Russians? Jews? Russian Jews?

Viktor Loshak

Moscow News, January 3, 2003
http://www.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2002-51-9

With his Dvesti let vmeste, or 200 Years Together, a historical study of
the relationship between Russians and Jews in Russia, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn calls for a better understanding and mutual empathy between
the two nationalities. The second volume of the book, spanning the period
from the 1917 Revolution to the mid-1970s, is about to hit the bookstalls.
Ahead of the publication the author was interviewed by Moskovskiye novosti
editor Viktor Loshak in his house at Troitse-Lykovo

We had a meeting shortly before Book 1 came out, and it was clear that Book
2 was on the way and could have been brought out literally within weeks.
Nonetheless, 18 months have passed since.

Why was the publication delayed for so long?

It was certainly going to take not weeks, but much longer. Also, Natalya
Dmitrievna [the author's wife and the book's editor. - V.L.] decided to
double-check all footnotes once again - in a broad context. It required the
patience of Job because all source materials had to be checked out and many
pages around each quotation read through carefully. That was how she
worked. In all, there are 1,500 footnotes. A very large volume. Also, it
was not our only work in the past year.

You have been working on the book for 12 years in all?

I began in 1990. But there were long breaks. In the 1990s I wrote and
published many other things.

Before passing over to Book 2, I would like to say that our first interview
(Burning Question, MN No.25 of June 26, 2001) triggered an extensive
response. One typical comment in letters to the editor was this: The
appearance of a book on the relationship between Russians and Jews merely
fosters anti-Semitism.

I should say that, indeed, there was plenty of bitterness in early reviews
- moreover, judging by the rate of their appearance, you might think that
this bitterness was provoked, even before the book was read to the end, by
the mere fact that I had taken up the issue at all.

Now, however, looking at the reviews in their entirety, including the
latest commentaries, I have good reason to say that many of my readers
consider the book useful and interesting. I have received words of
gratitude from ordinary Jewish readers: "Thank you for your interesting
book - we have learned so much from it." The latest reviews are more
reasonable and balanced. Recently, I was happy to read a very profound
article by Alexander Eterman, in Vremya iskat, a journal published in Israel.

It is in fact what I was dreaming about - that is to say, my call for
mutual understanding was heeded and appreciated. A hand was held out. It is
an extremely valuable article, a direct follow-up on my book.

Now, I rule out completely that my book could in any way have incited
tension. Quite the contrary, tension has been left behind, and now it is
time we calmly discussed the issue.

In your book, you quote from Dostoevsky's diaries - "the final word on this
great tribe has yet to be said." After you finished it, did you get an
impression that you had now said this word?

No, that would be too presumptuous. I do not have this impression. I have
said what I could, but the final word, if at all possible, has probably
still to be said, not in our lifetime.

Am I right to understand that in the first chapters of Book 2, devoted to
the Revolution, you disclose the Russian noms de guerre of Jewish
revolutionaries and count their number in the supreme Revolutionary bodies
so as to show in the closing chapters, when talking about the need for
nationwide repentance, that Jews have cause not only to resent Soviet
power, but also to repent?

That's right, both.

You use a specific word characterizing the revolutionary atmosphere at the
time; you write that it is not only about the national factor - referring
to the Bolsheviks of various nationalities and ethnic groups - but mainly
about the non-national. What exactly does this word mean?

A lack of any national awareness. An international, cosmopolitan worldview.
That was the rationale behind Bolshevism for a very long time. It is in
fact the absence of any national sentiment. There is just none.

You have addressed a subject wherein you yourself often invoke such
concepts as "spirit," "consciousness," and "historical fate." Were these
nebulous notions not an impediment to your well-researched work, based on
solid facts?

Far from being an impediment, they were, to a very large extent, a part of
my underlying concept. My book aims to go deep into Jewish thoughts,
feelings, ideas, and mentality - that is to say, the realm of the
spiritual. In this sense the objective of my book is not, in fact,
scientific, but artistic. It is basically an artistic work. Except that
there are not two or three characters, but a great many characters, with
various, most diverse feelings and ideas. Facts alone are not enough to
understand them. Generally speaking, I regard the spirit and consciousness
the most substantial elements of history.

