The Soul of Solzhenitsyn | An Interview with Joseph Pearce

The Soul of Solzhenitsyn | An Interview with Joseph Pearce, author of Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile | Ignatius Insight | May 20, 2011

Ignatius Insight: When did you first discover Solzhenitsyn? What attracted you to his writings?

Pearce: Solzhenitsyn became famous in the 1960s when I was a child. In consequence I grew up with the figure of Solzhenitsyn looming large as a legendary hero against Soviet totalitarianism. I read The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn's exposé of the Soviet system's treatment of political dissidents, when I was a politically active teenager in the 1970s. Solzhenitsyn has been a favorite writer of mine ever since.
 
Ignatius Insight: How did this biography come about? Why were you compelled to tell the story of Solzhenitsyn's life?

Pearce: As with so many of my books, I was initially prompted or provoked by the inadequacies and injustices of existing biographies. In Solzhenitsyn's case, I felt that Michael Scammell's biography failed to pay due attention to Solzhenitsyn's Christian faith and its importance to Solzhenitsyn's work. I also felt that Scammell and other writers had failed to understand Solzhenitsyn's Christian political perspective and were too uncritical of western liberalism. I felt that I could write a biography that would show the centrality of religious orthodoxy to Solzhenitsyn's vision and its challenge to western liberal assumptions. I hope and believe that my biography has succeeded in presenting the political and religious heart of Solzhenitsyn.

Ignatius Insight: You've remarked about how significant it was for you to be able to meet Solzhenitsyn in person. When was that and what came out of that time together?

Pearce: I had the inestimable honour of meeting Solzhenitsyn at his home near Moscow in the summer of 1998. It remains one of my most cherished memories. My time with the great man and his family was crucial to the book that I would write. It enabled me to address many of the issues and to ask many of the questions that were unasked and unanswered in earlier biographies.

Ignatius Insight: Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, the same year that the Bolshevik party consolidated power. How was his youth and early thought shaped by the Revolution?

Read the entire interview on Ignatius Insight...