I’ve been doing more writing during COVID and this grand pause in concert life. Here’s the full text of my op-ed about the unfortunate history of mistrust between Russia and the West, an abridged version of which appears in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required to read full story). Read the WSJ piece here.
“After the fall of Communism, Solzhenitsyn’s call for repentance, for a historical reckoning on the model of Germany’s legendary Vergangenheitsbewältigung, went unheeded, resulting in a further “red-brown” permeation of society, where official government support for memorials of Communist repression and the incorporation of The Gulag Archipelago into the nationwide high-school curriculum paradoxically coexists with a noxious insinuation that Stalin—the chief butcherer of Russians—was a Russian patriot, while Solzhenitsyn—the chief enemy of Russia’s oppressors—was a traitor.
Little wonder—but what a lost opportunity—that the West, in consistently repudiating any legitimate Russian national interest, has itself blurred any meaningful distinction between the totalitarian jackboot of the USSR and the soft authoritarianism of a comparatively free new Russia, and instinctively confused “Russian” and “Soviet,” miscomprehending three centuries of Russian history as well as the uncompromisingly anti-national essence of the Communist project. (“‘Russian’ is to ‘Soviet’ as ‘man’ is to ‘disease,’” writes Solzhenitsyn.) And unintended consequences: the crippling of the fragile beginnings of mainstream political discourse and the manifest spawning of an unprecedented Russian consensus (uniting liberal society and illiberal government who otherwise agree on little else) that “they won’t like us no matter what we do.”
If Western policymakers’ objective remains to bring Russia “into the community of free nations,” they might do well to heed Solzhenitsyn’s plea and engage with Russia equitably, according to the virtues or failings of current policy, rather than judge her reflexively by a fictitious, maleficent historical narrative from which there can be no escape.”