September 01, 2008

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This May, three months before Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s death on August 3, the writer’s wife, Natalya Dmitriyevna, sat down with Russian Life publisher Paul Richardson to talk about her family’s life in Vermont, about Russia and U.S.-Russian relations, and about her husband’s work.

I met Natalya Solzhenitsyn just a few blocks from the Kremlin, in her large city apartment, headquarters for the Solzhenitsyn Fund – which provides important aid to former Gulag internees, plus sponsors an annual literary prize. Her son Stephan, a business consultant, had just arrived in town as well, and he joined us in a narrow office space. The bookshelves were packed with Solzhenitsyn’s works. It was in this very room in 1974, that Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sent into exile, eventually ending up in Vermont, where he and his family lived for 17 years.

How is it you ended up in Vermont?

At first, we lived in Switzerland, after they kicked us out. We lived there two and a half years, but within a year, it became clear to Aleksandr Isayevich that it was too “central” for him. Switzerland is in the center of Europe and Zurich is in the center of Switzerland, and the street we lived on was in the center of Zurich and there was a steady stream of tourists, who came to the house just wanting to greet Aleksandr Isayevich, to shake his hand and say hello for five minutes. And he was unable to work. He went to the house in the country of some of our friends, and it became clear to him that we had to live somewhere remote, somewhere in the forest. He considered moving to Canada.

In 1975, we traveled together across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver… then we were in Alaska… and Seattle. Then we worked at the Hoover Institute [in Stanford, CA]. And from there, from Palo Alto, we traveled back, also by car, and decided in the end to live in New England, and not Canada.

In finding a place to buy, we were helped by our friend, a Canadian architect of Russian descent, who traveled with Aleksandr Isayevich through New England, but they did not buy anything. And Aleksandr Isayevich used up the time he could spend traveling and he returned to Zurich, to winter over there. And the architect continued the search. And in October 1975, he wrote a telegram, saying, “I have found exactly what you wanted. If you don’t want to come, please send your wife.”

Aleksandr Isayevich wrote back, “I am busy, and she is even busier. Buy it!”

And so he bought it without us even seeing it. And we were quite satisfied with what he bought and everything was always fine there. And for our children, it was practically their homeland; they grew up and went to school there… We still have close friends, neighbors and acquaintances there. In general, we lived there 17 and a half years and we have only good things to say about Vermont.

Have you been back much in the past 15 years?

Yes. I was there four times.

The first two times I came for long periods, because I was packing up our archive – books and papers – which we left there at first because we did not have anywhere to bring it, because we did not have a place to live here the first two years.

The third time I went back was for the wedding of our middle son, who got married in America… in our Orthodox church in Cavendish. We all gathered there.

And the last time was last summer, together with Stephan and Ignat. There was a conference in Illinois on the work of Solzhenitsyn and I was at that conference, and on the way back we stopped in Cavendish.

Is there anything specific that you miss about Vermont?

You know, no. I don’t miss anything, because I don’t have any time to. I have a very busy working life and don’t miss any place on Earth, but just try to finish the work I have in front of me each day.

What is Aleksandr Isayevich working on now?

Aleksandr Isayevich wrote a lot since we returned… some of it has been published, some not. Things written here, things written in Vermont…

It seems that, since returning in 1994, Aleksandr Isayevich has been working more on non-fiction, no?

No, that’s not true. For one, he wrote eight very wonderful binary stories – stories in two parts – a new genre he conceived long ago, but only finally wrote here. No, he has written plenty… including the military novel Adlig Schwenkitten... notes on his impressions after returning from exile [Sketches of the Years Back Home (1994-1999)]… these are all literary works… he wrote miniatures – poems in prose which he did not write while in exile… they date from the 1960s, but he did not write them down until he returned…

He has also written polemical pieces, but he has written more literature… The polemical pieces are better known in America… none of his binary stories have been published in English for some reason. In France, they were all published. In Germany, half were published. But in America they have simply not been published. Yes, there seems to be more interest in his polemical works in America. It is rather sad, but that’s just how it has turned out.

There seems to be this common understanding of Aleksandr Isayevich that he is some kind of “radical” or out there on the fringe. But if one takes the time to read his work, particularly his polemical work, there seems to be little in it that is radical. Where do you think this comes from? Do people need to paint him this way? Do they see something in his work that is not there? Do you think they have not read his work?

You know, there are many reasons. Several reasons. It would be hard to say which has played the biggest role.

One reason is of course that, for all those years before Solzhenitsyn’s exile, the KGB conducted a purposeful policy directed at different circles, focusing on those things which each group found distasteful.

