaster many times-
the problem with circle 96 (the first circle) a year earlier,
the unauthorized distribution of the oak and the calf six months before that,
when i had been denied light and air and the free use of my limbs,
when i could not rise quickly to my feet.
but now i was in the saddle,
at full gallop,
the moment was of my own choosing (some premonition had made me begin my campaign while all was quiet and there was no apparent need for it)
and others were galloping furiously beside me;
all we need do was turn aside slightly and have at them! this latest upset had come while a great historic upheaval was in progress:
europe was for the first time seriously alarmed and the hands of our masters were tied by their hope of an improvement in terms of trade with the americans, and by the european conference, so that before me there was smooth expanse of several months, begging me to act! whereas only a month ago i seemed to be 'putting my head on the block', i could now raise a defiant battle cry:
victory is ours!
with God's aid we shall yet prevail!
(note: the beginning of the end of solzhenitsyn's gold. we all lust for 'power' and 'freedom' and 'rights', not knowing that the genuine variety of these and all other 'blessings' can only be retained only by those who ARE suffering for truth..not WERE..)
...if i look back, it has been the same all these years, the same in all things. all the blows they have rained on me have only helped to break my chains, to set me free!
this is our assurance that they are doomed.
i heard the news on the evening of the third, and on the evening of the fifth i sent off not only an announcement that gulag had been seized, but orders to publish it immediately!
on the same day i posted my letter to the leaders. it could not have been more timely..i get carried away at such moments..my wife stayed my hand: it was pointless...
367.1 (speaking of his first wife and her current liaison with the KBG..)'whatever she might do on her new path, and for her new masters (she had not managed today's conversation at all well:she should have induced me to meet the geebees privately and, instead, we were 'awaiting' a publisher's offer; still, she had certain proof that i was not on the offensive, that i wasn't publishing gulag, that i was pacifically disposed)-whatever she might do in the future, i should not be able to isolate myself from it, to fling at her:
'that's all your doing! whatever she did i should be doing it with her...whatever evils poisoned the future their roots were in the past.
i had myself to blame.
in jail i could see righ through a man as soon as he entered a cell; yet
never once had i looked into the heart of the woman at my side.
i had allowed the evil to fester and flare up.
this is how we pay for mistakes in the neglected secondary sphere, that sphere which local party committees, in their holiday greetings to us, refer to as our 'private lives'.
378.1 (sol very strategic) 'for me, the purpose of the whole fight so far-i could see it now-was to secure a defensible base for attack in readiness for the next, the main battle, with flashing helms and clashing swords.
i could see where battle would be joined,
sketch out some of my tactical moves and how i must deploy my forces:
form a preliminary plan of operations....
..'if i had not published gulag till i got to the west, its destructive force wouldn't have been half so great...
389.1.. as it is, i am astonished to see how clearly its significance was realized:
'a burning question mark over 50 years of soviet power, over the whole soviet experiment from 1918 on...vorwarts
'sol tells the world the truth about the cowardice of the communist party...guardian
'the time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the soviet system from the appearance of gulag...frankfurter allgemeine
'so calls for repentance. this book can become the seminal work of a national renaissance if the men in the kremlin know haw to read it..deutsche welle
424..charged
'for...and for...you are charged under article 64.
that new code, eh? i don't know a thing about it. article 64-what's that , then?
treason!
sign here!
...i made a statement i had planned long ago:
'i shall take no part either in your investigation or in your trial.
you must carry on without me.
document 37 (while sol is in prison his wife remembers and find a statement he had previously written based upon the believe that the soviet government had no say over literature...types and sends it out for publication through 10 sources)..
'i declare in advance that any criminal proceedings against russian literature,
against any single book in russian literature,
or against any russian author
are improper and invalid.
if such proceedings are taken against me,
i will not go to the court on my own two legs.
i shall have to be delivered with my hands bound and in a black maria.
i shall not answer a single question put by such a court.
if i am sentenced to imprisonment, i shall only submit to the sentence in handcuffs.
in confinement, i who have already given the eight best years of my life to forced labor for the state,
and by way of wages contracted cancer,
will never do another half hour's work for the oppressors.
in this way i leave them the simple recourse open to all arrant bullies:
to kill me quickly for writing the truth about russia's history.
a solzhenitsyn
9.21.2012 FREE HEALTH CARE
what appears quoted below is from the article on p58 in world magazine 9.22.2012 entitled 'beyond the flow charts'. i wept as i read this even though in would choose to die outside a hospital, if given the choice, rather than experience what i call the American Medical Association type of treatment. i don't know if the treatment philosophy depicted in this article is AMA or alternative (probably a mix) but i sense it would give me a much greater sense of what i believe is 'normal', 'good' and 'right'...the kind of care i received from my family doctor, regelman, as a child...human, humane. i have not been to the doctor for years..never in the hospital- other than one visit due to a bicycle accident over 6 years ago. God protected me during the 3-4 days i was in the hospital on that occasion, thru the two operations on my shoulder at jefferson hospital, the rehab experience and an assorted other related visits. however, my already strong aversion- to what i'll classify-for want of a better overall term- as AMA care was reinforced by by the experience. for years, up to the last month, i have listened, with silent and private horror, to what others are experiencing through AMA type 'care'. i have, on one adult occasion in my life, experienced what i understand to be a true human being-not only caring and compassionate, but extremely skilled..an excellent teacher and communicator in the area of expertise- on the other side of my own medical relationships. to add fairness to my assessment i see them, on the other side of that type of relationship, as being herded...as being oppressed by the overall environment in which they MINISTER..an environment characterized in my experience by the feeling that i am just a number, that the 'health care giver' may know techniques and 'formulas' and see drugs as the panacea..
(note: a remedy for all disease or ills)
obviously i am unaware of all the factors, deleterious to health care giving, that they must have to deal with and be conditioned by...or 'get out' of the profession.
this article was meaningful to me to see that there are actually people out there, whether they be AMA (ugh!) or otherwise in orientation, who care enough to help those who cannot help themselves. (the more cynical side of me is thinking that this type of thing will soon be regulated out of existence (other than surreptitious)
(note: done by stealth; secret or unauthorized; clandestine)
by the allied powers-BIG government: pharmeceuticals: big business: BIG whatever or whoever else (ie. appointed or self-appointed BIG shots in every area!
my comeback on this to world is: can you make a list (or 'is there a list somewhere!) of such places in southeastern pa..the world!
for a number of years i was a member of a christian based organization, samaritan ministries (excellent experience with them...my bicycle accident costs of over $70,000 cost me less than $100) but left that several years ago to:
1. make my living expenses lower (a continual quest in every area) IN ORDER TO BE FREE to, hopefully, follow Jesus.
2. to put my 'health care' more squarely on God alone.
3. to do an act that would close every AMA temptation (i have very little savings) and put me in the care of anyone (i could trust!) who would be willing to help me in a limited way.
4. to hopefully move me toward SELF HEALTH CARE, not only necessitated by circumstance but also in a preventative mode ie.
put no food made in a factory in your mouth..no matter what the circumstance;
exercise regularly;
work hard/push yourself to the limit every day;
go to be early and get 7 hours sleep, more only if absolutely necessary (ie. when body is challenged unduly), confess sins as i do them-james 5.15-6 and
put my trust in God 'in whom i live and move and have my being')
..therefore, my flesh-which loathes FULLY DEPENDING ON GOD ALONE (haven't people for millenia done the best they could (those who were His, trusting in Him..looking to be with Him) and when they got sick, died?) wants a list of humans i can depend on.
article by susan olasky with reporting by christina darnell and tiffany owens
'in 2002 an ecuadorian showed up in a hospital emergency room in charlotte, NC.
in broken english he tried to describe the chest pains he was experiencing.
at that time, the hospital didn't have an interpreter.
in frustration the man went home and called his uncle, who spoke good english.
the uncle drove to take him back to the hospital,
but found the nephew dead of a massive heart attack.
that man was 38 and left behind a widow and young son. the tragedy was a turning point for rusty price, his pastor at camino baptist church. price began seeing the needs of the growing hispanic population, and in 2004 his church opened up betseda centro de salud, a charity clinic with a largely hispanic clientele.
first...REACH OUT..CHARGE NOTHING...that story points to a common pattern. across the country, in big cities, small towns, and rural areas. private citizens-often doctors-have band together to set up charity clinics to serve the working poor who don't have insurance. according to julie darnell, a public health researcher at the university of illinois at chicago, about 1200 charity clinics each year take care of nearly 2 million patients. her study included only those clinics that
charge patients little of nothing for visits
do not refuse treatment for those who cannot pay,
and do not bill patients.
about 58% of the clinics including some of the biggest,
take no government $.
many target the working poor,
those whose employers don't offer health insurance.
the clinics rely largely on volunteer doctors, nurses, and other medical professions.
some are affiliated with hospitals and universities,
others with churches and homeless shelters.
about 37% are religious.
some are full time and others are open only a few hours a week.
since washington policy makers tend to focus on healthcare from a 35000 foot perspective,
we a world decided to do some ground level reporting on charity clinics around the country.
5 of our writes visited clincs in washington state, michigan, texas, north carolina and upstate new york.
a 6th took a road trip from new york city to baltimore, washing ton, nashville, memphis, new orleans, mobile and atlanta, visiting clinics and talking to people in the neighborhoods around them.
...the charitable work of dan heffernan, 84, founder of hope clinic in ypsilanti, mich., exemplifies..four themes...has been providing care to poor people since the 1960s when, fresh out of medical school, he moved with his family to midland, mich. hef
1. saw camps of migrant workers and decided to help them get to church.
2. soon he saw their need for medical care, so he traveled to the camps with a nurse, carrying bandages and antibiotics.
3. 'once they trusted me, there weren't enough hours in the day to see everyone.
4. hef began holding a weekly evening clinic at his office, starting at 7 pm and continuing 'until we were done.
5. throughout the 60s he ran the clinic, which expanded with the help of about 150 volunteers.
6. hospital administrators saw his dedication and agreed to take care of his poor patients at no charge.
surgeons volunteered.
nurses and x-ray technicians told him,
'dan, if you're seeing them for nothing, we'll do it for nothing/
7. hef learned that clinics need to function as part of a network of care...
here's an example of how it works:
hope clinic sends a poor patient with bleeding to a volunteer gastroenterologist, who finds..colon cancer
the gastroenterologist calls an oncologist he knows who is willing to treat the cancer.
the patient receives good treatment and learns to accept grace,
while doctors have the joy of giving.
(note: the vision! all people in all professions, content with food and covering spend their time, energy and life focus to help others, either only in their area of expertise and/or generally! heaven come to earth...by following God's commandments..so GOOD for all of us but so HORRIBLE to the flesh of each of us that cries out for Self to the detriment of others.)
second...since lifestyles can contribute to illness (FOCUS ON LIFESTYLE), doctors who run patients through their offices as if they were machines needing a little oil are less effective than doctors who get to know their patients :) and talk with them :) about behavior.
many clinics have wellness programs that target diet and exercise. hef still spends two afternoons a week at hope clinic, primarily reviewing records to make sure no one falls through the cracks and he insists upon seeing smokers;
'it crazy to give medication for their lungs and abdominal pains when it's caused by smoking and they keep smoking.
he tells them, 'we'll lick this thing together.
third...charity clinics run on the work of VOLUNTEERS, who seize the opportunity to take time with patients and personally help them. (heffernan says he has learned over the years not to ask doctors to volunteer too often. hope has a regular saturday morning rotation requiring doctors to work once every six weeks, and some doctors have done that since the clinic opened in 1982.
...FOURTH... administrators at nearly every clinic spoke about the freedom to PRACTICE MEDICINE WITHOUT HAVING TO THINK ABOUT INSURANCE OR GOVERNMENT REIMBURSEMENTS. they spoke of the damage government can do and the way it can transform into cash transactions what once emerged out of compassion.
hef saw that firsthand. he ran his free clinic in midland for a decade. then federal $ became available and two neighboring counties applied grants to create clinics for migrant workers in their areas. he says,
they go a $400,000 grant to do what we were doing for nothing.
in this issue we'll show how networks of care work and why many charitable doctors are concerned about washington's expanding role in healthcare.world's oct 20 issue will have part two..an emphasis on why doctors volunteer and how they help patients change self-destructive behavior...nancy pelosi famously said,
we'll have to pass the (affordable care act) so that you can find out what is in it.
our writers this summer found what's in the existing charity clinic network and were impressed.
can we preserve and expand it,
or will we sing a line from an old joni mitchell song:
don't know what you've got til it's gone'?
(note: a remedy for all disease or ills)
obviously i am unaware of all the factors, deleterious to health care giving, that they must have to deal with and be conditioned by...or 'get out' of the profession.
this article was meaningful to me to see that there are actually people out there, whether they be AMA (ugh!) or otherwise in orientation, who care enough to help those who cannot help themselves. (the more cynical side of me is thinking that this type of thing will soon be regulated out of existence (other than surreptitious)
(note: done by stealth; secret or unauthorized; clandestine)
by the allied powers-BIG government: pharmeceuticals: big business: BIG whatever or whoever else (ie. appointed or self-appointed BIG shots in every area!
my comeback on this to world is: can you make a list (or 'is there a list somewhere!) of such places in southeastern pa..the world!
for a number of years i was a member of a christian based organization, samaritan ministries (excellent experience with them...my bicycle accident costs of over $70,000 cost me less than $100) but left that several years ago to:
1. make my living expenses lower (a continual quest in every area) IN ORDER TO BE FREE to, hopefully, follow Jesus.
2. to put my 'health care' more squarely on God alone.
3. to do an act that would close every AMA temptation (i have very little savings) and put me in the care of anyone (i could trust!) who would be willing to help me in a limited way.
4. to hopefully move me toward SELF HEALTH CARE, not only necessitated by circumstance but also in a preventative mode ie.
put no food made in a factory in your mouth..no matter what the circumstance;
exercise regularly;
work hard/push yourself to the limit every day;
go to be early and get 7 hours sleep, more only if absolutely necessary (ie. when body is challenged unduly), confess sins as i do them-james 5.15-6 and
put my trust in God 'in whom i live and move and have my being')
..therefore, my flesh-which loathes FULLY DEPENDING ON GOD ALONE (haven't people for millenia done the best they could (those who were His, trusting in Him..looking to be with Him) and when they got sick, died?) wants a list of humans i can depend on.
article by susan olasky with reporting by christina darnell and tiffany owens
'in 2002 an ecuadorian showed up in a hospital emergency room in charlotte, NC.
in broken english he tried to describe the chest pains he was experiencing.
at that time, the hospital didn't have an interpreter.
in frustration the man went home and called his uncle, who spoke good english.
the uncle drove to take him back to the hospital,
but found the nephew dead of a massive heart attack.
that man was 38 and left behind a widow and young son. the tragedy was a turning point for rusty price, his pastor at camino baptist church. price began seeing the needs of the growing hispanic population, and in 2004 his church opened up betseda centro de salud, a charity clinic with a largely hispanic clientele.
first...REACH OUT..CHARGE NOTHING...that story points to a common pattern. across the country, in big cities, small towns, and rural areas. private citizens-often doctors-have band together to set up charity clinics to serve the working poor who don't have insurance. according to julie darnell, a public health researcher at the university of illinois at chicago, about 1200 charity clinics each year take care of nearly 2 million patients. her study included only those clinics that
charge patients little of nothing for visits
do not refuse treatment for those who cannot pay,
and do not bill patients.
about 58% of the clinics including some of the biggest,
take no government $.
many target the working poor,
those whose employers don't offer health insurance.
the clinics rely largely on volunteer doctors, nurses, and other medical professions.
some are affiliated with hospitals and universities,
others with churches and homeless shelters.
about 37% are religious.
some are full time and others are open only a few hours a week.
since washington policy makers tend to focus on healthcare from a 35000 foot perspective,
we a world decided to do some ground level reporting on charity clinics around the country.
5 of our writes visited clincs in washington state, michigan, texas, north carolina and upstate new york.
a 6th took a road trip from new york city to baltimore, washing ton, nashville, memphis, new orleans, mobile and atlanta, visiting clinics and talking to people in the neighborhoods around them.
...the charitable work of dan heffernan, 84, founder of hope clinic in ypsilanti, mich., exemplifies..four themes...has been providing care to poor people since the 1960s when, fresh out of medical school, he moved with his family to midland, mich. hef
1. saw camps of migrant workers and decided to help them get to church.
2. soon he saw their need for medical care, so he traveled to the camps with a nurse, carrying bandages and antibiotics.
3. 'once they trusted me, there weren't enough hours in the day to see everyone.
