SOLZHENITSYN éxcept sexual, when they have as yet no years of personal suffering and personal wisdom behind them, enthusiastically repeat our discredited Russian lessons of the nineteenth century and think that they are discovering something new. They take as a splendid example the Chinese Red Guards' degradation of people into nonentities. A superficial lack of understanding of the timeless essence of humanity, a naive smugness on the part of their inexperienced hearts - We'll kick out those fierce, greedy oppressors, those governors, and the rest (we !) , then we'll lay down our grenades and machine guns and become just and compassionate. » APARTfrom his ethical socialism, Solzhenitsyn is also steeped in the traditions of Slavophilism and Populism, nineteenthcentury schools of thought which resemble Tolstoyanism in their idealization of the Russian peasant and their rejection of Western models in favor of native customs and values. Peter the Great, argued the Slavophiles, had diverted Russia from its natural path and set it on an alien course that spelled disaster for the common people. By sheer force and terror Peter had driven the masses forward, harnessed to the needs of the state, which the Slavophiles regarded as an artifical tyranny. extorting taxes, exacting military service, and trampling on popular freedoms and traditions. As Konstantin Aksakov declared, the state was « evil in principle. $ Solzhenitsyn criticizes the Soviet regime in much the same terms. His philosophy, like that of the Slavophiles, reflects a strong nativist resentment against foreign innovations. He echoes their glorification of the Russian village, with its bonds of love and fellowship, their romantic yearning for a preindustrial past before the corruptions of Westernization and modernization had set in, for a pristine pre-Petrine Russia, with its unity of ruler and people and its indefiled Christianity. Back to nature, back to the soil, back to the simple agrarian life and the virtuous peasants - the Matryonas and Ivan Denisoviches, the Spiridonovs and Blagodaryovs - who inhabit his stories and novels. Like the Slavophiles and Populists, he urges Russia to turn away from the West and to look inward for the solution to its problems. He rejects both capitalism and Marxism, the former as « soulless and mercenary, » the latter as « a dark un-Russian whirlwind that descended on us from the West. $ He dreams of a tranquil Russia of handicrafts and farming, with pure air and clean 111
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