Comes now the great Daniel J. Mahoney, author of penetrating intellectual biographies of Bertrand de Jouvenel, Raymond Aron, and Charles de Gaulle, among other books, to discuss his latest work, The Other Solzhenitsyn. Mahoney, co-editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader, provides us in this discussion a tremendous introduction to the Russian dissident writer’s corpus of writings and a rebuttal to his many critics.
We might say that most western writers who, from their position of faux outrage, frequently critique their governments, societies, and cultures have Solzhenitsyn envy, earnestly desiring that their work could perform something even close to the role of the Russian anti-communist writer par excellence. Not that they admire Solzhenitsyn’s political and moral philosophy, and his belief that freedom is ultimately born of spiritual commitment, but that no one will ever say of their work that it put a “sliver in the throat of power.” Such was the praise given Solzhenitsyn after the publication of One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich in 1962.
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