Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Red wheel.
August the Fourteenth
The last edition of the Knot was made during the typing process, in 1981 in Vermont.
Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich
“August the Fourteenth” was conceived by the author in 1937 - not yet as the First Knot, but as an introduction to a great novel about the Russian revolution. At the same time, in 1937 in Rostov-on-Don, all the materials on the Samsonov disaster available in Soviet conditions (considerable) were collected - and the first chapters were written: the arrival of a colonel from Headquarters at Samsonov’s headquarters, the move of the headquarters to Naidenburg, lunch there... Construction These chapters remained almost unchanged in the final edition. In that first stage of work, many chapters were devoted to Sasha Lenartovich, but these chapters disappeared over the years. There were also chapters on the economy of Shcherbakov (the author’s maternal grandfather), where even then the question of Stolypin’s activities and the significance of his murder was raised.
Then there was a break in work on the novel until 1963 (all the blanks were preserved through the years of war and prison), when the author again began to intensively collect materials. In 1965, the name “Red Wheel” was defined, and since 1967 - the principle of Knots, that is, a continuous dense presentation of events in compressed periods of time, but with complete breaks between them.
Since March 1969, continuous work on the “Red Wheel” begins, first with the chapters of the later Knots (1919-20, especially the Tambov and Lenin chapters). In the same spring of 1969, the writer began working on one “August 1914” - and in a year and a half, by October 1970, he finished it (what in the current edition constitutes the first volume and part of the second).
In this form, Knot First was published in June 1971 in Paris by YMCA-press, in the same year two competing editions were published in Germany, then in Holland, in 1972 - in France, England, the United States, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden , Italy, and in subsequent years - and in other countries of Europe, Asia and America.
The unauthorized printing of the book in the West caused an attack on the author in the communist press.
After the writer was sent into exile, he deepened Lenin’s chapters written back in the USSR, including the 22nd from “August,” which was deliberately not published during the first edition. It was included in a separately published collection of chapters “Lenin in Zurich” (Paris, YMCA-press, 1975). In the spring of 1976, the writer collected extensive materials about the history of Stolypin’s murder at the Hoover Institution in California. In the summer-autumn of 1976, all chapters related to this cycle (now chapters 8 and 60-73) were written in Vermont. At the beginning of 1977, the chapter “A Study of the Monarch” was written (now the 74th, it was separately published in “Vestnik RKhD”, 124, 1978) - after which Knot One finally became a two-volume book.
All notable historical figures, all the major military leaders, the revolutionaries mentioned, as well as all the material in the review and royal chapters, the entire story of the murder of Stolypin by Bogrov, all the details of military operations, down to the fate of each regiment and many battalions, are genuine.
The author's father is brought out almost under his own name, and the mother's family is authentic. The families of Kharitonov (Andreev) and Arkhangorodsky, Varya are genuine, Obodovsky (Pyotr Akimovich Palchinsky) is a famous historical figure.
ACT ONE.
REVOLUTION.
“Only an ax can
deliver, and nothing but
ax... Call Rus' to the axe.”
From a letter to “Kolokol”, 1860.
AUGUST THE FOURTEENTH
They left the village on a clear, bright morning, when at the first sun the entire Ridge, bright white and in blue depths, stood accessible, close, visible with every cut, so close that an unaccustomed person would have remembered to drive to it in two hours.
He stood so big in the world of small human things, so miraculous in the world of things made. For thousands of years, all the people, as long as they lived, carried here with a solution of hands and piled up in plump heaps everything they had worked or even conceived - they would not have erected such a super-imaginable Ridge.
From the village to the station the road led them all the time in such a way that the Ridge was right in front of them, they were driving towards it, they saw it: snowy expanses, bare rocky ledges and shadows of guessed gorges. But from half an hour to half an hour it began to thaw from below, separated from the ground, no longer stood, but hung in a third of the sky and became swaddled, there were no scars and ribs, no mountain signs in it, but seemed like huge fused white clouds. Then the clouds were already torn into pieces, no longer distinguishable from true clouds. Then they too were washed away, the Ridge completely disappeared, as if it were a heavenly vision, and ahead, as on all sides, there remained a grayish, whitish sky, gaining heat. So, without changing direction, they rode for more than fifty miles, before noon and after noon - but the giant mountains in front of them were no longer there, and nearby rounded hills approached: Camel; Bull; bald Snake; curly Iron.
They set out on a not yet dusty road, still on a dewy, cool steppe. They passed those hours when the steppe rang, fluttered, chirped, then whistled, crackled, rustled - but now Mineralnye Vody, dragging behind them a lazy billow of dust, they drove up in the deadest hour of the afternoon, and the only distinct sound was their measured tapping: rattles, tree against tree, and the horses became almost inaudible with their hooves in the dust. And during these hours all the subtle smells of herbs were there and passed away, and now there was one sultry sunny smell with a mixture of dust, and the same smelled of their tarataya, and the hay bedding, and they themselves - but, from the first childhood memory of the steppe inhabitants, this smell was them pleasant, and the heat is not tiring.
Father regretted giving them a spring britzka, a bank, so they shook and pounded at the trot, and they traveled most of the road at a walk. They rode between grain fields and between herds, passed salt-marsh bald patches, rolled over gentle hills, crossed sloping ravines, with close water and dry ones, not a single real river, not a single large village, meeting few people, being overtaken by few people in the Sunday sparse people - but For Isaac, and always patient, especially today, in his mood and plan, these eight hours were not at all burdensome, but he could have ridden sixteen like this: from under a holey straw hat - over the horse’s ears, and holding unnecessary reins.
Evstrashka, the youngest, from his stepmother, little brother, he tossed and turned all this way into the night, first he slept on the hay behind Isaac, then he turned around, rose to his feet, looking in the grass, jumped off, ran away, caught up, he had plenty to do, more and told or asked: “Why, if you close your eyes, it seems like you’re going back?”
Now Evstrat has moved to the second grade of the Pyatigorsk gymnasium, but at first, like Isaac, his father agreed to let him go only to the nearby pro-gymnasium: the rest, the older brothers and sisters, did not know, did not see anything except land, cattle and sheep, and lived . Isaac was allowed to study a year later than necessary, and after the gymnasium his father waited a year, not allowing himself to immediately understand that now some kind of university was needed. But just as oxen shift the weight not with a snatch, but with a tax, so Isaac took it with his father: with patient insistence, never all at once.
Isaac loved his native Saber and their farm ten miles away, and rural work, and now, during the holidays, he did not shirk at all from mowing or threshing. In understanding his future, he somehow hoped to combine his original life and what he had gained as a student. But no matter what the year, the opposite happened: the teaching irrevocably separated him from the past, from the villagers and from his family.
There were two of them in the entire village, students. Their reasoning and appearance aroused surprise and laughter among the villagers, and as soon as they arrived, they hurried to change into their old clothes. However, one thing was pleasant for Isaac: for some reason the village rumor separated him from the other student and called him - with mockery - a populist. Who was the first to stick it on and how it was laid out, and everyone unanimously began to call him “populist”. There were no populists in Russia for a long time, but Isaac, although he would never have dared to introduce himself like that out loud, understood himself, perhaps, as a populist: one who received his teaching for the people and goes to the people with books, words and love.
