Historical narrative and emotional paradigms: The case of Solzhenitsyn’s The Red Wheel and his other works

It is not the collection of data but emotional axioms which defines the nature of the narrative. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s view on the 1917 Revolution demonstrates this clearly. Working on his monumental history of the Russian Revolution, he collected enormous amounts of material which indicated that Russia experienced the complete meltdown throughout 1914–1917 and the brutal Bolshevik dictatorship was among the few viable options to stop the country’s complete destruction. Still due to his visceral hatred of the regime, Solzhenitsyn was unable to understand the nature of the events when the outcome was in sharp contrast to his views.