For simple people, they said that he was a traitor to the West. For the intelligentsia, they said he was a conservative and not a liberal. They did this, of course, not directly, but through their agents of influence.

An entire book has been published, The Kremlin Lynch Mob (Kremlevsky Samosud), with all the documents about how they tailed Solzhenitsyn, about all the KGB operations against Solzhenitsyn, in particular the disinformation, about how they needed to create negative opinions about him, to make him repulsive. That is one of the reasons, the external reasons.

There are of course other reasons. If you talk about liberal versus conservative… there is always a certain part of the intelligentsia – be it in Russia or America or wherever – which is extremely liberal and which strongly opposes any “conservative” or other person who has a patriotic attitude toward his people. They are required to brand them as nationalists… It is not acceptable to elevate one’s homeland to some kind of “important” place. You have to be a citizen of the world. You need to be a good person; your nationality is completely unimportant. And anyone whose heart beats for his country is easy to declare a nationalist. And a nationalist is already close to being a chauvinist or whatever else you like. Solzhenitsyn truly loves Russia and has always worried over its fate. His heart aches for Russia today as it did in the past. But he was never a nationalist in the sense that he considered Russia to be better than other nations. On the contrary, he believes that anyone who loves their homeland can more easily understand another person who loves their own homeland...

This is the second reason. The third reason is, of course, that they have not read him. Because, here, they did everything they could to ensure that he not be read. And abroad, translations take a long time, plus his writing is very dense and lengthy, and it can be rather challenging to read him – it is not literature for entertainment. That is another reason.

…When we returned, in 1994, we felt all these false labels they tried to paste on Solzhenitsyn. There were tons of opinions, for instance that his book The Red Wheel was unreadable, but no matter who you asked, they had not read it. As for unreadable, it was Sinyavsky who came here and said in an interview, that it “was just a heavy brick that was good for killing someone, but that it was unreadable.” But then Sinyavsky was something like Solzhenitsyn’s ideological adversary… but that is just one example.

So there have been a lot of reasons. Yet, thankfully, it has been gradually changing. The first few years after we returned, he was hardly published and little read. But then, for several years now, it changed for the better… There are now many editions of his works here, and he continues to be published widely, even though the majority of publishing houses here are purely commercial. Of course, there are so-called “intelligentsia” publishers, and they put out his works. But the commercial publishing houses, they don’t care if it’s Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov, Solzhenitsyn, whomever, as long as it sells. And it is obvious that Solzhenitsyn sells, because all three of the huge publishing houses – AST, Olma-Press, Eksim Press – they renew their agreements with us each year. Which means he is selling well.

So, he is being read by a lot of people now and being widely published, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has been included in the national reading list for schools, as has Matryona’s Place. So all children know this name.

Many will ask how someone like Solzhenitsyn could more or less reconcile with a regime headed by a former KGB chief and containing a high concentration of “Chekists”?

This argument is simply laughable. After all, the president of your country [George H.W. Bush] was a Chekist, well, not a Chekist, but head of the CIA.

You know, it does not mean anything… The Cheka had many different divisions… there is foreign espionage, there is domestic espionage, there were those who made war on their own people… As for Putin, he was as you know in foreign intelligence, or whatever, sitting in Dresden, so he wasn’t out there standing under our window, and didn’t make war on his own people. In fact, he didn’t even graduate from the Chekist school, but from Leningrad University, and then he studied German for two years in the KGB school – they taught him well there.

I have many objections to this regime, of an entirely different sort. But to call it a KGB regime on the basis that these people are from the KGB is simply laughable, as if the KGB is sending these people there to do all they can to take the country back to totalitarianism. But they are doing nothing of the sort, nothing even close to this. It is a completely Latin American model, they are stealing the country blind, worried only about themselves – many of these officials that is. They are not acting like people from the KGB, but like people from Pampas [South America].

…I have disagreed with lots of my friends, former dissidents, who say, “Look, look, we are now returning to Stalinism.” Nothing of the sort! Nothing even close to that. It is impossible to return, absolutely impossible. First, for technical reasons, computers and what not, it is impossible to go back, at least in Russia…

Second, people very quickly became accustomed to good times and have completely forgotten. What we have today cannot in any way compare to what was. It’s not that things are just a bit better than they were 30 years ago, they are fundamentally better. People travel abroad absolutely freely. Of course, many have low living standards, a huge number of people, and it’s just awful. But nonetheless, if people have money, they don’t have to waste their time standing in line the way I stood for my small children after work to find something, anything to feed my family with. There was nothing.

