Heroes of the 90s: People and Money. the Modern History of Russian Capitalism by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications Ltd

8

The masters of thought. From Solzhenitsyn to the entertainment industry

Live not by lies

The symbol of the 1990s – or of the first half of the decade, at least – was, in some ways, Alexander Solzhenitsyn – or rather, his return to Russia. As Solzhenitsyn himself once said, the sense that he would one day return to his homeland had never left him: the key thing to understand is that he predicted the fall of communism.

The preparations that were made for his return were extremely thorough. At the first signs that censorship was going to be lifted, every effort was made to ensure that Solzhenitsyn’s books were published in Russia. It was no easy task, and as usual, a large number of people were required in order to make it happen. And it was significant that the writer began his return “in book form”, at Novy Mir: it’s important to rise up again at the very spot where you fell down. What followed was an ultimatum to the people and to the country’s leaders: ‘How are we to furnish Russia with what she needs’, 22 million copies of which were published as a supplement in a special edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda. These ‘powerful reflections’, admittedly, turned out to be a sort of digest of the emigrant works published by Solzhenitsyn and the Red wheel.

The liberals were probably overjoyed to see that Solzhenitsyn had not written anything that expressed support for Russian national socialism. The ‘patriots’ probably took issue with his harshly expressed rejection of “thinking in terms of a vast state, the imperialist drug”, which, according to Solzhenitsyn, was essentially “a devoted form of support for communism as we lie dying.”

The wide audience that Solzhenitsyn, judging by his choice of publication, wished to address, was, for the most part, slightly shocked, not to say a little bit frightened by the writer’s florid style, which was quite difficult to read. Moreover, judging by the tone and scope of the recommendations he was making, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s call to ‘furnish Russia with what she needs’ was directed not at the general public, but at a leader. As for which leader he had in mind, he didn’t say.

The publication date of this text, which advocated the establishment in Russia of an authoritarian class, coincided with the draft edict from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the allocation of emergency powers to Gorbachev. The day after he was given these powers, Gorbachev, disassociating himself from the pro–monarchy tendencies shown by Solzhenitsyn, said to the deputies: “He is stuck in the past, the Russia of old, the monarchy. I see myself as a democrat with radical views.”

Perhaps, though, Gorbachev and Solzhenitsyn simply did not share the same ideas about what was the best form of authoritarianism. Whereas the ‘president’ advocated by Solzhenitsyn was merely a pseudonym for the ‘Tsar of all the Russias’, Gorbachev was apparently inclined to preserve an empire of an altogether different kind. With his counsel that Russia ought to rid itself of

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