Аннотация: Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes about Poland. A buff story.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes about Poland. A buff story.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was very fond of walking in the fresh air and listening to the radio.
During walks, different things happen.
For example, an elderly man, a foreigner, comes up, takes Alexander Solzhenitsyn by the elbows and begins to cry.
But sometimes the walk is different: a light lunch in the fresh air. Well, where lunch is, there is also a minute stop in a secluded place for a minute reflection ...
Passing such a secluded place (it was next to an abandoned military pillbox) - there, perhaps, not only Solzhenitsyn once stopped for reflection - Alexander Solzhenitsyn saw a wiggling lump.
It's not enough miracles are in the world? Solzhenitsyn did not even stop. But he still managed to see how a dwarf man materialized out of the lump, muttered something and headed towards the Soviet border.
"Why towards the Soviet border?" "The threat of the USSR hangs over Europe!" Aleksandr Isaevich feeled himself wary and, just in case, memorized the characteristic muttering of the dwarf.
A life does not stand still. Solzhenitsyn already lives in new places, but he continues to listen to the radio.
Suddenly he hears a characteristic manner of muttering. The same dwarf out of the lump that lay in a secluded place next to an abandoned military pillbox! The dwarf is now called "The Iron Logic Man" and he talks on a wide variety of topics. Once he even mentioned a Polish-Lithuanian toilet bowl. "Well, he got out not off the toilet bowl ..."
Alexander Isaevich is interested in Russian topics. "How can we to arrange Russia?"
However, he continues his usual walks. Sometimes he walks at night. In Switzerland, he met the dark spirit of Lenin in the night mountain air.
And here at night Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky approaches Alexander Isaevich. It's unpleasant! Solzhenitsyn moved from Europe, which was under the threat of the USSR's attack, and here is a such a meeting ...
But a habit is a habit. Hands - behind a back. The walk continues.
And Dzerzhinsky speaks politely, like that - like those leaders of the Soviet Union with whom Alexander Isaevich had a possibility of personally meet.
Alexander Isaevich listens to what Dzerzhinsky says.
- Alexander Isaevich?
- He is!
- You have lived in Rostov-on-Don since 1925, and studied at Rostov University from 1936 to 1941?
- Yes!
- In 1915, the University of Warsaw was evacuated to Rostov-on-Don, and for a historically short period - from about 1915 to the Khrushchev times (50s of the 20th century), about forty years, - Rostov-on-Don became an East-Republican, Polish university city. Some fragmentary, separate East-Republican, Polish traces both in Rostov-on-Don and at the university remained until the beginning of the 21st century.
Alexander Isaevich is silent. "Dialectics: the gendarme - it maybe bad, it maybe good."
Dzerzhinsky continues:
- The University of Warsaw is not a university in Vilnius or a university in Krakow. But a certain traditions, University of Warsaw adopted and absorbed from them. You, as a graduate of the university in 1941, became the heir of a cultural tradition that can be conditionally dated to 1364 (then the university in Krakow was founded).
Alexander Isaevich is silent.
- Yes, and your closest friend Vitkevich, your first wife Reshetovskaya were close to the Eastern republican cultural traditions.
Alexander Isaevich is silent.
- You have formed a good intellectual and cultural basis! And during your life behind bars (in Butyrki), you and Timofeev-Ressovsky communicated on an equal footing, and wrote actively in Ekibastuz, and then found a common language with Aleksandr Tvardovsky ... The Nobel Prize. You have managed to move from the camp theme, from the "prison theme" to the themes of Russian and world history. Brilliant travel across countries and continents. You communicated with people of the highest level from the sphere of culture, from the sphere of politics ... Your highest cultural and intellectual level was not questioned, it was always recognized. The 1364 cultural tradition worked well for you! And where, in what work did you write about Rzeczpospolita !?
Solzhenitsyn is silent. "I won't answer any question!" ('I mentioned Poland in historical works!' 'I couldn't but mention her!')
Solzhenitsyn continues to walk with hands behind his back, but Dzerzhinsky is no longer visible.
The walk is over. Unpleasant, a little, questions ...
Alexander Isaevich turned the handle of the radio receiver.
He pushed towards himself the sheet of paper.
Wrote:
"THE STRIKING POLISH WORKERS
Telegram, 20 August 1980
I admire your spirit and dignity.
You are giving a lofty example to all peoples oppressed by the communists.
Your
Alexander Solzhenitsyn " [unofficial translation]
Somehow a little, not enough. Both in volume and in the expressing of personal feeling.
He pushed towards himself another sheet of paper.
"ABOUT THE THREAT TO POLAND
December 4, 1980
Bloody followers of Lenin continue to pursue their unrealizable dream of conquering the world - not counting how many peoples, strangers and their own, will be grounded and disgraced in that meat grinder.
These days, the heart of the suppressed Russian people is together with the Polish. " [unofficial translation]
In an allegorical form (it can be understood in the sense that) the writer's heart is together with the Polish (with the people? with the heart?).
Let's hear what the radio is broadcasting ...
December 24, 2020 06:04
Translation from Russian into English: December 24, 2020 18:01.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Александр Солженицын пишет о Польше. Буфф-стори'.