4. hef began holding a weekly evening clinic at his office, starting at 7 pm and continuing 'until we were done.
5. throughout the 60s he ran the clinic, which expanded with the help of about 150 volunteers.
6. hospital administrators saw his dedication and agreed to take care of his poor patients at no charge.
surgeons volunteered.
nurses and x-ray technicians told him,
'dan, if you're seeing them for nothing, we'll do it for nothing/
7. hef learned that clinics need to function as part of a network of care...
here's an example of how it works:
hope clinic sends a poor patient with bleeding to a volunteer gastroenterologist, who finds..colon cancer
the gastroenterologist calls an oncologist he knows who is willing to treat the cancer.
the patient receives good treatment and learns to accept grace,
while doctors have the joy of giving.
(note: the vision! all people in all professions, content with food and covering spend their time, energy and life focus to help others, either only in their area of expertise and/or generally! heaven come to earth...by following God's commandments..so GOOD for all of us but so HORRIBLE to the flesh of each of us that cries out for Self to the detriment of others.)
second...since lifestyles can contribute to illness (FOCUS ON LIFESTYLE), doctors who run patients through their offices as if they were machines needing a little oil are less effective than doctors who get to know their patients :) and talk with them :) about behavior.
many clinics have wellness programs that target diet and exercise. hef still spends two afternoons a week at hope clinic, primarily reviewing records to make sure no one falls through the cracks and he insists upon seeing smokers;
'it crazy to give medication for their lungs and abdominal pains when it's caused by smoking and they keep smoking.
he tells them, 'we'll lick this thing together.
third...charity clinics run on the work of VOLUNTEERS, who seize the opportunity to take time with patients and personally help them. (heffernan says he has learned over the years not to ask doctors to volunteer too often. hope has a regular saturday morning rotation requiring doctors to work once every six weeks, and some doctors have done that since the clinic opened in 1982.
...FOURTH... administrators at nearly every clinic spoke about the freedom to PRACTICE MEDICINE WITHOUT HAVING TO THINK ABOUT INSURANCE OR GOVERNMENT REIMBURSEMENTS. they spoke of the damage government can do and the way it can transform into cash transactions what once emerged out of compassion.
hef saw that firsthand. he ran his free clinic in midland for a decade. then federal $ became available and two neighboring counties applied grants to create clinics for migrant workers in their areas. he says,
they go a $400,000 grant to do what we were doing for nothing.
in this issue we'll show how networks of care work and why many charitable doctors are concerned about washington's expanding role in healthcare.world's oct 20 issue will have part two..an emphasis on why doctors volunteer and how they help patients change self-destructive behavior...nancy pelosi famously said,
we'll have to pass the (affordable care act) so that you can find out what is in it.
our writers this summer found what's in the existing charity clinic network and were impressed.
can we preserve and expand it,
or will we sing a line from an old joni mitchell song:
don't know what you've got til it's gone'?
Thursday, September 20, 2012
9.20.2012 LARRY NORMAN - I'VE GOT TO LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU
i've got to learn to live without you
1. you came into my life
you took me off the shelf
you told my name to me
and taught me what to do
(note: sounds like God when He saves a person..but referring to a woman?
but then you went away
and left me by myself
(note: God is the only one who never does this. He says, I will never leave nor forsake you.)
i feel completely lost
and lonely without you
(note: this should only be how we feel when we are still separated from God by our sin. in God we have everything. psalm 16.11..'in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.)
why'd you go baby
i guess you know
(note: yes i do know...i do what i see as best for me. i don't really care about you unless i want you for something.)
chorus
i've got to learn to live without you.
i've got to learn to live without you
i've got to learn to live without you
(note: yes, we all need to learn to live without anything or anybody, if that's what God has planned for us.)
without you-
it's just no good without you
2.today i thought i saw you
walking down the street
with someone else
i turned my head and faced the wall
i started crying and my heart fell to my feet
but when i looked again
it wasn't you at all.
why'd you go baby
i guess you know
note: even if she doesn't, God does.
'My people have committed two evils.
they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters
to hew out for themselves cisterns
broken cisterns
that can hold no water.' jeremiah 2.13
it took me a number of times listening to this song before i realized that despite the mournful voice, norman's song is ironic.
irony-
1. a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning-called also socratic irony.
- do you think that another person (thing) can give you life? ie. you came into my life, you took me off the shelf
- do you think that another person (thing) can give you true, ultimate meaning and purpose? ie. you told my name to me and taught me what to do?
-experience people and things for a while..then let me know what you think.
2. the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
-only God can give life that is full of meaning and purpose. every time you turn to someone/thing else you will be profoundly disappointed...unless God does not want you to find Him.
3. incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.
-person connects deeply with person = profound, lifelong happiness. always true!
1. you came into my life
you took me off the shelf
you told my name to me
and taught me what to do
(note: sounds like God when He saves a person..but referring to a woman?
but then you went away
and left me by myself
(note: God is the only one who never does this. He says, I will never leave nor forsake you.)
i feel completely lost
and lonely without you
(note: this should only be how we feel when we are still separated from God by our sin. in God we have everything. psalm 16.11..'in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.)
why'd you go baby
i guess you know
(note: yes i do know...i do what i see as best for me. i don't really care about you unless i want you for something.)
chorus
i've got to learn to live without you.
i've got to learn to live without you
i've got to learn to live without you
(note: yes, we all need to learn to live without anything or anybody, if that's what God has planned for us.)
without you-
it's just no good without you
2.today i thought i saw you
walking down the street
with someone else
i turned my head and faced the wall
i started crying and my heart fell to my feet
but when i looked again
it wasn't you at all.
why'd you go baby
i guess you know
note: even if she doesn't, God does.
'My people have committed two evils.
they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters
to hew out for themselves cisterns
broken cisterns
that can hold no water.' jeremiah 2.13
it took me a number of times listening to this song before i realized that despite the mournful voice, norman's song is ironic.
irony-
1. a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning-called also socratic irony.
- do you think that another person (thing) can give you life? ie. you came into my life, you took me off the shelf
- do you think that another person (thing) can give you true, ultimate meaning and purpose? ie. you told my name to me and taught me what to do?
-experience people and things for a while..then let me know what you think.
2. the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
-only God can give life that is full of meaning and purpose. every time you turn to someone/thing else you will be profoundly disappointed...unless God does not want you to find Him.
3. incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.
-person connects deeply with person = profound, lifelong happiness. always true!
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
9.19.2012 SOLZHENITSYN II
-in materialistic
(markedly more concerned with material things than with spiritual, intellectual or cultural values)
dialectics
(the arguments or bases of dialectical materialism, including the elevation of matter over mind and a constantly changing reality with a material basis)
(note: does this mean there are no eternal values, no objective 'right' and 'wrong'?...no authoritative God?...they all seem to connect up like pearls in a necklace.)
..what matters is not what we do but what people will say about it
(oh, so people replace God as the judge..huh..interesting.)
..and so that they cannot say anything bad, we'll keep our mouths shut about all that goes on
(huh..sounds alot like our current american environment of 'political correctness'...whatever that means...so whatever gets said that is not acceptable to 'whoever' (no reason given..no ability to actually talk and each side share what they actually believe and why..just 'shame' the person into silence and, hopefully, apology, just scream at them, vilify them, shout them down...don't ever try to understand them...because you are RIGHT..whoever you are and WHATEVER you believe...and so the group splinters into a million SEPARATE pieces so there can be no unity or community with one another...because everyone is a little god over everyone else. so that's why we can practice genocide of more millions of (in our case totally helpless, innocent, voiceless) human beings...huh..very interesting..
sol...camp experience tells me that the rougher you are with stoolies, the safer you are. you must never appear to acquiesce.
sol in reasoning with tvar about being openly on the attack..after the writers union put him out 11.12. 1969 (see last item under solzhentsyn I)...'my sacrifice would go for nothing now, but in the future it would have it's effect..
sol to writers' union...'at this time of crisis you are incapable of offering our grievously sick society anything constructive and good, anything but your malevolent vigilance..you hold tight and don't let it go..
269..what lydia chukovskaya once said about political protests was right:
if i don't do it, i can't write about the things that matter. until i pull this arrow out of my breast, i can think of nothing else! i (sol) felt just the same. when all around were so faint hearted, what sort of man would i be if i left (the writers' union) without slamming the door?
272..sol to tvar who was angry with how he left..he writes
'...this is a different age-not that in which you had the misfortune to live the greater part of your literary life-and different skills are needed. mine are those of katorga and the camps. i can say without affectation that i belong to the russian convict world no less, and owe no less to it, than i do to russian literature. i got my education there, and it will last forever. when i am considering any step of importance to my future, i listen above all to the voices of my comrades in katorga, some of them already dead, of disease or a bullet and i hear clearly how they would behave in my place.
...by writing this letter(to the union on leaving)
1. i have shown that i shall resist to the last, that when i say 'i will lay down my life' i am not joking; that i shall continue returning blow for blow and perhaps hit still harder. so that if they are wise, they will think twice before touching me again. in this stance i shall be able to defend myself irrespective of the attitude of the literary community.
2. i have used an opportunity that was there for a day and will not recur: i was already released from the rules and terminology of the writers' union, yet i still had the right to appeal to it: and the secretariat was a very convenient addressee.
3. i feel that my whole life is a process of rising gradually from my knees, a gradual transition from enforced dumbness to free speech, so that my letter to the congress and this present letter, have been moments of high delight, of spiritual emancipation...
298.1..i (sol) should not think much of the author of gulag if he preserved a diplomatic silence about its continuation into the present. for our intelligentsia the internment of zhores medvedev in the loony bin held grater dangers and raised larger issues than what had happened to czechoslovakia. it was a noose around our own throats. so i decided to write something i began my first drafts very menacingly
WARNING! (to all of them all the torturers. i am very apt to be carried away at first, but then i recover my self-control.)
during my time in the camps i had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else:
the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.
(people in the west simply will not understand this, and are forever hoping to mollify them with concessions.) as soon as i rubbed the sleep out of my eyes in the morning i longed to get to my novel, but the urge to rewrite my warning just once more would be too strong for me, i was so worked up about it by the fifth draft it had become rather milder:
the way we live
the way we live, without any warrant for arrest or any medical justification, four militiamen and two doctors come to a healthy man's house, the doctors declare that he is crazy, the militia major shouts, 'we are the organs of coercion. get up! they twist his arms, handcuff him and drive him off to the madhouse.
this cannot happen tomorrow to any one of us. it has just happened to zhores medvedev, a geneticist and publicist, a man of subtle, precise and brilliant intellect and warm heart (i know personally of his disinterested help to ordinary citizens in sickness or near death.) it is precisely because of the diversity of his gifts that he is charged with abnormality: 'a split personality!' it is precisely his sensitivity to injustice, to stupidity, that is presented as a sick deviation: 'poor adaptation to the social environment!'
once you think in any but the approved way, that means you're abnormal!
while well adjusted people must all think alike.
and there is no redress:
even the appeals of our best scientist and writers bounce back like peas off a wall.
if only this were the first case! but this devious suppression of people
without searching for any guilt,
when the real reason is too shameful to state,
is becoming a fashion.
some of the victims are widely known,
many more are unknown.
servile psychiatrists,
breakers of the hippocratic oath,
see social concern,
excessive ardor,
excessive coolness,
brilliant or abundant gifts,
as so many symptoms of mental illness.
yet elementary prudence ought to act as a restraint. after all, chaadayev had not a finger laid on him, and even so we have been cursing his persecutors for over a century.
it is time to think clearly:
the incarceration of free thinking people in madhouses is spiritual murder,
it is a variation on the gas chamber,
but is even more cruel:
the torments of those done to death in this way are more heartless and protracted.
like the gas chambers, these crimes will never be forgotten and all those involved in them will be condemned in perpetuity, during their lives and after their deaths.
the lawless, the evildoers, must remember that there is a limit beyond with a man becomes a cannibal!
it is shortsighted to think that one can live by constantly relying of force alone,
constantly ignoring the protests of conscience.
313.last..knots
..'but still, it seemed a senseless undertaking: twenty knots, each taking a year, meant 20 years. but 'august 1914 had been two years in the writing. at that rate, might it take forty? of fifty? (note at back of book..'the term 'knot' is derived from the mathematical concept of 'nodal point'
(note: in looking up this i could make no connection at all to sol's use in literature..)
it suggests a point in history where the complex and interrelated issues of the time find their sharpest focus and where the essential (and otherwise frequently hidden) forces of the historical process are revealed. august 1914 is subtitled 'knot 1'; the following two knots will be october 1916 and march 1917.
322.2...'it can easily happen in a war of mines and countermines that the tunnelers collide head on. if i had got as far as my aunt's, the KGB party would have arrived while i was with her. but i got too much sun on the way, and when i was nearly there..i turned back, severely sunburned. my KGB 'admirerers' made a rewarding call on my aunt, obtained from her family records and stories, and departed rejoicing. by the standards of the twenties and thirties, the accusations were lethal-all the things that my mother and i had always concealed, when we had spent our lives cowering and trembling in half flattened hovels. another of their sapping operations, however, was thwarted. because of my sudden return-again we see the rules of subterranean warfare in operation- i had asked a friend of mine (gorlov) to fetch a spare part for my car from rozhdestvo. he might have gone any other day, but he had a chance to go as soon as i got back from the south, on 11 august, and was just in time to discover nine KBG men behaving as though they owned my little dacha. if i hadn't come back from the south, their operation would have gone back from the south, their operation would have gone off without a hitch...(as a result sol wrote an open letter to andropov, the head of the KBG, which appears below.)
document 17...'for many years, i have borne in silence the lawlessness of your employees:
the inspection of all my correspondence,
the confiscation of half of it,
the tracking down of my correspondents,
their persecution at work and by state agencies,
the spying around my house,
the shadowing of visitors,
the tapping of telephone conversations,
the drilling of holes in ceilings,
the placing of recording apparatus in my city apartment and at my cottage, and
a persistent slander campaign against me from the platforms of lecture halls when they are put at the disposal of officials from your ministry.
but after the raid yesterday,i will no longer be silent. my cottage at rozhdestvo, in the naro-fominsk rayon, was unoccupied, and the eavesdroppers were counting on my absence. i, however had come back to moscow after being taken ill suddenly and had asked my friend aleksandr gorlov to get a spare part for the car from my cottage. but it turned out the house was unlocked and voices could be heard from within, gorlov stepped inside and demanded the intruders' documents. in that small structure, where three or four can barely turn around, there were about ten of them in plain clothes. at a command from the senior officer-
take him into the wood and silence him!
-gorlov was grabbed, knocked to the floor, dragged face down into the wollds and beaten viciously. while this was going on, others took a roundabout route trough the bushes, carrying parcels, documents and other objects (including perhaps some of the apparatus they had brought before) to their cars. however, gorlov fought back vigorously and yelled, summoning witnesses. neighbors from other lots came running in response to his shouts, barred the intruders' way to the highway and demanded their identification documents. then one of the intruders presented a red identification card and the neighbors let them pass. gorlov, with a battered face and his suit in ribbons, was taken to a car.
fine methods you have, he said to his escorts.
we are on an operation and on an operation WE CAN DO ANYTHING.
the one who, according to papers he had shown neighbors, was a captain, and according to his own statement called ivanov, drove gorlov first to the naro-fominsk police station. the local officers greeted 'ivanov' with deference. 'ivanov' then demanded from gorlov(!) a written explanation of what had happened. although he had been severely beaten, gorlov put in writing the purpose of his trip and all the circumstances. after that the senior intruder demanded that gorlov should sign an undertaking not to give the matter any publicity. gorlov flatly refused. then they set off for moscow, and on the road, the senior intruder gave gorlov, word for word, the following warning:
if sol finds out what took place at the dacha, you're finished.
your career (gorlov is a candidate of technical sciences, has presented his doctoral dissertation, and works in the design and technical research institute of the state construction administration) will go no further;
you will not be able to defend any dissertation.
this will affect your family, your children, and if necessary, we will put you inside.
those who know how we live know the full feasibility of these threats. but gorlov did not give in to them, refused to sign the pledge and is now threatened with reprisals.
i demand from you, citizen minister, the public identification of all the intruders,
their punishment as criminals and
a public explanation of this incident.
otherwise i can only conclude that they were sent by you.
