In this autobiographical work, Solzhenitsyn tells of his ten-year war to outwit Russia's rulers and get his works published in his own country. 14 cassettes.
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Text: English, Russian (translation)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Oak and the Calf,
By
This review is from: Oak and the Calf (Paperback)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn holds the honour of being the author to break the news to the world of Russia's treatment of its people. Before him, the Western world - and, disturbingly, a large portion of Russia - had only a faint idea of the true depth of lies, deceit, exploitation and murder that were being committed under the rule of the Communist government. The Oak and the Calf is his memoir of the difficulties faced in being published in Russia, at a time when even typewriters were controlled by the government and publishing without attack by the censors was unheard of. It is a clear, lucid portrayal of Solzhenitsyn's decades long battle to write.The book is split into four sections, of which the first two and the last two form separate wholes. The first half of the novel recounts his difficulties in first becoming published, then details the difficulties in making Russia and the world aware of Russia's mistakes; the second half focuses on Solzhenitsyn's battles with the KGB to ensure that he was able to publish his more incriminating works within Russia, while avoiding imprisonment, exile or death. Solzhenitsyn spent the first twenty years of his adult life first at the Russian front in World War II, and then in a labour camp, where he was sentenced after criticising Stalin in personal correspondence. After that, he contracted cancer; he spent time recovering in a hospital at Tashkent. During this time, he would compose prose in his mind - there were no opportunities to write down and store text. He relates that he would spend a week of each month while in the labor camp, going over what he had written in his mind until he remembered it perfectly. He composed his thoughts, wrote prose, plotted novels. From a young age, he wanted to be a writer. Thanks to his imprisonment, Solzhenitsyn gained the source material with which to write. When Solzhenitsyn was in his forties, he was finally able to publish his work. At home now, living with his second wife (his first abandoned him when he went to the labour camps), Solzhenitsyn could write, but the realities of publishing in Russia were slim. He had two options. The first, samizdat, an underground network of writers and readers. The second was to be published in one of Russia's literary magazines, but the requirements of publication included the necessity of government censure and approval. Solzhenitsyn, in his own words, 'lightened' a novel of his, Shch-854. Thanks to the confidence of magazine Novy Mir's editor, Alexander Tvardovsky, the novel was published under the name, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In this book, Solzhenitsyn said what had never been said before - he accurately and honestly described life in the labor camps. What was once taboo was out in the open. It was a sensation, and his name was made. Instantly, Solzhenitsyn was one of the most dangerous men in Russia. What was the government to do? If they imprisoned him again, or killed him, the outcry would be horrific. But if they allowed him to publish further, then... They were in a terrible place, but so was Solzhenitsyn. His publisher, Novy Mir, faced increasing pressure to silence their new author, and on top of that Tvardovsky began to get wet feet. Still, Solzhenitsyn wrote and tried to publish. Imagine what we have here. An outstanding novelist is forced to shrink away and hide in the dark. His first published work has caused a sensation in his home country (and, later, abroad), and for that he faces prison, exile or death. And yet, for all that, he continues to write. He scatters his literature throughout the samizdat network, entrusting his terrible, accusative words to friends and strangers. He smuggles his work across the border, to a safe in the West, which is to be opened upon his death. From the very moment One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is released, Solzhenitsyn must live as a man who can be seized at any time. In one chilling paragraph, Solzhenitsyn outlines what he was prepared to do if they took his children: 'They did not know that we had thought of this and made a superhuman decision: our children were no dearer to us than the memory of the millions done to death, and nothing could make us stop that book.' Can we in the West imagine such consequences for writing? Can we possibly understand what Solzhenitsyn dealt with every day? While attempting to publish further works, how often Solzhenitsyn hears these words: 'Circumstances could not be less favorable to publication than they are at present. It would probably be impossible, and it would certainly be dangerous, to try bringing it out this year.' Years go by, with little of his work appearing in Russian. His relationship with Tvardovsky forms the bulk of the first half, it is a sad, unequal affair. Tvardovsky is a man of talent, but not talent on the level of Solzhenitsyn. He is more timid, less skilled, and nowhere near as bold. And yet, thanks to Solzhenitsyn's loyalty, they remain together for ten years, up to and including the time when Solzhenitsyn win the Nobel. The second half of the novel focuses on the struggle Solzhenitsyn undertook for the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, which the author considers his most powerful and damning book. We learn of the machinations involved in dealings with the KGB, as well as the convoluted, intricate schemes Solzhenitsyn and his allies used to transmit, hide and recover pieces of his work. We are more removed from this half of the novel, perhaps because we cannot rely on the emotional