ABSTRACT
In the case of Solzhenitsyn one could not even resort to that familiar intellectual nose: icy supercilious indignation. One has encountered enough of that: the outrage against a Russian dissident who is applauded and cheered by “the wrong side”. The hate/envy of an author who has earned a lot of money and still calls on people's sympathies: the hyper criticism of an intellectual who may be a source of some relevant information but who is basically a mediocre novelist. In some desperation the author tried making a last-minute telephone call. He simply could not return to Zurich without some proper scraps of information. Solzhenitsyn apologized for withdrawing for a minute or two to his own study to ponder the matters in question for himself alone. When he returned he made a breath-taking one minute resume of the author's position and stated his own views methodically, point for point, with exhaustive precision.
