Transcripts For CSPAN2 The 20240704

The victims of communism foundation and recipient of the truman regan medal of freedom. Hes an adjunct professor of politics and former distinguished lecturer at the Catholic University of america. Its published many books, quite a distinguished history has. Hes a legend at the philippines. The politics of john f kennedy. School of government. Harvard university. And the founding director of the institute of political journalism at georgetown. With no further ado, im going to welcome you to a gentleman that we all have esteemed respect for, and we be standing here today. If it wasnt for dr. Lee edwards, sir. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, bob. And welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the victims of Communism Museum, him and what we have here today is part of our continuing series of programs about the victims and crimes of communism. And today were going to be looking at a Remarkable Book by a remarkable author. This book has been the most powerful in diamond of a political in modern times. Its an expose of a vast underway of forced labor camps that stretched across the soviet union, from moscow to magadan. And it played a consequential role in the implosion of the soviet union and the collapse of the soviet empire. All this and more, much more can be said about impact of just one. One book, the gulag archipelago, 1918 1956. An experiment in literary investing ation by that Nobel Laureate alexander solzhenitsyn for solzhenitsyn the gulag archipelago was a moral and inescapable duty. He was after all, a man with a memory in a country. The lied about the past and his present in the name of utopia. The work remains an International Bestseller with more than 30 million copies sold around the world. 3 million here in the United States as a sign of his commit. And this tells you so much about alexander solzhenitsyn itself as a sign of his commitment to telling the truth about the gulag. He did not accept any royalties for the sales of those 30 million copies. He directing they be given to what became the alexander soldier and its in Russian Social Fund which was used by the gulag. And thousands thousand of former soviet gulag prisoners have received assistance from the fund. In a final chapter, solzhenitsyn calls for an accounting of the soviet crimes like the nazi trials in nuremberg. Why is germany allowed to punish its evildoer . Yes. And russia is not yet, despite the horror that he saw and the torture that he personally experienced during his eight years in the gulag. Solzhenitsyn does not despair as he ends his investigation describes himself as an unshakable optimist and day before he was forced into exile. Solzhenitsyn said that the gulag archipelago was destined to affect the course of history. I was sure of that, he said. And then, he added, you bolster fix our finished. There are no. Two ways about it. Indeed, not long after. The publication of the gulag archipelago, the berlin wall came tumbling down and the most evil empire of the 20th century was soon no more proving yet again that do have the power to change history. So at those opening remarks would like now to turn it over to mr. Mahoney. Oh, no, bob, you want to introduce bob . All right, please. This this is a somebody who knows as much or more about solzhenitsyn and everybody else in america. And were so pleased and honored to have him with us today. Thank you. Thank so very sir. Thank you very. And i definitely second that motion on and knowing a little bit about solzhenitsyn, then were glad to have back. Dans the latest member of our academic council. Uh, dan with us last summer for a we a book signing here for it was memoirs of Cardinal Joseph ben olinsky which he wrote introduction so same same spot. I think you can read oliver. Dan comes with us. Hes a Professor Emeritus at assumption, a senior fellow at the real Claremont Institute and a visiting professor and this is a mouthful institute i used to be at the real clear foundation. So hes a visiting professor and this is a mouthful. So make i get this one right at the school of, civic and economic thought and at Arizona State university. So good to go that. Just one quick plug. Hes the the persistence of the ideological lie i that comes out will be published in spring of 2025. Several on solzhenitsyn to include ascent alexander solzhenitsyn dissent from ideology and the other solzhenitsyn telling truth about a misunderstood writer and thinker. So then the floor yours and educate us on alexander solzhenitsyn and i will add to that list the sultanate sun reader, new and essential writings 1947 to 2005, which i coedited. I think its fair to say its an indispensable for grasping solzhenitsyn, a writer thinker, moral witness. Well, thank you very much to both lee edwards and to bob williams and delighted to be back at the among friends to see all the new faces. Lee edwards is absolutely about solzhenitsyn revealing and embodying, might say the power of the word. Some of you may remember that his nobel lecture, a very powerful piece in its own right ends by evoking a russian proverb. One word of truth outweighs the world. And he says, i know that is a violation of the law of physics, but it happens to be true. And associates himself four times in his works refer to the publication of the gulag archipelago. So it first appeared in russian in paris on december 28th, 1973, hence this 50th anniversary commemoration. But solzhenitsyn said, with the publication of the gulag archipelago, burnham wood, is moving birnam wood, as you remember, macbeth, the significance of birnam wood moving . In fact, solzhenitsyn went to receive the templeton prize, england in 1983. He asked to go to burn wood, and he did. So. And let me mention just a word about the composition of the gulag. Solzhenitsyn writing it in 58. The first champ to be written, the powerful and evocative chapter called the 40 days of king geir. About a camp revolt in the spring of. 1954. And its an exhilarating chapter. They ultimately fail, but they win. They went spiritually and i think if you read nothing else from the gulag archipelago read the chapter called the ascent about solzhenitsyns own spiritual and coming to philosophical selfknowledge in the camp and couple that with the 40 days the king year another version of spiritual ascent resistance to evil. Hows that coming down 1500 words too to beautiful and wonderful chapters. Solzhenitsyn most of the gulag archipelago in. Winters of 1965 and 66. To make a long story short, he had a friend who had been his jail at the lubyanka. The former estonian minister of education, arnold susi. Solzhenitsyn says about susi in the chapter called the ascent that he entered the camp a thoroughly decent man, and left the camps a thoroughly man. In other words, he was a personal embodiment and illustrate nation of the fact that one could choose not, to survive at any price. Arnold, susie and his wife kate. Somehow he eluded kgb. He went to the forests, estonia, and over 130 days in each winter, sometimes with he passionately and no, no books in front of him, he just this all up here. This is a man who had memorized 7000 lines of verse in the camps with. He had the lithuanians build them a cross with a hundred beads and it came up one monarch device. I dont know solzhenitsyn prayed to he he he shares some of his one great prayer in the gulag. But the the the the the rosary was for the sake of memory. All right. And the book was complete with the final edits. April 68. And then solzhenitsyn weighed it, debated when to publish it, when one of his typists, elena, foreign an, was arrested a copy of the gulag that she was supposed to destroy was that solzhenitsyn set everything motion. The book was published december 2873, and the rest is history. The gulag archipelago was published in english three volumes between 1974 and 78, and then, of course, a authorized abridgment was in 1985 and is still in print. It is, in my view, one of the indispensable books of. The last century, not least because does it undermine the and political legitimacy of the entire communist enterprise . But thats not its i think its you know, solzhenitsyn says at one point in the chapter called the blue caps. If you think this book is just a political expose, slam its cover shot. Okay. So how can those things both be true . The greatest critique of an lot of of a regime in Human History and slam the cover shot. If you think is just a political works theyre both true and theyre both part of solzhenitsyns this unique experiment in literary investigation an association called calls it brilliantly wove together personal experience, arrest and everything that followed and the testimony of what eventually counted. 257 four murder prisoners with Historical Research and, spiritual reflections. It readers on both sides of the iron curtain to encounter totalitarian oppression as for the first time and direct quote from the great russian writer lydia duke of skye, who was on a akhmatovas best friend hurt. Her father was a great russian novelist, very antitotalitarianism. She suffered the gulag. We hear and see what it was all like. Search, arrest. Interrogation. Prison. Deportee. Haitian transit. Camp. Prison camp. Hunger. Beatings. Corpses the gulag archipelago. Moreover, solzhenitsyns multifaith seated often sardonic arthurian voice served as powerful for indicting communist some and all its works. Solzhenitsyn usually cause with a mocking spirit in tone. He calls communism the progressive doctrine with a capital b and a capital d. This solzhenitsyn was not a fan of. Progress in ideological sense of that term. And as a root of solzhenitsyns critique was mankinds and his own nemesis. Ideology. Unlike the convened analysis of academic historians and political scientist, we really dont learn all that much from them in the end about totalitarianism. Sadly, turn to the writers mir, walsh and grossman and solzhenitsyn and pasternak. Solzhenitsyns understanding never treated the soviet union as merely tyranny, among others. So much of the book is a comparison of everyday life and political life and levels of political repression and experience of the camps in russia and the soviet regime. Solzhenitsyn saw the soviet regime as an as an ideological regime, par excellence built two pillars violence and lies, not lies are manifest manifold in the human world. And there is even the machiavellian lie, you know. But when solzhenitsyn speaks about the lie, he really means the imposition of an alternative reality take on the real world. The world, the life of Human Experience. Erik vogel it has, i think, a wonderful phrase second reality. You know what orwell talks about doublespeak and all. Thats how you navigate the gap between second reality and the world available to comment. Since an elementary experience and social nature famously argues in chapter called the boot camps that it was thanks to ideology that the soviet as 20th century experience and i quote evil doing a scale calculated in the millions shakespeares evil doers stopped at a half a dozen cadavers because they had ideology and know it. Lady macbeth and macbeth had an. You know they could justify a lot more than the killing of duncan and a few few scottish souls. Ideology allowed and intellectuals to justify the unjustifiable and to violence to nearly levels. One of the Great Stories of the 20th century is the moral and intellectual abdication of so many intellectuals. The red dean of canterbury who made political pilgrimages to lenins and soviet savvy soviet union to cuba, to china. They lived long enough. You certainly would have gone to managua, you know, looking for one ideological paradise after another. Jeanpaul sartre wrote in liberation, 1951 that freedom was so total in the soviet union. They had need for elections and bourgeois freedoms, and who saw china as the model, what he called factory . Only theyd after we overcome isolate and in solitude through terror, which provides new basis for fraternal ity or as somebody during the french revolution, a competition said be my brother or i will kill you. Okay, we dont want that kind of fraternity. Do we. Read Paul Hollander on the political pilgrims of the 20th century . They were numerous and shameful w. H. The great poet, when he initially publishes collected works, left out his poem spain 1937. Why because it lauded necessary every murder. And auden, who became a christian and entered zealotry and was ashamed of that poem, god bless. The central focus of solzhenitsyns work made it much more difficult to blame the soviet tragedy simply on stalins cult of personality as khrushchev folded in the famous 1956 speech on local conditions that were somehow peculiar an authoritarian russia, the kind of Richard Pipes movie, which is very much back because of recent developments in russia. But its the russians, the progressive doctrine, can move forward because will free it of its russian accretion. But as a layman, mallya, the author of the soviet tragedy, which is a splendid book in its own right, argued