Ukraine: "no one can be retained by force" (A. Solzhenitsyn)

The Voice of a Prophet: 

Solzhenitsyn on the Ukraine Crisis

by Joseph Pearce

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was many things. A fearless champion of freedom in an age of totalitarianism. A fearless critic of Communism. A fearless critic of the modern hedonistic West. A great historian. A great novelist. A Nobel Prize winner. A prophet.

Regarding the last of these, Solzhenitsyn prophesied, at the height of the Soviet Union’s power, that he would outlive the USSR and would return to his native Russia after the Soviet Union’s demise. As is the fate of prophets, he was not taken seriously. It was assumed by all the “experts” that the Soviet Empire was here to stay and would be part of the global geo-political landscape for the foreseeable future. As history has attested, the prophet was right and the experts wrong.

Clearly Solzhenitsyn is worth taking seriously. Nowhere is this more evident than in his remarkable prescience about the present crisis in the Ukraine.

As far back as 1968, during his writing of what would later be published asThe Gulag Archipelago, he wrote of his fears of future conflict between Russia and the Ukraine: “It pains me to write this as Ukraine and Russia are merged in my blood, in my heart, and in my thoughts. But extensive experience of friendly contacts with Ukrainians in the camps has shown me how much of a painful grudge they hold. Our generation will not escape from paying for the mistakes of our fathers.”

Foreseeing the rise of nationalism and its territorial claims, Solzhenitsyn lamented that it was much easier “to stamp one’s foot and shout This is mine!” than to seek reconciliation and co-existence:

Surprising as it may be, the Marxist teaching prediction that nationalism is fading has not come true. On the contrary, in an age of nuclear research and cybernetics, it has for some reason flourished. And time is coming for us, whether we like it or not, to repay all the promissory notes of self-determination and independence; do it ourselves rather than wait to be burnt at the stake, drowned in a river or beheaded. We must prove whether we are a great nation not with the vastness of our territory or the number of peoples in our care but with the greatness of our deeds.

Russia should be content with “ploughing what we shall have left after those lands that will not want to stay with us secede”. In the case of the Ukraine, Solzhenitsyn predicted that “things will get extremely painful”. It was necessary, however, for Russians “to understand the degree of tension” that the Ukrainians feel.

With his customary grasp of history, he lamented that it had proved impossible over the centuries to resolve the differences between the Russian and the Ukrainian people, making it necessary for the Russians “to show good sense”: “We must hand over the decision-making to them: federalists of separatists, whichever of them wins. Not to give in would be mad and cruel. The more lenient, patient, coherent we now are, the more hope there will be to restore unity in future.”

The greatest difficulty arose from the ethnic mix in the Ukraine itself in which, in different regions of the country, there were different proportions of those who consider themselves Ukrainians, those who consider themselves Russians and those who consider themselves neither.

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