121 CHRONICLESnVIEWSnSOLZHENITSYN: THE RUSSIAN LIBERALnby Mikhail S. BernstamnWhen an influential group of American intellectuals,nliberals and neoconservatives alike, unites against onenman, a Russian scribbler at refuge in a New England town,nthere ought to be something big at stake. Their ownnexplanation is that Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn is a reactionary,na social conservative, an antidemocrat, a 19thcenturynromantic or paternalist, a strong statist, a nationalist,nand whatever else.nThere is an irony about this case, because true socialnconservatives like Patrick Buchanan, paternalistic statists likenGeorge Will, religious romantics like Malcolm Muggeridge,nand extreme political right-wingers like James Burnham arennot similarly ostracized by the entire intellectual community.nPerhaps a simple example can hint at the reason. JeanenKirkpatrick argued for the comparative advantage of annauthoritarian state in some lesser developed, overpopulatedncountries of Latin America in the 1980’s. Solzhenitsynnargued for the comparative advantage of an authoritariannstate in Russia in the 1900’s-1910’s and in the hypotheticalntransitory period after communism. Yet Kirkpatrick is acceptable,nat least to neoconservatives, and SolzhenitsynnMikhail S. Bernstam is a senior research fellow at thenHoover Institution, Stanford University.nis not. The only explanation I can see is that a corporatenbody of American intellectuals identifies itself with thenpower-sharing aspirations of Russian intellectuals of then1900’s-1910’s and 1980’s-1990’s, while most Latin Americannintellectuals are integrated into their authoritariannpolitical systems. Solzhenitsyn hit where it hurts most: henexplored the costs of ideas—the ideologies and socialnarrangements of intellectuals—to ordinary people.nFrom an economic perspective, Solzhenitsyn is, contrarynto conventional wisdom, an original and distinctive libertarian.nHe is the only important libertarian who ever publishednin the Russian language. Libertarianism is, after all, alien tonRussian intellectual tradition. Solzhenitsyn noted that thenRussian intellectual community was very special in nevernhaving understood true classical liberalism. The proof of thisnis in the modern Russian language itself. With the emergencenof the term intelligentsia in the mid-19th century,nRussian terms for urban homeowner and petty bourgeois,nobyvatel’ and meshchanin—terms of the same culturalnmilieu as burgher, citizen, and businessman in English,ncitoyen and bourgeois in French, Burger in German —nchanged their connotation in the press, literature, andnsubsequently in the common usage. For over a hundrednyears these terms have meant stupid, greedy, narrowminded,nanti-intellectual; the modern dictionary translatesnboth terms into English as Philistines. To achieve suchnremarkable changes in language, the entire Russian intellec-n….”snnn