However, even returning to one’s own family was almost impossible. Three years ago, having lost to an incomprehensible university, the father no longer changed his decision, did not take it back, but felt it as his mistake, as the loss of his son. The only use he saw in him during the holidays was to take Sanka to rural work, and during the remaining months of absence he could not unsee the meaning of learning.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Red wheel.
August the Fourteenth
The last edition of the Knot was made during the typing process, in 1981 in Vermont.
Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich
“August the Fourteenth” was conceived by the author in 1937 - not yet as the First Knot, but as an introduction to a great novel about the Russian revolution. At the same time, in 1937 in Rostov-on-Don, all the materials on the Samsonov disaster available in Soviet conditions (considerable) were collected - and the first chapters were written: the arrival of a colonel from Headquarters at Samsonov’s headquarters, the move of the headquarters to Naidenburg, lunch there... Construction These chapters remained almost unchanged in the final edition. In that first stage of work, many chapters were devoted to Sasha Lenartovich, but these chapters disappeared over the years. There were also chapters on the economy of Shcherbakov (the author’s maternal grandfather), where even then the question of Stolypin’s activities and the significance of his murder was raised.
Then there was a break in work on the novel until 1963 (all the blanks were preserved through the years of war and prison), when the author again began to intensively collect materials. In 1965, the name “Red Wheel” was defined, and since 1967 - the principle of Knots, that is, a continuous dense presentation of events in compressed periods of time, but with complete breaks between them.
Since March 1969, continuous work on the “Red Wheel” begins, first with the chapters of the later Knots (1919-20, especially the Tambov and Lenin chapters). In the same spring of 1969, the writer began working on one “August 1914” - and in a year and a half, by October 1970, he finished it (what in the current edition constitutes the first volume and part of the second).
In this form, Knot First was published in June 1971 in Paris by YMCA-press, in the same year two competing editions were published in Germany, then in Holland, in 1972 - in France, England, the United States, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden , Italy, and in subsequent years - and in other countries of Europe, Asia and America.
The unauthorized printing of the book in the West caused an attack on the author in the communist press.
After the writer was sent into exile, he deepened Lenin’s chapters written back in the USSR, including the 22nd from “August,” which was deliberately not published during the first edition. It was included in a separately published collection of chapters “Lenin in Zurich” (Paris, YMCA-press, 1975). In the spring of 1976, the writer collected extensive materials about the history of Stolypin’s murder at the Hoover Institution in California. In the summer-autumn of 1976, all chapters related to this cycle (now chapters 8 and 60-73) were written in Vermont. At the beginning of 1977, the chapter “A Study of the Monarch” was written (now the 74th, it was separately published in “Vestnik RKhD”, 124, 1978) - after which Knot One finally became a two-volume book.
All notable historical figures, all the major military leaders, the revolutionaries mentioned, as well as all the material in the review and royal chapters, the entire story of the murder of Stolypin by Bogrov, all the details of military operations, down to the fate of each regiment and many battalions, are genuine.
The author's father is brought out almost under his own name, and the mother's family is authentic. The families of Kharitonov (Andreev) and Arkhangorodsky, Varya are genuine, Obodovsky (Pyotr Akimovich Palchinsky) is a famous historical figure.
ACT ONE.
REVOLUTION.
“Only an ax can
deliver, and nothing but
ax... Call Rus' to the axe.”
From a letter to “Kolokol”, 1860.
They left the village on a clear, bright morning, when at the first sun the entire Ridge, bright white and in blue depths, stood accessible, close, visible with every cut, so close that an unaccustomed person would have remembered to drive to it in two hours.
He stood so big in the world of small human things, so miraculous in the world of things made. For thousands of years, all the people, as long as they lived, carried here with a solution of hands and piled up in plump heaps everything they had worked or even conceived - they would not have erected such a super-imaginable Ridge.
From the village to the station the road led them all the time in such a way that the Ridge was right in front of them, they were driving towards it, they saw it: snowy expanses, bare rocky ledges and shadows of guessed gorges. But from half an hour to half an hour it began to thaw from below, separated from the ground, no longer stood, but hung in a third of the sky and became swaddled, there were no scars and ribs, no mountain signs in it, but seemed like huge fused white clouds. Then the clouds were already torn into pieces, no longer distinguishable from true clouds. Then they too were washed away, the Ridge completely disappeared, as if it were a heavenly vision, and ahead, as on all sides, there remained a grayish, whitish sky, gaining heat. So, without changing direction, they rode for more than fifty miles, before noon and after noon - but the giant mountains in front of them were no longer there, and nearby rounded hills approached: Camel; Bull; bald Snake; curly Iron.
They set out on a not yet dusty road, still on a dewy, cool steppe. They drove through those hours when the steppe rang, fluttered, chirped, then whistled, crackled, rustled - but now they arrived at Mineralnye Vody, dragging a lazy dusty billow behind them, in the deadest afternoon hour, and there was only a distinct sound - a measured tapping them: chattering, tree against tree, and the horses became almost inaudible with their hooves in the dust. And during these hours all the subtle smells of herbs were there and passed away, and now there was one sultry sunny smell with a mixture of dust, and the same smelled of their tarataya, and the hay bedding, and they themselves - but, from the first childhood memory of the steppe inhabitants, this smell was them pleasant, and the heat is not tiring.
Father regretted giving them a spring britzka, a bank, so they shook and pounded at the trot, and they traveled most of the road at a walk. They rode between grain fields and between herds, passed salt-marsh bald patches, rolled over gentle hills, crossed sloping ravines, with close water and dry ones, not a single real river, not a single large village, meeting few people, being overtaken by few people in the Sunday sparse people - but For Isaac, and always patient, especially today, in his mood and plan, these eight hours were not at all burdensome, but he could have ridden sixteen like this: from under a holey straw hat - over the horse’s ears, and holding unnecessary reins.
Evstrashka, the youngest, from his stepmother, little brother, he tossed and turned all this way into the night, first he slept on the hay behind Isaac, then he turned around, rose to his feet, looking in the grass, jumped off, ran away, caught up, he had plenty to do, more and told or asked: “Why, if you close your eyes, it seems like you’re going back?”
THE RED WHEEL CHANGED TO YELLOWNatalya Solzhenitsyna - about the main book of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and about our days WITH collected works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn in 30 volumes is published by the Vremya publishing house.
Three volumes will be published for the first time. In one - the author's diary of the epic "Red Wheel". In the other there is a book about modern Russia “Another time - a different burden.” The third contains an unpublished part of the “Literary Collection”.
Following the first volume (“Stories and Little Things” of the 1950s-1990s), volumes 7-8 were published. This is “August the Fourteenth” - Node I of the “Red Wheel”.
