Between Two Millstones: Sketches of Exile, 1974-1977

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prizing writing writer and Soviet dissident, spent 18 of his 20 years in exile in Cavendish, VT. With the publication of Between Two Millstones: Sketches of Exile, 1974-1977 now there is more than a glimpse of what life was like for him during this time.

"Between Two Millstones" contains vivid descriptions of Solzhenitsyn's journeys to various European countries and North American locales, where he and his wife Natalia (“Alya”) searched for a location to settle their young family. There are fascinating descriptions of one-on-one meetings with prominent individuals, detailed accounts of public speeches such as the 1978 Harvard University commencement, comments on his television appearances, accounts of his struggles with unscrupulous publishers and agents who mishandled the Western editions of his books, and the KGB disinformation efforts to besmirch his name. There are also passages on Solzhenitsyn's family and their property in Cavendish, Vermont, whose forested hillsides and harsh winters evoked his Russian homeland, and where he could finally work undisturbed on his ten-volume history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel. Stories include the efforts made to assure a proper education for the writer's three sons, their desire to return one day to their home in Russia, and descriptions of his extraordinary wife, editor, literary advisor, and director of the Russian Social Fund, Alya, who successfully arranged, at great peril to herself and to her family, to smuggle Solzhenitsyn's invaluable archive out of the Soviet Union. Notre Dame Press 

For Vermonters, Senator Patrick Leahy summed it up when he wrote, “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took to Vermont and Vermonters took to him. I felt it a privilege to have met with him in his new Vermont setting, and I know that our state’s forested beauty reminded him of home. We are proud that he believed that his homeland, and the world, could learn from the local self-government that is embodied in Town Meeting Day in towns and hamlets across the Green Mountain State.”

There were differing ideas of how Solzhenitsyn lived in Cavendish- a self -imposed “gulag,” to a lavish lifestyle in a “gated” compound. However, the truth was quite different. The suddenness of our move caught everyone’s attention: it is unacceptable for people of fame not to inform the world of what they are doing, not to advertise their next move but to go ahead and do what they want unannounced. Over a hundred press vehicles now converged on the tiny town of Cavendish from Boston, from New York, quizzing the townspeople to get information, journalists crowding in front of our gate, scurrying along our fence—they even arranged for a helicopter to fly over our property and take pictures. ....To make things worse, our light chain-link fence had a single strand of barbed wire on top where the fence ran along the side of the road, to hook the pants of snoopers trying to climb over. This single strand of barbed wire the media now magnified into a “barbed-wire fence surrounding the entire property,” and that it was if I were willing myself up in a new prison, a “self-imposed gulag.” I did intend to sequester myself, not in a prison but in a tranquil refuge, the kind necessary for creativity in this mad, whirling world. But the press also picked up details from the locals about us having a pond, setting off the legend about my “swimming pool,” which immediately turned our supposed life within a prion into a “bourgeois lifestyle” in which the Solzhenitsyn family now intended to indulge. Ah, wretches, they were writing not about us but about themselves, revealing what mattered to them. We have been expelled from our country, our hearts are constricted, my wife’s eyes are never dry of tears, only work can save us—and that is our so-called “bourgeois lifestyle.”

Between Two Millstones is available at Amazon in both hardcover and Kindle formats.

Vermont Native American Timeline

UPDATED OCTOBER 2019

Note that there are various videos listed at the end of this article, including the film made about the Paleoindian dig at Jackson Gore. 

9,500 > Years ago Paleo-Indian Era (Stone Age culture) As the Laurentian ice sheet retreated north,  the first peoples entered VT around 12,500 year ago. Champlain Sea. Warmer than in other locations. Mastodon and mammoth. They traveled as well as traded-stone, which was from New York, Quebec, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other places. Small groups, less than 10.

