Solzhenitsyn says goodbye to the U.S.S.R. (1974)

NOTE: A family emergency prevented me from posting today’s entry, so I found an assistant online, Nikolai Misunofavitch and asked him to research and write today’s entry. I’m sure he’ll maintain the high standards of research and probity that I’ve established on this site. Cheers, Bill Peschel.

On this day, the glorious workers revolution struck a blow for socialism when treasonous parasitic writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, arrested several days ago for actions “incompatible with being a citizen of the U.S.S.R.,” was sent into exile on board a plane for Frankfurt, West Germany.

The incorrigible criminal had been a thorn in the side of the worker’s paradise for nearly 30 years. In 1945, he had been sentenced to eight years in the labor camps, followed by a life sentence of exile in Kazakhstan for writing a letter critical of Stalin. He was released in 1956 following Josef Stalin’s death. His successor, Nikolai Khrushchev, personally approved the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Revealing the existence of labor camps for the reeducation of dissidents into the Soviet way fulfilled Khrushchev’s goal of blackening Stalin’s name, but also provided the state’s enemies with a moral weapon.

Khrushchev’s fall in 1964 freed the KGB to investigate Solzhenitsyn. His papers were seized and the criminal writings found in his novel, “Cancer Ward” were suppressed. Solzhenitsyn continued to thwart the will of the people. Ignoring Lenin’s directive at the 1921 Tenth Party Congress outlawing difference of opinion —to maintain socialism, the right of free association among independent like-minded people is more vital than dangerous free speech — Solzhenitsyn called for the abolition of what he termed state censorship.

In 1970, the decedent West awarded Solzhenitsyn the Nobel Prize, and he refused to travel to Stockholm to receive the award, fearful that he would not be allowed to return. With the eyes of the world upon him, the state found it more difficult to treat this cancer on the Soviet system. In 1971, an assassination attempt in which a KGB agent stabbed Solzhenitsyn with a poisoned needled failed to rehabilitate Solzhenitsyn. There was a movement within the Politboro to put Solzhenitsyn on trial, but others, pointing to the trial and imprisonment of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, did not want to make Solzhenitsyn into another martyr.

During this time, he worked on “The Gulag Archipelago,” his anti-Soviet account of the Gulag system, which combined his memories of his time in the labor camps, scholarly research and eyewitness accounts from more than 200 detainees which he had mostly memorized to preserve them. He kept the manuscript a secret, hiding portions of it with friends.

But the will of the KGB would not be thwarted. Under interrogation, Solzhenitsyn’s assistant, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, revealed the location of a draft of “The Gulag Archipelago.” After she hung herself, Solzhenitsyn decided to betray his country and permit its publication in Paris. 

The announcement on Jan. 1 sparked a furious debate within the Politboro. Nikolai Podgorney demanded Solzhenitsyn’s arrest, correctly pointing out that: “In China, they publicly execute people; in Chile the fascist regime shoots and tortures people; the British in Ireland use sanctions against working people, and we are dealing with a blatant enemy and just prefer to walk around.” Andae Kosygin suggested Solzhenitsyn be tried then sent to the mines in Siberia: “Foreign correspondents will not go there — it is too cold down there.”

But Leonid Brezhnev, in the throes of negotiating a détente with President Gerald Ford, demurred. Only when KGB chief Yuri Andropov pointed out that not doing anything would embolden anti-Soviet activity did Brezhnev agree to exile. Andropov arranged with West Germany to agree to receive Solzhenitsyn, and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger agreed not to use Solzhenitsyn’s exile for political purposes (besides, President Ford thought Solzhenitsyn to be “a god-damned horse’s ass”).

Following proper legal procedure, the KGB arrested Solzhenitsyn in the middle of the night on Feb. 12. He was exiled on this day and charged with treason on Feb. 14. His family followed him to his eventual home in the United States, and Soviet citizens breathed a sigh of relief at the ejection of the wicked writer. All hail the Glorious Workers Revolution!

Born: Ivan Krylov, fablist, Moscow, 1769; Ricardo Güiraldes, novelist, Argentina, 1886; Georges Simenon, novelist, Liège, Belgium, 1903; Elaine H. Pagels, religious historian, Palo Alto, Calif., 1943.

Died: Benvenuto Cellini, sculptor, goldsmith, memoirist, Florence, 1571; Cotton Mather, theologist, essayist, poet, psalmist, Boston, Massachusett Bay Colony, 1728; Rafael Sabatini, novelist, Adelboden, Switzerland, 1950; Elizabeth MacKintosh (ps. Josephine Tey, Gordon Daviot), novelist, playwright, London, 1952.

Quote for the Day: If there’s anything you want to do, do it now. We shall all be in little boxes soon enough. — Elizabeth MacKintosh (aka crime novelist Josephine Tey), who died today in 1952.

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