Modern Age - Summer 2014 - 27

WHY WE NEED GOD

under Tsar Nicholas II from 1906 to 1911-
were dismissed by much of Russia's intellectual elite because they did not measure up to
Tolstoy's ideals.4 Ironically, at the same time,
pacifist beliefs became a justification to avoid
military service-a kind of self-serving use
of moral idealism (1.417-18).
Moreover, the leaders of the tsarist regime
used religion almost as a superstition (1.818-
19). The tsar and his leading officers prayed
for success in war, rather than adequately
preparing for it (1.716, 818-20, 831). Perhaps it was because Orthodoxy became little
more than a supplication for success among
Russia's ruling classes that the two "heroes"
of The Red Wheel, Stolypin and Vorotyntsev,
pay scant attention to it when devising their
actions (1.575).
Religion not only makes people too
acquiescent; it can, paradoxically, make
believers too narrow-minded and sectarian.
Solzhenitsyn powerfully portrays the religious hatreds and persecution aimed at Russia's Old Believers. Moreover, as Aleksandr
Guchkov explains ironically in November
1916 (volume 2 of The Red Wheel), "the Jewish question" became "the greatest . . . most
acute . . . urgent . . . and . . . characteristic" of
all of Russia's problems (2.43-45, 529).5 Solzhenitsyn presents the tendency of religion
to elicit malice in a poetic passage:
God's truth was like "Mother Truth"
in the folktale. Seven brothers rode out to
look at her, viewed her from seven sides and
seven angles, and when they returned each
of them had a different tale to tell: one said
she was a mountain, one . . . a forest . . . one
a . . . town. . . . And, for telling untruths,
they slashed . . . each other . . . and with their
dying breaths bade their sons slash . . . each
other . . . to death (2.56).
Finally, and more generally, Solzhenitsyn
shows how almost all educated people of
prerevolutionary Russia found traditional

religion stifling, parochial, and unconvincing (1.30-39, 65). He points out that there
was a fundamental disagreement between
enlightenment and religion (1.341). This
gulf is even more acute in the modern age,
since truth is judged by the rigor of scientific proof. The dispute between reason and
revelation has never been more apparent or
intense (1.803-6).

hy, then, is religion important to us?
Solzhenitsyn's view of the importance
of religion is manifest in the way he presents
four characters. For many people, religion is
the basis of morality and hardly any questions are raised about its veracity. Although
religion may in reality be a culturally learned
set of behaviors, the unsophisticated acceptance of its dictums is exactly what has
made it critical to civilization. All religions
teach duty toward others and place limits on
individual selfishness; religion is one of the
foundations of human community.
Despite her lofty position, or perhaps
because of it, Tsarina Alexandra-the last
of the Romanov queens-spends time
comforting wounded soldiers in her private
hospital. In The Red Wheel, she claims to feel
"closer than ever to the wounded when she
prayed with them" (2.956). Her beliefs may
be considered naive by sophisticated people,
but religion has taught her responsibility.
Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the Soviet Union, is also
dedicated to other people. As Solzhenitsyn
depicts him, Lenin wants to usher in a society that will rid the human race of inequality, injustice, and suffering. Lenin believes
that he is more committed to the perfection
of society than others and, therefore, does
not feel beholden to any standards above or
beyond his own judgment. He "never took
his opinions from anyone else but always had
his own" (1.485). Everyday activities such as
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Modern Age - Summer 2014

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