The recent exiling of Alexander Solzhenitsyn has led to a rash of claims and counter-claims as to his significance, On the one hand, some socialist papers have implied that he is an autentic representative of the movement for socialist democracy in the USSR. On the other, the capitalist press have claimed him as one of their own.
Nesther version is correct. So what dnes he really represent"
BOLSEVIKS
Solzhenitsyn was born on 11 December 1918. His formative years word tletetote not those of stageie against a Tsarist autocracy which condemned the masses to hunger, battlefields of Europe. Nor did be know anything of the cariy yoars when the Bolsheviks stood in the forefront of millions of revolutionary workers, lighting throughout the world to put an end to capitalist explostation and violence.
Instead, the Soviet Union Solzhenitsyn grew up to know was one where to be a Bolsevik was to be on short-term reprieve from Stalin's Tiring squads, one where the party of Lenin and the Communist International had been transformed into the servile instruments of a privileged burcaucratic layer that had seized hold of the reins of Soviet power.
LOST BEARINGS
After Solzhenitsyn's own arrest in 1945 for privately criticising Stalin, he went through eight years of personal capenencc ol toc vast network of prisons and labour-camps.
In the camps it was easy to iose When daily life was reduced to the struggle for survival, when the only arguments used were the punishment cell, the cudgel and the machine-gun, when class solidarity gave way to self-preservation or a primitive mutual aid against the guards and theu spiesin such a situation, it was only the most conscious elements who remained attached to the cause of socialist It is clear that Solzhonitsyn was Dot among Loc CemenEs Bas aat, on the contrary, he has now completely lost his bearings in today's world of colonial wars and revolutBons.
The source of Solbenitsyn's literary inspiration lies above all in an individual gut raction against the lies and brutality of Stalinist rule, In his novels he presents a broad series of character studies of Soviet men and women, ranging from Stalin himself to an ordinary prisoner in a labour camp. I any ideal emerges, it is that of the simple hard-working individual who wishes for nothing more than to be left in peace by the world, and especially by the swollen ranks of Soviet officialdom.
PROLETARIAT
Une of the most striking features of the novels, warping their historical perspective, is the almost total absence of the Soviel proletanal as 8 class with certain distinct, historical interests, One of the few characters to express the revolutionary aspirations of the Sovict workers, the left oppositionist of The First Circie, is portrayed as little more than a narrow-minded fanatic.
In 1962, when Solzhenitsyn's first and only novel to he published in the Soviet Union (One Day in the Life of Ian Denisovich) appeared, it was possible to hope that with a new working-class upsurge he would he drawn into, and give literary expression to, a movement for socialist domocisey.
not yet exploded back onto the historical arena with the same force as sight of the international class struggle, The years since 1962 have seen a continuous tightening of the-bureaueratic dictatorship. The camps bave been filling once apain with oppositJonists of all shades, For Solzhenitsyn, they have been years of growing personal and socia isolation. He has been constantly us, culminating in his recent expulsion fram the Soviet Union, special stature as a major writer, is, to give some political form to his primitive, individualist revolt. The fullest statement to have appeared so far is the Letter to the Sovier Leaders, published by the Sundey Times (3 March).
ents a number of insights into the deep social crisis of Soviet societyalchoholism, cultural degeneration chaotic planning system, In his proposed way forward, however, he reverts to the nost ism, his position is the most banal and time-worn imaginable the old petty-bourgeois dream that it is nology and return to a mythical era of tranquillity, based on small-scale production.
turn their backs on 'decadent"
Siberia in a new 'stable economy.
7th century Orthodox Christianity instead of scientific socialism.
However, the Soviet proletariat has ion: a glorificalion of Tsardom and pre-revolutionary Russia as an alterin Hungary, Cechoslovakia or Poland gruously, he calls, in one passige, foe be more glaring: Soviets plus icons, the most advanced form of human organisation plus medieval super. SEL3O thing: the working nasses are not hounded by the buresucratic apparat- attracted to the regime of bureaucratic power and privilegea. But aor is there much future for them ln Most importantly, because of his Solzhenitsyn has felt obliged to enter the foreign territory of politics-that Even in this uninspired, patheticai-. ly naive document, Solzhenitsyn presrevealed in, for example, the rampant and widespread pollution caused by a reactionary utopias of pre-revolutionary Kussia, Despite a fierce individualpossible to halt the advance of techHe calls on the Soviet leaders to Moscow, and cultivate the wastes of And the means to this ane .., animal manure instead of chemical fertiliser, horses instead of motor-cars in short, Indeed, he pinpoints the crisis in CONTRADICTION And yet, Selshenitsyn cannot bring, ism and in the second, to support himself to accept the logical conclusnative to burcaucratic power. Incon in original] the restoration of the powers of the Soviets. The contradiction could not Solzenilsyn is right about one Solchenitsyn's prescribed diet of TASTAT TRAUT TUR CIDADE PREH What they can be won to is the perspective of building a socialist society that will guarantee the fullest democracy and satisfaction of human needs on the basis of a rational system of planning making use of the MOTHER RUSSIA Such a perspective, however, fies in the face of Solzenitsyn's jealous concern to preserve the natural and "spiritual' resouroes of Mother Russia Russia as stemming from ien exact adherence to the precepts of MarxIsP-Lenensr - ic in the first stance to harm the cause of world imperialcommunist movements abroad, In hoth canes nuttoni conscrations wete completely lacking.' [emphasis As evidence of this "Marxism' in Stalin's policy, he mentions 'how we bred Mao Tse-tung in place of a penceable neighbour [!| such as Chiang Kai-shek, and helped him in the atomic race." Yet the principal aim of the Kremlin bureaucracy has always been to seek an accommoda tion with imperialism. Indeed, it is well known that Stalin continued to the last to advise Mao to 'make peace with Chiang Kai-shek: whie one of the roots of the Sino-Soviet split was precisely hruschev's refusal to hand over atomic secrets to China Strange fruits indeed grow on the troe of Stalin's "Socialism in One Country'! Solzenitsyn knows that there are powerful voices within the bureaucracy itself that are opposed to the sale of Siberian natural gas to foreigners" or that see China as the main enemy of the "Rustian people'. In his contemptuous dismissal of the Vietnamese and lE tin America revolutionaries, in his fear of the class strugele, and above all in his Russo-centrism, Solshenitsyn is rather closer than he realises to these very sections of the bureaucracy.
MYSTIC
There are some Western Marxists who think that, confronted with the reality of capitalist society, Solzhenitsyn will now find his way back to Marxism. There is, unfortunatcly no batis for such optimiem. Despite a naive faith in the power of 'public opinion", Solzbenitsyn's bostility to the decadent West is esentially that of a reactionary mystic.
Indeed, the saddest irony of all is that Solshenitsyn's mysticism has its roots in the Stalinist degeneration brought ahout by the very forces he bas opposed for so long JOE GREENWOOD
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"Despite a fierce individualism, his position is the most banal and time- worn imaginable-the old petty-bourgeois dream that it is possible to halt the advance of technology and return to a mythical era of tranquillity, based on small-scale production"