13 august 1971 a. solzhenitsyn
324.last...'another shock: the oak and the calf, the book you have..was going around moscow! i was flabbergasted! because of course, in this book everything is wide open, people and things are given their own names:
what could possibly be more dangerous?
we had kept it safe and secret;
how had it broken loose?
where?
through whom?
why?
we mounted an investigation, checked all our copies: we had to go outside moscow and physically verify that all copies were in place, had not been moved and could not have been photographed. there was suspicion and doubt all around, all was chaos and confusion.
then we took up the search from the other end of the trail.
who had heard of the book being read?
who had read it for himself?
what did the copy look like?
at whose apartment had people read it?
address and telephone number? (there was no avoiding the excited mentioning of titles over the telephone-the lubyanka had no doubt noticed and their posse would sweep out to head us off at any minute!)
let's get there fast!
right, then.
give it to me straight-better come clean before the KBG roll up.
they come clean, they name names, they put a typed copy in front of me.
but it's not one of ours!
ours, of course, had all turned out to be in place.
not one of ours-so it was a copy of a copy!
what if there were four or five like it?
but it was not even a photocopy of one of ours
someone had typed an accurate copy, and it even had my latest amendments written in by hand.
obviously someone close to me,
someone in the know,
had cribbed from me as i went along,
looked over my shoulder.
but who?
better phone the man who brought it here.
not at home.
we sat and waited, to keep out of sight a bit.
a few hours later our man came along and sheepishly named his source.
one of those we trusted most!
we had only lent it to her to read herself.
but she had surreptitiously copied it.
(for history's sake?
to make sure it survived?
or simply because she had a mania for copying things?)
she had lent it only to him (he was an intimate friend).
but he had brought it to these other people, by way of thanks for some small favor.
and they had called a very dear lady friend to share their happiness.
and she had gushed over the telephone to her bosom friend.
at this fourth remove we had got wind of it.
moscow is big, but no one is far away.
we called up the culprit.
we arranged to meet her.
sobbing, she confessed.
she was struck off our list for the future.
i confiscated the booty.
in the few hours all this took, there were signs that the geebees were getting excited.
KGB cars with four toughs in each darkened interior went out on the prowl.
lick your chops, comrades!
you're just half an hour late! (they had no idea what all the fuss was about. what had we been looking for? what had they missed?)
in december 1969 something very similar happened with prussian nights.
again the rumor was all over moscow:
it was going the rounds.
impossible-but there it was.
on that occasion, too, i rushed from one apartment to another, tracked down the copy and seized it.
again, it was not one of our own copies!
but an exact reproduction!
cribbed!
(note: to pilfer or steal, especially to plagiarize another's writings or ideas)
by someone close to us!
by whom?
i uncovered the trail.
a friend had had it for a few days and lent it out.
and the other people had tapped out a copy.
and kept it secret for four years!
but once i had been expelled from the writers' union, why not let samizdat have it?
i stamped it out in moscow by one means or another.
the manuscript ceased to circulate.
such are the quiet weeks that make up our quiet years, the peaceful times in which there are no events of note, while the main forces are stationary and 'nothing happens'.
for how many years can i go on like this? so far there have been 27 of them, since my first poems in the sharashka, when i first tarted hiding and burning.
327.2...(after tvardovsky's funeral sol wrote for samizdat 'there are many ways of killing a poet' on 27 december 1971) 'it is not from this letter, but earlier, from the appearance of august 1914, that we must date the schism among my readers,
the steady loss of supporters,
with more leaving me than remained behind.
i was received with 'hurrahs' as long as i appeared to be against stalinist abuses only; thus far the entire soviet public was with me. in my first works i was concealing my features from the police censorship-but, by the same token, from the public at large.
with each subsequent step i inevitably revealed more and more of myself;
the time had come to speak more precisely,
to go even deeper.
and in doing so i should inevitably lose the reading public,
lose my contemporaries in hope of winning posterity.
it was painful, though, to lose support even among those closest to me.)
...'outwardly all is calm, there is no harassment,
but under the skin there is this cancer of slander...
thus public opinion the country over was fully prepared for any reprisal against me.
still, we are no longer in that era when you could crush someone without it becoming known!
interview with correspondents of the new york times and the washington post- moscow, 30 march 1972
512.4...'fame is a heavy burden..it consumes a lot of time to little purpose.
it consumes a lot of time to little purpose.
at least they do not drag me along to meetings, as they do others;
i am thankful that they have expelled me.
it was good to work when nobody knew me, nobody exercised his pen making up fairy tales about me..
what is the plan?
the plan consists in driving me out of this life or out of the country,
tossing me into a ditch
or sending me to siberia,
or having me 'dissolve in an alien fog',
as they frankly write.
how confident they are that the censor's pets have more right to russia than others who were also born there...
they do not want to know the complexity and richness of history in all its diversity.
they care only about silencing all voices that are unpleasant to their ears or spoil their peace of mind today, and they do not think about the future...
513.1...'the study of russian history, which has now taken me back to the last years of the last century,
has shown me how precious peaceful solutions are for our country,
how important it is that authority, however autocratic and unlimited it may be, should listen benevolently to society,
and that society should understand the real position of the authorities;
how important it is that the country be led not by force and coercion, but by RIGHTEOUSNESS.
i think that these studies of mine helped me to recognize in tvar's activity precisely that conciliatory line.
alas, even the gentlest admonitory voice is intolerable,
and to be silenced.
how reasonably,
with what good will,
did sakharov and grigorenko speak out here recently:
neither of them was given a hearing- they were told to get lost, to shut up..
there we see the pettiness, the ignoble narrow mindedness of those who are leading the campaign against me. it honestly does not enter their heads that a writer who thinks differently from the majority of his society is an enrichment to that society, not the shame and ruination of it...
342.last these vague promptings are sometimes traceable to actual events, though we cannot always make the connection at the time. we felt that we had reached a new low, sunk to new, suffocating depths of civic failure: more people were arrested, others were threatened, and yet others were renouncing all and leaving the country. sinyavsky came to say goodbye (and to introduce himself at the same time), and i was chilled and saddened to think that fewer and fewer were willing to endure russia's destiny with her, lead where it might. the authorities had calculated that this 'third emigration' would 'ease the pressure on the boiler', and they were proved right...there were fewer and fewer voices capable of protest left in the land. early in summer maksimov was expelled from the writers' union, and in july he wrote me a justifiably bitter letter: where was the solidarity of writers the world over' which i had so extolled in my nobel lecture and why did he, maksimov, not see me among his defenders?
i did not defend him for the same reason that i had not defended all the others:
licensing myself to work on the his story of the revolution,
i had absolved myself of all other duties.
to this day i am not ashamed of such periods of deliberate silence:
an artist has no other recourse if he does not want to overheat himself with ephemeral concerns and boil dry.
(note: the dynamic sol speaks of here is so real, so true and leads to the appearance of inconsistency or hypocrisy at times...each of us HAS TO to certain things..even though all around us are a host of legitimate claims!!! very, very frustrating in my life and yet EACH OF US HAS TO DO CERTAIN THINGS..)
344.2 the one worrying thing was that i might not be given time to carry out the whole scheme. i felt as though i was about to fill a space in the world that was meant for me and had long awaited me, a mold, as it were, made for me alone, but discerned by me only this very moment. i was a molten substance, impatient, unendurably impatient, to pour into my mold, to fill it full, without air bubbles or cracks, before i cooled and stiffened.
it had happened so often:
before the next step,
next breakthrough,
assault,
'cascade',
i concentrate solely on the affair in hand, on these last brief moments;
and the rest of my life,
the time that lies beyond these critical moments,
is completely forgotten,
it ceases to exist.
all i want is to come through this next crisis,
to survive...
and the future will look after itself.
the first blow in the cascade of blows was sol's letter to the minister of the interior, document 25,,
'four months ago i applied for a residence permit so that i might live with my family. after your lengthy meditation on a matter which might seem to need none, i have now been informed that my request has been rejected by the militia and by you personally. i would express my inability to understand what human or legal considerations could induce you to prevent a husband from living with his wife, or a father with his two small sons, if i did not know from long experience that neither human nor legal considerations have any existence in our political system.
the demeaning, compulsory 'passport system',
in which his place of residence may not be chosen by the individual but is chosen for him by the authorities,
in which the right to move from city to city and especially from country to city,
must be earned as a favor,
probably does not exist even in the colonial countries of the world today.
and yet for the last 42 years, millions of my compatriots have suffered and are still suffering daily under that system.
with the present wide ranging discussion about the freedom of emigration for thousands, one cannot but be struck by the fact that millions lack the right to pick their place of residence and occupation even within their own country!
that lack of rights has been further aggravated by a law passed in 1973..that prevents a peasant from leaving his collective farm even temporarily for seasonal work without permission.
however, i take this opportuuity to remind you that serfdom in our country was abolished 112 years ago. and we are told that the october revolution wiped out its last remnants.
presumably i, like any other citizen of this country, am neither a serf nor a slave and should be free to live wherever i find it necessary, and no one, not even the highest leadership, has a serf owner's right to separate me from my family.
21 august 1973 solzhenitsyn
516.1 (the next blow, an interview with associated press and le monde-moscow 23 august 1973 it is too lengthy to quote..several snippets..
...tsar nicholas I never pronounced himself proprietor of pushkin's poetry.
nor, under alexanderII, wer the novels of tolstoy, turgenev or goncharov state property.
alexander KK never told chekhov where to publish his works.
the merchants and financiers of so called capitalism have never seen any chance of trading in creations of the intellect or works of art unless the author himself has given them such rights.
..if, under the first socialist state, mean mercantile brains think that a product of spiritual creativity,
a product newly sprung from the soul or mind of its creator,
automatically becomes a commodity and the property of the ministry of foreign trade,
then such notions can provoke nothing but utter contempt.
what do you have to say about the decision to deprive zhores medvedev of soviet citizenship?
this is not a unique case, and a pattern is beginning to emerge.
1. citizenship in our country is not a natural inalienable right of every human being born on its soil, but a kind of coupon which is held by an exclusive clique of people who have done nothing at all to prove that they have more right than others to the russian soil. and this clique, if it doesn't approve of some citizen's convictions, can by a simple declaration deprive him of his homeland. i leave it to you to find a word for such a social system.
2. in cases when they've missed their chance to get rid of a person with behind the scenes methods (as they would with someone less well known), they find that the least painful thing is to fling him out to the west, preferably with his voluntary consent to what is represented as a temporary assignment abroad or a departure with no arrangements for return.
3. we must, alas, admit that they are not mistaken in their calculations. the environment in our country resembles a dense and viscous medium:
it is incredibly difficult to make even the smallest movements because it immediately draws some part of the environment after it...
...attacks on sakharov in the soviet press?
..tass in its reply to sak says that
even the sharpest criticism in our country is regarded as something useful.
this is a blatant lie.
no serious criticism whatever,
on any level whatever,
however constructive it may be,
is permitted in our country from ANYBODY,
except a small circle of people who have reached their positions by obediently taking orders for years,
which of course has done little to develop their critical faculties...
check for yourselves:
during the last 10, 20 or 30 years,
has RATIONAL ARGUMENT ever been used against any dissident?
no, never, because no such arguments exist.
they always reply with curses and slander...
..social situation in the USSR today?
the world, used by now to the idea that nothing can eve be discovered about us anyway,
overlooks even the most obvious and open piece of information:
that in this impressive country with its most advanced socialist structure
THERE HAS BEEN NOT A SINGLE AMNESTY FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS FOR HALF A CENTURY!...
what jamming of radio broadcasts means is impossible to explain to those who haven't experienced it themselves,
who haven't lived under it for years.
every day they spit into your eyes and ears.
it is an insult to human beings,
it degrades them to the level of robots,
no matter whether they jam with a 'total blackout' of the wave band,
or with the 'rusty saw',
or with vulgar music.
it means that grown persons are reduced to infants:
swallow what your mother has chewed up for you.
even the most benevolent broadcasts during the most friendly visits are jammed just as uncompromisingly;
there must not be the slightest deviation in the evaluation of events,
in the nuances,
in the accents.
everybody has to assimilate and remember an event in precisely the same way.
and many facts about the world must not be made known to our population at all.
moscow and leningrad have paradoxically become the most uninformed metropolises in the world:
their inhabitants ask people who come in from the countryside what news there is.
out in the country-for financial reasons (our population has to pay very dearly for these jamming SERVICES)- jamming is weaker.
but according to the observations of people from various places, jamming has been intensified.
...this series of sacrificial decisions by single individuals is a beacon to our future.
there is one psychological peculiarity in human beings that always surprises me. in times of prosperity and ease, a man will shy from the least little worry on the periphery of his existence,
try not to know about the sufferings of others of intimate importance to him,
just to prolong his present well being.
yet a man who is approaching the last frontier,
who is already a naked beggar deprived of all that may be though to beautify life,
can suddenly find in himself the strength
to dig in his heels
and refuse to take the final step,
can surrender his life but not his principles!
note:(MAY WE IN THE WEST PLEAD WITH GOD FOR TROUBLES SO WE TO MAY BE RELEASE FROM THE HORROR OF PROSPERITY AND EASE!)
because of the first quality,
man has never been able to hold on to one single plateau he has attained.
thanks to the second quality,
mankind has pulled itself out of all kinds of bottomless pits...
(markedly more concerned with material things than with spiritual, intellectual or cultural values)
dialectics
(the arguments or bases of dialectical materialism, including the elevation of matter over mind and a constantly changing reality with a material basis)
(note: does this mean there are no eternal values, no objective 'right' and 'wrong'?...no authoritative God?...they all seem to connect up like pearls in a necklace.)
..what matters is not what we do but what people will say about it
(oh, so people replace God as the judge..huh..interesting.)
..and so that they cannot say anything bad, we'll keep our mouths shut about all that goes on
(huh..sounds alot like our current american environment of 'political correctness'...whatever that means...so whatever gets said that is not acceptable to 'whoever' (no reason given..no ability to actually talk and each side share what they actually believe and why..just 'shame' the person into silence and, hopefully, apology, just scream at them, vilify them, shout them down...don't ever try to understand them...because you are RIGHT..whoever you are and WHATEVER you believe...and so the group splinters into a million SEPARATE pieces so there can be no unity or community with one another...because everyone is a little god over everyone else. so that's why we can practice genocide of more millions of (in our case totally helpless, innocent, voiceless) human beings...huh..very interesting..
sol...camp experience tells me that the rougher you are with stoolies, the safer you are. you must never appear to acquiesce.
sol in reasoning with tvar about being openly on the attack..after the writers union put him out 11.12. 1969 (see last item under solzhentsyn I)...'my sacrifice would go for nothing now, but in the future it would have it's effect..
sol to writers' union...'at this time of crisis you are incapable of offering our grievously sick society anything constructive and good, anything but your malevolent vigilance..you hold tight and don't let it go..
269..what lydia chukovskaya once said about political protests was right:
if i don't do it, i can't write about the things that matter. until i pull this arrow out of my breast, i can think of nothing else! i (sol) felt just the same. when all around were so faint hearted, what sort of man would i be if i left (the writers' union) without slamming the door?
272..sol to tvar who was angry with how he left..he writes
'...this is a different age-not that in which you had the misfortune to live the greater part of your literary life-and different skills are needed. mine are those of katorga and the camps. i can say without affectation that i belong to the russian convict world no less, and owe no less to it, than i do to russian literature. i got my education there, and it will last forever. when i am considering any step of importance to my future, i listen above all to the voices of my comrades in katorga, some of them already dead, of disease or a bullet and i hear clearly how they would behave in my place.
...by writing this letter(to the union on leaving)
1. i have shown that i shall resist to the last, that when i say 'i will lay down my life' i am not joking; that i shall continue returning blow for blow and perhaps hit still harder. so that if they are wise, they will think twice before touching me again. in this stance i shall be able to defend myself irrespective of the attitude of the literary community.
2. i have used an opportunity that was there for a day and will not recur: i was already released from the rules and terminology of the writers' union, yet i still had the right to appeal to it: and the secretariat was a very convenient addressee.
3. i feel that my whole life is a process of rising gradually from my knees, a gradual transition from enforced dumbness to free speech, so that my letter to the congress and this present letter, have been moments of high delight, of spiritual emancipation...
298.1..i (sol) should not think much of the author of gulag if he preserved a diplomatic silence about its continuation into the present. for our intelligentsia the internment of zhores medvedev in the loony bin held grater dangers and raised larger issues than what had happened to czechoslovakia. it was a noose around our own throats. so i decided to write something i began my first drafts very menacingly
WARNING! (to all of them all the torturers. i am very apt to be carried away at first, but then i recover my self-control.)
during my time in the camps i had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else:
the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.
