More controversially, Solzhenitsyn was beginning to criticize the decadence of the West as vociferously as he criticized the despotism of the East. He warned of the dangers inherent in the retreat of the older generation who had yielded their intellectual leadership. It was, he said, “against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society”.22
During the interview, Solzhenitsyn took the opportunity to defend himself from the various labels that had been pinned on him by hostile critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain:
Take the word “nationalist”—it has become almost meaningless. It is used constantly. Everyone flings it around, but what is a “nationalist”? If someone suggests that his country should have a large army, conquer the countries which surround it, should go on expanding its empire, that sort of person is a nationalist. But if, on the contrary, I suggest that my country should free all the peoples it has conquered, should disband the army, should stop all aggressive actions—who am I? A nationalist! If you love England, what are you? A nationalist! And when are you not a nationalist? When you hate England, then you are not a nationalist.23
A week after leaving England, Solzhenitsyn gave an interview on French television that provoked an official protest from the Soviet government. Yet this paled into insignificance beside the furor caused by the visit to Spain which followed. On March 20, he was interviewed on Spanish television, and later the same day he gave a press conference. Spain was emerging from the authoritarian regime of General Franco, who had died the previous year after almost forty years as dictator, and it was natural that many of the questions from the press should concern the country’s first tentative steps toward democracy. Solzhenitsyn offered tacit support for those seeking greater democratic freedom in Spain in the wake of Franco’s demise but warned against proceeding too quickly. The Western democracies were weak and decadent and were not a good role model for Spain to emulate. He courted controversy by stating that “the Christian world view” had triumphed in the Spanish Civil War, and he provoked outrage in liberal-socialist circles by suggesting that, compared with the Soviet Union, Spain was a free society. He had heard critics describe contemporary Spain as a dictatorship and totalitarian, but after traveling around the country, he could say that these critics clearly did not understand the meaning of the words they were using. No Spaniard was tied to his place of residence. Spaniards could travel abroad freely, and newspapers and magazines from all over the world were on sale in the kiosks. There was free and easy access to photocopying machines, strikes were permitted, and there had recently been a limited amnesty for political prisoners. “If we had such conditions in the Soviet Union today, we would be thunderstruck, we would say this was unprecedented freedom, the sort of freedom we haven’t seen in sixty years.”24 His words were well intentioned and, indeed, well reasoned and broadly accurate, but there was a predictable reaction from the world’s press. Most outrageous of all the misrepresentations was the report in Le Monde, which carried the headline “Solzhenitsyn Thinks that the Spaniards Live in ‘Absolute Freedom’”. Others followed the same line, attacking Solzhenitsyn for what they perceived as his exaltation of the Franco regime. Very few even mentioned that Solzhenitsyn had actually approved of the democratic reforms in Spain, merely urging that the country should be cautious in its approach.
As Solzhenitsyn watched the world headlines emerge, turning the half-truth into a lie, he was surely reminded of his treatment at the hands of the Soviet press. Indeed, a spokesman of the Left in Spain, reverting to a crude form of attack reminiscent of Pravda, alleged that he must “be suffering from a mental illness”.25
It was grimly ironic, but the sensationalism of the press disguised the fact that most people had missed the point entirely. Solzhenitsyn’s general tone throughout the conference had been not confrontational but genuinely conciliatory. He wanted to escape, he said, from the tyranny of left and right. Furthermore, the opposition between East and West was relative and was not of paramount importance. Humanity was in crisis, but the crisis was essentially spiritual and not political. Both the communist East and the capitalist West suffered from the same disease: “the ailment of materialism, the ailment of inadequate moral standards. It was precisely the absence of moral standards that led to the appearance of such a horrible dictatorship as the Soviet one, and of such a greedy consumer society as the West’s.”26
The origins of the problem, he explained, were in the transformation from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. This had been a materialist reaction to the exaggeration of the spiritual in medieval times. The process, once set in motion, was progressive, or rather regressive. Mankind had grown more and more materialistic, had more and more neglected its spirituality, the outcome being the universal triumph of materiality and the consequent decline in spiritual life. “The picture today’s world presents to the eye strikes me as appalling. I think that if mankind is not doomed to die, it must restore a proper appreciation of values. In other words, spiritual values must again predominate over material values. This does not mean that we should return to the Middle Ages. Every development is enriched by time. I am speaking of new horizons, or so it seems to me.”27
In these carefully considered sentences, Solzhenitsyn had confessed his credo, his very raison d’être, but his words, his warnings, had once more fallen on the ears of the deaf, those who did not want to hear. Scandal, not spiritual values, sold newspapers, and it was the scandal that made the following morning’s headlines.
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn had already received a premonition of the way his words would be manipulated by the media. Toward the end of the press conference, he had requested politely if he could make a little digression, pleading with reporters to use his answers in full or to omit certain topics altogether. “I know from… experience… that newspapers usually take only what they need. They tear some phrase out of context, destroy all proportion, and distort my ideas…. Leave the scissors alone, do you understand what I mean?”28 The assembled journalists said nothing, but, sharpening their pencils like knives, they were already planning the perfect murder, the next day’s character assassination.
Before long, Solzhenitsyn despaired of ever getting a fair hearing from the Western media. Thereafter, he would rarely appear in public or grant interviews. Silence was the safest course of action because silence, unlike words, could not easily be distorted. If the world insisted on being deaf, he would become dumb, speaking only through his books.
In the meantime, his brief honeymoon with the West well and truly over, he yearned for his home in the East. “I never intended to become a Western writer”, he told a reporter at the Spanish press conference. “I came to the West against my will. I write only for my homeland…. I cannot worry about what someone somewhere makes of what I write and if he uses it in his own way.” Another reporter had asked him why he lived in Switzerland. “I do not live in Switzerland”, he replied. “I live in Russia. All my interests, all the things I care about, are in Russia.”29