House of the dead
Sir: Auberon Waugh's tirade against Solzhenitsyn in your issue of 26 August is extraordinarily perverse, even by his standards. Nowhere in his article does Mr Waugh show the slightest understanding of the essence of Solzhenitsyn's message to the West. In fact, he is so wrong-headed one hardly knows where to begin in criticising him. Mr Waugh draws the ridiculous conclusion that Solzhenitsyn's philippic against Western decadence implies hostility to freedom and liberal values. What Solzhenitsyn is criticising, however, is the misuse, not the existence of freedom. His Harvard speech (with its condemnation of lawless totalitarianism) makes that abundantly clear. Indeed, the torrent of trivial and abusive comment to Which Solzhenitsyn has been subjected on this score, confirms, as nothing else does, the accuracy and cogency of his original observations.
It is a truism that freedom provides the indispensable arena for moral action. It is also the case that moral relativism, civic carelessness, and a general climate of 'bread and circuses', endangers a free society because it discredits the notion that freedom is an objective good, and so destroys its legitimacy. It is then only a matter of time before a free society loses its hold on the loyalty and the affections of its members, and succumbs to dictatorship. Does Solzhenitsyn become a crank because he warns us against these dangers?
When Mr Waugh sneers at Solzhenitsyn's comparison between the present intensity of spiritual development in Russia and the 'spiritual exhaustion' of the West, he blunders down another false trail by suggesting that these remarks deny the reality of Soviet barbarism. The reverse is the case; it is precisely because Soviet barbarism is so terrible, that the unflinching resistance to it of so many of its victims denotes the presence of those spiritual qualities in Russia which Mr Waugh affects not to see.
Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in the Gulag, surrounded by suffering and heroism. Auberon Waugh has enjoyed a sheltered life as a gossip columnist in a free country. It shows.
Philip Vander Elst 13 Spenser Court, Parkleys, Ham, Surrey
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