3,000-9,500 Years Ago: Archaic Period. Warmer temps helped to shape many kinds of wetland from lakes and ponds to swamps and bogs. Champlain Sea shrunk turning from salt water to fresh water. Lake Champlain was likely lower than its present day level. Hardwood forests appear-beech, oak, ash and maple. Rely on more local stone in VT. Groups began moving to different areas for season. The presence of a large variety of woodworking tools in Archaic assemblages suggest that water crafts were used for travel, fishing, and probably other animal procurement activities. In the latter part of the archaic period, fruit and nut bearing trees began to grow and native populations expanded with communities being forming.  At the end, temperatures drop

Early Woodland 2,000-3,000: Preferred not to live in the higher elevations and spend most of their time in the warmer river valleys. Population decreases. Cemeteries from this period Pottery Bow and Arrow. Connected with people in Ohio and across the Northeast. These were spiritual people who were deeply connected to their ancestors and to the land

Middle Woodland 1,000-2,000 Temps began to rise and with it an increase in population. Once again using stone from far away places for stone tools. Dugout canoes have been found throughout the Champlain Valley. Native Americans in the region had developed a culture based on the selective borrowing of ideas and innovations from other people with whom they had come in contact over the past 9000 years. The people of the Woodland Period were becoming more sedentary in their living habits, and established substantial settlements on the floodplains of major rivers, such as the Winooski and Otter Creek. The subsistence patterns of prehistoric Champlain Valley residents gradually changed from mobile hunting and fishing parties to a dependence upon horticulture and the gathering of a greater diversity and quantity of wild plant foods.

Pre European Contact -1,000 Temps remained steady or slightly increased. Pottery expanded and see pipes for the first time-ceramics. Cultivation of crops-three sisters (corn, beans and squash). Agricultural tips were passed through trade networks. First existence of farming in New England occurs in VT in the 12^th Century.

1535: Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) is first European to sight Vermont. Attempts to develop trade relations with the St. Lawrence Iroquois and other tribes living along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The French attempt to establish a colony in the St. Lawrence Valley during the sixteenth century failed, although sporadic trade for furs in exchange for metal tools did occur between the French and the St. Lawrence tribes. By 1603, the diseases which the St. Lawrence Iroquois contracted from the French spread quickly throughout the Champlain Valley, decimating the native population. The struggle over French trade also caused great unrest in the Champlain Valley. The Mohawk Iroquois, who inhabited primarily the Mohawk Valley, became the dominant tribe from Quebec to Connecticut. By 1609 the Western Abenaki had retreated from the Champlain Valley in an effort to escape destruction at the hands of the Mohawk.

1688: 1688 - 1763 The French and Indian Wars between France and Great Britain for lands in North America consisting of King William's War (1688-1699), Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), King George's War (1744 - 1748) and the French and Indian War aka the Seven Years War (1754-1763)

1688: (1688-1699) King William's War (part of the French and Indian Wars) between France and the Wabanaki Confederacy and England and the Iroquois Confederacy. Peace Treaty made at Pemaquid. August 11,1693. and was ratified on Jan. 7. 1699

1702: (1702-1713) Queen Anne's War (part of the French and Indian Wars) between the French and Spanish colonies allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy, Mohawk, Choctaw, Timucua, Apalachee and Natchez tribes against the British colonies allied with the Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw and Yamasee tribes.

1744: (1744–1748) King George's War (part of the French and Indian Wars) between the French colonies allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy and the British colonies allied with Iroquois Confederacy

1754: 1754 - 1763: The French Indian War is won by Great Britain

1775: 1783 The American Revolution.

1776: July 4, 1776 - United States Declaration of Independence

1780: Last major Indian raid, led by the British, in Royalton

1812: 1812 - 1815: The War of 1812 between U.S. and Great Britain, ended in a stalemate but confirmed America's Independence

1830: Indian Removal Act

1832: Department of Indian Affairs established

1861: 1861 - 1865: The American Civil War.

1862: U.S. Congress passes Homestead Act opening the Great Plains to settlers

1887: Dawes General Allotment Act passed by Congress leads to the break up of the large Indian Reservations and the sale of Indian lands to white settlers

1931: Vermont approved its sterilization law. Eugenics. Poor and socially ostracized families were targeted for investigation of the three D’s (delinquency, dependency, and mental defect). These families usually lived “outside the accepted moral or social convention of middle class America” (Gallagher, p. 37). The three D’s were used to target the poor, the disabled, French-Canadians, and Native Americans. Women were targeted more than men. French-Canadians and Abenakis were seen as a foe and threat to the early colonial settlers of Vermont.  They represented “an insidious and continuous invasion” of Vermont and were therefore targeted (Gallagher, p. 45).  Studies done on degenerate family lines were often traced back to French Canadian or Native American ancestry and were used to target these groups (Gallagher, pp. 80-82). the last noted sterilization in Vermont occurred in 1957, between 1973 and 1976, approximately 3,400 Native American women, according to the General Accounting Office, were sterilized in the United States without properly obtaining consent (Dowbiggin, p. 181; see also Forbes 2011).