I noticed that in Book 2, an impartial researcher at times gives way to a
passionate writer. Say, you write about the Bolsheviks, Stalin, and you
bring in plenty of color and hues.

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I had to restrain a writer's passion all
the time because otherwise I would have broken the rule of using a great
number of quotations. My commentaries could not be colored patches: They
had to be level, restrained. Language-wise, the book was not entirely free
and easy for me, but then I reaped a bountiful psychological harvest.

It seemed to me that you found the work on Part 2 more exciting.

More exciting, I agree. It was simply a sense of involvement: After all,
this is my era. Book 1 is distant history to which I was not a party. But
here I am a party.

Your book comprises an extensive essay about Alexander Galich, with
abundant quotations. Why does he touch you so: After all, Galich as an
historical figure is out of proportion to the prominence that you gave him.
The impression is that you had some personal dispute with Galich?

I took Galich as a typical proponent of a whole public trend. Again, this
is easier to do not through a general description but through a specific
person, a specific poet, with passages from him works. He was included in
the book not as a specially selected personage, but as a representative,
symbol, and mouthpiece of public sentiments. But of course once I touched
on him, I could not but touch on his personal feelings, in particular
repentance. As for a personal relationship, we had none.

Your book left me wondering - in fact, it is the same question that you put
to yourself: Can a people be judged as a whole? If a person was born
Russian, Jewish, or Kazakh, is he obligated to answer for an entire nation
for the rest of his life?

Although people do judge of nations on the practical level, there is not a
sufficient base for this. Such judgment is wrong on a responsible,
spiritual level. Nonetheless, people conveniently pass judgment on any
categories: "Say, women are so and so." But how can you possibly judge of
all women at once? Or: "Old people do this and that," or: "Britons are like
that." People just make such judgments pragmatically, but they do not stand
up to strict, spiritual judgment.

Book 2, however, left me with the impression that sometimes you are
inclined to talk about a nation as a whole.

No, I do not pass judgment on a nation as a whole. I always distinguish
between different social strata of Jews. You can observe this throughout
Book 2. There are those who rushed headlong into the Revolution; others,
quite the contrary, tried to hold back themselves and their young, and
uphold the tradition. Still others were the work-horses of the enormous
Soviet military-industrial complex - the plodders. I do not think that I
pass judgment on a nation as a whole. I believe that it is not up to humans
to make such judgments on a high spiritual level.

And another thing. I have never before come across any information about a
letter criticizing "Jewish bourgeois nationalists" that Stalin's Agitprop
was forcing Jews prominent in science and culture to sign as soon as the
"doctors' case" was opened. Furthermore, dozens of signatures, as you
write, had already been gathered. These included Landau, Dunaevsky, Gilels,
Oistrakh, and Marshak. But the leter was never published.

The letter to Pravda was never published because the doctors' case was
going nowhere, and Beria sought to have his own way. It was not published
until 1997 - in Istochnik, a bulletin of the RF Presidential Archive.

You write with great warmth and respect about the seven people who went on
Red Square in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. They got
straight into the clutches of the KGB. Four of them were Jewish. Do you
believe it was a coincidence, or perhaps those were the most humiliated
people? On the other hand, you talk about a special Jewish sensitivity to
problems.

Not a personal grudge, of course. Sensitivity to problems. Jews accounted
for a substantial share of the dissident movement. The demonstration by
those seven people was organized: They knew each other, and they planned
their action in advance. Sensitivity to general problems and the specific
situation within the dissident movement, where the demonstration was born,
were factors here.

Two hundred years together. The main premise of your wide-ranging work is
this: The truth about the Russians' relationship with the Jews is morally
vital. To whom? To history?

To both nationalities?

Any truth is morally vital to a person. Any truth in principle. The Jewish
issue had for a long time been off-limits here. Zhabotinsky ridiculed the
attitude in a commentary on an article by Osorgin: It is commonly believed
that the best service that our Russian friends can render us is not to talk
about us at all. Soviet Jews had that feeling for a long time. But after
restrictions on Jewish immigration in the Soviet Union or Russia were
lifted and an exodus began, now is just the time when the issue can be
discussed openly. I for one felt entirely free, unrestrained, and confident
that I was not causing Jews any harm socially. So I was stunned by such a
large number of harsh, bitter reviews at first.