(people in the west simply will not understand this, and are forever hoping to mollify them with concessions.) as soon as i rubbed the sleep out of my eyes in the morning i longed to get to my novel, but the urge to rewrite my warning just once more would be too strong for me, i was so worked up about it by the fifth draft it had become rather milder:
the way we live
the way we live, without any warrant for arrest or any medical justification, four militiamen and two doctors come to a healthy man's house, the doctors declare that he is crazy, the militia major shouts, 'we are the organs of coercion. get up! they twist his arms, handcuff him and drive him off to the madhouse.
this cannot happen tomorrow to any one of us. it has just happened to zhores medvedev, a geneticist and publicist, a man of subtle, precise and brilliant intellect and warm heart (i know personally of his disinterested help to ordinary citizens in sickness or near death.) it is precisely because of the diversity of his gifts that he is charged with abnormality: 'a split personality!' it is precisely his sensitivity to injustice, to stupidity, that is presented as a sick deviation: 'poor adaptation to the social environment!'
once you think in any but the approved way, that means you're abnormal!
while well adjusted people must all think alike.
and there is no redress:
even the appeals of our best scientist and writers bounce back like peas off a wall.
if only this were the first case! but this devious suppression of people
without searching for any guilt,
when the real reason is too shameful to state,
is becoming a fashion.
some of the victims are widely known,
many more are unknown.
servile psychiatrists,
breakers of the hippocratic oath,
see social concern,
excessive ardor,
excessive coolness,
brilliant or abundant gifts,
as so many symptoms of mental illness.
yet elementary prudence ought to act as a restraint. after all, chaadayev had not a finger laid on him, and even so we have been cursing his persecutors for over a century.
it is time to think clearly:
the incarceration of free thinking people in madhouses is spiritual murder,
it is a variation on the gas chamber,
but is even more cruel:
the torments of those done to death in this way are more heartless and protracted.
like the gas chambers, these crimes will never be forgotten and all those involved in them will be condemned in perpetuity, during their lives and after their deaths.
the lawless, the evildoers, must remember that there is a limit beyond with a man becomes a cannibal!
it is shortsighted to think that one can live by constantly relying of force alone,
constantly ignoring the protests of conscience.
313.last..knots
..'but still, it seemed a senseless undertaking: twenty knots, each taking a year, meant 20 years. but 'august 1914 had been two years in the writing. at that rate, might it take forty? of fifty? (note at back of book..'the term 'knot' is derived from the mathematical concept of 'nodal point'
(note: in looking up this i could make no connection at all to sol's use in literature..)
it suggests a point in history where the complex and interrelated issues of the time find their sharpest focus and where the essential (and otherwise frequently hidden) forces of the historical process are revealed. august 1914 is subtitled 'knot 1'; the following two knots will be october 1916 and march 1917.
322.2...'it can easily happen in a war of mines and countermines that the tunnelers collide head on. if i had got as far as my aunt's, the KGB party would have arrived while i was with her. but i got too much sun on the way, and when i was nearly there..i turned back, severely sunburned. my KGB 'admirerers' made a rewarding call on my aunt, obtained from her family records and stories, and departed rejoicing. by the standards of the twenties and thirties, the accusations were lethal-all the things that my mother and i had always concealed, when we had spent our lives cowering and trembling in half flattened hovels. another of their sapping operations, however, was thwarted. because of my sudden return-again we see the rules of subterranean warfare in operation- i had asked a friend of mine (gorlov) to fetch a spare part for my car from rozhdestvo. he might have gone any other day, but he had a chance to go as soon as i got back from the south, on 11 august, and was just in time to discover nine KBG men behaving as though they owned my little dacha. if i hadn't come back from the south, their operation would have gone back from the south, their operation would have gone off without a hitch...(as a result sol wrote an open letter to andropov, the head of the KBG, which appears below.)
document 17...'for many years, i have borne in silence the lawlessness of your employees:
the inspection of all my correspondence,
the confiscation of half of it,
the tracking down of my correspondents,
their persecution at work and by state agencies,
the spying around my house,
the shadowing of visitors,
the tapping of telephone conversations,
the drilling of holes in ceilings,
the placing of recording apparatus in my city apartment and at my cottage, and
a persistent slander campaign against me from the platforms of lecture halls when they are put at the disposal of officials from your ministry.
but after the raid yesterday,i will no longer be silent. my cottage at rozhdestvo, in the naro-fominsk rayon, was unoccupied, and the eavesdroppers were counting on my absence. i, however had come back to moscow after being taken ill suddenly and had asked my friend aleksandr gorlov to get a spare part for the car from my cottage. but it turned out the house was unlocked and voices could be heard from within, gorlov stepped inside and demanded the intruders' documents. in that small structure, where three or four can barely turn around, there were about ten of them in plain clothes. at a command from the senior officer-
take him into the wood and silence him!
-gorlov was grabbed, knocked to the floor, dragged face down into the wollds and beaten viciously. while this was going on, others took a roundabout route trough the bushes, carrying parcels, documents and other objects (including perhaps some of the apparatus they had brought before) to their cars. however, gorlov fought back vigorously and yelled, summoning witnesses. neighbors from other lots came running in response to his shouts, barred the intruders' way to the highway and demanded their identification documents. then one of the intruders presented a red identification card and the neighbors let them pass. gorlov, with a battered face and his suit in ribbons, was taken to a car.
fine methods you have, he said to his escorts.
we are on an operation and on an operation WE CAN DO ANYTHING.
the one who, according to papers he had shown neighbors, was a captain, and according to his own statement called ivanov, drove gorlov first to the naro-fominsk police station. the local officers greeted 'ivanov' with deference. 'ivanov' then demanded from gorlov(!) a written explanation of what had happened. although he had been severely beaten, gorlov put in writing the purpose of his trip and all the circumstances. after that the senior intruder demanded that gorlov should sign an undertaking not to give the matter any publicity. gorlov flatly refused. then they set off for moscow, and on the road, the senior intruder gave gorlov, word for word, the following warning:
if sol finds out what took place at the dacha, you're finished.
your career (gorlov is a candidate of technical sciences, has presented his doctoral dissertation, and works in the design and technical research institute of the state construction administration) will go no further;
you will not be able to defend any dissertation.
this will affect your family, your children, and if necessary, we will put you inside.
those who know how we live know the full feasibility of these threats. but gorlov did not give in to them, refused to sign the pledge and is now threatened with reprisals.
i demand from you, citizen minister, the public identification of all the intruders,
their punishment as criminals and
a public explanation of this incident.
otherwise i can only conclude that they were sent by you.
13 august 1971 a. solzhenitsyn
324.last...'another shock: the oak and the calf, the book you have..was going around moscow! i was flabbergasted! because of course, in this book everything is wide open, people and things are given their own names:
what could possibly be more dangerous?
we had kept it safe and secret;
how had it broken loose?
where?
through whom?
why?
we mounted an investigation, checked all our copies: we had to go outside moscow and physically verify that all copies were in place, had not been moved and could not have been photographed. there was suspicion and doubt all around, all was chaos and confusion.
then we took up the search from the other end of the trail.
who had heard of the book being read?
who had read it for himself?
what did the copy look like?
at whose apartment had people read it?
address and telephone number? (there was no avoiding the excited mentioning of titles over the telephone-the lubyanka had no doubt noticed and their posse would sweep out to head us off at any minute!)
let's get there fast!
right, then.
give it to me straight-better come clean before the KBG roll up.
they come clean, they name names, they put a typed copy in front of me.
but it's not one of ours!
ours, of course, had all turned out to be in place.
not one of ours-so it was a copy of a copy!
what if there were four or five like it?
but it was not even a photocopy of one of ours
someone had typed an accurate copy, and it even had my latest amendments written in by hand.
obviously someone close to me,
someone in the know,
had cribbed from me as i went along,
looked over my shoulder.
but who?
better phone the man who brought it here.
not at home.
we sat and waited, to keep out of sight a bit.
a few hours later our man came along and sheepishly named his source.
one of those we trusted most!
we had only lent it to her to read herself.
but she had surreptitiously copied it.
(for history's sake?
to make sure it survived?
or simply because she had a mania for copying things?)
she had lent it only to him (he was an intimate friend).
but he had brought it to these other people, by way of thanks for some small favor.
and they had called a very dear lady friend to share their happiness.
and she had gushed over the telephone to her bosom friend.
at this fourth remove we had got wind of it.
moscow is big, but no one is far away.
we called up the culprit.
we arranged to meet her.
sobbing, she confessed.
she was struck off our list for the future.
i confiscated the booty.
in the few hours all this took, there were signs that the geebees were getting excited.
KGB cars with four toughs in each darkened interior went out on the prowl.
lick your chops, comrades!
you're just half an hour late! (they had no idea what all the fuss was about. what had we been looking for? what had they missed?)
in december 1969 something very similar happened with prussian nights.
again the rumor was all over moscow:
it was going the rounds.
impossible-but there it was.
on that occasion, too, i rushed from one apartment to another, tracked down the copy and seized it.
again, it was not one of our own copies!
but an exact reproduction!
cribbed!
(note: to pilfer or steal, especially to plagiarize another's writings or ideas)
by someone close to us!
by whom?
i uncovered the trail.
a friend had had it for a few days and lent it out.
and the other people had tapped out a copy.
and kept it secret for four years!
but once i had been expelled from the writers' union, why not let samizdat have it?
i stamped it out in moscow by one means or another.
the manuscript ceased to circulate.
such are the quiet weeks that make up our quiet years, the peaceful times in which there are no events of note, while the main forces are stationary and 'nothing happens'.
for how many years can i go on like this? so far there have been 27 of them, since my first poems in the sharashka, when i first tarted hiding and burning.
327.2...(after tvardovsky's funeral sol wrote for samizdat 'there are many ways of killing a poet' on 27 december 1971) 'it is not from this letter, but earlier, from the appearance of august 1914, that we must date the schism among my readers,
the steady loss of supporters,
with more leaving me than remained behind.
i was received with 'hurrahs' as long as i appeared to be against stalinist abuses only; thus far the entire soviet public was with me. in my first works i was concealing my features from the police censorship-but, by the same token, from the public at large.
with each subsequent step i inevitably revealed more and more of myself;
the time had come to speak more precisely,
to go even deeper.
and in doing so i should inevitably lose the reading public,
lose my contemporaries in hope of winning posterity.
it was painful, though, to lose support even among those closest to me.)
...'outwardly all is calm, there is no harassment,
but under the skin there is this cancer of slander...
thus public opinion the country over was fully prepared for any reprisal against me.
still, we are no longer in that era when you could crush someone without it becoming known!
interview with correspondents of the new york times and the washington post- moscow, 30 march 1972
512.4...'fame is a heavy burden..it consumes a lot of time to little purpose.
it consumes a lot of time to little purpose.
at least they do not drag me along to meetings, as they do others;
i am thankful that they have expelled me.
it was good to work when nobody knew me, nobody exercised his pen making up fairy tales about me..
what is the plan?
the plan consists in driving me out of this life or out of the country,
tossing me into a ditch
or sending me to siberia,
or having me 'dissolve in an alien fog',
as they frankly write.
how confident they are that the censor's pets have more right to russia than others who were also born there...
they do not want to know the complexity and richness of history in all its diversity.
they care only about silencing all voices that are unpleasant to their ears or spoil their peace of mind today, and they do not think about the future...
513.1...'the study of russian history, which has now taken me back to the last years of the last century,
has shown me how precious peaceful solutions are for our country,
how important it is that authority, however autocratic and unlimited it may be, should listen benevolently to society,
and that society should understand the real position of the authorities;
how important it is that the country be led not by force and coercion, but by RIGHTEOUSNESS.
i think that these studies of mine helped me to recognize in tvar's activity precisely that conciliatory line.
alas, even the gentlest admonitory voice is intolerable,
and to be silenced.
how reasonably,
with what good will,
did sakharov and grigorenko speak out here recently:
neither of them was given a hearing- they were told to get lost, to shut up..
there we see the pettiness, the ignoble narrow mindedness of those who are leading the campaign against me. it honestly does not enter their heads that a writer who thinks differently from the majority of his society is an enrichment to that society, not the shame and ruination of it...
342.last these vague promptings are sometimes traceable to actual events, though we cannot always make the connection at the time. we felt that we had reached a new low, sunk to new, suffocating depths of civic failure: more people were arrested, others were threatened, and yet others were renouncing all and leaving the country. sinyavsky came to say goodbye (and to introduce himself at the same time), and i was chilled and saddened to think that fewer and fewer were willing to endure russia's destiny with her, lead where it might. the authorities had calculated that this 'third emigration' would 'ease the pressure on the boiler', and they were proved right...there were fewer and fewer voices capable of protest left in the land. early in summer maksimov was expelled from the writers' union, and in july he wrote me a justifiably bitter letter: where was the solidarity of writers the world over' which i had so extolled in my nobel lecture and why did he, maksimov, not see me among his defenders?
i did not defend him for the same reason that i had not defended all the others:
licensing myself to work on the his story of the revolution,
i had absolved myself of all other duties.
to this day i am not ashamed of such periods of deliberate silence:
an artist has no other recourse if he does not want to overheat himself with ephemeral concerns and boil dry.
(note: the dynamic sol speaks of here is so real, so true and leads to the appearance of inconsistency or hypocrisy at times...each of us HAS TO to certain things..even though all around us are a host of legitimate claims!!! very, very frustrating in my life and yet EACH OF US HAS TO DO CERTAIN THINGS..)
344.2 the one worrying thing was that i might not be given time to carry out the whole scheme. i felt as though i was about to fill a space in the world that was meant for me and had long awaited me, a mold, as it were, made for me alone, but discerned by me only this very moment. i was a molten substance, impatient, unendurably impatient, to pour into my mold, to fill it full, without air bubbles or cracks, before i cooled and stiffened.
it had happened so often:
before the next step,
next breakthrough,
assault,
'cascade',
i concentrate solely on the affair in hand, on these last brief moments;
and the rest of my life,
the time that lies beyond these critical moments,
is completely forgotten,
it ceases to exist.
all i want is to come through this next crisis,
to survive...
and the future will look after itself.
the first blow in the cascade of blows was sol's letter to the minister of the interior, document 25,,
'four months ago i applied for a residence permit so that i might live with my family. after your lengthy meditation on a matter which might seem to need none, i have now been informed that my request has been rejected by the militia and by you personally. i would express my inability to understand what human or legal considerations could induce you to prevent a husband from living with his wife, or a father with his two small sons, if i did not know from long experience that neither human nor legal considerations have any existence in our political system.
the demeaning, compulsory 'passport system',
in which his place of residence may not be chosen by the individual but is chosen for him by the authorities,
in which the right to move from city to city and especially from country to city,
must be earned as a favor,
probably does not exist even in the colonial countries of the world today.
and yet for the last 42 years, millions of my compatriots have suffered and are still suffering daily under that system.
with the present wide ranging discussion about the freedom of emigration for thousands, one cannot but be struck by the fact that millions lack the right to pick their place of residence and occupation even within their own country!
that lack of rights has been further aggravated by a law passed in 1973..that prevents a peasant from leaving his collective farm even temporarily for seasonal work without permission.
however, i take this opportuuity to remind you that serfdom in our country was abolished 112 years ago. and we are told that the october revolution wiped out its last remnants.
presumably i, like any other citizen of this country, am neither a serf nor a slave and should be free to live wherever i find it necessary, and no one, not even the highest leadership, has a serf owner's right to separate me from my family.
21 august 1973 solzhenitsyn
516.1 (the next blow, an interview with associated press and le monde-moscow 23 august 1973 it is too lengthy to quote..several snippets..
...tsar nicholas I never pronounced himself proprietor of pushkin's poetry.
nor, under alexanderII, wer the novels of tolstoy, turgenev or goncharov state property.
alexander KK never told chekhov where to publish his works.
the merchants and financiers of so called capitalism have never seen any chance of trading in creations of the intellect or works of art unless the author himself has given them such rights.
..if, under the first socialist state, mean mercantile brains think that a product of spiritual creativity,
a product newly sprung from the soul or mind of its creator,
automatically becomes a commodity and the property of the ministry of foreign trade,
then such notions can provoke nothing but utter contempt.
what do you have to say about the decision to deprive zhores medvedev of soviet citizenship?
this is not a unique case, and a pattern is beginning to emerge.
1. citizenship in our country is not a natural inalienable right of every human being born on its soil, but a kind of coupon which is held by an exclusive clique of people who have done nothing at all to prove that they have more right than others to the russian soil. and this clique, if it doesn't approve of some citizen's convictions, can by a simple declaration deprive him of his homeland. i leave it to you to find a word for such a social system.
2. in cases when they've missed their chance to get rid of a person with behind the scenes methods (as they would with someone less well known), they find that the least painful thing is to fling him out to the west, preferably with his voluntary consent to what is represented as a temporary assignment abroad or a departure with no arrangements for return.
