Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 2

15 NOVEMBER 2019MARCH 1917, BOOK 2 PUBLISHED TODAY

The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 2 is available today for the first time in English from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold.

With this volume we arrive at “the revolution at last" with an utterly passive and inconsequential Tsar, feckless liberals and socialists in the new Provisional Government (who see no enemies to the Left), disciplined totalitarian socialists with their eyes on the prize, and revolutionary mobs, drunk with the spirit of revolution and destruction. “The Red Wheel” is beginning to arrive at its destination… And there is some superb writing on Solzhenitsyn's part: expertly drawn streets scenes or fragments that capture the collective nihilism of the revolutionary crowds, and a remarkable chapter on the abdication of Tsar Nikolai—not to mention the devastating portrait of the vain Kerensky, and many others. The book covers three dramatic and consequential days, March 13-15, 1917.


We remind Solzhenitsyn readers of the overall sequence of the 10-volume Red Wheel:
Node I: August 1914, Books 1 & 2 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published in one volume)
Node II: November 1916, Books 1 & 2 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published in one volume)
Node III: March 1917, Book 1 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 2 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 3 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 4 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node IV: April 1917, Book 1 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node IV: April 1917, Book 2 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)


To inform readers about Solzhenitsyn’s system of “Nodes”, and also to explain the definitive term “Node” (instead of the older “Knot”), here is a portion of the Publisher’s Note that accompanies each of the Notre Dame volumes:


The English translations by H.T. Willetts of August 1914 and November 1916, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1989 and 1999, respectively, appeared as Knot I and Knot II.


The present translation, in accordance with the wishes of the Solzhenitsyn estate, has chosen the term “Node” as more faithful to the author’s intent. Both terms refer, as in mathematics, to discrete points on a continuous line.


In a 1983 interview with Bernard Pivot, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described his narrative concept as follows:


“The Red Wheel is the narrative of revolution in Russia, its movement through the whirlwind of revolution. This is an immense scope of material, and . . . it would be impossible to describe this many events and this many characters over such a lengthy stretch of time. That is why I have chosen the method of nodal points, or Nodes. I select short segments of time, of two or three weeks’ duration, where the most vivid events unfold, or else where the decisive causes of future events are formed. And I describe in detail only these short segments. These are the Nodes. Through these nodal points I convey the general vector, the overall shape of this complex curve.”




Read more: www.solzhenitsyncenter.org

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN: The Red Wheel, Method of Nodes

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN ON HIS METHOD OF NODES

At various times throughout the evolution of his concept of the Red Wheel and its possible structure, Solzhenitsyn explained his struggle to find the best solution for this daunting task. In the first excerpt below, from his diary, the author is still searching for ways forward. In the second, he is well on his way toward defining his answer. And by the third, he is able to formulate his method with final precision.


Structural principles of my historical novel.


1. An attempt to capture a major period of time through a more or less complete narrative would lead to flabbiness and pomposity. And taking into account my love for a narrative of continuous action, I should construct as follows : Parts (15? 20? 25?), separated from each other by any kind of intervals. Each part is bound up with a nodal, revealing moment—either of history or of a character's fate. Then within each part the action is continuous, and chapters bear no titles. (The Parts may be titled according to month and year.)


- from the “R-17” Diary, 1960


Q. So there will not be a main protagonist?


A. Definitely not! And this follows one of my principles, that it is not possible for one person, his views, his attitude to the situation, to convey the course and meaning of events. There is only one possible solution here, a solution I fell upon some time ago: one must not convey sequentially the entire flow of history, it will be far too long, and unsuitable for reading. I decided instead to concentrate, to create NODES, in other words again to apply the density method. Along this curve of history—curve in the mathematical sense—there are critical points, in mathematics they are called "special points". So these nodal points—Nodes—I serve them up in high density, i.e. as ten or twenty days of uninterrupted narrative. I locate these points mainly where the course of events is internally determined—not necessarily external events, but internal, those where history turns or decides. And so these ten, twenty days I describe in great detail and density, then a gap between Nodes, and then the next Node. That is how this idea of Nodes took shape.


- from interview with Nikita Struve, 1976


Q. Your major new work August 1914 has just appeared in French. But beyond this title we also see on the cover the words “Red Wheel" and "Node I". Can you explain to us what they signify?