in an analysis profoundly indebted to solzhenitsyn. Every communist has manifested in nearly identical genetic code, despite important cultural differences between russian, asian and communism. Every communist experiment been marked by a single party regime based on a mendacious sitting ideology that demonizes real or imagined enemies. Socialism. Solzhenitsyn insight was to highlight the insanity nature of ideology and the ideological lie, and to make its absurdities visible to the western imagination. Gulag takes aim. The manichean as americanism is an old heresy. You got to know your heresies, and manichean ism is a big one. Marching ism is another big one. The new testament without the Old Testament that causes a of trouble too. But manichean ism and this belief if that evil is localized over them you know a if only we eliminate the sources of either class race. That kind of ideological manichean ism is very much alive in the new racial and wokeism, etc. , as if weve learned nothing from the totalitarian episode, the ideologist denies the permanence of the imperfection inherent to the condition as solzhenitsyn says in the ascent, we cannot abolish evil from the world but we can restrict it in our own. You know, and if we try to abolish evil, we increase the sum total of evil, the human world, using the full force of his artistry. I mean the gulag is as a power does, because first and foremost, a work of literary art. Solzhenitsyn defends the timeless distinction between good evil against its permission, a replacement by the ideological decay of me, between progress and, reaction. By the way, that pernicious ideological distinction is very alive and well in our intellectual, political and academic life. The bitter experience of souls in the camps led solzhenitsyn to the age old insight. Theres two formulations of the school, the gulag archipelago, one in the blue capsule, one of the ascent most famous and most quoted lines. The book the line between good evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, either. Right through every human heart, more broadly, souls as a nation return to the wisdom, philosophical christianity. My friend david walsh has written very well. Hell be joining us on what christianity is through reflection on his personal experi inside of human nature in extremis, the gulag archipelago archipelago established beyond any doubt, that 20th century totalitarianism originated originated with lenin, the founding father, and icon of the bolshevik party. Faithful his marxist inspiration, lenin initiated a nihilistic project for in his own words. Solzhenitsyn and analyzes this essay. Essay from which this comes in the history of our show. Weed disposal system. Lenin. In january 1918, wrote that the project of the revolution was to purge russia of all sorts of harmful insects. The rhetorical dehumanization of human beings, ideological enemies was sent all to the leninist project and of course, is sent, remember, in the rwandan, the hutu regime with its genocide in 1994. Hutu radio would to the tutsis and the moderate hutus as cockroaches that had to be stamped out. Hitler to say the were poisonous bacillus. You get you get the point. You have dehumanize human beings before. You tyrannies and murder them on a mass scale. And in this solzhenitsyn argues lenin was more less faithfully followed by stalin. I think solzhenitsyn agrees with a remark that they should kosky made, and the main currents of marxism. Stalinism isnt the only possible outcome marxism, but its a perfectly and predictable outcome of marxism. I think that gets things just about right in gulag, solzhenitsyn shifts the attention away from high profile, communal as his, he says. They wrote the books, you know, the victims of the purges in 3637 the peasants ukrainian, russian, kazakh. They didnt write the books. But he particularly feel sorry for the victim. The party victims of communism, not because what was done to them was morally legitimate, but because they had been complicit in. All previous acts of ideological mass murder and collectivized russian was just fine. Just dont the revolution devour its children . To use an image from the french revolution, solzhenitsyn shows that he has much more sympathy for those ordinary russians, ukrainians who perished by the millions as result of the insane effort to create a new man and a new society. And russians, because millions of russians died, too. Not just ukrainians. A third of the people of kazakhstan were killed in the midthirties and in the famines of the toes as opposed to the primary early but not exclusively ukrainian. In the early thirties. 5 Million People died in the famine caused by wartime ism and that was almost exclusively in the heart of historic russia. So communist regimes, especially in killing peasants, that the principal victims of communist regimes globally, we all know the great leap forward for of the north korean famine of the nineties. In the gulag solzhenitsyn a riveting account of. He uses this image of metastases the metastases of cancer of soviet terror, its beginnings in red and lenins red terror. And the first concentration camps on the Arctic Sullivan islands. He rightly deems collectivization in the war against the independent peasantry. And thats not only the famine, thats collectivization itself. The the hundreds of thousands of families were exiled to the tundra and taiga siberia to the camps of to be the most terrible crime of the soviet regime. Quote, the targeting of the kulaks was the first experiment in mass totalitarian demos side quote one that was repeated by hitler with and again by stalin with the nationalities that were disloyal, him or suspected him. Now, the third, second and third vi arms of gulag are animated by an invigorating and instructive tension between solzhenitsyns, a priest and of the prospects for spiritual ascent. Even amidst the degradation of prison in the camps. The chapter on the ascent in the marvelous and indispensable middle section. The gulag archipelago. While the soul of barbed, which begins with a quotation from st pauls first letter to the corinthians, culminates in solzhenitsyns saying bless you prison for. Having been in my life not because he was a masochist, not because it was a passive ist, but because the scales of ideology from his eyes in the camps. And its in that that solzhenitsyn reproduces a prayer that he wrote in the camps about his return to religious faith. And solzhenitsyn is one of those cases where you cant make some kind of distinction between read as a revelation. His return to faith is rooted very much in his personal experience of the camps. He was able to see clearly, i think, for the very first time, and he was extremely grateful for that. Experience. But it never led him to quiet chisel. I never led him to say, well, isnt it wonderful if, well, ill be in the gulag . So can have spiritual assent . No, he was. Its i thinking as much more and more. Theres a theres a Strong Political place and that that means resistance to evil. All right. And we have that appreciation for the prospects of spiritual ascent, even amidst this wonderful line. Solzhenitsyn repeated that chapter, when you make that decision personal or separately personal, individual, spiritual and not to survive any price, he says. Then the soul starts to ripen. And he and he repeats six times in that chapter we are ascending. Its really quite beautiful and full. Its his philosophical christianity in its in its. So but solzhenitsyn also recognized that this was a not a an experience of just a few more than a few. He says manage to to commit themselves to survive and not at any price but this regime. So so brutalized human beings entailed such a systematic assault on the body and soul human beings that it had to be resisted. In a chapter called our freedom, solzhenitsyn talks about betrayal and as forms of existence, tremendous pressure on human beings. And for this reason, solzhenitsyn highlights the need to defend Human Dignity against every device of soul destroying tyranny. And the third, via solzhenitsyn, pays tribute to the peasants who rose up in the early twenties against bolshevik despotism and war. Communism. He even writes what some sympathy for the vlasov age or torn between nazi and soviet. He says we would have been worth nothing if nobody lifted a gun to the regime or to stalin during the war. And the book ends with account of the city of novichok ture moscow rising up in 1962 to protest increases in the price of but it led to a kind of anti totalitarian rebellion. And then theres also the camp said about strauss and king here and for cool down elsewhere. So it ends in a very cathartic note, a note of hope. And again, these acts of defiance did not have to succeed in the short run, to succeed in the long run, because revealed the nobility, the human spirit and on that note, drive a few more minutes. Bob. How much more time to have final minutes . Ive only gone 20 minutes, assuming how many how much more time . Oh oh, my god. I usually am coming over. Ive shocked myself. Ive shocked myself. No, no, no, no no. I have. I have more to say say. Hold out a second. So im going to id like to turn to some remarks that what i just tried to do, give you an overview, a sketch of the three volumes of the gulag, our compelling go. I do want to draw on something an entire source you need to know writes in her introduction. And first to the russian edition of the gulag and then reproduced in this new commemorative edition of the gulag archipelago that was released by fenchurch classics in december. And she comments that while socially an aim to do all the things that ive already highlighted, especially to show that the root of the disease was right from at foundation. This is not a stalin list aberration, she says. This book was merely a chronicle of terrible or historical crimes. It would, yes, it would still deserve be taken very seriously, but it would have perhaps less ultimate, fullest ethical significance. And she says in the end, the greatness of the gulag archipelago lies the fact that, as she calls it, its epic poem. And its an epic poem about the soul of man under barbed wire, but also its a frontal assault on every determined mystic account of human being, you know . So john dunlop, who just died a few months ago, a great russian, is from the hoover, said one of the first reviews of the volume, one of the gulag archipelago when it came out, he said it was a great personal list defeat and i think he meant that solzhenitsyn recovered the human countenance he loves that phrase. You they can they get sent hell say if we decide to survive in any we lose our human countenance. We use our face. And the face we know is the access to the soul. You dont have to read us to know that. It just is the seat of the the phenomenal expression of the human soul. So solzhenitsyn brings to life people who would never be remembered. And ill you an example, a couple of examples, the comparison he draws he illustrates says those who could really stand up for bolshevism were those who had a prince. Bold point of view and he mentions peasant orthodox woman who resisted all torture. She had an informer position on an orthodox archbishop who had been transported by underground railroad in the thirties to finland. And she said, im not going to talk. And she says, you guys dont know what to do with me because you want to me, but you cant. And not afraid to die. And so savage says, those old bolsheviks. Yes, were tortured, but so was everyone else that gave in so quickly because had no independent, principled point of view outside of the ideology. Right. One of my favorite sections of the gulag archipelago go is part four of the solemn barbed wire, where solzhenitsyn gives portraits of two people who, in an addendum laudable way, maintain their moral and the longest. These portraits is a woman named Anna Scribner cover. Anna scribner cover, basically that was arrested 11 times between 1918 and 1959 as a soviet regime liberalized a little, you know, the fifties, she began sending manifestos and letters, the u. N. , you know, which didnt help her prison conditions, but she was just some body who refused to kowtow to the unacceptable. And solzhenitsyn says in a very laconic way, i think its really a remarkable portrait. But he says about on a script makeover. If if you know one hundredths of the people of russia had been as implacable as on prochnik over the history of our country would have been too very different so again an excerpt of a did not secure i think she was released and spent two years in freedom 57 or 59 but she was very noble woman and her reward was that and independence of spirit, the personal honor, the moral nobility, the refusal to live by lies. And now i want to turn and this is just and the point that the gulag archipelago is not just an indictment of the evils of ideology, but its. The entire work as at the service of the recovery of the human countenance. I like that word countenance countenance. We have to keep the english language alive. You know, my