Marking the publication of the first “uncensored” edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s classic In the First Circle, The London Times has published a noteworthy interview with the author’s son, pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who was raised in the U.S. and still makes Manhattan his home.

The interview is remarkable for its dismissing of the formidable image of the great anti-Soviet (and Orthodox) novelist as a bleak reactionary. This image stemmed in large part from  Solzhenitsyn’s “reclusiveiness” while in exile from his native Russia, which son Ignat ascribes not to misanthropy but the author’s desire to finish his last and greatest (and still untranslated) novel, The Red Wheel, and to peevish reactions following Solzhenitsyn’s famous (in some quarters “infamous”) 1970s Harvard address warning of the West of its growing “decadence” and “enfeeblement”. In contrast to the image of his father as a sort of “Russian Khomeini”, Ignat describes him as humble, non-judgmental,, and supportive of his children’s interest in forms of western popular culture which he himself did not share.

Here’s an excerpt:

Free to mix with American children, the brothers became linguistically and culturally bilingual. Solzhenitsyn listened eagerly to the stories that they brought back from their travels abroad and was fascinated when they introduced him to new American literature. Yet the world outside viewed him as an embittered hermit, hiding behind a barbed-wire fence.

“The seclusion wasn’t a question of ‘I don’t want to be seen’,” Ignat replies. “I say this with certainty. After all the difficulties of writing in the USSR he finally had a chance to deepen his involvement in the major work of his life, The Red Wheel [an epic of the revolution, only partially translated into English]. He wanted to go someplace quiet where he could work without distractions. He said that he wished that he could have had the luxury to spend more time collecting impressions, mingling with Americans and travelling. But he knew that The Red Wheel would take every ounce of his time and energy and so he made his choice.”

For the rest of the article, click here.