In 1972 when Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the writer who died in Moscow on Sunday of heart failure, was being hounded by the Soviet police, two US reporters spent weeks in secret negotiations to secure an interview with him. When the appointed time came, they eluded the police and sneaked into the home of the apostle of anti-communism.
As they got out their tape recorders, the writer handed the reporters a 7,500-word text of the "interview" they were about to conduct, complete with ludicrously unlikely "questions". Solzhenitsyn demanded they print every word immediately. The journalists were shocked that Solzhenitsyn had no shame in using a technique of communist propaganda - the concocted interview - to get his message across.
"We don't even guarantee the American president to print every word," Hedrick Smith, of The New York Times, told him. After three hours of negotiations the writer agreed to respond vaguely to four questions, provided they got the whole text published somehow. After the interview appeared in print, Solzhenitsyn wrote to complain that the journalist's description of his opening his front door was "fictionalisation" and had destroyed the coherence of his 7,500-word text.
Two years later Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and expelled for publishing his great work, The Gulag Archipelago, which revealed the full horror of Joseph Stalin's network of labour camps through which the writer had passed along with millions of others.
But already in 1972, all the elements of Solzhenitsyn's character that made him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century were clearly defined: his rock-like inflexibility; his autocratic single-mindedness; and his disdain for western freedoms, including the liberty of the writer to choose his own words.
For Solzhenitsyn, there could never be any compromise with the communists. "I put it like this," he said after being forced into exile. "Those people who have lived in the most terrible conditions, on the frontier between life and death - be it people from the West or the East - they all understand that between good and evil there is an irreconcilable contradiction."
He certainly knew about the frontier between life and death, having fought bravely in the Second World War, and then been sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for some mild criticism of Stalin. This was followed by hungry exile to the steppes of Kazakhstan, and then falling ill with cancer.
None of this put him off his life's work. He recovered from cancer and despite being told he would never have any children, had three boys with his second wife, Natalya.
The accident of his birth in 1918, just after the Bolshevik Revolution, put him at the centre of key events of the century. "In a way, his life sums up the 20th century and its moral absolutes," said DM Thomas, a novelist and author of a biography of Solzhenitsyn.
"Though his intended audience was his own people, with his one-man history of the suffering in the camps he blew the communist system open for those fellow travellers in the West who were rather sympathetic to its ideals."
Despite only serving a relatively brief period in a labour camp, Solzhenitsyn always remained a zek, a convict. Some people are destroyed by prison life; others develop a detachment to their suffering; but for Solzhenitsyn the barbed wire entered his soul and hardened it, and it never left.
For 18 years he lived in exile in Cavendish, Vermont, and visitors were struck by how he had built his own private gulag there. He never learnt English or socialised with his neighbours; he built a high wall around his property, in defiance of the New England tradition of living in open view of your neighbours; he rarely allowed visitors.
One of the few Russians who was invited to see him in Vermont was Igor Zolutussky, also a former camp inmate and noted writer. Mr Zolutussky was struck by the abnormal life he led in the United States, and how he had never shaken off the imprint of prison life from his character. In prison he learnt to bite before he was bitten, and he never lost his distrust of people.
It was unthinkable for him to admit weakness or say sorry. His life would have been grim indeed but for his fortunate choice of wife in Natalya, who was his devoted researcher and spokesman. She was shrewd while he was dogmatic, flexible while he was immovable.
Solzhenitsyn's critics in the West have criticised him for not developing the sunny disposition of Nelson Mandela, that other famous political prisoner who destroyed a regime and spent not eight but 27 years in jail.
The secret lies not just in character. Mandela was famous before he was arrested; Solzhenitsyn was unknown and friendless, and when he was released he supported himself teaching while writing in secret, utterly alone.
If the writer's supporters hoped he would embrace the West, they were disappointed. In a tract written in Switzerland called Letter to the Supreme Leaders, he pictured the West as the source of harmful imports - technology and the "dark, un-Russian whirlwind" of Marxism - which had destroyed the moral perfection, as he saw it, of the Russian village. Only patriotism, led by the Russian Orthodox Church, could rescue the Russian people.
Once in the United States he inveighed against the "filth" of consumer culture and the moral decay it entailed. In an address at Harvard, he said: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days."
