Original subtitles

Taissia Zakharovna Shcherbak,

daughter of a Kuban peasant.

A photo made in 1912.

Isaac Semenovich Solzhenitsyn,

from a peasant family.

Stavropol region.

He volunteers in World War I.

Is decorated for bravery.

This handsome couple,

Isaac and Taissia -

marry in 1917.

Soon Isaac dies.

Sasha, their son.

Sasha Solzhenitsyn

is born

on 11 December, 1918.

In winter, a harsh season.

THE KNOT

Only a few years ago

Sasha used to go to church with his mother.

Now the churches are gone,

he's a Komsomol member,

he and his mother live in Rostov...

At school, he heads his class.

He likes football and amateur theatre.

He has good friends,

though later many of them will be forced to betray him.

But this has yet to come.

Sasha Solzhenitsyn is enthusiastic about Socialism.

He believes Marxism, Leninism to be the people's fate.

At a very early age, in his school years,

he becomes aware

It was his first marriage.

Not, perhaps, a very happy one.

In 1941, with a degree in Physics and Mathematics

from Rostov University,

he leaves for the front.

An open face.

A Russian, a peasant type, on the whole.

There are thousands such faces.

But no longer millions.

It seems he wrote his first stories at the front in 1942.

An artilleryman.

No coward,

he could have been killed many times.

His wit and honesty saved his soldiers' lives,

by the end of war he was a captain,

with several awards.

He was 27, alive to all he had to face.

In 1945 he was arrested right at the command post.

They'd had enough reading his frank letters to a schoolmate.

From 1945 on, and for more than fifty years

this man would not have a single hour of quiet life:

The obtuse regime, his fatal disease,

the silence of millions of witnesses,

the envy of the guild, his exile, his perseverance.

A photo for the outer world, in a suit...

...lent by the prison.

In 1953

he was assigned to "eternal residence"

in a remote Kazakh village.

Just think over these words: "For eternal residence".

He lived here, at the edge of the desert,

taught at school,

fell ill, secretly continued to write.

His courage was so great,

his concern for the life so unselfish,

that in a cancer hospital

he studied oncology,

read very, very much,

and he wrote, wrote, wrote every day...

It seems as if God looked after him during all these months

and loving him,

He made him continue to bear the heaviest burden,

He saved Alexander from death.

Solzhenitsyn would say he was alive as long as he kept writing.

Natalia Svetlova.

Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova.

In 1970 she becomes his wife.

She took this photo.

His eyes.

His face.

The small photo is taken by him.

Her face. Her eyes.

Their family would prove to be uncommonly close.

From 1970 to 1973 three sons were born to them:

Yermolay, Ignat, Stepan.

The photo taken in America, in Vermont,

after his expulsion from the USSR.

This provincial American town

gave the Russian family refuge for 18 years.

Yermolay, Ignat, Stepan

went to an American school,

but every day

their parents taught them at home:

Physics, mathematics and Russian.

The adults decided the boys should be Russian.

They grew up with love and discipline,

and soon they were already at their typewriters,

typing their father's works.

One more Vermont photo.

Center, Mitya,

Natalia's son by her first marriage.

Mitya suddenly died from heart failure.

A young man, kind, loved by everybody.

Yermolay's a Sinologist,

Ignat a pianist,

Stepan an architect.

Many parents, seeing this photo,

will feel heart-ache thinking of the unfortunate fate

of their own children.

But not many are able to make a difficult decision

and to stick to it, so as to secure a decent future for themselves

and their children.

Solzhenitsyn seeks harmony,

but harmony is achieved only through self-sacrifice.

According to him, the family

is the most important part of this harmony.

And there is also work, and there is his homeland.

His return was absolutely inevitable,

not because someone awaited him,

but because he was confident

that he would return to Russia before he died.

By 1994 he at last accomplished the dream of his youth:

A book about the Russian revolution.

And what a book!

Ten volumes of the "Red Wheel".

The reality of the revolution, extracted from non-existence.

A book for the future.

Like many of his other works,

this book has not been read by his compatriots.

It went unnoticed.

Who knows - perhaps they are afraid

to look into their dreary future.

Had they read it,

they might have avoided such a dreary future.

The Solzhenitsyns took their things,

packed their enormous library,

their huge archives

and, in the summer of 1994,

left for Russia.

I don't know about you,

but I felt guilty.

I felt guilty that we had nothing to receive him with,

that we had nothing to give him.

- He didn't come for an award.

- He must get something from society.

- But he does.

Not from the society, but from life.

It's much more important to give...

...than to receive. It makes you much happier.

You reward yourself by giving. - But he is an artist.

He must receive first. - He must give.

- He will give anyhow. He can't do otherwise.

Strange as it seems, he should receive

a lot more than he what gives.

- He does.

He gets wonderful letters.

