Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978 (The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series)

“It was so difficult to get used to the full freedom of life and to learn the golden rule of all freedom: to strive to use it as little as possible.’’I found the writing captivating. Somehow I assumed that a serious ‘Russian’ novelist, focusing on ideas, then translated into English would be so . . . so . . . hard. Wrong!The man can write!No wonder so successful — Circumstances, Russia to Switzerland; feelings, wife and children; friends, true and false; money, poverty and riches; politicians, honorable and not; academics, supporters and opposers; spies, eastern and western; etc., etc., are all here.Fantastic!Reads closer to a detective thriller than biography. Make a great movie!And of course (Solzhenitsyn being Solzhenitsyn) you get the whole package. Frustration from misunderstandings with western media, humility from acknowledging his inconsiderate ways; appreciation for self-sacrificing help; sadness when betrayed; determination to finish his historical series of the Russian revolution; dismay at the dissolute West, etc., etc.,Yes, we see his life in front of our eyes. Reader receives a real sense of the man. Not a ‘nice’ person, but genuine, determined, courageous. Yet tender, even sentimental when possible.Of course, outstanding highlights are his comments . . .“I invariably compared the people here in the West to the people back at home, and felt sad and puzzled by the Western world. Was it that people in the West were worse than people back in Russia? Of course not. But when the only demands on human nature are legal ones, the bar is much lower than the bar of nobleness and honor (those concepts having in any case almost vanished now), and so many loopholes open up for unscrupulousness and cunning. What the law compels us to do is far too little for humaneness: a higher law should be placed in our hearts, too. I simply could not get used to the cold wind of litigation in the West.’’Interesting take. Probably something only an outsider could see . . .Another . . .“I had lunch with Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra, and we marveled at the tortuous Russian paths of the twentieth century. To think that I was now here! What was more, I had intended to send her an anonymous parcel of my first microfilms, entrusting them to her keep. And I had already written about her in Archipelago; now I inscribed for her a copy of August 1914, as if I were giving back to Tolstoy a work that could not have come about without him. Sitting right there with us at the table was none other than the daughter of General Samsonov! And she said that I had portrayed her father exactly as he was. That, to me, was high praise.’’Lots and lots of these types of sketches. Neat.After sometime in the west . . .“The incorrigible vice of the world, to which any concept of the hierarchy of ideas is alien, lies in that no one person’s voice, no one person’s strength, can be remembered or acted upon. Everything passes by, shimmering and flickering, into a new diversity. A kaleidoscope.’’Well . . . the man can write!Looks for and finds Russian ‘Old Believers’ in Oregon . . .“The children—that was the challenge! They were particularly preoccupied by the problem of raising their children here, and we talked about that a great deal. Notwithstanding the power of spiritual influence from within the Old Believer families, the children inevitably went to American public schools, and were assailed from all sides by every kind of permissiveness. How else were these children going to engage in American life one day? But at home the Old Believers strove to strengthen the children spiritually; they had no television, they read in Russian. A neighbor’s wife, who had a limp, was teaching them how to read Old Church Slavonic. And the children’s clothes were homespun and entirely Russian. Alya and I were given a gift of two brightly embroidered shirts. We took a group photograph.’’Touching.Much of this work Solzhenitsyn defending, explaining, undoing slander.“I would never have imagined then that eleven years later, I would be forced to bring to the pages of this book my distant childhood and past life that had been completely recast by my enemies. You feel as if you are wading through a scorched and reeking wasteland, fires still smoldering, wading on and on, the stench seeping deeper and deeper into your clothing, your skin, your hair, and you look the other way, you pay no attention, ignoring it all as if it were just a minor nuisance.’’Well . . .“But at some point you suddenly realize that you absolutely have to begin washing and scrubbing it off, otherwise it will eat into you, stick to you until you die, and even beyond your death, stick to your sons, your grandsons. The proverb does say: Truth sticks like resin, lies run off like water. So I could hope that all the slander would trickle away, that nothing would remain. But there is another proverb that might be cited - that there is no smoke without fire.’’Everyone knows that!“And in the end, how many years must one spend in dangerous clutches before one realizes for sure that they have their own chemical formula for producing smoke without fire.’’This work deserves ten stars.Includes twenty four apendices (linked)Five hundred names listed (not linked)Detailed twenty page index (not linked)Two hundred fifty notes (linked)

In February 1974, writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was expelled from the Soviet Union. After years of his writings being published in the West, the triggering event for the Soviet government was the publication of the first volume of “The Gulag Archipelago,” Solzhenitsyn’s highly detailed account of life in the Soviet prison camp system.The writer was flown to West Germany, beginning an exile that would last until 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the restoration of his Russian citizenship, and his eventual return. But in 1974, his wife and young children had to be allowed to leave, his rather large archive of research materials, notes, and other documents had to be smuggled out, a place to live had to be found. He also had to navigate life in the West, survive the machinations of unscrupulous people disguised as helpers, and deal with a news media he found horrific.“Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978” is the first of two volumes on the 20 years he spent in the West. Translated by Peter Constantine. The account provides a story of an internationally famous author bewildered by Western culture and society. He was at first embraced by the Western news media and intellectuals; he was something of a problem and embarrassment for the Richard Nixon / Henry Kissinger plan for détente with Soviet Russia.The media the intellectual elites soon discovered, however, that Solzhenitsyn was not the Western-style liberal they expected; he was first and foremost a Russian, and a conservative one at that; the man actually worshipped faithfully in the Russian Orthodox Church. He learned quickly to distrust the news media in all of its formsSolzhenitsyn must have kept meticulously detailed diaries or have a phenomenal memory, or both. The memoir covers an almost daily account of his first five years outside of Russia. He had to give countless interviews. He had to find a place to live, considering Switzerland, Norway, and Canada before finally deciding on Vermont in the United States. He had to deal with the constant propaganda efforts of the KGB, the Soviet counterpart to the CIA. And he had to gather together his archives, visit universities and research centers, and somehow find time to help his wife raise their children.It’s no wonder he often felt caught between what he called two millstones – the millstone pf the Soviets and the KGB, and the millstone of unending pressure from elements of Western culture, and Western culture itself.I have read most of Solzhenitsyn’s works (including all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago) and his two earlier memoirs, “The Oak and the Calf” and “Invisible Allies.” I had believed that his falling out with the Western news media and intellectual elites stemmed from his 1978 Harvard commencement speech, published as “A World Split Apart.” More than one pundit observed that Solzhenitsyn had done something at Harvard that no one ever had done anywhere before – he gave a commencement address that was remembered a year later. What Between Two Millstones makes clear, however, is that the falling out between the writer and western news media happened much earlier, almost as soon as he arrived in Germany.The memoir also provides a deep understanding of Solzhenitsyn experiences as he began to write his fictional account of the rise of the Bolsheviks and how they seized power in 1917. Doing research at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, he’s shocked to learn that the first revolution of 1917, in which the tsar abdicated and Alexander Kerensky took over as national leader, was not the glorious moment he and many other Russians had believed it to be. In fact, that revolution was just as much responsible for the eventual tyranny of communism as the second revolution of 1917, that in November that was celebrated as the founding moment of Soviet Russia.“Between Two Millstones” is for admirers of Solzhenitsyn, for critics interested in his writings, and for historians who want to understand a short five years that, in their own way, contributed to the ultimate dissolution of Soviet Russia.

A great book by the 20th century's greatest writer and witness to man's inhumanity to man.