Solzhenitsyn’s Latest Book Delights a Few, Bores Most

Nobel laureate Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn’s latest musings on the moral decline of Russia went on sale Thursday to the delight of a diminished intelligentsia but also to widespread indifference among the more materialistic movers and shakers of the New Russia.

“Russia in Collapse,” a 204-page condemnation of the society built on the ruins of communism, waxes unabashedly critical on every aspect of modern life, from this country’s fall from nuclear superpower status to its shocking mortality statistics to the poverty that Solzhenitsyn contends the newly rich capitalists have imposed on 98% of the people.

“All the modern world is looking at us in amazement: How could such a huge Russia all of a sudden become so weak, lose much of its spirit and body, and dash headlong into self-destruction, having suffered no military defeat, revolution or civil war, not famine, neither epidemics nor natural disasters?” asks the author, who was hospitalized a year ago and now spends most of his time in seclusion at a country dacha outside Moscow.

Only 5,000 copies of “Russia in Collapse” were printed for initial release, the most telling sign that the doom-filled preachings of the 79-year-old writer hold little sway in a society already aware of its problems and ill-disposed toward wallowing in the hardship.

Release of the bleak forecasts and judgments, the author’s second volume of social commentary since his return in 1994 after 20 years in exile, came on a sun-splashed day when those prospering in the post-Soviet era were even less inclined than usual to be lectured by a writer who views their lives as corrupt and misguided.

“I don’t read Solzhenitsyn anymore. I watched him once . . . when his TV program was still on the air and I found him to be too negative--even mean,” said Igor, 18, a philosophy student browsing at the Russian Abroad bookstore, which had the only stocks of the book on its first sales day.

Author of such revered Soviet-era works as “The Gulag Archipelago” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn was expelled from his homeland in 1974 and stripped of his citizenship. The ardent nationalist and patriot spent the next two decades in exile in the United States, a country he routinely criticized as morally weak and suffering from “the spiritual impotence that comes from living a life of ease.”

Devoted readers and followers of his call for revival of Orthodox Christian values looked to his homecoming four years ago as the return of Russia’s spiritual father.

Their hopes were soon dashed by his unrelenting refrain of condemnation and his failure to inspire hope for escaping what he portrayed as a looming apocalypse.

While 1,000 copies were sold in the tiny bookshop where “Russia in Collapse” was on sale, this was a humbling contrast with the clamor for his earlier works.

“He has lost the support and adoration of the Russian people that he used to have,” said Alla N. Latynina, book review editor for the prestigious Literaturnaya Gazeta.

She noted that the 14-ruble selling price, just over $2, suggested the publishing house was dumping the books at cost.

“This does not detract from his significance as a great writer,” Latynina said. “He has already gone down in history and will no doubt be studied as a classical writer of the Soviet times. Besides, one great task--like bringing about the collapse of communism--is quite enough for a writer.”