THE CREATIVE ARTIST IN A COMMUNIST SOCIETY

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• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 96
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 17, 2014
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: May 1, 1959
• Content Type: REPORT

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THE CREATIVE ARTIST
IN A fAMMUNIST SOCIETY
Compiled and Edited
By HENRY Y. BURKE
May, 1959
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE SOVIET UNION
I. The Artist In a Monolothic State, by George Gibian
2. The Puzzling Theory of Socialist Realism, by GI eb Struve
3. The Artist's Role As Defined By Communist Leaders, by Henry V. Burke
4. Post-Stalin Literary Thaw Ends With New Controls, by Vera Al exandrova
5. Communism's Single Standard for Literature And The Arts, by Arturo Valente
6. Musical Censorship Poses Problems For Communist Officials, by Marcel Grilli
7. Pasternak's Fellow Authors Speak Their Minds, by Henry V. Burke
8. Dr. Zhivago "Has No Interest For Us," by Arturo Valente
9. Why Khrushchev Distrusts The Soviet Intellectuals, by James H. Billington
10. The Lesson of Pasternak, by Ignazio Shone
I I. Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago", by Max Hayward
EASTERN EUROPE
I. Gyorgy Lukacs: Hungary's Heretical Marxist, by Paul Landy
2. Let The Audience Decide, by Janos Torok
3. Literary Omens In Eastern Europe, by Paul Landy
4. Satellite Theatergoers Rebel Against Boredom, by Paul Landy
III
ASIA
I. Tashkent's Meaning For The Writers of Asia and Africa
(From a Report by Khrishnalal Shridharani)
2. Revolutionary Writers In Conformist China, by A. J. Roy,
3. Peiping's Ideology Of Literature, by Nils Stefansson
4. Ho Chi Minh's Cultural Problem: individualism in Art, by Henry V. Burke
5. Communist China Revealed In Her Art, by Peggy Durdin
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THE SOVIET UNION
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"The highest social purpose of literature and the arts is to arouse the people to
a struggle for new successes in the building of Communism." -- Nikita S. Khrushchev
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE
By George Gibian
(Mr. Gibian is an associate professor in the Russian Department of Smith
College, Northampton, Mass.)
PART I
The Price of Success
Three of the Soviet Union's most famous modern composers, Dmitri Shostakovich (left), Aram
Khachaturian (center) and Sergei Prokofiev (right) experienced considerable difficulty in
satisfying Communist officials of their artistic faithfulness to party objectives. Branded
as "anti�popular formalists" in a 1948 musical purge, the three were rehabilitated in 1958.
For Prokofiev, who died in 1953, the party's changed attitude came five years too late.
This portrait study of Boris
Pasternak suggests the
qualities of quiet scholar�
ship, poetic reflection and
artistic integrity which have
helped to make the famous
poet and novelist a highly
controversial figure in the
Soviet Union.
The young Soviet writer, actor, or musician who at the thres-
hold of his career stops to consider what his professional future may hold
in store for him is likely to be struck with awe by the tremendous gap
separating the possibilities of great fame and great failure.
The fact that two very divergent fates face a budding artist
does not seem in itself very surprising. Is there any country in the
world where the difference between the extremes of success and failure
are not very pronounced? The real peculiarities of the Soviet situation
lie in the kind of failure or success, in the circumstances and the ways
in which either may come about.
Let us first consider the most favorable possible course of
development for a Soviet writer. His works, whether novels, plays, or
poems, are published in editions running into hundreds of thousands, some-
times even millions of copies. They may be published first in installments
in a literary monthly, perhaps in October (Oktyabr) or The New World (Novy
Mir, in exceptional cases even in the pages of Pravda or The LitevEy
Newspaper (Literaturnaya Gazeta.) His writings are translated into the
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TBE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part I )
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various languages of the Soviet Union--Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, and
many others. His name is known to millions of his fellow citizens; he is
admired and revered. He may become a candidate for the annual Lenin Prize
(which has replaced the former Stalin Prizes) and may even win one of them.
The material rewards of such a successful writer's life match
his fame and honor. He is paid substantial royalties (based, oddly enough,
according to the old Russian system, on the length of his work) every time
his work is printed, whether in a magazine, as a book, or in translation.
He can keep almost the entire amount he is paid, for income tax in the
Soviet Union is extremely low, seldom exceeding ten or fifteen percent.
He is very likely to be assigned a small but comfortable apartment in Mos-
cow in one of the large apartment houses owned by the Union of Writers, where
he pays a very low rent and has the pleasure of living in close proximity
to numerous colleagues and friends-- or perhaps rivals. He may also
purchase or build a dacha, a country home, again very likely in
settlement some miles outside the capital of the republic where
or, most likely of all in the case of an established writer, at
the writers' colony close to Moscow, for the advantages of life
an artists'
he lives,
Peredelkino,
in the
cspital attract an even greater percentage of Russian writers than Paris
draws of the painters and sculptors of France.
The successful, favored writer may be one of the few Soviet own-
ers of a private automobile. When he wishes, he may receive a putyovka
(coupons entitling him to free or reduced rates for travel and hotel accommo-
dations) to Black Sea and other resorts. If he plans to write a novel about
a remote section of the country, he will be supported during months of stay
and research in the region.
THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part I)
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Is there any drawback -- any set of conditions to be fulfilled --
if he is to enjoy this enviable mixture of honors and material rewards?
Is anything necessary other than an unusual share of artistic talent?
Unfortunately,a great deal. In order to climb to and remain at
the zenith of a Soviet artistic areeer, it is necessary to stay in the
good favors of the Union of Writers -- and of the Communist Party, whose
instrument the Union of Writers is. One has to keep writing in a manner
pleasing to the controlling officials. Since 1934, the one and only liter-
ary method or style permissible has been the vague and amorphous "socialistic
realism." (Between 1928 and 1932, the slogan had been "social command," a
somewhat clearer description of the desired attitude towards writing.)
Socialistic realism has been described by many personar;es, ranging from
Stalin to Gorky, --ithout ever being completely clarified. At the Second
Writers' Congress, in December 1954, tne author Fedin complained that
foreign Communist writers were asking for an exact definition of social-
istic realism. It is impossible to give them as simple an answer as they
seem to want, Fedin declared. They should not "expect a recipe" which
would read something like "Take fifty parts of positive hero, five parts of
negative hero, one part social contradiction, one part inspired romanti-
cism, one hundred parts distilled water." The only positive, but hardly
satisfying, suggestion he was able to supply was to study "the best works"
of various Soviet writers and imitate them.
A
In actual practice socialistic realism has consisted of taking
contemporary subjects (often specific areas of Soviet life in which the
Party felt some change or improvement was necessary: the production of
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part I)
4
cement, the cultivation of the "virgin lands" of Kazakhstan, or the organi-
zation of an electric engineering research institute,) and treating them
properly. The proper manner of treatment means concentrating not on the
individual aspects, but on the social, on the masses, on the collective;
taking an optimistic, cheerful view of Soviet life, rather than being nega-
tive and critical; and writing in a manner intelligible to the masses, with-
out excessive attention to form -- in other words, avoiding experimentation,
anything modernistic and smacking of the "decadent, bourgeois," and con-
centrating on a plain, "realistic," conservative, conventional method of
narration.
To know just what subjects, attitudes towards them, and manner of
treatment are permissible or not permissible, encouraged or prohibited (for
the Party line shifts here as in other areas) is one of the major and most
delicate tasks of a Soviet artist. Some of the most prominent ones '(and
most consistently favored ones) have been those who, like Konstantine
Simonov or Ilya Ehrenburg, have had a keen nose and a good sense of timing
in sensing a change of line almost before it had occurred and the docility
to conform to what they felt was in the air. Those who either did not
catch on or who ,were temperamentally unsuited for the task of following
every twist of the line � Vladimir Dudintsev, Margarita Aliger, Boris
Pasternak, and others -- have been chastised or silenced.
If we looked only at what has happened to some unfortunate prtists
in Soviet Russia, we might wonder why any young man or woman in Russia de-
cides to become a playwright, film director, or author -- it must take great
blindness, gullibility, or courage. Pasternak, the whole world now knows,
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part I) - 5
has been insulted and threatened after he received the Nobel Prize for a
novel which has never been published in Russia; others have been attacked.
in a manner typified by the following description applied by a critic to
the imaginative Zamyatin: "This adept at mimicry and falsification whose
whole conception of life was culled from literary rpmi niscences and bore
no relation whatsoever to reality, left no trace in literature and has
been completely forgotten by the present generation of Soviet readers."
The characters of the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko have been
called by the same critic, Alexander Anikst, "misshapen caricatures" and his
work in general "a slanderous portrayal of Soviet people as primitive be-
ings with philistine tastes and manners. . . . Zoshchenko had a trades-
man's attitude towards life and wallowed in the mire of petty everyday
affairs and could not rise to the heights required to paint an extensive
canvas of life with a realistic picture of its typical characters and
manifestations." Some writers, like Isaac Babel, it is now admitted in
Soviet Russia, were arrested, sent to work camps, and even executed.
End Part I
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE
BY George Gibian
PART II
Methods of State Control
There are three main ways in which the Soviet Communist Party
makes clear to the U.S.S.R.'s artists how they should write, paint, and
compose.
The first way is by means of general pronouncements of guiding
principles. Congresses of writers or painters are held, at which some
of the leaders of the particular artists' union make theoretical state-
ments; speeches are delivered by political figures (in 1957, for example,
Khrushchev made three such speeches which were later printed and are
still being quoted and pointed to as authoritative indications of principle);
or authoritative articles are printed in newspapers and magazines.
One such recent essay, by Y. Elsberg (in Kommunist, No. 12, 1958),
is typical of these direction-setting articles. It sets down the usual
chain of reasoning concerning Party control over the arts. The first
premise, according to Elsberg, concerns the task of literature -- which
is "to inspire the people towards new progress in building communism."
The next presupposition is that it is "the policy of the Communist Party
rwhich7 expresses the deepest interests of the people" and that "never
before was the life of the people so full of principle, so fully intel�
lectually saturated, so aware, so many sided." The conclusion follows:
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part II)
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"Therefore the Soviet writer, a faithful supporter of the Party's work,
has at his disposal an infallible compass he Part/7' which helps him
to orient himself correctly in the complex problems of studying and
artistically representing the nation's life."
This rationale for compelling writers to write cheerfully,
positively, and in full obedience to the Party is strengthened by the
second major means of instructing them: the picking of a handful of
deterrent examples. In the lest two or three years: the whipping boys
have included Vladimir Dudintsev, Margarita Auger, Alexander Yashin
(for his story "The Levers,") David Granin (for his "Convictions Of
One's Own,") and Semyon Kirsanov -- a list recently joined and eclipsed
by Boris Pasternak.
The third method is to hold out as examples works which embody
the desirable characteristics the Party wishes other artists to imitate.
From time to time, such hallowed masterpieces are selected, praised, ana-
lyzed. Thus every artist in the country learns what he is to emulate, if
he is to be in the good graces of the "political artists," the various
functionaries of the unions, the aparatchiki (apparatus personnel) of the
artistic bureaucracy. A recent example of such an officially approved
work is Vsevolod Kochetov's The Yershov Brothers. Elsberg, in his article,
betrays the ideological reasons for the special "honoring" treatment given
to Kochetov's novel when he praises its hero as a "truly conscious builder
of communism". and as a man who remained "politically vigilant during the
months which followed the Twentieth Party Congress, when certain individ-
ual unstable elements tried to interpret the decisions of the Congress
in a revisionistic spirit."
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part II)
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There are four different roads open to the Soviet artist. The
first is for him to be a sincere, fanatical Communist convinced that what-
ever the Party wants is truly for the best. Therefore he cheerfully
follows the Party line, which most of the time coincides with his own
opinions anyway. If it does not, he willingly sacrifices his personal or
artistic conscience on the altar of Party discipline. Such artists are as
few and usually as mediocre in their field as they are fortunate in being
spared the inner conflicts of their colleagues.
The second way is that of the majority of the most talented
artists, who also conform to the Party's wishes, but do so grudgingly,
regretting the price exacted of them,yet preferring to live comfortably
and to continue working in their chosen field, with such concessions as
are necessary. They paint uniformed Stalins or smiling tractor drivers,
depending on the currently approved subjects, in such style as happens
to be fashionable. On the side, in secrecy, they may paint entirely
different subjects, in a personal manner. It was said about Gera.simov,
the conformist patriarch and leader of Soviet painters, that his studio
concealed scores of nudes painted in defiance of official taste, which
he never tried to exhibit or sell.
The third way, taken by many honest men, is silence or evasion.
Rather than paint or write as they do not wish to, they leave the field
of art and make their living in some other way, or turn to some politi-
cally innocuous corner within their field. Thus many writers gave up
"formalistic" and "subjectivistic" poetry or fiction and turned to safe
biographies or historical fiction. Pasternak devoted many years to mar-
velous translations of Shakespeare.
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part II) - 4
The fourth road, that taken by a small minority, is to follow
one's artistic and civic conscience, to go against the Party dictates,
to attempt to publish what one fears will be badly received, and then
to defend it as long as possible. Such was the course of action of
Margarita Aliger and others, particularly during the years 1956-57,
when the limits of freedom were extended and blurred. Since the spring
of 1957, the Party has been making a special effort to put the clock
back and to show the writers that they must not exceed the bounds of the
permissible. It was not content with damning certain objectionable works;
it insisted on their authors' recanting and apologizing. After months of
what even Russian writers called "the heroism of silence," most of the
authors attacked surrendered and delivered the required apologies, by
speech or letter. Typical of the pathetic, humiliating "confessions" is
Margarita Aliger's:
n. . . in my public work I committed a number of gross mistakes.
. . . I really committed those mistakes about which Comrade
Khrushchev speaks. I committed them, I persisted in them, but
I understood them andlbonfessed them deliberately and con-
sciously . . . Obviously I must now be much more exacting with
myself, rid myself of a certain speculativeness. . . "
For art and literature to be considered such an important
weapon as to call for constant, top level direction (Stalin called writers
"engineers of the human soul") is, to one way of looking at it, a great
compliment to their power and importance. Unfortunately it brings in
its train great limitations which are far from complimentary: Party con-
trol, both positive (guidance, exhortation) and negative (reprimands,
punishments.) The writers are the most outstanding victims, for their
medium, words, refers most clearly and unequivocally to the realities of
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THE ARTIST IN A MONOLITHIC STATE (Part II)
5
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Soviet life -- and hence courts the danger of running afoul of Party wishes.
Relatively most fortunate are the composers. Some of them have occasion-
ally been attacked, but as long as they avoid being too modernistic or
atonal, they enjoy considerable freedom -- for when a composer declares
that the subject of his suite is "Praise of Russian Reforestation," who
can contradict him?
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THE PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM
By Gleb Struve
(Mr. Struve is an associate professor in the Department of Slavic
Languages and Literature at the University of California.)
"Socialist realism," one of the more puzzling catch phrases of
Communist policy, might be defined as the term most frequently used to
describe the rules which all Soviet artists -- particularly writers --
are expected to apply in their creative undertakings.
This statement, admittedly, fails to answer such questions as
"what, precisely, is socialist realism?" and "what is its relation to
just plain realism?"
Actually, as 14e shall see, it is far from easy to evolve intelli�
gent answers to questions of this sort, which may explain why the subject
already has produced a voluminious and somewhat contradictory literature
of its own.
The formula khown as "socialist realism" is supposed to have been
coined by Stalin and is said to have been first used by him at a gathering
of Soviet writerein.0Jtober, 1932. One SoViet scholar drew attention to
the fact that the-sarietfOrMtifti had been cited earlier in a Literaturnaya
Gazeta editorial. This editorial which appeared in the issue of May 29,
1932, noted.that."The" masses afe demanding from the Vist'sVcerity,
truthfulness; and reolutionary'socialist realism in the depiction of the
proletarian revolution."
