Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Municipal educational establishment “High
school with a profound study of the English language № 27 ”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Plan. 1
Introduction. 2
Main part. 3
1. Biography. 3
2. Master’s works. 8
3. The Cancer Ward. 9
Conclusion. 11
Literature. 12
Introduction.
"Who else, if not
writers,
can censure not only their
faulty
rulers but society at
large?"
Solzhenitsyn (From Nobel
lecture)
"We lived
next door but did not understand that she was the upright person no settlement
can do without. Nor can a city. Nor the entire land..."
This excerpt from the famous short
story "Matriona's Home" about a peasant woman who gave shelter to the
writer in the 1950s perfectly applies to the writer himself. A teacher in the
broadest sense of the word, a human rights activist and a righteous man, whose
principle has always been to live without lies.
Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1970 "for the ethical force with which he has
pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature." Active member
of Russian Academy of Sciences (1997).
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is now 84.
"A legend of the 20th century, martyr and hero," thus the outstanding
Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachyov described Solzhenitsyn once. For us
Solzhenitsyn is not simply a great writer but rather the nation's conscience
whose word strikes you not only by its artistic value but by its message of
truth. This truth is all the more impressing since the writer's word and life
are never at varience. They complement each other. Today we came to realize
that the writer's most outstanding "work" is his own life.
"Longevity
was given to me. 80 years is a longevity. At this age you have new
opportunities. You can look back at your life and open something in it that you
could not notice and understand while you were on the run. For a larger part of
our lives we act, and action interferes with our ability to take a quiet look
at things. An old age gives some scope to your soul, a chance to evaluate your
deeds."
One of the
leading Russian writers of the 20th century, Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn,
was born in Kislovodsk, on the 11th of December 1918 in a family of Cossack
intellectuals and brought up primarily by his mother. His father had studied
philological subjects at Moscow University, but did not complete his studies,
as he enlisted as a volunteer when war broke out in 1914. He became an
artillery officer on the German front, fought throughout the war and died in
the summer of 1918, six months before his son was born. Alexander was brought
up by his mother, who worked as a shorthand typist, in the town of Rostov-on-Don, where he spent the whole of his childhood and youth, leaving the grammar
school there in 1936. Even as a child, without any prompting from others, he
wanted to be a writer and, indeed, he turned out a good deal of the usual
juvenilia. In the 1930s, he tried to get his writings published but he could
not find anyone willing to accept his manuscripts. He wanted to acquire a
literary education, but in Rostov such an education that would suit his wishes
was not to be obtained. To move to Moscow was not possible, partly because his
mother was alone and in poor health, and partly because of their modest
circumstances.
Solzhenitsyn
therefore began to study at the Department of Mathematics at Rostov University, where it proved that he had considerable aptitude for mathematics. But
although he found it easy to learn this subject, he did not feel that he wished
to devote his whole life to it. Nevertheless, it was to play a beneficial role
in his destiny later on, and on at least two occasions, it rescued him from
death. For he would probably not have survived the eight years in camps if he
had not, as a mathematician, been transferred to a so-called sharashia,
where he spent four years; and later, during his exile, he was allowed to teach
mathematics and physics, which helped to ease his existence and made it
possible for him to write. If he had had a literary education it is quite
likely that he should not have survived these ordeals but would instead have
been subjected to even greater pressures. Later on, it is true, Alexander
Isayevich began to get some literary education as well; this was from 1939 to
1941, during which time, along with university studies in physics and
mathematics, he also studied by correspondence at the Institute of History,
Philosophy and Literature in Moscow.
In 1941, a
few days before the outbreak of the war, Solzhenitsyn graduated from the
Department of Physics and Mathematics at Rostov University. At the beginning of
the war, owing to weak health, he was detailed to serve as a driver of
horsedrawn vehicles during the winter of 1941-1942. Later, because of his
mathematical knowledge, he was transferred to an artillery school, from which,
after a crash course, he passed out in November 1942. Immediately after this he
was put in command of an artillery-position-finding company, and in this
capacity, served, without a break, right in the front line until he was
arrested in February 1945. This happened in East Prussia, a region which is
linked with his destiny in a remarkable way. As early as 1937, as a first-year
student, he chose to write a descriptive essay on "The Samsonov
Disaster" of 1914 in East Prussia and studied material on this; and in
1945 he himself went to this area (at the time of writing, autumn 1970, the
book August 1914 has just been completed).
Solzhenitsyn was arrested on the
grounds of what the censorship had found during the years 1944-1945 in his
correspondence with a school friend, mainly because of certain disrespectful
remarks about Stalin, although they referred to him in disguised terms. As a
further basis for the "charge", there were used the drafts of stories
and reflections which had been found in his map case. These, however, were not
sufficient for a "prosecution", and in July 1945 he was
"sentenced" in his absence, in accordance with a procedure then frequently
applied, after a resolution by the OSO (the Special Committee of the NKVD), to
eight years in a detention camp (at that time this was considered a mild
sentence).
