A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s first novel, appeared 60 years ago this month. Vividly portraying a normal day in the life of a Gulag prisoner, it was followed by Solzhenitsyn’s two great anti-Stalinist novels, The First Circle and Cancer Ward (both 1968), which helped establish the Soviet dissident-in-excelsis as a modern-day Tolstoy and a darling of the Cold War West.

Soon after that, in 1975, came the third and final part of The Gulag Archipelago, his mighty takedown of the Soviet system. In the words of French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, it caused ‘a worldwide earthquake’, dissolving the ‘Communist dream…in the furnace of a book.’

Solzhenitsyn’s reputation as one of the most famous writers in the world was confirmed. Yet it is arguably what happened to Solzhenitsyn afterwards, in the three and a half decades before his death in 2008, that has a greater bearing on events in Russia and Ukraine this year. For it’s clear that Solzhenitsyn was at odds with the idea of a democratic and westwards-leaning Ukraine on several counts.

Solzhenitsyn’s caveat may come as decidedly cold comfort to the Ukrainians

First off, despite his anti-Soviet stance, Solzhenitsyn was clearly never an unconditional friend to the West. Emigrating to America after ejection from the USSR in 1974, he surprised his hosts by fulminating against Western values, which he frequently saw as pernicious and corrosive.

In his famous 1978 Harvard address, he lambasted the West for its loss of ‘civic courage’ and its ‘destructive and irresponsible freedom (and) human decadence’. Another speech saw him denouncing the Western ‘freedom’ ‘to spit in the eyes and souls of passers-by with advertisements… to poison the younger generations with corrupting filth.’

For Solzhenitsyn, Russia was and should be its own specific entity, with Western liberalism firmly off the table. His sentiments were echoed by Putin’s statement at the 2013 Valdai summit that the West was ‘denying moral principles and all traditional identities’ or his tame Patriarch Kirill’s chatter this year that the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine was a ‘metaphysical’ struggle against an outside world of ‘excess consumption’ and ‘gay parade(s)’.

Though an undoubted Russian nationalist – more fervent, it seems, by the year – Solzhenitsyn, in his defence, was certainly no imperialist. In his Rebuilding Russia (1990), written just before the demise of the Soviet Union, he urged that republics like those in the Baltics or Central Asia be let go as soon as possible, to avoid further sapping of Russian strength and allow the huge country to ‘straighten its back’. A country, he said, did not show its greatness by its territory, ‘nor should we be attempting to impose ourselves on the lives of others.’

But Ukraine for Solzhenitsyn was a slightly different matter. In The Gulag Archipelago, he was generous, writing that in the matter of Ukraine – an ‘extremely painful problem’ for Russia – their independence or otherwise should be left to the Ukrainians themselves:

‘Let them live their own lives, let them see how it works’

Yet from the 1990s onwards, Solzhenitsyn sang another, more nationalistic tune. In Rebuilding Russia (1990), he urged the Ukrainians that ‘we all sprang from precious Kiev’, and that the ideal future for the two countries was to join Belarus and part of Kazakhstan in a ‘Russian Union.’ That this never happened seemed to lay the groundwork for a lasting pique in Solzhenitsyn’s later life.

Ukraine’s Colour Revolutions, he said in 2006, were backed up by Nato’s ‘open material and ideological support’ and were a sign of Nato’s plan to encircle Russia, while Ukraine itself was going all out for ‘greedy Nato membership’. The ‘Leninist borders’ the country accepted in their 1991 independence were also something he challenged vociferously (as did Putin in his eve of war defence of his ‘special military operation in February this year). But when Solzhenitsyn recommended plebiscites in the largely Russian-speaking areas of Crimea and Donbass, did he really envisage the grotesque farce of the forced ‘referenda’ in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in late September this year, which recorded votes in favour of rejoining Russia as high as 99 per cent?

The issue of voting leads us onto the next statement that can be safely made about Solzhenitsyn: he was no believer in democracy. ‘The truth,’ he once declared, ‘cannot be determined by voting, since the majority does not necessarily have any deeper insight into the truth.’ The idea of ‘universal and equal suffrage’, he wrote in Rebuilding Russia, clashed with ‘the tremendous inequality among individuals in terms of their talents, their contribution to society, their ages, their life experience’.

The more citizens got directly involved in politics, he said, ‘the greater…the loss to spiritual life’. This insistence that Russians be exonerated where possible from politics harked back, as critic David G. Rowley pointed out, to the 19th century and Slavophile idea that the Tsar should bear the burden of political decision-making. An advocate of ‘a strong presidency’, Solzhenitsyn praised Putin for his ‘resurrection of Russia’ and his ‘sensible foreign policy’. At a 2007 meeting in the writer’s home after awarding him a State Prize (the highest possible honour) Putin, meanwhile, told him how much his political plans for Russia were ‘largely in tune with what Solzhenitsyn has written.’

Given the huge contribution Solzhenitsyn made to history and literature, even to the international image of the Christianity he returned to when, in the camps, his faith in Marxism shattered, it may seem unnecessary to point out that, these issues taken individually, he is not automatically wrong on any of them. He is merely a pronounced Russian patriot and conservative seeing things from a Russocentric of view. Nor is it any reason to stop reading him – particular those titanic early books of his, not only timely in their savage attacks on Kremlin abuses of power but also a kind of Mount Rushmore of late 20th century Russian Literature.

But taken together, that Solzhenitsyn’s arguments have added up to a lethal cocktail for Ukraine seems undeniable. For here was a country which, in the main, rejected Solzhenitsyn’s notions of brotherhood and wanted anything but a ‘Russian Union’. It has a westwards-leaning government struggling against the dead hand of the past towards a western-style democracy (and yes, its own Gay Pride parade as well). Add a leader with military and territorial ambitions in thrall to the great writer’s outlook and you have, perhaps, the perfect storm.

Would Solzhenitsyn have supported this war, Mariupol, Izium, Bucha and all? In his heart, he once said, there was ‘no place for a Russo-Ukrainian conflict’, and ‘never…no matter how some hotheads may push us’ would he or his sons fight in one. Yet many who have imbibed his words – including the Russian president – clearly feel very differently.

Solzhenitsyn’s caveat may come as decidedly cold comfort to the Ukrainians, as they struggle with nationwide power-cuts and water-failures as a result of targeted Russian drones and missiles. With temperatures well below zero set to arrive in Kyiv and beyond in the next few days, the people of Ukraine are now tensing themselves, in Zelensky’s words, for the ‘hardest winter in Ukrainian history.’

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