News of Solzhenitsyn’s imminent return prompted an article in The Times by Bernard Levin, one of his most loyal allies throughout the years of exile. Entitled “A Giant Goes Home”, it was a eulogy to the Russian’s courage and achievement, overlaid with Levin’s scarcely concealed delight at the providential turn of events: “We have it on Shakespeare’s authority, no less, that the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. But can there ever have been any revenge so sweet, or any revolution of the clocks so meaningful, as the news that Alexander Solzhenitsyn is shortly to return to his homeland, Russia, after almost exactly twenty years of forced exile?”40
The weeks and then the months slipped away, and still there was no sign of the exile’s long-awaited return. In September 1993, Ignat made his first journey back to Russia since he had left it as a bemused infant. On tour with the National Symphony Orchestra and Mstislav Rostropovich, he described it as “an unforgettable experience, twelve days that are a separate chapter in my life”.41 For the first time, he could see Russian words all around him, on shop fronts and road signs, everywhere: “seeing Russian with my own two eyes… hearing Russian spoken all around me—a din of hundreds of people walking along Tverskaia, and all speaking Russian”. With childlike excitement, he explored various corners of Moscow, the hometown of a dimly discerned childhood, and met people who had been until then only legendary shadows from his father’s past: “meeting friends of my parents, their comrades-in-arms, sitting and drinking tea with people who had risked their lives or livelihoods together with my father, and who were always present with us in spirit during the long years of exile”. The flow, the flood, of first impressions surged through his consciousness: the Kremlin, the blinding beauty of St. Petersburg, “and of course the concerts themselves with passionate Russian audiences”.42 One can picture Solzhenitsyn’s response as his son recounted his first excited impressions of Russia, and can only guess at the sense of longing it must have induced in his own exiled bones. Yet still he did not return.
Instead, on September 14, even as Ignat was giving concerts to ecstatic Russian audiences in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Solzhenitsyn was in the Liechtenstein village of Schaan, receiving an honorary doctorate from the International Academy of Philosophy. His speech to the Academy was destined to be his valedictory address to the West, an appropriate finale to his years of exile.
Commencing with the divorce of politics from ethics that, he said, had begun with the Enlightenment and had been given added theoretical justification by John Locke, Solzhenitsyn presented a masterful analysis of the world’s malaise. Whereas in Rebuilding Russia he had sought to solve society’s problems on a socio-political level by laying green foundations, now he was seeking deeper solutions to the fundamental problems of life by laying philosophical foundations. Moral impulses among statesmen had always been weaker than political ones, Solzhenitsyn admitted, but he stressed that the consequences of their decisions for society as a whole necessitated that “any moral demands we impose on individuals, such as understanding the difference between honesty, baseness and deception, between magnanimity, goodness, avarice and evil, must to a large degree be applied to the politics of countries, governments, parliaments and parties”.43 Within a Christian context, he quoted Vladimir Solovyev, who had stated that “political activity must a priori be moral service, whereas politics motivated by the mere pursuit of interests lacks any Christian content whatsoever”.44
Solzhenitsyn proceeded to discuss the nature and meaning of “progress”. The whole of humanity had embraced the term, but few seemed to give any thought to what it actually meant: “[P]rogress yes, but in what? And of what? And might we not lose something in the course of this Progress?”45 “It was”, he reminded his audience, “from this intense optimism of Progress that Marx, for one, concluded that history will lead us to justice without the help of God.”46 In the twentieth century, Progress had indeed marched on, and was “even stunningly surpassing expectations”, but it was doing so only in the field of technology. Was this sufficient in itself, and had it been purchased at a price—perhaps at too high a price? Unlimited Progress was threatening the limited resources of the planet, “successfully eating up the environment allotted to us”. It was also threatening the life of the human soul. In the face of technocentric Progress with its “oceans of superficial information and cheap spectacles”, the human soul was growing more shallow and the spiritual life reduced.
Our culture, accordingly, grows poorer and dimmer, no matter how it tries to drown out its decline with the din of empty novelties. As creature comforts continue to improve for the average person, so spiritual development grows stagnant. Surfeit brings with it a nagging sadness of the heart, as we sense that the whirlpool of pleasures does not bring satisfaction, and that, before long, it may suffocate us.
No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, economic growth. The victory of technological civilization has also instilled in us a spiritual insecurity. Its gifts enrich, but enslave us as well…. An inner voice tells us that we have lost something pure, elevated and fragile. We have ceased to see the purpose.47
As Solzhenitsyn concluded his address, he was bidding farewell to the West with a final plea for sanity. Yet as he prepared for a return to Russia, he knew that the same problems of “progress” awaited him in his homeland. The new Russians were accepting the new religion of consumerism with open, grasping arms, worshipping the latest gadgets as enthusiastically as their Western brothers. East and West were now marching together in a new unity, blinded not by the Light, but by the lights of a flashing, glittering technolatry. Unity without purpose.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A PROPHET AT HOME
Toward the end of 1993, Solzhenitsyn had an audience with Pope John Paul II in Rome. It was a meeting of considerable significance. The two men represented, each in his own way, the triumph of the human spirit over the evils of totalitarianism. Furthermore, both men had contributed to the downfall of communism to an extent that probably surpassed any of their contemporaries.
Solzhenitsyn had been a great admirer of John Paul II since the earliest days of his pontificate, describing the election of a Polish Pope as a gift from God. He had supported the Pope’s policies throughout the world, not merely in John Paul’s outspoken attacks on communism in Eastern Europe but also in his measures against Marxist-inspired liberation theology in South America. In a meretricious age, the Pope shone in Solzhenitsyn’s eyes as a towering, and all too rare, paragon of virtue. The danger was that the Russian might feel a sense of disappointment when he finally met the Pole in the flesh. It was a danger that never materialized; Solzhenitsyn retained vivid memories of his audience, describing their meeting and discussions as “very positive”. As a man, the Pope was “very bright, full of light”.1
The audience lasted for an hour and a half and was characterized by what Solzhenitsyn described as very interesting conversations. In particular, the Pope appeared to be well acquainted with Solzhenitsyn’s socio-political writings. He mentioned the importance of Rerum novarum to the Church’s social teaching, perhaps sensing the affinity between the Church’s teaching and Solzhenitsyn’s views. As Solzhenitsyn remembered,