Repeatedly Solzenicyn has paid tribute to Tolstoj as the grand master of Realism in the nineteenth century and as a philosopher concerned with the moral service of art. The concept of the artist as teacher and conscience of the nation has acquired major importance for Solzenicyn and has given particular coloring to his assessment of Tolstoj.¹ As a writer determined to bear witness to the history of injustice in the Soviet Union, Solzenicyn perceives a heritage in the role Tolstoj assumed in tsarist Russia in the latter part of his career.

The First Circle (1968) pursues the moral task of the writer in a manner strongly reminiscent of Tolstoj's Xadzi-Murat (1896-1904; pub. 1912). In the novella Tolstoj presents imperial Russia of the 1850s as a ruthless power bent on assimilating or exterminating the relatively primitive culture of the Chechens, and he gives a central place to the condemnatory portrait of Nicholas I in order to show the essence of the state. As represented in The First Circle, Stalin displays a psychology akin to Nicholas' mentality (Feuer, 134), but the similarity between the works of Solzenicyn and Tolstoj does not end here. In conveying the nature of Stalin, Solzenicyn relies on stylistic techniques used by Tolstoj as well, and in the structure of The First Circle the portrait of the dictator serves a function equivalent to the function of the portrait of Nicholas in Xadzi-Murat, In thought and language each tyrant appears as the guiding spirit of a rationalistic political system and stands in opposition to shapes of mind which resist the characteristic mode of the state. By placing the mind of the tyrant at the center of attention, Tolstoj and Solzenicyn both explore an ultimate, shared concern with the relationship between politics and language.

Xadzi-Murat focuses on the conflict between the savage and the Russian state. The story stands as recollection within a frame which establishes identification between Xadzi-Murat and the crushed but tenacious thistle plant. Within the main body of the text, however, Tolstoj operates against this somewhat sentimental metaphor of a mutilated creature of nature and gives remarkable insight into a process which Max Weber analyzed as the shift from traditional to bureaucratic forms of authority.² Rather than express a pastoral vision,³ Tolstoj recreates the complex psychic being of Xadzi-Murat as a charismatic figure, shaped by a pre-scientific, proto-state society. As the diametrical opposite, Nicholas appears as the rationalistic, bureaucratic leader who bears ultimate responsibility for the death of the savage. On the basis of extensive research into Chechen culture and the reign of Nicholas I,⁴ Tolstoj makes the Tsar and Xad i-Murat stand forth as the representatives of two cultures or cultural "languages." In an expanded sense of the term, the language of the Russian state is comprised of distinctive codes, procedures, modes of thought and communication. Tolstoj shows this language as the embodiment of cruelty, mendacity, and artificiality. The contrasting language of Xadzi-Murat is personal, authentically engaged with human realities and expressive of an aesthetic sensibility.

In the opening chapters Xadzi-Murat (in flight from Šamil') emerges as a charismatic figure within the context of his distinctive culture. The power of Xadzi-Murat is conveyed largely through the quality of relationships that obtain between him and those loyal followers who risk danger by helping him in the house of a village and on the journey to the Russians' fort. Tolstoj also penetrates the mind of Xadzi-Murat to reveal a confidence in the mysterious working of benevolent fate: the savage feels great faith in his fortune and dreams of triumph over Šamil'. By showing Xadzi-Murat in interaction with the other Chechens and by touching the deepest level of his mind, Tolstoj immediately conveys a powerful impression of authority as a God-given attribute.

In subsequent episodes, when Xadzi-Murat places himself in the hands of the Russians in hope of receiving assistance against his enemy Šamil', the charismatic fugitive leaves the context of primitive society and enters a bureaucratic system in which power derives from office. In contrast to rejected variants, which gave a detailed chronological treatment of Xadzi-Murat's entire life, the final text allots most space to the critical period spent among the Russians; and through a so-called "peep-show method" Tolstoj projects a multi-faceted picture of the savage in an alien realm.⁵ Xadzi-Murat's inability to speak Russian helps to define his distance from the characteristic mode of the state. The illiterate savage cannot understand most of the words spoken in officialdom (French as well as Russian); instead of communicating verbally, he often conveys the truth with his eyes and gestures. Xadzi-Murat's longest utterance is the autobiography which the Russian interpreter transcribes for the Tsar (chapters XI and XIII). In telling his story in his own words, Xadzi-Murat employs diction which is concrete and forthright (occasionally even vulgar), he does not follow complex syntactical patterns typical of standard literary Russian, and he makes effective use of colorful aphoristic phrases characteristic of a folk idiom ("in body he was strong as a bull and brave as a lion, but in spirit he was weak as water"). Tolstoj strove to fashion an effective, distinctive idiom for Xadzi-Murat (Sergeenko, 604-5) and pointedly contrasts the autobiography with the actual official document written (originally in French) in the chancellary style by Voroncov (chapter XIV).

