Alexis Klimoff, a good friend of the late, great Alexander Solzhenitsyn and one of the world’s leading Solzhenitsyn experts, has recently brought to light some exciting new facts that throw light onto Solzhenitsyn’s life and work, and particularly on the background to the controversial publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Here’s the text of Klimoff’s e-mail:

Readers of … Solzhenitsyn … who know Russian will be richly rewarded if they familiarize themselves with the journals of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor-in-chief of “Novy Mir” who was able to push through the sensational publication of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day” in NM in 1962.

Tvardovsky (1910-71) kept a diary throughout most of his adult life, and parts of the early journals have now been published. All are fascinating, but the journals of extraordinary interest to the theme of Solzhenitsyn cover the years 1961-1970. They are published in two volumes under the title “Novomirskii dnevnik” (Moscow: PROZAiK, 2009). Volume One covers 1961-66, Volume Two reflects the years 1967-70.

All readers of Solzhenitsyn’s “Oak and Calf” will recall the memorable portrait of the hugely talented, infinitely attractive, but ideologically hobbled editor of “Novy Mir.” On the pages of Tvardovsky’s journal we now have his version of the interactions with Solzhenitsyn, in many cases involving the very same episodes described earlier in “Oak and Calf”, but now presented from Tvardovsky’s point of view.

One might note in this connection that one of Solzhenitsyn’s earlier works has had a similar, though far less significant echo: the so-called prototypes of his fictional characters Lev Rubin and Dmitri Sologdin in “The First Circle”,—respectively Lev Kopelev and Dmitri Panin—have both written memoirs of the time when they were in the sharashka together with Solzhenitsyn, in most cases confirming the accuracy of the writer’s version of events and psychological attitudes.

The Solzhenitsyn-Tvardovsky “dialogue” is infinitely richer and vastly more complex. It could easily serve as a topic for a major study, and in the present note my purpose is simply to draw attention to this fascinating theme. Yet there is one piece of information in the journals that precedes Tvardovsky’s knowledge of Solzhenitsyn, and that strikes me as well-nigh sensational.

In Tvardovsky’s journal entry of November 7, 1961 (vol.1. pp. 66-7), he writes of his meeting with his younger brother Ivan on the previous day. I quote:

“Yesterday’s meeting with my brother Ivan, his convulsive outpouring of words (poryv vyskazat’sia), the infinite horror he experienced in Chukotka while I was building a dacha, getting drunk, engaging in idle chit-chat, and enduring only the ‘relative’ and ‘spiritual’ burdens typical of those years.”

As we learn from the annotation, Ivan Tvardovsky had been a POW in Germany. In 1947 he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in a camp in north-eastern Siberia.

Tvardovsky’s further comments, the quotes of his brother’s thoughts and the reminiscences of his behavior all signal the profound impression this meeting made on Tvardovsky and the deep sense of guilt that he experienced. The significance of this episode lies in the fact that it occurred almost exactly a month before the typescript of “One Day” came into Tvardovsky’s hands. While I saw no explicit comment in the journals linking this episode with Tvardovsky’s incredibly dedicated efforts to get Solzhenitsyn’s text published, it seems clear that the emotions generated by Tvardovsky’s meeting with his brother must have played a role, however important other considerations might have been. It is also pretty clear that Solzhenitsyn was never aware of this factor.