Tribute to Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn who died the other day was Russia’s most well known contemporary writer. He had to face the atrocities of Communist regime under Stalin even spending eight years in forced labor camp. The critic of barbarism of totalitarian Soviet Union formed the basis of most his writing. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) brought the monstrous evil of Stalin’s labor camp to the world. Other writing includes Gulag Archipelago, Cancer ward and so on. Later in his life as he moved to west to escape tyranny he came to disdain soulless capitalism.

These lines from Gulag Archipelago "It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human".

The shock and disillusionment towards policies followed by Soviet Union regime just before the world war two is well known. The case of happenings in Spain civil war is poignant wherein instead of supporting peasants and workers; Soviet supported Franco and his subsequent tyranny. This forms the backdrop for the story The Incident at the Krechetovka Station. Zotov- the protagonist, an enthusiastic upright young soldier realizing that all may not be well with his country (Solzhenitsyn also served in the Army briefly). He in his naïve eagerness demands to be send to Spain as a private soldier, least aware how the mechanism of the State is working to quell what he passionately feels for. “‘We must remember the general atmosphere at that time’ Zotov said heatedly. ‘The Spanish civil war, the fascist reaching the Madrid students settlement, the international brigade, Guadalajara, Teruel !. It was difficult to stay still. We clamored fro intensive course in Spanish, but they gave us German course instead. I got a Spanish teach yourself book and start studying it instead …I felt we were vitally involved in the Spanish situation and that our revolutionary conscience made it impossible for us remain in the sidelines. But I found nothing of sort in our newspaper, and wondered how I could get over there”…..“And then one day I read …from some French journalist who among other thing wrote ‘Germany and USSR look upon Spain as testing ground for warfare’”.

This line from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech is very pertinent “But for the whole of mankind, compressed into a single lump, such mutual incomprehension presents the threat of imminent and violent destruction. One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: we shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations. A man with two hearts is not for this world, neither shall we be able to live side by side on one Earth".