Goodbye Oleg

Yesterday a voice was silenced. But not by the people that sought to silence it before it could expose them. I learned this morning that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away in his Moscow home yesterday at the age of 89. He died a free man who had taken the worst that the Soviet regime could throw at him and lived to watch it die. He is one of my greatest heroes. And while I knew this day was coming, it’s hit me harder than I thought it would.

Like any favorite author, he was as much a friend as a literary figure to me. I became acquainted with Solzhenitsyn during a very lonely period in my life. I bought a copy of the Cancer Ward after reading excerpts that had been used in another book. The main character, Oleg Kostoglotov, is a former prisoner of the Gulag who, after serving a "tenner" (Soviet slang for a 10 yr. sentence), had been sent into "perpetual exile" from his friends and family to the Kazakh Republic. The novel opens with Oleg sitting in the waiting room of a cancer ward in the Uzbek Republic after having been diagnosed with stomach cancer.

I realize that to some that might not sound like the right novel for a lonely person to be reading, but I think I identified to a small degree with Oleg's isolation. I too was thousands of miles from family in a place where few people knew me. When not at work I was almost always alone. Yet, what drew me most to Oleg was the fact he didn't let any of the adversity that life handed him define who he was or dictate his happiness. He was the perfect picture of a truly free man. A man who had been stripped of everything by the State and, as a result, had nothing further to fear from it. The material world had become immaterial and he was free to dwell on the things that truly mattered.

After finishing the Cancer Ward I wanted to know more about Solzhenitsyn. In doing so I learned that the character Oleg was, for all intents and purposes, Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn had served a tenner for some disparging remarks he had made about Stalin in a letter to friend during WWII. After completing his sentence he had been sent into perpetual exile. While in exile he contracted stomach cancer. As with all fictionalizations some characters, times and places had been altered, but for the most part the Cancer Ward was a chronicle of his experiences.

After that I devoured anything by him that I could get my hands on. I read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and then "The First Circle". I discovered rare collections of short stories and speeches. Strangely, I didn't get around to his most famous work, "The Gulag Archipelago", until about eight years ago. I've yet to finish it. With the exception of C.S. Lewis, I would say no other author has shaped my current worldview more than Solzhenitsyn.

Tonight, my sadness at his passing is tempered by the knowledge that nothing in Aleksander Isaevich’s life happened by chance, even his death. He was sent to prison as a young man so he could use the powerful voice he was given to speak first hand about an evil that millions silently endured. He was exiled to the West in the 70’s so that he could warn us about our complacency in the face of such evil. And today, in one of the tragically few articles I was able to find about his life, I saw God’s hand even in the timing of his death:

In a bookstore in central Moscow, a selection of his most famous books was put on display beneath a large black-and-white portrait of the author.

Television channels and radio stations ran constant solemn reports on his life but some younger Russians confessed they knew little about his work.

"He is very famous. I'm just starting his works," said Viktoria Danilova, a 17-year-old in central Moscow. "Unfortunately I haven't read very much yet."

I can think of no better time for the young men and women of Russia to pick up Solzhenitsyn than now as Putin and his puppets seek a return to the Soviet glory days.

If you are interested in Solzhenitsyn, I suggest starting with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. It's a quick read. If you like that, follow up with “The Cancer Ward” and then “The First Circle.” These novels are, in my opinion, his best works but they might be a bit long for someone who just wants to get a taste. Another good place to start is "The Solzhenitsyn Reader" that was just published a year or two ago. This is a collection of political essays, novel excerpts and even some poetry. And if you can find it, check out “Warning to the West” - a collection of speeches he made shortly after his exile to the United States.