Moscow. After two decades in exile, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was welcomed back home in 1994 like a messiah. Rapturous crowds gathered at rail stations to hail the dissident author as his train made whistle-stops on the homecoming journey from Vladivostok, on the Pacific Coast, through to Moscow.
Ten years on, few in Russia feel as excited about the man. He is now living in solitude in his suburban estate, fenced off with a high solid barrier and outfitted with a security television camera to make sure there are no unwanted visitors.
Solzhenitsyn's present-day isolation is partly down to his character. He has always preferred the gloomy life of a hermit to the fuss of a public man's life. Besides, he is well into his eighties now. But perhaps the main reason behind his seclusion is a failure to meet the high expectations of the Russian populace, who once looked upon him as a moral leader and even a prophet.
This would-be prophet has played no significant role in Russia's political dialogue since coming back. In his rare television appearances, he has never spoken out on issues defining current Russian politics, such as the war in Chechnya. Instead, he has kept talking about the need to revive the peasants' self- government, the zemstvo, which existed during the time of Stolypin's reforms. This idea does not seem relevant for the modern-day Russia, where the peasantry is nearly non-existent. Those few peasants that have survived to this day are too old and frail to drive the nation to prosperity.
Solzhenitsyn's cultural activity is equally uninspiring these days. The literary award set up by his fund honors only established authors with a focus on rural life. Among the awardees are mostly Soviet-era men of letters, deceased as well as living, such as Academician Vladimir Toporov and writer Valentin Rasputin, as well as military writer Konstantin Vorobyov. The Nobel Prize laureate has never run the risk of supporting young, as yet unknown talents.
Another conspicuous tendency of his is to recognize the writings of fellow dissidents with a prison record. Neither Anton Chekhov nor Ivan Bunin would have been awarded the Solzhenitsyn Prize. Fyodr Dostoyevsky seems one of the few classical writers to have deserved it-he spent some time in jail. Solzhenitsyn's recent decision to confer his prize on the newly-released television series "The Idiot," after Dostoyevsky's novel, has been taken as a clumsy joke in the literary circles.
As for Solzhenitsyn's own creative endeavors, he has not produced much literature in the years since his return to Russia. His only recent book to bring him back into the spotlight has been "Two Hundred Years Together," but not so much due to its literary value as to the controversial subject it brings up. It traces the life of the Russian Jewry from the Czarist era all the way through to the Soviet, socialist, period. When this book was released, it did not produce any sensation but it split the readers into two irreconcilable groups. Many have described it as blatantly anti-Semitic. The high-profile journalist Mark Deitch, for one, responded with an article entitled "A Shameless Classic. Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a Mirror of Russian Xenophobia." The piece was carried by the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Actually, both labels seem too strong for the frail patriarch. He is neither an anti-Semite nor a Xenophobe. It's just that he does not have enough energy or knowledge to explore such a complex issue in depth. An entire research institute wouldn't be up to the task. And the role of a judge that he assumes in this book is not particularly becoming, either.
Solzhenitsyn's blunders have now turned him from a Resistance hero into a character of satirical writings and even direct insinuations. Essayist Alexander Ostrovsky's "Solzhenitsyn: Farewell to the Myth" accuses the Nobel Prize-winning author of working for Soviet secret services and alleges that his novel "Gulag Archipelago" was a KGB commission. This is all sheer nonsense, of course. But could such a book possibly come out a decade ago? The man is no longer immune, it seems.
Solzhenitsyn's recent appearance on television has dispelled the persistent rumors about him suffering from a serious illness. He still comes across as energetic, lively and witty, thank God. But the reason behind his reemerging in the public eye has a somewhat comic flavor to it. The governor of the Kuban province (southern Russia), Tkachev came to visit the world-famous writer in his retreat outside Moscow-only to receive lavish praise from the host for handing his late grandfather's two-storied house over to a local church.
Isn't it a noble gesture? Very much so. Why, then, the event has been taken with a sigh of general disappointment? Solzhenitsyn's detractors claim that this is a publicity stunt rather than a sincere effort to be helpful to the community.
The Russian people may topple their idols as easily as they put them on the throne. But their present skepticism vis-a-vis Solzhenitsyn is understandable-they have expected him to act like Christ, not like Pyotr Stolypin.
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