Name: Mémoires de Sologdine
Rating: 3.4 (3 reviews)
ISBN: 9782080607867

1,911 reviews956 followers

February 22, 2016

A memoir from the actual person who stands behind the character in Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, which character is of course the source of my nom de guerre. (The name may translate roughly as ‘alone anywhere’ in Slavic languages.) Should be taken seriously—but only up to a point, as dude is plainly a crusty old tsarist/theocrat who nevertheless survived the soviets, even while referring to tsarism as a “beautiful dream” (218).

Off to a bad start in the outworks when complaining about “the midst of chaos, shattered traditions, and wholesale destruction of the social order” (xi), which sounds kinda pro-tsarist. “The church was being crushed” (id.), uh oh. Proceeds to re-up the crazy with “the country, enslaved by a communist dictatorship” (3), which is of course a normal far right topos wherein leftwing regimes are ‘slavery’ and systems that actually use slaves are ‘free,’ the normal recitation in Ayn Rand. Author is a true tsarist insofar as “if it had not been for treason at the front and in the rear, Russia would have carried off one of the greatest victories” in 1917 (112).

Refers unhelpfully to 1917 as “the cataclysm” (6), as though the year initiating the revolution were the problem; perhaps it is because “then the active propagation of atheism began” (id.)—OH NOS! I always marvel that these sincerely held religious beliefs are always so fragile that they cannot withstand the active propagation of contrary ideas. FFS. Grow the fuck up. By contrast, atheists in the West exist in the midst of tons of religious ideology and are not threatened with conversion. They might burn us, but that merely kills the body. This weakness is intrinsic rather than incidental to the perspective: “A godless dictatorship both sullies and disfigures a man. Only a deep religious faith can provide him with stout armor” (12)—the equivocation here is that the religious advocacy of the state should not matter if the armor of faith is stout; why should the religious person care if the state is secular or even atheist? ON NOS religion doesn’t get special treatment any more. FFS. Grow the fuck up. It is very bizarre, the repeated refrain: “At the same time torrents of atheistic propaganda flood their minds. The matrices of the brain cannot help but retain some scraps of the Marxist litany” (42) – OH NOS someone somewhere might think a non-rightwing thought. These motherfuckers accuse the left of thought control totalitarianism, but the only ones I see actually whining about it is the rightwing when someone else challenges them.

Oddly admits that “never did I so much as hear of a group protest in public” (7), which is material to the consent of the governed, it seems. Admits further “I was not there to watch the process” of collectivization in the 30s (7), which shall limit the credibility of those portions of the narrative, such as when he proclaims, without more, that “since the days of Attila and Genghis Kahn, the world had not been witness to mindless cruelty on such a colossal scale” (id.). Admits still further that “I had lived by now twenty years under this regime, but this was the first time I had come in contact with the naked fact of monstrous injustice against a man innocent of any crime” (18). Rather, “From childhood on I had heard about arrests and tortures […] Knowledge gained secondhand is superficial” (20). Admits moreover “Nor did we hear of cannibalism, except for a single case” (65). Further concedes that a prisoner might be “certified as unfit for work—permanently if possible” (170), which is a bit weird for a labor camp.

Displays the normal overconfidence of his profession by proclaiming “the strongest in that class—the engineers” (8). Dude, just because you can fix an engine doesn’t mean you know shit about philosophy or politics or law or literature. For instance

As to whether our nation should revert to capitalism, we had no doubts whatsoever. We would have consented even to its primitive nineteenth-century form. After all, slavery as we now know it did not exist then; labor was voluntary; capitalists could be bargained with; legislative bodies and philanthropists often promoted the welfare of the working man. (10)

So, yeah, eww. Not really surprising, though, if dude also thinks that the Whites “were honorable men” (11).

Obnoxious in the manner of Ayn Rand in desiring “a war of liberation led by the West” (9). Let’s just make it unambiguous: “Hitler’s promise of a war against Stalin gave the hope, strength, and patience we needed” (12). “Hitler’s support of anticommunist forces in Spain spoke in his favor” (13).

Fundamentally misunderstands Marxist doctrine by accusing that the Stalinists “fanned the flames of class hatred” (10)—of course class struggle exists irrespective of any subjective emotional states related thereto, and independently of anyone’s agitation therefor.

