Solzhenitsyn and American Culture

The Russian Soul in the West

David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780268108267, 9780268102654
• eBook ISBN: 9780268108274
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

These essays will interest readers familiar with the work of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and are a great starting point for those eager for an introduction to the great Russian's work.

When people think of Russia today, they tend to gravitate toward images of Soviet domination or, more recently, Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. The reality, however, is that, despite Russia's political failures, its rich history of culture, religion, and philosophical reflection—even during the darkest days of the Gulag—have been a deposit of wisdom for American artists, religious thinkers, and political philosophers probing what it means to be human in America. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stands out as the key figure in this conversation, as both a Russian literary giant and an exile from Russia living in America for two decades. This anthology reconsiders Solzhenitsyn's work from a variety of perspectives—his faith, his politics, and the influences and context of his literature—to provide a prophetic vision for our current national confusion over universal ideals.

In Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson have collected essays from the foremost scholars and thinkers of comparative studies who have been tracking what Americans have borrowed and learned from Solzhenitsyn and his fellow Russians. The book offers a consideration of what we have in common—the truth, goodness, and beauty America has drawn from Russian culture and from masters such as Solzhenitsyn—and will suggest to readers what we can still learn and what we must preserve. The last section expands the book's theme and reach by examining the impact of other notable Russian authors, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Gogol.

Contributors: David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Nathan Nielson, Eugene Vodolazkin, David Walsh, Matthew Lee Miller, Ralph C. Wood, Gary Saul Morson, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Micah Mattix, Joseph Pearce, James F. Pontuso, Daniel J. Mahoney, William Jason Wallace, Lee Trepanier, Peter Leithart, Dale Peterson, Julianna Leachman, Walter G. Moss, and Jacob Howland.

PART ONE

Solzhenitsyn and Russian Culture

ONE

The Universal Russian Soul

NATHAN NIELSON

When Russia looks deep into itself, it can’t help but see the rest of the world.

A paradox lies at the center of the Russian character. Its history and politics embrace nationalism, but its culture and spirituality seek universalism. The deeper it burrows into its soul, the further it looks outward. When the defenses go down and Russia opens its heart, it finds its reach cannot fit within its own borders.

The world has always been its concern.

In the post–Cold War era of Vladimir Putin, Russia is turning inward. As the fabric of purpose and identity continues to fray among Western nations, the Russian people have set out to consolidate their culture and revive the national spirit. The West seems less confident in its culture and political institutions as the pressures of multiculturalism challenge its social fabric. The European Union is less able to keep its fold. Britain and many others are beginning to go their own way. The wearing of the West’s familiar lines of identity is not bringing more solidarity and peace, but less. The religious foundations of these cultures have given way to a regime of morality based on human rights. Secular ethics are crucial to a pluralistic society, but they cannot replace the old covenantal relationships inherent in the Abrahamic faiths.

Russia is watching this scene with interest, and many do not like what they see. Instead of following this path, the nation wants to return to its old self, to the familiar pattern of a strong Russian fatherland. They tend to believe that the values of autocracy, people, and culture promise a better path than the multiculturalism and liberalism of the West.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has reeled to find its bearings and regain its pride and place in the world. Given the current trajectory toward an independent identity and culture, Russia is becoming more introspective and protective. But hidden beneath contemporary Russian nationalism is an old aspiration to embrace all humanity. Rekindling it will soften Russia’s presence on the world stage. It is the generosity embedded in this universalism that could help lead Russia out of its “time of troubles” and put it on a more peaceful footing with Europe and the United States. Contrary to the dictates of realpolitik, diverting interests away from the self has a strange way of redounding to the benefit of the self.

The current Russian introspection comes with a cost. The West gets nervous when Russia ponders its destiny and previous stature in the world. The result is a tenser world stage. Suspicion ensues, grievances air, and blame gets multiplied on many fronts.

Russia is misunderstood. And the more it is misunderstood, the more defiant it becomes. The West does not try to comprehend Russia on its own terms. Western idealists often look down on what they see as a self-interested, brutish power player. And with this political lens alone, the West will not understand the deeper motivations and experience of the Russian people. The West struggles to imagine universalist ideals different from its own values of individualism and expression. More choices do not necessarily mean more freedom. To be sure, Russians long for more political and civil freedoms. But they also have a different relationship with them. They do not want Western-style freedom, capitalism, and military intervention to dissipate their national solidarity.