students, i noticed that the english language sort of recede into a few simple words. You soon itll be grunts, you know, and emojis, you know. So. So that is it is a beautiful full chapter in third volume of the gulag on poetry in the camps its entitled poetry under a tombstone truce under a stone. Its paired with the 40 days you can year that that account i mentioned were 8000 prisoners Political Prisoners and criminals alike rose up against the oppression oppressors and establish selfgovernment in the camp for 40 days. But this chapter, the poetry under tombstone, is just an account of these camps poets who did not write with the benefit of pen and paper and solzhenitsyn particularly talks at length about. A religious poet, anatoly vasiliev, which ceylan s. R. L. And so there was who, like solzhenitsyn, became a believer. The camps very well. Not everyone became a believer. The camps. The other great memoir is to the gulag shalom wolf, the author of climate tales, drew very nihilistic conclusions from the camps. The camps were the effectual truth about human nature of the hobbesian state of nature. Theres no hope. Solzhenitsyn initially asks the author. Equally, mattels to cowrite the gulag with. But it wasnt all worked out because had diametrically opposed worldviews and and youve got to read both of them. But in any case, this was this poet deemed a philosopher theologian in the russian sense, you know, he didnt have a degree, got degrees overrated. Leo strauss used to say the first two philosophers to have phds were marx and nietzsche. Plato didnt have one. Montesquieu didnt have one. Saint thomas didnt had one. So the poem that celan memorized in the camps, much like solzhenitsyn himself, he composed i quote from it end to end with i a word down went round and round in his head. He saw beauty in nature and believed that gods grace could in principle redeem even the most perverted will and a striking passage. Solzhenitsyn notes the atheists refusal to believe matter could be that spirit could beget only made. Szilard smile. So they would say, how the hell do they think matter begets spirit . You know, materialism, the hard thing to believe. Solzhenitsyn this truly chapter by noting how the camp regime attempted to deepen everyone. The original title for the one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is the book everyones read by sociological, short its a short novella, but it was going to be a 54 course. That was that was the the tag. Everyone wore and you know thats a that but even denisovich is so much better because shes a human being and not a depersonalized camp number so it ever was made as solzhenitsyn says to give every jack identical haircuts, identical fuzz on their cheeks, identical caps, identical padded jackets, unquote, and impersonal numbers in place of names. Yet the human face, not so easily abolished, especially if you have a philosophical poet around, even if the quote image of the soul, unquote that continues to shine through is. These words are quite beautiful distorted by wind and sun and dirt and heavy toil. The task work of the philosophical poet ceylan, most especially solzhenitsyn himself, is nothing less to this comes right at the end of the chapter, works to discern the light of the soul beneath this deep, personal lies and distorted exterior. That is what John B Dunlap means when he says the gulag archipelago is a personal lipstick. In the battle between an inspired by true philosophy and religion and in tune with the Human Experience of and evil at work and the degraded conditions of the force labor camps ideal energy must inevitably lose quote the sparks of the spirit cannot be kept from spread breaking through to each other like wretched organizes and has gathered to in a manner can explain somebody so many things to the spirit, cannot there not reducible to some kind of system. Attack scientist explained asia. But what the philosopher the composer can do is describe these sparks to the spirit that refuse be crushed by men and regimes who forgot what it means to be human . Well, i just want to say few very small words about. The gulag archipelago in russia today, this is just brief couple of minute addendum. The gulag archipelago, the three volumes are available bul in all three volumes are available from russian publishers and they have a lot of ancillary material. They list biographical sketches of all 257 people whose testimony solzhenitsyn drew upon. For example, theres also the authorized abridged meant that a different abridgment than the anglophone abridgment that natalia associated china had prepared for russian high after solzhenitsyns. But the book is very contested in russia today. Theres actually a book out in france on the controversy the big bolshevik street leads both via oh i forgot i forgot the title but. Anyway it was renamed solzhenitsyn street in august nine, 2000. The came out on the street really there was a battle in our soviet union as being like. And the other thing where people know that solzhenitsyn and not just the communist, but some people in the ruling party, united russia, putins party party is divided between those think the teaching of gulag archipelago, the truth about communism important and those who are less procommunist but dont want anything bad said about russia and form. And so their entrance is you know there was no public celebration in 2017 of the bolshevik revolution not a big monument was built on the road in moscow with names of 4 million victims of communism. So those things do occur. But the one thing you cant touch is the great patriotic. And thats where the lie really continues, because the soviet union didnt survive world war two, because stalin, it survived despite the regime. The millions of people, the 27 million figure you hear all the time is because they were selling avon after avon to be slaughtered. They didnt care. You know, yakovlev talks about the millions of p. O. W. S who were sent to the gulag after being in hudson camps because they were, you know, somehow guilty for being captured by the nazis. Ivan denisovich was captured by the nazis, had the cunning to escape and then that got a tenor in the camps for being polluted by national socialism. Well you know 80 of the officer corps was decimated in the thirties so theres a whitewashing history there. And and solzhenitsyn is the only great figure in russia who didnt buy into call to the great patriotic war. So thats provided in opening for nationalists, as well as the communists to attack the book. And a january 23, dmitri viken, hes an influential mp, part of the leadership of united russia in the duma. He demanded the expulsion of the gulag archipelago from the Russian School system. He denounced the book as quote garb much written to cover solzhenitsyn own motherland and mud. He read solzhenitsyn for 10 minutes. Youll know that he is a great russian patriot and he refuses to sully the russian soul National Experience by identifying it with soviets. So hes certainly very difficult to call solzhenitsyn antirussian. But we can continued rather crudely that he wrote the book solzhenitsyn wrote the book for no other reason to get an award for attacking his. This is pretty primitive stuff, but this is a bit encouraging. Theres not a whole lot of purging stuff, especially since the war began in february 22, but there was a huge debate in the duma and in public and press. And most of the ruling party came to associate his defense. So the book is still taught to russian high schoolers. The Solzhenitsyn Center is still very active in russia, but theres and theres pressures and well see. Hardened and the more hostilities develop between, the west and russia, its a question solzhenitsyns certainly know now. Our western eyes are far from it, but his refusal to compromise lies on the east central evil of communism to core and on the and his refusal to credit the regime for the great patriotic have provided his enemies with the entrance, you might say to delegitimize the gulag archipelago. This is very much a controversy in action right now. So i will on that note, thank you very, very much. Thank you, sir. What i want to do is im going to introduce the distinguished members of our panel and i ask when call your name, you come up and take your seat at the table. Once youre all seated, each of them will provide an opening, opening remark, and theyll be followed by a Panel Discussion conversation. But im glad we have all the u. S. Students here today. Were able to actually visit the museum prior to up for the event. So i see you back there copiously taking notes. So im sure once we get to the question and answer period, there will be plenty of time for questions and answers for for this. So the first or first panel member introduces us. Doctor edwards, spalding shes the tour chairman of the victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and founding director are the victims of Communism Museum. So that little tour through the museum has, her fingerprints all over that. And if you have any questions, you can get with her in the margins and ask her about specific exhibits or galleries or anything. So glad to have her here today. Shes the author of the first cold word harry truman containment and the remaking the liberal and the coauthor of a brief history of the cold war. Her scholarly and popular articles and reviews have published widely so. With no further ado, ill have dr. Spalding come and take your seat or. Our next distinguished panelist, dr. Flagg taylor, the fourth. Im i dont know if theres a fifth in progress or on the way, but well see. You must be a monarch somewhere. Definitely. Dr. Taylor serves on the academic and my chance to just say thank you, dr. Taylor involved in just about every single that we do here, whether it be teacher seminars or just prior to this today, he did some remarkable learning on totality darwinism and glad to have him on our team. Hes associate professor at the government skidmore college. He has a ph. D. In Political Science from the university and a b. A. Kenyon college is especially in the history of political thought in, American Government especially. The question executive power, his coauthor of the contested. Appraisal of an ideology and totalitarian analog night of the watchmen essays by vaclav bender. So thank you, dr. Taylor, and please have a seat. And i was able to speak with dr. Walsh just prior to he was the first one here and we had a small chat and had a very lengthy bio and he said no shortages. Okay, so, so but he comes to us from Catholic University of america as a department of politics, his expertise is in political theory, liberal democracy, the modern world and philosophical revolution of the modern world. So dr. Walsh, thank you very much and appreciate you coming today. So, dr. Walsh, im to have you be the first to provide your opening remarks and make sure your microphone is on the button there and make sure. There you go. Thank you, sir. Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you very much for this invitation. And its a pleasure to be here. Uh, wonderful to see lee edwards and. Uh, my co panelists, whom ive known for a good number of years and to see such a great turnout here, its, its wonderful that you all come to the victims of Communism Museum you know its so important to have a museum that allows us to think about you know what communism ism was but of course you can you know if youre visiting washington, most of the museums are things that you want that are that are beautiful and historical and things that are you think, yeah, we have to these are these are things we have to keep in our minds. But there are a to museums that are about things that we can forget, you know, the Holocaust Museum and this museum and in each of these cases, they can only you cant really think, well, were going to something beautiful here. Although the paintings beautiful, the things you have here are beautiful. But uh, and what, what dan is referring to as, you could say the, uh, the human face that cannot be erased under communism. All of that is. Is. And the truth that comes in comes through. But, uh, you know, we cannot celebrate communism in the way we celebrate things that are historical. Uh, so we have to think, about how to go through it and really, this is a wonderful, uh, session on gulag archipelago because. That was such an amazing book that, uh, opened up what the communist world was about from the perspective, of those who suffered the most from it. So, uh, solzhenitsyn, i think was a of communism, but ultimately hes the victor over communism. And thats a huge, uh, thing. Uh, and i think, thats, thats a, thats a large part of the remarks that dan has been making. Ill just say a few things. Cut me off when im going on too long because i know weve only a few minutes each. Uh, dan has mentioned the impact that the gulag archipelago had when it came, and you know now that were 50 years after that, uh, one of our problems is people forget. You know what, it. What an amazing work that was. But, uh, you should, uh, keep