The Vision of Solzhenitsyn
The Vision of Solzhenitsyn
Collection Structure: Firing Line broadcast records > Episode guide > The Vision of Solzhenitsyn
Item Title: The Vision of Solzhenitsyn
Collection Title: Firing Line broadcast records
Guest: Muggeridge, Malcolm (1903-1990)
Guest: Charlton, Michael
Guest: Levin, Bernard
Host: Buckley, William F., Jr. (1925-2008)
Date Created: March 10, 1976
Description:
Описание
В отличие от обычного формата, это шоу начинается с ретрансляции первого телевизионного интервью Александра Солженицына на Западе (с корреспондентом Би-би-си Майклом Чарльтоном), которое было, по словам г-на Бакли, «ударом в солнечное сплетение из тех, что сначала онемел, а затем ожил, а затем, возможно, преобразился». (Кратко процитирую самого г. Солженицына: «Я не критик Запада. Я повторяю, что почти всю жизнь мы поклонялись Западу… Я не критик Запада. Я критик слабости Запада. Я критик факта, которого мы не можем понять: как можно потерять свою духовную силу, свою силу воли и, обладая свободой, не ценить ее, не желать идти на жертвы ради нее».) После интервью. , WFB и его гости имеют несколько минут для комментариев. Г-н Маггеридж: «Его влияние связано с тем, что это абсолютная правда. Видите ли, то, что сказал Солженицын, находится на совершенно ином уровне, чем комментарии политиков о нашем мире по телевидению. Это с точки зрения правды. Это с точки зрения добра и зла. Это в конечном счете с точки зрения христианской веры». Г-н Левин: «Хочу сказать вот что: хотя Солженицын, несомненно, человек, озаренный изнутри благодатью, но есть и другие - Сахаров явный пример, - которые таковыми не являются, которые берут это просто из того, что можно назвать нравственным прагматизмом. Насколько мне известно, у Сахарова нет религиозной веры, а между тем вот человек, который показывает, так же как и Солженицын, что нельзя - что бы вы ни делали и сколько бы вы ни делали - погасить искру свободы в людях».
In a departure from the usual format, this show begins by re-broadcasting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's first television interview in the West (with the BBC's Michael Charlton), which was, as Mr. Buckley describes it, "a blow at the solar plexus of the kind that first numbs and then revives and then conceivably transfigures." (To quote briefly from Mr. Solzhenitsyn himself, "I am not a critic of the West. I repeat that for nearly all our lives we worshipped the West.... I am not a critic of the West. I am a critic of the weakness of the West. I am a critic of a fact which we can't comprehend: how one can lose one's spiritual strength, one's will power, and, possessing freedom, not to value it, not to be willing to make sacrifices for it.") After the interview, WFB and his guests have a few minutes left to comment. Mr. Muggeridge: "Its impact is due to the fact that it is absolutely true. You see, what Solzhenitsyn has said is at an entirely different level from the comments that go on about our world on television, by politicians. It's in terms of truth. It's in terms of good and evil. It's in terms ultimately of the Christian faith." Mr. Levin: "I would like to say this: that although undoubtedly Solzhenitsyn is a man lit from within by grace, there are others-Sakharov is the obvious example-who are not; who take it simply from what you might call moral pragmatism. As far as I know Sakharov has no religious faith, and yet here is the man who demonstrates, just as Solzhenitsyn, that you cannot-whatever you do and however long you do it-extinguish the spark of freedom in human beings."
Theme(s): Radio & Television
Subject(s): Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918-2008,
Language(s): English
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Place Recorded: London, England, United Kingdom
Dimensions: Duration: 60 minutes
Format: Text
Medium: television programs
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Color: color
Soundtrack: sound
Hoover ID: Program S0225
Record Number: 80040.469
Notes: Video available through special order.
Collection Guide: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6m3nc88c
Rights: Copyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.
MR. BUCKLEY: On the first of March in Great Britain the BBC ran an interview of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn conducted by Mr. Michael Charlton of the BBC staff.