3. we must, alas, admit that they are not mistaken in their calculations. the environment in our country resembles a dense and viscous medium:
it is incredibly difficult to make even the smallest movements because it immediately draws some part of the environment after it...
...attacks on sakharov in the soviet press?
..tass in its reply to sak says that
even the sharpest criticism in our country is regarded as something useful.
this is a blatant lie.
no serious criticism whatever,
on any level whatever,
however constructive it may be,
is permitted in our country from ANYBODY,
except a small circle of people who have reached their positions by obediently taking orders for years,
which of course has done little to develop their critical faculties...
check for yourselves:
during the last 10, 20 or 30 years,
has RATIONAL ARGUMENT ever been used against any dissident?
no, never, because no such arguments exist.
they always reply with curses and slander...
..social situation in the USSR today?
the world, used by now to the idea that nothing can eve be discovered about us anyway,
overlooks even the most obvious and open piece of information:
that in this impressive country with its most advanced socialist structure
THERE HAS BEEN NOT A SINGLE AMNESTY FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS FOR HALF A CENTURY!...
what jamming of radio broadcasts means is impossible to explain to those who haven't experienced it themselves,
who haven't lived under it for years.
every day they spit into your eyes and ears.
it is an insult to human beings,
it degrades them to the level of robots,
no matter whether they jam with a 'total blackout' of the wave band,
or with the 'rusty saw',
or with vulgar music.
it means that grown persons are reduced to infants:
swallow what your mother has chewed up for you.
even the most benevolent broadcasts during the most friendly visits are jammed just as uncompromisingly;
there must not be the slightest deviation in the evaluation of events,
in the nuances,
in the accents.
everybody has to assimilate and remember an event in precisely the same way.
and many facts about the world must not be made known to our population at all.
moscow and leningrad have paradoxically become the most uninformed metropolises in the world:
their inhabitants ask people who come in from the countryside what news there is.
out in the country-for financial reasons (our population has to pay very dearly for these jamming SERVICES)- jamming is weaker.
but according to the observations of people from various places, jamming has been intensified.
...this series of sacrificial decisions by single individuals is a beacon to our future.
there is one psychological peculiarity in human beings that always surprises me. in times of prosperity and ease, a man will shy from the least little worry on the periphery of his existence,
try not to know about the sufferings of others of intimate importance to him,
just to prolong his present well being.
yet a man who is approaching the last frontier,
who is already a naked beggar deprived of all that may be though to beautify life,
can suddenly find in himself the strength
to dig in his heels
and refuse to take the final step,
can surrender his life but not his principles!
note:(MAY WE IN THE WEST PLEAD WITH GOD FOR TROUBLES SO WE TO MAY BE RELEASE FROM THE HORROR OF PROSPERITY AND EASE!)
because of the first quality,
man has never been able to hold on to one single plateau he has attained.
thanks to the second quality,
mankind has pulled itself out of all kinds of bottomless pits...
Sunday, September 16, 2012
9.16.2012 ALEKSANDR I. SOLZHENITSYN 1918- I
solzhenitsyn (sol), imprisoned by the state when an officer in the military during world war II, experienced firsthand what the government had been doing to millions of people in the camps but was one of the few that escaped death and somehow survived. his life passion and goal was to tell the truth about events not only leading to the communist takeover, but especially those that occurred during stalin's time.. a time frame something like 1914ish through the mid 1940s.
the following is taken from 'the oak and the calf' (the USSR is the oak; sol the calf) covering the time period from the early 1960s until he was exiled from russia in the 1970's. he calls this book a memoir
(a record of events by a person who has intimate knowledge of them.)
after a brief survey the book describes events beginning in 1960
starting an early section he describes, in a picture, the psychology of seeking to bring a totalitarian government..feared around the world...to accountability by the use of words:
,,'..yes, yes, of course - we all know that you cannot poke a stick through the walls of a concrete tower, but here's something to think about: what if those walls are only a painted background.'
russian proverb - without one righteous person, no village can stand.
he sent a short work, 'one day in the life of ivan denisovich' to the most liberal periodical in russia, novi mir, which was headed by a man named tvardovsky (tvar). although amazingly tvar published this work, sol foresaw that their paths would not be able to stay together...
..but there can be no friendship between men where there is no similarity of outlook, no mutual appreciation and consideration. we were like two mathematical curves, each illustrating it's own equation. they may approximate at certain points, my meet, may even have a common tangent, a common derivative (all this alluding to their many similarities), but through archetypal peculiarity will quickly and inevitably carry them in different directions.
early on sol mistakenly was beholden to tvar not realizing that his own literary destiny was no his own but that of the crushed and destroyed millions who had no voice.
a russian censor said that the party does not wish to see in literature, 1. pessimism, 2. denigration 3. surreptitious sniping...speaking about anything that challenged what the government. (note: in 'free' societies like ours in america, the same thing is being done through the mainstream media...)
sol had been starting to tentatively spread his literary wings due to his contacts with tvar when suddenly his current novel and all his literary archives were taken in a secret raid by the government...
103.1...' it is 22 years since i was arrested, but although my feelings about that have faded, i know that the later disaster was harder for me to bear. the blow of my arrest was easier to bear because i was at the front (during world war II), in the battle line, when they took me;
i was 26 years old
no finished works of mine would perish with me (they simply did not exist)
i found myself involved in an interesting, indeed an exciting game
and u had a vague yet clairvoyant presentiment that my arrest would enable me as nothing else could to influence the destiny of my country.
(in my naive imaginings i saw the men in moscow suddenly wanting to hear my ideas on straightening out all that stalin had made crooked.)
but the catastrophe of september 1965 was the greatest misfortune in all my 47 years. for some months i felt it as though it were a real, unhealing physical wound-a javelin wound right through the breast, with the tip so firmly lodged that it could not be pulled out. the slightest stirring within me (perhaps the memory of some line or other from my impounded archive) caused a stab of pain.
the hardest blow was to find that after going through the full course in the camps, i was still so stupid and vulnerable. i had been an underground writer for 18 years, weaving my secret web and making sure that every thread would hold. a mistake about one single person could have plunged me into a wolf pit with all i had written-but i had made no mistake and had not fallen. so much effort had gone into keeping it all safe, so many sacrifices into writing it. my plan was an immensely ambitious one; in another 10 years' time i should be ready to face the world with all that i had written, and i should not mind if i perished in the flames of that literary explosion-but now, just one slip of the foot, one careless move and my whole plan, my whole life's work had come to grief. and it was not only my life's work but the dying wishes of the millions whose last whisper, last moan, had been cut short on some hut floor in some prison camp. i had not carried out their behests, i had betrayed them had shown myself unworthy of them. it had been given to me, almost alone, to crawl to safety; the hopes once held in all those skulls buried now in common graves in camps had been set on me-and i had collapsed and their hopes had slipped from my hands.
throughout this period i felt a constriction in my chest. there was a sickening tug somewhere near my solar plexus, and
i could not decide whether it was a spiritual sickness or a foreboding of some new grief.
there was an unbearable burning sensation inside me.
i was on fire and nothing helped.
my throat was always dry.
i felt a tension that nothing would relax.
you seek salvation in sleep (as you once did in prison);
let me sleep and sleep and never get up again!
switch off and dream untroubled dreams!
but within a few hours the shutter of the soul falls away and a red hot drill whirls you back to reality.
every day you must find in yourself the will to put one foot in front of the other,
to study,
to work,
to pretend that the soul can and must do these things, although in reality your mind wanders every 5 minutes:
why bother?
what does it matter now?...
in your daily life you seem to be acting a part;
you know that in reality it's all gone pfft.
it is as though the world's clock has stopped.
thoughts of suicide-for the first time and i hope the last....
111.2....at this juncture k. i. chukovsky offered me the shelter of his roof (which took great courage) and this greatly helped and cheered me. i was afraid to live in ryazan: it would be easy to cut off my way out and possible to seize me without fuss or fear of consequences (if need be, the blame for any 'mistake' could be shifted onto overzealous local KGB men). at chukovsky's dacha in peredelkino no such 'mistake ' on the part of operatives was possible. i strolled for hours through dark cloisters of pine trees in k.i.'s grounds with a heart empty of hope, vainly trying to comprehend my situation and, more important, to discover some higher sense in the disaster that had fallen upon me.
an acquaintance with russian history might long ago have discouraged any inclination to look for the hand of justice, or for some higher cosmic meaning, in the tale of russian's woes, but i had learned in my years of imprisonment to sense that guiding hand, to glimpse that bright meaning beyond and above my self and my wishes. i had not always been quick to understand the sudden upsets in my life and often, out of bodily and spiritual weakness, had seen in them the very opposite of their true meaning and their far off purpose. later the true significance of what had happened would inevitably become clear to me, and i would be numb with surprise. i have done many things in my life that conflicted with the great aims i had set myself-and something has always set me on the true path again. i have become so used to this, come to rely on it so much, that the only task i need set myself is to interpret as clearly and quickly as i can each major event in my life.
(v.v ivanov came to the same conclusion, though life supplied him with quite different material to think about. he puts it like this;
many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it aright.
more often than not it is given to us in cryptic form and
when we fail to decipher it, we despair because our lives seem meaningless.
the secret of a great life is often a man's success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him
understanding them and so
learning to walk in the true path.)
note:
-my father brainwashed me by many times saying to me as a child and a young man that the greatest calling was that an evangelist or pastor.
-if it was brainwashing i thank God for it.
-i graduated seminary with mounds of biblical knowledge but had no inner witness that i was His and He was mine.
-i went to grad school and learned more...still lost (as best as i can know..)
-i was a pastor in two small churches in new york over a three year period and got kicked out of both due to challenging things (with a sledgehammer) that were against scripture...still lost.
-i went back to grad school to get certification to teach and learned that it was not me...still lost.
-i worked and worked and worked to meet the needs of a growing family, secretly blaming my wife for the fact that i wasn't 'in the ministry...still lost.
-i, when our children were nearly all out of the house, informed my wife i would pay all the necessities and no more, paid off the house...and lost my wife..still lost.
-i, no He, at some point, found me..i think
-i anguished over abortion for nearly 2 decades before finally going to jail with the idea of dying there..
one person taking their little toy hammer (their life) to beat against the genocide we are living through..
the first night in jail abandoned by God..and fleeing.
-i..no longer want to live here in this horror.
-i ask God to please take me to Him ASAP.
-i have an insatiable urge to speak truth..which is uniformly rejected
-until i go, i hope to actually walk in the path of speaking the truth in love as much as possible, to as many as possible..even if no one listens...
romans 12.6-having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy (speaking God's truth..., let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith ( ...all of His truth that He has revealed in His word.
romans 11.29-..the gifts and calling of god are without repentance. (if you are given the gift of speaking God's truth you will speak it until you speak no more..)
ephesians 4.11f...He gave...evangelists..pastor-teachers
for the perfecting of the saints
for the work of ministry
for the edifying of the body of Christ...v12
till we all come in the unity of the faith
(till we all come in) the knowledge of the Son of God
(till we all come) unto a perfect man
(till we all come) unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ..v13
note: why was Christ hanged on a cross? He spoke the truth.
(till we all are)speaking the truth in love
...that is what the church is...a group of people speaking the truth in love to each other and to those outside.
mark 16.15-preach the gospel to every creature.
this is the path marked out for me and yet i continue to shy away from facing the cross of hatred and death...for sol and anyone, to the degree they speak truth, invites persecution and death. i call myself a christian but i've yet to see whether i really am. may God have mercy on my soul..and help me walk this path, this is the true path for me.
russian proverbs-
-when fate is ready it will tie you hand and foot.
-one man dies of fear, another is brought to life by it.
-if trouble comes make use of it.
-dare is halfway there.
'if we ever become free, it will only be by our own efforts..if the twentieth century has any lesson for mankind, it is we who will teach the west, not the west us. excessive ease and posterity have weakened their will and their reason. (note: not to speak of our sacrificial obedience to God)
130.last...'history moves in unexpected twists and turns. at one time we, the unlucky ones, were put in side (imprisoned) for nothing, for half a word or a quarter of a seditious thought. now the KBG had a whole bouquet of criminal charges to pin on me (according to their legal code, of course), yet this had only untied my hands, given me ideological extraterritoriality!
(immunity from the jurisdiction of a nation ie. such as given diplomats, etc)
half a year after the event (the state releasing several of his works, which they had taken in a search, and starting a slander campaign against him), it had become clear that the unhappy loss of my archives had brought me complete freedom of thought and of belief. i was free not merely to believe in God, although i was a member of the marxist and atheist writer's union, but to profess any political view i chose. for nothing i might think now could be worse and harsher than the angry words in the play i had written in camp. it they weren't going to put me inside for that, they obviously wouldn't put me in for any of the beliefs i might come to hold. i could reply to my correspondents as frankly as i pleased, say whatever i liked in conversation, and none of it could be worse than my play! i could make whatever entries i please in my diaries; no more need to use code and subterfuge. i was approaching an invisible divide beyond which there was no more need for hypocrisy-about anything or to anyone!
(note: i think of my life as a professed christian by largely hypocitical and clandestine rather than speaking and living Jesus' truth boldly and continually wherever i am. what needs to me, like sol, is to come under some sentence of death so that i realize i have nothing to lose by doing it. in the meantime i continue to spindle away precious moments and days that are eternally lost...what a hapless and hopeless creature i am...unless somehow this sentence of death somehow happily is given me. OH WHAT A MAN COULDN'T POSSIBLY ACCOMPLISH IF HE DIDN'T CARE IF HE DIED DOING IT!)
i concluded then, in spring 1966, that i had been given a lengthy reprieve, but i also realized the need for an OVERT and generally accessible work TO PROCLAIM in the meantime that i was alive
(note: for me, 'in Christ'!)
and working, to occupy in the public mind the space that my confiscated works had not been able to invade.
...there were always powerful, compelling reasons (to hurry)-
the need to hide
to disperse copies
to take advantage of someone's help
to set myself free for other tasks-
so that i never released anything without undue hast, i never had time to look for the precise, the definitive words.
...sol debating with those editorial staff at novy mir)..'there were millions of (those who should have been tried) that would never be tried in court, so that it was all the more important for them to be tried by literary and public opinion. if this could not be done, it had no use as literature and did not wish the right'..
..concerning the end of sol's formal relationship with the journal novy mir because they kept wanting to censure and change material he wrote..'i did not put all this in a dramatic announcement because my camp training for bids declarations of intent, bids me act suddenly and silently. all i said ..was that i would not sign the contract just yet an would take the manuscript with me...
139.4...'at one time, when i looked at the writers' union from a distance, i had seen a rabble of sacrilegious hucksters in the temple of literature, worthy only of the scourge. but young grass will spring soundlessly, skirting a pile of steel girders, and if no one tramples it, someday it will even screen them from view. healthy and unsullied stalks were noiselessly overgrowing that diseased and rotting body.
(note:...eternal hope in the principle: the kingdom of heaven is like 3 measures of leaven hid in dough...whether in this organization, a church, a nation, a neighborhood, a family, an individual's heart..)
their growth had become even more rapid after khrushchev's denunciations. when i found myself in the union i was overjoyed to discover many live and freedom loving people there-whether they had been so of old, or had not had time to become corrupt, or were trying to rid themselves of the pollution. (yet another proof that we should never risk wholesale condemnations.)