…These people hate Putin in particular. And they love Yeltsin, who was simply a criminal, a criminal guilty before Russia. And those who don’t like Putin are the same ones who loved Yeltsin.

In my opinion, Yeltsin was much worse. Much worse. He is responsible for much of why Russia is how it is today… Russia is much richer today, thanks to petrodollars. But the ruin, the situation with production, when a professor received pennies that were not enough to even feed himself and his wife, that was done by Yeltsin. And unfortunately it continues. My grievance with Putin is that he has too little departed from the Russia of Yeltsin, and not that he graduated from a KGB school.

It is not about why Solzhenitsyn reconciled with this. Solzhenitsyn cannot reconcile with the camps! And the KGB is not just about the camps. Unfortunately, every country has to have state security, we cannot live without this yet – meaning foreign operations. America has it, France has it, and so do we.

Why do you feel the West is focused on saying there is no freedom of speech in Russia?

It is purely a tool. You need to have some kind of tool, and it is a very convenient tool and the West uses it well. Of course we don’t have freedom of speech like it exists in America, but in comparison to what was! I have yet to meet an individual who feels there is not enough freedom of speech, except those who were rather highly placed, powerful politicians under Yeltsin. They feel that they are not allowed on television – Volodya Ryzhkov, Grisha Yavlinsky. Previously they were all over the TV, but now they really are not there, either they are rarely invited or not at all. They say there is no freedom of speech. But ask any normal person what freedom of speech means, what they cannot do; you can do anything. You can go out on Red Square and yell out, “I don’t like Putin,” and no one is going to put you in jail or drag you off.

Anyone can write letters to the editor and more than likely it will be published. Of course, these freedoms are less than you have, but this is because we don’t have a general sense of democracy, and those conceptions we do have, have only been developing for 15-20 years. That is not very much. You also had wild years when things were solved with guns and not through articles in the press… Give us a bit of time, at least. You need some time for this. You need a certain culture which of course does not exist, not with journalists, not with the owners of newspapers, which have been mainly bought up by the state. There is freedom of speech. Look at Novaya Gazeta. If someone in America wrote about the president the way Novaya Gazeta does, they would be put in prison, or at least have the paper shut down or issued a huge fine…

…In short, there should be greater freedom of speech, and it will gradually increase.

As soon as it is of benefit to someone?

No. No. I believe that, if there will be democracy in Russia, it will be thanks to an expression by the people, demanding their rights and freedoms, standing up for their interests.

As to when… look at how they have forbidden marches by Other Russia or others, they have broken them up… because there are just 50, maybe 100, maybe even 200 people showing up. But when the communists come out – and this is rather sad – there are 10,000 of them. No one is going to chase them off.

It is a question of support. The present Powers that Be won’t do it, can’t do it, it is already part of the Western World… they are not going to break up a demonstration that brings out, say 3,000 people. They won’t. It would be obvious to too many witnesses that they are taking action against the people.

They make a loud noise, but they have very few people. They are completely in the margins. It is a shame, but that’s the way it is… Kasparov, Kasyanov, they just don’t have wide support.

And what would they have to do to bring out 2-3,000 supporters?

Well, I think Kasyanov has absolutely no chance. He objects to those in power, yet he himself was in power along with them – he was prime minister for four years. He ruled the country for four years. And this is the result of everything he has done. And so when he says “Putin this, Putin that,” well, you had four years under Putin to do you wanted. Kasyanov has absolutely no chance, and so it was absolutely stupid that the Powers that Be did not let him take part in the elections. He would not have gotten any support.

Well, if he were allowed on television, he might be able to gain some support, no?

I don’t think so. Even though he is handsome and speaks well, his face is well-known… he was finance minister under Yeltsin, negotiating with the Paris Club, trading, etc. He did not just serve under Putin, but two years under Yeltsin, and very high up. And now, as an oppositionist, he is not convincing.

[Eduard] Limonov, he has a bit more support amongst the youth. Not much, but certainly more than Kasyanov.

In general, they don’t have a big following. What do they need to do to get more support? I don’t know. I have not been within their circles...

Of course, Russia has many problems today, and there are perhaps many things to blame Putin for. But I am astounded when our intelligentsia, how they can – after they all lived through communism, and remember what it was – how they can twist their tongues around to say that our country has a “regime.” A regime is a completely different thing. Yes, there are many shortcomings… many unpleasant things during the elections. But if there were none of these unpleasantries, if everything went absolutely smoothly, the result would have been exactly the same. Well, maybe he [Medvedev] would have received 3% less. That doesn’t mean those things are not important, they are. It is important that things gradually become more transparent and clean. But nevertheless there is this conception. Yet it is not a regime. It is just a very inexperienced democracy, one that is just getting started, and which still has remnants of its old habits.