In the name of sobornost—the Russian word for social and spiritual unity—Russia is now seeking to limit foreign influence on political and cultural life. New laws curtail NGOs that accept foreign funding. Speech that offends religious sensibilities can result in jail time. State-owned media cast suspicions at Western governments. Outside churches are scarcely welcome. Beleaguered by sanctions and international reprimand, Russians fear economic and military encirclement by a secular Euro-Atlantic sphere.

Does Russia have reason to be skeptical and protective? A brief glance at history might offer some explanations. More than most countries, Russia has been invaded by foreign powers who, in full-scale military operations, were bent on overrunning and absorbing the society. In 1812, Napoleon led the Grand Armée, composed of nearly seven hundred thousand soldiers from thirteen European countries, into the heart of Russia. He was intent on transforming the motherland’s backward ways and replacing them with the new thinking and freedoms of the Enlightenment. After a series of battles, the army captured Moscow and lingered until it caught on fire. But the evacuation and the cold proved too much for Napoleon. The Russian spirit outlasted the invaders.

In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Russia. The goal was to seize the vast agricultural richness of Soviet territory, enslave the Slavs to fund the war effort, and exploit the oil reserves of the Caucasus. Hitler disparaged Russia as inferior and outdated, insulting its people, culture, and art. The Wehrmacht rolled across Ukraine and Russia, penetrating to within sight of the Kremlin. But, in a familiar story, the cold of winter stopped them. The Russians fought back and eventually expelled them in a war of attrition.

An oft-forgotten tragedy in this war is the siege of Leningrad. With the help of Finnish troops, the German army circled the city and prevented any food or supplies from entering. This lasted two and a half years. The result was the starvation of over a million soldiers and civilians. Even cannibalism occurred. By most measures it is the deadliest siege in world history.¹ To this day the tragedy has gruesome effects on the mentality of the Russian population. There are people still living who endured and remember it.

The Mongol invasion of Russia in the 1200s had a much deeper impact. But like all invasions, this yoke came to an end, after lasting for more than two centuries. It broke up the people of ancient Rus’ and produced devastating effects on the psyche and personality of the people. There is an old Russian saying that goes something like this: “If you scratch the skin of a Russian, out plops a Tartar.” One interpretation of this saying is that through rape and pillage, Tartar cruelty merged into the Russian bloodstream in a way that makes it difficult for Russians to separate themselves from it. Russian rulers subsequently acquired many of the despotic ways of governing that the Mongols displayed.

Yet Russia has never been conquered. It has been the graveyard of tyrants. Thwarting invasions is in the country’s genetic makeup.

Russia has lived out an existential threat for much of its history. The images and hardships of those invasions still haunt its collective memory and inform its politics. But tragically, Russia responded to these invasions with invasions of its own. It went from victim to aggressive empire in the course of a few centuries. This history cannot help but make a people guarded. It has contributed to the current regime’s wariness of the color revolutions in its own neighborhood. The people now see themselves surrounded by a decadent Western culture that would dilute their national character into a bland, rudderless liberalism.

Ever since Peter the Great began to modernize his country in the early 1700s, Russia has been seeking its true identity. That “window to Europe” seemed to bring in more than it let out. Vacillating between East and West, Russians have wondered whether to orient toward Europe or Asia or just be content in the middle. The debate heated up in the nineteenth century, pitting home-loving Slavophiles against cosmopolitan Westernizers. But the country’s best thinkers emerged from this tension with a moral vision—Russia’s greatness lies in its simple goodness and spiritual capacity to love all humankind.

The glory of the motherland is a wonder to behold—its literature, art, music, and science are among the treasures of the earth. The great spirit of the people bursts through its poems, novels, plays, and operas. And the best of human conscience shines through the witness of its prison writing.

Russia’s brand of universalism is more spiritual than political. It assumes a literary quality. Even though the Russian regime’s stance on foreign relations is largely based on realpolitik, deeper considerations such as religion, history, culture, and identity also play an important role in the formation of Russian life.

For Russians, literature has acted as a kind of second government, and in some ways a second church. Czarism and Soviet communism had to contend with the conscience and prophetic insight of writers who wielded their pens in the search for truth, both political and spiritual. This same literature acquired a kind of religious authority, inspiring mighty visions of human flourishing, challenges to power, and stories of sin and redemption. It therefore makes sense that this literature would linger as a source of inspiration and guidance. The keenest of Russian minds were not content to articulate a mere national blessedness, but also called for a universal solidarity.