The literary chronology is violated by the will of the author: “the narrative in a measured time frame” about the Russian revolution will be published before the “GULAG Archipelago”.
The editor-compiler of the collected works, Natalya Dmitrievna SOLZHENITSYNA, talks about the “Red Wheel”. - Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn considers his main book not “The Gulag Archipelago”, but “The Red Wheel”. Why?
- “The Red Wheel” is a book parallel to his entire life. On November 18, 1936, an idea arose: “I will write a novel about the Russian revolution.” The eighteen-year-old student began with chapters about the battles in East Prussia in 1914.
In 1944, it was to East Prussia - by coincidence! - he came himself with his battery. Then there was an arrest. In the Butyrka prison, during transfers, at the sharashka, in the camps, Solzhenitsyn asked his elders about the year 1977.
And this was his vector. He saddled it, spurred it on and flew on it.
Archipelago stuff... there was so much of it! He simply forced him to fulfill the obvious duty that his fate imposed on the author.
But it was the thought that drove Solzhenitsyn all his life: to understand how the disaster of the Seventeenth happened? What is its mechanism? Do we repeat it? Was it rock or not?
The revolution in Russia could not fail to happen - or could it not happen?
In the 1970s he wrote: “It is amazing that in 60 years nothing has been written in fiction there is practically nothing about such a great event as the February Revolution... So many memoirs (scattering), studies - but no novel. Such is the power of being obscured (by later events). All these piles from my contemporaries lie and languish, as if they were waiting for me.”
The powerful scrupulousness of the chronicle breaks the myth of the “great bloodless one.” “March” 1917: 11 thousand lynchings. Kronstadt and Helsingfors: the number of killed officers is half the number of officers killed at Tsushima.
Petrograd: reprisals against policemen. The director of the Putilov plant is drowned: it’s good to bend your back! Community members destroy the farmsteads of the Otrubniks - “Stolypin landowners.”
...By 1922, about 15 million would die.
- In terms of detail, “The Red Wheel” is a work for a group of historians.
- Yes, the author studied and used colossal material. Memoirs, letters, diaries. Everything written by historians in exile. All the main newspapers of those months.
Alexander Isaevich was lucky to find many more participants and witnesses alive. After our expulsion, he met a lot with emigrants of the first wave.
Here is Alexander Pavlovich Sevryugin, an Orthodox monastery in Bussy. Formerly a military man, he lived at the monastery. He spoke wonderfully about the First World War (he was, it seems, a sergeant) and the Civil War.
There was a wonderful meeting with Zinaida Stepanovna Mokievskaya-Zubok, a sister of mercy of the Volunteer Army. Her memoirs were later published in the All-Russian Memoir Library.
In the midst of work A.I. writes: “In “Archipelago” I wrote: now if you have to receive a cheerful letter, it will only be from a former prisoner. Now, in 1977, I might add: or from a former White Guard. Those who survived the darkness, humiliation and poverty of emigration, at the age of 80, convey to me in letters their firmness, loyalty to Russia, and a clear view of things. To suffer so much and still be preserved in spirit! They really help us take over the era.”
Colossal material also requires remarkable skill in handling it. You can pull as many threads from sources as you like. It is important for everyone to immediately find the right place. And then you'll disappear. You'll never find her.
Alexander Isaevich’s card index for “The Wheel” - we have all of it preserved. She occupied the drawers and tables of a large library room in Vermont. These are hundreds of envelopes with the inscriptions: “ Petrograd garrison", "Petrograd factories", "Fleet", "Village", "Cossacks", "Church", "Zemstvo", "Cadets", "Revolutionary Democrats". Or: “Guchkov”, “Maklakov”, “gen. Alekseev", "Trotsky".
And when reading, he immediately put extracts on the topic into each envelope.
- In the pre-computer era...
- Certainly. But - with his clear mindset and mathematical education. And this helps in any profession. In the “Diary of a Novel” there is an entry: “For a job like my Knots, you need one more quality or passion - taxonomy. As a rule, a writer doesn’t have it. And without her, I would have been lost here a long time ago.”
The roots of this book are not only in documents. But also in them. And in the answers to the main questions, much changed as the material was obtained and assimilated.
"The Red Wheel" is a harsh book. It is thanks to the author's taxonomy.
Solzhenitsyn accurately unravels our favorite lament: “Fate punishes Russia the hardest of all.” Why?!
...You read about the plan for the second stage of Stolypin’s reforms. Increase the number of scholarship holders in universities by twenty times, the number of secondary schools - to 5000, higher schools - to 1500. Introduce a “professionalism qualification” in the state apparatus - and thereby facilitate vertical mobility. (Although in the 1910s, 20% of high school students were already “from peasants.”)
Next in the project are roads, factories, development of zemstvos and geology. What plans for the reconstruction of the country by 1932!
...You read further: what caused the death of Stolypin? From the fact that General N., without thinking for a long time, gave agent Bogrov a pass to the theater. But Officer N. did not check him at the door - although he was obliged to. And Bogrov entered the Opera with weapons. Why was Stolypin’s only bodyguard so far away from him? A...
The same goes for February 1917. The reader sees how the “death of the empire” was made up of thousands of actions. Out of laziness, vanity, fear of the “public” of specific people.
Which of them knew that they were taking their step towards a common abyss? And that by 1953 50 million will perish in it?
...And with a snuff-box, the travel engineer Bublikov jumped onto the forefront of history to send a telegram about the events in St. Petersburg throughout Russia. After which the unrest of the reserve regiments became a world event.
It was no longer possible to stop. Or is it possible? At this crossroads? At that station?
The strongest note of the book: we also don’t know what we are doing here and now.
There are so many crossroads where there is only one warrior in the field. And his choice will decide the matter.
But one more thing emerges from the meticulous chronicle. There were not many people who were not caught up in the general fever. They were: the active tsarist minister Rittich, the honest populist Poshekhonov, Colonel Kutepov, the labor leader Kozma Gvozdev. But there were more people who were seduced by the fame of a liberal general or the right to fool around “among the people.”
- A book of strict judgment... Not even on the revolution.
- I wouldn't say that. This book invites the reader to make his own judgment. It will probably be harsh for many. But not because the author wanted it that way. Solzhenitsyn the writer has this principle: he writes about each character from the inside. Allows everyone to be their own lawyer.
Even if this person is unpleasant to the author, or alien, or strange, the arguments in favor of his choice are presented by his own thoughts: be it Kerensky, Miliukov, Plekhanov or Nicholas II. This is how the organ sound of this historical prose arises.
- But then who was Lenin? Based on the volumes “October” and “March” it seems: not a demon, not a demiurge. So, a float on a wave, a bubble of earth. Not the cause of the death of millions and the “dislocation of the axis” of Russia, but the consequence of the weakness, laziness, and fear of hundreds of other people.
- Of course not. The trouble is that people recognize a demon only if he appears in a Mephistophelian cloak. Lenin was a man of enormous potential. Partly both a float on the wave and a bubble of the earth. But he carried a colossal charge. And he stayed on these waves, where no one, even the strongest, could do anything. He didn’t miss the moment when the crest of the wave rose and threw him up, where he was aiming.
