The Harvard address given in June
1978 by the famed Soviet exile-literatus Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (may he
rest in peace) is one of those works which ought to be read carefully, and
repeatedly, by anyone inside or outside the modern West of 2012 seeking to
understand its pathologies. Solzhenitsyn’s critiques of the Western ‘free’
press, of Western law, of Western politics and of Western economy – though
indeed they come from a friend – are biting; however, because they come from a
friend, they are well-intentioned and mostly correct (calling to mind the Qazaq
saying, ‘дос жылатып айтады; душпан күлдіртіп айтады’ – ‘your friends will make you cry; it’s your
enemies who make you smile’). To be sure, Solzhenitsyn was prone to some
hyperbole. Coming as he did from the horrors of the gulag and from the
constant drumbeat of disinformation surrounding him, he was wrongly convinced
of the unity and resolve of the entire Communist bloc; this led him honestly
and forthrightly, though nonetheless mistakenly, to fault America’s lack of
resolve (rather than the Soviet-Chinese split) for the brutal massacres in Pol
Pot’s Cambodia in the wake of the Vietnam War. But his underlying point is one
which deserves to be read, and to be made, over and over again – for it rings
just as true forty-four years after it was made.
The blind optimism and the faith
in human self-sufficiency in modern Western thinking has led, in Solzhenitsyn’s
estimation, to a form of cowardice: because human evil was considered a
deviation rather than a norm, it could not criticise or reflect upon itself,
let alone correct itself. Since human perfection was considered attainable, the
doctrines of self-satisfaction and the equality of all opinions became
preferred to the classical doctrines of self-examination and the equality of
all persons before God. Since freedom was an immanent quality inherent to
humankind rather than being a transcendent quality given conditionally by a higher
power, choice became enshrined as sacrosanct and the content of the
choice was increasingly regarded as irrelevant. (In effect, that meant that
political reformers and crusaders were subject to every manner of critique and
ridicule, whilst every manner of public depravity and amoral calculation came
to be greeted with – at best – fatalistic toleration.) Spiritual ends were
discarded for purely material ones, thus leading to a tendency in Western
culture to discount all sins but sloth, and to discount all virtues, leaving
the sins of avarice, lust and envy in their place. The Christian praxis
and ‘moral heritage’ of ‘mercy and sacrifice’ was regarded as the barbarism of
a benighted and violent past. The primacy of the state and the primacy of the
letter of the law led to the political struggle we see now between the
champions of ‘negative liberty’ from the state, and of ‘positive liberty’
guaranteed by the state – both of which are dependent fully upon the state and
upon a reductively materialist conception of human welfare, whether they
acknowledge that or not.
For the Orthodox Solzhenitsyn,
this philosophy was an utter dead end. (There is a reason, after all, why he detested Boris Yeltsin
so utterly.) The higher goals of human endeavour which he saw being ‘destroyed
by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party’ in Soviet Russia fared
little better in the United States, where ‘commercial interests tend[ed] to
suffocate’ them. In international affairs, he noticed a creeping cowardice and
lack of resolve wherein American officials tended to amorally calculate the
cultivation of powerful and wealthy friends, but are prone to ‘explosions of
anger and inflexibility… when dealing with weak governments and weak
countries’. See even now how we deal with the likes of nations like
Afghanistan, like Iraq, like Libya, like Syria and like Iran which we have
hopes of isolating – and how we capitulate so readily to the whims of Saudi
Arabia with its vast wealth and regional power, and its sneering disdain for
human dignity. A misguided generation of technocrats who do have the
sense that they are missing something their grandparents possessed go abroad
seeking demons to slay, but find only rodents – over whom they proceed to puff
out their chests and proclaim their moral superiority. Solzhenitsyn’s opposition to American
interventions (see also here)
in Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and in Iraq are not inconsistent at all with his
earlier condemnations of American lack of resolve in Vietnam; indeed, they
spring from the selfsame roots. He underwent no ‘conversion’, as so many
American commentators would have it, to Russian nationalism; indeed, by all
accounts the remembrance of his venerable, philosophical, philhellenistic
motherland was the wellspring of his opposition to the Soviet regime.
Solzhenitsyn’s critique of the modern
Western ‘free press’ is also damning in its prescience. In 1978, broadcast
television was still the primary mode of transmission of information; cable
news was still a twinkle in Ted Turner’s eye (CNN being founded two years
later). He very astutely noted the tendency in the Western press that being
first beats being right, and that speaking to superficial fashions and
dependence on ‘sensational formulas’ would take precedence over in-depth
analysis. The great spectator sport of our time, the gladiatorial indulgence of
the public, is the constant left-versus-right, Democrat-versus-Republican
banter, which sadly even those claiming to be above the fray (Mr Stewart, I’m
looking at you here) subscribe to and depend upon for their daily bread. All
issues are reduced to one dimension; all problems reduced to easily-allocated
blame; all solutions reduced to catchphrases and politically-convenient
bromides. (To be sure, one side is far and away more guilty of
cynically exploiting this game than the other, and this fact deserves to be
pointed out, but that doesn’t change the wrongness of the game itself.)
I consider it a very sad neglect
of my own self-education that I had until recently failed to understand or
appreciate Solzhenitsyn, and that I have not yet read enough of Solzhenitsyn’s
published works. However, I do intend to correct this oversight as soon as may
be – The Gulag Archipelago is next on my reading-list. It is my hope
that my gentle readers will likewise give the late literary giant the benefit
of the doubt!
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