It was only a few decades ago, when we welcomed the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ as an eyeopener for the world to finally grasp the cruelty of a totalitarian system and Communist repression in the Soviet Union.
Many Western apologists for the Kremlin were finally not only acknowledging the credibility of Solzhenitsyn’s personal experiences in Stalin’s prison colonies, they were extolling his writings as literary masterpieces and supporting his nomination for a Nobel Prize in Literature, which he won in 1970. He refused to travel to Stockholm to receive the prize fearing that the Soviet government would block his return home.
He was honoured by the Nobel committee for “the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”. The books had clearly outraged the Soviets and in 1974 the USSR stripped him of its citizenship, expelling him from the country. He then found a home in Cavendish, Vermont.
Solzhenitsyn’s Estonian connections: While imprisoned in Stalin’s Gulag, Solzhenitsyn be-friended Arnold Susi, a former Estonian education minister. After serving his sentence, he wrote the epic condemnation of Marxism, the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ while in hiding from Soviet authorities at the Susi family country home in occupied Estonia. When the writer resided in the USA this writer in the early 1980’s twice invited the most famous Soviet dissident at the time to Ottawa to be the guest speaker at the annual Baltic Evening on Parliament Hill, knowing that this would attract major attention among diplomats, politicians and media. The man had become the symbol of the Soviet persecuted anti-Kremlin movement. The invitation was extended to Solzhenitsyn by Alexis Rannit, research fellow and curator of Slavic collections at Yale University. Both times Solzhenitsyn declined.
Although he was recognized as a traditional Russian nationalist, the intensity and range of this personal belief had not yet been fully recognized. But this was quite evident from Solzhenitsyn’s commencement address at Harvard University in June 1978.
(Pikemalt saab lugeda Eesti Elu 4. veebruari 2022 paber- ja PDF/digilehest)