He knows there are many people who

are grateful and who bow low to him. He knows that.

He doesn't live and work for rewards, he can't do otherwise.

Anyway, we are happy at home.

- Then may God help you.

- Thank you.

We do feel this help.

- We can't help much.

- You can.

- We helped so little.

In tough times we didn't help.

- We're strong.

- Yes, you are.

But those who saw everything and did nothing to help,

or the little they could, what should they do now?

- Many people were trying to help us, many did help.

Many of them are like brothers to us, up to now.

They aren't all here,

some are abroad, the people who saved the archives.

They're our brothers.

In no way do we feel lonely or offended.

He feels no bitterness.

- I see. He may have no feeling of bitterness, but we have.

- I have?

- No, neither of you, but we have.

I remember very well the general silence when he was banished.

- This is what they can't forgive.

There are people who know well that they were silent,

but they respect and love him for he spoke for them.

But his fellow writers, the majority of them,

can't forgive just that.

His words made their silence audible.

Never mind it all. One can't go beyond one's self.

No doubt.

Since 1917 and until now

people seem to be convulsed.

I'm looking at Natalia, and listening,

if a floor board will not creak. It is his study above.

We'll soon go for a walk.

The forest is all around.

A quiet day.

The summer is over.

How strange.

The intelligentsia,

all the time pondering over the questions:

"Why?", "What to do?"

Do not notice the very existence of their great compatriot

who has already given

his answers to many questions.

He's been thinking

a lot for a long time about our life,

he's asked for advice,

he asked many people, some of whom went very long ago.

I recall:

It probably was Akhmatova who said about him:

"A torchbearer. Fresh, energetic, young, happy.

We forget that such people still exist.

Eyes like jewels. Strict.

Hears himself speak."

Young, happy...

This "young and happy" man

was awarded the Nobel prize in 1970.

That's it.

He became untouchable, no matter what they say.

Thank God for that.

Leave him in peace.

Let him write.

In his Nobel lecture he asked:

"What can literature

do against the onslaught of overt violence?

Remember: Violence doesn't live alone,

and can't live alone.

It is inevitably interlaced with lies.

Violence has nothing but lies to hide it,

and lies have nothing but violence to keep them up.

Anybody who has ever proclaimed violence to be his method

must inexorably make lying his principle.

And the only thing for any ordinary courageous man to do

is to abstain from lies.

May them - lies and violence -

reign in the world, but not through myself.

Lies can withstand many things in the world,

but not art.

When lies disappear,

bare violence will show its ugliness."

How long winter is...

It predisposes to sleepy contemplation.

One, two, three, four months a year...

Centuries after centuries -

winter... winter... sleep... sleep.

No.

After all, one has at least to begin reading...

...Stepan Aleksandrovich,

Yermolay Aleksandrovich, Ignati Aleksandrovich -

they are his true happiness,

his personal happiness.

I hear his steps.

He's walked out of his study,

he's coming to see me.

- There are mushrooms there.

- Yes, mushrooms.

- Toadstools?

- You know, I'm not a great expert,

I'm a Southerner.

All my youth there, I didn't see a single mushroom.

So I'm no expert.

- Then you must be especially fond of green.

- When I returned to the Moscow region

from my Kazakhstan exile...

In Kazakhstan...

we always had sun, there was continual exhausting heat.

- Dryness.

- And when I came to a forest, after the rain,

I was stupefied...

unable to recover my senses, to render such beauty.

After a real desert without anything but camel thorns.

Nothing else.

A cloudy day is such a pleasure, and such a delight.

I can't live without direct contact with the earth,

I can't stand many-storied buildings.

I feel as if I were in a prison there.

I specially noticed that Abakumov hated green.

I wonder why?

- Yes, why?

Because he was an anti-natural man.

- Anti-natural?

- We can walk side by side here.

- Anti-natural... What does that mean?

- Anti-natural...

Well, it means he who is against nature.

A cruel scoundrel.

He was not the only one.

- People become so or are born so?

- Both.

We have...

A tremendous importance...

...must be given to our natural qualities. Tremendous.

But the way they will develop...

depends on us. And on circumstances.

- Are there circumstances, which man doesn't control?

- I think in any case a lot depends on man.

Not everything, but a lot.

- Does man realise that he is a scoundrel?

- No, he doesn't.

- Never?

- No, one can't say so.

The greatest Shakespearean villains do realize it,

but they always find something to justify themselves.

Here is a bench, we can sit down.

- It's wet?

- There'll be two more benches on the way.

- We can sit here.

- Oh, how good!

- We...

We are highly responsible for the development

of the innate qualities nature bestows us.

Yes, highly.

The rationalist belief that only conditions are to blame,

was something Dostoevsky laughed at.

There is no justification.

I saw it,

I've been through war,

prison,

cancer hospital,

everywhere conditions were hard, cruel, incredible.

