A Travel Bag of Memories: “Solzhenitsyn and American Culture”

Would he still support Putin? After all, before the fall of the USSR, he called on Russia to "renounce all mad fantasies of foreign conquest".

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Nayeli Riano

Such are the power and relevance of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s words, that we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not engage with his memories in an effort to connect them with our own, transforming them into something new. And, happily, this is what the authors of “Solzhenitsyn and American Culture” do.

“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday.”[*]

Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, edited by David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson (400 pages, Notre Dame Press, 2020)

Memory is arguably the strongest faculty of the best writers. To understand memory in all of its dimensions is a task for a lifetime, since it requires looking not only to the past but also to the future. Contradictory as this previous statement might seem, memory is hardly ever stagnant. We convey it, for example, in art—be it literature, painting, or song—meaning that memory is never meant to be kept to oneself: it is meant to be a force for good and for change through the pain, sorrow, and strife that necessarily dwells in it, which meant to be shared. Memory may, of course, be filled with moments of happiness, but this is typically not the memory that moves writers. For if life were only happiness, we would never be led to contemplate the significance of our misfortunes within a wider picture; we would never have a reason to have faith.

Though memory is unique to the experience of each individual, it is also the greatest evidence we have as a human race for the existence of what we might call the human experience, a collective reality that ties us all together. For this reason, memory has hardly ever been self-contained. It is remade and incorporated into living tradition as the way through which peoples of different cultures, places, and traditions sustain themselves through the ages with the passing down of stories. It goes without saying that these “stories” are never fictional, regardless of their contents, because they demonstrate how we makes sense of the world.

The epigraph above conveys these sentiments. It was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. Notice how he describes memory as “bitter seeds” that might result in something fruitful once they “sprout” and “grow.” As Solzhenitsyn expresses it, the use of memory is meant to transform the author, the readers, and the contents of the memory itself. Memory is inherently transformative, then, and we can look no further than Solzhenitsyn’s writings to demonstrate this fact. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of those writers whom we could quote at-length, saying no more about him, and his words alone would captivate people through their perspicacity and heartfelt emotion, both qualities of which are the result of his use of memory in his writings. Such are the power and relevance of his words, moreover, that we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not engage with his memories and their subject manner in an effort to connect them with our own, transforming them into something new.

The impressive lineup of authors who contribute to a collection of essays celebrating the Russian writer in Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West achieve precisely this task. Nearly all of the authors featured in this work will be familiar to readers of this journal, and their collaboration on the topic of the Solzhenitsyn’s impact on American and Western culture should speak highly of Solzhenitsyn’s importance today. Not only this, but his appeal as a spiritual and cultural interlocutor of our age for some of the most thoughtful voices in contemporary academia should also be a reason to read the book. To be a professor in the humanities, after all, ideally entails a desire to explore those questions most deeply connected to our humanity: questions about religion, good and evil, suffering, love, etc. In this sense, the contributors to this volume engage with a worthy thinker who grappled with these very questions. It goes without saying that Solzhenitsyn, read well, is much more than a critic of communism. Still, parsing out all of the elements in his thought is no easy task, but the authors all meet the challenge.

The book is versatile. It can be of interest to readers who are familiar with Solzhenitsyn’s work and would like to know more about his impact on Western culture; it can also be of interest to readers who are not familiar with Solzhenitsyn and would like a reason to read him. A strength of the book is that one feels a desire to reengage (or engage) with Solzhenitsyn. Now, rather than provide a review of each essay in the volume, I think it is better to provide some general comments about its contents and—if I may—some of my own thoughts on Solzhenitsyn to encourage reading this book for the important commentary it provides on this historic thinker. But first, some thematic structure: The book is divided into five parts: Solzhenitsyn and Russian Culture; Solzhenitsyn and Orthodoxy; Solzhenitsyn and the Writers; Solzhenitsyn and the Politicians; and Beyond Solzhenitsyn: Russian Writers and American Readers. Each part has about four to five essays. Each essay is different in its topic, to be sure, but this does not result in a disjointed reading. The essays demonstrate each author’s genuine engagement with Solzhenitsyn’s thought, and it is interesting to see how different elements of Solzhenitsyn’s writings appeal to different contributors.

Another common thread throughout the essays is that the authors treat Solzhenitsyn as a thinker in his own right, not just as a writer. His work is treated as serious commentary with important implications for our day, as has already been mentioned. That said, treating Solzhenitsyn as a thinker does not detract at any moment from his literary talent—something which all of the authors seem to recognize. Most of the engagement with Solzhenitsyn is mainly through literary analysis, moreover, which to my mind is the best way to engage with him. There is something to be said for those thinkers, like Solzhenitsyn, who can relay their universalizing messages through the power of emotion, as opposed to rational argumentation, and whose use of emotion is constructive, aimed at a unifying purpose. Emotion has become a tool for subjective narration to push a particular political message, but it should, instead, serve as a sample of greater and general realities about the human condition. Thus, no higher compliment can be given to someone than to call him a writer and to describe his work as literary: it is the mark of work that has become truly universal by transcending personal, national, or cultural scopes by incorporating these very experiences into a wider message that resonates with everyone, from all walks of life.

