Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cold War Icon, Gulag Author, Russian Nationalist?

1.2 Review of Research Literature on the Subject

There are few previous studies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Western reception, and even fewer that are comparative. In addition to the following specific studies of Solzhenitsyn’s reception, in this book I will also refer to articles or book sections that thematize this subject in some way, and discuss their findings.

Birgit Meyer and Robert Conquest have written on this author’s reception in the media in West Germany and in the UK, respectively.[4] John Dunlop has written on Solzhenitsyn’s reception in the US in general, and Edward E. Ericson, on his Western reception.[5] Friedhelm Boll and Stephane Sirot recently published an article on Solzhenitsyn’s reception among French and German intellectuals in the 1970s.[6] Furthermore, Solzhenitsyn has been included in Birgit Meyer and Sonja Hauschild’s respective studies on the reception of Soviet dissidents in Germany—as well as France in Hauschild’s case.[7] The scope, the focus and the approach of all these studies have been very diverse. All of these scholars have been confronted with a gargantuan task, which they could not tackle in all its complexity within the limited frame of an article or book section. Some authors decided to concentrate on one type of reception, or a smaller time frame. A couple of studies of Solzhenitsyn’s reception simply contain an overview of the reception of one work or speech, but lack, of course, more general results.[8] Unfortunately, none of these earlier studies had a framework that allowed for a deeper look into the historical and social context of the reception or into the type of work that was receiving it. At times, this has resulted in generalizations that reflect these restraints and perhaps mirror the political constraints of Cold War scholarship. Three studies by Conquest, Dunlop and Meyer (1985) were all published in the same anthology of articles on Solzhenitsyn, and all share the view that détente and Ostpolitik were central to the author’s appreciation in the West. They also give rise to a false impression that Solzhenitsyn was under siege in East and West due to his controversial views. Edward Ericson shares the sympathy with the Russian dissident that these three authors express in their articles, but this unfortunately affects the way they all write about others’ reception, for example by repeatedly describing criticism as “attacks” or “misrepresentations”. For instance, Conquest writes about some British commentators’ claim that Solzhenitsyn’s tone is authoritarian as follows:

This view of his “authoritarianism” merged into attacks on his supposed hostility to democracy, together with his supposed predilection for Tsardom. This is, of course, a complete misrepresentation of Solzhenitsyn’s position.[9]

Conquest ends his article by comparing Solzhenitsyn with a doctor who has come to warn us that a cholera outbreak is spreading—cholera being his choice of a metaphor for communism—and compelling his readers not to choose denial or wrongful criticism but rather accept Solzhenitsyn’s message.[10] This example underlines the import of examining Solzhenitsyn’s work while discussing his reception, and the need for a new, less polemic approach. The effects of widespread worries and fears in the Cold War are evident in this case, and they are a reminder of the advantages that I enjoy by working in dramatically changed conditions. Today, the political overtone of previous studies becomes apparent and can be re-evaluated. Newer readings and approaches can contribute to the identification of past misjudgements and an assessment of their consequences. However, I do not wish to dismiss the relevance of these previous studies. They made an important contribution to scholarship by raising questions about the role of dissidents in a politically delicate environment. I can build upon their experience and reflect on this topic from a different historical context.

1.3 Theoretical and Methodological Background of the Project

This book is a reception history of Solzhenitsyn’s work in three different countries. Hans Robert Jauss and Gunter Grimm’s reception theories build the theoretical backbone of this study.[11] Despite the fact that these theories have been around for a few decades, they have key elements that render them adequate to approach the topic of this book.

In his reception theory, Jauss underlines the importance of the historical location of both the work and its reader. Although Jauss’ ponderings were made in the disciplinary realm of literary history, there are several concepts that are useful for my work as well. A reader’s experience of reading a literary text is affected by his previous knowledge of other works. Reception develops within a “horizon of expectations” that can be reconstructed by the literary historian.[12] Three aspects are key for a reconstruction of the “horizon of expectations” of the reader, and these are: a) the genre of the work, b) the text’s relationship to earlier works, c) the contrast between fiction and reality: the reader’s juxtaposition of his literary expectation and his life experience.[13] Understanding the horizon of expectations is helpful in evaluating a work’s importance in literary history. But, as I will show, these three factors are also valuable in the analysis of the changing impact a work can have. Some works become trendsetters, but over time it is difficult to see them as the innovative works that they once were. Therefore, when I look at Solzhenitsyn’s work and his reception, I take into account the expectations that existed at first publishing and how these developed over time. I will therefore weave the analysis of his reception into the literary-historical context within which it took place.

Gunter Grimm points out that the horizon of expectations is not sufficient for the study of reception, and adds that beyond the literary expectations, other aspects of the historical context of the reader and extra textual elements have a considerable effect on reception.[14] At the same time, he warns that a reconstruction of the historical context of the reader always retains a certain hypothetical character. In my study, the importance of the historical context is salient: if it were not for the history of state violence of the 20th century, Solzhenitsyn’s work and his reception would have been very different. As I base my study on written reception, I can delineate the various reminiscences that Solzhenitsyn’s work evoked in his readers. I choose prominent moments of Solzhenitsyn’s reception for such a synchronic analysis. The publication of Ivan Denisovich and Gulag—two of his most influential works—but also the time of his expulsion from the USSR, the publication of the re-written version of August 1914, his return to Russia in 1994 and his death in 2008 were some of the key moments that occasioned a heightened amount of attention being focused on this writer’s oeuvre.