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MOSCOW'S PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM
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The "socialist realism" formula was uidely discussed between 1932 ..and
1934, during the preparations for the first Congress of Soviet Writers,
which took place in August, 1934, at Moscow. By that time socialist
realism had been accepted as the guiding principle of Soviet literature
ard, as such, was incorporated in the charter of the newly founded Union
of Soviet Writers. In the preamble to that charter we read that the
creative ideas of Soviet literature, evolved under the guidance of the
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Communist Party, "have found their main expression in the principles of
socialist realism." The charter then gives this rather vague definition:
"Socialist realism, being the basic method of Soviet imagi-
native literature and literary criticism, demands from the art-
ist a truthful, historically concrete depiction of the reality
in its revolutionary development. At the same time the truth-
fulness and historical concreteness of the artistic depiction
of the reality must be combined with the task of ideological
remolding and upbringing of the toilers in the spirit of so-
Socialist realism was also said to provide the artist an ex-
ceptional opportunity of showing his creative initiative, as well as "a
choice of diverse forms, styles, and genres."
Hundreds of articles were written, and numerous discussions
held, in an attempt to lend more substance to these rather nebulous formu-
lations, as well as to define the relation between socialist realism and
that which was, at different times and by different people, variously
described as "classical realism," "bourgeois realism," or "critical realism."
4
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MOSCOW'S PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM - 3 -
The stress shifted now to one, now to another element of the above defini-
tion. Much was made of the importance of depicting reality as a revolu-
tionary development, and in this was seen the main difference between
socialist realism and the traditional "bourgeois" realism. There was also
a great deal of toying with the formula "revolutionary romanticism," which
was said to be a necessary ingredient of socialist realism. This latter
association was particularly dear to the heart of Maxim Gorky, who once
said that revolutionary-romanticism wasreelly a pseudonym for socialist
realism.
This identification of socialist realism with revolutionary
romanticism was combatted, however, by some writers, critics, and scholars,
among them Gyorgy Lukacs, a Hungarian Communist critic and literary scholar,
himself a great admirer of Gorky, who in the 1930's lived and wrote in the
Soviet Union and whom Herbert Read has described as "by far the most formid-
able exponent of Marxism in literary criticism." For Lukacs, who later
returned to Hungary and played a not unimportant part in the intellectual
fermentation which preceded that country's 1956 revolt, "revolutionary
romanticism" signified a naturalistic degeneration of socialist realism,
while the latter was really a logical step forward from, and an improve-
ment upon, the critical realism of the nineteenth century, the realism
of Balzac and Tolstoy, to whose study Lukslcs devoted most of his time.
From Lukacs's interpretation of socialist realism it would follow
that, fundamentally, socialist realism is a legitimate offspring of the
critical realism as expressed in the European novel of the nineteenth
century and continued in modern times by such writers as Thomas Mann, and
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that the new element or quality in it is the socialist outlOok'of its
exponents.. Whether this justifies us in describing it as a new artistic
method3.howevervis highly doubtful.
, Even some Soviet scholars, critics: and writers have at times
1.1:Used some doubts, asking themselves whether socialibt realism should not
rather be described as a philosophy of life or world outlook (mirovozzrenie,
Weltanschauung).- In one of the latest Soviet pronouncements on the subject,
a paper by V. Shcherbina, this view is, however, rejected. Mentioning tfiose
who propose to regard socialist realism either as a totality of certain
artistic means of representation or as a world outlook, he rejects both
thede approaches as "onesided" and insists that 'soCialist realism is an
arrtistic method.
In the 1930's much of the discussion about socialist realism was
-ofe-Purely scholastic, academic, often hairsplitting, nature, though at
timed the political essence of the whole concept would 'break through. Thus
the critic Isaac Musinov, who was later tb- bbcome one of thevictims of
Zhdanoir''s witch-hunting, in 1934 offered the T:ollowing formula of socialist
realism which seemed to have little to do with art: "The main object of
socialist realism is the struggle foe the destruction of the world of prop
erty and the triumph of socialism."
As time went on, this social-political aspect of socialist realism
came more and more to the fore. This was largely the result of the fact
that with the principle of socialist realism came to be coupled the notion
of partiynostrr or partymindedness, lir notion which can be traced back to
an article by Lenin, written in 1905, about the principle of party literature.
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Whether Lenin had in mind party literature in the narrow sense of
the word and the conditions then prevailing in Russian life, or was visual-
izing thea.td literature of the future, remains a moot point. At
any rate it ao.happened that Lenin's principle of partiynost' came to br
inseparahly,associated,with the principle of -socialist realism. To be a
good Soviet writerr it was-no longer enough to be a socialist realist: it
was necessary also to be "par,tyminded." The partymindedness of Soviet lit-
erature came to be particularly stressed during the so-called Zhdanov era,
that is, after World War II. It was during this period that it became in-
creasingly clear that socialist realism in practice boiled dawn to the cur-
rent Party line.
Both in imaginativeliterature and in literary criticism and
scholarship,' only that was admissible which conformed to the general line
of the Party at the givth-ribtient. Rabid anti-Westernism, assertion of
Soviet priority in almost ekriere�field of human endeavor, and the cult of
Stalin became the salient features of a socialist-realistic work of litera-
ture. When de-Stalinization get in and the cult of the individual was de-
nounced, the criteria of socialist, realism were revised overnight, and many
of the literary works produced between 1946 and 1953, and regarded previous-
ly as models of socialist realism, were dismissed as idealized distortions
of reality.
A During the so-called "thaw" in Soviet literature, works like
Ehrenburg's novel of that name.contained an implicit admission that social-
ist realism, as understood during the post-war period, meant an inevitable
decline of art:. In some Communist countries outside the U.S.S.R, writers,
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MOSCOW'S PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM
-6
and artists in general, went even further: in Poland and in Hungary the
�
adoption of socialist realism in the early Thirties came to be regarded
as the deathknell of all true art. The result was that Soviet critics
and scholars were henceforth to adopt a defensive, apologetic attitude in.
the debate about socialist realism. But the principles of socialist real-
ism and partymindedness were by no means abandoned. They were firmly re-
asserted, as the mainstays of Soviet literature and art, by Nikita 'thrush-
chev in the summer of 1957. His statements to Soviet writers and artists,
widely publicized, were described by Soviet writers as "historic" and "pro-
grammatic", and are now looked upon as directives which must guide the
course of Soviet literature.
Despite the subject's fascination for communist officials, howl-
evertasatisfactory definition of socialist realism, either in theory or in
practice, is still lacking. Since cultural coexistence has become part of
the official policy of the Soviet government, there has been a growing
tendency to try to reconcile socialist realism with the critical realism
of the past (and of the present as far as non-Communist countries are con-
cerned), even though at the same time Lukacs's views are being refuted as
Previsionism."
Let us take two typical recent pronouncements. V. Shcherbina,
in a paper already quoted, writes that socialist realism must not be di-
vorced from, or opposed to, critical realism, and that the cognitive and
artistic value of much of contemporary non-Russian realistic literature
must be fully recognized. Shcherbina is even ready to admit the existence
in Soviet literature of currents other than socialist realism. He also
3
MOSCOW'S PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM - 7
^
speaks disparagingly, in the wake of Lukacs, of "naturalistic pseudo-
realism." In a recent volume of studies of socialist realism, V. Ozerov
4
also speaks of the latter as the culmination of old realism, as its successor
and continuator. At the same time he comes dangerously close to admitting
the purely ideological differentia of socialist realism when he describes
it as "a Plealisti6-7 method fertilized by the ideas of socialism," or
sees the "newness" of Soviet art in the novelty of its representational
material.
At times Shcherbina and Ozerov contradict each other, once more
demonstrating in what confusion the whole subject is still wrapped. Thus,
while Shcherbina insists that it is a fallacy to speak of the demands that
socialist realism places on the artist, Ozerov writes that, instead of a
long enumeration of various "characteristics" of socialist realism, it
would be better to mention "the main demands which it makes upon writers,
and in the first place the demand for truth, revealed and interpreted in
the light of the socialist ideal and of the Communist partymindedness."
What "partymindedness" in art is, no one has as yet explained
satisfactorily.
The elastic, adjustable nature of socialist realism as understood
by Soviet literary lawgivers is best illustrated in the statements recently
made by Mikhail Sholokhov, the celebrated author of And Quiet Flows the Don.
4 Last April Sholokhov spent a few days in Prague, where he was received and
interviewed at the Union of Czechoslovak Writers. The interview was pub-
lished in Literary News, the official weekly of the Writers' union.
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MOSCOW'S PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM - 8-
-' To the first question -- "What he thought of socialist realism?" --
Sholokhov replied as follows:
"Theory is not my forte. I am just a writer. But I shall
tell you a little story. Not long before his death, I met my
friend Alexander Fadeyev. I asked him the same question. I
asked him what would he answer if he were asked a-straightfor-
ward question about the meaning of socialist realism. He said:
"If someone were to ask me this, to the best of my knowledge
I would have to reply: 'Devil knows what it really is.' Maybe
Fadeyev was joking. If I were to answer for myself I would say
that, to my mind, socialist realism is that which is in favor of
the Soviet regime and is written in a simple, comprehensible,
artistic language. This is not a theoretical assumption, but
the experience of an author. The theoreticians are there to
prop it up with their scaffolding and to drive in theoretical
wedges."
Sholokhov's reference to Fadeyev, who had always been one of the
staunchest supporters of the Party line in literature and was regarded as
-one of the meat thorough exponents of socialist realism at its best, and
who committed suicide a few mogths after the debunking of Stalin, is highly
significant. His own crudely simplified definition of socialist realism
has an almost mocking ring. But even more irreverent was Sholokhov's
answer to the next question. Asked whether he considered his own works as
representative of socialist realism, Sholokhov replied:
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MOSCOW'S PUZZLING POLICY OF SOCIALIST REALISM - 9
'When you ask me this question I recall that at first my
works were proclaimed by Marxist theoreticians to be those of
a kulak writer; later, I became for them a 'counter-revolu-
ionary' writer; while in recent years it has always been said
that I have been a socialist realist all my life."
It would be difficult to describe more succinctly the elastic-
ity of this famous formula. It is significant that while this interview
of Czech writers with Sholokhov was reprinted in the official Polish
Communist paper (Trybuna Ludu), not a word of it was breathed in the Soviet
press. Soviet critics, on the other hand, are fond of quoting the state-
ment which Sholokhov made in his speech at the Second Congress of Soviet
Writers in 1954, when he said: "...our enemies abroad say that we write
at the dictate of the Party. Things are somewhat different; each one of
us writes at the dictate of his heart, but our hearts belong to the Party
and to our people whom we serve by our art."
One may only guess at the degree of conviction in Sholok-
hov's remark.
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STAT
THE ARTIST'S ROLE, AS DEFINED BY COMMUNIST LEADERS
Communist
have made no secret
The theme
first consideration
constantly stressed
of intellectuals.
"The pringiple of party literature," V.I. Lenin once declared,
By Henry V. Burke
leaders, from Lenin to Mao Tse�tung and Khrushchev,
of their determination to control the creative arts.
that close adherence to party doctrine must be the
of writers, painters and composers, therefore, is
in Communist pronouncements governing the activities
"consists in the fact that not only may literature not be an instrument
of gain,for individuals or groups, but also in that it may not be an
individual matter at all." Instead, the Communist party's founder added,
"literature must become a component part of organized, planned, unified
party work."
Nikita Khrushchev broadened Lenin's concept in this series of
statements:
"The Ilighest social purpose of literature and the arts is to
arouse the,people to a struggle for new successes in the building of
Communist:"
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of the most important principles is the indissoluble con�
nection of Soviet literature and art with the policy of the Communist
party." r � �
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THE ARTIST'S ROLE, AS DEFINED BY COMMUNIST LEADERS - 2
"Our people need works of literature, art and music whioh
reflect the glory of labor... The me-ehod of socialist realism insures
unlimited possibilities for the creation of such works."
Khrushchev was particularly frank in outlining the role of news-
papers and magazines in a Communist society. "We cannot let the press
organs fall into unreliable lands," he asserted. "They must be in the
hands of the workers that are the most loyal, most reliable, most staunch
politically, and most devoted to our cause."
The Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung has stressed that
"art for art's sake, art which transcends class or party, art which stands
as a bystander to, or independent of, politics" cannot be allowed to exist.
"When we say literature and art follow politics," he added, "we
mean class politics."
President Kuo Mo-jo of the Chinese (Communist) Academy of Sciences,
pointed out in 1958 that "literary style... mainly involves ideology and
the ideological method."
Chou Yang, vice chairman of the Chinese Communist party's
central propaganda department, recently endorsed the Soviet line that
literature is primarily an ideological weapon when he said: "Under the
leadership of the Communist party, Chinese literature has always regarded
socialist realism as the most correct principle of creation, and looked
upon Soviet works as models."
Communist newspapers and theoretical journals have been even
more pointed in their cultural ediats.
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THE ARTIST'S ROLE, AS DEFINED BY COMMUNIST LEADERS - 3
"The most important task of Soviet writers," according to
Bolshevik, "is to preach the ideas of Communism and to show the advantages
STAT
of the Socialist (Communist) system."
"The form of (artistic) presentation," said the Teacher's Gazette,
"as well as stylistic beauty and poetical images... must all be subordi-
nate to the principles of Marxism-Leninism."
"Only that artist is free in his creation," Culture and Life
asserted, "who is versed in the laws of the historical development of
society and who with all his heart is devoted to his people, to the Com-
munist party, and to the Communist society."
Pravda, not forgetting the potential influence of motion picture
films, has decreed that "Soviet cinema art has not and cannot have any
interests or tasks other than the interests of the state and the tasks
of educating the people, and the youth particularly, in the spirit of
the great ideas of Lenin and Stalin."
# # #
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POST-STALIN LITERARY "THNU" ENDS WITH NEW CONTROLS
By Vera Alexandrova
(Vera Alexandrova, formerly editor-in-chief of the
Chekhov Publishing House in New York, is recognized
as an authority on the USSR's literary history.)
The Boris Pasternak case probably has done more than anything
else since the death of Stalin to dramatize and clarify the Communist
Party's position on cultural matters.
. This elderly Soviet poet and novelist, a symbol of stalwart
individualism in the midst of censorship alla regimentation, captured the
world's admiration and sympathy to a degree few writers have experienced.
Pasternak's 1958 ordeal, however,*as this review will show,
was merely the culmination of a chain of circumstances which began some
four years before.
In March, 1954, a year after Stalin's death, the Soviet magazine
Znamya published a novel entitled The Thaw. This book by Ilya Ehrenlqurg
was to become a rallying point for those ,seeking relief from the Communist
Party's program of making Soviet literature a propaganda tool.
"ThawM thus rapidly became a popplar byword and was applied to
the brief post-Stalin period of relaxed .party pressure on literature
during which the pent-up need of Soviet writers for greater creative free-
dom unmistakably began to break through to the surface.
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POST-STALIN LITERARY "THAW" ENDS WITH NEW CONTROLS
2
However, by the end of .the year, the Communist Party had suc-
ceeded in strengthening its control and partially restoring its shaken
cultural authority. This was the atmosphere in which the Second All-
Union Writers Congress was held in December 1954. A faint breath of free-
dom still persisted in the literary air.