Yet people behaved differently,

fought in different ways.

- I accept that if a man is cruel, but has by his side somebody

who is kind, who doesn't allow him to cultivate cruelty,

then it doesn't develop.

- It's good if there is a man like that at hand,

but saying there was no such person at hand

is no sort of justification.

The absence of someone who could pull me up,

who could help me,

cannot justify my acts.

A man must understand

his own ways by himself,

and he himself must come to understand his natural capacities.

And then, you see...

It isn't easy at all for a man

to understand himself.

I must say,

that I look at it with surprise now,

as I have been granted longevity.

From 80 years on one may call it longevity.

In our unfortunate Russia even 70 is longevity.

It's wrong.

In longevity one finds new

possibilities and capacities

that I can speak about.

One of them is...

that...

recalling one's whole life again and again,

one discovers things one had never been able to discern

while life still ran on.

We...

We spend the greater part of our life in action.

And action prevents us from a quiet understanding

of any nuances in life.

Old age gives...

some extra space for the soul

to grasp it all.

This is why we don't always have the right

to bear judgement on other's acts.

Just because we underestimate men

who did not understand their own acts,

as they had neither the time, nor the circumstances

to do so.

- Even if their acts were extremely cruel?

Again this word.

- Yes, I see you emphasize this very much.

- I'd like to understand,

why the cruelty of man

is something I worry so much about.

When it must be so enjoyable,

so gratifying to commit acts of kindness, to compromise,

to listen to people, to help.

- Not only this. It is human to make a career,

it is human to look for success,

to show one's worth, to become distinguished,

to satisfy one's aspirations, to satisfy love, -

dozens of ways, all this is not yet cruelty.

Don't consider it as cruelty.

It will give you, how to say,

a flat picture.

Cruelty and kindness are the two poles, the extremes,

but the whole spectrum should not be reduced to this.

- Let's go. - As you wish.

- To the next bench? - To the next? All right.

The weather is fine, fine.

We're going to the place,

And here it happened. I've written a miniature about it.

I'll show you the place.

It's such a pity our friend...

...ordered the remains sawn off and destroyed.

It was really incredibly beautiful!

There are two things of truly perfect beauty,

the Universe and Man.

- He's beautiful?

- Not beautiful, perfect.

He is such a perfect creature,

possessed with so many vital resources,

so as to overcome all illness and danger.

It's hard even for an atheist,

who never thinks who he is, to imagine.

One need not search too far,

it suffices to read about any function of the body,

how it works.

It's amazing.

Do we live only from eating and drinking,

and is that the way we increase our energy? No.

- Then why do we kill each other so much?

So willingly?

Why do men live in eternal combat?

- If there were billions of similar creatures,

they'd be sure to compete,

just as much.

This is the way of nature.

Even trees strangle other trees when they grow up.

Would you ask them to strive for universal peace?

Here we are. Here was a huge lime.

You see, it's sawn off.

A huge lime.

And the lightning struck it,

and split it in two.

One piece of it fell on those trees,

the other hung here.

For a day the split part stood there.

Then it fell on those trees.

They remained like that for 2 years.

They were sawn off just two months ago.

There were pieces of burnt bark scattered about here.

The lightning passed through and went into the earth.

- How old was this tree?

- I can't say for sure. One has to count and count.

- The rings.

Is it true that each ring is a year?

- Yes, but you must know how to count them.

You must know what is a ring, and what isn't.

I wouldn't try.

Sure, we have trees here that were

already there before the revolution.

- How old is this tree?

- Who knows... - 100 years, more?

- I think less, but who knows.

We have such old pines here.

And in Vermont we had very thick trees.

Maybe from before the foundation of the USA.

There's another bench.

Let's sit down to look at the park.

What I like here...

...though it's not a real village,

but still... - Over there?

- Yes, they have small plots of land, and cocks.

It's nice that we can hear them crowing here.

I'm so fond of crowing! One of the loveliest sounds.

It is so multi-toned, vibrating,

with a complex spectrum,

and there's such...

vitality,

such love of life!

Especially in the day-time,

I mean the midday crowing.

I'm fond of cocks.

In America I was struck by two things in nature.

Their pines are strange.

They are not so slender, not so far-reaching

Here we have bare columns for 4/5ths of the height,

then the crown.

In America it's quite different: They have branches lower down.

It's a pine, but not our kind.

And then,

there are almost no song-birds in America.

It's incredible.

Here in spring whole forests sing.

Everything sings. In America it is silent.

Only two or three birds sing.

Fine birds, but none sing.

There's a wonderful blue bird, a sky-blue bird there.

Lovely, but it doesn't sing.

There's a pigeon like that - a melancholy pigeon.

"Tragic pigeon".

Actually, it's not a pigeon.

- Why sad?

