Solzhenitsyn Goes Home

FOR 20 YEARS, ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN tried to re-create his own Russia, surrounded by pine trees in a snow-covered dacha in Vermont. Expelled from the Soviet Union after the publication abroad of his anti-Soviet ""Gulag Archipelago,'' the crotchety Nobel Prize winner withdrew from the world, isolating himself from the American society whose consumerism and pop culture he detested. He wrote about Russia, for Russians, with the passion of a genius. Solzhenitsyn never changed -- but Russia did. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, democracy, bubble gum, Michael Jackson and pornography all flooded into the country. So as he finally made his journey home last week, landing in Magadan, the Far East city of gulags, Solzhenitsyn was in a sense more Russian than Russia itself.

At 75, Russia's greatest living dissident was returning with a mission: to save the Russian soul. ""I hope that I can be of some help to my tortured nation,'' he said in a farewell speech in Vermont. But his nation may no longer have a place for cultural figures as spiritual leaders -- or for dissidents. ""Those times have passed,'' says Vitaly Tretyakov, the editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which ran an article dismissing Solzhenitsyn as ""hopelessly outdated.'' Says Tretyakov, ""Nobody believes in anything anymore.'' Cynicism, individualism and downright exhaustion from maneuvering through a new, chaotic economy have fundamentally changed Russia.

Holy fools:

That psychic collapse leads many intellectuals to look to Solzhenitsyn for help. For centuries Russian peasants, intellectuals and nobility alike flocked to be healed by holy fools, mystics and prophets. Writers like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy served as spiritual beacons. During Soviet times Andrei Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn filled that role, offering moral opposition to tyranny. Ironically, the freedoms they helped achieve devalued the intellectuals. ""Our nation has lost itself -- people think only of money,'' says Nadezhda Zhiltsova, a journalist in Nizhny Novgorod, whose husband was jailed for spreading Sakharov's ideas. ""The question is, how can Solzhenitsyn break that "I don't care' attitude?''

Just how the provinces will react to the monthlong train ride Solzhenitsyn plans to take across Russia is unclear. Russians will probably come to hear him speak, and local authorities may try to win political capital by giving him grand receptions. In Moscow, many intellectuals rushed to pay homage. ""The doctor is coming to see the patient,'' the author Konstantin Kedrov wrote in Izvestia. Some intellectuals may be cozying up in the hope that proximity to the Great Man will increase their own stature. Boris Yeltsin's entourage no doubt will also try to win Solzhenitsyn's support. In a rare interview with Russian TV, Solzhenitsyn backed Yeltsin after the bombardment of the Russian White House last October. But he also criticized reforms for spreading poverty. ""They will want him to say, "Boris Nikolayevich, you have made mistakes, but your course is right','' says Tretyakov. ""He's just as likely to say, "Boris Nikolayevich, you're an idiot'.''

Yeltsin isn't the only Russian who may be offended by the outspoken and impolitic Solzhenitsyn. Russian emigres have accused him of being anti-Semitic and a monarchist, both of which he denies. In a famous 1990 article, ""Rebuilding Russia,'' Solzhenitsyn suggested that Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian-speaking part of Kazakhstan be reunited with Russia because of historical and ethnic ties -- a proposal that wasn't welcomed in those Soviet republics. But he also said Russia should give up its imperial ambitions. Some intellectuals criticize him for having stayed away too long; others say his recent writings -- a four-volume epic about the revolution -- are boring. But Solzhenitsyn just keeps sermonizing. ""I am only saying things I think might be useful and needful for Russia,'' he said in October. ""I assume that I am going to become an undesirable person and my freedom of speech is going to be restricted -- I am prepared for that.'' But with Russians so disaffected, the question may be, is he prepared to be ignored?

© 1994