The Doomed Cause of a Russian Liberal
Didn’t You Know that Manuscripts Don’t Burn?
You might think the greatest literary assault on Soviet communism is Animal Farm, George Orwell’s fast-paced 1945 allegory—and you wouldn’t be far wrong. Although it satirizes the specifics of Stalin’s triumph over Trotsky, Bukharin, and the others in the wake of Lenin’s revolution, the book drives toward the more universal conclusion that the swinish elements of human nature will always snuffle their way toward power. All animals are equal, as Orwell famously put it, but some animals will quickly attempt to prove that they’re more equal than others. For that matter, you might think the most important account of Soviet communism…
Telling the Truth about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Comes now the great Daniel J. Mahoney, author of penetrating intellectual biographies of Bertrand de Jouvenel, Raymond Aron, and Charles de Gaulle, among other books, to discuss his latest work, The Other Solzhenitsyn. Mahoney, coeditor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader, offers in this discussion a tremendous introduction to the Russian dissident writer’s oeuvre and a rebuttal to his many critics.
We might say that some Western writers who, from their position of faux outrage, frequently critique their governments, societies, and cultures have Solzhenitsyn envy, earnestly wishing their work had even a fraction of the impact of the Russian anticommunist’s corpus of writings. Not that they admire Solzhenitsyn’s political or moral philosophy, or his belief that freedom is ultimately born of spiritual commitment. They only yearn to have it said that their words put a “sliver in the throat of power.” Such was the praise given Solzhenitsyn in 1962 after the publication of One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich.
The Weight of Totalitarian Ideology
Twenty years have passed since the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its satellites in Eastern and Central Europe. Most of those countries are now members of the European Union and NATO, and the half century of “Really Existing Socialism” has already been relegated by the region’s young people to the realm of ancient history, the subject of memorials, museums, and school curricula, but of little apparent relevance to their own lives. Anne Applebaum’s book is an important, if not crucial, reminder of just how devastating those years were. The history she recounts, though filled with appalling…
