On May 23, in the midst of this debate, The Times published an interview with Solzhenitsyn by Bernard Levin, in which he reiterated his conviction that “the goal of Man’s existence is not happiness but spiritual growth”. He admitted that in the modern world such a conviction “is regarded as something strange, something almost insane”. Levin asked him whether there was anything intrinsically wrong with the right of the mass of the people to enjoy the material possessions that previously were enjoyed by only a few, to which Solzhenitsyn replied that one must distinguish between material sufficiency and consumer greed. The whole of history, he maintained, consisted of a series of temptations to which mankind had normally succumbed, showing itself to be unworthy of its higher purpose. “Now we stand before the temptation of the material, more than a sufficiency of the material, of luxury, of everything, and again we show ourselves unworthy. Our historical process is really—consists of—man standing before the things which are temptations to him and of showing himself able to overcome them.”6
Again Solzhenitsyn expressed his admiration for Pope John Paul II, “his personality, the spirit which he has brought into the Roman Catholic Church and his constant and lively interest in all the various problems all around the world”.7
Asked by Levin whether suffering was necessary for people to turn to things of the spirit, Solzhenitsyn confirmed that “suffering is essential for our spiritual growth and perfection”. Furthermore, “suffering is sent to the whole of humanity…. It is sent in sufficient measure so that if man knows how to do so he can use it for his growth.” Suffering must be freely accepted for it to have any positive power. “Now, if a person doesn’t draw what has to be drawn from suffering but instead is embittered against it he is really making a very negative choice at that moment.”8 Asked whether he believed that communism would finally collapse in the Soviet Union, he refused to be drawn on a specific timescale but repeated his premonition that “I am personally convinced that in my lifetime I will return to my country.”9
Solzhenitsyn had granted this exclusive interview to Bernard Levin because Levin had been one of the few writers in Britain to speak up in his defense. For the same reason, several weeks later he granted an interview to Malcolm Muggeridge. For some time, Muggeridge had been eager to interview Solzhenitsyn, and the Russian finally agreed to his requests during the British visit. The interview was broadcast on BBC2 on July 4, 1983, and covered much of the familiar terrain explored in the earlier interview with Levin, including the brutalities of the Soviet regime, the resurgence of Christianity in the face of these brutalities, the betrayals of Western liberalism, and the need for spiritual renewal in the non-communist countries. There was also the same prophetic premonition: “In a strange way,” Solzhenitsyn told Muggeridge, “I not only hope, I’m inwardly convinced that I shall go back.” In fact, Muggeridge was one of the few people who took Solzhenitsyn’s hopes of a return to Russia seriously. He had been predicting the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union since the mid-1970s. In the event, both men would live to see their prophecies fulfilled.
Commenting on the televised interview, Peter Ackroyd wrote that Solzhenitsyn’s “convictions animate him and in this short interview he seemed entirely self-assured, with a directness of glance and an economy of gesture which are the marks of someone who has ‘come through’”. Ackroyd was also amused by the mutual respect that the two protagonists displayed throughout the proceedings: “The spectacle of Solzhenitsyn and Muggeridge agreeing with, and complementing, each other had its comic moments…. ‘Hallelujah!’, said Muggeridge to one remark by Solzhenitsyn; ‘what you have said has a profound significance’, said Solzhenitsyn after one of Muggeridge’s own contributions.”10 For his part, Solzhenitsyn has nothing but positive memories of his meeting with Muggeridge, describing him as “enchanting”.11
In October, Solzhenitsyn was interviewed at home in Vermont by Bernard Pivot, who recorded their dialogue for his French television program. The interview was broadcast on December 10, on the eve of Solzhenitsyn’s sixty-fifth birthday. It revealed that Solzhenitsyn “chops wood in true Russian style for exercise” and that he had taken up tennis late in life. “When I was a boy in Ryazan,” he explained, “I dreamed of playing tennis, but I never had enough money for a racket. At the age of fifty-seven, I managed to allow myself my own court.” There was also the same familiar, seemingly mandatory, refrain that his dearest wish was “to return to Russia alive, not just in my books”.12
On December 9, the day before the interview with Pivot was broadcast, Solzhenitsyn’s French publishers brought out a revised and expanded version of August 1914, which was described as the first volume of a cycle of books entitled The Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn announced that he had completed two further volumes, covering October 1916 and March 1917, but these still awaited publication. He was working on a fourth volume, and several more were planned. “Probably my life will come to an end before I complete it”, he told Pivot. In fact, he survived to see the full cycle through to completion, considering The Red Wheel the most important work of his life.13
Given Solzhenitsyn’s own estimation ofThe Red Wheel as the culmination of his literary achievement, it was scarcely surprising that he became animated when discussing it, enthusing about it both as a work of literature and as a much-needed work of history:
In the West, it is often said that I have proved with my book the inevitability of the February revolution. Actually, that is not at all the case. This point of view was held by those who didn’t actually read the book; one journalist would write something and another would read what he had written and repeat it. In reality, the February revolution might have happened or it might not have happened. That is the key question, and that is the main event for Russia in the twentieth century, but after the February revolution, these liberals and revolutionaries in eight months so quickly dismantled everything. Everything fell apart, all Russia fell apart. They didn’t really know what to do; they didn’t even want power any more. The Bolsheviks came along and found power just lying there on the ground, and they picked it up. Therefore, the October revolution is an event of secondary significance.
This book ended up being such a significant volume because it was important not to let go, not to ignore, the importance of the development of events. I could of course have written it in a shorter fashion. It would have made for a good read as a description of lies that people tell, but it would not have obtained historical proof. One could have said that he argued in this fashion but one could argue for the opposite case, but I laid out such a multitude of facts that it is impossible to give it a different interpretation, since the facts themselves yield up one interpretation. And also of course given the volume, the size, of this work, I utilized a number of different literary devices and switched between genres; prose, citations of documents, overview of the current press, a collection of short fragments of glimpses of the life in the different regions, cinematic scripts, Russian folk sayings embedded in the text in the sense that, for instance, a chapter would commence with a traditional saying. The meaning of it is as follows, that some old man would have been reading all of this and would then pass judgment on what he had just read with a traditional folk saying.14
Solzhenitsyn ascribed a great deal of perennial wisdom to folk sayings, which, in the context of their use in The Red Wheel, “lays bare, presents clearly, the meaning of that which the previous chapter had described”. In fact, folk wisdom can do more than merely summarize what has been said: “It is in some ways an unexpected judgment of the people regarding that which we are doing.” To illustrate the point, Solzhenitsyn discussed the proverbial lines “Don’t search the village, search your heart”, with which he had ended a chapter in August 1914: “In Russian, there is also a rhyme which is lost in the English translation. It means that when you try to explain strange occurrences, things that are going on, don’t look around and say, ‘Oh, it’s because people are this or that way’, but recognize that you also may be that way and that perhaps the key to what has transpired may also be found inside yourself.”15