As an alien within Russian culture, Xadzi-Murat cannot comprehend the split between "public" as opposed to "private" dimensions of being, and accordingly he is snubbed by officials on social occasions when he tries to discuss his strategy for rescuing his family from Samil'. Ultimately the charismatic savage is thwarted by the efforts of the Russians to channel his complex, fully human project into the prescribed legalistic procedures and forms. As defined by Tolstoj, Xadzi-Murat's cultural language conveys a noble, humane spirit at odds with corrupt civilized men: Xadzi-Murat's speech itself, his manner of dress, his love for his family, his religious faith, the barbaric grandeur of his traditions of war, his appreciation of the beauty of nature, and his response to the Chechen songs all combine to project an integrity and authenticity which clash absolutely with the rationale of the Russian state.

As Tolstoj explores the character of the various Russians, he constructs a hierarchy of moral corruption. In this hierarchy the old parents of the soldier Avdeev stand closest to Xadzi-Murat and farthest from the pinnacle of bureaucratic power. In chapter VIII Tolstoj represents the existence of the peasant not only by giving attention to details of dress and by describing at length the collective work of threshing grain, but also by capturing the distinctive idiom of the village. In Xadzi-Murat the peasants' speech and their illiteracy isolate them from the characteristic modes of discourse of aristocrats (who speak French as well as standard Russian) and bureaucrats (the official notification of the beloved son's death is couched in the hackneyed rhetoric of the state and must be relayed orally by a clerk who can read). Within the Russian army, Tolstoj focuses upon Butler, a congenial, morally weak cadet who finds romance in the "poetry of warfare" (voinnstvennaja poèzija) in the Caucasus. In contrast to the traditions of the Chechens, which Tolstoj represents in chapter XXIII, this false "poetry" consists of drunkenness, gambling, vulgar sexual escapades, and impersonation of the natives (chapter XXIV). Butler operates fully in accord with this code of the typical Russian soldier and eventually finds himself gazing with morbid fascination at Xadzi-Murat's severed head, which a fellow officer has brought back to the fort as proof that the savage is dead. Although Butler had developed a friendship with Xadzi-Murat during his stay among the Russians, he now shows blind acceptance of the notion that "war is war" and acquiesces in the state's policy of subjugating or exterminating the native tribes of the Caucasus.

At the top of the hierarchy stands Nicholas as the embodiment of cruel, self-aggrandizing bureaucratic power. In chapter XV Tolstoj first shows the Tsar's quarters at the palace, where everything has been arranged to create an impression of imperial grandeur. As an actor on this stage, Nicholas appears as a repulsive, dissipated figure whose "senile sensuality" emerges as the truth behind a mask of religious rectitude and the dignity of a statesman. Since Nicholas himself can no longer see behind the public facade, he is enveloped completely by an aura of inauthenticity. He exists by performing appropriate roles (brilliant general, devout sovereign, family man) and by surrounding himself with subordinates who will play to his deluded self-image. (Between the two extremes of Nicholas and Xadzi-Murat, Tolstoj in chapter XIX represents Samil' as a traditional leader of a proto-state society who is losing authenticity and learning to operate by the duplicitous practices of modern statecraft.) Nicholas' courtiers are skilled in reading the exterior signs which indicate the mood of the tyrant, and they are quick to tell him what he wants to hear. In particular, they play to his vanity about being a military leader of genius. All in all, Nicholas regards himself (in the mirror and in his mind's eye) as the savior of Russia: "Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he asks himself; and with an air of martyrdom he recognizes the need to terrorize people who dare to think that they "could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them!"