two things in mind. One is that the word gulag, uh, is actually a word that most English Speakers recognize today that was not true in 1974. So solzhenitsyn introduces one word that you know marks communism in a way that it was never marked up to that. The second thing is that, uh, he it changes peoples minds. We thought, oh, well, the holocaust, that was terrible. The nazis, they were awful. Uh, but in fact, uh, communism was equally, if not more, and lasted for much longer period of time. Uh, somewhere between 50 and 60 Million People died under communism, uh, and, you know, even though it got whitewashed in various ways, uh, by defenders in, the west and elsewhere, who said, uh, no, no, thats, that was just sort of bad. And none of that no, none of those were the good communists. Uh, the gulag archipelago is a convincing testament to the idea that, uh oh is bad and all of it leads down this destructive road of depersonalized and mass incarceration and, mass murder, murder on a mass scale. So its extermination in exactly the same way in this country that had been more less known in the 1970. Is, uh, but the in europe the book had an astonishing impact, especially in france. Uh, you know, it changed the minds of a whole generation of young french people who are drifting towards marxism. And they realized no, no, no, no. This is my chance. Its and has exposed in the gulag archipelago. So you know, occasionally there are books like that that change history another book is of course im from ireland may have detected. It but im shocked and im happy. Im happy to claim edmund burke, my fellow countrymen, as one such similar author who by by of one book reflection on the french revolution, changes the minds of english people and people everywhere and on about the french revolution. So all of a sudden the french revolution is seen not as a sort of logical next step in progress and enlightened and but as opening up the reign of terror and everything that goes with that. Uh, and certainly, you know, those are, those, those are comparable works that the authors themselves, i think, were probably equally surprised with the impact that they had most authors and like us up here Just Write Books and we we, you know, somebody reads now and then and most of the time they just rest on shelves and nobody really pays much attention to them. We console ourselves with, you know, giving them away as gifts. Uh, putting to seminars as door stoppers. But then sometimes a book has a life of its own and its like a kind of, you know, a solzhenitsyn is a kind of prophetic figure. Uh, once he steps out and, you know, its, it has a huge impact. You before the, the story of solzhenitsyns life is less and less. Well known now. And so glad especially for the young people who are here that youre learning a little bit about them. Because, you know, in the 1970s he was on every tv everybody wanted to interview him. You know, he was all over the news. Now, whenever i talk about in class, i have to explain who he was and what the gulag archipelago was. So i dont mind doing that, but you know, there there the attention span, any kind of mass media and culture is relatively short. So its very important to dig down and, find those individuals that are worth remembering. Solzhenitsyn was, of course in the gulag and and and god and when you got released you had. Zero status you were like the lowest of the low low. He couldnt of course one of the features of russia and russians in history is that its a big country and they can lose you anywhere in it they want to. So he couldnt move back to moscow or couldnt move to St Petersburg to anywhere, anywhere like that. Leningrad. He couldnt move to any of the big cities. So he had to find employment out in the boonies where nobody wanted him. And of course, as a former prisoner, he could not really. You cant walk up to people and say, look, can you give me a job . No, no, no, no. Thats a too dangerous a thing. But eventually they found they could teach mathematics and theres, you know, theres always a demand, especially small towns, for people who can teach mathematics. And he got a job and a and went back to his first love, which was writing. And in that in that time he published that that book that dan refers to as earlier is really the condensed of the gulag archipelago is the gulag archipelago through the lens of. One person on one day an average prisoner called a randomly savage. Okay, but you know, in order to get Something Like that published, you have to have permission. You to have a license. You, you know, you cant just submitted, you know, to a journal or to a printer and say, here, bring this out. And id say, how many copies we can get of out. No, no, no, no the story, even though the publication of that was amazing because uh, uh, solzhenitsyn, the work was writing just at the time when there, when khrushchev had had embarked on a period of destalinization separating himself from the stalinist past and it was a kind of moment of brief opening towards this type of invitation to look more critically on the stalinist labor camps and that period. So uh, that seemed to be, you could say an acceptable moment for, for solzhenitsyn to send his manuscript after to an editor and he sent it off to the big russian journal, novy and that they, they, they looked at it. And tarkovsky, the big editor of it, looked and said, oh, its letters. But of course we cant, uh, make decision like that. We cant just that. So they send it, you know, all the way up through the Security Apparatus and. Ultimately, uh, Nikita Khrushchev himself has to read it over the weekend and see if you know this. This is something that can fly. And it was, you know, sufficiently careful about, you know, what it was, quote, to condemn what it didnt condemn that khrushchev decided that on balance, this made me look better than stalin. And so he said, yes, go ahead and publish it. And then they published it. And within a whole weekend, about 200,000 copies had flown off the shelves. You know, so it was just a sensation. Think so. Solzhenitsyn at that point went from being a complete unknown to being the most famous guy in russia. And then, of course, in the world and then, uh, he, he has but at the back of his mind, of course, he has this other project and was as a result of the one day in the life his underneath civic that people contacting solzhenitsyn and one them and all of these former prisoners come out and say look wed like to share our with the of our time in those camps and he decides you know to put all of that together. The. Uh, thats, thats an important background to keep in mind in reading the gulag archipelago because it, uh it shows you that, uh, solzhenitsyns first effort to communicate what it was all about was really a literary experiment itself. A short story. There was no ever underneath of it except in general. Uh, to in order to understand that the gulag, you had to imagine it was like for the average. And so that was the experiment in literary investigation that solzhenitsyn brings about. Now why did the book, why did solzhenitsyns gulag archipelago succeed, when many other, um, dan has touched on this beautifully in his remarks, but why did that book succeed in when there were about 40 books . You know, and by the time we got to mid to late sixties, early seventies, even about whole prison camp system and the extensive extent of it and memoirs of people either sometimes published in russia but mainly in the west, but not on the scale that that what as smart as solzhenitsyn had but mostly mostly published in the west. So this was not kind of a New Discovery in the west but solzhenitsyn manages to do unique in this book that no one did. And that is, as dan outlines there, to really, uh, show not all of it, not all of the details, although it is a very comprehensive book, but its quite different from, say, the work of Anne Applebaum, who has done great work on the basis of the soviet archives. Uh, and basically confirm and whats also innocent has in the gulag, uh, uh, that will never replace solzhenitsyn has done, which is to, of bring you the reader into the gulag system and see it from within. Uh, thinking through what it was like to be arrested, to be thrown into your first prison, then your first transport, and then finding somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and having to survive and without really no preparation and. And so, uh, you realize that this is actually not about the prison camp system. Its about each person who has to find a way through the challenges of life under the most circumstances, we all have to suffer and die. The question is how are we going to do it . And all that was unique about people in the gulag was they were having to do it in a much more way. So thats what thats about, and thats what makes the solzhenitsyns gulag archipelago such a compelling and why um, it, it really will be, it really is one of the greatest books of the 20th century for two things. One, the of condemnation that it places on communism and the other is once it went down and referenced the uh, possibilities for the human spirit, especially as it begins to ascend, uh, when, when i started reading the gulag, you know, i used it as a kind of emblematic case of how, uh you could say, uh, the total italian crisis and convulsion that modern civilization had ended up with could indeed be answered only a kind of a of the soul, as solzhenitsyn to a kind of inner turning around and a movement back that rediscovers everything that, you know, for, uh, the Great Western tradition has been the source of rejuvenation and spiritual growth and of maturity for human beings. Time out, mind. So its a, uh, its, its a, its its a, its an epic account of the of the prison camp system. Uh, thats where it goes in an archipelago, the way in which that, um, the whole of soviet society theyre scattered all over the entire society too. And everybody is somehow tainted by it. Youre either in it or kind of touched by it in various ways, but its also, uh, the inner journey of the soul by which you can find way out, really, into freedom. I just that. To offer also a vision of the, of the one day in the life of evangelism which he authorizes is the one that the novella the little novel that that book that that that that solzhenitsyn published called one day in the life of event denisovich and, you know, if youre not up to lugging that wonderful big volume you definitely should pick up. Its got about 100 pages called one day in the life of evangelism which. And its a its a wonderful kind of encapsulation of the experience as well. Yeah, but khrushchev authorize the publication of that. Yeah. Thank you, dr. Walsh. And the worst mistake of his life, obviously. Thank you very much, dr. Walsh, and dr. Teller. Or just thanks to vrc for for inviting me and also a special thanks to my friend dan mahoney. Many years ago i was trying to write a dissertation and dan gave me a list of books read and solzhenitsyns was on the list. Nonetheless, this led to a postpone of the writing on my dissertation, but it also led to a new scholarly for me. So this is this is worked out rather well . Yes. Bless you for having been in my dan mentioned the shocking statement that comes at the the end of the chapter the ascent. Solzhenitsyn does not offer this until near the end of part four of this of this massive but the remark shouldnt really surprise an attentive reader of the book. Dan has emphasized this thread of the book he calls it solzhenitsyns path to philosophical selfknowledge, which id kind of like to pull on that thread little more and kind of deepen deepen the portrait that dans already started to paint for us. Im to call gulag a memoir of moral self. Now, this is a little strange because souls tells his readers in an early chapter called arrest that this book, quote, is not going to be a volume of memoirs my own life. So he tells us its not a political expose, and then he tells us its not a memoir. His own life. Its certainly not simply that or even primarily that, but i think through the periodic use of personal reflection and the deployment of of the stories that dr. Walsh just mentioned, the deployment of all these stories about these other people that he met, moral stuff, discovery and the conditions for its possibility is really the core of the books. Relevance. This aspect of the book, i think, is is crucial in, revealing the specific evil of totalitarian domination, and that is the restriction and or the suffocation of moral agency. So there you can see where the, you know, the connection between moral selfdiscovery and, political right, where those two kind of threads of the book meet this theme emerges very early. And to contrast eating chapters in particular, one chapter comes early in the book, either quite late. This chapter has not been mentioned yet. So excited that its called first cell, first love, solzhenitsyn. His encounter with other in the cell after, his arrest and his interrogation. And heres the crucial quote, he says. Now, for the first time, you were about to see