Apart from the obvious themes of Solzhenitsyn and Russian literature, two themes stand out in the work: religious faith and national identity. With regard to the first, Solzhenitsyn demonstrates the role of faith as something meant to bring us together through our mutual obligations to one another. He reminds us, moreover, about what matters most in earthly life and the end towards which it should be aimed. Several authors in this volume do a wonderful job at describing the influence that Orthodoxy had on Solzhenitsyn through biographical essays as well as essays that discuss communism’s effects on the soul. The many essays in this volume that discuss the role of faith in Solzhenitsyn’s writings are all worth reading, and the overall treatment of religion and faith in this book is excellent. Then there is the theme of national identity; more specifically, this notion about the Russian “soul.”

To speak about the “soul” of a nation is derided nowadays. Yet, nations that have known strife in their recent histories would understand full well what it means to say that a nation has a soul—Russia surely being an example. To attribute a soul to a nation might appear to be a sloppy act of anthropomorphizing something for the purposes of rhetorical effect. This is however not the case. What is a soul, if not an entity that encapsulates the very essence or being of a person? Moreover, what is a person, if not an entity that possesses individuality alongside humanity? The latter is what connects us to our fellow man. This connection grows outward, eventually to all human kind, but given our (initial) limitations in geographic and cultural experience, we form that first non-familial, non-direct bond with the people we call our countrymen. There is no such thing as a pure cosmopolitan citizen, after all. If we are to say there is a notion of humanity, then it must be possible to speak about the soul of a nation, through which it is possible to connect with the people of cultures and places different from our own. But if there is a possibility to speak of a nation’s soul, then we also have to explain what it is. Here, again, Solzhenitsyn’s emphasis on memory proves helpful.

To speak about a nation’s soul is to say that a people in a given place share a culture and history that binds them together in their collective memory. Indeed, the soul of a nation is its memory, the location of which is typically found in its art, music, and literature—creations that contain within them folk traditions, crafts, and emotions. Together, these creations relay how a people of a given nation relate to each other, to the world at large, and, if only for a little longer, to their God. It is no surprise, then, that memory is such a prevalent concept in Solzhenitsyn’s writings, for it conveys this paradox wherein a nation, through its history, politics, and culture, embraces a form of nationalism that still seeks universalism through its collective experience and religious faith. Even in the works of an author best known for relaying the Russian experience, there is emphasis for universality; but it is a universality that requires a connection to our fellow man that is illuminated by a brotherly love which only religious faith can spark. This is perhaps Solzhenitsyn’s most poignant message.

The authors of this work are not unaware of the historic tensions between the “West” and Russian, moreover. There is a distinction to be made, however, between the tainted politics of a country that leads it down a dark path for some time—a feature to which all of our nations have arguably been subject—and a nation’s existential journey, expressed through its art. From the outset, the authors make clear that the traditional dichotomy drawn between these two regions ignores the cultural and spiritual continuity that connects them. It is a strong premise that is built on the notion that a nation’s art transcends cultural boundaries. Although there are significant differences between these two regions—and one can ask central and eastern European nations about just how compatible Russia is with Western Europe to get at this tension—some connections might be found through art. In the case of this book, Russian literature is what binds the two regions together, though we can of course say the same thing about Western European literature’s impact on Russia.

What the authors see in Russian literature (Solzhenitsyn’s writings in particular) that serves as a supplement to the West, moreover, lies in its criticism of “post-enlightenment modernity,” comprised of radical individualism, relativism, and secularism. The extent to which Solzhenitsyn might provide a solution—though this would be putting it too simply—to these modern phenomena is not straightforward, however. To be sure, Solzhenitsyn’s writings provided a critique of liberalism’s excesses before the topic became popular. Indeed, prevalent throughout several of the essays are the “measured” critiques that Solzhenitsyn leveled against liberalism by rethinking topics like liberty, patriotism, and faith. That said, Solzhenitsyn was a product of his time and lived a challenging life that many of us would fail to endure. The idea of the ennoblement of souls through adversity is true, but our condition is not yet one of adversity, though it is one of challenge.

Solzhenitsyn’s message is one of hope, and his emphasis on religious faith and love is the source of this hope. Here, he provides a strong retort not just against post-enlightenment modernity or contemporary liberalism, but also against their critics who would meet this challenge with anything but faith (trust) and love. Reading Solzhenitsyn demonstrates, to my mind, how the solution to the challenge we are facing is less reactionary (how are we fighting against this?) and more sacred (what are we offering? and how is it better?).

To close, Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, is a worthwhile read. The essays are about much more than The Gulag Archipelago, and the book serves as a good primer for readers interested in Russian literature looking to broaden their knowledge on the subject. Apart from other well-known writers in Russian history, such as Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the essays introduce readers to other Russian writers and thinkers like Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Bakunin, Vladimir Solovyov, Boris Pasternak, and Vassily Grossman, to name a few. Apart from my brief discussions on religious faith and national identity, the importance of truth against ideology is another prevalent theme in the book that is explored well. The essays are scholarly, furthermore, but they are not filled with academic jargon, nor do the historic analyses that help us to contextualize Solzhenitsyn’s words ever overshadow their literary value.

The authors’ collective emphasis on literature, above all, is a strength that cannot be understated. For the problems of modern society, political analysis alone will never suffice. As it has been said by multiple thinkers from multiple places; ours is a collective spiritual challenge, which means it can only be answered through those mediums that best convey faith through the emotion inherent in it. Art and literature convey this emotion because they are forms of memory. Solzhenitsyn left us his memories through a collection of works that merit continued study, and the authors who engage with him in this book demonstrate the benefits of such an undertaking since it creates for us a new source of commentary through which to value him and his literary contributions.

[*] Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn and Thomas P Whitney, Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, the: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2007), 516.