The true inner dimension of Nicholas emerges tellingly as a matter of language: in writing a cruel, hypocritical order which will result in a man's execution, the Tsar makes orthographic mistakes which signify total corruption of thought and moral fiber. Xadzi-Murat displays keen insight into the relationship between corrupt language and corrupt politics, but Tolstoj's conception cannot be extracted from the representation of Nicholas alone. Xadzi-Murat is a perfectly realized structure in which the architectonics and the stylistic nuances draw a complex pattern of linkages. The chapter on Nicholas stands almost exactly in the middle of the text—as a center of the rationalistic power of the state. The Tsar's mental dynamics radiate outward and are made evident everywhere. His spiteful orders to continue attacks against the Chechen villages are translated into murder and destruction in the next chapter; the old General Voroncov appears as a little Nicholas who also will not call things by their real names; the official communiques about the death of the soldier Avdeev hide human suffering; the impersonal document written by Voroncov cannot convey the unique, full truth of Xadzi-Murat's project to save his family. Through juxtapositions and particulars of style, Tolstoj explores a central antithesis between the rationalistic, bureaucratic mode of the state and the personal, concrete mode of consciousness embodied most fully in Xadzi-Murat. The language of the Russian state (bureaucratic idiom, legalistic procedures, policy of military aggression) stands forth as a complex structure which is used to dominate or exterminate an alien shape of mind (the savage, the peasant).

In form and function the three chapters on Stalin in The First Circle closely approximate the model of Xadzi-Murat. The data come from the Soviet period and corroborate information contained in Xrušcev's secret speech and memoirs, Djilas' Conversations with Stalin, and Medvedev's Let History Judge,⁶ but Solzenicyn selects and assembles details in much the way that Tolstoj does in treating Nicholas. At the beginning of the first chapter ("The Birthday-Hero") he makes Stalin's quarters speak of his personality and his reign of terror. Initially the tyrant appears in the inner sanctum, which embodies his paranoia. Later he moves into the large daytime office that has been stage-designed as a setting for public contacts. After describing the small, sparsely decorated night office, Solzenicyn focuses upon the physical appearance of Stalin himself. Whereas Nicholas is dissipated, Stalin is decrepit, and this important difference in psychology⁷ lends distinctive coloring to each of the portraits of the tyrants. In Tolstoj's representation, the Tsar tries to fill the void of his existence with sexual escapades, while Solzenicyn's Stalin has senile longings for immortality. Despite this difference in conception, the means of characterization are identical: description of the exterior moves toward revealing an inner dimension which is at variance with an official image. As in the case of Nicholas, Stalin can no longer distinguish the truth behind his public image, and in particular he cherishes the notion of himself as a military leader of genius. Subordinates display the behavior of the courtiers of Nicholas: Abakumov reads exterior signs to ascertain Stalin's mood, and his thoughts and words take shape through a mechanism that tries to register the desires of the dictator. Stalin duplicates the Tsar's habit of contemplating his greatness in the mirror, and he also conducts a similar kind of dialogue about himself within his head. In the same spirit of martyrdom that Tolstoj attributes to Nicholas, Stalin believes that he simply must "suffer another twenty years for the sake of humanity" and is outraged by independent thinking ("Better socialism? In some other way than Stalin's?").

In Solzenicyn's portrait the idiom of the tyrant announces the total inner corruption. Nicholas' lie about capital punishment calls attention to itself through sub-standard orthography, while Stalin's Georgian accent is approximated through incorrect, phonetic spelling. On a superficial level of the text this device signifies the more fundamental distortions in the thought, language, and moral character of the tyrant. In a distinctive manner Solzenicyn examines the process whereby politics mutilates language in the chapter entitled "Language is a Tool of Production."⁸ Here he parodies the turgid style of Stalin's writing (cataloguing, repetition which adds no new semantic content) and shows how his muddled mind does violence to words. The very concept of language has little real importance in the mind of Stalin. He merely wants to aggrandize himself by making "his indelible contribution to a science other than philosophy or history." In deciding to end the Cikobava-Marr debate about the relationship between language and superstructure, Stalin proceeds in a purely mechanical way. He views "philology" as "grammar," which in turn is perceived as a quasimathematical set of relations that can be manipulated and used to generate formulas. Within such a conceptual framework he brings various clichés into alignment as a structure which is internally coherent and makes no appeal beyond itself in order to substantiate its "message." In parodying the efforts of Stalin as a writer, Solzenicyn thus seeks to reveal a quite terrifying mode of abstraction which operates in isolation from human concerns and transforms language into an instrument of political control.

