Epilogue

[9^7]

Potentialh' more damaging w as the rc-emergence of the C//.cch \\ riter 

Tomas Rezac into tiic public c\c. After returning to O.echoslox akia from 

Zurich, Rezac had made a pubHc recantation on O.ech telex ision. He hatl 

then been taken up b\" Novosti and "encouraged" to write a So\iet-st\le 

biograph\' of Solzhenitsvn. The book appeared first in Italian, published In 

Teti (the specialists in anti-Solzhenitsvn literature), and soon thereafter in 

Russian, entitled Ihe Spiral of Solzhenitsyiis Betrayal. ^^ Rezac had been afforded 

every assistance b\' the Novosti press agenc\' to visit the So\ iet Union, tra\ el 

to the places of Solzhenitsvn's birth and schooldavs, and inter\ iew fcjrmer 

friends and acquaintances. Judging bv the list of people mentioned in the 

book, the overw helming majorit\ must have refused to ha\ e an\ thing to do 

u'ith Rezac. He did, however, manage to get a few words w ith Alexander 

Kagan, the bo\- Solzhenitsxn had tussled w ith at school, and pretlictabK met 

the thoroughh' frightened \ itkevich and Simon\ an, although the\ added 

little to w hat the\- had said already. Rezac had also called on Natalia Reshe- 

tovskaxa under the pretext of being the Czech translator of her book, later 

passing oti his question-and-answer session with her (on the subject of her 

book) as an independent interview , and claimed to have interview ed a friend 

of Solzhenitsvn's referred to as "L.K."—a transparent reference to Le\- Kopelev. 

Kopelev categoricallv denied ever having spoken to Rezac and affirmed in an

open letter that everv word attributed to him in the book was a fabrication. '"

The book w as published in Russian in the spring of 1978 (on 1 April, to 

be precise, an appropriate date) bv the Progress publishing house in Moscow , 

and was billed as a translation from the original Czech. The publisher claimed 

in a foreword that Rezac had belonged to the "inner circle of Solzhenitsxn's 

friends" while in Zurich, that his book w as "strictlv objective," that it "exposed 

the image of Solzhenitsyn . . . assiduouslv propagated bv contemporary 

bourgeois propaganda" and constituted, among other things, "a powerful 

polemic w ith Solzhenitsvn's most feted publication in the W est, The Gulag

Archipelago.''^^

Rezac's bf)ok w as a predictable tissue of innuendoes, quotations out of 

context, invented dialogue, and unfounded speculation w hose tone can be 

gauged from the author's opening statement that he had w ritten "not the 

biography of a vxriter but an autopsy of the corpse of a traitor." Rezac's 

"case" against Solzhenitsyn was a shakily cobbled together patchwork of ear- 

lier statements bv \ itkevich and Simonvan, the shadier parts of Reshetov- 

skaxa's memoirs (mostly interpolations bv Novosti), some new allegations bv 

Burkovsky (the prototype of Buinovskv in Ivan Denisovich), the resentful Ya- 

kubovich, and the terrified Samutin, and a mass of fantastic speculation and 

invention presumably bv Rezac himself. According to this picture, Solzhe- 

nits\'n had been a cunning dodger at school, a cow ard in the arm\', an informer 

in the camps, a lecher in exile, a thief after his rehabilitation, a betrayer of 

his friends, a committer of incest w ith his second w ife, a talentless hack w ho 

had not even mastered the Russian language, a traitor to his country, and a 

warmonger in the West.

It seems not to have occurred to Rezac that this "portrait" may have[988]

SOLZHENITSYN

struck its readers as a shade exaggerated. On the other hand, it was difficult 

to sav who its readers were, for the Progress edition was very small, being 

given onlv a restricted circulation among senior Partv members (even such a 

relentlesslv black picture of Solzhenitsyn as this could be trusted only to a 

handful of lovalists), and there were no translations into languages other than 

the Italian. Nevertheless, it seems to have touched a sensitive nerve in 

Solzhenitsvn. Just before the book's appearance, Natalia Svetlova gave an 

interview to the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag in which she denied 

that Solzhenitsvn had ever met Rezac. She also claimed that the Holub cou- 

ple, \\ ho had been Rezac's friends, had soon been exposed to Solzhenitsyn 

as Soviet agents, but Solzhenitsyn, "at the request of the Swiss police," had 

concealed his knowledge of the fact and fed tiem disinformation.'' In early 

1979 Solzhenitsvn published an entire booklet, Skvoz' chad (Through the 

Fumes), about Rezac's book, in which he, too, denied having met Rezac or 

having spoken to him. '**

The booklet was described as a sequel to, or continuation of. The Oak 

and the Calf. Solzhenitsvn had subtitled it "the sixth supplement" (the fifth 

supplement evidentiv described Solzhenitsvn's first few months in the West 

and Svetlo\ a's feat in smuggling out his archi\es under the noses of the KGB), 

and it marked a departure from his former practice of not answering attacks.

He explained his reasons for this as follows.

Goodness know s how nian\ have w ritten against me all these years, but I never 

replied; I kept doing mv ow n work. And that same Novosti agency distributed 

two collections of slanders against me free of charge in a variety of languages, 

and I didn't reply. But put yourself in the place of our countrymen now : anyone 

who wants to find out the truth about me in the Soviet Union can't lay his hands 

on either Gulag or the Calf, but onlv the Progress publication. And when I die, 

lots more will sink without a trace or simply die away, and [the slander] w ill 

stick all the more. And w ho is behind the slanders? The mightiest power in the 

modern world, with excellent chances of expanding further.'*^

Solzhenitsvn appears to have been particularly stung by the fact that Rezac 

was slandering not onlv himself but also his parents and family and that, 

unlike most of the other attacks on him, this one was intended for circulation 

inside the Soviet Union (and perhaps among Russian emigres). He was ultra- 

sensitive to his reputation with the Russian people.

It was to be two vears before another major attack on Solzhenitsyn was 

launched bv the Soviet authorities; it is \\ orth mentioning, however, not only 

for the indication of a complete change of tack but also for one unexpected 

consequence. The change of tack was simplv from personal to more general 

political scurrility. Whereas Rezac's muck-raking effort had concentrated on 

depicting Solzhenitsyn as a moral degenerate, a new book, published at the 

beginning of 1980, tried to show that Solzhenitsyn had been an active CIA 

agent since before the publication of his first story. The subject of the book 

was indeed the wider one of the insidious influence of the CIA on the Soviet