PAUL AVRICH decorated for bravery in Second World War, he was seized by the secret pollee, a number-Shch 262 - was sewn on his cap, chest, thigh, and back, and he spent the next eleven years in prison, labor camps, and exile, from which he emerged an unremitting critic of whole system, both Leninism and Stalinism alike. WE KNOW then what Solzhenitsyn is against. But what is he for? Is there an element of anarchism in his intellectual makeup? Such questions are not easy to answer. Though he has thrown off his earlier Marxism, though he has denounced both Stalinism and Leninism with passionate eloquence, his positive socl.al and political ideas remain unclear. Perhaps, in his new Western environment, he himself is still groping for an answer. Meanwhile, however, sorne tentative observations can be made. His outlook, to begin with, does contain a strong libertarían component. Is it mere accident that he was born in the Northern Caucasus, with its population of fiercely independent mountaineers ? Or that he was raised in Rostov-on-the-Don. in the heart of Cossack country, where the struggle for autonomy from Moscovite control reaches back to the sixteenth century? Or that his father, though he fought in World War I, was a Tolstoyan whose philosophy made a lasting impression on the son? The Tolstoyan ethical code, based on truth, honesty, and the primacy of individual conscience, echoes through all of Solzhenitsyn's writings. Solzhenitsyn's beard and humble dress, his disdain for material possessions and strongly ascetic style of life, his abiding faith in the Russian people and concern with their suffering are all fundamentally Tolstoyan. In his present surroundings he continues to exhibit a marked ascetic streak and a severe, self-disciplined integrity, without any airs or pretensions, traits that are reflected in his literary work. He has a scorn for gourmets and dandies. He is attached to old clothes and possessions - a battered hat, a threadbare coat, a dilapidated suitcase that he has saved from his days in prison. Even when comparatively well off, after the success of lvan Denisovich, he could not force himself to take a taxi. « He had an aversion to feellng llke a lord, ·l) a friend explained. In his concern for human rights and for the dignity of ·the individual Solzhenitsyn is profoundly libertarían. As a youth in the early ' thirties he already « sensed the falsity and exaggerated, stifling exáltation of one man, always one man ! If he was everything, did it not mean that other men were 108
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