These tirades were no doubt inspired partly by the knowledge that, exiled from Russia, he could not flourish as a writer. The monumental works of history he wrote failed to inspire. "All Solzhenitsyn's great work was instigated by his experience of tyranny. Personal freedom, once he got it, did not give him a lot to write about," said Thomas Keneally, an Australian writer.
The tragedy of his creative life is that his earliest work was the best. The short novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published during the Cold War "thaw" of 1962, inspires the reader precisely because the prisoner's day is a happy one as he receives a food parcel from his wife, manages to get a hacksaw blade past the guards and does not fall ill despite the Arctic cold. The First Circle is set in the most privileged of labour camps - a cosy place where brilliant engineers are locked up together to serve the Soviet state, despite being "enemies of the people". Cancer Ward, drawing on his experience of overcoming the deadly disease, is ultimately inspiring.
It is for these three books, where his red-hot indignation is kept under restraint, that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He declined to go to Stockholm to receive the award for fear that he would not be allowed re-enter the Soviet Union.
Once he started to reveal the true horror of the gulag - an acronym for central administration of corrective labour camps - his messianic zeal took over and he turned into a literary prophet, as Tolstoy had done.
When finally he returned to Russia in 1994 after his citizenship was restored, communism was in the past, and no one was interested in his books. People were grasping the "filth" of consumer culture with both hands. At one stage, it was thought he might emerge as an ayatollah-like figure, leading the country back to its village roots. But the Russians were more interested in flying to Dubai to shop. He was given a late-night TV chat show, but the guests rarely got a word in. It became a monologue. It was taken off the air for poor ratings.
While never a full supporter of Vladimir Putin, he accepted the State Prize for literature from him in 2007. By taking an award from a leader who ordered Russian school textbooks to take a more positive view of communist history, Solzhenitsyn alienated some of his remaining liberal supporters.
His last work, Two Hundred Years Together, a history of the Russians and the Jews, never found a publisher in English.
He would wish to be remembered, however, not as a novelist but as a man who followed the Russian proverb he cited at the end of his Nobel speech in 1970: "One word of truth shall outweigh a whole world."
aphilps@thenational.ae
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Mia Man’s tips for fermentation
- Start with a simple recipe such as yogurt or sauerkraut
- Keep your hands and kitchen tools clean. Sanitize knives, cutting boards, tongs and storage jars with boiling water before you start.
- Mold is bad: the colour pink is a sign of mold. If yogurt turns pink as it ferments, you need to discard it and start again. For kraut, if you remove the top leaves and see any sign of mold, you should discard the batch.
- Always use clean, closed, airtight lids and containers such as mason jars when fermenting yogurt and kraut. Keep the lid closed to prevent insects and contaminants from getting in.
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
Sri Lanka-India Test series schedule
- 1st Test India won by 304 runs at Galle
- 2nd Test Thursday-Monday at Colombo
- 3rd Test August 12-16 at Pallekele
BRAZIL SQUAD
Alisson (Liverpool), Daniel Fuzato (Roma), Ederson (Man City); Alex Sandro (Juventus), Danilo (Juventus), Eder Militao (Real Madrid), Emerson (Real Betis), Felipe (Atletico Madrid), Marquinhos (PSG), Renan Lodi (Atletico Madrid), Thiago Silva (PSG); Arthur (Barcelona), Casemiro (Real Madrid), Douglas Luiz (Aston Villa), Fabinho (Liverpool), Lucas Paqueta (AC Milan), Philippe Coutinho (Bayern Munich); David Neres (Ajax), Gabriel Jesus (Man City), Richarlison (Everton), Roberto Firmino (Liverpool), Rodrygo (Real Madrid), Willian (Chelsea).
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The specs
Engine: 3.6 V6
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Power: 295bhp
Torque: 353Nm
Price: Dh155,000
On sale: now
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
How does ToTok work?
The calling app is available to download on Google Play and Apple App Store
To successfully install ToTok, users are asked to enter their phone number and then create a nickname.
The app then gives users the option add their existing phone contacts, allowing them to immediately contact people also using the application by video or voice call or via message.
Users can also invite other contacts to download ToTok to allow them to make contact through the app.