A. The Red Wheel is the narrative of revolution in Russia, its movement through the whirlwind of revolution. This is an immense scope of material, and when taking into account that it stretches out over years (for the narrative begins in 1914 and continues basically all the way to 1922), it would be impossible to describe this many events and this many characters over such a lengthy stretch of time. That is why I have chosen the method of nodal points, or Nodes. I select short segments of time, of two or three weeks' duration, where the most vivid events unfold, or else where the decisive causes of future events are formed. And I describe in detail only these short segments. These are the Nodes. Through these nodal points I convey the general vector, the overall shape of this complex curve. So August 1914 is the first of these Nodes.


- from interview with Bernard Pivot, 1983


ADDITIONAL RESOURCES


The Red Wheel


Node I: August 1914


Node II: November 1916


Nodes III and IV: March 1917, April 1917




Read more: www.solzhenitsyncenter.org


The Red Wheel 


The Red Wheel (Russian: Кра́сное колесо́, Krásnoye kolesó) is a cycle of novels by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, retelling and exploring the passing of Imperial Russiaand the birth-pangs of the Soviet Union. 

Though Solzhenitsyn says he conceived the idea in 1938 and gathered notes for Part 1, August 1914 (which is about the disastrous opening of World War I from a Russian perspective) in the weeks when he led a Red Army unit into Eastern Prussia, the location of much of that part, in 1945, it was only in early 1969 that he actually sat down to write this historical novel. 

August 1914 was finished in late 1970, submitted for publication to Soviet printing houses, but turned down. Instead, it appeared abroad, at YMCA Press in Paris, without Solzhenitsyn's knowledge (though he gave his approval as soon as the news reached him).

When Solzhenitsyn was banished and stripped of his citizenship in 1974, his wife and other associates brought his manuscripts and archive out of the Soviet Union to the West, and he continued working on the novel in exile. 

A few chapters were published by the Russian exile church journal Vestnik in Paris in 1978-79, but it wasn't until 1984 that the work began to appear again in bookshops. 

In this year a revised and expanded edition of August 1914 was published, again by YMCA Press, also including sections on the revolution of 1905 and the assassination of the Czar's minister Pyotr Stolypin in 1911.

Read more: en.wikipedia.org

From The New Criterion’s thirty-six-year history ...

A curated selection of articles from The New Criterion’s thirty-six-year history.

The slyer virus: the West’s anti-westernism by Mark Steyn The sixth in a series titled “The survival of culture.”

In the first week of September 2001, the kindly earth, lapt in universal law, was gathered in South Africa, yakking incessantly, shrieking hysterically, but slumbering nonetheless. In a novel or a movie, it would have seem... more

The fortunes of permanence by Roger Kimball The concluding essay of The New Criterion’s series on The Survival of Culture, revised and expanded for publication in The Survival of Culture: Permanent Values in a Virtual Age.

I remember the first time I noticed the legend “cultural instructions” on the brochure that accompanied some seedlings. “How quaint,” I thought, as I pursued the advisory: this much water and that much sun, certain tips... more

The felicific calculus of modern medicine by Anthony Daniels The third in a series titled “The survival of culture.”

In May of this year, one of Britain’s most wanted criminals, a man called Ronald Biggs, returned to Britain after thirty years of exile in Brazil. Now aged seventy-one, he was arrested on arrival and taken straight to... more

France: Tour d'horizon des lois adoptées en 2019, qui auront un impact sur vos libertés.

Les 10 pires lois passées cette année en France

LA LOI QUI REMET EN CAUSE LE DROIT DE PROPRIÉTÉ

Jeudi 28 novembre 2019, c’est une loi Lagleize qui revient sur le droit de propriété, dissociant la propriété (éternelle) du foncier, de la jouissance (limitée) du bâti.

Comme le commente Pascal Beuvelet : « Il est clairement question de remettre en cause le droit fondamental au respect de la propriété tel qu’il est fixé à l’article 2 de la Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen de 1789. »

Ce qui n’a bien sûr pas arrêté le législateur.

LA VITESSE LIMITÉE À 80KM/H SUR LES ROUTES FRANÇAISES

Ce n’est pas vraiment une loi, mais un décret qui abaisse la vitesse de 90 à 80 km/h sur les routes, provoquant la colère des automobilistes.

La mesure est perçue comme contre-productive, liberticide et surtout comme un nouveau moyen pour les pouvoirs publics de faire entrer de l’argent dans les caisses de l’État aux dépens du contribuable.

LA LOI ANTI-GASPILLAGE

Le 10 décembre, c’est le projet de loi anti-gaspillage qui est adopté. Prototype de la fausse bonne idée, la loi anti-gaspillage interdisant la destruction des invendus, risque de faire grimper les coûts de production sans apporter de solution concrète.

L’interdiction des plastiques à usage unique posera également de nombreux problème que nous ne tarderons pas à aborder.