In a way that is analogous to Tolstoj's representation of Nicholas, Solzenicyn defines Stalin as the embodiment of the totalitarian state and poses relationships to other types of consciousness which are more or less distant from the dictator's. Within Stalin's realm of thought stand all the members of the establishment who serve him. These creatures include the apparatciki as well as the slick literary critic Lanskij, who uses the computertechnician's language ("increment of victims") to speak of the inequities in the Soviet system of justice. With the exception of Galaxov, the members of the establishment are short-sighted and seek no philosophical grounding for their existence. They appear almost as emanations, as puppets who take their cues and make Stalin's words their own in a relatively mechanical way.

In contrast to these types of characters, the high-minded Communist Rubin more complexly displays Stalin's cast of mind. Rubin's background, scholarly pursuits, and moral dilemma differentiate him from his Mavrino comrades and from Stalin himself, but he has made the tyrant's language his own. Both Rubin and Stalin are grounded in the thorough rationalism which allows abstract structures to keep moral questions and existential despair at a distance. In an argument about the laws of dialectics, Rubin becomes befuddled and leaves the impression that he is committed to a self-referential structure that has virtually no meaning for human experience. As a dogmatic Communist who defends his jailer, he shows Stalin's tendency to downgrade other human beings into objects governed by the laws of history. The individual personality (Volodin, or a cousin against who Rubin informed) is lost in a process of objectification whereby concepts such as the "proletariat," "enemy of the people," and "progressive forces" are elevated into substantially existing realities.

Through such a process of abstraction and obfuscation Rubin arrives at his project for "civic temples." Without recognizing his self-deception, he seeks to find some home in a realm of spirit—in churches called by another name. Solzenicyn attributes the same yearnings to Stalin, who longs for spiritual comfort and notes in himself an undying predisposition toward Orthodoxy. But whereas the plan for "civic temples" appears as a prisoner's futile exercise, the tyrant transforms the traditions and the idiom of religion into instruments of political control! By calling attention to the state's appropriation of an entire system of religious signs, Solzenicyn clearly seeks to present Communism as a false, secular faith. In contrast to the false faith of Stalinism, a genuine spirituality emanates from the secondary character Aginja. Through association with her in his youth, the police agent Jakonov felt the power of religion at a service in a beautiful church. But in opposition to his religious girl friend, Jakonov ultimately sided with the Bolsheviks' "realm of reason," and his complete abnegation of the soul was signaled by willingness to sign an article full of clichés about Communism's struggle with the decadent West. In The First Circle Solzenicyn does not give an elaborate projection of traditional religious faith, but a consideration of the power and the abuse of the language of the church (religious idiom, architecture, ritual, mythology) helps define affinity or hostility to the characteristic mode of Stalin.

Art, the realm of Solzenicyn's own endeavors, also comes under direct discussion as a mode of expression alien to the characteristic language of the state. As in the treatment of religion, The First Circle affirms the value of genuine art by contrast to a sham product. The inauthentic writers of Russia are represented by Galaxov, an acclaimed winner of Stalin Prizes who has learned to rationalize his servility and moral cowardice. In opposition stands the painter Kondrasev-Ivanov, who serves the same function that an authentic novelist could as a character in Solenicyn's book. In discussion with other prisoners, Kondrasev-Ivanov voices the idea that art provides a way of knowing the most significant human realities. Ner in concurs, and praises Anna Karenina as an unsurpassed work of literature. By contrast, he notes, the technological innovations of the 1870s now seem primitive. The remarks of Nerzin, which are directed against Rubin, convey Solznicyn's own view of the power of art and underline the limitations of the "objective," scientific mode of cognition promoted by the ideology of the Soviet state. Throughout The First Circle Solzenicyn upholds art as an eternal way of knowing moral truths and voices his condemnation of Socialist Realism as an artistic code which cannot embody the actuality of life in Stalinist Russia as he sees it. The mode, not merely the message, is at issue. As for Solzenicyn himself, for the inauthentic writer Galaxov the art of Tolstoj stands as a compelling, challenging model which the winners of Stalin Prizes seem only to parody, as they continue to fashion a literature which lends support to an unjust political system.