What I find amazing is that you read the reviews at all, and follow the
general trend.

I remember the general drift, but not each review in particular, of course.

A personal question if I may. What was your reaction when all sorts of KGB
scum went around calling you "Solzhenitser," ascribing Jewishness to you,
among other lies?

I never lost my cool whatever state police were doing, whatever side of the
ideological divide they sought to bring up against me - be it
"Solzhenitser" or, quite the contrary, anti-Semitism. I saw that they were
simply seething with rage and just did not know what stone to grab to hurl
at me.

You have a formula: a "ring of resentment." Does it refer to a ring of
mutual resentment that impedes an objective view of a situation?

A ring is where it is difficult to find the beginning and the end. A ring,
in the sense that it is a closed-circuit line, making research difficult,
obscuring the origin of a dispute and its subsequent course.

After you drew a line at a certain year, the Internet began to spread like
wildfire, also leading to a measure of assimilation and dissolution of
national identity. New relationships are rapidly evolving in the world. You
do not take it upon yourself to appraise them. But what are the main
elements of new relationships? How do you see them?

It was not by accident that I stopped at the exodus through Jewish
emigration. I write in concluding remarks that I did not immediately hit on
that cut-off line: At first I was planning for my book to span a period
from the second integration of Jews in Russia, in 1795, until the
mid-1990s. But, first of all, the exodus convinced me that the 200 years
had already come to pass, almost to the year: In 1772, the first 100,000
Jews were allowed to integrate into Russia, while the 1970s marked a
breakthrough in Jewish emigration. I simply cannot take it up to the
mid-1990s, above all, because it is impossible to be a historian of the
modern area. Very many processes are occurring behind the scenes: Little or
nothing is known about them in the public domain while details about them
may not be released until 20 or maybe even 50 years from now. This makes
writing seriously and responsibly altogether impossible.

Impossible for you, or do you believe that it is in principle impossible to
be a historian today?

It is impossible to be a historian of the present day. Also, it is
impossible for me: I am nearing the end of my lifetime. Concerning the
Internet, I will say frankly that I do not follow it: It is a global
phenomenon that will have its consequences. As for assimilation, it is a
cultural process. There is no way you can assimilate just by picking up an
idea or developing it on the Internet. Assimilation has to be absorbed on
the inner level - it is a very complex process. My impression is that thus
far it is proceeding haltingly in the world. Nations are still important,
have some weight in the world - and they have their own identity, distinct
from each other. But internationalization is certainly an ongoing process.
How it will evolve, I can no longer tell.

There is an expectation that the world could become a melting pot, where
all nations will assimilate, or else the opposite, the economic divide will
lead to even greater isolation.

I do not think it will become a melting pot. There will be greater
isolation, I agree, if only due to the inevitable, and now obvious, glaring
gap between the rich and the poor. It so happens that there are two
biological species living on Earth. As for nations resisting a fade-out,
this is just as well. Mankind should be many-colored - not in the sense of
skin color but in the sense of the color spectrum of perception,
variegation of cultures. Otherwise it would be boring. If the melting pot
idea worked, life would become impossibly dull and boring.

How do you view the intensity of interethnic problems in Russia?

You see, numerous bloody conflicts were all but preordained by the breakup
of a centuries-old empire, especially after decades of ruthless Communist
rule. Remember, in the early 1990s the fear of a "Yugoslav scenario" was
overriding. With God's grace, it bypassed us. And now it has conveniently
been forgotten what an inferno it could have meant. Yes, the Chechen
disaster caught up with us, but its root causes lie not in interethnic
strife - at any rate, not on the part of the Russians. Altogether different
factors and driving forces were at work there. But any interethnic tension,
wherever it exists, is of course very dangerous, and everything must be
done to avoid or lessen it.

