BOOKS
SOLZHENITSYN'S LENIN
LENIN IN ZURICH. By Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Translated by H.T.
Wil letts. Farrar Straus and Giroux. $8.95.
Solzhenitsyn's
August,
1914 was the first of three volumes–
or "knots," as the author calls them-of a trilogy designed to portray
the fate of Russia from the outbreak of the first world war in
1914
until
the revolution of
1917.
One chapter relating to Lenin was omitted
when the first "knot" was published. Other chapters which were
destined for "knots" II and III (October
1916
and March
1917)
were
written, or partly written, by Solzhenitsyn while he was still in the
USSR, and were revised and rewritten, or completed, when he found
himself in Zurich, with access to sources which were not available to
him before.
It
is these chapters which have been assembled to form the
present book. It is a study of Lenin during the first world war-his
arrest in Cracow, flight to Zurich, life in Zurich with its conflicts and
frustrations, and negotiations with the Germans, after the collapse of
the monarchy in March
1917,
for his return to Russia. It is therefore a
work of history, but it is also much more.
Although
August,
1914 could be described as a work of fiction , it
also incorporates some historical facts and personages in its account of
the first major defeat of the Russian army in the Great War. This
mixture of fact and imaginative reconstruction was one of the reasons
why this first volume of Solzhenitsyn's projected trilogy was at times
compared to
War and Peace,
or more accurately, contrasted with it. For
Tolstoy, the historical moments in the novel are subject
to
an inexor–
able destiny before which men are impotent. For Solzhenitsyn human
choice and decision are the motive forces of history. In Tolstoy'S case
many critics, quite rightly, separated off the philosophical ideas: and
his choice of historical facts, from the great human drama which bursts
with the energy of genius through the framework. Turgenev, for
example, deplored Tolstoy'S philosophy, his tendency to embrace
rather shoddy all-explaining "systems" and what he, Turgenev, re–
garded as inaccurate history-but welcomed
War and Peace
as the
greatest novel in the language.
Although
Lenin in Zurich
is, to some extent, an amalgam of
