“What sort of man are we talking about?” he continued. “Suddenly all the professors and all the engineers turn out to be wreckers, and he believes it! The best Civil-War divisional commanders turn out to be German and Japanese spys, and he believes it! His own friends and acquaintances are unmasked as enemies of the people, and he believes it! Whole nations, old men and babies are mown down, and he believes it! Then what sort of man is he may I ask? He’s a fool. But can there really be a whole nation of fools? No, you’ll have to forgive me. The people are intelligent enough. It’s simply that they wanted to live. There’s a law big nations have-to endure and to survive. When each of us dies and History stands over and asks ‘What was he?’ there’ll be only one possible answer Pushkins: “In our vile times… man was, whatever his element, either tyrant or traitor or prisoner!” [32]
Kostoglotov is one of those extraordinary persons who actually-learn from experience—that his, his reflections on his own history are original with him, and not derived from the recent opinions that constitute the body of social superstition at any time. He knows that his life of exile is a terrible injustice, that the Soviet state is a tyranny-the more shameful for its claim to incarnate a lofty ideal of political decency. Without for a moment hankering after the other social systems of which we have examples, he is shrewd enough to guess at the forms that injustice must assume in other states that claim to represent the popular will and the interests of the common man, he longs with an exile’s yearning for a community of fair dealing, of love and truth.
Kostoglotov is neither a saint nor a lay-figure representing an ideal of primitive Christianity that is appealing in proportion as it is obviously inadequate to deal with the problem of evil. He is a man, with a man’s faults, and a man’s aspirations to do better than he does. The problem of evil is indeed, in many forms, the deepest concern of Kostoglotov, and the particular preoccupation of his author. By instinct, both Solzhenitsyn and Kostoglotov confront the question without reticence. As we witnessed in the opening pages of this thesis, Solzhenitsyn typifies Stalin to an “evil prince” in his earlier cited short story, “Lake Segden” (1972) as encountered in Solzhenitsyn’s Stories And Prose Poems, at 198-9.
In the novel Cancer Ward this imagery is promoted in two other noteworthy incidents worth recounting here. Oleg Kostoglotov receives a letter from two close friends relaying to him that their dog “Beetle” has been killed. A senseless act, that was committed with the sanction of the “village council”:
Dear Oleg,
We are in great distress. Beetle has been killed. The village council hired two hunters to roam the streets and shoot dogs-They were walking down the streets, shooting. We hid Tobik (another pet dog), but Beetle broke loose, went out and barked at them. He’s always been frightened even when you pointed a camera lens at him, he had a premonition. They shot him in the eye. He fell down beside an irrigation ditch, his head dangling over the edge. When we came up to him he was still twitching-such a big body, and it was twitching. It was terrifying to watch. You know, the house seemed empty now…… So now they had killed the dog as well. Why? [33]
Under Kostoglotov’s release from the cancer wing, he enters a department store in a nearby metropolitan area. He is overcome by the tedious vacuum created by excessive materialism. His conclusion is inescapable.
What was this? There were men rotting in trenches, men being thrown into mass graves, into shallow pits in the perma frost, men being taken into the camps for the first, second and third times, men being jolted from station to station in prison trucks, wearing themselves out with picks, slaving away to be able to buy a patched-up quilt jacket-and here was this neat little man who could remember the size not only of his shirt but of his collar too!… If you remember your collar size, doesn’t it mean your bound to forget something else, something more important? (Kostoglotov). [34]
Kostoglotov proceeds on in visiting a zoo, and what do you know, the monkeys there are found to be bearing a strong resemblance to many of his former inmates; no doubt many of whom, were still behind bars (like monkeys).
They reminded him of many of his former acquaintances. In fact, he could even recognize individuals who must still be in prison somewhere. [35]
Alexander Solzhenitsyn continues exploring through the character of Kostoglotov, the fragility of the human (animal) condition and its relation to rational freedom in the world. The analogy created here is, in the writer’s view, an act of unabashed genius.
The most confusing thing about the imprisoned animals was that even supposing Oleg took their side and had the power, he would still not want to break into the cages and liberate them. This was because, deprived of their home surroundings, they had lost the idea of rational freedom. It would only make things harder for them, suddenly to set them free. [36]
It would be incomplete if the “evil prince” and “the hunters” who murdered Beetle were not present as the novel climaxes. Their presence is, as subtle here, as the consequences of Stalinism themselves.
He went there. The cage was empty but it had the usual notice reading “Macaque Rhesus.” He had hurriedly scrawled and nailed to the plywood. It said: “The little monkey that used to live here was blinded because of the senseless security of one of the visitors. An evil man threw tobacco into the Macaque Rhesus’ eyes. Oleg was struck dumb. Up to then he had been strolling along, smiling with known condescension, but now he felt like yelling and roaring across the whole zoo, as though the tobacco had been thrown into his own eyes, “Why?” “Thrown just like that! Why! It’s senseless! Why?” What went straight to his heart was the childish simplicity with which it was written. This unknown man, who had already made a safe getaway, was not described as “anti-humanist” or “an agent of American imperialism”; all it said was that he was evil. This was what was so striking: how could this man simply be “evil”? Children, do not grow up to be evil! Children, do not destroy defenseless creatures! [37]
Kostoglotov does not linger long after the zoo. He now begins the long process of acclimating himself to rational freedom once again. He had survived whereby the others had not.
He hadn’t even died of cancer. And now his exile was cracking like an eggshell. He remembered the komendant advising him to get married. They’d all be giving him advice like that soon. It was good to lie down. Good. The trains shuddered and moved forward. It was that only in his heart, or his soul, somewhere in his chest, in the deepest seat of his emotion, he was seized with anguish. He twisted his body and lay face down on his greatcoat, shut his eyes and thrust his face into the duffel bag, spiky with loaves. The train went on and Kostoglotov’s boots dangled over the corridor like a dead man’s. An evil man threw tobacco in the Macaque Rhesus’s eyes. Just like that. [38]
With the question of evil and good fathomed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, how can Russian men and women rectify the horrendous predicament? What does he offer up to us as a possible remedy?