This is what distinguishes a genius from a non-genius.
He had such a passion and such incredible determination that he did not miss this moment. I've been going to him all my life. But he couldn’t know whether it would happen or not? Most, even highly gifted people, let go of the reins at their most important moment.
Parvus was brighter. And Trotsky is brighter. So what? Yes, they were in the lead for some periods. But that's all. And shining, and striking, and captivating, they nevertheless did not go the entire distance. They failed and lost. Lenin did not lose. He turned everything upside down. And we still live in Lenin's Russia.
He is certainly not a black and red demon. More like... grey. But the most powerful.
And this is much scarier than a demon artist.
- “The Diary of a Novel”, “The Diary of R-17” will be published for the first time. When?
- The author’s desire and my desire is to roll the “Wheel” as quickly as possible. The Second Knot, “October the Sixteenth,” is already in the publishing house. I think the volumes will be released in February-March. By the fall of 2007 - four volumes of “March”. Then "April". And behind it “Diary of R-17”. I think in 2008.
-What is this book?
- Solzhenitsyn’s life confrontations, publicly known, leave the impression of a man of steel. Uncompromising. Devoid of doubt.
This has been written about more than once. He seems like that.
In reality, everything is completely different! And the diary that accompanied his twenty-five years of work on The Red Wheel reveals this. There are a lot of doubts, even torments.
“The Diary of R-17” was written by a suffering person.
In some notes, the author despairs that, apparently, he does not have enough strength to complete “The Wheel.” Because the chronicle of several months - the Sixteenth and Seventeenth - took so many years of work.
But further, in the process of work, he becomes convinced (and we along with him) that since May 1917 nothing could be returned or slowed down.
Previously, he wanted to conduct the action until October 1917, showing in detail how it happened. And then I realized that already in May there were no more forces that could stop this cosmic wheel. What happened has already been shown. And - it has already happened...
- Maybe the ten-volume chronicle lacks a short and strict code?
- At the end of each volume of “Martha” there was such a coda - a review chapter. Written by “today’s man”: Solzhenitsyn, who went through the Second World War, the Gulag, and deportation.
I just thought that these chapters in the “Wheel” corpus contradicted the plan: to reconstruct events as accurately as possible, but to hand over the right of trial to the reader. Alexander Isaevich hesitated, our disputes are on the pages of the Diary. He eventually combined these four chapters into the article “Reflections on the February Revolution.”
- “Reflections” is on the website www.lib.ru. There is a very strong theme of “The Red Wheel” as a book about the eternal discord between the authorities and the “public”.
“It was like a general (educated) state under hypnosis. ...The intensity of hatred between the educated class and the authorities made any constructive joint measures, compromises, or state solutions impossible, and created only the destructive potential of destruction.”
The results of that discord are obvious. But can we “recognize the government” in 2007?
- In general, the government is not bright... But here’s the thing: it’s time to recognize the government as a participant in the dialogue. It's time to argue with him, it's time to flog him, it's time to praise him if he deserves it!
There is an opportunity to speak out loud now. Yes, we need to achieve it. But we see: the authorities react to the will of groups.
This was the case with monetization. So 28 thousand people stood up for Shcherbinsky, the driver during whose overtaking Governor Evdokimov died. The movement of defrauded shareholders, the idea of a referendum in St. Petersburg on the Gazprom tower on Okhta... The people are definitely learning a new language of conversation with the authorities.
- Or the resistance of the STD and the Union of Museums to the law “On Autonomous Associations”. And they achieved correction - two years of chicanery by conciliation commissions.
- And note: the whole people could not participate in this action. But a group of people who considered this their vital business found an opportunity to influence the Duma.
We are so accustomed to the fact that there were tsars, then the Bolsheviks, under whom it was better not to get out... The consciousness of people must change, but it is changing terribly slowly.
The principle of interaction with the authorities must be different. The one that was not in Russia in February 1917: do not destroy everything in a big way and do not hand over everything without a sound.
- There is a scene in “The Wheel”: Colonel Vorotyntsev at Shingarev’s. October 1916. The famous cadet, future suicide bomber Shingarev says with horror and delight: I’m reading about France at the end of the 18th century. Oh, what a resemblance to us!
Vorotyntsev replies: “Aren’t we creating these parallels ourselves? How can we make an effort to parallelize it? How to... hug?
We love to build these parallels. A special temptation: those who write grow above themselves to the extent of the predicted misfortune. It thickens in the minds of readers: since everyone is writing! And it comes.
In 1916, they read about the guillotine.
Now about the similarities with Germany on the eve of fascism.
What do you think about it? “How to make an effort - to parallelize it”?
- The recent wild manifestations are endlessly depressing. Vietnamese boys studied in my Mechanics and Mathematics course at Moscow State University; they were just angels... Quiet, diligent, sweet.
And these same people are being killed on the street in St. Petersburg.
I can't live with shame when this happens.
Undoubtedly, this needs to be dealt with more harshly. It seems they are finally starting.
But I think that the population of Russia does not carry the roots of fascism. Based on all previous experience: there are none!
But nevertheless we see the facts. So, we need to look for the reason. I think “ours” is the way we got rid of communism in the 1990s. Social hopelessness of entire towns. Or districts in big cities: St. Petersburg has long been one of these cities.
In 1996, we were there with Alexander Isaevich. Those were tears! Dirty, crying city. Crying in the literal sense: all the facades have dark streaks.
That's when the St. Petersburg skinheads appeared. It’s clear: the gateways of a big city where teenagers gather. Today there is need - and there is no work - and there is hopelessness ahead. In such an air there will always be gurus who are intoxicated by power.
The economy was falling apart in entire regions. There was nowhere to work. And it’s impossible to leave. And people in large numbers fell into a social trap.
- In 1998, in the book “Russia in Collapse,” Alexander Isaevich cited letters to him about this. Are they writing about the same thing now?
- They write all the time: he is generally recognized as the defender of the province. Yes, he always was. People write about things that are no longer available to them. A lot is about culture, which is now not available anywhere where there is no oil. Especially teachers, doctors in Middle lane. Yes, it has become a little better with salaries. It can be seen from the letters. But still there is no money to come to Moscow during the holidays, to go to theaters and exhibitions (as teachers used to do). Now during the holidays they work in the garden.
Many people have been morally undermined by these years.
- In England in the 1930s after the Great Depression, life was so difficult that workers and part of the elite were interested in the experience of the Reich. But they were able to get past it.
- Solving these problems is very difficult. But the origins are not in the Russian national character.
Aggression can come to life in any society, provided there is an environment. We created the environment ourselves through an extremely inept transition. Those who led the country in the 1990s forgot that there are people to take care of. The smarter former leaders now recognize this.
- You mentioned: Alexander Isaevich calls the post-Soviet years the “Yellow Wheel”. What's behind this formula?