When analyzing reception texts, I use Grimm’s central question which is: “why does who read what and how?”[15] I read the reviews, articles, or books on Solzhenitsyn’s works under this premise. To be sure, there will always be some aspects of this question which remain obscured, but generally, there is enough material to derive an answer to this question and be able to work from there. By exploring the reasons that Solzhenitsyn was read and considered to be a relevant author, I can chart the priorities his readers had: was he read primarily as a political author, or for the beauty of his language? Were his works read as entertainment, as historical works, as witness accounts? Who read and wrote about him?

As opposed to previous reception studies which define groups of readers a priori by their affiliation—for example: the “liberal media” or “conservative journalists”—I focus on the reception texts as such and appraise the type of narrative they share. As Grimm has pointed out, the reception-analyst must decide if he approaches his topic through the subject, or through a group or class.[16] In my case, I compare individual readings and present resulting salient trends. This approach has the advantage of avoiding ideological pigeonholes and reflecting a complex reality in which some authors may belong to different groups depending on the issue at hand: an author of a reception text might be anti-communist when it comes to the Soviet Union, but leftist when it comes to his local political priorities in the West. Furthermore, I benefit from Roger Chartier and Stanley Fish’s notion of “communities of interpretation”.[17] The community of interpretation is created by the environment in which readers are confronted with a particular work. Their interpretation reflects their context to a considerable extent. This calls for a contextualization of reception: a reader in the US had a different type of reading experience and expectations than one in West Germany. This becomes more poignant in certain cases, especially when one literary text was available in a country many years before another, or when a book was not translated at all into a certain language, as is the case with some of Solzhenitsyn’s books.

The context of Solzhenitsyn’s readership has changed over the years, as have its points of reference, and its interpretation of his works. As a reception history, this study combs through several decades of reception and pinpoints important areas of reception and types of reception while taking this context into account.

I do not seek to add new perspectives on reception theory in this book. These theoreticians provide the main framework and the point of departure for my analysis. However, there is an important point in which I depart from Jauss and Grimm’s theories. Contrary to the task of a standard reception analyst, I complement my study with an analysis of relevant parts of Solzhenitsyn’s works. This is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, Solzhenitsyn’s texts are often a complex amalgamation of genres and styles. The variety of interpretations and their implications can only become clear if I explain what they refer to. Earlier reception studies followed the classic paradigm of avoiding the discussion of Solzhenitsyn’s texts. However, their criticism of certain readings made it clear that they had a concrete expectation of how these books should be read. In sketching my own analysis, I explore why the same book can be read in many different ways while clarifying what my own reading is. Secondly, the importance of doing this goes beyond the avoidance of opaqueness or lack of clarity. As I will show, Solzhenitsyn’s work has suffered what recent critics termed “critical exile”.[18] In this book, I argue that his work is interesting from a contemporary theoretical point of view.

Many developments in literary theory do not occur in Solzhenitsyn’s reception. Psychoanalytic readings of Solzhenitsyn are scarce.[19] Feminist and gender studies are yet to thoroughly analyze his work.[20] There is only one post-colonial reading of one of his novels.[21] In my study, I explore the possibility of different factors that influenced which types of readings of Solzhenitsyn were seen as adequate and which were relegated to the background or fully neglected. As I will show, the environment in which Solzhenitsyn’s reception developed was strongly polarized and intolerant of ambivalence or ambiguousness. Newer theoretical approaches to his work might have resulted in less black and white readings, which would have broken with an established pattern. In a recent book about the development of Slavic studies in the US, historian David Engerman describes the relative theoretical and methodological isolation that Russianists in the US worked in.[22] This appears to be a paradox, considering the important contributions early US Russianists—such as Roman Jakobson and Victor Erlich—made to literary theory in general. But it is true that Russianists had to work under entirely different circumstances as, say, their colleagues in English departments. The a priori politicization of literature due to Soviet censorship mechanisms and the problems of accessibility of certain texts were bound to create a peculiar research environment.

In the 1960s and 70s—parallel to the apogee of Solzhenitsyn’s reception—new developments in literary criticism proliferated. Anti-colonialist, civil rights and women’s rights movements in the UK, US and West Germany influenced scholarship and resulted in new understandings of literature and culture. The purely aesthetic analysis of literature was called into question and feminist, Marxist, post-structuralist, and post-colonial interpretations offered a reassessment of established canons. The new readings by Terry Eagleton, the Frankfurt School, and proponents of gender studies triggered innovative

approaches to literature, which are unfortunately widely ignored in the reception of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. When I present the ideological readings of Solzhenitsyn’s work, I will not delve into these developments because they are not mirrored in his reception (although I deliberate on the consequences of this neglect). When defining the ideological aspect of Solzhenitsyn’s work I draw from Eagleton’s work on ideology, and discuss readers’ confusion about the presence of ideology in Solzhenitsyn’s texts. I also benefit from György Lukács’ and Katerina Clark’s understanding of the political literary mode of Socialist Realism and discuss the challenges that Solzhenitsyn’s proximity to this literary mode causes to many of his readers. In chapter four of this book, I apply the methodology of German memory studies experts Aleida Assmann and Astrid Erll in analyzing the interaction of political interests with historical interpretations and literary texts. Assmann and Erll’s experience in studying the polemical memory culture surrounding Germany’s troubled past is helpful in understanding the similar complexity of Western memory of Soviet history.

In my study, I argue that reading Solzhenitsyn’s work in the 21st century demands new approaches and new interpretations. For example, I sketch the importance of re-interpreting his image of women and homosexuals and of evaluating his literary treatment of minorities according to contemporary theories. I point out why Solzhenitsyn is relevant enough that he should be drawn back from his “critical exile”, but I do encourage a view of the author and his work which is significantly more differentiated and perhaps less homogenous than past interpretations. In this process, invariably, Solzhenitsyn’s image risks losing some of its iconic features, while gaining authenticity.