by James Millar
Soloviev’s philosophical approach was a synthesis of Western philosophy (particularly German idealist thought) and the Orthodox faith in which he had been raised. His philosophical system emphasized the integration of science, philosophy, and religion. At the center of his philosophical outlook was the concept of the unity of all-the idea that the world was an Absolute in the process of becoming. On this basis, he developed a unique Christian metaphysics in his Lectures on God-Manhood (1877-1881). He argued that reality had been fractured by the Fall, and that history, the center of which was the Incarnation of Christ (the “God-man”), was a process leading to renewal of the unity of all. In this work, he also introduced the elusive concept of Sophia, which at various times he referred to as the “world soul,” the ideal of a perfect humanity, and the “eternal feminine” principle in the Divine.
Soloviev’s fascination with Sophia was reflected in personal mystical experience. His reputation as a mystic derived from his poetry, most famously the poem “Three Meetings,” in which he described three encounters with Sophia, first as a young boy, then during his studies in the British Museum, and finally in the Egyptian desert.
Meanwhile Soloviev was developing a liberal theology similar to the Social Gospel movement in the West. He criticized conservative intellectuals for compromising the moral claims of the Gospels, and
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advocated unification of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches. Soloviev’s enthusiastic ecumenism provoked a nationalist backlash, which in turn led to his Christian critique of nationalism (The National Question in Russia, 2 vols., 1888, 1891). Soloviev went on to produce a wide-ranging ethical treatise, The Justification of the Good (1897), in which he provided an overall theory as well as practical discussion of such issues as nationalism, capitalism, and war. He also contributed to the development of a liberal philosophy of law in Russia.
In the year of his untimely death at age forty-seven, Soloviev published Three Conversations on War, Progress, and the End of History, a controversial work of fiction that questioned the efficacy of human action in an evil world. The work concluded with “The Short Tale of the Anti-Christ,” a futuristic story about the end of the world. Some scholars argue that Soloviev here rejected his liberal theology, but others contend that the central meaning of the story is consistent with his earlier work, because a unified, truly ecumenical humanity triumphs.
A uniquely independent thinker during his life, Soloviev had great influence after his death. His theology inspired social activism among some Orthodox clergy, a trend cut short by the Bolshevik Revolution. His philosophy paved the way for Orthodox thinkers like Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Flo-rensky. His mystical poetry inspired symbolists like Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. And after the Soviet Union came to an end, many Russians returned to Soloviev as a guidepost for creating a new Russian philosophy. See also: BELY, ANDREI; BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXAN-DROVICH; BULGAKOV, SERGEI NIKOLAYEVICH; ORTHODOXY; SILVER AGE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copleston, Frederic C. (1986). Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Berdyaev. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Gaut, Greg. (1998). “Can a Christian Be a Nationalist? Vladimir Soloviev’s Critique of Nationalism.” Slavic Review 57:77-94. Groberg, Kristi A. (1992). “The Feminine Occult Sophia in the Russian Religious Renaissance: A Bibliographic Essay.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 26:197-240. Kline, George L. (1985). “Russian Religious Thought.” In Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West Vol.
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SOLOVKI ISLAND
2, ed. Ninian Smart. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kornblatt, Judith, and Gustafson, Richard, eds. (1996). Russian Religious Thought. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Sutton, Jonathan. (1988). The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev: Towards a Reassessment New York: St. Martin’s Press. Walicki, Andrzej. (1987). Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
GREG GAUT
SOLOVKI ISLAND See GULAG.
SOLOVKI MONASTERY
Located on the Solovki Archipelago in the White Sea, the Solovki (Solovetsk) monastery was founded between 1429 and 1436 by the hermits Savaty and German, followed by the monk and future abbot Zosima. By the early sixteenth century, Savaty and Zosima had become the patron saints of the White Sea region. Solovki, also a garrison, was one of Russia’s most important cloisters with extensive territories, earning income from trade, salt, fishing, and rents. Metropolitan Phillip II of Moscow contributed significantly to Solovki’s architectural development while serving as abbot (1546-1566). Its monastic rule, formulated in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, became a template for later communities.
Tsar Alexei Mkhailovich’s troops besieged Solovki from 1668 to 1676 in a conflict traditionally linked to Old Belief. Solovki’s leaders and a large part of the brotherhood first accepted, then rejected, Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms. However, rebellion against central authority combined religious concerns with anti-Moscow sentiment fostered by political exiles imprisoned at Solovki. After their defeat, many monks left, ultimately to swell the number of trans-Volga elders-hermits who served as spiritual fathers to disaffected Orthodox communities.
Solovki remained an active monastery and popular pilgrimage site until the October Revolution, after which the Soviet government transformed it into a military training camp. It became a labor camp in the 1920s and 1930s for political prison1424 ers. Abandoned soon afterward, Solovki was reopened as a museum in the 1970s, then closed again until the end of Soviet rule, when it was reopened to the public. See also: KIRILL-BELOOZERO MONASTERY; MONASTICISM; OLD BELIEVERS; SIMONOV MONASTERY; TRINITY ST. SERGIUS MONASTERY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mchels, Georg. (1992). “The Solovki Uprising: Religion and Revolt in Northern Russia.” Russian Review 51:1-15. Spock, Jennifer B. (1999). “The Solovki Monastery, 1460-1645: Piety and Patronage in the Early Modern Russian North.” Ph.D. diss. Yale University.