In contrast to the loyal Communist Rubin, Nerzin and Solzenicyn's other major characters exhibit a personal, existential type of consciousness which stands diametrically opposed to Stalin's mode of thought and language.⁹ Nerzin, Volodin, Sologdin, and Spiridon have an individualized psychology, but their minds diverge in the same direction away from the laws of abstraction and obfuscation which govern the mentality of the tyrant. In an argument with Rubin, Nerzin explicitly protests against the obtuse, pretentious style of Stalin which seeks to disguise monstrous stupidity. Nerzin's mistrust of rationalistic structures as a source of values is elaborated in counterpoint with the experience of Volodin, who recognizes the inadequacy and irrelevance of the philosophical system of Epicurus only as he confronts the existential horror of being a prisoner. At the end of the novel, Volodin has suffered a drastic reorientation and entered the school of the Gulag. As the actuality of imprisonment supplants book-learning, he begins to recapitulate the experience of Nerzin, who claims that fellow zeks and intense introspection have revealed to him the knowledge he considers most meaningful.

In charting the development of Volodin, Solzenicyn makes significant reference to conflicting modes of discourse. The attempt to find some grounding for his existence leads Volodin not only to the thought of the ancient Greeks but also to the predominant sensibility of the era of Russian Symbolism. His mother's diary and her journals from the fin de siècle period arrest his attention through language itself:

The very words in which his mother and her women friends had expressed themselves were oldfashioned. They wrote in all seriousness with capital letters: Truth, Good, Beauty; Good and Evil, the ethical imperative. In the language Innokentij and his friends used, words were more concrete, and therefore more comprehensible: ideological substance (idejnost'), humaneness, loyalty, purposefulness.¹⁰

In this episode Solzenicyn shows Volodin's confused attraction to a new language. The very concern with ethical imperatives appears alien in Stalinist Russia and helps prompt Volodin to search for a code of justice. But the Symbolist mode of discourse, which promoted its own form of "poetic" abstraction and obfuscation, cannot give him firm guidelines. As they stand in abstract shape, the capitalized words seem available as categories, as containers to be filled with meanings that match Volodin's illdefined personal longings. By contrast to the Symbolist mode, the words in the second series in the quotation only seem more "concrete" to Volodin because in Stalinist Russia they have been transformed into unambiguous signs.¹¹ Through a process of appropriation by the state, words have been locked onto their referents; as signs, they are weighed down with specific meanings so that they can no longer signify in different ways. As in the treatment of Communism as a false religion and Socialist Realism as false art, in dealing with Volodin Solzenicyn suggests that the state can pervert words such as "humane," "just," "loyal," and effectively impair a citizen's capacity to define true meaning.

In connection with the chapters on Stalin, the contemplation of language by Nerzin and Volodin acquires special force and furthers Solzenicyn's major concern with the salvaging of words as instruments of genuine communication—particularly as means of giving shape to the inner life of the individual. In contrast, Sologdin's "Language of Maximum Clarity" actually confuses the main issue of the relationship between corrupt politics and corrupt language. The refusal to use words of foreign origin leads Sologdin to expunge from his vocabulary "poet" as well as references to science, technology, and Soviet Communist ideology. In speech he (or Solzenicyn) sometimes completely forgets his linguistic program, and his most successful "Russianizations" consist largely of Church Slavonic forms.¹² Despite the resulting incoherence, Sologdin's protest against political jargon helps to further Solzenicyn's concern with the debasement of language in Stalinist Russia.

As a projection of the consciousness which diametrically opposes the state's language of abstraction and obfuscation, the peasant Spiridon stands as one of Solzenicyn's most effective creations. The mentality of the peasant is conveyed in his own words and from the perspective of Nerzin, who is reexamining the whole tradition of Russian intellectuals' looking to the people for moral edification. Again the recoiling from abstract structures characterizes Nerzin. In their own way, the Populists elevated a concept of the People into the substantially existing reality. By dealing with various representatives of the peasantry during his imprisonment and by seeking out Spiridon in particular, Nerzin looks for those who get lost in the intellectual process of formulating categories. In distinction from Nerzin as well as Sologdin and Volodin, Spiridon himself recognizes no need to speculate on matters of philosophy. But in elaborate detail Solzenicyn represents his existence as a series of life-threatening confrontations in which the peasant made decisions on the basis of his family ties and some obscure sense of relation to a scheme of natural law. This personal, existential mode of thought finds expression in the idiom of Spiridon, who speaks of the concrete, misuses "learned words," and finds meaning in the pithy language of proverbs. Rubin, the dialectical materialist, rages against this whole shape of mind which resists rationalistic abstraction. In debate with Sologdin, who self-consciously opposes the language of the state, Rubin shouts that discussion with him is as boring "as trying to pound the fact that the sun doesn't circle the earth into the head of some dottering old fool (starik-pesocnik). He'll never learn no matter how long he lives." (227.) As in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic and "Matrena's Home,"¹³ in The First Circle the particulars of the peasant's language best show Solzenicyn's ability to explore Russian as a living, whole system which endures as the most significant, cherished element of continuity in the history of his country.

