Solzhenitsyn's prophecies
We often hear the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian social prophet and political moralist and the author of the GULag Archipelago being cited as an exemplary dissident, visionary, and fighter for freedom, especially in the context of the Western form of democracy. Well, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint those who are willing to use him as some kind of paragon. I for one am pretty sure he would've supported Putin's current actions, including the annexation of Crimea. Having considered himself a Russian patriot first and foremost, he would've qualified these actions not so much as a neo-imperialist act, but more like a "consolidation of the traditional Russian territories". In other words, uniting territories that are perceived as part of one indivisive entity in the first place.
In fact Solzhenitsyn was an isolationist. He believed his people were "historically tired", which is why he was against the exhausting engagement in North Caucasus and other regions (like Central Asia). He called these strategic regions "a serious chronic disease". But the traditional Russian settler lands, from North Kazakhstan to East and South Ukraine to Odessa, he viewed as legitimate Russian territories, where the incompetent Bolsheviks had drawn arbitrary borders in order to somewhat increase the tolerance to the Soviet project among the local elites. What's more, he viewed Crimea as "Russia's natural southern border".
Solzhenitsyn's political-moralist views (especially well pronounced in his later years) revolved around an advocacy for the "preservation" of the merging "Russian peoples" as Russia's number one priority. He was definitely a conservative in the classical sense, and probably the personal catastrophes he had gone through had a great deal to do with that. He didn't shy away from his tzarist nostalgy, and his attitude to the political elites of his time was rather unsentimental. He believed the last Russian tzar, Nikolay II had been particularly incompetent, so he insisted that Nikolay's potential idealization as some kind of martyr would be wrong and poor-tasted in the least. As he repeatedly emphasized, statespeople should be judged by their political actions and results, not their character. In his opinion the demise of the tzarist empire was a catastrophe "only" for the fact that the revolutionary energy that sprang up along that process had inevitably destroyed the newly-emerged structures of local self-rule. And in his mind that was the main basis for real democracy.
Solzhenitsyn's mindset could only be comprehended by one who views the world not as a grand chessboard but as a bundle of problems, from which the reasonable person selects the lesser evils in order to prevent the larger ones. The effects of market economy, which tempted his "immature" compatriots to run after the "golden billion", were the biggest destructive factor in society in his opinion. He maintained that position to his very death in 2008.
Russia was a huge yet poor, backward empire. No true, sustainable prosperity was possible there in the long term, due to its sheer size. Solzhenitsyn, for whom humankind's welfare entirely depends on its ability to restrain itself, never hid his belief that he saw nothing blessed or beneficial in the unchecked human rights as so loudly proclaimed by the West, provided that their upholding simultaneously led to releasing society of many of its obligations. The liberal ideology that made people believe they had the right to freely enrich themselves, in the Russian context led to something fatal, he thought: a rampant kleptocracy by those who excelled at asserting themselves at the expense of others.
Solzhenitsyn didn't denounce violence if it could help prevent anarchy and societal self-destruction. His fave hero was the last tzar's prime-minister Pyotr Stolypin who systematically encouraged autonomous initiative among the peasantry (Solzhenitsyn's pipe dream, really), and in the meantime ordered the execution of thousands of revolutioners. In his honor, the gallows had gotten a new nickname, it was dubbed "Stolypin's necktie".
Solzhenitsyn was no fan of the Western system, in whose confines he believed the ordinary citizen could do whatever they pleased. He preferred a model where a clearly stated and justly distributed set of freedoms and obligations existed. Which is why in 2006 he sided with Russian patriarch Kirill who had some scathing criticism for Western culture in general, arguing that upholding the rights and wishes of the separate person should not get in the way of either the interests of the fatherland or the religious and national feelings of the rest of society.
Solzhenitsyn was a paleo-Russian patriot as well. He considered the ascetic life that most Russians were relegated to, to be some sort of dignified trait that should be emulated. He was happy that his compatriots were not slaves to the "golden billion" and rejected Western secularism. In that sense, Solzhenitsyn was a supporter of the Church, although he did regularly criticize its oppressive structures and had no illusions about its corrupt practices.
He did spend several years around labor camps in Siberia, and was subsequently stripped of his citizenship for his views, and had to live in the US for 17 years. But all the while, he remained convinced that Western civilization (particularly NATO) was striving to tighten the loop around Russia's neck. In his view, that constituted a direct threat to Christian civilization (particularly Orthodox Christian), whose essence he saw in its ability of self-restraint. In the meantime he predicted that due to the "shrinking" of the Russian population, in the not-so-distant future his country's culture could obtain an Islamic or even a Chinese character. He did welcome Putin's policy of closer relations with China and the Muslim world as "far-sighted", though. Maybe that's why Putin, the former KGB agent, eventually forgave Solzhenitsyn for all his statements where he had dared criticize the new secret-services dominated regime as misanthropic and destructive for his fatherland.