A new "thaw" began after Khrushchev's speech at the closed session
of the 20th Communist Party Congress in February, 1956, with its shocking.
exposure of Stalin's crimes. This second "thaw," which lasted more tfhan
a year, was halted by the direct intervention of Khrushchev himself, who
arranged two conferences with writers, artists and composers in May, 1957,
and followed these up with a speech on the tasks Of literature and art at
a meeting of leading Communist Party workers.' The three Khrushchev talks
were reworked into a long article, "For Close Ties Between Art and Litera-
ture and the Life of the People," which first appeared in the magazine
Kommunist in August, 1957, and was later reprinted in all literary journals
throughout the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev's statements were built upon a single idea: the will
of the Communist Party is the genuine expression of the will of the people;
hence the "party spirit" in literature, that is, absolute adherence by
writers to the party's directives, is the only expression of their true
loyalty to the people. Any show of independence by a writer is an expres-
sion of a hostile attitude toward the people. This decree, which was soon
proclaimed to be a "party document," became Moscow's mandatory credo for
all Soviet writers. A new literary freeze had begun.
_
POST-STALIN LITERARY "THAW" ENDS WITH NEW CONTROLS - 3
During the second literary "thaws" which had preceded the 1957
edict by Khrushchev, there appeared an inspired novel by the young writer
Vladimir Dudintsev, Not By Bread Alone. This work was serialized in the
magazine Novy Mir,in August, September and October, 1956.
Dudintsev's novel depicts the struggle of the talented "indi-
vidualist" inventor Lopatkin, who designs a machine that is to simplify
production methods and cut costs in the manufacture of metal pipes, against
the inertia and bureaucracy of the Communist industrial administration.
"No matter how hungry I might be," says Lopatkin, at one point, "I would
always exchange my bread for a spark of faith." And because Lopatkin; does
not surrender, he acquires devoted friends and emerges a victor from the
unequal struggle.
Both the general reader and other writers welcomed Dudintsevis
novel with great enthusiasm. A meeting held at the Central Writers' Club
in Moscow at the end of October, 1956, to discuss the novel was filled
to overflowing. All the speakers were unanimous in their praise.
Only one month later, however, people cautiously began to dis-
sociate themselves from Dudintsev, who was now accused by the party of
"bias in favor of individualism" and "inability to realize and appreciate
the strength of the collective" (Literary Gazette, November 24; Izvestia,
December 2, 1956). At the March, 1957, plenum of the Executive Committee
of the Writers' Union there was no longer any trace of the initially
favorable response to Not By Bread Alone.
In a later comment, Dudintsev described the plight of Soviet
writers as being comparable to that of the child whose every movement is
closely controlled by strict parents,
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POST,STALIN LITERARY "THAW" SENDS WITH NEW CONTROLS - 4 -
In 1958 Vsevolod Kochetov 14rote a novel, "The Yershov Brothers"
(published in the magazine Veva-, June-July, 1958),-which was conceived
as a kind of anti-Dudintsev production, and is todayrecognized_ as such.
It is centered around an ideal family of hereditary proletarians, the
Yershov brothers, and bristles with political tirades in the spirit of
Khrushchev's "party document."
Kochetovis novel, as might be expected$won the highest praise
of the literary authorities. Kammunist (Simplot, 1958) characterized it
as an "'acute and timely' book honoring the image of a truly conscious
builder of Communism." A further accolade to Kochetov by Izvestia (on
October 2, 1958), described his book as a "party novel" -- the highest
term of Communist praise.
In the light of the party's response to these two novels, it
becomes clear why the epic work of Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, could
not appear in the Soviet Union. Dr. Zhivago is permeated by feelings
which the Communist Party and its literary censors .have been trying for
decades to destroy or at least to suppress. Foremost among these feelings
is hunger for freedom and a sense, of maes dignity and independence.
These ideas pervade the entire book.
"The main misfortune, the root of all the evil to came," says
Dr. Zhivago, "vas the loss of confidence in the value of one's own opinion.
People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense,
that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions,
notions that were being crammed down everybody's throat."
POST-STALIN LiTbRARY "THAW" ENDS WITH NEW CONTROLS - 5
But these thoughts do not lead Pasternak and his heroes to
pessimism and despair. The novel ends on this note of hope:
"Although victory has not brought the relief and freedom that
were expected at the end of the war, nevertheless the portents of freedom
filled the air throughout the postwar period, and they alone defined its
historical significance."
# # #
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
By Arturo Valente
Part I
Leji
Most scholars looking for an explanation of modern Communism's
rather exacting requirements for writers and other creative artists sooner
or later find themselves engaged in a study of the 1917 Bolshevik revolu-
tioi4L
It is in this eventful period of Communist development, one
quickly realizes, that the party's present attitude toward the expression
of divergent viewpoints began to take definite form.
ParadoxicOly, the first official actions of Lenin and his asso-
ciates upon gaining control of the Russian government on, November 7, 1917
were to deny to others the opportunities for self-expression which had
made their own revolutionary movement possible. Although Marx, Engels and
Lenin had depended to a great extent on books, pamphlets and articles to
spread their own theories, one of Lenin's first moves after seizing power
was to stop the publication of all newspapers and periodicals not committed
to Bolshevism. Proposals that the new Russian government include repre-
sentatives of other political groups were quickly rejected and it was not
long before the freely elected Constituent Assembly was forcibly disbanded
for refusing to accept the Bolsheviks' insistence on absolute control.
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE AR2S (Part I) -2-
From this rather abrupt and prophetic beginning has come the
monolithic Commmisit party as it is known today.
Shrewdly and inexorably, Lenin and his successors have applied
the principles of centralized power to every aspect of Soviet life, seek-
ing at all times to create the image of an all-wise party leadership which
can do no wrong and which therefore demands unhesitating loyalty from each
of its subjects. In actual practice, the concept of Communist reality im-
plies far more than mere obedience; the citizens of a Communist state are
expected to concentrate their entire beings on the building of Communism
as blueprinted by the party.
Writers, painters and composers who accept these conditions with-
out question, and have skill in their crafts, are handsomely rewarded. They
are provided with country homes, good incomes and the privileges of travel.
Authors, for example, have the Soviet writer's union to supervise their
affairs and make sure that whatever they write is in keeping with party
,policies and objectives. The outward benefits of conformity are demon-
strably attractive.
Conversely, any artist ghose vision is broader than the party's
is on dangerous ground the instant he gives first priority to his own per-
sonal reactions to the world around him. Anything resembling what the
party calls a revisionist tendency is quickly spotted, as in the case of
Boris Pasternak's Dr. zwatlea, and the artist finds his work branded as
unfit for Communist audiences. If the writer or other creative worke4
COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part I) -3-
again as in the case of Pasternak, is not sufficiently amenable, he is ex-
pelled from his union and faces the uncertain future of all non-conformists
in a conformist society.
Soviet officials, from Lenin to Kbrushchev, have made no secret
of their position on the intellectual's role under Communism. "The high-
est social purpose of literature and the arts," says Khrushchev, " is to
arouse the people to a struggle for new successes in the building of Com-
munism." Lenin's edict that "literature must become a component part of
organized, planned, unified party work" was strikingly similar.
In other words, as the Soviet intelligmtsia is constantly re-
minded by party newspapers, magazines, central committee proclamations
and other policy outlets, the artist's work is only useful to the extent
that it fits the desired ideological grooves.
Critical observations, satire and other thoughtful ventures cal-
culated t6 stimulate the people's curiosity as to whether Communism is
indeed the best of all possible solutions to life's problems are, of
course, forbidden. Those who even skirt such questions are risking con-
demnation as revisionicts, dogmatists, formalists or worse.
This intellectrAlly cloying aspect of Communist life, it is
commonly believed, has been the greatest single deterrent to the creation
of a meaningful body of literature in the Soviet Union, Commnnist China
and the satellite countries of Eastern Europe.
Since the ideological content of music and painting is relative-
ly nebulous, it is writers as a class who feel most keenly the pinch of
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OXAMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part I)
party discipline, the never-ending political surveillance of their activi-
ties. This is undoubtedly what Vladimir Dudintsev, the troubled author of
Not By Bread Alon2, meant when he maid: "Alas, I constantly.feel that I
am on a leash. . .such as those sometimes used for guiding infants." This,
it might be added, is by no means an unusual reaction for writers in Com-
munist states. Far across the Eurasian continent, the Chinese editor Chin
Chao-yang is on record with the observation that today's writers in his
country "are apprehensive, ill at ease and always cautious, lest someone
grab them from behind."
One typical solution to the Communist-controlled intellectnplq:
dilemma has been to follow the party's orders in public but to do the work
that rePlly interests them in secret.
As the noted Soviet affairs commentator Edward Crankshaw wrote
recently: "Today there are painters (in the Soviet Union) whose rooms are
stacked with the products of their imagination, their visual curiomity,
their preoccupation with western developments of the past hundred years.
It is the same with the novelists, the playwrights and the poets. In-
numerable manuscripts lie hidden in desks and are never taken out except
to be read to small groups of friends."
In any event, it has became fairly obvious that great works of
art 'cannot be prOduced to meet rigidly prescribed formulas'. It is. only
logical, therefore, that modern Soviet fiction abounds in stereotyped,
r-
wooden characters and that -many readers turn, in despair, to the older
P
Russian-classics. Even the party is dissatisfied with "the inage of the
-
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COMMUNIST'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part I) -5-
new Soviet man" as various writers, to the best of their ability, have
managed to portray him. The single-minded, ideologically pure builder of
Communism, as party officials seem to want fictional heroes to be charac-
terized, just doesn't seem real -- even on paper.
A similar deadness has been noted in the "people's art" of Com-
munist China, North Vietnam and the more repressed countries of Eastern
Europe.
Communist officials, moreover, seem exceedingly fearful of the
personal liberties necessary to correct this situation. The upsurge in
literary activity which preceded the 1956 Hungarian revolt, the somewhat
radical trends which developed in the Soviet Union during the post-Stalin
"thaw," and the outspoken criticism which erupted in Communist China at
the time of Mao Tse-tung's brief "hundred flowers" experiment still serve
as ominous object lessons to the party's disciplinarians.
In simpler terms, it appears that Communism's own leaders have
accepted as proven fact that their doctrine and way of life cannot with-
stand the unrestricted probing of independent minds.
* * * * *
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STAT
COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
By Arturo Valente
Part II
"Few Of Our Young Peo le Are Becoming Writers"
The Soviet Communist Party's monolithic stand against any-
thing resembling an objective literary examination of the nature and
results of its rule, as demonstrated recently by the suppression of
Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, raises a number of questions about the
future course of literature in all Communist-dominated societies.
These questions, which presumably aptly equally to the vari-
ous regimes which have acknowledged Moscow's self-appointed i.ole as
ideological leader of the Communist bloc, deal with the most basic
concepts of human thought, expression and social development.
Can a vibrant, meaningful culture, for example, be built up-,
on a foundation of censorship and the imposition of arbitrary literary
and artistic rules?
Party spokesmen, judging from their periodic decrees and ex-
hortations, appear to think that it can. They are, at least, obligated
to a defense of this viewpoint, in mlich the same way that writers are
obliged to follow their advice if they expect their works to be approired
fdi 'publication.
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part II) -
2
Those taking the opposite viewpoint feel rather strongly
that no intellectual culture of any permanent value can come from the
maze of restrictions which confront the creative artist living under a
system which requires him to-be, first of all, a propagandist for the
party's political program. Critics of the Communist method point to
the writer's historic role of social catalyst, in helping to shape
man's understanding of his environment, as a prime example of the need
to let the creative artist speak from his own mind, heart and experience.
The cultural future looks dark indeed, these critics say, if the crea-
tive arts are to become only a supporting chorus for the politicians in
power.
Most readers, by now, are familiar with the Communist party's
tendency to regard the thinking man with distrust. They have noted
the official Soviet line that advocacy of any theory or viewpoint not
sanctioned by party councils constitutes revisionism and therefore be.
comes punishable as a crime against the party. This formula, they have
observed, seems to apply In all areas under Commtnist rule� Mainland
China, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and the satellite countries of
Eastern Europe.
The line of demarcation between party approval and disapproval,
to compound the average writer's dilemma, is not always easy to antici-
pate. Vladimir Dudintsev, for example, was condemned for his provocative
attack on Communist bureaucracy in Not By Bread Alone, even though Premier
and Party Chief Kbrushchev himself took a remarkably similar stand in his
I
th.,Piiara
COMMUNIMS SINGLE STAMARD FOR. LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part II) - 3 -
1957 demand for a reorganization of Soviet industry. Even writers like
Ilya Ehrenburg, who ucually- manage to conform satisfe.ctorily, seem to
harbor an inner resentment because they must do so. In any event, schol-
ars say Ehrenburg made some devastating points against the Soviet system
in his 1957 article, Lessons of Stendhal, under the cover of e rathPr
skillful symbolic association of certain Stendhal quotations Lith the
conditions. of today.
Soviet attempts to influence the course of literature ere by
no means confined to the areas Moscow now controls. Soviet sponsor-
ship of such affairs as the Tashkent conference strongly indicates a de-
sire to internationalize the concept of literature as propaganda. This
1958 meeting, ostensibly a forum for mutual discussion between the writers
of Africa and Asia, was held, in the Soviet city of Tashkent.
"The conference," according to a delegate from India, the liter-
ary critic and scholar Durga Bhagvat, "was just an elaborate technique,to
exploit persons from the academic class for the propagation of a partic-
ular political philosophy."
"The author," Miss Bhagvat wrote after returning to India, "was
valued but not the person. His writings were regarded as important, but
there was no attempt at any critical appreciation of his writings. The
various forms of literature were important, but the contents must alweys
be the usual propaganda stuff. The conference was concerned with vara)us
forms of writing more from the point of view of their utility than the
basic aspect of creativeness of literature."
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS(Part II) - 4 -
.11�0�411i1�11,
The Communist cultural trend, as Miss Bhagvat has indicated,
is apparent. Both on the national and international fronts, "party....
mindedness" is the first requisite for the hopeful Communist writer,
painter or composer.
It is interesting, however, to note that the manuscript of the
Soviet-banned international best-selling novel, 2.1..12.1timm, has become
a popular black-market item in the USSR. This would seem to indicate that
the reading public in the so-called "first country of Communism" is by no
means entirely satisfied with the voluminous party-approved literature
now in circulation.
What, then, is the real future of Communist literature?
One of the speakers at the 1958 Soviet Communist youth congress
may have provided the answer in a single sentence.
Ilide cannot help but feel disturbed," Secretary S. Pavlov of
the Moscow city committee said, "by the fact that very few of our young
people are taking up the'profession of writing."
* * * * *
.1'
SI'
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�
CONNUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
By Arturo Valente
Part III
"To Tell About The Future Is Not An Easy Task"
11.0.11�1411.mmi����..
Shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution brought Communism
to Russia, a Soviet writer named Yevgeni Zamyatin produced a book about
life in the far-off future -- a time when the entire world was ruled by
a single power.
Zamyatin's novel, We, was centered around the love story of a
dedicated space scientist and a girl who had become a rebel against the
all-pervading, oppressive nature of "the single state." The scientist,
to simplify the story, finally rejects his sweetheart and removes all
possibility of future temptation by undergoing a brain operation which
renders him mentally incapable of rebellious thoughts.
The implications of Zamyatin's visionary masterpiece, which is
supposed to have influenced the writing of George Orwell's satirical
classic, 1984, were apparently considered too provocative for Soviet
audiences. At any rate, recent reports say the book is no longer obtain-
able in the USSR.
Modern writers of Communist science fiction, however, have been
given formulas far less likely to create ideological doubts in the minds
of their readers. The recommended approach, it will be seen, is closely
linked to the party's general attitude concerning all matter&lof potential
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part III) - 2
influence on popular thinking. For this reason, although "future" fiction
is not usually included in serious literary studies, the subject merits
further examination.