other people who are not enemies. Now, for the time youre about to see others who are alive, who are traveling your road and whom you could join to your with the joyous word we yes, that word which you may have despised out in freedom when they used it as a substitute for your own individuality. And it gives a couple of examples. All of us, like one man, we are angered or we demand. We swear this. We as revealed to you as something sweet. Youre not alone in the world. Why spiritual beings, human beings still exist. We is a joyous word in this context for solzhenitsyn, because now he can truly and finally give himself over to others. Up to this point out in socalled free life we had always been wrapped up in the pseudo social world of ideological assertion. One encounters others through the real but compulsorily compulsory collectives or abstract ideological categories in either case, one becomes acutely aware that the different articulations this we demand that you sacrifice your individuality and so prison paradox actually becomes a space where genuine social life became possible, a social life that depended real selfgiving and reciprocal recognition. Danis mentioned a few of the characters like sushi, that that solzhenitsyn befriended and eaten and has debated in the developed most of this of this. We. So he introduces this theme in this chapter called first cell first love. But then he that throughout the book now this joyous we stands in stark contrast to the ethics social life that govern socalled free life in the soviet union. And dan has mentioned the single chapter in the gulag that is about life outside of legal ag and its called our muzzled freedom. And he says, what, what sort of a country it was . He asks that for the whole decades dragged that archipelago go around inside itself. He gives a portrait of what ill call the pseudo sociality of collective life and how it produced as a kind of anti social ethics that governs everyone who remains a socalled free citizen outside of a gulag system and solzhenitsyn mentions ten traits in particular that govern this world one constant fear to servitude, three secrecy and mistrust for universal ignorance. Five squealing. Six betrayal is a form existence. Seven corruption. Eight the lie as a form of existence. Nine cruelty and ten slave psychology. Just going to make a couple of observations about a couple these of these traits. Ill start with three and four secrecy and mistrust and universal ignorance. Given that given the looming presence, the gulag, it makes perfect sense that people more and more secretive and more and more mistrustful of one another, people shared as little as possible with one another as an understandable defense mechanism, when people are disinclined to share knowledge and opinions, they lose their appetite for truth. Solzhenitsyn argues that people assisted in the implementation of absolute secrecy and, absolute misinformation, which he called, which he calls because of causes of that took place. The disinclination to share information and opinion and to learn from one another causes ignorance, which in turn made people susceptible to quote official lies, you could say, mistrust and universal ignorance could all be described as passive vices. They result from not speaking not sharing things and or retreat inward. All excellent emphasize act of ice that dan mentioned in his talk betrayal as a form of existence as solzhenitsyn suggests with this characteristic the safest most secure path in life was to betray people. And there were positive inducements for informing on friends and colleagues. Right. You might get little nicer, nicer, flat. The most common form of betrayal was merely not speaking up when a friend or colleague was at work. You sort of bowed your head and pretended you didnt see. What was going on . This leads me to number eight on on the list, the lie a form of existence that becomes the safest path to relatives. You use a handy collection of readymade phrases to declare your orthodoxy. And of course its the safest thing to do is repeat the the official lies, the industrial norms that are being met, the deplorable conditions in the west and finally, solzhenitsyn adds every word quote, every word of it does not have to be a direct is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general common law with these Ethical Principles place to define social life. Is it wonder that the wi a word that was despised in the socalled free life the soviet union. Its this precious discovery and cultivation of the third person plural in the world of the that enables solzhenitsyns of selfdiscovery and, transformation and in the end i think this is really the heart of the book the phenomenon of total is a vivid and communicable tool and its linkage to this deeply moving and deeply personal moral drama. And i suspect this is what keep has kept and will keep generations of readers coming back to this monumental and truly singular work. Art, thanks. Thank you, dr. Taylor. Dr. Spalding, what more can be said of the gulag archipelago, perhaps the better question is, can enough ever be said of. The gulag archipelago. It has sold tens of millions of copies. As weve heard, but there are billions of in the world. I agree very much with davids portrait of the 1970s, but also met so many people in the past decades who have said, sure, i have a copy of that on my shelf. No, never pulled it off. Its so long i havent read it. Yes, ive heard solzhenitsyn, that kind of thing. So if we look at just the american audience at the of first publication 50 years ago, some but not all baby boomers were old enough to read the gulag archipelago or to have read published excerpts which were or to have read solzhenitsyns 74 essay live not lies and especially the students in the room. If you havent already put this in your amazon cart which you should if you dont own and if youre looking for something this evening to read, you should look up that essay live not by lies from 1974, because its a distillation of many of solzhenitsyns themes. So lets take a line here, say yes, go to the washington back. Oh yeah. You have to use you have to use dans yes, you have to use one of solzhenitsyns sons retranslated and its available at the web site of the alexander Solzhenitsyn Center. Its just a much improved literal translation as opposed one that was done very hastily by a journalist in february 74. So its a great its great website to the soldier and its center website. So thats what you should do tonight, too. You know, in addition to going around washington, going to the memorials at i recommend that to so if we take the line between birth before and after 1960, this line indicates that American Teens of 13 or 14 may have been aware of solzhenitsyn, the dissident writer and embodiment of the gulag as he was arrested, charged with treason, stripped of his citizenship and ejected from the soviet union. Thats what happened to him. And the reason that he be killed right away is because he was too well known. The soviets didnt want to make a martyr of and and so even all of that was going on as david so well described, there would have been people who missed the story at the time or forgot the story at the time and never got around to the gulag. And then i really appreciated that dan talked about whats going on in russia because the gulag did eventually make its way into the High School Curriculum in russia, as weve heard. But it was only two years after solzhenitsyns death, 2008. It wasnt shortly after the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 and then in todays climate in russia, this of great concern. There are these concerted efforts by certain politicians to remove the gulag from the curriculum. They get batted down by others. But its something to keep an eye on. And the long standing regime of Vladimir Putin has violated so many of the truths of. So certainly you know, putin is not living by what solzhenitsyn wrote and taught. So i refer to solzhenitsyn as dissident writer and walking embodiment of the gulag both victim and victor i think this is the way you have to look at at him as one of these extraordinary witnesses as to what communism is, what it tries to do, and how you resist and fight it and overcome. And although he was interested in writing from a young age as we have heard, his vocation was truly born in the gulag and developed there and afterward. And id like to highlight three key themes which will echo some of what weve been already talking about. Number one is good and evil so much of solzhenitsyns, including in the gulag archipelago, is a meditation on good and evil. I was asked the other day in an interview if god is part of the gulag archipelago. He is of course omnipresent, and. But solzhenitsyn doesnt mention him explicitly on that many pages relative to the length of the work men have forgotten. Solzhenitsyn later famously said in his 1983 templeton prize acceptance address further, the soviet communist regime did its best to destroy god right get rid of god. There is a deep awareness is of original sin in the gulag archipelago, solzhenitsyn witnesses to and describes the evil of the communist regime and offers the insight that gulag country, as he puts it, envelops the entirety of the ussr. Right . The fact that it exists, it ends up swallowing up the whole place and it began right away with lenin. So stop in systematized and in and expanded the gulag he inherited. Why is there this regime problem with evil . Because as weve heard, theres an individual problem with evil and solzhenitsyn points back to the battle between good and evil. Each man. This emphasis helps us that central passage from the gulag archipelago, the dans already quoted one variation of today regarding line separating good and evil that passes quote through every human heart and through all human hearts. Number two ideology writ large in the soviet regime connects to the battle between good and evil, and each person in the gulag archipelago. Solzhenitsyn explains that there has always been tyranny, but that ideology, this horrible modern creation radicalizes and goes what we might call mere tyranny. Solzhenitsyn writes that ideology, and weve heard this too evil doing its long sought justification and gives the evildoer, the necessary, steadfast fastness and determination. He exposes ideology as the grounding for the 20th centurys large scale totalitarian regime crimes including but not only those committed in the gulag and without the evil doers and their ideology, he says, there would have been no archipelago right. Number three truth, not lies. I was also asked if. Solzhenitsyn seeks the truth or cares about the truth. And as we have heard abundantly today, solzhenitsyn is all about truth. This is why he lays bare ideological lie and all its spawn. There are many other lies come from the big ideological lie lies hunt and, destroy the truth and ussr was a communist regime based on, as we heard, lies and violence. The lies are seen at their. It seems odd to use the word that way, but theyre seen at their purest in the gulag, which aims. 24 seven 470 years to strip man of his very personhood of his very nature and this is where dan brought up that very important passage from the gulag about officials depersonalized the zaks through identical identical fuzz on their identical caps identical jackets. This is so important to understand what it comes from. But solzhenitsyn does not despair or advocate despair at the end of the same passage, he refers to the light of the soul and says the sparks of the spirit cannot be kept from spreading breaking through to each other. And that means also breaking through the lives. So in the end, the gulag is a meditation good and evil on ideology, on truth, not lies, and on much more in a condemn and refutes communism vs communism is that revolutionary to negate to break down and remake man to somehow replace what we know is human nature, the human soul and the dignity of the human person and the society in which we know that we would flourish. Yes all of that communism goes after, tries to change and it does this with this great ideological lie. And and solzhenitsyn, it all exposes it. It exposes it all shows what should be there in its place. And it is a work for the ages. Thank you. Yes. Start first with do any of our palace members have any questions . Their fellow Panel Members comments, or if not . I can go ahead and i think its a good thing to say elizabeth made i think a very important point about solzhenitsyn with her preaching and and not in a theological idiom at all but he really does restore a kind of common sense appreciation of the reality of original sin that the source of evil is not out there. And solzhenitsyn certainly believes theyre unjust and cruel social systems and impalpable political regimes. But the of evil lies within man himself and to too great to great men of the 20th century. G. K. , the catholic convert and essayist reinhold niebuhr, the orthodox protestant theologian, both said independently of each other that original sin was only