Vadim Belotserkovsky
SOVIET DISSENTERS:
SOLZHENITSYN, SAKHAROV,
AND MEDVEDEV
I.
SOLZHENITSYN'S MISTAKES
The ancients said , " Your teacher is poorly rewarded if you
agree with him ." Solzhenitsyn was a teacher, to all of us . He taught us
honesty and courage. But now the time has come to disagree and to
argue .
People in the USSR are subjected to monstrous exploitation and
repression . They live in dire poverty , especially if one looks at the
provinces and not at Moscow ; they live on the level of the
underdeveloped nations. And yet Solzhenitsyn sees a panacea for all
ills in the renunciation of Communist ideology which has been no
more than
a
hollow pretense in the country for a long time now-a fact
he himself acknowledges. He considers it possible and even desirable ,
moreover,
to
retain an authoritarian system in Russia , albeit one under
the " ethical umbrella" of Russian Orthodoxy and a fourteenth–
century Orthodoxy at that, evidently considering such a renaissance a
real possibility in the twentieth century. Solzhenitsyn is convinced that
under these conditions the
existing
authoritarian system of the "big
Gulag prison " could be transformed into a place of "goodwill and
concern for all human beings ." In defense of his vision he writes that
" no one ever at any time or place demonstrated or brought into being
a democracy operating within strict moral boundaries ." But neither
has anyone ever , at any time or place demonstrated or actualized an