142.3...(sol decides to become more continually bold)..'my first public appearance was arranged on the spur of the moment: i happened to meet somebody who asked me, as were were walking along, whether i would be willing to go and speak at what he called a 'box number (a classified institute). why not? the arrangement was put into effect quickly, before the security organs could get to hear of it, and the physicists at the kurchatov institute held a meeting attended by 600 people. (true, over a hundred of these were unknown outsiders 'invited by the party committee'.) the security boys were of course present in considerable strength and there were people from the regional and the city party committees.
i went to this first meeting equipped not to speak but simply to read-and this i did for three and a half hours, answering very few questions, and those only curiosity. i read some of the key chapters from the cancer ward, one act of candle in the wind (about the aims of science, to engage the imagination of this scientific audience), and then i got reckless and announced that i would read some chapters (those about to visit to lefortovo ) from first circle-that very same first circle which had been taken into custody by the lubyanka; if they could let the bureaucratic underworld read it, why should not the author read it to the general public? (i had not been the first to start untying the knot of prohibitions: with my prison camp fatalism, i found reassurance in this.)
no, times had changed and so had we! i was not shouted down, not interrupted, my wrists were not handcuffed behind my back, i was not even called in by the KGN to explain myself or be reprimanded. would you believe it-the head of the KBG, semichastny himslef, started replying to me! publicly, not tete a tete. as security chief, he saw his spy rings and subversive networks in europe and asia collapse one after another while he concentrated all his forces on the ideological struggle, especially against the writers, in whom he saw the main danger to the regime. he spoke frequently at ideological conferences and in seminars for agitators. in his speeches that november he expressed indignation at my impudence: i was giving readings from a confiscated novel. and that was all the response i got from the KBG!
every step they took showed me that my last step had not gone far enough.
i now began looking for a chance to reply to semichastny. the news that i had appeared at the kurchatov institute got around and invitations began to arrive in large numbers-some tentative, some precise and pressing and i accepted them all as they came...these institutions seemed to have everything arranged-directors had given their permission, notices had been put up, invitation cards were printed and distributed-but it was not to be! they wer not to be caught napping...we arrived to find a notice pinned up: 'canceled owing to the author's indisposition'.
i realized, too late, that i had been too restrained at the kurchatov institute and i now sought a platform from which to answer semichastny-but all doors were slammed in my face: you've missed your chance, old chap! i wanted to make just one little speech, no more, to give a blunt answer just for once-but i was too late! never in my life have i felt so keenly what it means to be denied freedom of speech.
then suddenly, from the lazarev institute of oriental studies, where a previous meeting had been canceled i received a pressing invitation: it won't be canceled this time! i went..and sure enough it was not..
this time i was there to SPEAK! this time i had come with a prepared speech and all i needed was a peg to hang it on. i read two chapters from cancer ward, and a few dozen written questions were passed to me. taking my cue from one of these, i rapped out all that i had been forbidden to say in the past nine months, rushing through it in case i was chased off the platform. sitting beside me were certain gentlemen from the party committee-there perhaps to switch off the microphone and me, too, if things went awry? but they had no occasion to act. those sitting in the hall were sophisticated humanists and for them things would be sufficiently clear if i trod close to the brink without overstepping it. certain vibrations told me that someone important from the KGB was sitting there-probably with a tape recorder. i fancied that i could see the features of the chief of gendarmes standing out in bold relief among the moldings...but he was in no position to answer back just then-and i could object to him as much as i liked. in a loud voice and with a feeling of triumph and simple joy, i explained myself to the public and paid him back. an insignificant zek (prisoner in the camps) in the past and perhaps in the future too, i might face another trial in camera, and another round of solitary confinement cells, but first i had been granted an audience of half a thousand and freedom to speak!
..'i must explain why, although i used to refuse to talk to reporters or to make public appearances, i have now started giving interviews and am standing here before you. i believe, as before, that the writer's business is to write, not to haunt public platforms, not to keep explaining himself to newspapers. but i have been taught a lesson; the writer exists not to write but to defend himself. that is why i stand before you here-to defend myself! there is a certain organization which has no obvious claim to tutelage over the arts, which you may think has no business at all supervising literature-but which does these things. this organization took away my novel and my archive, which was never intended for publication. even so, i said nothing but went on working quietly. however, they then made use of excerpts from my records taken out of context to launch a campaign of defamation against me, defamation in a new form-from the platform at closed briefing sessions. what can i do about it? only defend myself! so here i am! look: i'm still alive. look: this head-turning it from side to side-is still on my shoulders. yet, without my knowledge and contrary to my wishes, my novel has been published in a restricted edition and is being circulated among the chosen-people like the chief editor of oktybr, vsevolod kochetov. tell me, then, why should i deny myself similar privileges? why should not i, the author, read you chapters from the same novel here, today? (shouts of 'yes'!)
you would have to live through
a long life of slavery,
bowing and scraping to authority from childhood up,
springing to your feet to join with the rest in hypocritical applause,
nodding assent to patent lies,
never entitled to answer back-
all this as slave and citizen,
then later as slave and zek:
hands behind your back!
don't look around!
don't break ranks!-
to appreciate that hour of free speech from a platform with as audience of 500 people, also intoxicated with freedom.
this was perhaps the first time,
the very first time in my life,
that i felt myself,
saw myself,
making history
i chose the chapters on the exposure of informers ('our native land must know who its informers are') and about those puffed up nonentities the mysterious operations officers.
almost every sally scorched the air like gunpowder!
how these people must have yearned for truth!
OH GOD, HOW BADLY THEY WANTED TO HEAR THE TRUTH!
a written question:
explain your sentence in the chapter you have just read about
'stalin not allowing the red cross to contact soviet prisoners of war'.
they had lived through and some of them had taken part in that unhappiest of wars, that all devouring war, and even about that they had not been allowed to know all that they should. the dullest blockhead in the dimmest cell was familiar with it-but here sat half a thousand highly educated humanists and THEY HAD NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO KNOW.
(note: its currently happening in most school rooms in the united states...a portion by state mandate..a growing portion by teacher inclination...we are becoming a nation shielded from truths in every area but especially history..)
by all means, comrads, i'll be glad to explain: it's a story that is unfortunately too little known. acting on stalins's orders, foreign minister molotov refused to sign the hague convention on prisoners of war or to pay contributions to the international red cross on behalf of the soviet union.so our prisoners of war were the only ones in the world who were abandoned by their native land, the only ones doomed to perish of hunger on a diet of german pig swill.
458 sol has written an open letter to congress of the union of soviet writers challenging them...
'i ask the congress to discuss:
-the no longer tolerable oppression to which our literature has been subjected for decades by the censorship, and to which the writers' union can no longer submit...l propose that the congress demand and ensure the abolition of all censorship, open or hidden, of imaginative literature and release publishing houses from the obligation to obtain clearance for every printed page.
-the duties of the union toward its members...i propose that all guarantees provided by the union for the defense of members subjected to slander and unjust persecutions be clearly formulated in paragraph 22 of the union statutes, so that past illegalities will not be repeated.
1. my novel the first circle was taken and published in an unnatural closed edition...concealed from most writers (and the public).
2. my literary archive dating back 15 to 20 years and containing things that were not intended for publication, was taken..now heavily slanted excepts are appearing.
3. a three year campaign of slander
4. my novel cancer ward..cannot be published by chapters
5. the play the love girl and the innocent, accepted in 1962 by the sovremennik theater, has so far not been approved for performance.
6. the screenplay tanks know the truth,
the stage play the light that is in you,
the short stories right hand, what a pity and my series of miniatures cannot find a producer or a publisher.
7. my stories published in novy mir have never been reprinted in book form having been rejected everywhere
8. i have also been prevented from having any other contacts with readers through public readings of my works
thus my work has been completely suppressed, locked away and slanderously misrepresented.
...i am of course confident that i shall fulfill by duty as a writer in all circumstances-from the grave even more successfully and incontrovertibly than in my lifetime. no one can bar the road to truth and to advance its cause i am prepared to accept even death. but may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stay the writer's pen during his life time?
this has never yet added luster to our history.
16 may 1967 A. Solzhenitsyn
..'i am defending myself...hunters know that a wounded beast can be dangerous..
163.2 (speaking to a group of intelligencia in an open forum)
i can find nothing with which to compare the relief i feel after speaking out. (refers to the document above) you have to spend almost half a century in endless compliance, endless silence, then suddenly stand erect and bellow-not just from the rooftops, not just to the marketplace, but for the whole world to hear-to feel, as i do, the soul readmitting a universe made calm and orderly again. no more doubts, no more floundering, no remorse-just the pure light of happiness! this was the way to do it! this was what i should have done long ago! as i look at the world in this bright new glow, something like complacency floods my being, although nothing has yet been achieved.
but why do i say that nothing has been archived? after all, about 100 writers have supported me, 84 in a joint letter to the congress, and fifteen or so in personal telegrams and letters. (i am only counting those of which i have copies.) isn't that amazing? i had never dared to hope for so much! a writers' rebellion! in our country! after stalin's steamroller has lumbered backward and forward, backward and forward over and over again. unhappy writers, artists, scholars, unhappy intelligentsia: you are the most dangerous, the hydraheaded monster they have worked to destroy ever since 1918-to ax and scythe and hound and starve and burn out of existence. surely they've done a thorough job by now..but no-you live again!..you, and not your comfortable brethren the rocketers, the atom men..they, who are so well preserved should now take over your harsh destiny..but no! the rider cannot understand the man without a mount. they will prepare for our destruction by fire, but to make the earth flower it i you who must perish!
commenting on the interview(169.last f) with the heads of the writers union...'that day i experienced for the first time in my life something of which i had previously had only secondhand knowledge-what it feels like to make a successful show of strength. and how well they understand that language! the language alone! that and no other, from the day they are born!
russian proverbs
-love the straight talker not the sweet talker
-friendship does not speak with a honeyed tongue
478.top....'concerning the task of the writer...'in general.. (this) cannot be reduced to defense or criticism of this or that mode of distributing the social product, or to the defense or criticism of this or that form of government (the current soviet understanding of the writer's function). the tasks of the writer are connected with more general and durable questions, such as
the secrets of the human heart and conscience,
the confrontation between life and death,
the triumph over spiritual sorrow,
the laws of humanity over the ages,
laws that were born in the depths of time immemorial and will cease to exist only when the sun ceases to shine.
197.top...'for half a century the whole world has failed to see this very simple fact:
that strength and steadfastness are the only things these people fear;
those who smile and bow to them they crush. (..speak the truth in love..)
204.top...'those who are quick to silence others doom themselves never to know the truth in time!
(he who answers before he hears a matter, it will be counted to him as folly and shame..)
205...'i had no birds eye view to guide me, only a tunneler's intuition..
-sol, at some point, finds that his works are spreading from people close to him who desire to read what he is writing to a wider audience through samizdat
(clandestine system in the USSR by which unpublishable and forbidden literature is reproduced and circulated privately)
which is then discovered by the state.
-as he is learning the strength of speaking truth, sol's next dare is to send several chapters of the cancer ward to russian printer
-4.9.1968 granni (foreign) publishes the cancer ward against sol's wishes
-june.. sol completes the gulag archipeligo (too hot to make public...time is not right)
-8.21-2 occupation of czechoslovakia
september..first circle
222.2...upon the news of czech, sol in agony whether he should make public statement, 'I AM ASHAMED TO BE SOVIET!
...'i understand these ecstasies of despair and i experience them myself.
at such moments i am capable of crying out!
but this is the question to ask:
AM I CRYING OUT AGAINST THE GREATEST EVIL?
cry out just once and perish for it-yes, if you have never seen anything so horrible in all your life.
but i have seen and known many worse things...
why do i not cry out about that?
our past 50 years consists of nothing else.
Yet we are silent. (note: like america is about abortion?)...
...'i held my peace.. (on czech...)
223.2...'i was 50 that december.
how often had my predecessors in the muted years watched in muffled silence as such anniversaries went by;
even close friends had feared to visit them or to write.
but the cordon sanitaire had broken down, the impassable barrier had been breached!
to greet the outlaw, the pariah,
telegrams began winging their way to ryazan a week ahead of the date, followed by letters, most of them sent through the open mails, not clandestinely, a few of them anonymous, most of them signed.
in the lst few days the post office had been sending 50 or even 70 telegrams at a time, and on the day itself there were several such deliveries!
altogether there were more than 500 telegrams and perhaps 200 letters signed by some 1500 fearless individuals, who had only occasionally camouflaged themselves..a few..
-'may God help you to keep on just as you are.
-'each man chooses his way through life and i believe that you will not depart from your chosen path...
i rejoice that our generation's sufferings have at least produced such sons.
-please do not lay down your pen...please believe that not all of us are capable of loving only the dead.
-in the future as in the past, may you be the author only of works which no one need be ashamed to sign.
-you are my conscience.
-to live at the same time as you is both pain and happiness.
-praise God, you will not have to hear an insincere, hypocritical syllable on this day..
-we read your books on cigarette papers, which makes them all the more precious to us.
if russia is paying dearly for her great sins, it is surely for her great sufferings and so that shame may not utterly demoralize us.
that you have been sent to her...
-when i am not sure how to behave at work, i think about your deeds...
in moments of despondency, i think about your life.
-face to face with my conscience, it is a bitter thing to confess that i am silent
though silence is no longer possible...
-in you the dumbstruck have found their voice.
i can think of no writer so long awaited and so solely needed as you.
where the word has not perished, the future is safe.
your bitter books both wound and heal the soul.
you have restored the russian literature its thunderous power. lydia chukovskaya (a writer soon to be persecuted)
-may you live another 50 years and may your talent lose none of its splendid strength.
ALL ELSE PASSES; ONLY THE TRUTH WILL REMAIN...
ever yours, tvardovsky
let me scorn mock modesty and admit that i held my head high that week.
gratitude had caught up with me in my own lifetime..
on the eleventh, while reading telegrams in bundles..i found a reply phrasing itself
and gradually taking definitive shape,
though there was nowhere to send it,,
except samizdat..
my sole dream is to justify the hopes of the russian reading public.
232..'they knew how to do one thing only:
deftly field rebukes from above and sling them at others lower down..
247.2..we can pick out, list and evaluate certain thoughts in this and other, related articles in
molodaya gvardia that we should hardly expect to see in a soviet publication.
1. more preference for 'desert fathers', 'spiritual warriors' and the Old Believers
as against the revolutionary democrats..from chernyshevsky to kerensky. (i must say that i agree.)
6. the land is eternal and vitally necessary:
a life divorced from the land is no life. (yes..as dostoyevsky put it in diary of a writer, july-august 1876:
'if you want man to be reborn and changed for the better,
endow him with land!
there is something sacramental about the land...
a nation can only be born and rise to maturity on the land,
on the soil in which grain and trees grow. (note: oh may many be called away from 'city-ease' back to the land!)
7. the village is the stronghold of our native traditions. (the village has been murdered..)
8. the merchant class, too, was a vivid manifestation of the russian national spirit. (yes, no less so than the peasantry. and there was no higher concentration of the nation's energies.)
9. it is from popular speech that poetry draws its nourishment. (this is my belief too.
11. young people (note: in america now, most all) in our country are smothered by emasculated language, which lays waste all thought and feeling
by the TIME WASTING frivolities of TELEVISION (note: amen.)..(and by sport..and by political indoctrination.)
in the chapter 'asphyxiation' speaking of the endless defense of marxism and the endless attack on land, village and religion (..and anything else that challenged it.)in the soviet union,
sol touches on the hysteria to NOT deal with all the problems that arise from this.
252.2..'you see how in our country and in our time there is not a single problem
(and there are thousands of them pressed together in a twisted mass)
of which we can speak lucidly, simply, without confusion.
neither of the disputant journals had set out its thoughts clearly,
both had slicked over them with communist spit and verbiage.
484/document 11 sol's record of the meeting of the ryazan writers'organization in which he was voted out of the soviet writers union
sol is given 10 minutes to talk..
sol..'i regret that no shorthand minute is being made of our meeting and that a careful record is not being kept. yet it may have some interest not just tomorrow or in a week's time, but even later...
as regards the accusations of a general character, i still fail to understand what kind of 'reply' people expect me to make-what must i reply to?..i have nothing to say..to that anonymous article.
..generally, what happens with my writings is this:
if i myself disown some work or other and wish that it did not exist-s with the feast of the victors- they make a point of talking about it and 'interpreting' it for all they are worth.
if, however, i press for my writings to be published, as, for instance, cancer ward or the first circle, they are hidden away and nothing is said about them.
you say i ought to 'reply' to the secretariat? but i have given them a reply already to all the questions put to me, whereas the secretariat has not replied to a single one of mine. i have received no real reply to my letter to the secretariat, in which there was a great deal both on general and on personal matters.
exactly the same procedure was adopted in respect to cancer ward. as far back as september 1967 i insistently warned the secretariat of the danger that the book might appear in the west..i urged them to give permission for publication her..but the secretariat went on waiting.when, in the spring of 1968, signs began to appear that at any moment now it would be printed in the west, i sent letters to literaturnaya gazeta, le monde and l'unita, in which i forbade the printing of cancer ward and denied all rights to western publishers. ..the letter to le monde..was not allowed out. the letter to l'unita..was taken..by the customs...the literaturnaya gazeta still went on waiting!...why did the lt. hold up...for 9 weeks? the calculation is obvious:
let cancer ward appear in the west, then it will be possible to damn it and keep it from the soviet reader...
chairman baranova..your time is up-ten minutes.
sol..how can you insist on a time limit in this case? it's a matter of life and death.
bar..but we can't allow you more-there's a time limit.
sol insists on his plea. various members intervene.
bar...how much longer do you want?
sol..i have a lot i need to say. give me another ten minutes at least.(10 granted)
sol...(speeding up still further his already fast delivery)..i made an application to the ministry of communications..asking them to put an end to the postal theft of my correspondence-
nondelivery or holdup of letters, telegrams, packets, especially those from abroad..
but what is one to do if the soviet WU secretariat itself is abetting these robberies? after all, the secretariat hasn't passed on to me a single letter or telegram from the hep..for my fiftieth birthday..
the whole of my correspondence is closely inspected ...
to come now to the accusation that i paint reality too black: ..it works out this way:
what matters is not what we do but what people will say about it.
and so that they cannot say anything bad, we'll keep our mouths shut about all that goes on....
the man who is always rosily enraptured is-contrary to appearances-indifferent to his native land.