JENNIFER B. SPOCK
SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH
(b. 1918), Nobel Laureate for Literature, one of the most prominent Soviet dissidents of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in the southern resort town of Kislovodsk. His father, a tsarist officer, died before his birth, and he was raised by his mother in Rostov-On-Don. He studied math and physics at Rostov University and was married in 1940 to his first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya. Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery officer in the Red Army during World War II and was arrested by the secret police in February 1945 for criticizing Josef Stalin in his personal correspondence.
Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years, which he served in a number of facilities, including a sharashka (a special scientific installation/ prison) and a labor camp in Kazakhstan. He was released from the camp system in February 1953, and then was sent into enforced internal exile in rural Kazakhstan, where he taught high school. Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed and treated for cancer during this period. He also reconciled with his wife, from whom he was divorced during his imprisonment. He was allowed to move to Ryazan, where he taught physics, after his conviction was overturned in 1957.
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SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH
Solzhenitsyn burst abruptly onto the national and international stages in November 1962, with the publication of his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in the journal Novy mir (New World). This deceptively simple novella describes a normal day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet forced-labor camp in the early 1950s. It was the first work he had submitted for publication, though he had been writing for thirty years. Novy mir’s chief editor, Andrei Tvardovsky, passed the story on to one of Nikita Khrushchev’s aides. Khrushchev, who had started a second round of de-Stalinization in 1961, personally approved its publication, which would have been impossible otherwise.
The publication of Ivan Den
isovich caused a sensation. Although millions of Soviet citizens had been released from the camps or internal exile in the late 1950s, the topic had never been discussed publicly. The novella immediately sold out several press-runs totaling almost a million copies, provoking widespread discussion. Many liberal Soviet intellectuals hoped, in vain, that its appearance presaged a further loosening of artistic controls. It was also translated into numerous foreign languages and held up as a triumph of Soviet art. The combination of the novella’s content and artistic quality made Solzhenitsyn an internationally recognized writer. He published several short stories in the months that followed, all in Novy mir.
SOLZHENITSYN AS A DISSIDENT
The ten years after 1963 saw a rapid deterioration of the relationship between Solzhenitsyn and the Soviet leadership, devolving into open hostility by 1969. A crackdown against outspoken writers began in late 1963 and intensified greatly after Khrushchev was ousted from power in 1964. In this new environment, Solzhenitsyn was unable to publish anything, including two new semi-autobiographical novels: The First Circle, based on his sharashka experiences, and Cancer Ward, both of which were highly critical of the Soviet system. Their publication, even in revised form, was blocked by Party hardliners, who instead tried to coerce Solzhenitsyn to write more positive works about the Soviet Union.
In the meantime, some of Solzhenitsyn’s works began to circulate in samizdat, and a few were published abroad without his permission. These developments, along with the accidental discovery by
Alexander Solzhenitsyn holds his first press conference in the West after being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS the KGB of some of his most critical writings in 1965, led to a hardening of official attitudes towards Solzhenitsyn. In 1967, Solzhenitsyn attacked the powerful Union of Soviet Writers, criticizing it for persecuting writers on behalf of the state, instead of protecting their artistic freedom. Solzhenitsyn’s approval of the foreign publication of Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and other works, created further friction. Party and state officials responded by launching an escalating campaign of harassment, slander, and threats, including his expulsion from the Writers’ Union in 1969.
Although Solzhenitsyn was part of a larger dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, he was unique in a number of ways. His international prominence, which only grew after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, protected him from arrest, and allowed him to be more confrontational in his actions than most other dissidents. It also allowed him access to Western reporters.
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SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH
Solzhenitsyn also had his own unique political agenda. While most Soviet dissidents focused on the need for basic human rights, by the early 1970s Solzhenitsyn began to focus on the issue of morality. He believed that the Russian people could only be saved by a rejection of Bolshevik ideas and the resurrection of what he considered a unique set of moral values developed in Russia over centuries under the influence of Orthodox Christianity. He looked to pre-Revolutionary Russia for guidance, not to the West; indeed, he believed that these Russian spiritual values could save the West as well.
Solzhenitsyn criticized Western culture for its decadence and argued it was weakening the United States to the point where it would soon no longer be able to stand up to the communist threat. He denounced the policy of d?tente, saying that the Soviet Union was using the process to take advantage of the United States’ weakness. Solzhenitsyn’s religiously tinged nationalism was similar to that of the nineteenth-century Slavophile movement. Although hinted at in interviews, Solzhenitsyn’s philosophical opinions only became widely known after his arrival in the West in 1974.
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
In the mid-1960s, Solzhenitsyn began work on a project titled The Gulag Archipelago. The title referred to the extensive system of prisons and forced-labor camps that had begun shortly after 1917 and expanded dramatically under Stalin; the term Gulag was the Russian acronym for the Main Directorate for Camps. The book, which Solzhenitsyn termed “an experiment in literary investigation,” was based on his own experiences and those of over two hundred former prisoners. This epic work eventually ran to three large volumes. Although the manuscript was completed and copies smuggled to the West in 1968, Solzhenitsyn delayed its publication abroad until the end of 1973, when his hand was forced by the KGB’s seizure of a manuscript copy.
