Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978 (The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series)

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Was it that people in the West were worse than people back in Russia? Of course not. But when the only demands on human nature are legal ones, the bar is much lower than the bar of nobleness and honor (those concepts having in any case almost vanished now), and so many loopholes open up for unscrupulousness and cunning. What the law compels us to do is far too little for humaneness: a higher law should be placed in our hearts, too.

I wanted that autumn, in my fervor, to state publicly that the whole system of book publishing and bookselling in the West did not foster the development of a spiritual culture. In past centuries writers wrote for a small circle of connoisseurs who in turn guided artistic taste, and high literature was created. But today publishers have their eye on mass sales, which so often entails the most indiscriminate taste; publishers make gifts to booksellers to please them; authors, in turn, depend on the mercy of their publishing houses.