Returning to literature. How do you and Aleksandr Isayevich assess the current state of Russian literature?

Well, I think our view differs little from the widespread public view, that, in general, whenever the country is going through rough times, many rapid changes, it is not a favorable time for literature. It is a time that is good for short form genres, like journalism or little offshoots of literature. But it is not a favorable time for great literature.

So it is not surprising that there are not great writers now, unfortunately. There are very popular writers, who are read by many and widely published, but this is more a question of cunning: who happened to get acquainted with a certain publisher, who has a gift for public relations… And against this background, one could name 10 or 12 writers who are quite good, but it would not be appropriate to say which of these are better or worse, because some like detective novels more, some like other things… Literature has not collapsed, but it is, well, boring. Even the “innovators” of today, in fact, are not offering anything new. It was much more interesting, say, in the 1920s, when innovators were truly innovators, like our Futurists…

But Aleksandr Isayevich truly believes that it is not dying out, but that it is just a temporary, fully understandable impoverishment of literature. There is no clear voice, one that everyone feels they should read. Some read this, some read that… but he truly believes that Russian literature will not disappear, that there will yet be a new dawn… He is actually rather optimistic when it comes to literature… But the fate of Russia worries him much more than the fate of literature… He feels there is more foundation for saying that Russian literature will not vanish than for saying that Russia will not vanish.

You talked before about grievances against the present “regime”? Can you be more specific?

Of course. We have horrific inequality in material wealth. On the one hand, it is extremely dangerous to the peace of the country, and on the other it is simply unjust, because only part of the population is enjoying the wealth accumulated by the entire country, the labor of everyone… This huge difference between the richest 10% of the country and the poorest is just horrible, it is unpleasant and unjust… And if this goes on too long, then people will definitely come out into the streets, and they will not be led by Limonov or Kasparov, or even Zyuganov, but by people who want to change everything from the top down. It is simply horrible that they are paying so little attention to this.

Many observers now say that there will be more focus on social policy. If that happens, that will be very good. But it is an open question... But then of course one president or one government changes everything quickly. After all, they destroyed all industry, all science. They tossed aside a huge number of people, scientists. We had very good science, but these people left because they fell into poverty, either going abroad or going into some other sphere of activity. And now there is a problem finding good personnel, and this is of course horrible. And who did this?

Who is it that asks, “Why did Solzhenitsyn reconcile with this, that or the other?” The people who were in power, the people who did this! Concretely: [Former Prime Minister Yegor] Gaidar said that “science must feed itself.” I am a scientist myself, a mathematician… I was here in 1992 when he said that, that science must feed itself. But even in America science does not feed itself – at least 50% of its support comes from government grants.

One would like to think this was not a conspiracy, but just idiocy. Certainly I know it was not a conspiracy on Gaidar’s part, because I know he loves his country. But it was awfully stupid. And fixing it will be incredibly difficult; it is a question of generations. So how is it Putin could be sitting there for eight years and not have done anything to rebuild our science? They could have done it, there was money… they have started to give some money to this, but it is a bit late.

And there are many spheres like that… Like the arts. At first they didn’t give anything to the arts. All of the artists, actors and writers were simply dying. And that went on for a long time. Then, at the end of the Yeltsin era and the start of the Putin era, they started to give some money, and quite a bit even. Yet all the money that the state hands out for the arts gets spent in the two capitals, in Moscow or Leningrad.

There have long been theaters in every provincial city all across Russia. This was not done by the Bolsheviks, but all those old buildings were built by rich merchants from those cities. And there was an excellent dramatic tradition all across Russia. And this educates people. As well, all across Russia there was musical education for children. Everywhere. Why does Russia have so many musicians? It’s not as if we are the most musical of nations, like say Italy. Yet we could boast huge achievements. Just like kids played soccer in every courtyard and this gave us many great sportsmen, so it was with music. In every city there was a music school. Now there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. If you love your country, how can you let this happen? Why was it not possible to do something over the past eight years? They could have.

Well, [Finance Minister] Kudrin did not give any money because they said they feared people were stealing it. What’s that mean? It means you need to lock up those who are stealing…

Does Russia have anything to learn from Vermont?

