When Alexander Solzhenitsyn was abruptly expelled from Russia as a traitorous "alien" last February, the Soviet leaders hoped to rid the U.S.S.R. of a commanding moral presence whose martyrdom had mesmerized the world. If he were yet another emigre, they calculated, the authority of the Nobel-prizewinning writer would gradually cease to be felt in the West and, more important, among Soviet citizens.
In Zurich last week, Solzhenitsyn demonstrated that even in exile he had no intention of allowing the Kremlin to destroy his influence. In his modest two-story home, he announced to the press the forthcoming publication of a volume of eleven essays designed to stir heated debate in the U.S.S.R.
Entitled From Under the Ruins, the essays, three of which were written by Solzhenitsyn, advanced some controversial solutions to Russia's problems. They range widely over a number of highly topical issues including the future of Christianity in Russia, the transformation of the economy and the explosive question of the U.S.S.R.'s restive minorities. The book will appear in Russian next week in Paris (Y.M.C.A. Press); an English translation will be published in the U.S. early next year by Little, Brown.
Risking Arrest. As if to echo Solzhenitsyn's appeal for a resumption of dialogue among Russian dissidents, an unauthorized press conference was called in Moscow to announce the book. Igor Shafarevich, a world-famous algebraist, told Western newsmen that the aim of the essays was to bring about fundamental changes in the U.S.S.R. Risking arrest, three other dissidents who contributed to the book were willing to be identified: Scientist Mikhail Agursky, Art Historian Yevgeni Barabanov and Historian Vadim Borisov.
The very title, From Under the Ruins, suggests that the Russian people, long buried under the weight of Marxist ideology, must break loose to confront the future by drawing upon Russia's pre-revolutionary past. Specifically, the book reaches back to a famous collection of articles called Vekhi (Landmarks) published a few years after Russia's abortive 1905 revolution. Among the contributors to Vekhi were Christian Philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev and Liberal Politician Pyotr Struve. Vekhi promoted a return to Russia's traditional spiritual values rather than an uncritical acceptance of Western materialism. "The inner life of the individual," the authors argued, is vastly more important than any social system.
Solzhenitsyn and his circle of friends take off from the Vekhi premises. They urge Russians to resist "the mercenary pursuit of more wages, titles, positions, apartments, dachas, cars and the chance to buy gaudy rags." Instead, they should seek an internal freedom of conscience, and redemption through penitence. Solzhenitsyn believes that millions in the Soviet Union were accomplices in Stalin's crimes. He calls upon the entire nation to confess to the guilt of the past. "Only through the repentance of a multitude of people can the air and the soil of Russia be cleansed, so that a new, healthy national life can grow up."