I love how the mind of the anti-commie works: “What amazed me was the fact that the uneducated clearly saw through the Communist fantasies, while the well-educated for years remained captives of these wretched delusions” (29). Might as well substitute in ‘evolutionist’ or ‘round-earth’ for ‘communist’ there. That said, dude is not completely irredeemable: “It amused us whenever the Communist dogmatists, schooled in Stalin’s political lore, endeavored to prove that we live under socialism. With no difficulty we proved to them the contrary: according to all the trademarks of the Stalinist tyranny, it was a cruel variety of enforced state capitalism that was flourishing” (31), which has become a fairly standard Trotskyist, Menshevik, and western Marxist reading of the Soviet Union. Similarly, bytovik “includes many whose only crime consisted in showing private initiative, thereby in some way encroaching on the monopoly of the ruthless state capitalism that in the Soviet Union goes by the name of ‘socialism’” (131). Dude nevertheless fucks up by proclaiming that “every nation, unfortunately, has its moral degenerates with their misshapen souls and perverted minds” (31), which is just dumb far right bullshit.

Alleges that the communist party “has modeled itself as an underworld gang” (40), which makes a bit of sense, considering how the SDP originally worked underground against tsarism. An ugly producerism in “the parasites were accomplishing their filthy business, sucking out the blood” (48).

Deploys the normal rightwing topos of making historicist excuses for some persons, but not for the villains of the narrative:

The reason for such behavior lies in the brutalization that takes hold of a man whose intellectual development is at a rudimentary stage, who has been deprived of the light found in Christian precepts [!]. Under the influence of a bestial environment, the basic goodness and humaneness within his heart become atrophied; gradually his compassionate feelings shrivel up and disappear altogether. He justifies his actions with standard sayings made up of the vilest underworld speech. His assessment of people and events reverts to the law of the jungle: ‘You die today, and I’ll die tomorrow.’ The zek was acquiring habits of a jackal—wagging his tail in the presence of the mighty, preying on the weak, and taking anything he found lying around unattended. I have no intention whatsoever of passing judgment on any working man at the end of his tether. He should not be held responsible. Those who have created this regime of universal corruption and mass extermination are the ones to blame. (64)

This is very similar to arguments laid out by Ayn Rand for the abuses of capitalism—some people inherit a raw deal—but the communists are Evil. It’s outrageous, as though leftwing regimes were somehow outside history. The irony here of course is that the typically philistine & non-historicist rightwing adopts a historicist argument to excuse the defects of its preferred historical protagonist.

Wants to proclaim various multi-million death tolls, but confides “nothing will be found in the archives about the Stalin camps, since all evidence has been carefully destroyed” (90), which is not really true, I think, as it turns out. Fucks up by advocating “small scale war” by the West against Stalin in the early 30s (100). FFS. Adopts the Marxist rationale that the 30s crisis was “a result of overproduction” and suggests that a war might’ve alleviated same--gross (101): “a war that would have destroyed a focus of international contagion which by its existence favored the counter-development of Nazism” (id), which is von Hayek’s position, as I recall it.

Author concedes that there’s lotsa fiction circulating in the gulag: “In the camp there was a persistent story, regarded by many as a legend, that whole bands of prisoners—in fact an entire brigade—who, after disarming their guards, had broken out and were still roaming the forest” (121). I suspect that much in gulag literature is this type of persistent legend.

Otherwise endorses some odd beliefs, such as “the yogi’s secret of utilizing the energy that accumulates in the gonads” (164). Is also a major asshole: “aspiration toward so-called equality—especially with one’s betters [!]—is a manifestation of envy” (228). FFS. Whatever, tool.

Has completely unsurprising gender politics:

between the male and female realms there was a sharp dividing line that one had to observe: if was for the man to resolve life’s more serious problems; it was for the woman to look after the home and children, to involve herself in art and religion. Now that I am in my declining years, I can see that my view still holds true: women are designed expressly for motherhood and caring for the family. (232-33)

Is furthermore an asshole insofar as “terrorism and partisan warfare against a ‘conventional’ conquering enemy […] are certainly not admissible” but “against the Bolshevik regime was completely justifiable” (239)—nothing better than an open and notorious double standard.

Adopts taylorist ideas: “forging technology can be transformed from an uncoordinated set of operations into a streamlined system by clearly defining the time factor for all the separate phases, which are thus combined into a single whole” (226), which system of course was adopted by the Leninists. Duh. Welcome to modernity, premodern douche.

Overall, good insight on Solzhenitsyn in the later sections; the bond of affection is readily apparent and generally impressive. Books such as this one should be read by lefties who are interested in the Soviet Union. It is a serious internal critique and deserves to be read. It is less essential for rightwingers, as it will simply reinforce their blinkered opinions. Text is good at explaining gulag slang: blatnyi, kantova, tufta, bytoviki, dokhodyaga, &c.

Recommended for those thrown into the maw of Baal, slaves in an atheistic state, and readers whose prayers throw an invisible cloak of protection around them.

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Mémoires de Sologdine

Çetin Altan

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