Slater and McCain collaborated on a book that included an appreciation of Solzhenitsen. But the entire story at the root of all this kerfuffle may have been made up, since the anecdote doesn’t actually appear in the Gulag Archipelago. There is an anecdote like it, as a reader discovers, searching the book in the Russian online. Here’s the passage, translated by my reader:
These strange half-gorillas were most probably in t-shirts — after all it was hot in Stolypin. Their veined maroon necks, their shoulders spread out like spheres, their tattoos on dark-skinned chests never experienced prison exhaustion. Who were they? From where? Suddenly from one neck hangs out – a little cross! Yes, an aluminum cross on a string. You are stunned and a little relieved: among them are believers, how touching; so nothing horrible will happen. But it was just this “believer” who suddenly leans over the cross and in faith (they swear partially in Russian) and pokes two fingers out like horns, right in your eyes – not threatening, but starting to gouge. In this gesture “I’ll gouge you’re eyes out, trash!” – is their entire philosophy and faith! If they are able to press out your eye like a snail – so what are they going to spare you from? The little cross bobs, you look with your not-yet-gouged out eyes at this feral masquerade, and lose your system of keeping track: which of you has lost their mind? Who will lose it next?
Here, of course, the lesson is the actual inverse of the Salter/Colson story. It is that even people wearing the sign of the cross can be evil in certain circumstances. I wonder what the origin of the Colson story was. Someone should ask him. Obviously, if any other reader can pore through Solzhenitsen online in search of the anecdote in question, I’d be only too happy to post it. My suspicion is that it’s a fabrication used for evangelical purposes. A beautiful and poignant fabrication – but untrue nonetheless. I don’t know for sure, so keep the emails coming and I will post any and all salient facts that can shed light on this.
The Dish 