As happens only once in a decade or so, it was one of those broadcasts that stopped people cold. It was a blow at the solar plexus of the kind that first numbs and then revives and then conceivably transfigures; and when one could not in the ensuing days distinguish the political predispositions of the critics by what they said, for a moment--a brief moment, perhaps-all trivial differences were put aside as beneath consideration. England had not heard the like of such a performance, one critic said, since Garibaldi united the British Isles in support of Italian unity. Solzhenitsyn's theme is both grander and more painful. Reaching for an appropriate response by the West, the critic of the Times, Mr. Bernard Levin, wrote these bitter words: "So what can we do with Solzhenitsyn? Well, if I may conclude with a modest proposal,
I suggest that the West, when he has provoked it a little further, should, possibly under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly, formally condemn him to death and execute him either by obliging him to drink hemlock or by crucifixion. After all, the two most noted figures in history who respectively experienced those fates we condemned, whatever the ideological niceties involved, principally because they told their own societies truths that made those societies uncomfortable, and since our own society is even more averse to discomfort than those were, it seems only fitting that the man who is, mutatis mutandis, doing much the same thing to us should suffer a like fate. Meanwhile," he concluded, "at any rate, I can look at the hand that shook the hand of the man who shook the world, and, if he will allow me to say to him: 'Aleksandr Isayevitch, do not despair just yet. We understand.'"
We shall proceed to show the full interview, uncut. In the remaining few minutes we shall have comments on it from Mr. Levin and from Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge, well known on this program as everywhere else, who, I guess it is accurate to say, was the first critic in the Western world to hail the unique mission of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Firing Line episode S0225 "The Vision of Solzhenitsyn” transcript pages 2-7 removed due to copyright issues.
For more information, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives.
MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Muggeridge, how do you account for the impact of this program in Great Britain if it is in fact the case, as Mr. Solzhenitsyn alleges, that the West is in such moral disorder?
MR. MUGGERIDGE: Its impact is due to the fact that it is absolutely true.
You see, what Solzhenitsyn has said is in an entirely different level from the comments that go on about our world on television, by politicians. It's in terms of truth. It's in terms of good and evil. It's in terms ultimately of the Christian faith. Now, I think myself that the fact that these words, so infinitely refreshing and uplifting and hopeful, should come not from the West, where we're always talking about freedom, but from the most enslaved society that's ever existed on earth and from a man who, let us never forget, had he wished to make only very trifling concessions could have lived in that country as one of its most favored and honored citizens but who chose for the sake of truth and for the sake of loyalty to the people with whom he'd been in those prisons--wrongly, by the way, referred to as Stalin's camps because they still exist; they're not Stalin's camps, they're Soviet camps-chose to jeopardize his life, his work, everything, and to give us in the West a last chance by telling us what the world situation is really about, which is not energy, not inflation, not who is going to be chosen to be the candidates in America, not who gets into power, but good and evil.
MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Levin, did you find that message hopeful as Mr. Muggeridge did? And what is it about it that is hopeful?
MR. LEVIN: This is a curious paradox. I did find that the thing I took away from it very strongly is exactly that feeling of--I can only use the word- exhilaration. And yet the message, after all, he is giving us is that the West is in a terrible plight, weak because she is morally weak, could be crushed in a moment. This is what he's saying from beginning to end, and yet one comes away not in despair but in hope. And I think that as far as I can see the reason for that is not that he is telling us something we didn't know already- there were no revelations in that interview, after all--but that he has touched in us a chord that was ready for such a man.
You see, the most extraordinary thing about Solzhenitsyn is that I do not know when the last time in the world's history it was that a single man, with no power-he was not a king, a dictator, a general--but the moral force of his own will and beliefs and character compelled the world to listen to him. And I believe that in the countries like Britain we were ready to listen to him. I cannot myself believe that the feeling I got very strongly wherever I've been since the BBC showed that interview, people I've talked to all say the same thing: that they were hypnotized by him and the message he was telling them. And the message is, as Malcolm says, that there is a difference between good and evil and that it is an important difference to remember not merely when you are dealing directly with questions of morality but when you are dealing with questions of international politics. And I think we believe that. We have known it, and he has at last touched the spring that has released it and forth has come the spring, gushing.