EY way of illustration, here are condensed plot summaries of
four recent Soviet offerings:
1. Aelita, by Alexei N. Tolstoy. A Soviet expedition lands on
Mars and helps the Martian proletarians defeat their "capitalist" oppressors.
2. Menni, the Engineer, by A. Bogdanov. This is an account of
early Martian history, when the people were suppressed by'" capitalists."
Mbnni comes to recognize the "evils" of capitalism, but it is his son,
Netti, who does the most to advance Communist principles on the planet.
3. The Planetary Guest, by G. Martinov. A space ship from a
remote planet lands on earth, its passengers revealing that their ancestors
conquered the problems of space long ago -- primarily because they had
adopted Communist methods.
4. Engineer Garin's Hyperboloid, by Alexei Tolstoy. This story
about a mad scientist's plan to conquer-the world with his "death ray"
employs a typical Soviet "cold-war" theme. The evil scientist is sponsored
by American capitalists but iS finally defeated by a Communist.
These stories, apart from their obvious straining for -broad
propaganda effects, suggest other and more interesting aspects of the
writer's problems in a Communist society.
In dealing with the future, especially, Communist writers are
faced with almost insurmountable obstacles -- for their books andstories
cannot, under any circumstances, presume to predict the course of party
policy.
A
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part III) -
As the New York Timest specialist on Soviet affairs, Harry
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Schwartz, pointed out recently, Soviet fiction is notable for its "reluc-
tance to speeulate on what life actually would be like under a future
'Comtunist utopia."
"Even the dullest Soviet author," Schwartz noted, "is aware of
the dangers of such fantasies. Communism is nominally the goal of all
Soviet striving and its supposed future benefits are the justification for
the many sacrifices that were and are now required of Soviet citizens. Yet
the official picture of just what Communism will be like is exceedingly
vague."
Therefore, Schwartz concluded, any Soviet writer who presumed
to speculate in detail about the USSR's future "would be running grave
political risks.
Only someone of Nikita S. Khrushchev's stature may today
dare to talk on this topic."
Knowing this, the USSR's science fiction writers, in particular,
are faced with a task of formidable proportions. They must write popular
pieces about the future, giving Communism the credit for all possible
achievements but avoiding any speculation as to what political shapes their
system will assume.
Even the official Soviet newspaper Izvestial in the course of a
recent demand for more and better Communist fiction, was forced to admit
that "to tell about the future is not an easy task."
Izvestia might have added that it is equally difficult for Soviet
writers to produce satisfactory works about the present. The Moscow
Literary Gazette, on January 24, 1959) put its editorial finger on the
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COMMUNISM'S SINGLE STANDARD FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS (Part III) - 4
problem by pointing out some of the party's major objections to writing
which is too factual and too realistic in its approach. "These works,"
Literary Gazette charged, are written in such a realistic way that "the
life of the communist in the struggle for building communism appears
monotonous and du11.!!.
4
MUSICAL CENSORbiiir POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OFFICIALS
By Marcel Grilli
(Mr. Grilli is music critic for the Japan Times of Tokyo)
Music, because it is an art form which defies measurement by
the same sort of ideological yardstick used to assess the work of writers,
has long been a problem for Communist cultural censors.
The difficulties these doctrinal experts encounter in drafting
a Usafe" line for authors, for example: are compounded to a formidable
degree when they attempt to spell out the party's regulations for com-
posers. Words, it becomes obvious, are vastly' easier to regulate than
the subtler messages which may be contained in symphonies, sonatas or
0 I
concertos.
Nevertheless, since the Communist party requires that -ell
artistic expression be monitored: controlled and disciplined, no excep-
tion can be made for music.
These introductory remarks may help to explain the confusion
which attended promulgation of a significant 1958 Moscow decree which
purports to 'contain the latest party line for musicians. Although
approved by the party's ruling central committee on May 28, the new
regulations proved to be so complicated that it was not until June 8
that Pravda (the party's principal press organ) was able to publish them;
along with an attempted clarification.
-
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MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OFFICIALS 2
The interval of two weeks was needed for the preparation of "an
overall and profound analysis" and for developing the theses of musical
development according to the new prouncement -- a task assigned to Pavel
Satyukov, the editor of Pravda. This document, that was to clarify ob-
scurities and reconcile the irreconcilable, turned out to be as voluminous
and riddled with contradictions as such official dicta are wont to be. In
order to find whatever meanings might be hidden in the directive -- appar-
ently part of the general reversals of Stalinist policies instituted by
Premier Khrushchev -- one has to reexamine the zig-zag track of Soviet
musical esthetics and the governing Communist policy of "socialist realism."
The one consistent Soviet cultural policy throughout the years
has been enforced subservience of music and the other arts to the practical
problems of revolutionary development. Such atie-up of art and politics
has been a standard practice in many totalitarian countries, so the Soviet
Union was hardly original in formulating its needs for a kind of "politically
suitable" music.
Since the mid-1930's the Soviet Communist Party has been sending
out a stream of directives intended to maintain its concepts of the ideolo-
gical significance of music. Through disciplinary action and heavy penalties
the USSR's leading composers have been repeatedly Dulled back from "devia-
tionise through subjective expression or stylistic connection with modern
movements in the West. Instead, Soviet composers have been ordered to work
with themes of social significance which would also be immediately compre-
hensible to a wide audience. In the case of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and
�
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MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OFFICIALS 3
Khachaturian, to mention three composers whose works are most performed
and admired abroad the accusations of "deviationism" from the "true
esthetic principles of Soviet art" have been recurrent and vociferous.
Each time the necessary genuflections and expiations had to be performed
before the artist could resume his work. (The case of Prokofiev may be
excepted; in many ways his was an unusual case. Less manageable than
either of his two confreres, he was certainly a more independent spirit.
For a time he continued to write as he pleased under the cover of an
occasional "Ode to Stalin" or a "Peace Oratorio," which contained a
sufficient number of party-line allusions to make the music acceptable).
The great musical "purge" of 1948 involved eight top composers,
including Nikolai Miaskovsky (who died in 1950)) Prokofiev, Shostakovich,
and Khachaturian. A prominent Soviet critic recently ranked these four
composers as "the great masters of Russian music in the Soviet period."
�f.
But in 1948 they were confronted by Alexander Zhdanov, then the chief
Soviet cultural inquisitor. The immediate spark that set off Moscow's
attack at that time was an opera entitled The Great Friendship, by a
minor Georgian composer, Vanno Muradelli. This work, dealing with Stalin's
years of friendship with Lenin, had obviously been intended as a noble
tribute, but the touchy subject managed to offend Communist Party leaders
at a "closed" performance in Moscow in November 1947.
The decree that followed on February 10, 1948, however, was
directed at a far wider field. "Formalise was the key word and its many
meanings all bore accusations of failure to serve the cause of "the great
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MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OFFICIALS
epoch of of socialist reconstruction." The dissident composers were accused
of employing the advances in musical style developed by such "decadent"
and "corrupt" "Western" musical leaders as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and
Hindemith.
Again Shostakovich and Khachaturian saw fit to recant their
"errors" and speedily made their peace with the party bureaucrats.
Prokofiev� long in poor health, maintained his tongue-in-cheek attitude,
but on the whole led a quiet existence until his death of cerebral
hemorrhage at the age of 61 in March, 1953, a week after Stalin's passing.
(Prokofiev's last formal work, it might be noted, was a Sinfonia
Concertante which is merely a rehash ofaprevious cello concerto written
twenty years earlier.)
Two important points now emerge from the new decree and the
voluminous commentary published in Pravda on June 8, 1958: (1) the
decree admits that Muradelli's opera, The Great Friendship, which had
occasioned the previous decree of 1948, really did not deserve the label
of "formalism in music," and (2) that it had been wrong to describe such
composers as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian as "representatives
of anti-popular formalistic trends." Also admitted to have been "un-
justifiably severe" were past denunciations of a number of other dis-
tinguished composers and of two additional operas of 1951, namely,
Konstantin Dankevich's Bogdan Khmelnitskyl based on the history of the
17th-century Ukrainian people's war of liberation, and German Leontievich
Zhukovsky's Ot vsevo serdtsa ("From the Bottom of the Heart"), whose plot
MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OkiliCIALS 5
was drawn from a novel by Maltsev. Stalin had become the scapegoat, and
the Party's previous musical line was ascribed to the fallen dictator's
"subjective approach" and to the "negative influence" exerted by such
"anti-Party" traitors as Molotov, Malenkov, and Beria.
So far, so good. The very next day, on June 9, 1958: messages
from Soviet musical personalities endorsing and praising the new party
ruling began to appear in the columns of Pravda. It was recalled that
many composers who had suffered under Zhdanov's cultural dictatorship had
later been awarded prizes and had their compositions performed after
Stalin's death. One of these messages, from the veteran Yuri Shaporin,
composer of the monumental opera, The Decembrists (begun in 1925 and not
completed until some thirty years later) spoke eloquently of "the direct-
ness and high-principled attitude" of the party's decision, which, in the
words of Shaporin, had "exposed the mistaken evaluations of musical works
� which were formed under the conditions of the personality cult."
Prokofiev had once described some of his musical colleagues as
"babes in arms", and evidently Soviet composers again are naively reading
into the new decree what they wishfully hope to see there. For example,
Shostakovich was on hand to welcome the new pronouncement -- "a yard-
stiCk of national interest," he called it euphemistically, against which
artists could measure their advances in creative work. On the general
subject of party prepared yardsticks, Shostakovich had previously
clarified his views in Pravda on March 27, 1957/ when he wrote: "I
consider this a great benefit and a great advantage for the artist because
g
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MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OFFICIALS 6
it saves him from the self-delusion of individualism and the risk of
straying off to the byways that lead to decadence: turgidity, and hack
work...." Such a statement on the part of the leading Soviet composer
is all the more revealing since it came at a time when Shostakovich was
preparing for the premiere of his Eleventh Symphony: a musical re-evocation
of episcodes of the abortive Russian revolt of 1905: an overly long work
whose main features are its fanfares, populnr march tunes, and patent
cliches.
Also indicative was a Radio Moscow broadcast in August of 1958
reporting that Shostakovich had turned to musical comedy in an effort to
attune his creativeness to the new artistic experiments encouraged by the
Khrushchev regime. Like the revised view of Jazz, this appeared to be a
consequence of the official tendency to woo the rank-and-file of Soviet
aficionados of musical stage works away from the Italian and French
operatic repertoire, which remains extremely popular throughout the U.S.S.R.
For it must be admitted that, in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of
the directors of Soviet opera houses to popularize modern native works,
few of the operas produced by contemporary Soviet composers have managed
to win a permanent place in opera-goers' hearts. As a matter of fact,
repeated appeals have been made to win official Communist approval for
some relaxation of rigid party ukases and party sanction for policies
more in favor of bolder attempts by composers, librettists, and producers
to find new forms. This was tacitly conceded in the June 8 Pravda editorial
which not only called for more and better operas on contemporary subjects,
t?'
MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST Ok.DICIALS 7
but also for a greater tolerance on the part of critics towards composers
searching for new formal solutions.
Such developments would also seem to be all to the good. But
the verbatim translation of the new party-approved dictum is far less
ebullient than the journalistic commentaries. For example, there is an
explicit acknowledgment that the -previous 1948 resolution had correctly
related the task for the development of music to the concept of socialist
realism and had properly condemned formalistic tendencies in music. A
network of linguistic contradictions allows loopholes that make previous
criticism seem to be in error, but nevertheless still upholds the "important
party rulings" and the "important party documents" in which the original
criticism appeared. Finally, the demands of composers, musicians, and
producers for freedom from party restrictions and discipline are
peremptorily rejected.
�
Pravda itself has admitted that the danger of "unhealthy and
alien" musical phenomena and "incorrect tendencies" still exists. The
party newspaper also points out an inclination to "false originality,"
an enthusiasm among young composers for formal experimenting "without a
healthy and realistic ground," and the existence of Uncritical attitudes
towards "decadent modern art." All these are condemned without mincing
words.
What, then, is the concrete and factual residue left after the
verbiage is sifted from the 1958 decree? There is a pretense at legalizing
the rehabilitation of previously censured composers. A few freedoms which
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MUSICAL CENSORSHIP POSES PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST OH,ICIALS
8
the composers had been winning for themselves were also grudgingly conceded.
But there is no evidence of relaxation of discipline imposed on music as
a utilitarian tool in a political organization. The extent to which com-
posers may benefit by the breakthrough achieved after Stalin's death is
very strictly delimited. No Soviet composer who wishes a measure of
material success can afford to ignore these boundaries.
* * * * *
PASTERNAK'S FELLOW AUTHORS SPEAK THEIR NUNDS
By Henry V. Burke
When Soviet actions in the Boris Pasternak affair reached an
ideological point of no return in late October of 1958, it was not sur-
prising that authors in other counties were among the first to voice
their opinions.
The situation in which the famed Soviet poet and novelist sud-
denly found himself -- the recipient of -increasing praise throughout the
non-Communist literary world but faced with rapidly mounting pressure in
his own -country -- quite naturally had a special kind of impact on those
individuals who, in one form of another, felt themselves to be Pasternak's
spiritual colleagues.
Who better than another writer could sense the full import of
,
Pasternak' -personal ordeal? The whole Pasternak episode was, after all,
the most dramatic kind of revelation of what any artist faces if he happens
to live in a society which -regards all manifestations of the creative ,
imagination as potentially dangerous.
In this context, the fact that authors living in the Soviet. .Union
either kept silent or joined in the Communist attacksyon Pasternak gives
added significance to the words and actions of those other writers who
were in a better position to comment as individuals.
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PASTERNAK'S FELLOW AUTHORS SPEAK THEIR MINDS - 2 -
It is something more than a coincidence, one might add, that
virtually every author outside the Communist blco arrived independently
- . - �
at almost the identical conclusion about Pasternak's abrupt rejection of
the Nobel award.
Here, for Oca1tiiii4,7are the
winners in literature:
comments of three former Nobel prize
'is �
r.,
"I don't believeRfAterriak refused,the Nobel prize of his -own
free will." -- Albert Camus of France.
"Knbwing the RITISSian0 way of life asVre..doi we may well think
that Pasternak had no alternative butrto reject this prize." 7- Bertrand
Russell of Britain.
"The rejeCtionE, -Which no doubt was made pmder pressure,. does not
alter his (Pasterriak'S) world stature as a writer.- It does rep.e,ct, most
unfortunately, upon his government and his compatriots.", Pearl, al& of
the United States.
The noted Britishauthcit Stephen Spender termed PasternWs-
expulsion from the Soviet Writers' Union "a disgrace to civilization."
Similar reactions came from Franeh author Andre'Nhurois, who,called the
reprisal against the.�Sovdet poet ahd novelist a "scandaloue-development,
and President Tatsuzo Idhikawa of the Japanese Writers' -Unieni, who char-
acterized PaSternak's treatlient in the USSR as "deplorablea,
,z..
A number dt world-r&howned authors felt so strongly about. the
Pasternak case that they sent indivicual or group messages of protest to
Soviet officials.
s _
. _ � itg'1)...
,
PASTERNAK'S FELLOW AUTHORS SFELk THEIR EdNDS
\J-
- 3.--
Iceland's Halldor Illjan Laxness, winner of both the Nobel and
Stalin prizes, directed this appeal to Soviet Premier and Party Chief Nikita
Khrushchev:
"Turning to Your Excellency, I implore you as a level-headed
statesman to use your influence in :litigating the malicious onslaughts of
sectarian intolerance upon an old; meritorious Russian poet, Boris Pasternak.
