Solzhenitsyn's Religion

by Niels C. Nielsen Jr.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous exile from the Soviet Union, is not only one of the most famous writers living in the world today, he is also the foremost symbol of resistance to oppression in the Communist homeland. This fascinating book deals with a hitherto unsuspected dimension of Solzhenitsyn the man, his apparently deep and personal Christian faith. It includes as a chapter the first publication in English of Solzhenitsyn's long and astonishing letter to the Third Council of the Russian Church Abroad in which the great Russian writer passionately indicts the Communist parties for their brutal persecution of Christians.

Dr. Nielsen, a man with personal ties and experiences in the Eastern European countries heavily influenced by Solzhenitsyn's views, has examined Solzhenitsyn's life, writings, and statements in documented detail. He presents a portrait of the great Russian which shows the powerful and surprising influence of Solzhenitsyn's own personal and unique faith. This is not the usual religious portrait; the circumstances of Solzhenitsyn's life, his imprisonment and the conditions under which he has lived have combined to forge in an agonized crucible a terribly human understanding of the Will of God. Reading this account, one can understand Solzhenitsyn's implacable resistance to oppression, his moving compassion, his poignant love for his homeland.

This is not the Russia of the shining Sputniks or the Red Square parades; it is the somber but heroic homeland of the ones who have lost everything except the ultimate inner source of strength - in Solzhenitsyn's case, God.

164 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

p. 12: His historical novel, August 1914, borrows techniques learned from the American writer, John Dos Passos. He is also indebted to Ernest Hemingway whom he commends for terseness of style, frankness, and contempt for falsehood, although Solzhenitsyn does not admire him greatly. Solzhenitsyn does not compose novels with conventional main characters and minor characters, plots and subplots. More modernistically, he employs a series of interrelated episodes which are united by ideological content as well as story.

p. 14: In his Nobel Prize lecture, S warned: “Let us not forget that violence does not and cannot exist by itself; it is invariably intertwined with the lie. They are linked in the most intimate, most organic and profound fashion: violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle.”

p. 21: One of the worst features of the camps is that criminals and political offenders are mixed together promiscuously. Stalin designated the former as “social allies” and the latter as “social enemies.”

p. 29: Stalin, defining socialist realism in 1932, insisted that writers portray the utopian Communist society of the future. They were to write only the “typical” and “uplifting.”

p. 40: Solzhenitsyn and Philosophy: A minimum definition of terms can help to identify S’s position:

Naturalism (nature only) allows but a single reality. Who is man on such a view? He is an animal, a product of temporal processes. What is the goal of his life? It is pleasure and – most of all – survival in this world.

Humanism (nature and man) distinguishes the human person more drastically from his environment. Characterized by freedom and reason, man seeks to know abiding truth. He has a dignity which sets him off from all other animals and things.

Theism (nature, man, and God) recognizes the physical and human realms and explains them in the purposes of God their creator. The creature’s destiny is not simply in this world. His responsibility is not only to himself – or even humanity in general.

S as a Theist – As a theist, S espouses three distinct realities: nature, man, and God …Communist dialectical materialism is a kind of naturalism. The claim that reality is limited to this level can be found throughout the history of thought.

p. 65: Most Russian intellectuals were estranged from religion before the Revolution. Berdiaev has described them as a unique group from a variety of backgrounds, not a single class.

p. 116: Such mass adulation was part of the Stalin cult. S reports how one party secretary had been replaced by another during one of the purges in the Moscow district. Under the leadership of the new functionary, an ovation had been begun for Stalin in a large assembly. It continued, five, eight, more than ten minutes. No one had the courage to break off the applause. Finally the head of a paper factory who was on the platform stopped clapping. At once, all the ovation ceased. The same night the factory chief was arrested and sentenced to ten years, of course, on the pretext of a different offense. “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding,” his interrogator reminded him, after sentence had been passed.

p. 124: He is deeply Russian, and this is reflected in his faith. His sentiments are those of a pre-1848 nationalist, not exclusive or chauvinistic, but loyal. ….. S’s critique is directed against a rootless, secular view of man’s life. So-called moderns too often view freedom as simply negative, the absence of restraint. Positive affirmation requires goals, direction, support in reality.

p. 125: In imprisonment, he concluded that the dividing line between good and evil is not between states or parties, but in the human heart. There is good and evil in the same heart. Religions fight the evil that exists in all men.

p. 128: The Orthodox Church was a part of Tsardom; for Tolstoy, this had little or nothing to do with the religion of Jesus. Unlike Tolstoy, S was a soldier and still preserves a sense of patriotic duty from his military experience. He is not prepared to retreat into innerliness: the pressures are too great to allow him to do so. His enemies charge that he is a reactionary, attempting to identify him with the old regime.

p. 130: Solzhenitsyn’s God: [Alexander] Schmemann emphasizes that for S, the roots of defeat are not where Tolstoy or Dostoevsky would have put them. Tolstoy’s sense of love, fairness and kindness is not unacknowledged any more than Dostoyevsky’s fear that the demon of revolution can bring about something even worse. It is the myth of pseudo-messianism and pseudo-mysticism which S resists as a deceit.

p. 134: S believes that there is a threshold over which, having passed, men cannot return. Sin destroys this knowledge, and they are given over to it, as in the case of Stalin. In the past great sinners such as Shakespeare’s Iago knew their wickedness. Now, moderns have an ideology which blinds them to sin. Marx’s belief that human nature would be reformed when the abuse of religion is restrained is itself a myth, disproved by Stalinism. The so-called natural world is tooth and claw – it is fallen. Human nature is much more morally mixed than he supposed, in short, it needs redemption.

p. 140: He does not seem to have been a Christian at the time of his release. However, by the time of the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his first novel, he had come to explicit Christian belief.