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Important Points Missed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

John B. Dunlop
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Extract

To comment on Sidney Monas’s “GULag and Points West” is not an easy task. The article as a whole lacks focus and consistency, and it is simply not clear what moved Monas to compose this often diffuse collection of misrepresentations and misconceptions. In the past I have been an admirer of the author and his scholarship, but it is difficult to extend my admiration to this essay.

One of Monas’s intentions may have been to provide an overview of Solzhenitsyn’s writings which have appeared since his expulsion from the USSR. If so, the effort is highly flawed. While he does discuss—often in rather pedestrian fashion—Gulag Archipelago, The Oak and the Calf, Lenin in Zurich, From Under the Rubble, and certain of Solzhenitsyn’s recent publicistic writings, Monas omits all consideration of such significant works as the ninety-six-chapter version of The First Circle, published in 1978, or the important chapters from the “Red Wheel” historical cycle which Solzhenitsyn has been publishing in recent issues of the journal Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia. This omission necessarily skews any analysis of Solzhenitsyn’s thought.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , Fall 1981 , pp. 457 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

1. John Bayley. “The Two Solzhenitsyns,” New York Review of Books, June 26, 1980, pp. 3-4. In late 1981, Nordland Publishing Company plans to issue Solzhenitsyn in Exile: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials, a volume coedited by Michael Nicholson, Richard Haugh, and myself. The book will contain criticism by leading American and European scholars.

2. See, for example, his interview with BBC correspondent Janis Sapiets in Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., East and West (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 147 Google Scholar.

3. Georges, Nivat, Soljenitsyne (Paris: Ecrivains du Toujours/Seuil, 1980), p. 159 Google Scholar

4. Alexander Schmemann, “A Lucid Love,” in Dunlop, John B., Haugh, Richard, and Klimoff, Alexis, eds., Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials, 2nd ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1975), pp. 382–92Google Scholar.

5. For Yanov's views on Solzhenitsyn, see Alexander, Yanov, The New Russian Right (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1978), pp. 85–112 Google Scholar; Aleksandr Ianov, “Na polputi k Leont'evu (Paradoks Solzhenitsyna),” in Belotserkovskii, Vadim, comp., Demokralicheskie al'ternativy (Achberg: Achberger Verlagsanstalt, 1976), pp. 188–202 Google Scholar; and Aleksandr Ianov, “D'iavol meniaet oblik,” Sintaksis, 6 (1980): 88-110. Several recent emigres have subjected Yanov's views to sharp and detailed criticism. See, for example, Boris Paramonov, “Paradoksy i kompleksy Aleksandra Ianova,” Konlinent, 20 (1979): 231-73 and Mikhail, Agurskii, “Zootekhnik Barbu” Novyi zhurnal, 137 (1979): 166-79Google Scholar. Paramonov was the first to raise the issue of Yanov's debt to Miliukov. Agurskii advises those interested in Yanov to read carefully the articles which Yanov published in the Soviet press before emigrating. In an emotional response, Yanov has characterized his opponents as “a gangsters'syndicate” (see Sintaksis, 8 [1980]: 110-15).

6. Solzhenitsyn, A, “Glava iz Uzla II ‘Oktiabr’ Shestnadtsatogo,'” Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia. no. 130 (1979), pp. 188-213Google Scholar.

7. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, “Tret'emu Soboru Zarubezhnoi RusskoiTserkvi, “ibid.,no. 112/113 (1974), p. 106.

8. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., Letter to the Soviet Leaders (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 57 Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 52.

10. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., Mir i nasi lie (Frankfurt/Main: Possev Verlag, 1974), pp. 90–91 Google Scholar.

11. Alain, Besancon, Present Sovietique et Passe Russe (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1980), pp. 124 and 130Google Scholar.

12. Aleksandr, Solzhenitsyn, “Mr. Solzhenitsyn and His Critics,” Foreign Affairs, 59, no. 1 (Fall 1980): 196 Google Scholar.

13. Martin, Malia, “A War on Two Fronts: Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag Archipelago,” Russian Review, 36, no. 1 (1977): 58 Google Scholar.

14. Aleksandr, Solzhenitsyn, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2 (Vermont/Paris: YMCA-Press, 1978), pp. 314–24Google Scholar.

15. See note 5 for reference.

16. Valentin Rasputin, “ProshchaniesMateroi, Povest',” Ato/i.sovreme7jwA:, 1976,no. 10, pp. 3-71 and ibid., no. 11, pp. 17-64. The novella also appeared in Valentin Rasputin, Povesti (Moscow: “Molodaia gvardiia,” 1976). My essay, “Valentin Rasputin's Proshchanie s Materoi,” will be published as part of the papers of the Second World Congress on Soviet and East European Studies, Garmisch- Partenkirchen, September-October 1980. On the “village prose” movement, see Geoffrey, Hosking, Beyond Socialist Realism (London: Grenada, 1980)Google Scholar; Shneidman, N. N., Soviet Literature in the 1970s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Mikhail Agursky, “The New Russian Literature, “ Research Paper No. 40, Soviet and East European Research Centre, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; John, Dunlop, “Reclaiming the Russian Past” Times Literary Supplement, November 19, 1976, p. 1447 Google Scholar; and John Dunlop, “Russian Prose Writers in the Russian Ethnic Movement” in Edward, Allworth, ed., Ethnic Russia in the USSR (New York: Pergamon, 1980), pp. 80–87 Google Scholar. The New York Times (May 3, 1981, p. 13) has communicated the shocking news that Rasputin was severely beaten in Irkutsk a year ago and has been unable up to the present time to resume writing.