Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Between Two Millstones, Book 2

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Between Two Millstones, Book 2

Exile in America, 19781994

Aleksandr Solzhenitsynperhaps the most significant literary exile since Danteis a figure of incalculable importance to world history. Yet in these pages, we enter into the life and times not of an austere statue or a respectable oil portrait but of a flesh-and-blood Russian patriot struggling to defend his vision and his humanity amid the loneliness of his American exile and the remorseless grinding of two rival empires. Between Two Millstones, Book 2 is not only an invaluable addition to Solzhenitsyn studies but also an intimate self-portrait of the great-souled man.

Rod Dreher, author of Live Not by Lies

In terms of the effect he has had on history, Solzhenitsyn is the dominant writer of this century. Who else compares? Orwell? Koestler? Where Solzhenitsyns intuition proved keenest was in his prediction when he arrived in the West that his books would surely be published in the Soviet Union and, what was more, that he would himself return to a liberated Russia. It was a firm and intimate belief that even contradicted Solzhenitsyns dire analysis of Soviet ruthlessness and Western accommodation. Is it too much of an embarrassment in the age of irony to think that his homecoming is somehow Biblical?

David Remnick, from The Exile Returns in The New Yorker

We know Solzhenitsyn the prisoner of the Gulag and the survivor of cancer. We know Solzhenitsyn the Russian patriot and resolute foe of the tyranny that deformed his country. In the second volume of Between Two Millstones we meet Solzhenitsyn the husband and father, Solzhenitsyn the writer. Here we meet a great soul overcoming not crisis but the quotidian, the banal, the small, a Solzhenitsyn for anyone who struggles against the enervating drag of the ordinary in our culture of distraction.

Will Morrisey, author of Churchill and de Gaulle

The Solzhenitsyn forcibly deported to Germany in 1974 now faces a disconcertingly gaudy array of Western images and effigies of himself. In characteristically vivid and pugnacious vein he tells of twenty years of exilestorm-tossed between the snarling Soviet Scylla and the vertiginous frustrations and perils of this Western Charybdisnursing the seemingly forlorn hope that he might yet end his days in his homeland. A gripping read!

Michael Nicholson, co-editor of Solzhenitsyn in Exile

Between Two Millstones provides a unique peek into Solzhenitsyns life in Cavendish, a small rural Vermont town whose people collectively chose to keep the location of his home a secret from the prying eyes of the press and the curious. This compelling memoir answers some of the locals own questions about life behind Solzhenitsyns chain-link fence and provides a glimpse into how it was possible for him to conduct research and to write in such a remote location.

Margaret Caulfield, director, Cavendish Historical Society

In these pages, readers meet one of the great men of the twentieth century. Exiled, misunderstood, and often attacked, Solzhenitsyn drew courage from his devotion to truth, his loyalty to his vocation as a writer, and his indomitable belief in the dignity of the Russian people.

R. R. Reno, editor-in-chief, First Things

This is a happy book. An epic of small spaces, great issues, and large accomplishments, the concluding volume of Between Two Millstones covers the years 1978 to 1994, when Solzhenitsyn was living on his beloved Vermont property. At the heart of the memoir lies a touching portrait of his wife Natalia. Between Two Millstones is enlivened by the authors impressions of famous figures like Andrei Sakharov, Heinrich Bll, Margaret Thatcher, and Princess Diana.

Richard Tempest, author of Overwriting Chaos

The Solzhenitsyn who emerges in Between Two Millstones is no longer the triumphant and ebullient fighter we saw in The Oak and the Calf. Though ready for battle as ever, his assurance in the efficacy of his word is shaken not only by Westerners with their deeply embedded biases but also by his own countrymen who turn a deaf ear to his warnings. A great read!

Alexis Klimoff, coauthor of The Soul and Barbed Wire

If Solzhenitsyn did not welcome exile, if he felt torn, as always, between the two millstones of the Soviet Dragon... and an uncomprehending and increasingly hostile West, he nonetheless found solitude and happy refuge in his eighteen years in Cavendish, Vermont. It was there that he worked on, and eventually finished, his other great work of historical and literary investigation, The Red Wheel.... Eventually, Solzhenitsyn would be... the enemy of Sovietism par excellence,... the last major anti-Communist writer to appear in print.

Daniel J. Mahoney, from the foreword

BETWEEN

TWO

MILLSTONES

BOOK 2

The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series

Under the sponsorship of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, this series showcases the contributions and continuing inspiration of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (19182008), the Nobel Prizewinning novelist and historian. The series makes available works of Solzhenitsyn, including previously untranslated works, and aims to provide the leading platform for exploring the many facets of his enduring legacy. In his novels, essays, memoirs, and speeches, Solzhenitsyn revealed the devastating core of totalitarianism and warned against political, economic, and cultural dangers to the human spirit. In addition to publishing his work, this new series features thoughtful writers and commentators who draw inspiration from Solzhenitsyns abiding care for Christianity and the West, and for the best of the Russian tradition. Through contributions in politics, literature, philosophy, and the arts, these writers follow Solzhenitsyns trail in a world filled with new pitfalls and new possibilities for human freedom and human dignity.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

BETWEEN

TWO

MILLSTONES

BOOK 2

Exile in America

19781994

Translated from the Russian by

CLARE KITSON and MELANIE MOORE

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS

NOTRE DAME, INDIANA

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

English Language Edition copyright University of Notre Dame

Copyright 2020 by the University of Notre Dame

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940874

The full LC record is available online at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020940874

ISBN 9780268109004(Hardback)

ISBN 9780268109035(WebPDF)

ISBN 9780268109028(Epub)

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CONTENTS

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is the first publication in English of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns memoirs of his years in the West, : [Ugodilo zyornyshko promezh dvukh zhernovov: Ocherki izgnaniya] (The Little Grain Fell Between Two Millstones: Sketches of Exile