Resistance in the Gulag Archipelago

Solzhenitsyn’s work presents to a great extent a powerful attack on the Soviet system from inside. He constantly calls into question the morality of the Soviet leaders and their institutions, both high and low. The stress is on ethical rather than socialist principles: Solzhenitsyn’s views are basically moral rather than political, except insofar as ethics are ancillary to politics. As we will observe, Solzhenitsyn is more obsessed by the problem of man’s evil and goodness than he is by the political ramifications of those ethical considerations.

Solzhenitsyn is unable to uncover the roots of evil or of goodness by tracing them to the social system and its production and class relations, by employing the orthodox and vulgar Marxist analysis of base and superstructure.

Prior to examining the question of resistance as encountered in Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward and The First Circle, it is imperative that we first come to appreciate how the Russian, generally speaking, perceives ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’. Materialism, too, indubitably plays a role here. As we will see soon, materialism served as a catalyst to certain forms of resistance manifested in the Gulag camps.

One finds no deep-rooted tradition of and love for personal freedom per se, but there does exist a profound commitment to “justice”; it is from this commitment that Solzhenitsyn truly speaks for his people. Andrei Amalrik writing in his Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (1970) may be correct in maintaining that for most Russians “freedom” is synonymous with disorder, that “individual” and “personal” human personality has no particular value, and thus must be considered subordinate to the “communal” interest. He may even be accurate in contending that Russian love of justice is far less vigorous than Russian respect for brute force, and that in practice, what passes for love of justice is simply a kind of equalitarianism which says that no one should live better than the next person.

This idea of justice is motivated by hatred of everything outstanding which we (Russians) make no effort to imitate, but, on the contrary, try to bring down to our level, by hatred of any sense of initiative, of any higher or more dynamic way of life than the life we live ourselves. This psychology is, of course, most typical of the peasantry and least typical of the “middle class.” However, peasants and those of peasant origin constitute the overwhelming majority of our country.22

Yet Solzhenitsyn’s position is inimical to that which has been expressed by Amalrik. For Solzhenitsyn is convinced, that his stubborn insistence on justice may find more fertile ground in the Russian spirit, than his equally stubborn concern for freedom and the individual personality. Because Solzhenitsyn earnestly believes that the urge to justice is inherent, in the spirit of men, everywhere.

Justice has been the common patrimony of humanity throughout the ages. It does not cease to exist for the majority even when it [is] twisted in some (“exclusive”) circles. Obviously it is a concept which is inherent in man, since it cannot be traced to any other source. Justice exists even if there are only a few individuals who recognize it as such. The love of justice seems to me to be a different sentiment from the love of people (or at least the two only coincide partially). And in periods of mass decadence, when the question is posed, “Why bother? What are the sacrifices for?” it is possible to answer with certainty: “for justice.” There is nothing relative about justice, as there is nothing relative about conscience. Indeed, justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually also recognizes the voice of justice. I consider that in all social or historical questions (if we are aware of them, not from heresay or books, but are touched by them spiritually), justice will always suggest a way of action (or thinking) that is not in conflict with one’s conscience.23

But Solzhenitsyn and the remainder of that courageous band of dissidents and reformers in the Soviet Union, are living in a period and a society of mass decadence, and despite their intrepidity and moral courage, their prospects are surely bleak. Their numbers are small, their power is extremely limited, and they are trapped between a hostile regime and an indifferent populace. This represents a precarious position to say the least.