Both Solzenicyn in The First Circle and Tolstoj in Xadzi-Murat project the mind of the tyrant as the very source of the corruption, impersonality, and cruelty writ large in society. With the tyrant defined as the central point of reference, other characters in The First Circle and Xadzi-Murat take shape within artistic structures which establish linkages (between Stalin and Rubin, between Nerzin and Spiridon; between Nicholas and General Voroncov, between Xadzi-Murat and the peasants) and oppositions (between Stalin and Agnija, Stalin and Kondrasev-Ivanov, Stalin and Spiridon; between Nicholas and Xadzi-Murat).

While Solzenicyn's treatment of Stalin does display notable stylistic and structural parallels with Tolstoj's treatment of Nicholas, The First Circle and Xadzi-Murat provide different perspectives on the issue of politics and language. Solzenicyn attacks the issue with an intensity born of his experience in Soviet Russia. While all significant Russian writers have prized the unique resources of their native tongue, Solzenicyn felt compelled to formulate a set of guidelines¹⁴ which authors could follow in order to salvage a linguistic edifice undermined by Stalinist Russia. His concern about the debasement of language finds various forms of expression in The First Circle. Within the scope of this loosely structured novel, Solzenicyn shows that tyranny involves the appropriation of words as state commodities and the transformation of language into a set of sign-systems (official historiography, controlled journalism, Socialist Realism). Full of righteous indignation against such power, he urges his readers to learn to decode the language of the state. Volodin, the man who attempts to communicate a sympathetic message by telephone in chapter one, will be defined as an "enemy of the progressive forces of history"; the parody of Stalin's language seeks to unmask the utter mediocrity of the mind and spirit of the dictator; "civic temples" speak of a false religion; the story "Buddha's Smile" figures as a literary amusement which illustrates the novel's central concern with decoding; the final chapter ("Meat") underlines the effectiveness with which the state uses mendacious language. In The First Circle Solzenicyn aspires to bear witness to history, and frequently his own impassioned voice rings out in commentaries (on the value of valenki, on Dostoevskij's Notes from the House of the Dead) which are reminiscent of passages in The Gulag Archipelago.

By contrast, Tolstoj does not take such a tendentious approach to the question of the relationship between corrupt politics and corrupt language. In Xadzi-Murat the life of the state and the making of history under Nicholas I provide Tolstoj with the occasion for giving his final artistic depiction of death. In this tightly structured novella which moves through a series of scenes full of significant visual detail, he draws the reader toward that final moment of death, when Xadzi-Murat's integrity and harmony of being blaze forth against the background of the whole morally corrupt culture that has destroyed him. Unlike Solzenicyn, Tolstoj does not raise his own voice to condemn history in the main body of Xadzi-Murat. He strived for the objectivity achieved in the final text and rejected variants which did include authorial commentary (on the nature of imperialism).

With the facts of history before him and with an understandable sense of urgency, Solzenicyn shows the corruption of language in an advanced stage not attained in Tsarist Russia. In Xadzi-Murat the subordinates of Nicholas worry about being dismissed or demoted, whereas The First Circle documents Stalin's casual murders, full-scale purges, and the total collapse of a legal system in Russia. At the dinner party in Xadzi-Murat the guest's insistence on describing a military campaign as the disaster that it really was produces annoyance and embarrassment in General Voroncov, while in Stalin's time calling things by their right names might result in exile or death. When Stalin proceeded to build Socialism in Russia, the "increment of victims" escalated drastically, and the state's control over language also reached an unprecedented degree: as massive social transformation was effected, the state fashioned language into an instrument for defining truth and justifying policy.

In Tsarist Russia, Tolstoj did not confront the totalitarian state and the brand of Newspeak which became its distinctive idiom. Given his place in history, his artistic insight into the relation between socio-political change and the debasement of language appears all the more remarkable: Xadzi-Murat uses words as a means of authentic communication, Samil' as leader of a proto-state society has begun to play roles and use language to manipulate his subjects, while Nicholas as the head of a vast bureaucratic empire quite cynically employs language to rationalize acts of murder. Without witnessing the terror of Stalinism or the perfecting of the Stalinist mode of discourse, Tolstoj in Xadzi-Murat brilliantly represented the earlier phases of that process whereby language becomes another institutionalized structure wielded by the state to control the defining of truth and to exercise absolute authority over the individual.