Why lightheartedly arouse the wrath of the world's poets, writers, intel-
lectuals and socialists against the Soviet Union in this matter? Kindly
spare the friends of the Soviet Union an incomprehensible and most unworthy
speotaelow"
More strongly worded protests came from authors in Britain,
the international P.E.N. organizations .the Authors' League of America,
and various national committees for cultural freedom.
A number of prominent Austrian writers signed a resolution
protesting Soviet actions against Pasternak and saluting "our great
Russian colleague in his hours of Solitude to which the anti-intellectual
-
terror of the rulers of his country has condemned him."
Italy's National Union oetiiiters dispatched this appeal to the
,
Soviet Writers' Union in MOSeow: ' �
"The Union expresses its painful shook and its protest against
the attitude taken by you concerAihi Boris Pasternak. Such steps whibl
"
we dormot consider 'justified, even� as 'a political aid doubtlessly dediperate
seribUsly violate the professional dignity or writera-and.hre in
�
open contra/notion to the unanimous decisions of the recent internatibnal
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PASTERNAK'S FELLOW AUTHORS SPEAK THEIR yams
writers' congress held in Naples and which were approved also by your
official delegation."
A group of Indian writers issued a statement charging that "it
is the Communist rulers who are imparting political considerations to a
purely literary affair. ,Literary men,all over the. world disapprove
of this tendency of mixing politics with literature. Me hope the Russian
government will have some consideration for the opinion of writers and will
in deference to that stop their ill treatment of the great Russian writer,
Boris Pasternak."
Sharp criticism of the Soviet campaign against Pasternak also
came from authors and academicians in Latin America. Among ,the first to
protest was the Brazilian novelist and,poet_Jorge Amado, himself a former
winner of the Stalin prize. Amado asserted that "Pasternak's expulsion
from the Union of Soviet Wrtiers demonstrates that schematic, sectarian
and dogmatic elements still dominate in the Soviet ..Union, trying to impede
literary creation and to impose a.single school of thought, just as, in
the Stalin era." .The Brazilian Association for Treedom of Culture declared,
in a particularly forthright statement that "any attempt to prevent an
artist from giving voice to his art is an irreparable crime against humanity."
The Sladish, Association of Writers cabled the USSR's Union of
Writers that "in our firm opinion, it is_ your and our commOrn. task to guard
.freedom of.speech and the writer's right to speak, out on the great questions
_
of our time. Therefore, an author must,be able tp.feel certain that his
criticism of circumstances in his own,country will be met by counter�
criticism, not reprisal."
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t:r.::��-
PASTERNAK'S FELLOW AUTHORS SPEAK THEIR MINDS � 5
From these randomly selected examples of world literary reaction,
it is apparent that the Soviet campaign against Pasternak for presuming
to write objectively of life in the USSR was uniformly regarded as an
official repudiation. of the artist's inherent right to express himself.
Any attempt to seek out the real reason for the Soviet Union's
official attitude, however, must go beyond the overt political campaign
conducted against Pasternak and those who honored him with the Nobel award.
One must first examine the original Soviet decision to ban Pasternak's
novel, "Dr. Zhivago," and then consider the strenuous efforts made to prevent
its appearance in other countries.
Soviet literary censors, in rejecting the manuscript of "Dr. Zhivago"
when it was first submitted for publication in the USSR, put their objec�
tions into a surprisingly simple, frank and revealing statement.
"The thing that disturbed us about your novel,"
Pasternak, "is something that neither the editors nor the
by cuts or alterations. We mean the spirit of the novel,
they wrote to
author can alter
its general tenor,
the author's point of view...The spirit of your novel is that of non�
acceptance of the Socialist (Communist) Revolution."
* * * * *
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DR. ZHIVAGO "HAS NO INTEREST FOR US"
By Arturo Valente
As anticipated) one of the questions raised by newsmen during
Soviet Deputy Premier Aaastas Makoyan's early 1959 visit to the United
.States concerned Boris Pasternakts much-discussed novel: Dr. Zhivago.
Makoyants ansver, when asked if this world-famous book would
ever be published in the USSR, was simplicity itself. "It has no interest
for us," the Soviet official replied.
From an official and party point of view, Makoyants statement
was undoubtedly true, it having already been decided that Dr. Zhivago
was not suitable reading for residents of the Soviet Union and its areas
of primary influence.
A few months before, however, spokesmen for the Soviet Communist
Party were giving every indication that they considered Dr. Zhivago a
subject of the greatest possible interest. This was the period, late in
1958, when award of the Nobel prize for literature to Boris Pasternak
set off a nation-wide campaign to discredit both book and author.
In view of the more recent Soviet stand that Dr. Zhivago and
qitoris Pasternak are unworthYof serious discussimbit might be interesting
to coriiider some of the Communist Partyts possible reasons for wishing to
wash its hands of the whole matter.
- -
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Back in 1956, long before Dr. Zhivago became an international
best-seller, Boris Pasternak's manuscript was weighed against the stand-
ards of "Communist realise which govern all cultural endeavors in the
Soviet Union.
Editors of the Soviet literary monthly, Novy Mir, after consid.
ering the manuscript in their capacity as party examiners, expressed them-
selves as shocked by both the tone and content of Pasternakts panoramic
survey of Russian life before, during and after the Bolshevik revolution.
"The thing that disturbed us about your novel," Pasternak was
informed in a 10,000-word letter of rejection, "is something that neither
the editors nor the author can alter by cuts or alterations...The spirit
of your novel is that of non-acceptance of the socialist (Communist)
revolution."
While the tone of Novy Mirts letter was remarkably temperate,
in relation to the party's later attacks on Pasternak, its long-delayed
publication by the Soviet Literary Gazette in 1958 prompted many non-:
Soviet readers to take a second look at their copies of Dr. Zhivago.
Just what, they wondered, were the Communists so disturbed about?
In addition to the author's obvious feelings about the fundamen-
tal importance of the individual, and his right to freedom of thought, a
number of specific pvsages must have seemed highly improper to Communist
party officials. Here are some examples:
"You:know, it looks as if I'll be forced to resign from my jobs.
It's always the same thing -- it happens again and again. At first
Oar&
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DR. ZHIVAGO "HAS NO INTEREST FOR US"
- 3 -
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everything is splendid. 'Come along. We welcome good, honest work, we
welcome ideas, especially new ideas. What could please us better? 1)o your
work, struggle, carry on.' Then you find in practice that what they mean
by ideas is nothing but words -- claptrap in praise of the revolaion and
the regime. I'm sick and tired of it. And its not the kind Of thing
good at."
* * *
"Marxism is too uncertain of its ground to be a science
,Sciences are more balanced, more objective. I don't know a movement more
self-centered and further removed from the facts than Marxism."
� *
"His;(Strelnikov's) alliance with the Bolsheviks is accidental.
So longreethey:need him, they put up with him...The moment they don't
need him they'll throw him overboard with no regret, and crush him; as
they have done with other military experts."
"To conceal failure by every means that terrorism can suggest,
it is necessary to make people learn not to think and to judge, forcing
them to see things that did not exist and proving the contrary of what
everyone coula see.il
* * *
"The worst evil and the root of future evil were a loss of
confidence in the value of one's own opinion.. .We thought it was necessary
to sing in chorus and to live on absolute concepts imposed from above."
* * *
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DR. ZHIVAGO "HAS NO INTEREST FOR DS" '
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"What was conceived as a' noble and lofty idea has become
.ria]. and and crude...Russian enlightenment has become the Russian revolution."
* * *
"The idea of social betterment as it is understood since the
October revolution doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. It is far from being
put into practice, and the mere talk about it has cost such a sea of blood
that I am not sure the end justifies the means."
* * *
"The great majority of us are required to lead a life of constant,
systematic duplicity."
* * *
"Civic institutions should be founded on democracy; they should
grow upfrom below...You cannot hammer them in from above like stakes for
a fence."
* * *
"Life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you
want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly
renewing and remaking and changing And transfiguring itself! It is
infinitely beyond your or ray obtuse-theories about it."
# # #
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WHY KHRUSHCHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS
By James H. Billington
From The New York Times Magazine
Reprinted by permission
The current Soviet campaign to humiliate and defame Boris Pas-
- ;
ternak is only the latest and most dramatic illustration of the con-
tinuing tension between the Soviet regime and its intellectuals. What-
ever Nikita S. Khrushchevls successes in material construction and foreign
policy, he has not yet found a formula for dealing with this troublesome
element in Soviet society.
A recent trip to the U.S.S.R. provided me an opportunity to
learn -- through formai and informal talks in a number of intellectual
centers -- something of the outlook of the Soviet intelligentsia. While
the picture was often depressing, there seemed little doubt even in those
days before Pasternak received -- and refused -- the Nobel Prize, that
this lonely and craggy figure is closer to the thinking people of the
U.S.S.R. than is Khrushchev or any other recent political leader.
1958 by The New York Times Company
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Khrushchev's problem in determining what to do about Pasternak
is part of the broader dilemma of the despot posing as a reformer. On
the one hand, he must grant his cerebral servants enough freedom to
Pro-
duce the things the regime needs; at the,aame time, .he must make it clear
that they are still on a leash. . .
In this period of uncertainty in which attempts are being made
to tighten the leash .on Spirj.et wri,tera.r..if not to.terrorize them, intel-
lectuals seem to feel perplexed. and, increasingly antagonistic 10 "thee --
the Communist Party supervisors of ,intellectual life. "We hardly, know
what they believe, let alone what we are to think 9T teach,". one young .
Soviet teacher said of the recent changes in the official histories of
the U.S.S.R.
� These feelings of discontent are in many ways recent developments.
Late in 1956, at the end of the officially sanctioned "thaw" in Soviet...
intellectual life, apparently many still spoke with gratitude of the days
"since the birth of Khrushchev" -- a pun, since the words for Khrushchev
and Christ sound somewhat similar in Russian.
Now the general attitude seems closer .Go that of a writer, who .
said, in discussing Khrushchev's denigration of Stalin: "Comrade Khrush-
chev seems to have gotten the idea that the rumblings he made after his
--
revelations were unqualified cheers fort him. He is like the master .of �
ceremonies in a bad comedy show. When he suddenly receives an uproarious
reaction from the crowd he congratulates himself on his great wit without
noticing that his suit has just come apart at the seams."
*
- 3 -
One of the surprisingly large number of young-writers who knew
and admired Pasternak (and who had some familiarity with '!Doctor Zhivago"
despite the official ban-on its publication in the U.S.S.R.) pointed out
with considerable feeling that Pasternak, in contrast to Khrushchev,
neither benefited from the terror of the Stalin era nor waited until the
master was dead to make his attitude clear. This same writer pointed to
the "moral dignity" of Pasternak's long literary silence, and to such
past incidents as his reading of nonpolitical poems at "literary evenings"
almost entirely devoted to grovelling odes to Stalin.
Khrushchev's most serious problems with the intellectuals are
probably not, however, those that follow from his exposed ideological
position so much as those that result from his determination to "overtake
and surpass America," to use the official slogan of current Soviet con-
struction (or "keep ahead of the Chinese," to use one of the unofficial
ones). One of the many jokes about this slogan tells of the economics
professor who, after explaining that America is inevitably declining,
asks his class what is the future goal of Russia and is answered in chorus:
"Overtake and surpass America." This very determination renders the
ambitious politicians increasingly dependent on the intellectuals' talents
at a moment when their ideological hold over the thinking community has
been weakened.
Who makes up the intellectual community in the U.S S.R.? Its
official members are the professional scientists, writers and professors
who work for the Academy of Sciences, the Union of Writers and the higher
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WHY KHRUSHCHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS - 4 -
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state schools. These full-time intellectuals are often better paid and
more publicly honored than their counterpartsdri.the United States,
th6ugh they pay a price that few thinking people can ever fully tolerate:
acceptance of their task as essentially serviceto the state. ::.
It was with the obvious intention of fostering the impression
that all is well on this intellectual assembly line that a meeting was
arranged for me in Moscow at the Union of Writers -- the organization
from which:Pasternak:Was recently expelled. Seated at the head of a
table in the palace that was Tolstoy's model for the Rostov estate in
"liar:And Peace" was the writer Boris Polevoi and a small entourage of
"literary figures."
After a cordial welcome, Polevoi said: "So you wanted to see� ;
well, here he is.," Thereupon a door opened and the first of several promi-
nent young writers whom I had asked to see entered.otcue for a brief and
rather wooden discussion.
This unedifying parade was accompanied by much effusive
camaraderie among Polevoi and the permanent members of his literary semi-
nar, who engaged in some mock sparring over such pressing matters as which
really was the best novel of some obscure Soviet writer, ."You see," said
Polevoi, throwing his arms out expansively lest I miss the point, "we
have many arguments among ourselves." "Yes"; "Certainly"; "All the time"
came the reprise from the chorus.
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WHY.KHRUSHChEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS
At this and similar meetings (especially with large visiting
delegations) a flattering illusion of contact is created and an earnest
effort made to disarm potential critics with brief displays of friendli-
ness and free discussion. However, smaller informal meetings or follow-
up discussions are almost invariably ruled out, often by the simple methOd
of putting off the initial meeting until the final day of a visitor's stay.
But even in these formal meetings it is often possible to dis-
cover more than the Communist stage managers probably intend. One writer
will tell you in the course of his recital that he is now preparing an
edition-of his selected works-- "very selected", -- another that he has
suddenly developed a passion for translating after previously saying
paintedly that he had never had any ability or interest in foreign lan-
guages. Others convey a great deal simply by silence, by a look, or by
including-- as most whom I met did� the names of Pasternak and other
unorthodox contemporary figures among those whose work has made the deveat
impression on them.
In these rare "moments of truth," in official meetings and in
even more rewarding chance encounters, one slowly comes to realize how
much fuller the intellectual and creative life of Russia is than that
which is represented by its official Communist overseers.
The intellectual community in the Soviet Union today includes
not only professionals, but many of the growing number of educated lay-
menres well. The very word intelligentsia is a Russian one with past
connotations of high purpose ami deep concern. Even today the word
kulturny ("cultured") is generally esteemed to be a far higher compliment
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WHY-KHRUSHCHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS
-6
than partiny(?qarty-spirited"). "To be kulturny you must live honorably,"
a Moscow cab driver explained, "and to be'intelligentny you must be able �
to read' between the lines." There is little doubt that he -- and many
other Russian members of this uniquely philosophic profession -- are both
more "cultured" ahd more 'intelligent" than most of the regime's paid
philosophers. I � -.-
Soviet intellectuals in this special sense are today the very
old and the very young. While the very old -- Pasternak and many of the
best scientists, writers and historians -- have their roots in pre-revolu,-
tionary-Russial the post-war generation of intellectuals represents a new
source of vitality. Their unorthodox "rotten moods" have-perplexed the
regime, which denounces them vigorously, but rather implausibly, as per�.
zhitki -- "survivals of the past."
They are in essence the Saviet Union's version of the angry
young men-- though their anger has a moral and selfless quality-about it.
They find unity in a common revulsion toward those whom one writer called
"petit bourgeois Communists" -- men who survived the Stalin era and prize
above everything else this animal survival. If these young intellectuals
have no unifying positive vision, they do have a common idea of hell: the
bovine life of the middle-aged bureaucrats who, without honor, humor or
embarrassment, swarm in their inelegant beach pajamas over-imitation baron-
ial palaces along the Black Sea.
A second comm6n characteristic of this rising student generation
is its almost insatiable curiosity about the outside world. A student to
whom I had given a copy of"an'American newspaper later told me that he had
cut it into 75 pieces in order to give each of his classmates some of it.
WHY KHRUSIEHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS - 7
A young musician insisted that Van Cliburn was received with such unprece-
dented warmth not only because of his =kcal virtuosity, but because of a
widespread desire to demonstrate in some way the popular thirst for expanded
contact with the United States.