...people want to conceal, to forget the crimes committed under stalin, to avoid mentioning them.
'is there any point in recalling the past?
was the question put to lev tolstoy by his biographer,
'if i had a vile disease and i were cured and cleansed of it, i would always be happy to talk about it. i would make no mention of it only if i were still suffering and getting worse and i wanted to deceive myself. we are sick-and always no more and no less sick than before. the form of the sickness has changed but it is still the same disease; only it is called by a different name...the disease that we are suffering from is the disease of killing people.
(note: same disease america now has.)
if we recall the past and look it straight in the face, the violence we are now committing will also be revealed.
no! we shall not succeed indefinitely in keeping silent about stalin's crimes, in going against the truth. the millions of people who suffered from these crimes cemand that they be brought to light. it would be a good idea, too, to reflect of the moral effect concealment of these crimes may have on the younger generation. it means the corruption of still more millions. the growing generation of young people are no fools; they know full well that millions of crimes were committed and that nobody tals about them-that they are carefully hushed up. what is there, then, to restrain anyone of uss from taking a hand in other acts of injustice? these, too, will be carefully hushed up.
it only remains for me to say that i retract not one word, not one letter of what i wrote to the writers' union...
the following is taken from 'the oak and the calf' (the USSR is the oak; sol the calf) covering the time period from the early 1960s until he was exiled from russia in the 1970's. he calls this book a memoir
(a record of events by a person who has intimate knowledge of them.)
after a brief survey the book describes events beginning in 1960
starting an early section he describes, in a picture, the psychology of seeking to bring a totalitarian government..feared around the world...to accountability by the use of words:
,,'..yes, yes, of course - we all know that you cannot poke a stick through the walls of a concrete tower, but here's something to think about: what if those walls are only a painted background.'
russian proverb - without one righteous person, no village can stand.
he sent a short work, 'one day in the life of ivan denisovich' to the most liberal periodical in russia, novi mir, which was headed by a man named tvardovsky (tvar). although amazingly tvar published this work, sol foresaw that their paths would not be able to stay together...
..but there can be no friendship between men where there is no similarity of outlook, no mutual appreciation and consideration. we were like two mathematical curves, each illustrating it's own equation. they may approximate at certain points, my meet, may even have a common tangent, a common derivative (all this alluding to their many similarities), but through archetypal peculiarity will quickly and inevitably carry them in different directions.
early on sol mistakenly was beholden to tvar not realizing that his own literary destiny was no his own but that of the crushed and destroyed millions who had no voice.
a russian censor said that the party does not wish to see in literature, 1. pessimism, 2. denigration 3. surreptitious sniping...speaking about anything that challenged what the government. (note: in 'free' societies like ours in america, the same thing is being done through the mainstream media...)
sol had been starting to tentatively spread his literary wings due to his contacts with tvar when suddenly his current novel and all his literary archives were taken in a secret raid by the government...
103.1...' it is 22 years since i was arrested, but although my feelings about that have faded, i know that the later disaster was harder for me to bear. the blow of my arrest was easier to bear because i was at the front (during world war II), in the battle line, when they took me;
i was 26 years old
no finished works of mine would perish with me (they simply did not exist)
i found myself involved in an interesting, indeed an exciting game
and u had a vague yet clairvoyant presentiment that my arrest would enable me as nothing else could to influence the destiny of my country.
(in my naive imaginings i saw the men in moscow suddenly wanting to hear my ideas on straightening out all that stalin had made crooked.)
but the catastrophe of september 1965 was the greatest misfortune in all my 47 years. for some months i felt it as though it were a real, unhealing physical wound-a javelin wound right through the breast, with the tip so firmly lodged that it could not be pulled out. the slightest stirring within me (perhaps the memory of some line or other from my impounded archive) caused a stab of pain.
the hardest blow was to find that after going through the full course in the camps, i was still so stupid and vulnerable. i had been an underground writer for 18 years, weaving my secret web and making sure that every thread would hold. a mistake about one single person could have plunged me into a wolf pit with all i had written-but i had made no mistake and had not fallen. so much effort had gone into keeping it all safe, so many sacrifices into writing it. my plan was an immensely ambitious one; in another 10 years' time i should be ready to face the world with all that i had written, and i should not mind if i perished in the flames of that literary explosion-but now, just one slip of the foot, one careless move and my whole plan, my whole life's work had come to grief. and it was not only my life's work but the dying wishes of the millions whose last whisper, last moan, had been cut short on some hut floor in some prison camp. i had not carried out their behests, i had betrayed them had shown myself unworthy of them. it had been given to me, almost alone, to crawl to safety; the hopes once held in all those skulls buried now in common graves in camps had been set on me-and i had collapsed and their hopes had slipped from my hands.
throughout this period i felt a constriction in my chest. there was a sickening tug somewhere near my solar plexus, and
i could not decide whether it was a spiritual sickness or a foreboding of some new grief.
there was an unbearable burning sensation inside me.
i was on fire and nothing helped.
my throat was always dry.
i felt a tension that nothing would relax.
you seek salvation in sleep (as you once did in prison);
let me sleep and sleep and never get up again!
switch off and dream untroubled dreams!
but within a few hours the shutter of the soul falls away and a red hot drill whirls you back to reality.
every day you must find in yourself the will to put one foot in front of the other,
to study,
to work,
to pretend that the soul can and must do these things, although in reality your mind wanders every 5 minutes:
why bother?
what does it matter now?...
in your daily life you seem to be acting a part;
you know that in reality it's all gone pfft.
it is as though the world's clock has stopped.
thoughts of suicide-for the first time and i hope the last....
111.2....at this juncture k. i. chukovsky offered me the shelter of his roof (which took great courage) and this greatly helped and cheered me. i was afraid to live in ryazan: it would be easy to cut off my way out and possible to seize me without fuss or fear of consequences (if need be, the blame for any 'mistake' could be shifted onto overzealous local KGB men). at chukovsky's dacha in peredelkino no such 'mistake ' on the part of operatives was possible. i strolled for hours through dark cloisters of pine trees in k.i.'s grounds with a heart empty of hope, vainly trying to comprehend my situation and, more important, to discover some higher sense in the disaster that had fallen upon me.
an acquaintance with russian history might long ago have discouraged any inclination to look for the hand of justice, or for some higher cosmic meaning, in the tale of russian's woes, but i had learned in my years of imprisonment to sense that guiding hand, to glimpse that bright meaning beyond and above my self and my wishes. i had not always been quick to understand the sudden upsets in my life and often, out of bodily and spiritual weakness, had seen in them the very opposite of their true meaning and their far off purpose. later the true significance of what had happened would inevitably become clear to me, and i would be numb with surprise. i have done many things in my life that conflicted with the great aims i had set myself-and something has always set me on the true path again. i have become so used to this, come to rely on it so much, that the only task i need set myself is to interpret as clearly and quickly as i can each major event in my life.
(v.v ivanov came to the same conclusion, though life supplied him with quite different material to think about. he puts it like this;
many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it aright.
more often than not it is given to us in cryptic form and
when we fail to decipher it, we despair because our lives seem meaningless.
the secret of a great life is often a man's success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him
understanding them and so
learning to walk in the true path.)
note:
-my father brainwashed me by many times saying to me as a child and a young man that the greatest calling was that an evangelist or pastor.
-if it was brainwashing i thank God for it.
-i graduated seminary with mounds of biblical knowledge but had no inner witness that i was His and He was mine.
-i went to grad school and learned more...still lost (as best as i can know..)
-i was a pastor in two small churches in new york over a three year period and got kicked out of both due to challenging things (with a sledgehammer) that were against scripture...still lost.
-i went back to grad school to get certification to teach and learned that it was not me...still lost.
-i worked and worked and worked to meet the needs of a growing family, secretly blaming my wife for the fact that i wasn't 'in the ministry...still lost.
-i, when our children were nearly all out of the house, informed my wife i would pay all the necessities and no more, paid off the house...and lost my wife..still lost.
-i, no He, at some point, found me..i think
-i anguished over abortion for nearly 2 decades before finally going to jail with the idea of dying there..
one person taking their little toy hammer (their life) to beat against the genocide we are living through..
the first night in jail abandoned by God..and fleeing.
-i..no longer want to live here in this horror.
-i ask God to please take me to Him ASAP.
-i have an insatiable urge to speak truth..which is uniformly rejected
-until i go, i hope to actually walk in the path of speaking the truth in love as much as possible, to as many as possible..even if no one listens...
romans 12.6-having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy (speaking God's truth..., let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith ( ...all of His truth that He has revealed in His word.
romans 11.29-..the gifts and calling of god are without repentance. (if you are given the gift of speaking God's truth you will speak it until you speak no more..)
ephesians 4.11f...He gave...evangelists..pastor-teachers
for the perfecting of the saints
for the work of ministry
for the edifying of the body of Christ...v12
till we all come in the unity of the faith
(till we all come in) the knowledge of the Son of God
(till we all come) unto a perfect man
(till we all come) unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ..v13
note: why was Christ hanged on a cross? He spoke the truth.
(till we all are)speaking the truth in love
...that is what the church is...a group of people speaking the truth in love to each other and to those outside.
mark 16.15-preach the gospel to every creature.
this is the path marked out for me and yet i continue to shy away from facing the cross of hatred and death...for sol and anyone, to the degree they speak truth, invites persecution and death. i call myself a christian but i've yet to see whether i really am. may God have mercy on my soul..and help me walk this path, this is the true path for me.
russian proverbs-
-when fate is ready it will tie you hand and foot.
-one man dies of fear, another is brought to life by it.
-if trouble comes make use of it.
-dare is halfway there.
'if we ever become free, it will only be by our own efforts..if the twentieth century has any lesson for mankind, it is we who will teach the west, not the west us. excessive ease and posterity have weakened their will and their reason. (note: not to speak of our sacrificial obedience to God)
130.last...'history moves in unexpected twists and turns. at one time we, the unlucky ones, were put in side (imprisoned) for nothing, for half a word or a quarter of a seditious thought. now the KBG had a whole bouquet of criminal charges to pin on me (according to their legal code, of course), yet this had only untied my hands, given me ideological extraterritoriality!
(immunity from the jurisdiction of a nation ie. such as given diplomats, etc)
half a year after the event (the state releasing several of his works, which they had taken in a search, and starting a slander campaign against him), it had become clear that the unhappy loss of my archives had brought me complete freedom of thought and of belief. i was free not merely to believe in God, although i was a member of the marxist and atheist writer's union, but to profess any political view i chose. for nothing i might think now could be worse and harsher than the angry words in the play i had written in camp. it they weren't going to put me inside for that, they obviously wouldn't put me in for any of the beliefs i might come to hold. i could reply to my correspondents as frankly as i pleased, say whatever i liked in conversation, and none of it could be worse than my play! i could make whatever entries i please in my diaries; no more need to use code and subterfuge. i was approaching an invisible divide beyond which there was no more need for hypocrisy-about anything or to anyone!
(note: i think of my life as a professed christian by largely hypocitical and clandestine rather than speaking and living Jesus' truth boldly and continually wherever i am. what needs to me, like sol, is to come under some sentence of death so that i realize i have nothing to lose by doing it. in the meantime i continue to spindle away precious moments and days that are eternally lost...what a hapless and hopeless creature i am...unless somehow this sentence of death somehow happily is given me. OH WHAT A MAN COULDN'T POSSIBLY ACCOMPLISH IF HE DIDN'T CARE IF HE DIED DOING IT!)
i concluded then, in spring 1966, that i had been given a lengthy reprieve, but i also realized the need for an OVERT and generally accessible work TO PROCLAIM in the meantime that i was alive
(note: for me, 'in Christ'!)
and working, to occupy in the public mind the space that my confiscated works had not been able to invade.
...there were always powerful, compelling reasons (to hurry)-
the need to hide
to disperse copies
to take advantage of someone's help
to set myself free for other tasks-
so that i never released anything without undue hast, i never had time to look for the precise, the definitive words.
...sol debating with those editorial staff at novy mir)..'there were millions of (those who should have been tried) that would never be tried in court, so that it was all the more important for them to be tried by literary and public opinion. if this could not be done, it had no use as literature and did not wish the right'..
..concerning the end of sol's formal relationship with the journal novy mir because they kept wanting to censure and change material he wrote..'i did not put all this in a dramatic announcement because my camp training for bids declarations of intent, bids me act suddenly and silently. all i said ..was that i would not sign the contract just yet an would take the manuscript with me...
139.4...'at one time, when i looked at the writers' union from a distance, i had seen a rabble of sacrilegious hucksters in the temple of literature, worthy only of the scourge. but young grass will spring soundlessly, skirting a pile of steel girders, and if no one tramples it, someday it will even screen them from view. healthy and unsullied stalks were noiselessly overgrowing that diseased and rotting body.
(note:...eternal hope in the principle: the kingdom of heaven is like 3 measures of leaven hid in dough...whether in this organization, a church, a nation, a neighborhood, a family, an individual's heart..)
their growth had become even more rapid after khrushchev's denunciations. when i found myself in the union i was overjoyed to discover many live and freedom loving people there-whether they had been so of old, or had not had time to become corrupt, or were trying to rid themselves of the pollution. (yet another proof that we should never risk wholesale condemnations.)
142.3...(sol decides to become more continually bold)..'my first public appearance was arranged on the spur of the moment: i happened to meet somebody who asked me, as were were walking along, whether i would be willing to go and speak at what he called a 'box number (a classified institute). why not? the arrangement was put into effect quickly, before the security organs could get to hear of it, and the physicists at the kurchatov institute held a meeting attended by 600 people. (true, over a hundred of these were unknown outsiders 'invited by the party committee'.) the security boys were of course present in considerable strength and there were people from the regional and the city party committees.
i went to this first meeting equipped not to speak but simply to read-and this i did for three and a half hours, answering very few questions, and those only curiosity. i read some of the key chapters from the cancer ward, one act of candle in the wind (about the aims of science, to engage the imagination of this scientific audience), and then i got reckless and announced that i would read some chapters (those about to visit to lefortovo ) from first circle-that very same first circle which had been taken into custody by the lubyanka; if they could let the bureaucratic underworld read it, why should not the author read it to the general public? (i had not been the first to start untying the knot of prohibitions: with my prison camp fatalism, i found reassurance in this.)
no, times had changed and so had we! i was not shouted down, not interrupted, my wrists were not handcuffed behind my back, i was not even called in by the KGN to explain myself or be reprimanded. would you believe it-the head of the KBG, semichastny himslef, started replying to me! publicly, not tete a tete. as security chief, he saw his spy rings and subversive networks in europe and asia collapse one after another while he concentrated all his forces on the ideological struggle, especially against the writers, in whom he saw the main danger to the regime. he spoke frequently at ideological conferences and in seminars for agitators. in his speeches that november he expressed indignation at my impudence: i was giving readings from a confiscated novel. and that was all the response i got from the KBG!
every step they took showed me that my last step had not gone far enough.
i now began looking for a chance to reply to semichastny. the news that i had appeared at the kurchatov institute got around and invitations began to arrive in large numbers-some tentative, some precise and pressing and i accepted them all as they came...these institutions seemed to have everything arranged-directors had given their permission, notices had been put up, invitation cards were printed and distributed-but it was not to be! they wer not to be caught napping...we arrived to find a notice pinned up: 'canceled owing to the author's indisposition'.
i realized, too late, that i had been too restrained at the kurchatov institute and i now sought a platform from which to answer semichastny-but all doors were slammed in my face: you've missed your chance, old chap! i wanted to make just one little speech, no more, to give a blunt answer just for once-but i was too late! never in my life have i felt so keenly what it means to be denied freedom of speech.
then suddenly, from the lazarev institute of oriental studies, where a previous meeting had been canceled i received a pressing invitation: it won't be canceled this time! i went..and sure enough it was not..
this time i was there to SPEAK! this time i had come with a prepared speech and all i needed was a peg to hang it on. i read two chapters from cancer ward, and a few dozen written questions were passed to me. taking my cue from one of these, i rapped out all that i had been forbidden to say in the past nine months, rushing through it in case i was chased off the platform. sitting beside me were certain gentlemen from the party committee-there perhaps to switch off the microphone and me, too, if things went awry? but they had no occasion to act. those sitting in the hall were sophisticated humanists and for them things would be sufficiently clear if i trod close to the brink without overstepping it. certain vibrations told me that someone important from the KGB was sitting there-probably with a tape recorder. i fancied that i could see the features of the chief of gendarmes standing out in bold relief among the moldings...but he was in no position to answer back just then-and i could object to him as much as i liked. in a loud voice and with a feeling of triumph and simple joy, i explained myself to the public and paid him back. an insignificant zek (prisoner in the camps) in the past and perhaps in the future too, i might face another trial in camera, and another round of solitary confinement cells, but first i had been granted an audience of half a thousand and freedom to speak!
