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PARTISAN REVIEW
not come (rom the outside: a na ti on is always its own torturer as well as
its own victim. I'm afra id tha t any co ll ective fa rmer understands thi s
better than the authors o f
From Under the R u bble,
for if the na ti on did
rescue something from the ha lf-century o f
confl ~gra tion ,
it was the
awareness o f the duality, the ambivalence of its n a ture- an awa reness
which was cha racteristic o f Russi a long before Octo ber 19 17. Th ere are
two abysses in man , acco rding to Dos toevsky, but he does no t choose
between th em : he oscill a tes like a ppndulum .
There is no cure for a pendulum. Russ ian do ubl ethink and
doubl espeak, however una ttracti ve they may seem, do in fact indi ca te
that the Russian people li e cl oser to the existenti a l co re o ( being than
any o ther people, who p refer the right o r left wa ll of the cl ock ca binet.
Solzhenitsyn himself asserts tha t the boundary between good and ev il is
no t shown on any map-it run s through the human hea rt. All the
same, he refuses to acknowledge their p roximit y as a rea lity, as the
status quo. He in sists tha t good will conqu er evil , a belief th a t results
(rom a primiti ve understanding o f Chri sti anit y. Fo r whil e God has
Heaven , He also has Hell , and th ey a re no t just barga ining chi ps but
wha t is rea II y in store.
T he weakness of the a rguments presented by the authors of
From
Under the Rubble
lies ri ght here-in their brute in ability to accept the
idea or pi cture o f exi stenti al ho rror, in th eir interpretati on o f it as a
consequence of social dogma. Dogma should be g iven its due; it has
done much more than anything or anyone else to expose th a t horror
(and consequentl y takes any descripti on of the ho rror as a personal
rebuke; hence all tha t has befa ll en writers in Russi a durin g thi s
cenlUry). But it onl y exposes wha t
is
there.
In
a certa in sense, dogma
(an y kind , for th a t ma tter ) is no thin g but an acce lera tor: it simpl y
speeds up the process by which man comes to understand th e essence of
exi stence, and on Judgment Day it could use thi s accelera ti on in its
own defense.
Christi an idea ls, even if understood primiti vely, certa inl y look
more a ttracti ve than the idea ls of a "class less" society. But it sho uld not
be forgoll en th a t the lalter is Chri stianity 'S heir. Something is wrong
either with Chri sti anity o r with our understanding of it if tha t kind o(
succession proves poss ible. Co nsequentl y, the ca ll to awa ken reli g ious
con sciou sness and restore Church institutions sounds ra ther un con–
vincin g. There were 300,000 pri es ts fun ctionin g within Rus sia a t the
outbreak o ( the revolution ; wha t happened still happened. In my view,
it is precise ly the inferior qua lity of the Church in Russia which is
res po nsibl e (or the nightma re o ( the last three centuri es.
As the paramount conditi on for a program o ( non reiig ious seJ(-