empirically provable. Doctrine christianity. You know, its not a bad start place to start and with that in mind, i want to share with you a quotation solzhenitsyn. This is an interview with the german newspaper developed in 1993 and the long interview where solzhenitsyn is articulating, you might say that his spiritual the spiritual of this thought in writing, i most unlike rousseau, my views claim me that humans are good by but corrupted by their environ ment and circumstances was a grave error. And those points also been made in the russian tradition by people like dostoyevsky and solovyov forgivable gudkov and people who i think had a influence on solzhenitsyn, especially. He returned to philosophical christianity. I have always said many times that the line between good and evil is not drawn between. Governments, parties or nations but through every human heart. A human being is inclined to both good and evil and that last solzhenitsyns, you might say, recovery, his experiential and common sense recovery of original sin not to be identified with calvinist depravity. You solzhenitsyn believed in the as we were saying today the wellsprings of the spirit and that and im touched by gods human beings are capable of heroism and moral nobel and we believed that human beings are kind to both good and evil. And that means that theres always hope when when that that small bit of goodness can remain even in the most evil of hearts. Although theres a father, susan hansen had a background in physics and mathematics thats what he studied. Those are the safe disciplines in the soviet union. Look like here sort of into quite recently you know until somehow managed to be ideology managed you know become activist but solzhenitsyn discovered as a in the chapter the blue camps whether or not a person can a point of no return and he takes this notion from physics the threshold of magnitude and he says at a certain point i its when a solid turns to gas and it cant change back again. But he warns you would be you know only so far down path of evil and in this case evil ill informed by ideological and you really leaving behind your human countenance altogether so so so hope and redemption or ever ready possibilities. Unless one commits my hits commits oneself to what you might call radical evil and then a return highly unlikely, you know. And so i think thats a very, very powerful warning, something in the complicit with totalitarian evil, something very important is at stake. And its that the human soul. But that quote could strike struck me and solzhenitsyn actually occasionally will mention in his it is published mystic writings. People like hobbs and rousseau or frequently marx. But i was quite straight struck by that interview because. He that he saw sort of were so an affirmation of original innocence as the the die as being diametrically opposed to his own understanding of the drama and of good and evil in. Every human soul that was. Yeah, let me just add a little footnote to that. You know, in in that short novel event and denisovich Ivan Denisovich is not one of these spiritual seekers and you know and thats what makes i think that that was what made the whole thing seem harmless to the soviet government of khrushchev and the censors and else you know this was couldnt be a threat in any way because hes just an average prisoner. Hes a kind guy who manages to survive on his wits more than anything else without being, you know, terribly reprehensible to anybody. But there is in in that little novel the presence of christians and was whats interesting is that the treatment thats given to them is that uh we see it through sugar of evangelism, which uh, uh, where he says, he is looking at alyosha and the baptists and what do they spend their doing, saying their prayers, reading the new testament and whatever free time they have, everybody else is scurrying around trying to make money out of a bit of a selling to one another and getting doing services and earning something else. And so it these people have something for them, but it cant kind of put his finger on it. He cant explain to it himself. Theres these are the people who survived in the camps the best. So they knew what they were suffering for. And, you know, its theres theres admiration, but not inside their world. And so it is kind of striking that when solzhenitsyn writes the gulag archipelago, he makes that front. And center. The question that, uh, dostoyevsky, in all of his great novels. Can we be good without god . And thats why the question god it just so comes up. Hang on, hang on. Its a you dont have to answer that. You know the answer to that i was. You can answer that but you know in essence thats of the question thats always nice and very, very aware of being part of world russian literature and very, very that this is the question that hangs the 19th Century Russian novel can man be good without god and it doesnt look so for tolstoy in that regard. Even though hes more christian than anybody. But he, uh, he comes, he forces himself through a journey of. And they, you could say, the perspective of truth that elizabeth references is, first of all, truthful about himself and, about how really you know, you know, unkempt oppressive. He is as a character, the things that he did, how he felt towards others, how he lorded the money and power, how he was he was almost an informer. How he threw a guy out of his bunker, was on his last legs. So you use and and the turning point is where someone says him look you have to think about over your whole and ask yourself is there something for which i have to repent . Thats what opens everything. And thats really how he rises and ascends. He can say towards the perspective of god. Its not very theological account, but it does lead inexorable towards a transcendent perspective on human life. And the person, its like send a augustines confessions, which are not really a religious book at all. Theyre about that process by which augustine arrives at, the boundary of faith and, religion. All right. I was just going to add, you know, even denisovich, the book ends with a dialog between ali. Oh, yes, yes. And even delusive. Its soup of. Yeah. And i think the end that particular moment in that particular dialog, solzhenitsyn is more sympathetic to shook off than alyosha. I think you could this he clearly the baptist theyve given five years simply for being believers yes but theres so exclusively with eliminating the scum from their own hearts that they really are very passive. Theyre not interested in putting an end to the soviet regime or getting out of prison and all that. And for the very common should cool off from his peasant perspective. This is too much. Yeah he he respects leo with his hidden bible. He respects him a good deal, but says, what am i doing here . I get captured by the germans ten years, you know, my escape that i still got ten years and hes superstitious in a naive way. When alyosha is praying and any evokes the faith that moves mountains shook says, i never saw a mountain move. You know. But shoe covers are really character for another reason. Hes superstitious, really being christian and anything but a nominal way but a pagan figure. Yet hes thorough and decent. And david mentioned its hes really good at getting extra and ending up with an extra bowl of soup, but he never does it at the expense of another human being. And earlier in my talk i mentioned arnold sushi, the estonian friend. He was not a solzhenitsyn describes former estonian minister of education as a humanist. He is a liberal humanist, not a believer. And yet he somebody who was in his refusal to survive at any price of. I agree with everything david said. Ultimately, souls, natures experi and his articulation of the more points to the of transcendence. But solzhenitsyn is perfectly aware that there are decent people who reject the lie, who might not understand, you might say, logic of the role of decency if i could put it that way and just on a practical point, id like to say that david done a wonderful job of explaining to you how you wouldnt have the gulag archipelago if you hadnt had one day in the life of ivan in a. So again, for people here among the students, especially, who may not have read that, its well worth reading. And and then eventually really does help to take down khrushchev very much regrets that he had signed off on the the editor novy mir stayed up all night reading it read it again couldnt believe you know i never get very very close in his very personal touch to reagan. Thats right. Im reading a russian classic. Exactly. Can sit down in your pajamas and then it is it is banned subsequently. So even though it been published, even though it had been read hundreds of thousands and passed on to more, its banned. And so so then then solzhenitsyn becomes a samizdat writer for a period of his career and all of that leading up to him writing eventually parts of the the gulag archipelago, pulling it all together. Okay. I mustnt read the one day and the ralph parker translation. Any of the sixties translate versions, theyre very weak, very read. The one in dans book and that thats the thats thats the best we dont have anybody in the is very read the Harry Willetts from Farrar Straus and which is a very serious authorized solzhenitsyn which a very helpful introduction by alexis of a great solzhenitsyn scholar. But most important thats the restored edition to get published in 62 souls as in its an had to cut lots of references that would have made very apparent that this was an anticommunist book and not just an anti stalin. And ill just give you one example. There are details accounts of why people are prison that are absent or are minimized in the original versions. And a lot of them have to, with collectivization a. Lot of it has to do with soldiers were just like yvonne denisovich, who were deemed enemies of the people for no good reason during war two. So the cumulative of that account of why people are in prison is in and in and of itself. A much more open indictment of communist totalitarianism. But i mean, if you only have bad translation available, its better than not it. But so which issue should they read . The british version of the one. Well, i made a. Ideally you should read all 1600 pages, but one reason solzhenitsyn of various abridgment is he knew busy hurry modern men were unlikely to do so and a lot of people this is certainly my experience in talking to people elizabeth related her recent experience of talking to people about the gulag they read 100 pages its very long its very depressing and they never get to the notes of hope and catharsis, you know, to the triumph, to the victory so thats a good reason, i think, to to an abridgment theres an abridgment original abridgment was prepared by friend and colleague and coeditor the solzhenitsyn reader in the late ed erickson. A very good man. He took the initiative and went to vermont, worked on with solzhenitsyn. Its quite something and thats been continually reissued harper with at erickson introduction in 2007 Harper Collins reissue all three volumes of the gulag archipelago there and most barnes and noble and abridgment and that abridgment meant has a foreword Anne Applebaum. It is competent but a little workmanlike. There is 2018 paperback edition from vintage classics in london that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, mainly because it has an introduction. Jordan peterson, who was a big fan of solzhenitsyn and most of the people young people i run into today who have read the gulag archipelago have done so because it was recommended by jordan peterson, even though a lot of professional russians who said why he writing this introduction this right wing know troglodyte i know the solzhenitsyn family thinks his introduction captured some know some of the essentials of the book and they were very so its and then this is the best version of the abridgment of the original english abridgment because it has this splendid and revised introduction by natalia solzhenitsyn. That really gets to the heart of the book and tells the story of its genesis and publication it includes a glossary of names names and places it which of the names were mentioned were for the book among the 257, whose letters or discussions with solzhenitsyn provided important material for the gulag archipelago. And it also it well has several other additional features and at the beginning this was all done very hurriedly in the early seventies. So four order of things, the beginning of the gulag archipelago, the the dedication to those perished solzhenitsyns first note the they. Had a tournament here was the wrong award so thats been restored. So this is very this is really one of i think preferred additions of the authorized it also has great advantage of being beautifully produced you know. So i would recommend dead to the busy hurried reader as solzhenitsyn called them i also mention im to give the bibliographical role. You know, the russian abridgment that was prepared. I think the title solzhenitsyn began it with