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In Solzhenitsyn's view, the West is losing its battle against totalitarianism, which is on the offensive everywhere. Inconsistent, disunited, lacking firm religious or moral guidelines, it is wallowing in the pleasures of the consumer society, in permissiveness. It is heedlessly destroying itself in the smoke and fumes of its cities and the din of hysterical music.
Certainly there is much bitter truth in Solzhenitsyn's complaints. I too have called attention to the West's lack of concerted action, its dangerous illusions, the factional gamesmanship, shortsightedness, selfishness and cowardice displayed by some of its politicians. Yet I believe that Western society is fundamentally healthy and dynamic, capable of meeting the challenges life continually brings.
The West's lack of unity is the price it pays for the pluralism, freedom and respect for the individual that are the sources of strength and flexibility for any society. It makes no sense to sacrifice them for a mechanical, barracks unity that may have a certain utility if one's goal is aggressive expansion but has otherwise proved to be a failure. Solzhenitsyn's mistrust of the West, of progress in general, of science and democracy incline him to romanticize a patriarchal way of life and craftsmanship, to expect too much from the Russian Orthodox Church.
Solzhenitsyn suggests that there are already clear signs of a national and religious renaissance, that Russians have always been hostile to the socialist system and even that they harbored defeatist sentiments during World War II. These ideas, which I may have oversimplified somewhat, are little short of myths. If our people and our leaders ever succumb to such notions, the results could be tragic.
Unlike Solzhenitsyn, I see faults and sound principles in both the socialist / and the Western systems. I believe that their convergence is possible, and I welcome that prospect as a chance to save humanity from the confrontation that threatens it with destruction.
I do not share Solzhenitsyn's antipathy toward progress. If mankind is the healthy organism I believe it to be, then progress, science and the constructive application of intelligence will enable us to cope with the dangers facing us. Having set out on the path of progress several millenniums ago, mankind cannot halt now -- nor should it.
Solzhenitsyn and I differ most sharply over the defense of civil rights -- freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom to choose one's country of residence, the openness of society. I have no doubt whatsoever as to the value of defending specific individuals. He assigns only a secondary importance to human rights and fears that concentration on them may divert attention from more important matters.
In The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn makes a great deal of my supposed naivete, my impracticality and especially my susceptibility to "pernicious" influences. Among those who (in his view) have hitched themselves to "this strange, huge, conspicuous balloon, which was soaring to the heights without engine or petrol" -- me -- Solzhenitsyn's sharpest, if covert, thrusts are aimed at my wife. Her "deleterious" influence, he suggests, led me to harp on emigration by Jewish refuseniks -- people "who did not feel that Russia was their own country."