Erofeev: “is familiar with Solzhenitsyn, one in 200 years”

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11. December, the Russian Nobel prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have turned 100 years old. The writer Viktor Erofeev has idolized him once. He criticized, but his later closeness to Putin.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is so great that everyone can draw in Russia. Anyone who reads his works, creates his own Solzhenitsyn. This is also true for me. For me, God was Solzhenitsyn. No Idol, not a literary Star, not a fearless fighter against political injustice, as for many others – no, a God. I worshiped him, even if he was always with me: on my window sill.

One day, I saw in the workshop of two of Moscow’s sculptor, a small bust of him, made of red baked clay. The head rested on the books, which were wrapped with barbed wire. It was the mid-1970s, the darkest and heroischste time in the life of the writer, as he put himself before his expulsion in the West with the powerful Soviet state. I begged for the images to sculpt the bust. When I brought them home, there was Trouble: “Bring her back!”, the parents said. My father was feared a high-ranking Soviet Diplomat and my mother to his career, although Solzhenitsyn’s estimated some years earlier, published the novel “A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich”. We agreed that the bust in my room was allowed to remain on the window sill. If guests asked who it was, I should say “Beethoven”. So Beethoven survived “” for me, all the years of Soviet rule.

Two great books

Later Solzhenitsyn himself was detrimental to his divine call. Nevertheless, he is part of the Pantheon of the most influential Russian writers. As with his first novel, “A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” in he broke with the taboo subject of Stalin’s camps on Soviet literature. He built the story sent, by describing, of all things, a happy day of his heroes in the Gulag. I remember well how friends quarreled with my father – a Soviet diplomat at the dining table and said, the book got added to the Soviet Union a great disservice. In fact, Ivan Denisovich was a condemnation of Stalinism.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was honored in 1970 with the Nobel prize for literature

Much greater impact Solzhenitsyn took on the whole of the European policy, as he published in the West, the book “The Gulag archipelago”. This documented work about the horrors of the Soviet camps to the “hell” chapters in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. I read it all night long on a stool in Warsaw with the parents of my Polish wife and was afraid of it to Moscow to take. It is a real bomb, which, ultimately, the long enthusiasm of the European Left for the Euro-communism was made – to- moderate but still pro-Soviet communism – has all but negated. These two great books are enough to identify Solzhenitsyn’s genius and importance.

Utopia of a “Russian world”

With the Rest of it looks a bit more complicated. Already in the story “Matrjonas yard” to beat ideological tones of those conservative “Potschwennitschestwo”flow (“Bodentümlertum”), which was against the USSR’s dominant ideology, but at the same time against modern Western values. The discovery of Soviet crimes went hand in hand in the case of Solzhenitsyn, increasingly, with the rejection of the liberal European Alternative. Was only offered the path to the new utopia of a “Russian world”.

Solzhenitsyn, by the Soviets in the West, deported, turned more and more against the modern Western democracy. Pluralism for him was a dirty word. It was based on Christian virtues, as he understood it. Probably he was not a great philosopher, who penetrates into the secrets of the ambivalent human nature. He suggested to heal the people with old ways, a return to a “moral life”.

At this point, he was received by President Putin. In a private conversation after Solzhenitsyn’s return from exile both of them were about a departure of Russia from the Western way agree. The author of the book “The Gulag archipelago” – with the immortal bearing the commandment “do not Believe, do not fear,” thought the former KGB Colonel, staff of the suppression of organs, was about to establish a “Russian world” after its own manner. This caused the Opposition to a storm of indignation and pleased all supporters of the Russian great power.

May not make a great writer error? Really, a big one?, some ask. Someone might say, Solzhenitsyn had also written many small books, such as the historical epic “The red wheel”, a novel series about the Revolution. Yeah, and his stubborn archaic experiments with the Russian language were sometimes ridiculous. But the importance of a writer is determined by his best books. Solzhenitsyn is the last Russian writer, with the great moral Tradition of ending in Russian literature. In any case, his personality and his works are an important stage for the Controversy over Russia. You will know him in 100 and even 200 years from now.

From the Russian Ostaptschuk translated by Markian.

Viktor Erofeev, Born in 1947, is a Russian writer. In 1979, he was excluded from the writers ‘ Union of the Soviet Union. He became internationally famous in 1990 with the novel “The Moscow beauty”, which was translated into 27 languages. He lives in Moscow and speaks regularly critical of the policy of Vladimir Putin.