In any event, whenever informal meetings were possible, young
Soviet intellectuals asked questions not ohly about Little Rock and unem-
ployment, but others revealing broader horizons than many might have thought
possible under Soviet methods of indoctrination. They seem genuinely inr.
terested in knowing if, and why, educated Americans still believe in God,
or if, and why, different universities teach the same subjects differently.
When I assured a group of Moscow University studentsthat no one:
regulated the content of my courses at Harvard, the spokesman of the group
nodded and said, with a tone of reverence that would be hard to duplicate
in the free world, "Da svoboda slov!" ("Yes, freedom of speech!").
Expanded intellectual horizons are, to a very considerable degree,
the accidental creations of Khrushchev's policies. Although Khrushchev
clearly intended to let out the leash only when necessary to produce results
in areas oflpriority concern to the regime, he appears to have stimulated
independent thinking in many unwelcome areas.
Ardhitects, for instance, have at last been encouraged to cease
building pretentious civic monuments and get on with long-overdue housing
projects. But several architects who had been sent abroad to study foreign
techniques seemed less interested in the specific methods they were sup-
posed to have studied than in the ideas they had picked up in free countries:
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WHY-NHRUSHOHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS - 8 -
of tailoring, construction more to individual needs and tastes, of build-
ing more harmoniously intoithe landscape and, above all, of emphasizing.
lightness and simplicity
The bordeom and exasperation induced by official ideology is
illustrated by one of the_many jokes told about the regime's attempt to
drape itself in the mantle of a "return to Leninism." Lenin, it seems,
arose from the grave arid.-went in search of a newspaper that would tell
him what had happened in the U.S.Ka. since his death. When he asked
for Pravda (Truth), Sovetckaya Rossiya (Soviet Russia) or Thud (Work),
.I���wM, ��������
the news vender explained to him: "There is no Truth left; Soviet Russia
has been sold out; all that remains is Work."
This story is typical not only in its expression of discontent,
but also in its resignedly submissive conclusion. This technically trained
student generation seems politically naive and even indifferent; but its
members are at least bent on doing their work well -- without frills,
without cant, 'arid, above all, without interference. To an observer, this
no-nonsense attitude may seem a natural and insignificant development; but
to the Soviet leaders -- whose political position is still dependent on
their ideolozicoll pretensions -- it apparently seems to be part of some
insidious plot, a kind of creeping pragmatism which bids fair to threaten
the "leading role of the party" in all walks of life.
This struggle between party bureaucrat and scientific specialist
seems to have been almost literally built into the new Moscow University,
which dominates the horizon of the capital for miles around. These new
buildings are for the exclusive use of the favored scientific faculties,
WHY KHRUSHOHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS - 9
but they are built in the heavy, Mtsco-Vite style which man scientists
openly refer to as "the Empire style in the time of the plague." All
115tudy is free, but engraved on the wall of the main auditorium is Stalin's
ominous warning that scientists must be not only skilled specialists, but
faithful and active party men as well.
At the other end of the intellectual pole from the creeping
pragmatism and skepticism of the scientist is the .half-hidden interest of
many intellectuals in the broader questions of meaning and purpose.
While the educated classes, on the whole, do not appear anxious
to return to any formal religion, I did notice some evidence of renewed
interest in religious ideas. One student explained that the riotous stu-
dent demonstrations of support for the novelist Dudintsev two years ago
were more on behalf of the title of his work, "Not by Bread Alone," than
for the author or the book itself. In the re-examination of long-neglected
elements in Russia's past during the past few years, the attention of the
thinking classes has been focused largely on the tortured but deeply reli-
gious figure of Dostoevsky. A new edition of his works and a new motion
picture version of "The Idiot" seem to be enjoying more popularity and
provoking more thoughtful discussion than almost any other recent cultural
productions.
In such delicate subjects as the exploration of Russia's past,
"they" (the party bureaucrats) are, of course, ever alert to see that cul-
tural activities either support an ideological point or contribute to the
prestige of the Soviet state. There was something both amusing and depress-
ing about a young Communist archaeologist who pointed with great solemnity
--
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WHY KHRUSWHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS - 10-
to some birchwood account records that had been dug up at great expense.
"These prove," he announced rather defensively, "that we Russians weren't
illiterate back in the twelfth century, and that we didn't get our culture
from the church, . either."
If the Soviet intellectual community is in frequent conflict
with its party overseers and is increasingly populated by inquiring young
men who can "read between the lines," nonetheless its contribution to the
state remains immense.
The undeniable material progress that Russia has made in the
Soviet period would have been unthinkable without the cooperation of many
pre-revolutionary intellectuals and the development in more recent years
of an impressive new generation of scientists and technologists. Although
Soviet science almost certainly owes a theoretical debt to Germany, England,
and the United States for its recent advances in such fields as rocketry,
jet aviation, and nuclear energy, these still are substantial national
achievements, in which most Soviet intellectuals take considerable pride.
The intellectuals' sense of identification with the fate of their
native land is exemplified by Pasternak's anguished plea not to be exiled
from Russia. Particularly since the upsurge of wartime nationalism, the
regime seems to have benefited from the general desire to stick together,
almost no matter what, while the motherland got back on her feet. However,
after more than 13 years, many now seem to feel that it is time for a new
period to begin.
Both the vitriolic campaign against Pasternak and Khrushchev's
new program to remedy the students' "separation from life" by imposing on
�
WHY KHRUSHCHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTELLECTUALS - 11 -
them obligatory service. in a factory or on a farm indicate that the re-
gime is determined to tighten the leash. But it is unlikely that Khrushchev
can ever preside over a full-blown return to Stalinism, herring himself done
so much to shatter the myth of infallibility. Thus, it appears likely
that the Soviet leadership will have to grant some further grudging con-
cessions to the group on which it depends for the realization of its plans.
Vindictive personal injustices -- such as forcing Pasternak to
decline the Nobel Prize -- undoubtedly will continue. But as all who have
recently seen Pasternak attest, he has developed a noble indifference to
his personal fate as long as he can in some way give witness to his ideals
within his native Russia. If some party bureaucrat, such as his principal
tormentor Surkov, the widely disliked secretary of the Writers Union, should
succeed in imposing even more brutal sanctions on Pasternak, they would
probably do the cause which Pasternak serves more good than harm. Indeed,
the vast uproar already made about "Doctor Zhivago" has, no doubt, done far
more to stimulate curiosity about a novel still unpublished in the U S.S.R.
than to call forth any genuine indignation over it.
When I concluded my visit in the Soviet Union in the fall of
1958, I did not feel any great optimism about the ability of these inquir-
ing young intellectuals seriously to affect the politics or policies of the
Soviet state� at least in the near future. Nonetheless, I left with a
distinct feeling that Soviet creative life has a richness and depth which
the regime has been unable fully to control and the world fully to appre-
ciate.
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Though I did not See Pasternak, 'Ineverthelesi felt some sense
of his presence in many talks with Russian thinkers. Outstanding young -
writers, who are among his closest friends and admirers, have long been
heartened by his adherence to poetic values in an age Of political doggerel.
Some of the unorthodox aesthetic ideas they axperessed -- of
experimenting with' blank verse or pOeticizing the Russian language by elim-
inating harsh gutterals -- represent the sort of thing he himself might do
if he still had yoUth and.a chance to publish. In talking with many others
who have no real understanding of Pasternak's literary work, I found that
he-stands as a witness to the proposition that it is possible to have lived
through all that Ruseia has experienced in this century and yet still speak
truthfully about important questions.
' One cannot leave the U.S.S.R without some feeling of respect
for the forests of cranes atop buildings going up, for the new dams and
hoSpitals, for the hypnotic statistics of physical construction. But some-
how one feels that these are not what thinking young' Russians really care
about; that this building is for them a massive calisthenic exercise held-
in the half-light prior to the dawn.
But is there to be a dawn? In search of an answer one turns
inevitably to Pasternak-- and to the many others whose names and fates
may never be known. It is possible that in Pasternak and "Doctor Zhivago"
one sees only the last reflections on a lonely mountain of a sun that has
already set. But perhaps his is also the perspective of Prospero -- the
wondrous final creation of the Shakespeare whom Pasternak has so long and
so lovingly translated. For Pasternak "the cloud-capp'd towers, the
�
WHY KHRUSHCHEV DISTRUSTS THE SOVIET INTFMCTUALS
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gorgeous palaces" of Soviet construction may already seem an "insubstantial
pageant faded" and man "such stuff as dreams are made on."
As he recently said: "The proclamations, the tumult, the exm.
citement are over. Something new is growing, imperceptibly and quietly
as the grass grows. It is ripening as fruit does, and it is growing in
the young. The essential thing in our age is that a new freedom is
being born."
END
This article appeared in the magazine section of the No-
vember 9, 1958, issue of The New York Times. The author,
an assistant professor at Harvard University, recently
returned from a visit to the U.S.S.R. He teaches Soviet
history and modern Russian intellectual history.
The article has been abridged. It has been cleared for
republication in English and in translation outside the
United States and Canada provided credit is given to the
author and The New York Times and the following copyright
notice is carried:
*/--1958 by The New York Times Company
This clearance is for five years only and expires November 25, 1963.
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THE LESSON OF PASTERNAK
By Ignazio Silone
From The New Leader
Reprinted by permission
The great storm around Boris. Pasternak has now abated. Now we
can put into perspective some of the things revealed by it.
What, above all, is the true significance of the pretests that
have been voiced in all parts of the world against the grave threats and
persecution to which Pasternak has been subjected in the U.S.S.R.? These
protests, in my view, constitute the most fitting reply to the abject
rationalizations which the poet himself was forced to submit in rejecting
the Nobel Prize for Literature. The first reason given by Pasternak for
his rejection referred, as we know, to the particular psychology of the
national society-to which he belongs and which, realistically, he must
take into account. But the intense emotion and the rising storm of pro�
test engendered throughout the civilized world by this episode demon�
strate that there exists, at least potentially, a society larger than
the national society to which Pasternak, as a man and as a consummate
artist, fully belongs.
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All of us knew, in discussing the Pasternak affair, that we
were not arbitrarily interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign
country. Pasternak is our colleague; he belongs to us as much as to the
Russians; he is part of what Goethe called Weltliteratur. The boundary-
less society of artists and,Stee.men_felt outraged and wounded by the
ignoble behavior of the Sovietcultural'bureaucracy. We had the right
and the duty to intervene. Pasternak unexpectedly gave a name and a
face to the cause'of the freedom of art. With him our dignity and our
honor as writers were at stake. Now the simple fact that a novel has
been the center of the'world's attention must impress upon us the impor-
tance which true art can still assume in the life of the people.
After Budapest, after Warsaw, we now have "Dottor Zhivago."
Anyone who, in the future, speaks of the role of the intellectuals in
our time will not be able to ignore these func9ar,ental events. In this
sense, the Pasternak case has served as a touchstone which no Western
literary circles can refuse to recognize. The cowardice, the ambiguity;
the subtle distinctions, the hypocritical' evasions of "equi-distance" '
have again- laid bare the malaise which still afflicts many' Western writers
when they are confronted-with the need -to assume a reSponsibility that
endarigers.their tranquility. This'is a lesson to keep in mind.
The Pasternak 'case has also enabled us to See tdre clearly the'
present status of cultural life in the Soviet Empire* airei* knew
that the "thaw" was a short-lived one. We knew that the cultural insti-
tutions, the publishing houses, the writers' and artists' associations,
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the editorial' offices of the reviews remained unchanged, with the same.
directors who had been placed there by Andrei Zhdanov. But we never
could have predicted that the insolence of these gentlemen could take .�
this form, which, to us, appears mad. To be sure, even now we are not,
in favor of a rupture of cultural relations with the Soviet Union; we
remain, now as always, partisans of a free circulation of men and ideas.
But we shall not easily forget the names of the Soviet men of letters who
promoted the shameful campaign against Pasternak and who led the Moscow
Writers Union to request that the Government deprive Pasternak of the
right to work and live in the U.S.S.R. We must wait for one of these
gentlemen to appear at some international conference in Venice, Rome,
Zurich, or Paris, to ask him to account for his ignominy. Of course,
shameful attitudes have been taken by other writers, recently and in the
distant past. But the literary history of no country knows a more de-
grading spectacle than that of an assembly of Boo writers condemning a
novel without having read it. Not even the Spanish Inquisition, in its
darkest period, descended to
It would seem that
famous ones, did not join in
such depths of violence and stupidity.
certain Soviet writers, including some
the general outcry against Pasternak. We
must hope that more will be known about this, and soon. But the question
that arises is this: Taking into account the conformism of the Writers
Union; is it conceivable that it could hae been convened, and that it
would have taken these mad decisions, without an explicit order from the
supreme political authorities? No, this is unthinkable. Haw; therefore,
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THE .-LESSON OF PASTERNKK
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can we explain the fact that these decisions were, not implemented!? The �.
apparent repentance, 1t, appears to me, was dictated by the information,
which had in the meantime been received by Nikita S. Khrushchev on the:
internal and international repercussions of the scandal. Jib must have
noticed that' the Zhdanovists of the Soviet culture apparatus had forced
his, hand, and he offered Pasternak the possibility of an accommoaation.
Pasternak's letter to Khrushchev was rather disappointing to
many-Admirers of "Doctor Zhivago." But who can judge? We must exercise
our imagination to conjure up the lynch atmosphere to which Pasternak was
exposed, during a period of some ten days. To be sure, it is an embana
rassing letter. Fully five times, despite the brevity of the letter,
Pasternak repeats that his statement was written freely, without violence,
without blackmail, without suggestions from others. "I have not been
subjected to threats or to constraint," we read . . . "Nothing can force
me to act against my conscience . . . ." "I have given up the prize .with-
out constraint by-anyone." And so on. Would,this not seem too much for
a free man in an atmosphere of serenity? The letter is basea voon a
glorification of Pasternak's native soil which ominously recalls the
notorious sentiment of "Blut and Baden," in sharp contrast with the
internationalist tradition of the founders of Russian Communism almost
all of whom knew exile, and with the work of Pasternak himself. Nobody
leaves his own-country with a light heart, but if need be, one can in
fact emigrate. Before being Italian, German, Russian, one is a man.
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THE LESSON OF PASTERNAK
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Finally, the references in Pasternak's letter to the circum-
stances through which "Doctor Zhivago" came to be published are not
truthful. And the publisher, Feltrinelli, has done well to refrain
from setting the record straight -- for how, after all, can one engage
in polemics with a prisoner? But we may be permitted, through an asso-
ciation of ideas, to recall an episode from the period of the great
Stalinist trials: A defendant, forced to confess that he had met Leon
Trotsky's son in a Copenhagen hotel, gave a fictitious name -- so that
from the falseness of this detail, the falseness of the entire testimony
could be deduced abroad.
Alas, in these days, Pasternak was so deafened by the hysterical
shrieking cf the Moscow writers that he failed to perceive that, because
of the alert sounded by international opinion, he was stronger than his
adversaries. But "Doctor Zhivago" will survive all polemics; this is
the revenge of which no dictatorship can deprive the poet.
END
This article appeared in the January 5, 1959, issue
of The New Leader, a liberal magazine published
weekly in the United States and containing articles
on international and national affairs. The author
is known throughout the world as a leading Italian
novelist.
The article has not been abridged. It has been
cleared for republication in English and in trans-
lation outside the United States and Canada pro-
vided credit is given to the author and The New
Leader.
