Solzhenitsyn And American Culture

These essays will interest readers familiar with the work of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and are a great starting point for those eager for an introduction to the great Russian's work. When people think of Russia today, they tend to gravitate toward images of Soviet domination or more recently Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. The reality, however, is that, despite Russia's political failures, its rich history of culture, religion, and philosophical reflection--even during the darkest days of the Gulag--have been a deposit of wisdom for American artists, religious thinkers, and political philosophers probing what it means to be human in America. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stands out as the key figure in this conversation, as both a Russian literary giant and an exile from Russia living in America for two decades. This anthology reconsiders Solzhenitsyn's work from a variety of perspectives--his faith, his politics, and the influences and context of his literature--to provide a prophetic vision for our current national confusion over universal ideals. In Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson have collected essays from the foremost scholars and thinkers of comparative studies who have been tracking what Americans have borrowed and learned from Solzhenitsyn as well as his fellow Russians. The book offers a consideration of what we have in common--the truth, goodness, and beauty America has drawn from Russian culture and from masters such as Solzhenitsyn--and will suggest to readers what we can still learn and what we must preserve. The last section expands the book's theme and reach by examining the impact of other notable Russian authors, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Gogol. Contributors: David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Nathan Nielson, Eugene Vodolazkin, David Walsh, Matthew Lee Miller, Ralph C. Wood, Gary Saul Morson, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Micah Mattix, Joseph Pearce, James F. Pontuso, Daniel J. Mahoney, William Jason Wallace, Lee Trepanier, Peter Leithart, Dale Peterson, Julianna Leachman, Walter G. Moss, and Jacob Howland.

Russian Nobel prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is widely acknowledged as one of the most important figures—and perhaps the most important writer—of the last century. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the first English translation of his memoir of the West, Between Two Millstones, Book 1, is being published. Fast-paced, absorbing, and as compelling as the earlier installments of his memoir The Oak and the Calf (1975), Between Two Millstones begins on February 13, 1974, when Solzhenitsyn found himself forcibly expelled to Frankfurt, West Germany, as a result of the publication in the West of The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for a time and was considered the most famous man in the world, hounded by journalists and reporters. During this period, he found himself untethered and unable to work while he tried to acclimate to his new surroundings. Between Two Millstones contains vivid descriptions of Solzhenitsyn's journeys to various European countries and North American locales, where he and his wife Natalia (“Alya”) searched for a location to settle their young family. There are fascinating descriptions of one-on-one meetings with prominent individuals, detailed accounts of public speeches such as the 1978 Harvard University commencement, comments on his television appearances, accounts of his struggles with unscrupulous publishers and agents who mishandled the Western editions of his books, and the KGB disinformation efforts to besmirch his name. There are also passages on Solzhenitsyn's family and their property in Cavendish, Vermont, whose forested hillsides and harsh winters evoked his Russian homeland, and where he could finally work undisturbed on his ten-volume dramatized history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel. Stories include the efforts made to assure a proper education for the writer's three sons, their desire to return one day to their home in Russia, and descriptions of his extraordinary wife, editor, literary advisor, and director of the Russian Social Fund, Alya, who successfully arranged, at great peril to herself and to her family, to smuggle Solzhenitsyn's invaluable archive out of the Soviet Union. Between Two Millstones is a literary event of the first magnitude. The book dramatically reflects the pain of Solzhenitsyn's separation from his Russian homeland and the chasm of miscomprehension between him and Western society.

Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky shared a deep faith in Christ, which compelled them to tell stories that force readers to choose between eternal life and demonic possession. Their either-or extremism has not become more popular in the last fifty to a hundred years since these stories were first published, but it has become more relevant to a twenty-firstt-century culture in which the lukewarm middle ground seems the most comfortable place to dwell. Giving the Devil His Due walks through all of O'Connor's stories and looks closely at Dostoevsky's magnum opus The Brothers Karamazov to show that when the devil rules, all hell breaks loose. Instead of this kingdom of violence, O'Connor and Dostoevsky propose a kingdom of love, one that is only possible when the Lord again is king.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's March 1917, Book 2, covers three days of the February Revolution when the nation unraveled, leading to the Bolshevik takeover eight months later. The Red Wheel is Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution. He spent decades writing about just four of the most important periods, or "nodes." This is the first time that the monumental March 1917--the third node--has been translated into English. It tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which the Imperial government melts in the face of the mob, and the giants of the opposition also prove incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of Book 2 (of four) of March 1917 is set during March 13-15, 1917, the Russian Revolution's turbulent second week. The revolution has already won inside the capital, Petrograd. News of the revolution flashes across all Russia through the telegraph system of the Ministry of Roads and Railways. But this is wartime, and the real power is with the army. At Emperor Nikolai II's order, the Supreme Command sends troops to suppress the revolution in Petrograd. Meanwhile, victory speeches ring out at Petrograd's Tauride Palace. Inside, two parallel power structures emerge: the Provisional Government and the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which sends out its famous "Order No. 1," presaging the destruction of the army. The troops sent to suppress the Petrograd revolution are halted by the army's own top commanders. The Emperor is detained and abdicates, and his ministers are jailed and sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress. This sweeping, historical novel is a must-read for Solzhenitsyn's many fans, as well as those interested in twentieth-century history, Russian history and literature, and military history.

'Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not? Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger...to assess soberly the worldwide menace that threatens to swallow the whole world? I was swallowed myself. I have been in the dragon's belly, in its red-hot innards. It was unable to digest me and threw me up. I have come to you as a witness to what it is like there, in the dragon's belly' During 1975 and 1976, Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn embarked on a series of speeches across America and Britain that would shock and scandalise both countries. His message- the West was veering towards moral and spiritual bankruptcy, and with it the world's one hope against tyranny and totalitarianism. From Solzhenitsyn's warnings about the allure of communism, to his rebuke that the West should not abandon its age-old concepts of 'good' and 'evil', the speeches collected in Warning to the West provide insight into Solzhenitsyn's uncompromising moral vision. Read today, their message remains as powerfully urgent as when Solzhenitsyn first delivered them.

After his expulsion from Russia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn secretly worked on a memoir that would acknowledge the courageous efforts of the people who hid his writings and smuggled them to the West. Before the fall of Communism, the very publication of Invisible Allies would have put these friends in jeopardy. Now we are finally granted an intimate account of the extensive, ever-shifting network of individuals who risked life and liberty to ensure that Solzhenitsyn's works were kept safe, circulated in samizdat, and "exported" via illicit channels. These imperiled conspirators, often unknown to one another, shared a devotion to the dissident writer's work and a hatred of the regime that brought terror to every part of their lives. The circle included scholars and fellow writers and artists, but also such unlikely operatives as an elderly babushka who picked up and delivered manuscripts in her shopping bag. With tenderness, respect, and humor, Solzhenitsyn tells us of the fates of these partners in intrigue: the women who typed distribution copies of his works late into the night under the noses of prying neighbors; the correspondents and diplomats who covertly carried the microfilmed texts across borders; the farflung friends who hid various drafts of Solzhenitsyn's works anywhere they could--under an apple tree, beneath the bathtub, in a mathematics professor's loft with her canoe. In this group of deftly drawn portraits, Solzhenitsyn pays tribute to the anonymous heroes who evaded the KGB to bring The Gulag Archipelago and his many other works to the world.

From the reign of Tsar Nicholas II to the brutal cult of Stalin to the ebullient, uncertain days of perestroika, nowhere has the inextricable relationship between politics and culture been more starkly illustrated than in twentieth-century Russia. In the first book to fully examine the intricate and often deadly interconnection between Russian rulers and Russian artists, cultural historian Solomon Volkov brings to life the experiences that inspired artists like Tolstoy, Stravinsky, Akhmatova, Nijinsky, Nabokov, and Eisenstein to create some of the greatest masterpieces of our time. Epic in scope and intimate in detail, The Magical Chorus is the definitive account of a remarkable era in Russia's complex cultural life.