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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn |
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died a sad and disillusioned
man.
Solzhenitsyn was a genuine socialist
in the beginning. He fought for the Red Army in WWII. He was a committed Soviet
patriot. Equality, justice, and dignity of the worker were his ideals, his
dreams. However, Stalin became brutal dictator and Solzhenitsyn became his vocal
critic. As a result, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sent to the Gulag: a network
of inhuman labour camps. Hundreds of Russians were tortured and killed in those
camps and Solzhenitsyn was disillusioned with socialism.
The Russian Revolution was supposed
to have liberated the common citizens from imperial oppressions. However, the
new government under Stalin was far more ruthless, unjust, and oppressive than
the empire. The socialist ideology became a kind of deity for which everything
else was sacrificed, including truth. Writing the story of his life in the camp
in The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn warned that such systems could arise
anywhere if power was unchecked.
Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the USSR
in 1974, soon after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973.
The manuscript had been smuggled to the West where it was published. The book
was obviously banned in the USSR. Stalin’s regime was described in it as the
most vicious, most bloodthirsty, cunning and ingenious. “Just as King Midas
turned everything into gold, Stalin turned everything into mediocrity,” Solzhenitsyn
wrote.
Whether it is socialism or capitalism
or cultural nationalism, the inner calibre of the leader determines the
standards of the citizens to a large extent. In Solzhenitsyn’s own words, “The
line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes,
nor between political parties – but right through every human heart.”
Half a century after that was
written, we stand faced with the worst possible leaders in too many countries. The ideology doesn’t matter a
bit. The leader’s heart matters much.
Russian Socialism disillusioned Solzhenitsyn
before American capitalism did. The West had welcomed him as a hero of
anti-communism. He expected moral seriousness, a commitment to truth, and
spiritual integrity in the West. Instead what America, as well as many other
countries in the West, gave him was materialism, consumerism, and what he saw
as moral weakness. When he criticised the West in his 1978 Harvard Commencement
Address, the audience that was waiting to applaud their anti-communist hero,
whom they had awarded the Nobel a few years back, became uneasy. They didn’t
like a Russian coming and poking his finger at their spiritual emptiness.
Capitalism wasn’t any better than
communism, Solzhenitsyn realised. In fact, in the hands of a good leader,
communism would be a lot better. It has noble ideals. What does capitalism have
other than endless greed for wealth? Solzhenitsyn also accused American
capitalism of lowering excellence to mediocrity, even as Stalin did in his
country.
Political parties are like Tweedledum
and Tweedledee. Ideology is just a façade.
Disillusioned with American capitalism,
Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994. The USSR that had given him his first
disillusionment had collapsed three years ago.
Russia’s Putin finally drove the last
nail into the coffin of Solzhenitsyn’s dreams. Putin’s Russia was cauldron of
economic chaos, cultural disorientation, weak civic institutions, and erosion
of traditional values. Nicholas II, whom the Russian Revolution overthrew in
1917, was a far better human being than the Communist leaders who succeeded,
including today’s Putin.
What about the leaders in other major
countries today? I leave that to you to decide.
Nicholas II, whom the Russian
Revolutionaries humiliated and then executed, was a thousand times better than
our present leaders. He had deep faith in his system, autocracy, which he
regarded as a divine mandate. He was a polite and mild-mannered man whose
personal integrity was reputed. Unfortunately, he lacked the political acumen to
govern a large country. Reality with its inevitable harshness caught up with
him tragically.
Do you think reality has become more
benign after that? Never. It is going to catch up with today’s leaders too. Abide
the time.
PS. This post was inspired by an article I read on Solzhenitsyn in a Malayalam journal this morning.
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