- We did not see August 1991 in Moscow. It's a pity: the participants experienced it as great days. But that rise was channeled into nothingness. What was called democracy during the Yeltsin era was, of course, a farce.
The lies (sometimes stupidly, but more often consciously) hurt our ears when we returned in 1994. I wanted to ask: “Don’t you really hear this yourself?”
Many haven't heard. Perhaps due to the inertia of 1991.
...Yellowness - and in the instantaneous change in the ideals in which children were raised. They were canceled overnight. It became good to be rich. But “Thou shalt not steal!” it became indecent to say out loud. “Thou shalt not kill” did not sound either. Moral imperatives disappeared from speech for years.
And it turned out: not to give in, to live by your own mind, to remain faithful to what you breathed - it is safer in the Yellow Vortex than in the Red. But it’s also very difficult.
The Red Wheel...at least it wasn't hiding. Yellow came gradually, under false slogans. And they also killed a huge number of people.
The rolling of this new Wheel tormented Alexander Isaevich from the very beginning. Here are his notes:
“Three Great Troubles have now converged on my tables. The Troubles of the Seventeenth Century, which I follow - according to historians, and precisely with the search for lessons; The Troubles of the Seventeenth Year, refined to the bottom; and the Third Time of Troubles, today... and to which the “Wheel” was still late, late.
These 75 years have been mercilessly imposed on our country - with ever new, new oppressive layers, beating off the memory of the past, not allowing us to breathe, come to our senses, or understand the path. And - again we are on the same February street: to chaos, to tearing apart, to shreds.
And our democrats, just like in 1717, having received power, do not know how to lead it: they are neither courageous nor professional.
In the seventeenth century, our people in the depths of the country were healthy, well-fed and steadfast in spirit. And he resisted. In the seventeenth year - still full and still healthy in body. And now everyone is hungry, sick, in despair and in complete confusion: where have they been taken?”
This is 1991.
- The epic is being published in a new author's edition...
- The changes concern mainly “March” and “April”. The essence is liberation from redundant information. Mainly in “newspaper” chapters.
Alexander Isaevich was fond of them. Microfilms of newspapers from 1917 were sent from the Hoover Archives, and he spent a significant part of his life at the “dorobloke.” (We called the reading machine a peasant word: it was absurdly large.)
There were so many vivid details in the newspapers! But such a volume is difficult to perceive.
But the author did not have the strength to squeeze: we were already in a hurry to Russia. Perestroika began. And Solzhenitsyn was in a hurry with “April”.
About two years ago he did some serious editing. 5-7% of the volume of the author's compartment. To the obvious ease of reading. But there are no changes in essence, no different view of the trajectory of the Red Wheel.
- We are definitely afraid of this topic. In 2006, there was an experience on LiveJournal - publicist Olshansky asked the question: “Who would you be with in 1917?”
Gave 1100 responses. Basically: “With the Reds: I am from the land-poor.” “With the Reds: they built Magnitka in a wild country.” They often answered: “I would be with those who win.”
It seems that the country does not want reflection and repentance.
What led us to condemn collectivization and 1937 were the surviving victims and their descendants. Victims of the Civil War and the 1920s. They left almost no descendants in Russia.
- This is very controversial. I think that those who today in Russia condemn collectivization and 1937 are no more numerous than those who are ready to recognize the legitimacy and heroism of the White struggle. But something else is more important: when blood descendants raise their voices, it is not as valuable as when non-blood descendants do. I think that the people’s repentance for an unjust piece of their history is not only possible, but also necessary. No, not in the form of a temple action. Repentance lies in the work of realizing the past. And in making (based on today’s experience) your personal verdict.
God gave us this land and language; our ancestors raised, accumulated, cultivated. We let it all down. They destroyed each other. How can you not repent for this?
But so far the “victory of the Reds at RuNet” does not surprise me. The old propaganda worked powerfully and for a long time. And it is firmly embedded in the consciousness of adult compatriots.
- There is a formula in the book: “Infant, pre-political people are easy to seduce.” The law on universal primary education in Russia was adopted in 1908. Completed in the 1930s. The USSR received the “universal average” in the 1970s. Our first general picture of Russia in the twentieth century is from Brezhnev's textbooks.
- After our return, Alexander Isaevich was sent new history textbooks more than once for examination. Also tears. Non-propaganda textbooks on the history of Russia of the 20th century, serving the facts and worthy of respect, are yet to be seen.
So, unfortunately, teenagers know no more and no better than their elders.
But the fact that so many people answered a “purely historical question” on the Internet perhaps means: there is anxiety about self-determination? The gray spot wants to be illuminated.
Remember, Akhmatova’s “Poem” has lines written already in the 1940s, with new experience: “As if in the mirror of a terrible night / And man is raging and does not want / to recognize himself, / And along the legendary embankment / The non-calendar century was approaching - / The Real Twentieth Century.”
If you like, “The Red Wheel” is a mirror that the author holds up to us.
Here's a mirror. If you dare to undertake the work of self-knowledge and are able to accept its results, not all is lost.
...It is important not to even judge who was right. It is important to understand: what stem from everything that has happened can grow for today? That's all that matters!
Who remembers that in the 1910s the Russian economy was growing by leaps and bounds? And that at the same time we had the lowest taxes in Europe: 1%, and not 33%? Although the country was the same: huge, the population was not very dense, and in some places it was quite sparse. And the roads are in trouble.
But the same roads: do we remember that the Trans-Siberian Railway route was laid in 1901-1910 - in record time? Now the Germans are designing the Cologne-Shanghai expressway. They are counting on the same ten years. But a century has passed.
But we just keep repeating: everything in Russia was very bad. And we must look to the West.
Of course, we must look to the West. And to China with its miracle. You need to look everywhere. But since we will still have to build on our land, we need to know how things were managed here, with us. And how they further destroyed it.
- But then why is the circulation of the collected works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn - 3 thousand? Books published in such a circulation in a country of 140 million people exist before God, but not before people. Is it not because we remained with the truths of Soviet textbooks because they were printed in millions?
- I take this very calmly. We now exist “in market conditions.” The Vremya publishing house called this edition a trial one. The sample showed itself as follows: 3000 disappeared from Vremya’s warehouses by the end of the first day of sales. A second edition was immediately ordered for Yekaterinburg, all supplied by orders from wholesalers and stores. Now he is already in Moscow.
So publishers will print as much as the country decides to read.
Interviewed by Elena DYAKOVA
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Red wheel
Node IV April Seventeenth
Proclamation "Young Russia", 1862
CALENDAR OF REVOLUTION
There is only one way out - revolution, a bloody and inexorable revolution... We will be more consistent not only with the pathetic revolutionaries of 1948, but also with the great terrorists of 1992, we will not be afraid if we see that... we have to shed three times more blood than was shed by the Jacobins... With full faith ... to the glorious future of Russia ... to be the first to carry out the great cause of socialism, we will let out one cry "to the axes"
(old style)
– German min. in. cases requested from min. finance another 5 million marks “for political purposes in Russia”
– F. Platten, on behalf of Lenin, entered into secret contact with the German ambassador in Bern
24 – In the West Good Friday
– The United States declared war on Germany
– The German government informed the Lenin group that it agreed to allow them to travel in an isolated carriage
25 – 28 – Congress batches k-d in Petrograd
27 – Departure of the Lenin-Zinoviev group from Zurich to Germany. German Ambassador in Bern: “It is imperative that the German press completely ignore what is happening.”
