Alexander Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle has just been published in English. Solzhenitsyn scholar and biographer Edward Ericson in his review describe the central message of the novel.
When faced with the moral dilemma of what to do about the stunning secret that has fallen into his possession, Volodin asks himself, "If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?" He exchanges the potentially self-indulgent principle that "we are given only one life" for the consequential principle that "we are given only one conscience." His action establishes the ideal of "humanity," and thus sets the bar by which all the novel's characters are judged.
The United States and the former Soviet Union are worlds apart. Yet the people who inhabit both worlds are human beings who live each day within a similar moral universe. We each live with various levels of fear in conflict with a conscience that begs us to live with honesty and integrity.
The question of what does it mean to be human is an important one for our time. For many writers like Solzhenitsyn, the answer lies in how we live under fear, tyranny and oppression. It is something that most of us in the West have never experienced.
Over past few months, the subject of fear in the workplace has come up in conversation has come up often. Workplace fear has more to do with not knowing what the future holds, instead of an oppressive state imposing rule over a person's conscience.
It is the moral dilemma of living as a free being under Soviet oppression that informs Solzhenitsyn's writings. Solzhenitsyn, best known as the author of One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, spent eight years as a political prisoner which transformed his understanding morality and human dignity. It was this moral perspective that brought him criticism from the Western critics. His Nobel Prize lecture, his 1978 Harvard commencement address - A World Split Apart, and Warning to the West are good sources of Solzhenitsyn's perspective.
In the First Circle is a restored edition of a self-censored version he changed to get past Soviet censors published as The First Circle. If this historical moment intrigues you at all, I highly recommend his memoir of dealing with the Soviet government entitled The Oak and The Calf.
Ericson writes of Volodin's character.
No character is more radically altered from one version of the novel to the other than Volodin. In the shortened book, he is a jaded young member of the privileged Soviet elite. In the full version, he is a young functionary whose moral evolution leads him to commit treason against the regime of which he is a part. Readers are left to ponder, along with him, the ethics of betraying the worst sort of regime—a variation on the age-old theme of the legitimacy of tyrannicide.
While we don't have political prisons here in the United States, the fear of speaking counter to what is the current political fashion is nonetheless real. The challenge for each of us is to know the values that form our conscience, and live by them. The integrity and confidence that comes from doing so is the right kind of counterweight for our lives.
An excerpt from chapter one is available here.
Great post! I say that to the degree we live in fear we live separate from God. The things that our fear causes - or empowers - us to do are symptoms of this separation. And the symptoms are not the disease. I suspect that it's not the things we do when we live in fear that God doesn't like as much as the existence separate from God.
Living under oppression isn't the same as living in fear. People live under oppression all the time and surrender their fear. But we also shouldn't let this distinction allow us to fall into the trap of works-righteousness, for "all fall short." And God remains there to welcome us back and makeus useful again.
Posted by: twitter.com/rdkemper | October 14, 2009 at 05:52 PM