connection that the friendship between Tvardovsky and Solzhenitsyn provided in the first half. This does not weaken the text, it remains a compelling account of struggle in the face of insurmountable odds. One thing that Solzhenitsyn never explicitly states - but which runs through the entire piece - is that he has a strong feeling of patriotism towards Russia. Not the USSR Russia, but the grand fatherland, the vanished grandeur of his home. Many times, he could have fled to the West to publish at his leisure. Many times, he could have published his vast unpublished works in America and elsewhere. But he stayed with Russia for as long as possible, attempting always to publish first in his home country before anywhere else. He was the cancer from the inside. He needed to show Russia that she was sick; foreigners came second. A compelling aspect of Solzhenitsyn's work is that he does not indulge in grandiloquent passages of destiny. Nor does he invoke some triumphant mandate of heaven that requires him to write. No, Solzhenitsyn simply states, many times, that what he needs to do with his life is write what he has seen, what he knows, what he thinks. Does a doctor brag of his ability to diagnose illness? No, and nor does Solzhenitsyn when he identifies Russia's vast sickness. Perhaps his talents were the only ones capable of correctly examining the illness, perhaps his skill was the only one capable of showing Russia - and the world - how to heal, but Solzhenitsyn does not seek to glorify himself. He writes, for he is but a humble author. Would that we all possessed such a pen.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I LIKE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, BUT I LOVE THIS BOOK THE BEST,
By
This review is from: Oak and the Calf (Paperback)
Don't get me wrong, Gulag Archipelago is one of my favorite all-time works. It's place in world history is secure. But the Oak and the Calf is a personal history of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (arguably the greatest living writer in the world).At a time when the punishment for owning a copy of Gulag was DEATH, Solzhenitsyn was not afraid to stand up to the Soviet system ALONE AND UNARMED (He has a lot in common with Mahatma Ghandi). When you are armed with truth and you stand firm, it is Evil itself that must eventually back down. How did Solzhenitsyn gain so much courage? How did he handle the Soviet system without becoming a corpse? How was he able to write his first several books while still a prisoner in the prison camps? What kept him going when things looked the most bleak? We can learn much about commitment, will-power, and dedication to principles of truth by seeing how Solzhenitsyn did it. By reading this book, Solzhenitsyn can be your mentor and teach you through his example. --George Stancliffe
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
St. Al and the Dragon,
By
This review is from: Oak and the Calf: A Memoir (Paperback)
I had been reading this book, off and on, for a few months when word came that Alexander Solzhenitsyn had died. What an improbable miracle, that he died outside Moscow at the age of 89, of old age! Surely he would have been glad to know that would be his fate, as a young captain heading west to engage the German invaders, as a new inmate in the belly of the Gulag (like Agent Jones -- or was it Smith? -- being swallowed by the insect at the end of Men in Black), as a cancer patient a few years later -- or during the period covered by this memoir, a knight in the shining armor of truth, facing Leviathan with nothing but the "sword of the spirit," as St. Paul put it. (Or even later, in exile in Vermont.)It was a deliberate, considered engagement, as Solzhenitsyn shows, though he did not always follow what he saw as his own best instincts. The world knows him best today for two books: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (check Amazon sales), and The Gulag Archipelago. (My own favorite is First Circle, however.) This memoir is more or less framed by the publication of those two works -- the first of which made him famous, the second which forced the dragon to cough him out, and finally brought that dragon to its knees. (I prefer not to compare the Soviet Union to a bear -- I like bears.) Solzhenitsyn describes the contest blow-by-blow, guessing what various aparachniks are thinking (to the extent he gives them credit for so exalted an activity), "allies," in particular the poet and publisher Tvardovsky, described with consummate humanity, and his own chess game, played as it was with most the opposing pieces hidden. I'm not sure that this book is meant for "foreigners" like myself. The writer is dialoguing, if not with himself, or his inner daemon, with the Russian people of his day. This may be why I haven't devoured it, as with one of Solzhenitsyn's novels -- which are written for Russia, too, but also for the ages, for man as man -- but take it in pieces. It's a long book, too -- not light reading, but meaty reading, and with lots of tangents. One of the glories of Solzhenitsyn's writing is the sense that ghosts surround him -- a passion of duty, Hamlet but sane because the Holy Ghost is also there, he is not speaking or living on his own behalf, but on behalf of those who died, and of a nation whose soul was lost. He seems to hear the voice that Socrates heard, as he was waiting to die: "The most important thing is not life, but the good life . . . one must not give way or retreat or leave one's post . . . Do not value either your children or your life or anything else more than goodness, in order that when you arrive in Hades you may have all this as your defense before the rulers there." Not in Hades, but in heaven, for whatever his sins may have been, I think he will hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant." He was also a great writer, by the way!
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