30 – Lenin’s group sails to Sweden. Emperor Wilhelm ordered: if Sweden does not accept them, let them pass through the Eastern Front
31 – Meeting Plekhanov at the Finlyandsky Station
2 – First day of Orthodox Easter
3 – Meeting Lenin at the Finlyandsky Station
4 – Lenin in the Tauride Palace speaks with theses (“April”) on the deepening of the revolution
8 – Meeting at the Finlyandsky station of Chernov, Deitch, Avksentiev, Savinkov
INTRODUCTION
DOCUMENTATION - 1
GEORGE'S PERSONAL SECRETARY V STAMFORDAM -
...must beg you to tell the Prime Minister that everything that Co.the role is heard and read in the press, shows that the presence of the emperor and empresses in this country will not please the public and will certainly worsen the position of the King and Queen... Buchanan must tell Miliukov that discontent in England against the arrival of the Emperor and Empress so strongly that we must abandon our past coglasia to the proposal of the Russian government...
DOCUMENTATION – 2
AMBASSADOR IN PETROGRAD BUCHANAN –
FOREIGN MINISTER BALFOUR
... I completely agree with you... It will be much better if the former emperor does not go to England.
This suddenly arose before the Siberian Social Democrats: they came to Tsereteli, who in two days became the master of Irkutsk: should the trains of equipment arriving at the station from Vladivostok be allowed to go to the front? And Tsereteli, without hesitation at all, exclaimed: “Of course let us pass!” Thus was born what a few weeks later began to be teased as “revolutionary defencism.”
War! How much has been discussed and changed about it by the exiles during these years. They were all united by a passionately negative attitude towards this crazy war, especially senseless for Russia, which did not need even an inch of territorial acquisitions. But the hope that the socialist parties of Europe would each fight imperialist aspirations at home did not materialize: wildly, it turned out that there the working class felt more in common with the national politics of its ruling classes than with the international tasks of the proletariat. Only we, Russians, were free from all this! – and did not want to be as short-sighted, practical and unprincipled as our Western brothers. However, there was little hope that this war would end in conditions of popular uprisings - and then whose side should win? Publications came from Europe that Lenin advocated “nationalism in reverse”: to desire and achieve the defeat of Russia. But the Siberian socialists (both Tsereteli and his party comrades - Dan, Voitinsky, Weinstein, Gornstein, Ermolaev, and together with the Socialist Revolutionary Gots) adopted the line of absolute neutrality. (That is, they would, of course, sympathize with Western democracies, but tsarism will win along with them? - and this is horror. The only hope is that the fundamental interests of the Russian bourgeoisie are irreconcilable with the autocracy and will undermine it.)
And suddenly - a revolution broke out! And she inherited this war. And the Russian socialists, from a persecuted irresponsible opposition, suddenly turned into the masters of a revolutionary country. And this caused a psychological turning point towards the war; it had not yet been formulated theoretically, but suddenly it manifested itself like this in Tsereteli.
When in the Second State Duma On June 2, 1907, it was already clear that only a few minutes remained until the arrest factions s-d or before the dissolution of the Duma, - a young slender Georgian, a half-educated student, but already the leader of the Moscow student body, but already the leader of the Duma faction of the Social Democratic Party - Irakli Tsereteli, with noble grace of movements, independence in the carriage of the head, long-eyed, black-eyed, at 11 o'clock evening I still managed to get the word, last time ran up to the podium and in a full-voiced angry voice scourged this government of military courts, this triumph of boundless violence, when the bayonet was placed on the order of the Duma day. On that day, the state bulk of autocracy seemed impenetrably eternal, and our breasts, especially those already touched by throat consumption, were doomed to be crushed.
But, less than a full ten years have passed, in the capital of Siberia, Irkutsk, news of the unthinkable and instantaneous collapse of this damned autocracy began to flow to the unthinking inhabitants and mercurial-sensitive exiles, in private congratulatory telegrams. We were waiting for anything - but not this! And suddenly the political exiles, who until now had only been boiling over in their circles with disputes about socialist principles only in private apartments and in the summer at their dachas (well, it’s true, sometimes they published magazines, and Gotz managed to even publish a regular newspaper of the Zimmerwald trend) - in three days they were recognized as the only power here. And he immediately headed the Tsereteli committee public organizations, established an 8-hour working day, on the square in front of the city council he spoke to the lined up garrison and then let the troops march past him, and they enthusiastically barked to the committee, and reluctantly to the commander of the District.
It was necessary to experience this transition after six years in prison (due to Irakli’s poor health, hard labor was replaced by prison time), then four years of Usolsk exile (quite well-lived and fruitful, 60 miles by rail from Irkutsk, and you can go any day, but eternal hopeless settlement, if you don’t flee abroad) - and to this suddenly fabulous instant collapse of the centuries-old system (is success lasting? but it came too easily), to this state of intoxication and power tension.
But from the very first days there was acute concern for the fate of the revolution. There was really no understanding with this screaming mass of soldiers, this is not the working class, this is an element without certain social ideals, it is not even aware of what is happening and is fraught with the danger of both anarchy on the left and counter-revolution on the right. Russian social democrats have long known from Marxism: a revolution cannot make a leap from the semi-feudal Russian system and directly to the socialist one; the limit of possible gains now is the democratization of the country on the basis of bourgeois economic relations. But such a sudden joining of the working class by a multimillion-strong armed army lures the socialist parties to the most extreme experiments, to impose the will of the socialist minority on the entire country - and this can lead to an explosion and counter-revolution, and there will be a collapse of the revolution.
Already on the tenth day of this feverish, sleepless Irkutsk situation, Irakli began to bleed and had to go to bed. It is necessary that on the most radiant days of life your health fails! Friends and relatives called by telegram to Georgia, but no, I was drawn to go to the very center of the revolution! The “train of the Second Duma” dragged from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg, lively crowds greeted it at the stations, people were looking for leaders, but Irakli continued to cough up blood all the way, he did not give speeches, only quietly talked in the compartment with members of local councils.
Yes, overtaking the slow movement of the train, they grabbed the oncoming ones, everything fresh, “Izvestia” of the Petrograd Soviet, the throats of the revolution. It was already clear that the authority of the Council was much higher than the Provisional Government. The harsh articles of Izvestia dictated a distrustful attitude towards the bourgeoisie. But some articles contradicted others - who wrote them? who printed? – it turned out that the Council did not have its own clear program. And my heart was yearning to go quickly and put an end to this chaos and uncertainty! Now that the revolution is moving from negative to positive tasks, what is needed first of all is a clear program, especially about power and war. With joy and pride we read and re-read the Manifesto of March 14 - that international word that the millions of tortured masses around the world had been waiting for throughout the war. Yes! Of course – not reckless defencism. But neither is the overthrow of the Provisional Government. And how difficult it will be to explain this now to the working masses in Petrograd: that, with the unconditional victory of the revolution, it is necessary to limit oneself in demands? how to explain to the workers the importance of this intangible, intangible influence of technically educated cultural circles?
