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...
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