LA LOI ALIMENTATION ET SES EFFETS PERVERS

Le législateur prétendait intervenir pour éviter la guerre des prix et protéger le pouvoir des agriculteurs. Il n’en fut rien. Comme le dit H16 :

« Le prix de certaines denrées augmente assez mécaniquement. Le pouvoir d’achat des agriculteurs, qui auraient dû bénéficier de cette hausse des prix, ne bouge pas d’un iota. C’est un échec. »

LA LOI D’ORIENTATION DES MOBILITÉS S’OCCUPE DE VOS DÉPLACEMENTS

Là encore, c’est H16 qui en parle le mieux :

« On comprend qu’il s’agit avant tout d’orienter, aussi lourdement et autoritairement que possible, les choix des Français dans leurs modes de transport. L’élite a ainsi décidé, dans sa schizophrénie de plus en plus lourde et de plus en plus coûteuse, que la voiture individuelle devrait absolument être combattue par tous les moyens, tout en s’acharnant à conserver nos grands constructeurs automobiles français sur le territoire. »

En cette période de grève, les Français apprécieront la volonté du gouvernement de les rendre dépendants des transports en commun.

LA LOI PACTE CONTRE LA COMPÉTITIVITÉ FRANÇAISE

Le 23 mai 2019 entre en vigueur la loi PACTE. L’objectif officiel est de renforcer le contrôle de l’État sur les investissements étrangers pour éviter le pillage de nos technologies.

En pratique, elle établit un contrôle protectionniste rigoureux des sociétés françaises. C’est un coup dur pour l’attractivité économique du pays.

LA TAXE SUR LES GAFA

Le projet de loi sur les services numériques finalement adopté le 11 juillet 2019 devait selon ses inspirateurs « rétablir une justice fiscale ».

Malheureusement, ce sont encore les consommateurs qui payeront, comme le remarquait Nicolas Marques de l’Institut économique Molinari avant son adoption :

« La théorie de l’incidence fiscale montre aussi que la taxe risque de retomber in fine, au-delà des entreprises directement visées, sur les personnes physiques. Ce sont les consommateurs, les salariés ou les actionnaires des entreprises visés par la taxe ou travaillant avec ces entreprises ou leurs partenaires qui en feront les frais. »

LA LOI ANTI-CASSEURS

La loi du 10 avril 2019 dite « anti-casseurs » vise à renforcer et garantir le maintien de l’ordre public lors des manifestations. Même si sa mesure phare sur l’interdiction administrative est retoquée, elle témoigne de volonté répressive, voire autoritaire de l’exécutif pour répondre à la crise des Gilets jaunes.

Source: www.contrepoints.org

Law & Liberty: 10 Most Read Book Reviews of 2019

Law & Liberty‘s 10 Most Read Book Reviews of 2019
by LAW & LIBERTY EDITORS

Law & Liberty‘s editors are proud to present our ten most-read book reviews from 2019:

1. We Need Our Mojo Back Vis-à-Vis China, by David P. Goldman

Reviewing Bill Gertz, Deceiving the Sky: Insight Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy

2. Capra Meets Kafka: Political Intrigue Too Bizarre for Fiction, by Mark Pulliam

Reviewing Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, Justice on Trial

3. A Marxist Takes a Swing and a Miss at Justice Thomas’s Jurisprudence, by Scott Gerber

Reviewing Corey Robin, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas 

4. Mauling McCullough, by John Bicknell

Reviewing David McCullough, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

5. Michel Houellebecq: Chronicler of Our Mass Incompetence in the Art of Living, by Theodore Dalrymple

Reviewing Michel Houellebecq, Serotonin

6. Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, by James Ceaser

Reviewing Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

7. Is Turkey’s Strongman Caught in a Web of His Own Making?, by Paul A. Rahe

Reviewing Soner Çagaptay, The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey

8. What Does the Word “Liberal” Mean?, by Nathan W. Schlueter

Reviewing Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism

9. Founding Deists and Other Unicorns, by James Bruce

Reviewing Mark David Hall, Did America Have a Christian Founding?

10. What Is a Traitor?: The Glorious (and Ruinous) Life of Alcibiades, by Steven Grosby

Reviewing David Stuttard, Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens

Law & Liberty Editors

Richard Reinsch II and Brian A. Smith.

Source: www.lawliberty.org

Law & Liberty Editors: the top three most-downloaded podcasts of 2019

Top Episodes of Liberty Law Talk for 2019

by LAW & LIBERTY EDITORS

Since January 2012, Richard Reinsch has been conducting interviews with the most important writers and scholars in the classical liberal and conservative tradition on Liberty Law Talk.