These writers show that deep down, the best of the Russian soul knows that history, race, and sectarianism—as powerful and meaningful as they are—are not enough to bind a country together. If left to themselves, these characteristics can consume each other because they are pointed inward. Unity does require inwardness, but it also relies on a generousness of spirit to the stranger—the other—who will always be with us.

But this universal vision did not always prevail. Other visions of nationalism, parochialism, realism, socialism, and ethnic superiority had their day in the sun too. Universalism went dormant for a time, but the strength of its logic and feeling kept resurfacing from time to time.

The warmth of the Russian soul still speaks through its visionary writers and thinkers. They wrestled with the “accursed questions” of human existence—Why do we suffer? How do we find beauty? What is the cost of freedom? Where is our redemption?—and came out of the struggle on the side of harmony and wholeness. We gaze at the universe through the Russian navel.

The father of Russian literature is Alexander Pushkin. In poems, novels, and plays he articulated the diverse Russian personality. His phrase “there is no truth where there is no love”² characterizes the moral aspirations of his people. Fyodor Dostoevsky praised the poet’s ability to identify with strangers: “There had never been a poet with universal sympathy like Pushkin’s. And it is not his sympathy alone, but his amazing profundity, the reincarnation of his spirit in the spirit of foreign nations.”³

In many of his poems, Pushkin displays a universal sympathy for the victims of raw human power and injustice. In “The Upas Tree,” a slave is sent to a faraway land to collect poison from an exotic tree. He returns but dies, without reward or recognition, upon delivering it to his master. The master in turn dips his arrows in the poison and wreaks havoc on his neighbors, near and far. In the words of Russian scholar John Bayley, “Master, slave, and poison, are alike under the destiny of power.”⁴

In “The Bronze Horseman,” a hapless, solitary man named Yevgeny comes up against the statue of Peter the Great. The city he created on the banks of the Neva River has flooded and destroyed everything the young man cares about. After cursing the tsar, Yevgeny sees the statue come to life and flees its chase through the streets of the city. He ends up dead in the waters. Though some interpret this power as necessary to build civilization, Pushkin can also be seen as pointing to the all-powerful reach of the state. In this he sympathizes with the little man in the face of modernizing power.

Nikolai Gogol, writer of Russian and Ukrainian epics, expressed the universal aspiration in the voice of Cossack folk hero Taras Bulba: “To love as the Russian soul loves, is to love not with the mind or anything else, but with all that God has given, all that is within you.”⁵

Fyodor Dostoevsky embodies this expansiveness perhaps more dramatically than any other Russian writer. Though a fierce nationalist his entire life, the novelist stretched outward in a June 1880 speech just months before he died. His Christian vision culminated not in national might but in a call to befriend the human family: “To become a true Russian, to become fully Russian, and you should remember this, means only to become the brother of all men, to become, if you will, a universal man.”⁶

The true path of Russia leads through the gate of the heart. “Our destiny is universality,” he insisted, “won not by the sword, but by the strength of brotherhood and our fraternal aspiration to reunite mankind.”⁷ Dostoevsky turned the usual formula of statecraft on its head—success comes from affinity, not advantage. The nobleness of Russia is not for Russia alone; it is for everybody.

However alluring the idea of nationalism was for Dostoevsky, it never could hold complete sway over his heart and mind. In A Writer’s Diary, he expressed a philosophy that surpasses any nation: “Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other ‘higher’ ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.”⁸ Here he alludes to the needs of the human soul, not just the Russian soul.

In his novel The Idiot, Dostoevsky puts in the mouth of a character named Prince Myshkin a phrase that would ring through the ages as a universal truism. Epileptic and sick, but naïve and saintly, Myshkin said that “beauty will save the world.”⁹ In his most felicitous moments, Dostoevsky measured goodness and salvation in universal terms. Beauty is something accessible to the entire human race, not just Russia.

In The Brothers Karamazov, the lustful and passionate brother ...

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyrights
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword John Wilson
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Missing the Deep Roots and Rich Soul David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson
• Part One. Solzhenitsyn and Russian Culture
• Part Two. Solzhenitsyn and Orthodoxy
• Part Three. Solzhenitsyn and the Writers
• Part Four. Solzhenitsyn and the Politicians
• Part Five. Beyond Solzhenitsyn: Russian Writers and American Readers
• Contributors
• Index