Monday, February 28, 1977
Citizens of Cavendish! Dear
neighbors!
I have come here today to
say hello to you and to greet you.
I will be turning sixty
soon; yet in all my life I have never had any definite permanent place to live,
much less my own home. Not knowing the
conditions of Soviet life, you can barely imagine that people in the Soviet
Union are not allowed to live where they choose. I did not have the opportunity to live in
those places where my work dictated that I should be; at times, I was not even
permitted to live with my own family.
Finally, the Soviet authorities would no longer tolerate me at all, and
deported me from the USSR.
God determined that every
man should live among his own people, in the land of his birth. As a mature tree takes poorly to replanting,
sickens, and sometimes dies in its new place, so too a man cannot always bear exile,
and literally falls ill. I would like to
hope that none of you will ever have to experience this bitter fate of forced
exile. Nothing seems the same in a
foreign land; nothing seems yours. You
feel a constant anguish in those conditions under which everyone else lives
normally — and you are seen as a stranger.
It so happened that among
you, in Cavendish, Vermont, I was able to find my first home and my first
permanent residence. I am no fan of big
cities with their bustling way of life; but I like very much your simple way of
life, similar to that of our Russian peasants, except that they, of course,
live much poorer than you. I like the
landscape that surrounds you, and I like very much your climate, with its long
snowy winters which remind me of Russia.
I like it here, but I hope
that my presence will not turn out to be unpleasant for you. I have read in the papers that some of you
feel unhappy, or even insulted, that I have put up a fence around my property. I would like to explain this now. My life consists of work, and this work
demands that it not be interrupted. An
interruption of one's work is enough to ruin it. I have come here from Switzerland, where I
first lived after being expelled from the Soviet Union. There, I lived in an easily accessible
place. And thus, hundreds of strangers
from around the world kept coming to see me, never asking for my agreement or
for an invitation, but deciding that their wish to see me and talk to me was
reason enough to come. Furthermore, I
have often been visited by reporters — also uninvited — who believe that my
life is part of the public domain, and that they have the right and obligation
to relate every petty detail of my life in the press, or to keep pressing me
for new photographs. Over and above all
that, I am sometimes visited by Soviet agents — in other words, ill-meaning
individuals sent by the hostile Soviet authorities. They have already managed to come here; they
have sent letters through the mail and even left notes at the gate, threatening
to kill me or my family. I understand,
of course, that my fence is not a protection from Soviet agents (such a fence
would do little against them); but as for the reporters and the idle types —
from them, this fence protects well, and gives me the quiet necessary for my
work. Some of these people have already
disturbed my neighbors, and you can judge for yourselves what it is like to
meet with anyone who chances to come. I
would like to bring my apologies to those of my neighbors who have been annoyed
and disturbed by these unbidden guests.
I would like to apologize even more to the snowmobilers and hunters
across whose usual paths the fence now stands.
I think that you will understand, now, that this is an essential
condition for my work, and hence for my life.
I could not have done otherwise.
Taking the opportunity of
our meeting today, I would like to add a couple of words — to ask you not to
misconstrue, not to succumb to the misinterpretation of the word
"Russian," as it is used in the press. Two words are being confused here:
"Russian" and "Soviet."
You are told that Russian tanks entered Prague, and that Russian
missiles are aimed threateningly at the United States. I would ask you to keep in mind that, in
fact, Soviet tanks entered Prague,
and Soviet missiles threaten the
United States. "Russian" is to
"Soviet" as "man" is to "disease." We do not call someone afflicted with cancer—"Cancer,"
or someone with the plague—"Plague," for we understand that their
disease, their severe trial, is not their fault. The Communist system is a disease, a plague
that has been spreading across the earth for many years already, and it is
impossible to predict what peoples will yet be forced to experience this disease
firsthand. My people, the Russians, have
been suffering from it for sixty years already; they long to be healed. And the day will come when they are indeed
healed of this Soviet disease. On that
day I will thank you for being good friends and neighbors, and will go back to
my homeland.
[trans.
by Stephan Solzhenitsyn]
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