Solzhenitsyn
served the first part of my sentence in several correctional work camps of
mixed types (this kind of camp is described in the play, The Tenderfoot and
the Tramp). In 1946, as a mathematician, he was transferred to the group of
scientific research institutes of the MVD-MOB (Ministry of Internal Affairs,
Ministry of State Security). He spent the middle period of his sentence in such
"SPECIAL PRISONS" (The First Circle). In 1950 he was sent to
the newly established "Special Camps" which were intended only for
political prisoners. In such a camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), he worked as a miner, a
bricklayer, and a foundryman. There he contracted a tumour, which was operated
on, but the condition was not cured (its character was not established until
later on).
One month after
he had served the full term of his eight-year sentence, there came, without any
new judgement and even without a "resolution from the OSO", an
administrative decision to the effect that he was not to be released but EXILED
FOR LIFE to Kok-Terek (southern Kazakhstan). This measure was not directed
specially against him, but was a very usual procedure at that time. He served
this exile from March 1953 (on March 5th, when Stalin's death was made public,
he was allowed for the first time to go out without an escort) until June 1956.
Here his cancer had developed rapidly, and at the end of 1953, he was very near
death. He was unable to eat; he could not sleep and was severely affected by
the poisons from the tumour. However, he was able to go to a cancer clinic at Tashkent, where, during 1954, he was cured (The Cancer Ward, Right Hand).
During all the
years of exile, Solzhenitsyn taught mathematics and physics in a primary school
and during his hard and lonely existence he wrote prose in secret (in the camp
he could only write down poetry from memory). He managed, however, to keep what
he had written, and to take it with him to the European part of the country,
where, in the same way, he continued, as far as the outer world was concerned,
to occupy himself with teaching and, in secret, to devote himself to writing,
at first in the Vladimir district (Matryona's Farm) and afterwards in
Ryazan.
During all the
years until 1961, not only was he convinced that he should never see a single
line of him in print in his lifetime, but, also, he scarcely dared allow any of
his close acquaintances to read anything he had written because he feared that
this would become known. Finally, at the age of 42, this secret authorship
began to wear him down. The most difficult thing of all to bear was that he
could not get his works judged by people with literary training. In 1961, after
the 22nd Congress of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party and Tvardovsky's speech at
this, he decided to emerge and to offer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Such an
emergence seemed, then, to Solzhenitsyn, and not without reason, to be very
risky because it might lead to the loss of his manuscripts, and to his own
destruction. But, on that occasion, things turned out successfully, and after
protracted efforts, A.T. Tvardovsky was able to print his novel one year later.
The printing of his work was, however, stopped almost immediately and the
authorities stopped both his plays and (in 1964) the novel, The First Circle,
which, in 1965, was seized together with his papers from the past years. During
these months it seemed to him that he had committed an unpardonable mistake by
revealing his work prematurely and that because of this he should not be able
to carry it to a conclusion. After 1966, his work was not published in the Soviet Union for many years.
The open conflict between communist
regime and Solzhenitsyn erupted with his Letter to the Fourth National Congress
of Soviet Writers (May 1967), in which he demanded the abolition of censorship,
the rehabilitation of many writers victimized during the repression, and the
restoration of his archives, confiscated by the KGB in 1965. After the
publication abroad of The First Circle (1968) and The Cancer
Ward (1968-69) abroad and winning the Nobel Prize (1970, "for the
ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian
literature") the confrontation increased. Further public statements by
Solzhenitsyn (A Lenten Letter to Pimen, Patriarch of all Russia, Letter to the
Soviet Leaders, etc.) as well as the publication of the first variant of August
1914 (1971) and the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago (1973), led
the Soviet authorities to exile him to Germany (February 1974).
Having settled
first in Switzerland, Solzhenitsyn, his wife Natalia Dmitrievna, three sons:
Ermolai, Ignat and Stepan, in 1976 moved to the United States. They lived in Cavendish, Vermont. While in the West, Solzhenitsyn completed The Oak and the
Calf (1975) and Three Plays (1981). In 1982 an enlarged
version of August 1914 was published as the first in a series of
novels about the Russian Revolution to be called collectively The Red
Wheel. Excerpts from this work had been published in 1975 as Lenin in
Zurich. There were many public addresses and speeches also: A World Split Apart, Misconceptions About Russia Are a Threat to America, etc. The
intellectual and moral influence of Solzhenitsyn played an important role in
the fall of communist power in East Europe and Russia.
In 1989 Gulag Archipelago
was published as a serial in the literary magazine Novy Mir. In
1990 Solzhenitsyn was again admitted the Soviet citizenship. Then he published
How to Reconstruct Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals.
He came back to Russia in May 1994. Among his new works was Russian Question
at the End of XX Century, Russia in the Abuss and other publicist
writing, short stories. Now the magazine Novy Mir has began to
publish his Sketches on Exile (a sequel of The Oak and the Calf).
There is a new his historical book now: 200 Years Together.
