Solzhenitsyn's Maxim

"(...)The Russian novelist and famous dissident has made almost no public appearances since returning to his homeland in 1994, and his privacy is jealously guarded. That is why his return to public life – in an interview on the Rossiya (channel 2) television station, generally regarded as pro-Putin – has attracted such attention. For Solzhenitsyn to come out of his cocoon, a sort of self-imposed internal exile in which he has been contemptuously silent on the subject of politics, it must be important, and, as it turns out, Solzhenitsyn is worried about the survival of the Russian nation. Russia, he says, could face a Ukrainian-style uprising financed by foreign interests:

"An Orange Revolution may take place if tensions between the public and the authorities flare up and money begins flowing to the opposition."

He didn't say, at least in the excerpts I saw, where the money would be flowing from, but – I ask you – where else would it come from except Washington, D.C.? The U.S. government has brokered a whole series of color-coded "revolutions," from Georgia to Ukraine, in Kyrgyzstan and now in Belarus, and it makes sense that they will ultimately home in on the object of their determined encirclement: Putin's Russia.

Solzhenitsyn agreed with his interlocutor that Russia has freedom of expression, but these are only "signs." "One sign does not mean democracy." Western accusations that Russia is "backsliding" into authoritarianism – a staple of the neoconservatives these days – have to be put in context: "'It is often said that democracy is being taken away from us and that there is a threat to our democracy. What democracy is threatened? Power of the people? We don't have it,' he told Rossiya, the state-run channel. 'We have nothing that resembles democracy. We are trying to build democracy without self-governance. Before anything, we must begin to build a system so that the people can manage their own destinies.'"

Local government is the key to understanding how the liberalization of Russian society is going to proceed, he averred: "Democracy cannot be imposed from above, by clever laws or wise politicians. It must not be forced [on people] like a cap. Democracy can only grow upwards, like a plant. Democracy must begin at the local level, within the local self-government."

Nor can it be exported at gunpoint: "'Democracy is not worth a brass farthing if it is being installed by bayonets.' Taking clear aim at Washington, he said that over a decade ago the U.S. 'launched an absurd project to impose democracy all over the world. (...)'" Justin Raimundo