SOLZHENITSYN nothing ? » How closely this resembles Bakunins' famous Unes in God and the State : « God being everything, the real world and men are nothing .... God being master, man is the slave. » In later years Solzhenitsyn carne to recognize that power and privilege corrupt all who possess them. During the Second World War, he writes, « I ate my officer's butter with pastry, without giving a thought to why I had a right to it, while the rank and file soldiers dit not . . . . This is what happens when you put epaulettes on people's shoulders ; they begin to feel like little gods. » In his Letter to the Soviet Leaders of September 1973 he condemns ·the inherent « violence of the state, » and in The Gulag Archipelago he calls politicians « boils on the neck of society, preventing it from moving its head and arms. » His own life, indeed, personifies the struggle of the individual against the arbitrary powers of government. Whom does Solzhenitsyn invoke in his writings as an antithesis to Stalinist repression? Neither Marx nor Lenin, to be sure. Nor even Bukharin, who, with the publication of a new biography by Stephen Cohen, has been enjoying a reviva! in the West, but who, for all his attractive qualities, defended the one-party dictatorship and treated his political opponents as unredeemable enemies, devoid of civil or even human rights, to be condemned and crushed at every turn. He invokes, rather, such libertarian thinkers as Tolstoy, and Herzen and Kropotkin, with his concept of mutual aid. Witness the following dialogue in The Cancer Ward : Shulubin : « Young man, don't ever make this mistake. Don't ever blame socialism for the sufferings and cruel years you've lived through. However you think about it, history has rejected capitalism once and for all ! ... Capitalism was doomed ethically before it was doomed economically, a long time ago .... Nor can you have a socialism that's always drumming on about hatred, because social life cannot be built on hatred. » Kostoglotov : « You mean Christian socialism, is that right? » Shulubin : « It's going too far to can it 'Christian' .... I should say that for Russia in particular, with our repentances, confessions, and revolts, our Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Kropotkin, there's only one true socialism, and that's ethical socialism. That is something realistic. » Shulubin goes on to say that ethics must become the foundation of all social relations, including the rearing of children, scientific research, foreign policy, and economic policy. 109
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