..'i must explain why, although i used to refuse to talk to reporters or to make public appearances, i have now started giving interviews and am standing here before you. i believe, as before, that the writer's business is to write, not to haunt public platforms, not to keep explaining himself to newspapers. but i have been taught a lesson; the writer exists not to write but to defend himself. that is why i stand before you here-to defend myself! there is a certain organization which has no obvious claim to tutelage over the arts, which you may think has no business at all supervising literature-but which does these things. this organization took away my novel and my archive, which was never intended for publication. even so, i said nothing but went on working quietly. however, they then made use of excerpts from my records taken out of context to launch a campaign of defamation against me, defamation in a new form-from the platform at closed briefing sessions. what can i do about it? only defend myself! so here i am! look: i'm still alive. look: this head-turning it from side to side-is still on my shoulders. yet, without my knowledge and contrary to my wishes, my novel has been published in a restricted edition and is being circulated among the chosen-people like the chief editor of oktybr, vsevolod kochetov. tell me, then, why should i deny myself similar privileges? why should not i, the author, read you chapters from the same novel here, today? (shouts of 'yes'!)
you would have to live through
a long life of slavery,
bowing and scraping to authority from childhood up,
springing to your feet to join with the rest in hypocritical applause,
nodding assent to patent lies,
never entitled to answer back-
all this as slave and citizen,
then later as slave and zek:
hands behind your back!
don't look around!
don't break ranks!-
to appreciate that hour of free speech from a platform with as audience of 500 people, also intoxicated with freedom.
this was perhaps the first time,
the very first time in my life,
that i felt myself,
saw myself,
making history
i chose the chapters on the exposure of informers ('our native land must know who its informers are') and about those puffed up nonentities the mysterious operations officers.
almost every sally scorched the air like gunpowder!
how these people must have yearned for truth!
OH GOD, HOW BADLY THEY WANTED TO HEAR THE TRUTH!
a written question:
explain your sentence in the chapter you have just read about
'stalin not allowing the red cross to contact soviet prisoners of war'.
they had lived through and some of them had taken part in that unhappiest of wars, that all devouring war, and even about that they had not been allowed to know all that they should. the dullest blockhead in the dimmest cell was familiar with it-but here sat half a thousand highly educated humanists and THEY HAD NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO KNOW.
(note: its currently happening in most school rooms in the united states...a portion by state mandate..a growing portion by teacher inclination...we are becoming a nation shielded from truths in every area but especially history..)
by all means, comrads, i'll be glad to explain: it's a story that is unfortunately too little known. acting on stalins's orders, foreign minister molotov refused to sign the hague convention on prisoners of war or to pay contributions to the international red cross on behalf of the soviet union.so our prisoners of war were the only ones in the world who were abandoned by their native land, the only ones doomed to perish of hunger on a diet of german pig swill.
458 sol has written an open letter to congress of the union of soviet writers challenging them...
'i ask the congress to discuss:
-the no longer tolerable oppression to which our literature has been subjected for decades by the censorship, and to which the writers' union can no longer submit...l propose that the congress demand and ensure the abolition of all censorship, open or hidden, of imaginative literature and release publishing houses from the obligation to obtain clearance for every printed page.
-the duties of the union toward its members...i propose that all guarantees provided by the union for the defense of members subjected to slander and unjust persecutions be clearly formulated in paragraph 22 of the union statutes, so that past illegalities will not be repeated.
1. my novel the first circle was taken and published in an unnatural closed edition...concealed from most writers (and the public).
2. my literary archive dating back 15 to 20 years and containing things that were not intended for publication, was taken..now heavily slanted excepts are appearing.
3. a three year campaign of slander
4. my novel cancer ward..cannot be published by chapters
5. the play the love girl and the innocent, accepted in 1962 by the sovremennik theater, has so far not been approved for performance.
6. the screenplay tanks know the truth,
the stage play the light that is in you,
the short stories right hand, what a pity and my series of miniatures cannot find a producer or a publisher.
7. my stories published in novy mir have never been reprinted in book form having been rejected everywhere
8. i have also been prevented from having any other contacts with readers through public readings of my works
thus my work has been completely suppressed, locked away and slanderously misrepresented.
...i am of course confident that i shall fulfill by duty as a writer in all circumstances-from the grave even more successfully and incontrovertibly than in my lifetime. no one can bar the road to truth and to advance its cause i am prepared to accept even death. but may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stay the writer's pen during his life time?
this has never yet added luster to our history.
16 may 1967 A. Solzhenitsyn
..'i am defending myself...hunters know that a wounded beast can be dangerous..
163.2 (speaking to a group of intelligencia in an open forum)
i can find nothing with which to compare the relief i feel after speaking out. (refers to the document above) you have to spend almost half a century in endless compliance, endless silence, then suddenly stand erect and bellow-not just from the rooftops, not just to the marketplace, but for the whole world to hear-to feel, as i do, the soul readmitting a universe made calm and orderly again. no more doubts, no more floundering, no remorse-just the pure light of happiness! this was the way to do it! this was what i should have done long ago! as i look at the world in this bright new glow, something like complacency floods my being, although nothing has yet been achieved.
but why do i say that nothing has been archived? after all, about 100 writers have supported me, 84 in a joint letter to the congress, and fifteen or so in personal telegrams and letters. (i am only counting those of which i have copies.) isn't that amazing? i had never dared to hope for so much! a writers' rebellion! in our country! after stalin's steamroller has lumbered backward and forward, backward and forward over and over again. unhappy writers, artists, scholars, unhappy intelligentsia: you are the most dangerous, the hydraheaded monster they have worked to destroy ever since 1918-to ax and scythe and hound and starve and burn out of existence. surely they've done a thorough job by now..but no-you live again!..you, and not your comfortable brethren the rocketers, the atom men..they, who are so well preserved should now take over your harsh destiny..but no! the rider cannot understand the man without a mount. they will prepare for our destruction by fire, but to make the earth flower it i you who must perish!
commenting on the interview(169.last f) with the heads of the writers union...'that day i experienced for the first time in my life something of which i had previously had only secondhand knowledge-what it feels like to make a successful show of strength. and how well they understand that language! the language alone! that and no other, from the day they are born!
russian proverbs
-love the straight talker not the sweet talker
-friendship does not speak with a honeyed tongue
478.top....'concerning the task of the writer...'in general.. (this) cannot be reduced to defense or criticism of this or that mode of distributing the social product, or to the defense or criticism of this or that form of government (the current soviet understanding of the writer's function). the tasks of the writer are connected with more general and durable questions, such as
the secrets of the human heart and conscience,
the confrontation between life and death,
the triumph over spiritual sorrow,
the laws of humanity over the ages,
laws that were born in the depths of time immemorial and will cease to exist only when the sun ceases to shine.
197.top...'for half a century the whole world has failed to see this very simple fact:
that strength and steadfastness are the only things these people fear;
those who smile and bow to them they crush. (..speak the truth in love..)
204.top...'those who are quick to silence others doom themselves never to know the truth in time!
(he who answers before he hears a matter, it will be counted to him as folly and shame..)
205...'i had no birds eye view to guide me, only a tunneler's intuition..
-sol, at some point, finds that his works are spreading from people close to him who desire to read what he is writing to a wider audience through samizdat
(clandestine system in the USSR by which unpublishable and forbidden literature is reproduced and circulated privately)
which is then discovered by the state.
-as he is learning the strength of speaking truth, sol's next dare is to send several chapters of the cancer ward to russian printer
-4.9.1968 granni (foreign) publishes the cancer ward against sol's wishes
-june.. sol completes the gulag archipeligo (too hot to make public...time is not right)
-8.21-2 occupation of czechoslovakia
september..first circle
222.2...upon the news of czech, sol in agony whether he should make public statement, 'I AM ASHAMED TO BE SOVIET!
...'i understand these ecstasies of despair and i experience them myself.
at such moments i am capable of crying out!
but this is the question to ask:
AM I CRYING OUT AGAINST THE GREATEST EVIL?
cry out just once and perish for it-yes, if you have never seen anything so horrible in all your life.
but i have seen and known many worse things...
why do i not cry out about that?
our past 50 years consists of nothing else.
Yet we are silent. (note: like america is about abortion?)...
...'i held my peace.. (on czech...)
223.2...'i was 50 that december.
how often had my predecessors in the muted years watched in muffled silence as such anniversaries went by;
even close friends had feared to visit them or to write.
but the cordon sanitaire had broken down, the impassable barrier had been breached!
to greet the outlaw, the pariah,
telegrams began winging their way to ryazan a week ahead of the date, followed by letters, most of them sent through the open mails, not clandestinely, a few of them anonymous, most of them signed.
in the lst few days the post office had been sending 50 or even 70 telegrams at a time, and on the day itself there were several such deliveries!
altogether there were more than 500 telegrams and perhaps 200 letters signed by some 1500 fearless individuals, who had only occasionally camouflaged themselves..a few..
-'may God help you to keep on just as you are.
-'each man chooses his way through life and i believe that you will not depart from your chosen path...
i rejoice that our generation's sufferings have at least produced such sons.
-please do not lay down your pen...please believe that not all of us are capable of loving only the dead.
-in the future as in the past, may you be the author only of works which no one need be ashamed to sign.
-you are my conscience.
-to live at the same time as you is both pain and happiness.
-praise God, you will not have to hear an insincere, hypocritical syllable on this day..
-we read your books on cigarette papers, which makes them all the more precious to us.
if russia is paying dearly for her great sins, it is surely for her great sufferings and so that shame may not utterly demoralize us.
that you have been sent to her...
-when i am not sure how to behave at work, i think about your deeds...
in moments of despondency, i think about your life.
-face to face with my conscience, it is a bitter thing to confess that i am silent
though silence is no longer possible...
-in you the dumbstruck have found their voice.
i can think of no writer so long awaited and so solely needed as you.
where the word has not perished, the future is safe.
your bitter books both wound and heal the soul.
you have restored the russian literature its thunderous power. lydia chukovskaya (a writer soon to be persecuted)
-may you live another 50 years and may your talent lose none of its splendid strength.
ALL ELSE PASSES; ONLY THE TRUTH WILL REMAIN...
ever yours, tvardovsky
let me scorn mock modesty and admit that i held my head high that week.
gratitude had caught up with me in my own lifetime..
on the eleventh, while reading telegrams in bundles..i found a reply phrasing itself
and gradually taking definitive shape,
though there was nowhere to send it,,
except samizdat..
my sole dream is to justify the hopes of the russian reading public.
232..'they knew how to do one thing only:
deftly field rebukes from above and sling them at others lower down..
247.2..we can pick out, list and evaluate certain thoughts in this and other, related articles in
molodaya gvardia that we should hardly expect to see in a soviet publication.
1. more preference for 'desert fathers', 'spiritual warriors' and the Old Believers
as against the revolutionary democrats..from chernyshevsky to kerensky. (i must say that i agree.)
6. the land is eternal and vitally necessary:
a life divorced from the land is no life. (yes..as dostoyevsky put it in diary of a writer, july-august 1876:
'if you want man to be reborn and changed for the better,
endow him with land!
there is something sacramental about the land...
a nation can only be born and rise to maturity on the land,
on the soil in which grain and trees grow. (note: oh may many be called away from 'city-ease' back to the land!)
7. the village is the stronghold of our native traditions. (the village has been murdered..)
8. the merchant class, too, was a vivid manifestation of the russian national spirit. (yes, no less so than the peasantry. and there was no higher concentration of the nation's energies.)
9. it is from popular speech that poetry draws its nourishment. (this is my belief too.
11. young people (note: in america now, most all) in our country are smothered by emasculated language, which lays waste all thought and feeling
by the TIME WASTING frivolities of TELEVISION (note: amen.)..(and by sport..and by political indoctrination.)
in the chapter 'asphyxiation' speaking of the endless defense of marxism and the endless attack on land, village and religion (..and anything else that challenged it.)in the soviet union,
sol touches on the hysteria to NOT deal with all the problems that arise from this.
252.2..'you see how in our country and in our time there is not a single problem
(and there are thousands of them pressed together in a twisted mass)
of which we can speak lucidly, simply, without confusion.
neither of the disputant journals had set out its thoughts clearly,
both had slicked over them with communist spit and verbiage.
484/document 11 sol's record of the meeting of the ryazan writers'organization in which he was voted out of the soviet writers union
sol is given 10 minutes to talk..
sol..'i regret that no shorthand minute is being made of our meeting and that a careful record is not being kept. yet it may have some interest not just tomorrow or in a week's time, but even later...
as regards the accusations of a general character, i still fail to understand what kind of 'reply' people expect me to make-what must i reply to?..i have nothing to say..to that anonymous article.
..generally, what happens with my writings is this:
if i myself disown some work or other and wish that it did not exist-s with the feast of the victors- they make a point of talking about it and 'interpreting' it for all they are worth.
if, however, i press for my writings to be published, as, for instance, cancer ward or the first circle, they are hidden away and nothing is said about them.
you say i ought to 'reply' to the secretariat? but i have given them a reply already to all the questions put to me, whereas the secretariat has not replied to a single one of mine. i have received no real reply to my letter to the secretariat, in which there was a great deal both on general and on personal matters.
exactly the same procedure was adopted in respect to cancer ward. as far back as september 1967 i insistently warned the secretariat of the danger that the book might appear in the west..i urged them to give permission for publication her..but the secretariat went on waiting.when, in the spring of 1968, signs began to appear that at any moment now it would be printed in the west, i sent letters to literaturnaya gazeta, le monde and l'unita, in which i forbade the printing of cancer ward and denied all rights to western publishers. ..the letter to le monde..was not allowed out. the letter to l'unita..was taken..by the customs...the literaturnaya gazeta still went on waiting!...why did the lt. hold up...for 9 weeks? the calculation is obvious:
let cancer ward appear in the west, then it will be possible to damn it and keep it from the soviet reader...
chairman baranova..your time is up-ten minutes.
sol..how can you insist on a time limit in this case? it's a matter of life and death.
bar..but we can't allow you more-there's a time limit.
sol insists on his plea. various members intervene.
bar...how much longer do you want?
sol..i have a lot i need to say. give me another ten minutes at least.(10 granted)
sol...(speeding up still further his already fast delivery)..i made an application to the ministry of communications..asking them to put an end to the postal theft of my correspondence-
nondelivery or holdup of letters, telegrams, packets, especially those from abroad..
but what is one to do if the soviet WU secretariat itself is abetting these robberies? after all, the secretariat hasn't passed on to me a single letter or telegram from the hep..for my fiftieth birthday..
the whole of my correspondence is closely inspected ...
to come now to the accusation that i paint reality too black: ..it works out this way:
what matters is not what we do but what people will say about it.
and so that they cannot say anything bad, we'll keep our mouths shut about all that goes on....
the man who is always rosily enraptured is-contrary to appearances-indifferent to his native land.
...people want to conceal, to forget the crimes committed under stalin, to avoid mentioning them.
'is there any point in recalling the past?
was the question put to lev tolstoy by his biographer,
'if i had a vile disease and i were cured and cleansed of it, i would always be happy to talk about it. i would make no mention of it only if i were still suffering and getting worse and i wanted to deceive myself. we are sick-and always no more and no less sick than before. the form of the sickness has changed but it is still the same disease; only it is called by a different name...the disease that we are suffering from is the disease of killing people.
(note: same disease america now has.)
if we recall the past and look it straight in the face, the violence we are now committing will also be revealed.
no! we shall not succeed indefinitely in keeping silent about stalin's crimes, in going against the truth. the millions of people who suffered from these crimes cemand that they be brought to light. it would be a good idea, too, to reflect of the moral effect concealment of these crimes may have on the younger generation. it means the corruption of still more millions. the growing generation of young people are no fools; they know full well that millions of crimes were committed and that nobody tals about them-that they are carefully hushed up. what is there, then, to restrain anyone of uss from taking a hand in other acts of injustice? these, too, will be carefully hushed up.
it only remains for me to say that i retract not one word, not one letter of what i wrote to the writers' union...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)