The writer defined the genre of his ten-volume epic about the February Revolution, “The Red Wheel” (1937, 1969-2000), as “a narrative in a measured time frame.” The original plan was designed for 20 Knots (volumes) and was supposed to cover the period from 1914 (Samsonov disaster) to 1922, when all the consequences of the revolution became inevitable. But the colossal material subjugated the plan. In the final version, the epic consists of two “acts”. Act one - "Revolution" - includes three Nodes: "August the Fourteenth" (2 volumes), "October the Sixteenth" (2 volumes), "March the Seventeenth" (4 volumes). Act two - “Rule of People” - consists of one Unit - “April the Seventeenth” (2 volumes).
In addition, the text contains retrospective chapters “From Previous Knots”, in reverse order bringing the historical thread to March 1881 - the time of the assassination of Alexander II. However, the technique of retrospection runs through the entire epic, equally touching both the stories of individual families (fictional and real) and parties. The last, tenth volume of “The Wheel” includes a detailed plan of “Nodes V - XX” on 135 pages, which gives the main milestones of the original plan, which never came to fruition (until the spring of 1922).
The desire to recreate the truth about the tragedy of 1917 was all the stronger because Solzhenitsyn felt himself to be the last of the writers for whom “the sense of the contemporaneity of these events” was not lost. The principle of “Nodes,” “that is, a continuous dense presentation of events in compressed periods of time,” but with deliberate breaks between Nodes, allowed the author to show only the most important, defining events.
As it should be in historical epics, Solzhenitsyn introduces fictional characters into the plot along with historical characters: Sanya Lazhenitsyn (the prototype is the writer’s father Isaac), his bride Ksenia and friend Kostya Gulay (Kotya), Colonel Georgy Vorotyntsev, his wife Alina and beloved Olda Andozerskaya, philosopher Pavel Ivanovich Varsonofyev, supporters of revolutionary terror sisters Adalia and Agnessa Lenartovich, their nephew Sasha, soldier Arseny Blagodarev and others. There are about two hundred characters on more than six thousand pages, and, unlike Leo Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn does not pay special attention fictional characters. Their lines are drawn dotted, and by the end of the epic they fade under the pressure of terrible events. It is no coincidence that already in the first volume, Georgy Vorotyntsev, experiencing a cooling towards Alina, reflects on the “insignificance of personal dramas”: “A feeling worthy of a man’s breast can only be patriotic, or civil, or universal.” History itself comes to the forefront of the narrative, with its fatal steps that are still subject to the will of individuals.
In each Node, the narrative is centered around certain historical figures. IN " August the Fourteenth"(Node I, August 10-21) these are General Samsonov, the reformer Stolypin and Nicholas II. All of them in their own way appear as victims of history. The most important episodes of the First World War are described dramatically. The defeat in East Prussia, the death of the Second Army are depicted with that degree annoying pain for Russia, from which the soul shudders. The image of Samsonov, according to Solzhenitsyn, is largely copied from Tvardovsky: the same Russianness, honesty, tragic submission to circumstances. The first volume ends with the scene of his suicide. For the losing commander, it was not execution, but deliverance , because responsibility for the army, deep love for the homeland and his soldiers tore the general’s heart. His last words are addressed to God: “Lord! If you can, forgive and accept me."
A voluminous chapter of the second volume is devoted to the image of Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin. His love for the fatherland, colossal diligence, competent, balanced reforms are depicted as a private feat of a statesman. How insignificant and selfish do the ambitious and selfish interests of his murderer Bogrov, whose life path traced back to chapter 63! In the death of the great statesman(Solzhenitsyn insists on this) On September 1, 1911, the author saw a tragic and ominous symbol of future disasters. Unable to raise his right shot hand, with which he wanted to cross the tsar, “Stolypin raised his left”... In this dying cross, researchers see an “anti-gesture” (M. Golubkov), who predicted the terrible fate of the last emperor.
The 74th chapter is entirely devoted to the image of Nicholas II. The author portrays in her a kind, weak-willed man, who, by the will of fate, was forced to be the emperor of a huge power in the twilight period of its monarchical history. A wonderful family man, a true Christian, he is nevertheless guilty of serious mistakes and numerous victims of the people he loved so much. This retrospective chapter ends with Nicholas’s decision to start a war and an illiterate letter from Rasputin (July 1914), warning the Tsar that war is the “beginning of the end”: “Great is the destruction without end.”
Node II" October Sixteenth"examines the events from October 14 to November 4. Attention here is focused on the conflicts between the Duma, the government and the tsar. The activities of the Bolsheviks (K.A. Gvozdev, A.G. Shlyapnikov) are shown separately. Lenin becomes the central historical figure of the second Knot (dedicated to him seven separate chapters). The author strives to look at the world through his eyes. And we see how cynical, ruthless and purposeful this man is. He uses people, in the depths of his soul constantly cursing their shortcomings (both comrades and opponents). He speaks and thinks in “disgustingly pale, dry language.” He knows both periods of “declines to prostration” and an unheard-of, dangerous concentration of all forces.
The image of the “great hater of Russia”, Odessa millionaire I.L., looks just as ominous in this Knot. Gelfand (Parvus), who obtained money for the Russian revolution and launched it - through Lenin - into the red wheel. Their fantastic conversation, bordering on sleep (in fact, the meeting took place a year earlier), invented by Solzhenitsyn to prove the commonality of their goals, ends the 47th, Lenin-Parvus chapter. Parvus talks about his “great plan”, which he presented to the German government and for which he expects to receive huge amounts of money. Main role in this regard, he reserved for Lenin. The author admitted that he needed this last pre-revolutionary Knot “as a clot of the heavy and sedentary atmosphere of those months.”
Four-volume Knot III - " March the Seventeenth" - talks about the crisis of autocracy and the February Revolution itself (events from February 23 to March 18 are taken). The main attention here is paid to the figures of the Provisional Government, Duma deputies and the revolutionary seething of the Petrograd crowd. The growing loneliness of the sovereign is sympathetically depicted. In fact, Solzhenitsyn recreates "the story of the self-fall of February", which directly led to the Bolshevik coup in October. The author painfully shows how the liberal government that came to power bled Russia, so that any aggression from the outside was doomed to success. The finale of the fifth volume shows the destruction of the Astoria Hotel by the revolutionary "soldier". A base force drives these people - a passion for destruction, violence, robbery, bullying. The mood of the crowd is summed up by the cheeky proverb at the end of the chapter: "Get off, you skinny bastard! Get attached, good-o-shay!" And the next chapter shows the secret night departure of Grand Duke Michael from the Winter Palace abandoned by the troops on February 27. To save his life from the unruly crowd, "the great-grandson of the emperor who lived here, the grandson of the emperor killed here - he ran for everyone for them, taking them with you?"