NOTES

¹ See for example Kathryn B. Feuer, "Solzhenitsyn and the Legacy of Tolstoy," and Richard Haugh, "The Philosophical Foundations of Solzhenitsyn's Vision of Art," in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials, ed. John Dunlop, Richard Haugh and Alexis Klimoff (Belmont, MA: Norland Publishing, 1973), 129-46; 168-84. See also A. Obolensky, "Solzhenitsyn in the Mainstream of Russian Literatures," Canadian Slavonic Papers, 13 (1971), 131-38; and Deming Brown, "Cancer Ward and The First Circle" Slavic Review, 28 (1969), 304-13.

² See especially Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building. Selected Papers, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968).

³ For an analysis of the distinction between the pastoral and the primitive in Tolstoj's writings, see my essay, "Concepts of the Primitive in Russian Literature: from Tolstoy to Pasternak," in Concepts of the Primitive in Western Civilization, ed. Stanley Diamond (New York: Pergamon Press, forthcoming).

⁴ A. P. Sergeenko, "Kommentarii," in L. N. Tolstoj, Polnoe sobrante socinenii (90 vols.; M.: GIXL, 1935-58), XXXV, 583-633; see also L. Semenov, ed., "Material k istorii sozdanija povesti 'Xadzi-Murata,'" Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 37-38 (1939), 633-50. For an assessment of the historical accuracy of the work, see V. A. D'jakov, "Istoriceskie realii 'Xadzi-Murata,'" Voprosy istorii (1973), no. 5, 135-48.

⁵ For the variants, see Tolstoj, XXXV, 284-556. On the peep-show method, see the entry of 21 March 1898 in Tolstoj's diary, LIII, 188.

⁶ Gary Kern, "Solzhenitsyn's Portrait of Stalin," Slavic Review, 33 (1974), 1-22.

⁷ See Feuer, 134, who draws no distinctions between the psychology of Stalin and the psychology of Nicholas.

⁸ See Edward J. Brown, "Solzenicyn's Cast of Characters," SEEJ, 15 (1971), 162-63.

⁹ By using this term, I mean to characterize a mode of thought and language which recoils from abstract structures. For discussion of the characters' philosophies of life, see John Dunlop, "The Odyssey of a Skeptic: Gleb Nerzhin," in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 241-59; Natalia Rea, "Nerzhin: A Sartrean Existential Man," Canadian Slavonic Papers, 13 (1971), 209-16; and Helen Muchnic, "Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle/Russian Review, 29 (1970), 154-66.

¹⁰ Solzenicyn, V kruge pervom (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 306.

¹¹ On the distinction between "signs" and "signifiers," see Roland Barthes, Mythologies, tr. Annette Lavers (London: Cape, 1972), 113. Compare Nadezda Mandel'stam's remark on her husband's famous portrait of Stalin: the authorities said that the poem was a "usurpation of the right words and thoughts that the ruling powers reserved exclusively for themselves." Hope against Hope: A Memoir, tr. Max Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 83.

¹² Boris O. Unbegaun, "The 'Language of Ultimate Clarity,'" in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 196-98.

¹³ L. R evskij, "Obraz rasskazcika v povesti Solzenicyna 'Odin den' Ivana Denisovica,'" Studies in Slavic Linguistics and Poetics in Honor of B. O. Unbegaun (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1968) 165-78; "Tvorceskoe slovo u Solzenicyna," Novyj zumal, 96 (1969), 76-90; T. G. Vinokur, "O jazyke i stile povesti A. I. Solzenicyna Odin den 'Ivana Denisovica," ' Voprosy kul'tury reci, 1965, no. 6, 16-32; Roman B. Gul', "A. Solzenicyn, socrealizm i skola Remizova," Novyj zumal, 71 (1963), 68-74; and Ludmila Koehler, "Solzhenitsyn and Russian Literary Tradition," Russian Review, 26 (1967), 176-84.

¹⁴ Solzenicyn, "Ne obycaj degtem sci belit', na to smetana," Literaturnaja gazeta, 4 November 1965.