her husband she continued it was published in 2000. The thing russian that has been translated into french and is the widely available French Version of the gulag today. And it has also been translated into two versions of portuguese, portuguese, portuguese and brazilian portuguese. The solzhenitsyns me they dont exactly know why brazil and portugal needed different versions of gulag in portuguese, but there are two competing anyway. If you want read the gulag archipelago in portuguese you have a choice of essentially the same except for the introduction. So right no, they are those about that. They the brazilian. No, no, no, no. I mean the various abridgment they all begin with the Edward Carson one. That was all thats there. Yeah. The english language. Yeah, right. Yes. So essentially the books are identical, they are improved with this word additions. Yes, there is another one has better introductions, glossaries and everything else. Yes. Yeah, but but the base any one of those ish, any of the gulag abridgment from 85 on will do just fine this has improvements and i think important ancillary materials and its a beautiful edition but you have an older edition of the abridgment all means go ahead and read. Yes thats like a tesla and. The other ones are like a vote. To a doctor. Mahoneys answer to dr. Edwards version of which abridgment is this is one. Yeah, i know. So i mean, what i would do is we have about 30 minutes left and i want to open it up to questions. And i see the hands coming up. So from our audience. At the work you guys in 10 a. M. I believe the cspan and our mike here here is oh surgery those who have described experiences in the gulag. Have any of them been by people on the other side of the wire the camp, the guards, spouses or did these people have ever say about the experience and unrelated. But what did solzhenitsyn have to say about his experience in america . Were his observations, comments conclusions about that Cross Cultural experience. There is a memoir. There are several memoirs, guards. Theres one that i do remember, the one that came available four years ago. That was quite interesting. And unfortunately, the title escapes me. But i think you could identify it by doing a search. But if i remember the guard who kept his memoirs in the siberian camps about four or five years, he has many is most of the ideological attitudes the regime that these are enemies and therefore inferior beings. But he also presents himself something of a victim. Hes not particularly to be here. He feels that hes dehumanized in many ways by, you know corrupt exercise of power. But you know mainly what we have. And there some other memoirs from from guards of a few mainly what we have from the other side is what david walsh had to refer to what Anne Applebaum utilizes in her find 2003 book gulag a history. And thats the work in the andll use this occasion to, say, among professional historians, theres what i call archival fetishism, that somehow the numbers given by the regime, by the secret police, somehow more authoritative than the actual personal experiences of the sex. I dont think thats true i dont think the soviet the official figures are quite as accurate as is sometimes claimed. Many, many people died in transit many people died because were so weak and that they died after being released from camp, especially during world war two, but were never counted among the victims. Those of you who are old enough remember. 1989 to about 1991 or two. There were mass graves all over the soviet union where people were buried and in many cases nobody knew who these were for and all that. So the nazis probably, because of certain germanic traits, bureaucratic efficiency that were held over from 33 there, there records are really quite accurate in terms of numbers. I think the soviet so but i just think and i give in Anne Applebaum credit for in foreword to the 2007 she says you cant this idea that academic historians have that the the the the archives are everything and the person or witnesses or distrusted really get almost get things backwards know and thats why you david walsh mention know estimates of to 50 Million People killed by the soviet regime by the book of communism estimates 20 political 20 make politically induced death. Alexander yakovlev often excommunist turned anti totalitarian and hero. He was the head of the official president ial commission on repression under lenin and stalin. He estimates 35 million. So theres a theres great latitude in this so but in the end it doesnt matter if it was 20 or 35 may in 15 or 15 may in what david walsh. So these were man, this massive repression inspired by ideological thinking and by an effort to just let utterly false that evil could be located and suspect groups whose elimination or punishment would open, you know open up the opportunity for transformed revolutionary community. And i think that simply certain thing but yeah you want to i mean i think the archival as some people have called it was initially very very important but seemed to crowd out the importance of personal witness and you know come back to the first point i made the the archives are not always trustworthy and so we need a a holistic approach we need an approach that draws on many different approaches and we need some judith on the part of scholars who were able to make judgments and not treat this as some kind of merely scientific, well, thats probably what but a museum has to do if you if you go to the Holocaust Museum, they end up with personal reminiscences are that are videotaped and recorded and thats kind of an then dispensable part of this. You know, obviously the holocaust has been much more as drawn, much deeper and more extended attention for a longer time. You know solzhenitsyns gulag is really the first point where communism comes under that kind of scrutiny and is seen as of the same level. But there is a remarkable series of interviews that was done by television. Claude lanzmann, in the sixties and. Those are seventies called shoah. Its well worth having a look at because he actually does interview not just people who survived or people who are in the concentration camps, but everybody who worked that system, including people who like run the trains designed the train schedule, you know, repaired them and it and you realize, yes, this whole system could not work unless a whole social network cooperated on it. And these are not people in the camps. These are not people who are, you know . Diehard nazis or communists. They just ordinary people showing up to do their job every day. Theres a new out about that. Thats right. Yes. Zone of interest. People are constantly coming back to that question. How could you be there and see all of this going on and not have any interest in it . But thats how it happens. Its not just stalin and and the communists and the kgb. Its actually everyone becomes a in the whole thing and. So this series on show is a wonderful because he actually just sits down and and interrogates in a very leisurely way. And i said, well, you know you were sending all those trains out there. They were full of people. And then they all came back empty. Did you ever ask yourself what happened to those people . You know . And so just ordinary people, just train drivers, trains, schedulers, theyre all put on the spot to kind of, oh, no, thats of course, how evil spreads in the world. We dont Pay Attention ordinary people doing jobs, dont Pay Attention and therefore dont. Resistors, you know, david mentioned has selfcritical solzhenitsyn can be in the gulag almost to all the propaganda against profit by the kgb or by leftist biographers in the west took information that sold the nation and the lessons for his own failings. But i try i mention this because. The seventh thousand word on biographical poem that solzhenitsyn wrote in the camp and its about his own spiritual odyssey. This is a man he tells us who on his honeymoon in 1940 got up early in the morning to engels. He briefly, a true believer. And thats tough stuff. Yeah all right. You know, dialectical with breakfast, but that autobiographical poem, which ends the 10th part is available in english. Its called knights as the red army into east prussia and section five is available in the solzhenitsyn. Its called best said. Its very powerful piece. Part two is called boys the moon soldier. Its and gives a very selfcritical account of he and a couple of his School Buddies beside going down the volga in. 1938, oblivious to what was around them. Yeah, there were boats carrying in zaks. There were clear for that suggests camps and he says they somehow given given their ideological presuppositions and proclivities manage not to notice and only retrospectively did solzhenitsyn realize that this was all before and everything in their training and their communist views prepared them not to notice. So boys they could have been on the moon for all its very very powerful because its its a retrospective account know its is very asks the question so where are we any better where any better. Ive got to interrupt here and could we get a couple more questions. Theres. Another ominous color chicken from Pacific University or from making it out here to the rain. My question has to do with the theme that weve talked about a lot of moral humility, which i think solzhenitsyn addresses and. My question is, and ive read part the book, so your answer may spoil the rest thats okay. What does he have say about punishment those involved in the gulag . How does he balance that with this moral humility and this idea that, you know, could have been them. Right. But he talks about and then furthermore how does that perhaps impact our view how communities and and nations can rehabilitate after these large crises moral integrity. Thats a great question. One quick thing ill say just on the you know, hows the Community Recover . Hes very pessimistic that its going to take generations upon generations before, you know, russia can can recover. And he he draws a contrast between the, you know, very selfconscious and explicit at rooting out of people involved in nazi ism and in germany and so its called lustration and right. I think he thinks that there should be some sort of lustration. I dont i dont know that hes specific about punishment as well. He has a twofold approach. Obviously when you finish the gulag archipelago in 1968, many of the worst perpetrators still aliv eighties, molotov was doing enter reviews with soviet journalists where. He was just taking full credit for collectivization of the purges and mass murder, even though his wife was in the camps. I mean talking about. You know, a soul torn apart. But so solzhenitsyn initially hoped i think that when the bolshevik regime collapse that russia could see Something Like i know many people say denazification was haphazard or didnt go far enough but solzhenitsyn says look, 66,000 people punished in a certain way the guilt was publicly stated recognized by the political order it affected the education the young and he said weve had nothing like this. And he ends section is the final paragraph graph of that crucial chapter. Ive alluded to the blue camps and he says its going to be hard a terrible to live in such a country because of believe that vice is rewarded and virtue is punished then you might say the natural order of things. The very essence of the moral life is turned upside in the 19 as many of the speeches, solzhenitsyn gave after his return to russia may 1994, he switched from emphasizing the imperative of punishment partly because of the and character of many of these ideological criminals, and emphasized the for repentance. And repentance wasnt just the few who tyranny i the many people through silence through repeating ideological slogans at work and at party meetings, through various forms of complicity, also needed to examine in their souls. So solzhenitsyn thought that repentance would the most means for purifying the russian soul and allowing to find productive in the future. But this thought reinforced something frank said a moment ago in an interview t. A. R. P. At, who was wonderful. Interviewer the Bbc Russian Service in, 1981. Its a very revealing. Its in a little book called east and west sap hearts and solzhenitsyn. How do you see russias future and . He says turning inward. A thousand years of repentance and recuperation now, as in years, may be a little hyperbolic, but his point is this you dont bring in a couple of western economists to do Shock Therapy with the economy and say we have a normal society in a normal democracy. No, because this was an ordinary authoritarianism. This was that transformed the souls and communism succeed in creating a new. But the new man was all the old the traits of the old adam amplified and within a system of mendacity where or even the ability to wreck denies reality for what it was was so profoundly so. The lunacy in the west was, oh, what, a few years know russia will just be a normal, you know well tinker with prices and all of that. And it was all so superficial