In fact Solzhenitsyn was an isolationist. He believed his people were "historically tired", which is why he was against the exhausting engagement in North Caucasus and other regions (like Central Asia). He called these strategic regions "a serious chronic disease". But the traditional Russian settler lands, from North Kazakhstan to East and South Ukraine to Odessa, he viewed as legitimate Russian territories, where the incompetent Bolsheviks had drawn arbitrary borders in order to somewhat increase the tolerance to the Soviet project among the local elites. What's more, he viewed Crimea as "Russia's natural southern border".
Solzhenitsyn's political-moralist views (especially well pronounced in his later years) revolved around an advocacy for the "preservation" of the merging "Russian peoples" as Russia's number one priority. He was definitely a conservative in the classical sense, and probably the personal catastrophes he had gone through had a great deal to do with that. He didn't shy away from his tzarist nostalgy, and his attitude to the political elites of his time was rather unsentimental. He believed the last Russian tzar, Nikolay II had been particularly incompetent, so he insisted that Nikolay's potential idealization as some kind of martyr would be wrong and poor-tasted in the least. As he repeatedly emphasized, statespeople should be judged by their political actions and results, not their character. In his opinion the demise of the tzarist empire was a catastrophe "only" for the fact that the revolutionary energy that sprang up along that process had inevitably destroyed the newly-emerged structures of local self-rule. And in his mind that was the main basis for real democracy.
Solzhenitsyn's mindset could only be comprehended by one who views the world not as a grand chessboard but as a bundle of problems, from which the reasonable person selects the lesser evils in order to prevent the larger ones. The effects of market economy, which tempted his "immature" compatriots to run after the "golden billion", were the biggest destructive factor in society in his opinion. He maintained that position to his very death in 2008.
Russia was a huge yet poor, backward empire. No true, sustainable prosperity was possible there in the long term, due to its sheer size. Solzhenitsyn, for whom humankind's welfare entirely depends on its ability to restrain itself, never hid his belief that he saw nothing blessed or beneficial in the unchecked human rights as so loudly proclaimed by the West, provided that their upholding simultaneously led to releasing society of many of its obligations. The liberal ideology that made people believe they had the right to freely enrich themselves, in the Russian context led to something fatal, he thought: a rampant kleptocracy by those who excelled at asserting themselves at the expense of others.
Solzhenitsyn didn't denounce violence if it could help prevent anarchy and societal self-destruction. His fave hero was the last tzar's prime-minister Pyotr Stolypin who systematically encouraged autonomous initiative among the peasantry (Solzhenitsyn's pipe dream, really), and in the meantime ordered the execution of thousands of revolutioners. In his honor, the gallows had gotten a new nickname, it was dubbed "Stolypin's necktie".
Solzhenitsyn was no fan of the Western system, in whose confines he believed the ordinary citizen could do whatever they pleased. He preferred a model where a clearly stated and justly distributed set of freedoms and obligations existed. Which is why in 2006 he sided with Russian patriarch Kirill who had some scathing criticism for Western culture in general, arguing that upholding the rights and wishes of the separate person should not get in the way of either the interests of the fatherland or the religious and national feelings of the rest of society.
Solzhenitsyn was a paleo-Russian patriot as well. He considered the ascetic life that most Russians were relegated to, to be some sort of dignified trait that should be emulated. He was happy that his compatriots were not slaves to the "golden billion" and rejected Western secularism. In that sense, Solzhenitsyn was a supporter of the Church, although he did regularly criticize its oppressive structures and had no illusions about its corrupt practices.
He did spend several years around labor camps in Siberia, and was subsequently stripped of his citizenship for his views, and had to live in the US for 17 years. But all the while, he remained convinced that Western civilization (particularly NATO) was striving to tighten the loop around Russia's neck. In his view, that constituted a direct threat to Christian civilization (particularly Orthodox Christian), whose essence he saw in its ability of self-restraint. In the meantime he predicted that due to the "shrinking" of the Russian population, in the not-so-distant future his country's culture could obtain an Islamic or even a Chinese character. He did welcome Putin's policy of closer relations with China and the Muslim world as "far-sighted", though. Maybe that's why Putin, the former KGB agent, eventually forgave Solzhenitsyn for all his statements where he had dared criticize the new secret-services dominated regime as misanthropic and destructive for his fatherland.