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
"My greatest wish, a quiet life"
By Max Hayward
From Encounter
Reprinted by permission
Boris Pasternak's novel, "Dr. Zhivagolu was first mentioned in
the Soviet press during the thaw after Stalin's death. For almost 20
years Pasternak, once a leading figure in the Russian literary world, he.d
published practically nothing. Then in April 1954 ten magnificent poems,
described as "poems from the novel in prose, 'Dr. Zhivago," appeared in
the magazine Znamya issued by the Soviet Union of Writers. In an intro-
ductory note, signed "The Author," Pasternak wrote:
"The novel will probably be completed in the
course of the summer. It covers the period from 1902
to 1929, with an epilogue relating to the Great War
for the Fatherland.
"The hero, Yu A. Zhivago, a physician, a
thinking man in search of truth, with a creative and
artistic bent, dies in 1929. Among his papers written
in younger days, a number of poems are found, which
will be attached to the book as a final chapter.
Some of them are reproduced here."
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
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What happened in the two years between the summers of 1954 and
1956 remains shrouded in mystery. Soviet writers on visits abroad gave
contradictory reports on whether and when Pasternak's novel would be
finished. The author himself remained silent except for the occasional
publication in Soviet periodicals of a solitary poem: or a critical ar-
ticle on translations from Shakespeare. During the minor freeze-up in
the autumn of 1954, marked by the condemnation of Pomerantsev's article
on "Sincerity in Literature" and the removal of the poet Tvardovsky from
the editorship of the magazine Novy Mir, the poems published in Znamya
were mildly criticised by Soviet critics as "lacking in vitality" and
"failimgto answer the call of the present day." Details of a literary
intrigue are rarely ventilated in the pages of the Soviet press. We must
therefore rely for our knowledge of the destiny of Pasternak's novel in
that period on an official interview given to the Italian Communist paper,
L'Unita (22nd October, 1957): by the secretary of the Union of Writers of
the U.S.S.R.: a poet, a prominent literary bureaucrat and a member of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Alexeyi
Surkov. Surkov, who, according to L'Unita: at last gives us the true
story of "Dr. Zhivago," stated that Pasternak had sent the manuscript
of his novel to one of the Soviet publishing houses. The "whole collec-
tive" -- by which the firm's editorial board is probably meant -- read it.
They sent a private letter to- Pasternak explaining the reasons for their
disagreement with him. Surkov pointed out that he could not blame those
who had read this book, as he had done himself, for believing that it
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PASTERN&K'S "DR. ZHIVAGO" - 3 -
put in doubt the validity Of the October Revolution which is described
as if it were the greatest crime in Russian history. According to
Surkov, Pasternak seemed to agree with some of the criticism contained
in the letter and spoke of his intention to revise the text. Surkov
also stated that Pasternak had sent a telegram to his Italian publisher
asking him to return the manuscript (which had been used for preparing
an Italian translation) to Moscow for revision.
The-important part of Surkov's statement lies in the information
that the novel has been condemned by a group of Writers, including Surkov
himself, which explains why it has not yet appeared in the Soviet Union.
What Surkov did not say in his interview with L'Unita was that, at the
same time as he presented his novel to the Union of Writers for publica-
tion: Pasternak had given the copyright for all translations into foreign
languages to the publishing firm of Feltrinelli in Milan, who arranged
for publication in English: French and German as well as an Italian ver-
sion. Feltrinelli is himself a rather prominent member of the Italian
Communist Party. His representative visited Pasternak in the summer of
1956 and brought the manuscript to Italy. In the year that passed between
the conclusion of the agreement between the author and his Italian pub-
lisher and Surkov's visit to Italy, there was plenty of time for a Russian
edition to appear, perhaps even a revised one, and then of course the
Italian publisher would have taken into consideration any revisions. .As
nothing of the kind happened: Feltrinelli decided to stick to his original
agreement with the author and refused to stop the publication of the Ital-
ian translation. In a statement to the press he made it known that Surkov
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had visited him, accompanied by an official of the Italian Communist
Party, and that the two used every means. of persuasion, including Surkov's-
expressed concern for Pasternak's personal safety, and various kinds of
threats to force Feltrinelli to alter his decision. Prtssure was also
applied to the other foreign publishers, and telegrams signed by Pasternak
were received by them asking them to abandon publication. However, in a
statement to foreign journalists made at his residence near Moscow in
December 1957, after the appearance of the Italian translation, Pasternak
expressed no regret that the novel had appeared, and put the blame for
"all this nonsense" on the Soviet literary authorities who could have
avoided it by permitting publication in the U.S.S.R.
The situation is bedevilled by the fact of a personal rivalry
between Surkov and Pasternak, of which Surkov makes no secret in his
public statements. This may be seen in, for example, Surkov's attack
on Pasternak in Pravda of 1st December, 1957, in which he condemns
attempts to "canonise" Pasternak and other writers of similar outlook.
However, Surkov must be keenly conscious of the opprobrium which would
fall on him if he had to bear sole responsibility for the decision to
suppress "Dr. Zhivago." He was careful to get a unanimous decision from
the board which sat in judgment over the novel. Recently, verses by him
were published side by side with some of Pasternak's in the Literaturnaya
Gazetal probably an attempt to establish an alibi.
Nevertheless, it is hardly possible that the recent efforts to
stop publication abroad could. have been made only at the instigation of
Surkov or other litterateurs who were moved by professional jealousy. Of
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO" - 5
course, such jealousies would-be used by the Party in order to get the
active support of Surkov and 'people like him for the effort to silence
Pasternak. Butt the decision must have been taken at a higher level than
the Union of Writers and from more general motives than literary jealousy.
The reaion for the attitude of the Soviet authorities must there-
fore be sought in the first place in the contents of the novel itself and,
in the second place, in the personality of the author. Surkov'S argument
that the novel was rejected because of an alleged slander on the October
Revolution is not quite convincing. To begin with, there is no outright
condemnation of the October Revolution as such in the novel, and the
question whether the Revolution was a crime or not could never have been
put by Pasternak. He does not think or speak in such categories. But
even if -- by implication -- Pasternak's novel can be interpreted as an
attack on the October Revolution, it does not follow that it would have
been rejected outright for publication in the summer of 1956.
There was, at that time, a hint in the air of an open discussion
of the fundamentals of the Communist creed. Those responsible for the
publication of literary works were bold enough to allow Dudintsev's novel
"Not by Bread Alone" to appear in the monthly journal Novy Mir, and the
Moscow writers were preparing for the second issue of "Literaturnaya-
Moskva," 1956, which contained a number of bitter attacks on the policies
of Government and Party. Historians were working out a revised version
of the October Revolution and of the history of the Party. If misrepre-
sentation of the October Revolution had been the only -- or the main --
fault of Pasternak's novel, the appearance of the novel could have been
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
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made the opportunity for reasserting the Party line in literature. The
fact that those responsible did not take this
print the novel, shows that there was more to
It is clear that those who read "Dr.
1956 thoughtthat; from a Party point of view,
view, but decided not to
it than Surkov admits.
Zhivago" in the summer of
the damage which would be
done to the regime by its publication in the U.S.S.R. would be greater
than any advantage which could be derived from exposing and criticising
its shortcomings after it had appeared. There must be something in the
novel, the suppression of which seemed necessary to those responsible
for Soviet cultural policy even at the cost of compromising, in the eyes
of the world, the reputation for liberalism which they were, at that time,
trying to establish,
:reative work can go
Pasternak's
and at the risk of destroying the blaim that artistic
on unimpeded in the Soviet Union.
early poetical work (his first two volumes of poems
were published. in 1917 and 1922) can be regarded as a totally new depar=
ture in Russian poetry. Perhaps his early ambition to become a composer
(he had been a pupil of Scriabin) and the diversity of his interests in
general account for the fact that the imagery of these poems is that of
a fleeting; momentary association of ideas which remains unimpeded by
common-sense knowledge or artistic prejudice. He would compare the eye-
lid of the sleeping Helen of Troy to "a dear old apron," or say: "...The
rain is fumbling on the doorstep. The rain smells Of vine-bottle corks
and if you think of it," he would add, "the writings of the gentry on
equality and fraternity had smelled exactly like that." Some of this
imagery is impressionistic. Some of it arises from a play with
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO" - 7
alliterations and from semantic riddles. It strikes the reader for a
moment as incomprehensible: sometimes as gibberish. It is only by letting
the words produce the full aura of associations in the mind that the images
cone alive and, after a short period during which they seem artificial and
capricioub, one suddenly realises that their fleeting spontaneity could
never have been the result of artifice but only of a vision which had
possessed' the poet. This is why it is right to say that Pasternak's po-
etry, as recorded in the few- volumes of verses which he has published,
has not been his life-work, but a series of accidentally preserved samples
of that poetical vision which goes on uninterruptedly as long as he breathes,
and which is the very essence of his life. Realising.the identity of the
poet and the human be.ing isn Pasternak's personality, we begin to appreciate
the silliness of the suspicion that he could use his poetical gift for a
political aim.
From his parents (his father was an eminent painter and his
mother an accomplished musician) Pasternak inherited the gift of poetical
sight and a very elgbOrate rhythmic expression. But these gifts and tal-
ents are only the pterequisites of his poetry. The poetry itself is the
sum total of the events of his every-day life, of waking and going to
sleep, of acting and eating. To make use of his talents for a political
or, for that matter, any other extraneous purpose, would mean
and concentrating certain images, certain verbal expressions,
rhythms, in order to produce a desired effect on his readers.
selecting
even certain
The Com-
munist Party demands of the poets in the Soviet Union that they do this
in order to produce enthusiasm for the Communist cause. This is the sense
a.
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
8
of all Party directives on poetry. What would this mean in the case of
Pasternak? It would mean the suppression of some, and the wilful inter-
ference with others, of the free associations of ideas and emotional
reactions which constitute his poetical vision. For one whose creative
moments are rare and summoned up by a deliberate effort of will this might
perhaps be possible. For Pasternak and any poet of this type such an
interference would mean an intolerable mutilation of all his vital activi-
ties. Looking out of the window would become torture indeed if the process
by which the sight of branches of trees and of the buildings and the drops
of rain on the glass are transformed into a rhythmic expression of all
they mean to the poet, was interfered with by a censor, who would select
out of it what he believes they should mean to the reader. Pasternak's
silence lasting for 20 years can only be explained as a passive resistance
to such interference with his poetical life.
Perhaps, in a paradoxical way so characteristic of Soviet con-
ditions, Pasternak's claim for the recognition of his independence as,a
poet provides an explanation of the surprising fact that he was never
physically molested, imprisoned or banished under the Stalin regime.
Stalin may well have believed that if nothing could be obtained from
Pasternak in support of the regime, not much need be feared from him
which would endanger it. Stalin knew that the stick and the carrot
might be effective with Alexei Tolstoy or Ilya Ehrenburg� but would be
of no avail with Pasternak. At the same time, he must have sensed what
the Soviet poets and writers whom his apparatus controlled thought of
Pasternak's towering superiority. It is in keeping with what we know of
PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHINAGO" - 9 -
Stalin's character to assume that he held Pasternak in reserve as a kind
of bogy for the controllable poets and. writers so that he could say: "If
ever I allow freedom of creative work to anyone, I will allow it to
Pasternak. He, at least, will produce genuine poetry whereas you, who
have been serving me with your tkhaltural (pot-boiling) might make use
of such freedom to serve another master."
.However this may be, the fact remains that Pasternak lived in
terror and frustration between the middle 1930's and the beginning of the
Second World War. During the war, he remained in Moscow and. witnessed
the peculiar atmosphere which prevailed in the city between October and
December 1941. This period has been described more than once as a kind
of crisis of liberation.* As Pasternak states expressly in his novel, the
beginning of the war produced a powerful liberating effect on the mentality
of the sensitive Soviet,citizein. It was probably at that momenti. when in
the midst of physical privation an4 fear some natural freedom and moral
courage could be recovered, that the idea of "Dr. Zhivago" was hatched.
The decision to write the novel as it has been written: without
fear or scruple, and to press for its publication, cannot have come easily
to Pasternak. This is revealed in the first of the poems included in the
Appendix to the novel. In this poem the poet is about to play the part
of Hamlet. He is already on the stage and from the dark auditorium he
feels the touch of a thousand opera-glasses focused on him. He prays the
*Compare, for instance, such other witnesses as M. Koryakov in "The
Liberation of the Soul" 5he1thov Publishing House, New York, in Russiaj
and YuLia Neuman in her poem on the year 1941, described as a "pure year,"
because "in that year of camouflage and blackout, chicanery crumbled like
plaster and we saw our neighbours without masks" fLiteraturnaya Moskva,"
vol. II, Moscow, 195E7.
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PASTERNAK' S '1DR ZHIVAGO"
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Father to spare him the ordeal. He admits that he. is rea4y, to accept the
destiny of Man and that he loves the life which has been ,given to him.
He is ready to fulfil the human drama and to play his part:in life. But
he begs God to spare him this appearance in social isolation before a
hostile and uncomprehending humanity. The order of life is, however,
pre-established and the final goal of the path of his life is unavoid-
able. "I am alone: everything is drowned in pharisaic hypocrisy. To
live one's life is not all that easy' (is not like crossing a field, as
the Russian proverb goes). It was inthismood that "Dr. Zhivago" was
conceived.
Pasternak's attitude towards the revolutionary events which are
the setting of his novel was that of an "obyvatel" -- an untranslatable
word which Russians have used since the nineteenth century to describe
those among them whose attitude towards politics was exactly that of
ordinary people everywhere towards the weather. For them, political
conditions and circumstances were to be taken account of solely in order
that they should not interfere with their personal lives. It would be
sheer lunacy to attempt to interfere with these events, to jeopardise
or even render more difficult personal achievements by the vain attempt
to change political circumstances, just as it would be lunacy to try
and influence the weather to suit our ends.
"Obyvatelshchina," or the attitude of the "obyvatel," is .a
typically Russian phenomenon. This form of aloofness from all things
.
political and social is not the result ok a narrowness of heart and
mind like that of a German "spiesser." While the "obyvatel's" behavior
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PASTERNAK S "DR ZPilVAGO" - 11
towards State authority and, in particular, every kind of police, may
appear submissive and cowardly, he is capable of great personal courage
and spirit of sacrifice in all personal relations and in personal mis-
fortunes. His submissiveness is resilient. An "obyvatel" will enjoy
official festivities, march to music in demonstrations when required,
and perform all the ritual imposed on the politically reliable citizens
by Authority, while remaining inwardly as aloof towards this authority,
be it the Tsar or the Communist Party, as one is towards the frost or
the rain, or to the causes of disease and death. The "obyvatel" has often
been a rather despicable figure in Russian literature, or a figure of fun,
especially in so-called "progressive" writings, but much attention has
been focused on him and his human qualities ever since Pushkin's "Tales
of Belkin" and Gogol's "Overcoat."
The key position in Russian literature of Gogol's "Overcoat" is
beyond doubt. It is the source of the stream of writings in defence of
the dignity of the small man. But it is surprising that another feature
%
of this story has not been pointed out by the many literary historians
who have discussed it. The little clerk in "The Overcoat," whose precious
garment had been stolen after he had starved and saved for months to pay
for it, turned for help to the Head of his Department. His Excellency
gave him a dressing down: the little man went home and died. In a
grotesque and whimsical epilogue, the ghost of the clerk returns to earth
and disrobes His Excellency, at night in a blizzard, of his magnificent
beaver-collared overcoat. It is going too far to interpret Gogol's story
as a symicolic vision of the vengeance which the humble and oppressed would
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12
wreck on all the EXcellencies almost a century later, a vision born in
Gogol's schizophrenic mind and of the significance of which he was him-
self possibly not conscious?
In any event, the "obyvatel," while remaining an object of
derision and blame became, at the same time, a pet of Russian literature,
which prided itself on asserting the dignity and intrinsic value of the
poor and humble. This attitude-terminated in the long gallery of
Chekhov's heroes -- most of them "obyvatels," or "superfluous" men, and
most of them redeemed as human beings.