Too few birds sing there.

My feelings towards nature were somehow different in America.

I no longer had the lively affinity I used to have.

Not a single miniature was written there.

Not a single one, during all my 20 years abroad.

I did write them before I was banished, now I write them again.

Not there.

It's most strange.

The same beautiful sky, the same clouds, the same light. Why?

Among...

...other features of longevity, of old age -

it is...

it is a state that depends on...

how you understand and expect death.

That fear of death is so typical

not only in the West, -

all prosperous people feel it.

Fear of death obscures the mind

unless you attain a state, when you lose all fear

and deliver yourself unto God's will.

Death is a natural transition

from one state to another.

- To another life? - Yes, to another life.

Russian peasants always understood that and died in peace.

Then...

there's a harmony.

You live those last years in harmony,

with trust in God,

and in the sort of death or disease He will send us.

- Should man ask God for it?

- You don't ask for anything, just live in union with nature.

Why are early deaths so tragic?

Because when life is interrupted artificially,

to understand himself, his life,

to understand anything. It just cuts him off.

There's also another matter.

Too many people of my age are already gone.

It creates a feeling of a semi-desert.

Still other people, other ages,

you recall them one by one, and where are they all?

They are no more, and you miss them.

You see, all religions are against cruelty, all of them,

but cruelty remains.

That's what they're for:

So that men can have a shield, a brake.

Repentance was so common in Russia.

Now it doesn't exist any more.

Now you'll never make anybody repent.

I appealed for it

in my article.

Everybody just laughed.

Whatever should repentance be for?

When in some of my works

I give way to my own repentance,

the only result is: "Look, look, he himself is like this."

No one thinks:

"Let me do it myself. I will try."

Nobody cares.

Today's crooks aren't expected to repent.

If it were only cruelty... How about greed?

Is greed a lesser trouble than cruelty?

Greed destroys the human race. Greed destroys everybody.

Man can't stop and say: "That will do.

"I've got enough.

I'm perfectly satisfied."

No, he wants more and more.

Greed is terrible. Terrible.

- How odd. Everyone knows it's no good,

and yet... - It isn't 'everyone knows'.

- They know greed is an evil.

- Well, it is generally considered as morally condemnable.

We'll take another path,

also narrow enough.

We won't go along the road. - No.

- We'll turn to the left.

Let's go. Yes, little by little.

- It must be beautiful in winter. - Yes, it is.

- Do you get frosts? - Of course.

Of course. Sometimes - 25 �C. - It must be quiet...

in the snowy evening, quiet and peaceful. - Yes.

In Vermont there's still more snow,

though it is further south.

A savage continent. When it suddenly begins to snow

it comes down in huge amounts.

More snow there than here.

In Moscow, after all, there are thaws.

- Why does winter bring a feeling of peace?

- That's only when you are warm,

not when you have to break frozen ground with a pick-axe.

- Once it was...

The lowest temperature at which I have ever worked was -35 �C.

It fell to our lot.

Sometimes they cancelled work at - 35�C and sometimes at - 40�C.

That day there were fluctuations of one degree.

We went.

- 35�C, what a horror.

I carried a barrow with a mate.

- Didn't you curse life?

- No. It was just one such day

when I got the idea for my "Ivan Denisovich".

Just write about only this, I thought.

Just one day, when nothing terrible happened.

Nothing sensational. Quite a normal day.

That's what I imagined. - In such a frost?

- 35�C.

It was only once when I worked at such a temperature.

I was also doing some stonework,

and I became rather a good mason.

I would be glad to go to Ekibastuz,

to see my "lanterns", as they call them.

Such triangles hang over workshops there,

and here all is glazed in.

Stepped stonework,

upwards, like that, and from the other side.

I know where my lanterns are, I wish I could see how they are.

- Do people know they are yours? - No.

They wanted to rename the main lane there

"Solzhenitsyn Avenue."

But it created such a row!

- Why?

- My God! Before I was hated by the communists, then...

by the Kazakhs,

because I said Kazakhstan ought to unite with us,

as some regions were entirely Russian.

They didn't forgive me for that. Condemned me to death.

- The Kazakhs?

- A Kazakh nationalist organisation.

They can't forgive me.

It's a pity.

I had even a whole Kazakh class,

I was a form master. All the pupils

were little Kazakhs,

and we got along very well together.

They were unpretentious boys.

Really, nationalism fools everybody.

- Beautiful pines.

- Sorry? - Such beautiful pines.

- You'll see the best ones from my study.

- A tree is the most perfect thing in the world.

More perfect than man...

- Yes. - We simply don't know it. - No, we don't.

- What is this?

What does it tell us? What does it mean?

This long trunk,

its roots, its crown, its swinging?

What does it mean to die standing and not fall?

- Yes, you are right. It is perfection.

Yes, it is.

THE KNOT