A Great Russian Nationalist view...
Solzhenitsyn lays bare the evils of modern Russia
By Alan Philps in Moscow
telegraph.co.uk
ALEXANDER Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel-prize winning writer, this week
publishes a bitter indictment of the evils of modern Russia.
The author's attack, in a book called Russia in the Abyss, will make
unpleasant reading for the Kremlin just as the government tries to
weather the worst financial crisis of the decade.
According to Solzhenitsyn, 79, it is not just the finances of Russia
which are rotten: the state which grew up on the ruins of the Soviet
Union is facing collapse, taking the Russian nation to its doom.
The Russians, he writes, are committing mass suicide while their rulers
and the new rich feast off the wealth plundered from the countryside.
"Our frenzied rulers are stabbing Russia to death," he writes. "We are
barely living - caught between the oblivion of the past and looming
annihilation in the future."
The language of his polemic proves that Russia's greatest living author
has not lost the messianic zeal which he used to destroy the communist
party, exposing the crimes of Stalin in Gulag Archipelago. In his new
work he sets himself up as the defender of the majority of Russians - 98
per cent according to him - for whom the reforms of recent years mean
only poverty, unemployment and helplessness.
Russia, he says, is ruled by "band of selfish people who are indifferent
to the fate of the people and do not even care whether they live or
die". The Russian state is a "phantom" where elections and a so-called
free press are just an empty boast, he writes. One of Russia's key
tasks, he says, is to create a sense of American-style patriotism,
without which there can be no normal society.
The book is due to go on sale on Thursday. Excerpts have been published,
at the author's wish, in two newspapers outside the control of the
notorious oligarchs who own most of the mass media. But only 5,000
copies are to be printed, raising the question: who is listening to
Solzhenitsyn's call to reject the flesh-pots of Moscow and live the
simple, peasant life? The publisher and critic Igor Zakharov said: "This
is a book mainly for people who professionally worry about the fate of
Russia, and secondly for his literary admirers, but there are not many
of them left."
The writer's rejection of Russia's smash-and-grab capitalism is so
absolute that he has become a national irritant, so much so that few
people want to listen to him. Mr Zakharov said: "The Moscow elite and
the money men hate him. They don't want a prophet of asceticism
preaching in the market square. For ordinary people, he disturbs their
peace of mind too much. They do not like to hear that they can lead a
moral life if they just listen to their consciences."
Solzhenitsyn has long been out of favour with the authorities. When he
returned to Russia in 1994 after 20 years of exile, he was given a
fortnightly television slot, but it was axed supposedly on the grounds
of low ratings. Many suspected it was because his message was so
anti-Kremlin.
With his beard and antique vocabulary, Solzhenitsyn appears to many to
be a caricature of the Russian writer turned prophet.
Defenders of the current regime say that Solzhenitsyn and other
disaffected intellectuals have done a lot of harm by painting the
blackest picture of economic reform.
Published comment in Moscow about Solzhenitsyn tends to be polite but
dismissive. But he claims to receive thousands of letters from the
provinces, which he calls Russia's "Third World", where people live a
primitive subsistence culture.
Konstantin Eggert, a commentator at Izvestia newspaper, said:
"Solzhenitsyn has failed as a prophet in Russia. If he wants to help the
dispossessed, he needs to find a way to influence the decision-makers.
But he has lost that audience. He has failed to make himself part of the
solution."
The Moscow elite, for whom the future is bright, criticise him for being
out of touch with aspirations for a richer and more comfortable life.
Russians, they argue, want more wealth, more evenly distributed, not a
return to the 19th Century.
His tirade would no doubt be balm to the soul of the provincial
dispossessed, but they do not buy many books. Indeed, they rarely see
money at all. |