The Gulag Archipelago was by far Solzhenitsyn’s most damning work on the Soviet system. It described, in horrifying detail, the ordeal that prisoners underwent, from arrest through life in the camps, including the systematic use of torture and attempts to dehumanize prisoners. It also argued that the organized use of state terror was an integral part of Soviet communism from the start, and that Stalin only expanded the system created by Vladimir Lenin. Solzhenitsyn predicted, correctly,
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that the appearance of this work would intensify state actions against him; he was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union shortly after its publication in the West.
The publication of the Gulag Archipelago’s first volume had a huge impact outside the Soviet bloc, particularly in Europe and the United States, where it sold millions of copies. It is widely considered to have done more than any other single book to shatter Western illusions about the nature of the Soviet dictatorship. The term Gulag entered widespread use in many languages. The book’s influence was particularly strong in France, where many intellectuals had remained sympathetic to Soviet communism until its publication. The book’s impact was heightened by its presentation, which mixed fiery rhetoric with literary skills, separating it from standard historical writings. Appropriately, Solzhenitsyn used his profits from the project to aid the families of jailed Soviet dissidents.
Many readers were overwhelmed by the book’s size, however, and sales of the next two volumes were considerably lower. Although some of Solzhenitsyn’s specific facts and details are now contested, the Gulag Archipelago remains one of the definitive works on the Soviet prison system.
EXILE AND RETURN
In February 1974 Solzhenitsyn was arrested, charged with treason, stripped of his Soviet citizenship, and expelled to West Germany. Party leaders believed that exiling Solzhenitsyn would be less damaging to their international reputation than sending him to prison. His second wife, Natalia Svetlova, and their sons were allowed to follow him a short time later. After a brief period in Europe, Solzhenitsyn moved to the United States, settling in Vermont.
After a tumultuous reception, Western sympathies towards Solzhenitsyn cooled after he articulated his moral philosophy in a series of articles and lectures, which concluded with his 1978 Graduation Address at Harvard. His attacks on Western culture alienated many, and he eventually withdrew into self-imposed seclusion in Vermont, where he worked on his Red Wheel series of novels. Solzhenitsyn also engaged in heated polemics with members of the dissident and emigr? communities who disagreed with his views and tactics.
In 1989 Solzhenitsyn’s writings began to appear in the Soviet Union, starting with The Gulag
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SOPHIA
Archipelago. Although he published some additional articles in the Soviet press, his absence from the scene limited his influence during the period of transition. Solzhenitsyn finally returned to Russia, amid great publicity, in 1994. Upon his return, he had a short-lived television talk show (1994-1995) and published several books. His didactic style has limited his audience, however, and he has had relatively little influence on Russian society since his return. Solzhenitsyn continues writing; one of his works, Dvesti let vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together, 2000), revived old accusations of anti-Semitism, charges which Solzhenitsyn and many observers reject as false. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; GULAG; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS; NOVY MIR; SAMIZDAT; SLAVOPHILES; UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pearce, Jose
ph. (1999). A Soul in Exile. London: HarperCollins. Remnick, David. (1997). Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia.. New York: Random House. Scammell, Michael. (1984). Solzhenitsyn: A Biography. New York: Norton. Scammell, Michael, ed. and intro. (1995). The Solzhenitsyn Files, tr. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick et. al. Chicago: Edition. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1963). One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, tr. Ralph Parker. New York: Dutton. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1968). Cancer Ward, tr. Nicholas Bethell and David Burg. New York: Far-rar, Straus and Giroux. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1968). The First Circle, tr. Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper amp; Row. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1974-1978). The Gulag Archipelago. 3 vols., tr. Thomas P. Whitney (vol. 1-2), H. T. Willets (vol. 3). New York: Harper amp; Row. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1980). East and West. New York: Harper Perennial. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1980). The Oak and the Calf: A Memoir, tr. Harry Willetts. New York: Harper amp; Row. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1995). The Russian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century, tr. Yer-molai Solzhenitsyn. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Thomas, D. M. (1998). Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
BRIAN KASSOF
SOPHIA
(1657-1704); regent to Tsars Ivan V and Peter I, 1682-1689.
The fifth daughter of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and his first wife Maria Miloslavskaya, Sophia spent her youth in the terem, where her freedom was restricted, but she also came into contact with the new cultural trends of Tsar Alexei’s later years. Many historians describe her as a pupil of Simeon Polotsky, but, although she was literate, there is no hard evidence that she studied with him. Those who regard Sophia as ambitious believe that she prepared for power during the reign of her brother Tsar Fyodor (r. 1676-1682) by attending his sickbed and making political alliances, notably with Prince Vasily Golitsyn, whose lover she is said to have became. However, evidence of an intimate relationship, which would have seriously breached Muscovite moral codes, rests mainly on hearsay and rumor, as do Sophia’s early political ambitions.