because it was all based on a on a deep about totalitarian assault on the human person. Two quick things at the sea. We often talk about the legacy challenge. And so with russia you know, its a postcommunist state and society but its dealing the legacy of communism all the time as. You can see many, many examples in their and foreign policy. And then second, when flag talked about the, uh, the points that then dan amplified that sardonic tone is definitely in there too in those sections when hes about how will you ever this system, the communist totalitarian system be taken down. Well then those who were under the nazis, they did this. Its very much that that tone that that dan was talking about, his his main remarks where you have to read when when you go back to read the rest of it. Sometimes you can be two or three paragraphs along in new york. Oh oh, thats sardonic. Solzhenitsyn and i have to go back, read that page, and that happens in that section. You are mentioned communism on draft if youd like to, but. We will in a while, you know. Vladimir borkowski i had the pleasure of meeting in 1985 and i picked him up at the airport, i dont even remember how this happened. I was in graduate school of Catholic University a thermocouple. Kosky was a fighter against totalitarian who spent many years in the gulag he wrote a beautiful book. Whats the name of it . The to the castle. No, thats thats horrible. To castle and back to build a castle. To build the castle castles in the title. But its its why its one of the great memoirs of somebody as a later generation of sort then. But he it was a really exchange for chilling communist came to the west but his great hope was to put the communist party on trial and he returned briefly to russia in 1992 in 1993. And it was the early years of scanning you know, he got a scanner and he was given access to party archival materials and he scanned and scanned and scanned the way. And so thanks to bukowski we have all sorts internal communist party and state documents. The book was published in france and about six other european languages and really had a term among things bukowski showed that western peace movements were born and paid for by the soviet communist party. The complacency ran very deep but random house in new bought the rights and when the editors were probably 28 year old jacobins, they discovered that this book was an uncompromising indictment of communism and in all its works and they refused to publish it they told bukowski had to soften the tone and i believe bukowskis finally came out in two volumes about four years ago by small private publisher. But that that is an interest sting tale. But bukowski he was very very much committed to this idea that the soviet Communism Party needed a public trial. You know, it needed to be condemned publicly. I would add about it depends. What about repentance from western intellectual who are taken in by the communist idea . There wasnt much of that either. You want to hear those . So what solzhenitsyn has to say about western intellectuals, the sort dominick solzhenitsyn this is the third to last paragraph of the gulag. All you freedom loving wing thinkers in the west. You left labor rights, you progressive german and french students. As far as you were concerned of, this amounts to much as far as you were concerned. This whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday, but only when you yourselves hear hands, your backs there and assure onr our bellicose one, my here. I have prisoner u. S. Class in 97. So it did in u. S. Students audience of horrified first of all in ways im a former Senior Defense editor 1945, now publisher of my own patriotic blog and a proud monthly support of elc as to my question are back in 20 i became the publish author in academia in a paper about solzhenitsyn specifically about the kgbs failed attempt to assassinate them, and about your andropovs continued Harassment Campaign and Discrediting Campaign against solzhenitsyn. Excellent. Then talk about how solzhenitsyn kind of got the last laugh, because after his he was accorded equivalent basically of a russian state funeral, he and Vladimir Putin, of all people, eulogized solzhenitsyn as a matter of fact, even before solzhenitsyn away, putin kind of kind of buddy buddy relationship with solzhenitsyn, which is, of course, ironic in the light of the fact that putin is a former kgb colonel as well. And no, still, norman klotz, a real. So i kind of like to get the panels opinions on this apparent is the irony this apparently contradictory dynamic the solzhenitsyn relationship thank you. Well ill start i think much too much of of that is made in the west and solzhenitsyn and putin met three times a once early on. And putin saw picture. Solzhenitsyn had two pictures behind his desk. One of admiral kolchak, the white the White Siberian leader, the soviet, one of pyotr sleeping, the great russian statesman. And he said, and this was a sort of so. Well, he said, put him was sort of attracted to stalin. But you know well a great leaders but hes a reformer hes moving country forward. Hes just maybe we should prop dice the ideas of stalin but as solzhenitsyn says, oh its all the red wheel you need to read the red. We dont need to propagandizing. So its an interesting thing. And in truth, as an eight, solzhenitsyn got a state medal right before he died. And putin handed it to him and shook hand. But i think we have to recognize that the fact that and im not making a pitch for putin, but the fact that pick putin for a long time at least more likely to quote for of and celebrity of or solzhenitsyn than figures was a potentially promising the fact that he supported a ten Part Television series calling the tales a. Eight or ten Part Television of in the first circle, where solzhenitsyn the sound over the that the orthodox church. Canonized 3000 martyrs who were victimized by the soviet regime. The fact that but also just of moscow the cemetery where probably 2020 5 of those who were killed were religious clerics. That is a of sanctified point of of honoring and in paying paying testimony to the victims communist regime. These things have also existed in putins russia. They dont get a lot of press in the west i and i would say those more promising developments under putin are were seeing less and less that i mentioned before. Think the regime is hardening hardening. Theres no regime. Theres doubt that putin stayed in power way too long. Crowding is going to be a real problem of transition. The crowding out of civic life, of civic openness is a real problem in contemporary russia and. The problem is a lot of the opposition is worse. Putin, the red Brown Coalition and the ultra nationalists, the in this navalny, his views on ukraine are more hardline than putins. So theyre really hard to know. But putin has a certain responsibility for monopoly lies in the public sphere, crowding out, you know, at least the for the development of a civic culture in russia. But youre not youre never going to find mean everyone quotes the note the note about the greatest theocrat could do political disaster of 20th century. But the content there was more russians being lost the near abroad but putin just doesnt give speeches defending communism and my last would be very similar to alexander solzhenitsyn died on august. 2008. He had three contacts with putin. Putin proved rather enthusiastic to the inclusion of the gulag archipelago in the curriculum. But id say the regime has hardened very considerably since 2008. And, you know, of these retrospective judgments know go the website of the alexander Solzhenitsyn Center look at everything weve posted about solzhenitsyns writings, ukraine and the gulag three, he says. I discovered the camps, the ukrainians had very legitimate grievances. If they want go their own way, we have to let them go own way. But there has to be a plebiscite to the east because some of that land was given by lenin to the ukrainian ssr at a time territory didnt matter, he said 1990 that if war broke down between ukraine and russia, he would let his sons serve on the other hand, he was very critical of. Some ukrainian nationalists who he said blame everything on russia and, not on communism. So he you can read what supposedly just said on ukraine, but its not what putins saying about ukraine. He he really thought a russian ukrainian war would be a calamity and everything had to be done to avoid it and just a biographical fact, solzhenitsyn is half ukrainian readers of the red. We all know that because the larger family, their theyre basically kulaks in the ukraine you know, or at least on his mothers side. So i think i yeah. Another way of looking at it is if theres anything positive to be said about it has to with a openness sometimes an incomplete open this to the kind of russian patriotism solzhenitsyn represents. Im not sure thats the dominant note think its less and less the dominant note. But it was something real. And the fact that the gulag is still there are three works of solzhenitsyn are required readings and high schools. Metro is home one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich and the authorized abridgment of the gulag archipelago. Thats something shalom office also taught. Thats something. But on the other day, you know, the russian declared boris akunin, the author of those great detective novels of being a traitor and a for opposing the war. Thats not promising. You know, thats soviet language, you know, so i but i just dont think its solzhenitsyn having died. 2001 more thing socially and was deeply by the experience of the russian 1990s. He saw the russian 1990s as an example of russia coming of communism in the worst possible way the communists trans public property to them selves. I think solzhenitsyn was alarmed when people berezovsky and tarkovsky these really corrupt criminal oligarchs rip that rename themselves human rights fighters and all that you know so. He had some sympathy for the effort in the early 2000s to to create a state in that could govern and that could free the country from the grip of this unholy alliance and of the unscrupulous bureaucrats and the communists turned uh oligarch. And but but, you know, you cant use the 1990s as an excuse forever to justify the, the problems contemporary russia. But you have to start with the 1990s in order to understand how solzhenitsyn must have been thinking. And then he goes back, you know, partway through 1994, 1994. And so hes hoping for the best with subsequent governments after that wild and wooly 1990s and it doesnt happen and i dont know if he knew or not and not going to give putin a pass and im not going to give putin a i mean, i can still remember cringing as some of you may have when president George W Bush said what he said about putin. And then, of course, its its problematic what president obama said about putin in time. So, i mean, it was too many medvedev, but it was putin indirectly, of course. He was, you know, still running the show. So what it is, its this legacy piece again. And dealing with the fact that its not perfect, its politics, its postcommunist. What do you do . How do you set the best practical you can in russia at the time . And i think that solzhenitsyn can be for always trying to take the long view and figure out how to do that. We gave our embassy we gave our highest award, our truman, reagan medal of freedom last year to father georg adelstein and this is a Russian Orthodox priest who remained loyal to god from stalin on hes over 90 years old. And so hes been persecuted by the soviets, by the russians, and by many in the unfortunately, in the orthodox church, because hes in a minority of those that have been pure, who have been, you know, living martyrs a way throughout throughout his his life as a priest. So, you know, we have to look for those kinds of examples, too, and encourage people to learn more about that kind of person for the future of russia. Im going to conclude here. I was just going dr. Washy, you sort of triggered me think when you said about having to reintroduce solzhenitsyn is, you know, just because the regime has played on a place on the ash of history doesnt mean you completely forget about it. The narratives and the stories and all the people that were persecuted during that time that needs to be told over and over again. And thats what we do here at victims of communism, is try to educate people to the ills of communism. So i must say thank you to our panel. That was very good conversation. So a quick thank you to those folks behind the scenes like lily and sterling and here, you know, those are the ones that make these kind of events possible. And go to our web site, youll find more information on their op ed discussion at chances to donate anything. Just go read about us and learn about us and help us spread the message because youre the ones you know. The children are our future next generation. Youre the ones who are going to carry the carry the sword and carry the torch. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Oh, youre