SOLZHENITSYN despotism, is in many ways a throwback to the mineteenth century. Yet to call it reactionary would be misleading. For it is a far cry from xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and phillstine obscurantism to which so many Soviet conservative patriot.s adhere. His disdain for representative democracy, moreover, is part and parcel of a tradition of which Herzen, Bakunin, and Tolstoy were all exponents; and his warnings against unbridled industrial growth and his evocation of the beauty of Russia's ancient villages and towns, now invaded by blocks of ugly apartment houses and the « poisonous interna! combustion engine ,, parallel the arguments of the most enlightened ecologists in the West. Nor must we forget his uncompromising devotion to moral values or his courageous struggle for the truth. He is not one to lie and deceive, to exploit and oppress, to torture and kill. He is a brave and honorable man ata time when such qualities are rare. « If I had to go to sea again,, a Wobbly sailor told me, « I would want him in my crew., He has restored the deep humanity and moral fervor that have made Russian literature and the Russian revolutionary tradition so widely admired around the world. A group of Russian dissidents once called him « the mind and conscience of our nation. , His books are not only literary masterpieces but also revolutionary documents. As a living symbol of integrity he is anathema to the ruling establishment. « For a country to have a great writer,, a character in The First Circle remarks, « is like having another government. » Solzhenitsyn has been such a government, « a light within, , to borrow the title of one his own plays, a voice of truth and justice raised against falsehood and repression. « They are afraid of him, , said one of his friends. « His is the voice from there. When he speaks they hear the voices of the millions who perished there. And they are afraid. , Seen in this light, his expulsion from the Soviet Union was not a defeat. It was a victory of freedom over authority, of the individual over the state, of « decency over swinishness, » to use a vivid phrase from August 1914. It marks the triumph of the tradition of Kropotkin and Tolstoy over the tradition of Lenin and Stalin. In one of his best stories, Matryona's House, Solzhenitsyn describes the main character as that person « without whom no village can stand. Nor any city. Nor all of Russia. Nor the whole world. » Such a man is Solzhenitsyn. 113
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