1969: All Indians declared citizens of U.S.

1979: American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed

Roger Longtoe Sheehan, Chief El

nu

Today: Vermont has a Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs  and recognizes four Vermont Tribes:
• Abenaki Nation at Missiquoi
 • Koasek Band of KoasAbenaki Nation
• Elnu Abenaki (Tribe for Southern VT, includes Cavendish.)
• Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe 



Below are videos to watch to learn more. 
 Nebi:Abenaki Way of Knowing Water 
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 Jesse Robinson, speaking about Vermont prior to European contact.

Jackson Gore Paleo Indian Dig

CHS Briefs October 1, 2018

Please also check the Cavendish VT Facebook page for photo albums of various CHS activities.

Yes the new doors for the Museum are finally being hung! Things always seem to take longer than we plan on and as a result, the Museum has been closed for the last two weeks. We hope the doors will be working so we can hold our last program of the season at the Museum on Oct. 7- 1^st Peoples of the Americas and Vermont. In the event that construction is still underway, we will post notices at the Cavendish VT Facebook page and CHS blog.

Special thanks to Bob Naess and Dave Stern for their ongoing efforts on this project. 

WHAT WE’RE DOING

Carmine Guica Young Historians: Between taking the Cavendish Town Elementary School (CTES) 5^th and 6^th graders to Constitution Day  at Coolidge, RiverSweep,  and blueberry picking, the school year is off to a good start. October includes a special workshop on 1^st Peoples for the 5^th graders as well as the annual trip for the 6^th grade to Sturbridge Village. For the first time we will be taking the 4^th grade, along with a few students from Green Mountain Union High School, on the Fall Foliage Train History Tour.

Thank you to our incredible volunteers Doris Eddy, Bruce McEnneny, Peggy Svec, and Pang Ting. None of this would be possible without the contributions from Stein van Schaik and the McEnneny’s Blueberry Fund.

Solzhenitsyn:. While Margo Caulfied spoke at the Reading Solzhenitsyn: An International Conference at Northern Vermont University on Sept. 7, it was exciting to host so many conference speakers the following day in Cavendish.

Upcoming activities include:

• October 15: Publication of “Between Two Millstones, Book 1.”  Fast-paced, absorbing, and as compelling as the earlier installments of his memoir The Oak and the Calf (1975), Between Two Millstones begins on February 12, 1974, when Solzhenitsyn found himself forcibly expelled to Frankfurt, West Germany, as a result of the publication in the West of The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for a time and was considered the most famous man in the world, hounded by journalists and reporters. During this period, he found himself untethered and unable to work while he tried to acclimate to his new surroundings. There are passages on Solzhenitsyn’s family and their property in Cavendish, Vermont, whose forested hillsides and harsh winters evoked his Russian homeland, and where he could finally work undisturbed on his ten-volume history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel.

• The Solzhenitsyn exhibit continues at the Vermont Historical Society Museum in Montpelier until October 20.

• November 15: Vermont Historical Society at the University Heights South, Room 133.  Presentation by Margo Caulfield “I Wrote and Waited": Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Life in Cavendish, VT

• Margo will also be doing a presentation for the Oshler Center for Life Long Learning at Dartmouth. Date to be announced.

SAVE THE DATE

Oct. 7 (Sunday): 1^st Peoples of Cavendish Talk will focus on the earliest occupants of the land, dating back 11,000 years ago. It will include a discussion of how North America became occupied and evidence of first occupation in Cavendish. The talk begins at 2 pm.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

If you can help with any of the following, please contact CHS margocaulfield@icloud.com; 802-226-7807 or PO Box 472, Cavendish, VT 05142

• Baby Boomers: Recently CHS acquired a fan from the 1950s and it has sparked a conversation that we have far more examples of life in 1800s Cavendish then we do from more recent times. If you have items you would like to donate, CHS is working on a “Life in Cavendish-Baby Boomer Style.”

• CHS is looking for new board members as well as volunteers who can help with various activities.