Solzhenitsyn and Christianity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Some caveats need to be expressed about Michael Brander's article "Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the West" (March 2005).

In the first place, Solzhenitsyn's prime and profound importance as a European writer of the first stature arises not from his essays and occasional speeches but from the series of great novels in which he presents an analysis of a diversity of human characters comparable with that of Shakespeare.

As with the English playwright, so with the Russian storyteller, we should be very wary of any attempts to harness such wisdom, magnanimity, insight and compassion to particular ideologies, be they religious or political.

And that, I fear, is what Brander is doing. A close examination shows that most of the authorities he quotes approvingly are Catholics. It is from that perspective that his defence of Solzhenitsyn is made. "The traditionalist view can be summed up as seeking a society which reflects the Christian religion in its social forms, economics and politics."

For Brander, Christianity is a religion that seeks to "lead and influence" the world, a faith which was the foundation of "the thousand year civilisation preceding our era", the "Christendom of the Middle Ages".

Brander states that Solzhenitsyn "makes it clear from the start that there can be no ...