Word: solzhenitsyns
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...CALF by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Translated by Harry Willetts; Harper & Row; 568 pages...
Novelist, short-story writer, playwright, poet, historian of the Gulag and indefatigable polemicist-these are the various vocations that Alexander Solzhenitsyn has long pursued. Now, with the publication of The Oak and the Calf, yet another Solzhenitsyn has emerged: military strategist. This memoir reveals the embattled Russian writer as the master planner of his own personal twelve-year war with the Soviet regime. Few readers of his chronicle of combat will fail to be impressed by the bold forays and feints, the diversionary actions and tactical retreats that ultimately won Solzhenitsyn an unconditional victory, albeit only a moral...
...extended military metaphor is Solzhenitsyn's own. Scarcely any other image is large enough to encompass the feat of a writer who consistently outwitted and outmaneuvered Nikita Khrushchev, the KGB and the Soviet literary establishment in the pursuit of his mission: to bear witness to the Gulag before his countrymen and the world...
This memoir ranges over the years of his greatest productivity and fame, beginning in 1962 with the publication of his concentration camp novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich on Khrushchev's orders, and ending with his deportation from the Soviet Union in 1974. Solzhenitsyn, whose creative energies seem to flourish in adversity, was in top form when he wrote The Oak during the years 1967-73; only the climactic chapter, footnotes and appendixes have been added in exile. The force of his narrative, the drama of unfolding historical events and the density of supporting detail combine...
...rain poured down on observers two years ago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used the Commencement podium to launch a biting diatribe at the West's value structure. The voice of the interpreter blended with the Nobel Prize winner's producing a grating effect and making listening difficult. But his words rang out far beyond the confines of the Tercentenary theater; a rebuttal from Rosalynn Carter and mixed public and press reaction were not long in coming...