The right to choose

As I see, the dispute about Yuri Polyakov and Solzhenitsyn does not subside. Sergey Shargunov yesterday in the program "Echo of Moscow" remembered me , counting by some side to the supporters of Polyakov, which I am in no case.

I was critical and related to some views and texts of Solzhenitsyn, but of course I will not agree to the fact that he simply took and left, and was not forcibly taken abroad. The Americans to war with the USSR (“And the USSR,” Poles indicates, “we want it or not, in fact, one of the political versions of historical Russia”) he did not call, because, according to the defenders of Alexander Isaevich, he was a great Russian patriot and, even being in the USA, allowed himself to sharply criticize the Americans.

But in fairness, it must be recalled that he criticized them for a variety of things - for example, for the fact that they did not decisively confront the communist threat, which was the Soviet version of Russia. In the Gulag Archipelago, he gave the arguments of the prisoners not only that the American occupation would be desirable for them, but also that they would approve the Americans if they had dropped an atomic bomb into Moscow. But what is it, interesting, such a terrible desire was caused? It was caused and justified by the percentage inhumanity of the Soviet system in the Stalinist “version”, which seemed to people turned into camp dust, worse than the atomic bomb. Which allows us to compare the Soviet regime in the Stalinist version with the Nazi Germany regime.

One elderly Polka, who was stolen to Germany during the war and fell under the American bombing in Dresden, told me that she was sitting in the basement then and, ready to die herself, whispered: “So they need it! So they need!”

Solzhenitsyn hated the Soviet system so much (having enough grounds for this) that he justified the Vlasovites. But at the same time, he raised the question of who betrayed whom the first - people of Soviet power or it are people. The theme of the betrayal of Alexander Isaevich is present not only in the Archipelago, but also in the novel “The First”, where the diplomat Innokenty Volodin is trying to warn the Americans about the possible abduction by Soviet agents of the secrets of the nuclear bomb.

No matter how I relate to Solzhenitsyn’s words and deeds, I have no reason to doubt his patriotism. But his experience shows that you can be a patriot and critical of existing power, and in some cases to hate it and wish its defeat. Now there is an attempt to adapt Solzhenitsyn to the current ideological needs of the existing government, but it turns out that his works do not quite fit into the historical concept imposed on society, according to which all our past at all times (except the nineties) was simply great - to which, referring to the high authority of the 5th management of the KGB, rightly indicated the vigilant Yuri Polyakov. I also have no reason to doubt the patriotism of Polyakov and his like -minded people, and if I reacted to their declarations anyway, I would be ready to assume that if they were before a brutal alternative - to languish in the will under the oppression of American invaders or to rot on the bunks under the protection of the Stalin Vertukhaev - they would have chosen the second option without hesitation.