Yes! Aleksandr Isayevich has talked about this a lot. You know, we saw plenty of good things in the West. Good things that can and should be adopted in Russia, particularly if we truly want to be a country governed by its people.

We had the first such impression in Switzerland, in different cantons. We lived in one canton, then visited others. And we got this impression that local power, local self-government, is more important than presidential power. Everything is decided locally in Switzerland. The power of the canton is much more important than the power of the federation.

And in Vermont, I personally went to our town meetings and saw what kind of problems were being dealt with. And we saw that Washington was not running things, deciding which roads to build in Vermont, or when to put a new roof on the school. We decided that with our votes, those of us who lived in Cavendish.

And until we have local self-governance here, everywhere, all across the country, there will of course not be true democracy. But of course it cannot exist on its own. It must be self-governance which rises higher and higher through elected representatives. But of course in huge countries like America and Russia – not in small countries like Switzerland – there must also be a centralized vertical of power which goes from the top down.

You know America well, you know Russia well. What needs to be done so that Americans can understand better what is going on in Russia? So that they don’t conclude that there is no freedom of the press, that Russia is ruled by a KGB regime?

It is completely untrue. And I think that those who are heading up the media companies in the U.S. know very well what is really going on in Russia. It is a conscious policy, so that Russia as a player in world politics is seen as a conspirator…

You surely understand, everywhere are these oil and gas lines… and even Europe cannot agree how Germany and Russia should build them, along what routes. Poland and Lithuania say, “No, they should go through us.” They are all members of the European Union, but they cannot agree. Germany and Russia, however, want to lay the pipelines as it was agreed between Putin and Schroeder. But Poland and Lithuania don’t like that, because if the pipelines go through them, they will earn something from it.

There are disagreements like that everywhere. And so if Russia can be painted as a conspirator or a spoiler, as a country that cannot be trusted, that Putin is a fascist or a Stalinist, then Russia will be seen as unreliable in all these agreements. That’s all there is to it.

On the other hand, if you, with your experience, simply helped us, without ulterior motives… Helped us how: not by taking our people from here to there, but bring your institutes here and teach us how self-government should work in practice, that would be good.

How to explain things to Americans? I don’t know. Because I don’t really understand how, for all your freedom of the press, how it really works. For instance, you come here, and you can see for yourself that wolves are not running wild on Moscow streets, that you can live here. So what, where are you going to explain that to Americans? Okay, here in your magazine Russian Life, superb. But I don’t know if it will be reprinted or spread, say, in Washington, or on the capitalist hills… You know, there are different ways to understand freedom of speech. Can you say something and not be arrested? Yes, you can. But can you step up to microphone and be heard by millions? That is a different question.

I don’t think there are a lot of opportunities for this. I think it is something that will be decided on the level of high politics, and if Washington decides that, okay, we can be friends with Russia, then Russia will be presented [in the media] in a more or less decent light. If they decide that Russia presents a threat, to oil interests or whatever – I mean an economic threat, no one believes anymore in a military threat, and there cannot be war, I hope… but there are economic interests, and if they decide that Russia presents a threat, then they will portray Russia the way it is now being portrayed. And it does not reflect reality. And the portrait of Putin does not correspond with reality. You know, he has this sort of rhetoric. Maybe he himself is to blame, he has this sort of “macho” rhetoric which is completely unnecessary. But in reality he is absolutely a capitalist. And absolutely pro-Western. Entirely pro-Western. He would be the last to be in favor of some return to the past. And he was always that way….

Medvedev will improve this image which Putin, consciously or not, let decline over the last three years. Now Medvedev will improve it, all the more that the West really wants this.

…That is if we are talking here about rhetoric… Russia wants to be capitalist… no one but [Gennady] Zyuganov and his 10,000… no one else wants to return to a socialist economy. No one. That is an invention…

Do you think Russians have a better view of America than Americans have of Russia?

Definitely. Definitely. Especially now. I think that 20 years ago, the Russians had great illusions about America. They were absolutely convinced that America is paradise. Period. And now I believe that Russians understand America much much better than Americans understand Russia. First of all because there are a lot of tourists, and not only tourists; a lot of young people who went to America for study, or for work in California for example – a lot of our programmers and mathematicians and physicists. And they have family here, they travel back and forth and discuss the situation in America a lot. So I think that, particularly on the level of people, the understanding is much better. In our press, of course, they write all sorts of nonsense about America. But people understand America much better. Much better than Americans understand Russia… and there are a huge number of people who emigrated from Russia, who hold American passports and live in America. They have family here, and when Russia opened, they started coming back. It’s just a huge number of people.