Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Mar 2019)
Through the Novy Grad and Vekhi: Vladimir Varshavsky on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Abstract
This article considers the participation of Vladimir Varshavsky, an émigré writer, in the discussion around Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous journalistic manifestos, i.e. Letters to the Soviet Leaders and From under the Rubble collection published in 1974 by Paris publishing house YMCA-Press. The article focuses on the considerable influence the ideology of the Novy Grad journal had on Varshavsky’s perception of Solzhenitsyn’s journalistic works. The discourse of Novy Grad helped Varshavsky occupy an independent position regarding the long-lasting harsh debate between Andrey Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn which took place in the 1970s. Varshavsky considered many of the issues of the argument through the prism of the Novy Grad method, i.e. deep synthesis (or convergence), and his participation in the discussion is interesting from the point of view of his attempt to uncover the origins of the antinomy and go beyond it. Varshavsky saw the reasons for the conflict in the traditional watershed of the Russian national idea, i.e. Westernism and Slavophilism. The prerevolutionary collection Vekhi (1909) played a special role of a link between the ideas of Solzhenitsyn and later works of Varshavsky which were succeeded by many émigré authors of the Novy Grad journal and participants of From under the Rubble in the Soviet Union. This deep influence of the Vekhi tradition of self-reflection of the Russian intelligentsia played a considerable role in the approximation of Varshavsky’s views on the development of Bolshevism and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s standpoint. Varshavsky’s last book The Genealogy of Bolshevism (1982) is characterised by a complex genesis combining his fundamental prewar experience at Novy Grad and response to the topical argument about the future of Russia between Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn.
Keywords