We are proud to present the top three most-downloaded podcasts of 2019:

1. Born-Again Paganism, with Steven D. Smith

Steven Smith returns to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his latest book Pagans & Christians in the City.

2. Borne Back to the American Founding, with George Will

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and political commentator extraordinaire George Will comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his new book The Conservative Sensibility.

3. Bureaucracy, Regulation, and the Unmanly Contempt for the Constitution, with John Marini

John Marini is a revolutionary scholar on how our Constitution is undermined by the administrative state. He comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his new book Unmasking the Administrative State.

Law & Liberty Editors

Richard Reinsch II and Brian A. Smith.

Source: www.lawliberty.org

Wanting to destroy democracy is like wanting to sink Atlantis

Are American Monarchists Dreamers?

By Charles Coulombe (*)

One of the commentators on a recent Crisis article of mine declared that “Charles Coulombe is a weird person who desires the destruction of democracy and its replacement with monarchy again. There is a bizarre thread in Crisis now that desires such stupid stuff.” I suppose I am a weird person, so I can’t disagree with him there. But I certainly cannot desire the destruction of what does not exist: wanting to destroy democracy is like wanting to sink Atlantis. I do favor ending the charade that allows small minorities to make infanticide, perversion, and murder of the elderly and infirm sacred things protected by law.

As for Crisis having a bizarre thread—well, bizarre is in the eyes of the beholder, as is the stupidity of any given stuff. In any case, if democracy is indeed majority rule, we have not had it in these United States in my time, if ever we did. What we have, to repeat, is rule by a collection of ever stranger minorities of varying kinds, who via some sort of strange symbiosis with what passes for our elites are seemingly able to bend reality to their will. This is why we have infanticide. This is why we have same-sex “marriage.” This is why we have unisex facilities. And this is why statues of such anodyne figures as Kate Smith and Lewis and Clark are being torn down. Call it what you will, but it is not democracy.

Now, as to my monarchism, I must certainly plead guilty to the charge; but to be fair to myself as I stand in the dock, I must be precise about the nature of that monarchy which I feel to be the best form of government. 

It has five hallmarks: 

a) altar, that is, a system under which the Church (the Catholic Church, to be specific) gives legitimacy to the regime via a coronation rite and other ceremonies, and is the animating philosophy of society; 

b) throne, that is, a sovereign whose authority is grounded in the Church and national tradition, and who has sufficient power to protect his people from their politicians; 

c) local liberties, or what is today called subsidiarity, wherein as much power as possible would devolve to the lowest possible levels of governance; 

d) class cooperation, or what is generally called solidarity today and was once called “social monarchy”; and 

e) consciousness of the nation being part of a greater and loose whole.

Call it Christendom, the West, or what you will. Despite having played with applying such ideas to this country in my book Star-Spangled Crown, I highly doubt anything remotely like this would or could come to pass in America—at least so long as she remains as she is.

But is not entertaining such ideas that simply cannot be enacted as things stand a sort of intellectual LARPing? In a sense. But so, too, is any alternative to what we have now. Whether you call yourself a constitutionalist, a libertarian, a distributist, a capitalist, or even just pro-life, you are attempting to remake a resistant current reality against the will of your (and my) betters. This is a highly unlikely prospect. All of this is to say that it’s just too bad for you if you do not think the regime we enjoy—with its sacred cows of infanticide and perversion—is perfect. In that case, you are the “weird person who desires the destruction of democracy.” It is your views that are the “bizarre thread … that desires such stupid stuff.”

The Founding Fathers agreed with Aristotle that the best form of government would be “mixed”, bringing together elements of what he considered the three “good” forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and “polity” (i.e., rule by the stakeholders— landowners, artisans, and the like). Against these Aristotle had ranged what he considered to be their evil imitations: tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy (in the sense of mob rule). What neither he nor the Founders could have conceived is that one day we would have a mixed government all right—of the three worst forms!

As Orestes Brownson predicted in the 19^th century, the sad truth is that unless our United States are converted to the Catholic faith, they will fall because of errors implicit in the foundation of our government and in the national ideology which has been dying since the 1960s. To believe otherwise is true LARPing.

(*) Charles A. Coulombe is a contributing editor at Crisis and the magazine's European correspondent. He previously served as a columnist for theCatholic Herald of London and a film critic for the National Catholic Register. A celebrated historian, his books include Puritan's Empire and Star-Spangled Crown. He resides in Vienna, Austria and Los Angeles, California

Source: www.crisismagazine.com