After return he
tried to influence the modern Russian politics and met President Yeltsin (1994)
and President Putin (2000).
Literature, however, was not Solzhenitsyn's first profession. He graduated from
Rostov University (and with honors) and in the 50s taught mathematics,
physics and astronomy. Perhaps, this explains the logic always present in his
literary work. The idea of every short story or epic novel is always crystal
clear. The author's stand is never ambiguous. The celebrated One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich, which made the writer famous overnight, is
a wild protest against Stalin's concentration camps and, in a broader sense,
against suppression of any personality. But this protest is expressed in
amazing artistic form, where every word is richly colored.
One Day and Matriona's Home have been read by millions of people in
this country, while the large-scale novels In Circle One, Cancer Ward,
The GULAG Archipelago and The Red Wheel are a hard nut to
crack and on the whole have not become national bestsellers. Certainly, many
readers were discouraged by the size of these books; The Red Wheel alone
consists of 10 volumes. Besides, after all the revelations of the perestroika
period, after scandals and masses of compromising material daily supplied by
the media, many people simply don't have the energy to go deep into the events
of the past, which were even more frightening that those of the present. The
writer himself has an approximately similar opinion on the issue. As for the
Russian literature of the Soviet period on the whole, he believes that
"After 1917 life and people changed greatly. But literature produced a
very poor reflection of these changes. The truth was suppressed and lies
encouraged. Thus we arrived in the 1990s, knowing next to nothing about this
country. This explains the great number of surprises."
There is still another reason why
many people remain strangers to Solzhenitsyn's work. His major books are not entertaining
reading. In fact, they are political and philosophical essays. The writer
believes his mission is to keep things under constant scrutiny.
I would life to
tell you about one of my favorite novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It is The
Cancer Ward.
The story takes place in the men's
cancer ward of a hospital in a city in Soviet Central Asia. The patients in
Ward 13 all suffer from cancer, but differ in age, personality, nationality,
and social class (as if such a thing could be possible in the Soviet
"classless" society!). We are first introduced to Pavel Rusanov, a
Communist Party functionary, who enters the hospital because of a rapidly
growing neck tumor.
We soon learn,
however, that the book's central character is Oleg Kostoglotov, a young man who
has recently been discharged from a penal camp and is now "eternally"
exiled to this particular province. Only two weeks earlier, he was admitted to
the ward in grave condition from an unspecified tumor, but he has responded
rapidly to radiation therapy. Among the doctors are Zoya, a medical student;
Vera Gangart, a young radiologist; and Lyudmila Dontsova, the chief of
radiation therapy.
Rusanov and
Kostoglotov respond to therapy and are eventually discharged; other patients
remain in the ward, get worse, or are sent home to die. In the end Kostoglotov
boards a train to the site of his "eternal" exile: "The long
awaited happy life had come, it had come! But Oleg somehow did not recognize
it."
Solzhenitzyn himself was
released from a labor camp in early 1953, just before Stalin's death, and was
exiled to a village in Kazakhstan. While incarcerated, he had been operated on
for a tumor, but was not told the diagnosis. He subsequently developed a
recurrence, received radiotherapy in Tashkent, and recovered.
In The Cancer Ward Solzhenitzyn
transforms these experiences into a multifaceted tale about Soviet society
during the period of hope and liberalization after Stalin's death. Cancer, of
course, is an obvious metaphor for the totalitarian state. The novel also
provides an interesting look at mid-century Soviet medicine and medical ethics.
The novel also
explores the personal qualities and motivation of physicians, and the issue of
intimate relationships between doctors and patients. Probably the book's
strongest points are its insight into human nature and the believability of its
characters.
Solzhenitsyn is disappointed with
Russian literature: "On the one hand, our Russian literature is very high
because it has not lost its ethic standard. On the other hand, partly under the
influence of Gogol, with his merciless attitude toward public vices, Russian
literature lost its creative message. We have Oblomov, Onegin, Pechorin, all
the so-called "useless people", but where are the builders, the
creators? Russia was created as a mighty power stretching east to Siberia, where back in the 18th century we had educational institutions, talented people
and culture. Then under Gogol's influence there appeared a succession of
satirists and ironists. Saltytkov-Shchedrin, for example, with his scathing
look at the negative is simply mustard."
Today Solzhenitsyn continues
working, preparing his diaries for publication, writing letters to the former
fellow-inmates and helping thousands of people. The Solzhenitsyn foundation is
based on the royalties of The GULAG Archipelago, published in 30
countries. It supports thousands of former political prisoners across Russia.
"Giving is far more important
than taking," says the writer's wife, Natalia. "As for him, he has
popular love. He receives wonderful letters and knows there are many people who
are grateful to him. But he works not for this gratitude. We are happy to be
back home. We never feel lonely, nor do we bear any grudge. We feel as if we
had never left the country."
1.
Нива
Ж. Солженицын. – М., 1992.
2.
The New York Times, May
15,1997.
4.
Encyclopedia Britannica.
5.
Профиль,
12 января 1998, №1.