The drama of the fall of the monarchy, experienced with bitterness royal family, brings joy to the majority. However, the people who came to power moral qualities much lower than the members of the dynasty. Feeling themselves to be impostors in many ways, these people will very soon get the hang of it. However, the red wheel crushes them too. Thus, deciding the fate of the next “malicious servants of the old regime,” Hitler (a member of the Executive Committee) himself understands that it is in his power only to “authorize the arrest of the designated victim for some reason,” but it was almost useless to refuse - they will deal with themselves anyway.
In the finale of the 6th volume, Solzhenitsyn reproduces the gloomy and hopeless state of the emperor who had just abdicated the throne. The last phrase in Nicholas's famous diary entry about renunciation is seen in the light of gospel reminiscence. The vulgar lies of the newspapers, the disintegration of the army, the dictates of corrupt public opinion, the rudeness of the faithful and once attentive servants - all this is felt especially acutely by thinking people. Professor Andozerskaya understands that now “it has become dangerous to think differently from everyone else.”
“March of the Seventeenth” ends with two adjacent fragments: secret diplomatic correspondence, where the delivery of Russian revolutionaries from abroad to Russia and the victory of extreme left forces is interpreted as a guaranteed collapse of Russian power, and a chapter where, using the example of the “new order” in the Volyn battalion, the complete corruption of Russian army.
The Last Knot of the Epic - " April the Seventeenth" - dedicated to the final segment of Russia's path into the abyss: April 12 - May 5. The last two volumes of the epic are literally stitched with chapters "Fragments of the rule of people" (chapters 22, 35, 113, 135, 167, etc.), where they are shown with extreme laconicism and expression the abyss of arbitrariness and sophisticated violence in all parts of Russian society on the eve of October: at the front, on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow, in the provinces, etc. The struggle for power of Guchkov, Milyukov, Kerensky and others is increasingly turning into a tragic farce against the backdrop of those who returned to Russia leaders of Bolshevism. The wheel turns faster and faster, so that the wedding plans of Sanya Lazhenitsyn and Ksenia seem doomed in advance. Lenin’s last appearance on the “plot” pages of the epic is made through an ominous quote from his works: “This will be a state like the Paris Commune. Such power is a dictatorship...”
The lines of the epic's cross-cutting heroes, Sanya Lazhenitsyn, Ksenia, Varsonofyev and Vorotyntsev, also come to an end. All of them (perhaps, except for Ksenia) expect nothing from the future except going through torment. The IV Knot ends with Vorotyntsev’s question: “But what fork should we rush to? And lay ourselves under what stone?”
One of the main themes of The Red Wheel is the confrontation of ideas, which are tested for truth through the actions of their bearers. Moreover, political, religious, philosophical views are shown both from the inside (from the point of view of the bearer of the idea) and from the outside (in the perception of opponents). All of them are somehow passed through the author’s consciousness, which places ethical accents in its own way. Solzhenitsyn loves those heroes who know how to perceive and analyze other people’s ideas (Vorotyntsev, Lazhenitsyn, Varsonofyev) and through this look for a universal idea.
The writer is repulsed by all types of ideological radicalism. Therefore, people with dogmatic thinking become the negative pole of the “Red Wheel”: the Lenartovich sisters and their nephew Sasha, the “Dummists” Purishkevich and Markov, the Bolsheviks Lenin, Trotsky and Kollontai. Their images are deliberately narrowed, emasculated, almost devoid of psychologism. And the ideas they preach most often sound self-exposing, because party psychology, according to Solzhenitsyn, always narrows the personality. Engineer Obodovsky expresses this idea in an aphoristic form: “Every party is a muzzle on the individual.”
And indeed, in the heated ideological debates of the Bolsheviks or Cadets, hackneyed phrases taken from party programs are constantly heard, and there is no living thought, a living word. Russian society, Solzhenitsyn is sure, on the eve of October was enslaved by ideology, and ideologized thinking is always flawed. Everyone, even the most decent people, is afraid of being branded as reactionaries. The author sees in the confrontation between the ideas of the February Revolution not a search for truth, but a tragedy, because diversity, leading to destruction, is essentially chaos. The results of revolutionary radicalism are reflected primarily in the crowd (“the foul abuse of the common people,” “openly selling pornography,” etc.).
Power in a country obsessed with revolution is being seized by people who do not feel sorry for anything or anyone. They are not afraid of anarchy, they are not afraid of hunger. Lenin, as depicted by Solzhenitsyn, becomes a key figure in the new Russian history, merciless, powerful and treacherous. His ability to manipulate people was revealed by Solzhenitsyn from the inside, through Lenin’s thoughts.
The colossal material collected in the epic required a special sense of composition. In addition to depicting the progressive running of the wheel of history on the eve of October, the text contains numerous documents, letters, diaries, and collages from newspaper articles; generalizing proverbs highlighted in large font. A special place in the composition is occupied by review chapters, indicated by an apostrophe next to the number (32") and occasionally typed in petit. There are 21 of them in total, with a volume of 360 pages. This can be a review of military operations, the history of a party or statesman, a story about a meeting of the Duma, etc. etc. Solzhenitsyn the historian appears especially clearly in them. He speaks about the past from the future. Hence the prophetic intonations and the dictates of the author’s point of view.
To enhance the impact on the reader, specially highlighted graphically, rhythmically organized fragments called " Screen"(there are 13 of them in total, approximately one hundredth of the text). In them, the author gives scenes in predominantly visual terms, i.e., as in a film script, he does not talk about phenomena, but shows them. These fragments are particularly expressive. They reproduce what the tragic faces of Russian prisoners (chapter 58 of "August the Fourteenth"), then street incidents in revolutionary Petrograd (chapters 2, 169 in "March of the Seventeenth"). The aggressive crowd, breaking glass, crippling anyone who does not want to join it, is not He robs as much as he destroys everything in his path.
The core motif of the epic, expressed in its title, also runs through the “screen” chapters. The image of the red wheel appears five times in the text. And every time it turns into a deeply tragic symbol. This is especially clearly highlighted in two episodes of “August the Fourteenth” (chapters 25 and 30). In the first of them, Vorotyntsev and Blagodarev, who came under artillery fire, observe a fiery wheel made from the blades of a burning mill, which spins without wind and eventually falls apart into “fiery debris.” In the second, the wheel will bounce off the infirmary line as the Russian troops retreat. (“A wheel painted with fire is rolling!”).
Solzhenitsyn himself explained the meaning of this image in his interviews: “I found that this most accurately expresses the law of all revolutions.” Russia's path to disaster is described in ten volumes of Solzhenitsyn's tragic epic. However, in the process of working on the book, Solzhenitsyn was “surprised” to see that “in some indirect way he was also writing the history of the twentieth century.”
