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It would be a relief if Solzhenitsyn were really a writer left over from the 19th century, a purely anachronistic spirit, a Great-Russian chauvinist with nothing ultimately very new or very credible to contribute to our understanding of Stalinism or of Soviet history and Soviet society. It would at any rate relieve the Left in the West of a daunting task that of deciphering a message which, like many others that are now reaching it from the East, fails to offer an echo to the Western Left's hopes or illusions. However, in order to quell a fever it is not enough to smash the thermometer.