Much in your book centers around Israel. Yet you admit that it will never
become a motherland for all Jews, neither will the majority of them ever
live there. What is it - a tragedy of Israel or a tragedy of the nation?

In studying Jewish sentiments and views, I naturally also studied Russian
Jews who had absorbed Russian culture but left for Israel. I followed them,
I cited them, and their life in Israel interests me as a continuation of
these Russian-Jewish relations. At the very beginning of the book I
specified, though, that I was studying the issue only within the bounds of
Russia. As for speculation on what choice the Jews will ultimately make, I
believe that it has already been made: There are still Jews in all
countries of the world; there are Jews in Russia, although they are not
being forcibly held here; there are Jews in the United States, in
especially large numbers, and of course there are and there will be Jews in
Israel. The Jewish people has a difficult fate. It will never be easy.

You have finished the book. What are you doing or going to do now that the
last word has been written?

I have some loose ends that need tying up. There is plenty of work to be
done yet. There is something to publish. Some of the publications will, I
think, be made after I am gone. I am not embarking on any new projects. I
have an ongoing project called Literary Collection. Some of it has been
published, and more is forthcoming. I can take it up or leave off at any
moment. It does not have a final, definitive form: These are simply
comments on particular authors or even particular books. It is just my
personal opinion as a writer.

True, at this point Natalya Dmitrievna added that the work was unique in
that it was not just a writer's opinion, nor a critic's opinion, but the
opinion of a reader who happens to be a writer. And it is a very frank
opinion.

So, you took a long time to work on the book, and now you have finished it.
Do you feel relieved?

I do. Because it is such a great responsibility. There is responsibility in
every page, every footnote, every passage. The thoughts and feelings of
Jews, especially of those with Russian culture, especially of high-minded
people - I went to them and felt an affinity with them, as one does with
characters in a work of fiction. But had I known how much effort this would
require, I would never have started it. I had no idea how much hard work it
would involve.

* * *
Afterword

Possibly no other book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn has provoked such scathing
criticism as has his 200 Years Together. Avowed anti-Semites read Book 1 as
being sympathetic to the Jews. Liberal critics lambasted the book as
nationalistic and stirring jingoist passions.

Considering how high passions were running over Book 1, which
chronologically ended with the 1917 Revolution, now that the writer has
taken his historical study up to the mid-1970s, it is bound to come under
fire from weapons of all calibers.

After two meetings, following publication of each book, with Alexander
Isaevich and his wife, Natalya Dmitrievna, who greatly facilitates the
author's historical quests, I would like to suggest that Solzhenitsyn's
latest work should not be seen as a dry piece of deadwood thrown into the
fire of the perennial Russian debate as to who is to blame for every
trouble under the sun.

Solzhenitsyn's is a different, above-the-fray vantage point. His is a
different objective, totally devoid of writer's vanity: Not really needing
our approval, Solzhenitsyn seeks to act as a kind of referee in a
protracted historical debate. He does not seem to care even whether there
is still anyone left in the ring or whether Russian Jews, having acquired
the Russian language and culture, have fully assimilated. Meanwhile,
anti-Semites, for want of something better to do with their narrow minds,
will keep harping on their tune, even if not a single Jew, so hateful to
them, remains on the planet.

With his book, comprising evaluations of tsars, Khrushchev, Beria, Galich,
and Zhabotinsky, and quotations from Lenin to Stalin to Grigory Pomerants
to Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya, Solzhenitsyn stepped into the minefield of
the Jewish issue. And he walked across it confidently - maybe because there
is no longer a mine that could blow up his authority.

"Russian Jew. Jew. Russian. How much blood has been spilled, how many tears
shed over this; what untold suffering there has been, and at the same time
how much joy in spiritual and cultural growth. There were, and there still
are, many Jews who bore this brunt - being a Russian Jew and Russian at the
same time. Two loves, two passions, two struggles - isn't this too much for
one heart?"

St. Ivanovich (S. Portugeis)

"The Jewry has literally been kicked into the latest exodus. I grieve for
those whom Russians forced to see themselves as Jews. Jews lost their
national identity while an artificial revival of their national awareness
is but a delusion."

Lydia Chukovskaya