In contradistinction to a lot of the tittering, mincing comment that has been publicly made about Solzhenitsyn, I think one of the things that has gone wrong with this country is that too much of the public comment has been of the kind that dismisses a man like Solzhenitsyn because it is incapable of taking the measure of him, and that therefore a lot of what you might call private comment is unwilling, or at any rate unable, to formulate these feelings. And that is why the effect of a man like this is so great: because he comes, in effect, to tell us what we already know and to strengthen that belief in us.
MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Mr. Muggeridge, in the light of Mr. Levin's analysis, are we entitled to say that if this exposure to Solzhenitsyn proves to be resonant, then indeed we can judge the situation as hopeful; but that if it becomes simply another transitory, emotional experience quickly excreted along with the rest of the day's detritus, he will actually have proved that the situation is beyond remedy?
MR. MUGGERIDGE: I don't think anything could alter its hopefulness because I think the fact that it still is possible for a man to come on television and speak truth and have this tremendous impact-and it's going to be the same impact in America that it's been here-is itself the reminder of the eternal hope that whatever happens- I mean, our civilization comes to an end as civilizations do; our decadence and corruption brings it down. But still the fact remains that words such as Solzhenitsyn spoke, an approach to our situation such as he has presented, has this impact, wins this response. And you will find exactly the same response. He is the greatest man now alive in the world. It's rather sad to think that the president of the United States, who receives a great many people, didn't think it worthwhile, when he was there, to receive him-something that will be in history books in a way.
Also, I think you will find that somehow or other it affects even your presidential election, because he presents the issues as they really are. I'd like to say one thing to American viewers of this program which will bear out what he's been saying: that after they've watched it and listened to it, let them go and get hold of Dostoevsky's novel called The Devils or The Possessed- both names are used. There's a very good, new translation by Magarshack And they will see in that novel exactly what he means: that this experience that the world's going through-in which Russia's played so considerable a part-began long before the Russian Revolution. The same issues were there, and he speaks the same language that Dostoevsky speaks in that novel.
MR. BUCKLEY: Even granting that as the historical background, Mr. Levin, would you say that there is a, if you like, peacock correspondence between the two years during which Mr. Solzhenitsyn has been at liberty and those two years that he singles out as the great acceleration in the decline of the West? MR. LEVIN: Yes. It's an irony that that is indeed what's happened. I think the decline would have gone on whether he had been in the West or not, of course. That in itself hasn't anything to do with it. But in that sense he's absolutely right: It has gone on. There are signs now, clearly-at least I think I detect signs-that many people are feeling that the acceleration has gone too far and too fast and actually do want to do something about it. I think it is one of the hopeful threads in the run up to the American presidential campaign that the real meaning of detente seems to be under examination as it has not been since the absurdly hopeful days that have preceded this period.
MR. BUCKLEY: As a pragmatic or as a moral matter?
MR. LEVIN: Well, Solzhenitsyn would disagree here, obviously. I say it doesn't matter provided the reexamination of detente takes place. I don't care whether it's done on a moral or a pragmatic basis provided it's done.
MR. BUCKLEY: Because they will come to the same conclusion, you mean? Because they will come to the same conclusion?
MR. LEVIN: It would come to the same conclusion. The conclusion is what I'm interested in. I don't share Solzhenitsyn's or Malcolm's Christian faith, but I see the-- I mean, the fact that this is what gives Solzhenitsyn not merely his strengths but the whole tenor of his argument, and the whole basis of his view of the world is based obviously in his Christian faith. I don't share that myself, but that's neither here nor there. What I'm saying is that whether it is because we realize, as he says, that you cannot divorce morality from politics or whether it is because we look at the balance of power and get alarmed by it, provided we do something about it I shall be content.
MR. MUGGERIDGE: Bill, one more point of hope, which is the biggest point of all: This regime, of which after all Solzhenitsyn is a product--he was born into the Soviet regime--has set itself to fashion a type of human being who would fall in with their standards, their arrangements. Now, the world sees that man and listens to that man and realizes that that idea of what they call in their rather hollow way "social engineering" has been a total failure and fiasco; that this is what you can't do. Whether you try to do it their way by means of what's called propaganda or our way by means of genetics and so on, you can't do it.
MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is he a mutation? Or is he touched by grace?
MR. MUGGERIDGE: Grace. And this is the most extraordinary thing of all, which is the one question I would still have liked to put to him.
MR. LEVIN: Yes. But-- He is, undoubtedly. But I would like to say this:
That although undoubtedly Solzhenitsyn is a man lit from within by grace, there are others--Sakharov is the obvious example--who are not; who take it simply from what you might call moral pragmatism. As far as I know Sakharov has no religious faith, and yet here is the man who demonstrates, just as Solzhenitsyn, that you cannot--whatever you do and however long you do it--extinguish the spark of freedom in human beings. Both of them demonstrate this, and they demonstrate it, the philosopher and artist on the one hand and the scientist on the other. I think those two colossi rightly dominate the world and should continue to do so.
MR. BUCKLEY: We have only a few seconds, but if in fact you project the technology of totalitarianism along the same graph it has followed during the past century, mightn't it be predictable that even 10, 15 years from now such a phenomenon as Solzhenitsyn could not be permitted to exist?
MR. MUGGERIDGE: I don't agree. I think that the fact that it can exist now is the proof that that technology can never wholly conquer man. And I love the image that if you-- I don't know where I read it. But if you encased the earth in concrete there would still be a crack in that concrete, and through that crack something would grow. That's Solzhenitsyn.
MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, Mr. Muggeridge. Thank you very much, Mr. Levin.
Оригинал: digitalcollections.hoover.org
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См. также:
- 25.03.1976 TV: Solzhenitsyn BBC Interview on ‘Firing Line’ // voiks
Александр Солженицын, русский писатель в изгнании, 1 марта дал интервью Майклу Чарльтону для программы «Панорама», выпускаемой по связям с общественностью Британской радиовещательной корпорации. Это событие вызвало необычайную реакцию, от широко распространенных комментариев в британской и международной прессе до отставки вскоре после этого лорда Джорджа-Брауна из Лейбористской партии. Бывший чиновник кабинета министров объяснил, что предупреждения Солженицына Западу «заставили меня почувствовать, что я должен что-то предпринять».
- Firing Line (Television Program) broadcast records. Collection Number: 80040 // oac.cdlib.org
"The Vision of Solzhenitsyn"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. : Levin, Bernard. : Charlton, Michael.
10 March 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 3
Program details: In a departure from the usual format, this show begins by re-broadcasting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's first television interview in the West (with the BBC's Michael Charlton), which was, as Mr. Buckley describes it, "a blow at the solar plexus of the kind that first numbs and then revives and then conceivably transfigures." (To quote briefly from Mr. Solzhenitsyn himself, "I am not a critic of the West. I repeat that for nearly all our lives we worshipped the West.... I am not a critic of the West. I am a critic of the weakness of the West. I am a critic of a fact which we can't comprehend: how one can lose one's spiritual strength, one's will power, and, possessing freedom, not to value it, not to be willing to make sacrifices for it.") After the interview, WFB and his guests have a few minutes left to comment. Mr. Muggeridge: "Its impact is due to the fact that it is absolutely true. You see, what Solzhenitsyn has said is at an entirely different level from the comments that go on about our world on television, by politicians. It's in terms of truth. It's in terms of good and evil. It's in terms ultimately of the Christian faith." Mr. Levin: "I would like to say this: that although undoubtedly Solzhenitsyn is a man lit from within by grace, there are others-Sakharov is the obvious example-who are not; who take it simply from what you might call moral pragmatism. As far as I know Sakharov has no religious faith, and yet here is the man who demonstrates, just as Solzhenitsyn, that you cannot-whatever you do and however long you do it-extinguish the spark of freedom in human beings."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.469
Digital Collections Link: http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6403
- 01.02.2017 Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Muggeridge Revisited // www.youtube.com: Firing Line with William F. Buckley, Jr.
Episode S0332, Recorded on June 27, 1978
Guests: Malcolm Muggeridge, Andrew Knight
For more information about this program, see: digitalcollections.hoover.org
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