While this process of the gradual rehabilitation of the "obyvatel"
went on in Russian prose, poetry remained essentially untouched by it.
There, the polarisation of trends was characterised by the contrast between
civic poetry and an attitude of "ivory tower" and "art for art's sake."
Both trends had their roots in nineteenth-century romanticism. In both
cases the poet claimed to serve a cause, either that of "increasing ar-
tistic values in the world," or of "contributing to social progress."
Abusive allegations of philistinism were flung backwards and forwards
between the two camps. Revolutionary heroics took over the traditions
of romanticism without having undergone purification by the realistic
vision so noticeable and so beneficial in Russian prose writing. �
Mayakaysky came as a Victor Hugo of the Russian Revolution. At their
best moments, Russian poets were painfully.conscious of their alienation
from the source of real poetry. This is why Pushkin, who would write
poetry as he breathed air, towered above them as a demi-god whose works
would for ever remain unsurpassed.
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
-13-
In his rehabilitation of the "obyvatel" attitude which ends in
an apotheosis, Pasternak takes his bearings from Pushkin. He makes his
hero, who has found a temporary refuge with his family in the wastes of
the eastern Urals, read and comment on Pushkin:
"The fabulous is never anything but the
commonplace touched by the hand of a genius. The
best object lesson in this respect 'is Pushkin. What
an ode to honest work, duty and the common round:
The words 'bourgeois' and 'obyvatel' have only become
terms of abuse nowadays, but Pushkin forestalled the
implied reproach in his 'Family Tree': 'A bourgeois,
a bourgeois is what I am!' and again in 'Onegin's
Journey': Now my ideal is the housewife/My greatest
wish, a quiet life/A fat tureen of cabbage soup."
The message of the novel is, to a large extent, an elaboration
of this simple but surprising thought.
The comparison of "Dr. Zhivago" with Tolstoy's "War and Peace,"
which has already been made in the press, can only cause misunderstanding.
Both epics are, of course, attempts on a large scale to reflect the char-
acter of an epoch, but this is the only ground for comparison. Tolstoy's
novel was a reconstruction of a period based on certain preconceived
ideas concerning the character of historical development and its real
causes. "Dr. Zhivago" is an account of personal experience, and the unity
of vision achieved by Pasternak is not conditioned by a theoretical
approach to historical data as it was in the case of Tolstoy. It is the
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
-
unity of personal reminiscence and of poetical perception. Even had the
novel not been so obviously autobiographical, it would have been personal
and lyrical in this sense. It is focused on one of the protagonists,
Dr. Zhivago, who is both the main hero and almost the narrator of the
novel.
Zhivago's personality is so close to the author that their
relationship can be compared to that of Proust and the "I" of "A la
Recherche de Temps Perdu." The character emerges gradmily and, even
towards the end of the novel, it has still the same myopic vagueness
of design which is characteristic of introspective self-knowledge. But
of course, Pasternak's hero should not be identified with the author him-
self. He is something of Pasternak's super-ego, whose purity of purpose,
dignity and humanity Pasternak obviously admires and can hardly hope to
attain. For this admiration, Pasternak takes vengenance on his hero by
reducing his social effectiveness to a minimum, by making him one of the
great "superfluous men" of Russian
Zhivago goes through life
world, but also without leaving an
literature.
uncorrupted by the wickedness of the
imprint on it by his intentional ac-
tions. The women he loves -- and who love him even more -- he loses and
is unable to help. He is no father to the children whom they have by him.
In spite of his psychological insight and his goodwill towards his fellow-
men, he is unable to help them in their tragedies, and the story of his
personal relations as a whole is that of failure and disaster. It has
been said that Pasternak referred to Turgenev's Rudin as to a distant
literary ancestor of Zhivago, but he seems to have more in common with
.�11,
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO" - 15 -
Dostoevsky's "Idiot" and certain Chekhov characters. There is the same
inability to transform knowledge and intention into action; and the same
final triumph in failure, the triumph of the uncompromising attitude to
reality, which will not be bribed by the promise of wordly success. This
final justification and apotheosis of Zhivago's way of life comes towards
the end of the boa and finds its most powerful expression in the lament
of Lam, the great love of his life, over his dead body in Moscow in
1929. No Russian'writer before Pasternak has made this point clearer
concerning the superfluous man. Unlike Dostoevsky's hero, however,
Zhivago is not a Jesus-like figure. He is more like an apostle, one of
those disciples who could not keep awake during the vigil of Gethsemane,
referred to in the last poem at the end of the novel.
Zhivago's character develops against the background of the
dissolution of Russian society which culminated in the revolution of
1917. His attitude towards the great social changes is that of a
sympathising and enlightened "obyvatel." Although the problems of the
historical destiny add of the social development of Russia were present
inhis, mind from early youth, Zhivago never thought he could influence
them directly by his actions. He did not seek contact with those who
believed they could do so, and it is clear from his casual encounters
with them that his attitude towards their belief was, at the best, pity
for ignorant enthusiasts. This does not mean that he was indifferent to
the Revolution. It affected him most profoundly, and his attitude towards
political events is stated in the novel with extreme clarity. In a scene
with Laval long before their relationship had developed into a liaison,
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
-
Zhivago philosophises about the political conditions in Russia in the
high summer of 1917/ and expresses the typically "obyvatel" attitude to
them, as if they were uncontrollable in the sate way as the forces of
nature itself. He says:
"Last night, I was watching a public meeting.
What an sme7ing spectacle: Old Mother Russia is on the
move. She cannot stand still any longer; she walks and .
cannot stop walking; she talks and cannot stop talking;
and it is not that the only speakers are the people;
stars and trees have come together and are holding
parleys; the flowers of the night are philosophising,
stone buildings are taking part in public meetings."
The idea appeals to tare, who says that she understands the
trees and the stars who take part in meetings. She knows what he means
and herself had such ideas. This objectivist, or naturalist attitude
towards the social and revolutionary turmoil establishes the first
intimate link between Zhivago and Laza, which then develops into the
great love story of their lives.
It is remarkable that another eminent Russian poet whose later
tragic destiny means so much to Pasternak -- Marina Tsvetaeva -- had
pointed out Pasternak's peculiar attitude to the Revolution as early as
1924 in a review of his second book of poems, "My Sister -- Life."
There Tsvetaeva.wrote of Ppsternak's perception of the Revolution:
"Pasternak did not take cover hiding from
the Revolution in one of the other of the basement
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
-17-
haunts of the intelligentsia. (There are no base-
ments in the Revolution, only open squares in open
fields.) Pasternak and the Revolution did actually
meet. He saw her for the first time in the distance
in the glow of fires shooting into the air like a
corn sheaf. He heard her in the groaning flight of
the roads. The Revolution reached him and was
assimilated by him like everything in his life,
through nature. Pasternak will say his word about
the Revolution as the Revolution herself will say
it at some future time. In the summer of 1917 he
marched in step with her and listened to her
attentively."
Paradoxically, the more revolutionary events tended to inter-
fere with Zhivago's personal life, the more conscious became his attitude
of passive
makes this
historical
aspects of
submissiveness to their blind elemertal power. Pasternak
point again and again by-combiniug every glimpse of the
happenings of the autumn of 1917 with some entirely personal
his hero's life. During the October days when indiscriminate
shooting makes movement in the streets of Moscow practically impossible
and visitors who drop in remain stranded for days in Zhivago's flat, a
note of poignancy is introduced by the record of a seemingly alarming
although, in the end, innocuous illness of his little son. When at last
Zhivago is able to get out into the streets, he is once more overwhelmed,
as he had been the summer before, by a feeling:of-the-cosmic unity of
natural and social upheavals:
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
"There wad'dome kind of siMilarity between
what was going on in the moral and in the physical
world, between occurrences near and faraway, on
earth and in the atmosphere. Somewhere the last
isolated shots of a broken resistance resound.
Bubbles of weak: almost extinguished fires flare
up and dissolve somewhere on the horizon and the
blizzard chases the snow in rings and funnels of
similar pattern along the steaming and wet
pavements under Zhivago's feet."
It isinthismooderatZhivago gets hold of a news-sheet announcing
the appointment of the People's Commissars and the first decreee of the
Soviet government. He realises the momentous character of the news:
"...the greatness and the eternal signif-
icance of that moment shook him and knocked him out."
Zhivago enters the doorway of a block of flats to take cover and
read the news. By one of his craftiest tricks, at exactly that moment
Pasternak interrupts the story of Zhivago's reaction to what he is reading
in order to introduce an unexpected personal element. There, on the stairs
of an unknown house, he lets Zhivago meet a youth, a half-brother of his
wham he had never met before and who plays a peculiar part in the con-
struction of the novel, appearing at critical moments like the envoy of
Destiny, who suggests and determines the line of behavior. By this device
the author seems to remind us that historical events may be judged only
in the light of their impact on individuals. And as if to drive this
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.PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
STAT
-19-
lesson home, Pasternak makes another :seemingly casual digression. On his
way home, Dr. Zhivago takes advantage of .the darkness to steal a log of
wood from a heap of demolition timber guarded by a sentry and brings it
home, where fuel has been used up during the days of street fighting. At
home, Zhivago comments on the significance of the news:
"...the main thing is the streak of genius
about it all.liadanybody been given the-task of
creating a new world: of beginning a new era, his
first definite need would be to have the decks
suitably cleared for action. Before getting down
to the construction of new epochs he would have
waited for the old to finish. He would have
needed a round number, a new paragraph, a blank
page. And here, look at it, this unprecedented
thing, this miracle of history, this revelation,
has been dropped in the midst of the continuing
day-to-day life with a complete disregard for its
course.
"The miracle has begun, not from the
beginning, but from the middle. Not at a date
which had been fixed in advavel but on an ordinary
week-day in the very midst of the tramway traffic
in the city. This is what strikes one most as a
feat of genius. Only the very greatest can be so
out of time and place."
71,e:1�114-.4. '
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estm.
PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
-20-
The greatness of the-revolutionary events and Zhivago's enthu-
siasm about them does not mean, however, that he approved of any of the
intentions of the Revolution. Years later, after the whole family had
fled from starving and typhus-infested Moscow to the Urals, where they
hoped to settle down as market gardeners, Zhivago's father-in-law comments
on what Zhivago said in the first days of the October Revolution. Zhivago
tells his father-in-law that now that they have come into a part of the
world where their relatives had owned a large property before theRevo-
lution, they must be quite honest with each other about their hopes,
desires and aspirations:
"We must agree- beforehand on the way in
which to behave in certain circumstances) in order
not to be ashamed of each other and not to put each
other to shame."
What Zhivago means is obviously the attitude they should adopt
in case of a counter-revolutionary coup (White Guard detachments were
roaming quite near the station where the conversation took place), and
whether they would, in this eventuality, claim any part of the property
to which Zhivago's wife might be entitled.
Zhivago's father-in-law, Gromeko, answers:
'Do you remember that winter blizzard night
when you brought the news-sheet with the first decrees?
Do you remember how that was absolutely final? Its
uncompromising character subdued us: but such things
live in their original purity only in the heads of their
-
PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
- 21 7
creators, and that only on the first day of their
announcement. By the next day, the Jesuit hypocrisy
of politics turns everything inside out. What can
I tell you? This philosophy /hat is, communis.27n
is alien to me. This government is against us.
I was not asked whether I agreed to this general
break-up. But they trusted me and the way I
behaved, even if I acted under pressure, puts an
obligation on me."
The old man explains to Zhivago that he is not going to claim
any rights in the property of his in-laws, but will merely use his con-
tacts in order to settle on the land and make a living out of it. "The
history of private property in Russia," says old Gromeko, "has come to
an end. And we personally, the Gromekos, had already said good-bye to
the passion for acquisition in the Nineteenth Century."
This is the style in which Pasternak speaks of political reality
affecting the private lives of his heroes. There is no criticism or
discussion of the intentions, aspirations and political manoeuvring of
those who claimed to direct revolutionary events. What concerns Pasternak
is: what Should a man like his hero do when faced with such changes, in
order to preserve his moral integrity, and to survive without breaking up
his personal identity?
Zhivago is contrasted with another character who appears in two
different aspects. Pavel Antipov is a working-class boy, an orphan,
brought up by a family of railway workers, a gifted, tormented mind who,
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
22
after completing his university studies and marrying a girl whom he
considers socially superior to him, becomes an intellectual. The girl
is the same Lara who later, when abandoned by him, becomes the grand
amour of Zhivago. While Zhivago is the type of "obyvatel," Antipov is
the "activist" par excellence. Pasternak sums up his character at the
end of the first volume, in the following words:
"Two features, two passions were characteristic
of him: his thinking was uncommonly clear and correct
and, to an equally uncommon degree, he.had the gift of
moral purity and justice, and his feelings were warm
and noble. But what stopped him becoming the kind
of scholar who blazes new trails was that his brain
lacked that talent for the arbitrary, that force
which by unpredicted discoveries shatters the barren
harmony of sterile predictions.
"And. so far as doing good was concerned,
though he was a man of principle, he was lacking
in that unprincipledness of the heart which knows
nothing of generalizations, concerning itself
solely with individual instances, the heart whose
greatness rests on the very littleness of its
actions.
"From his early childhood, Pavel longed
for the very highest and brightest ideals. In.
his view, life was a huge arena in which, honestly
IND
PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZBIVAGO" - 23 -
adhering to the rules, men were competing in their
progress to greater perfection.
"When he found out that this was not so, it
did not occur to him that he had been wrong in having
a much too simplified idea of the world order. his
obviously refers also to the failure of Pavel's
marriage to Laraj Having buried his grievance
deep in his soul, he began playing with the idea
of some time becoming supreme judge in the contest
between life and the dark forces which corrupted
it. He daydreamed of drawing his sword in defence
of life and so of avenging it.
"Disappointment made him bitter. Revo-
lution armed him."
Antipov turns up in the novel under a new identity and a new
name, Strelnikov, as a leader of the Red Army forces in the Urals.
Zhivago is arrested while wandering on the railway line by some Red Army
men who believe him to be a spy. He is brought to Strelnikov, who realises
that a mistake has been made and that Zhivago has been taken for somebody
else. Strelnikov tells him that he will be freed, but asks him why he
happens to be in this remote part of the Urals. Is he by chance the heir
of the owners of the local factories? Zhivago admits that "his wife was,
indeed...but what has this to do with it?" He has come to the Urals to
find peace in the wilderness. Strelnikov presses Zhivago, asking him why
he has not joined the Red Army, since he is a doctor.
VaigalW.
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
"After all, you are a doctor, an Army doctor
at that, and this is war-time. This concerns me
directly. A deserter.. .The Green Partisans are
also looking for quiet in the forests. What is your
reason for not being in the Arny7?"
Zhivago: "I was wounded twice and invalided
out of the Army"
Strelnikov/Antipov: "And now, I expect,
you will produce a certificate from the People's
Commissariat of Education or from the People's
Commissariat of Health to attest that you are a
completely dependable Soviet citizen, a sympathiser,
and politically reliable. This, my dear sir, is
the Last Judgment on earth. Beasts of the
Apocalypse, winged and sword-bearing, are roaming
about and not sympathising and politically reliable
doctors. But I have told you already that you are
free and I shall not go back on my word. But this
is only for this time. I feel that we shall meet
again and then the conversation might turn out
differently. Be on your guard."
The threat does not affect Zhivago, and he answers:
"I know all you are thinking of me. From
your point of view you might be quite right. The
debate into which you are trying to draw me, I have
_ 24
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4
PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO" 25
been carrying on all through my life with an imaginary
accuser and, you will admit, I have had plenty of time
to come to a conclusion of sorts. Allow* me to go if
I am indeed free and, if I am not, dispose of me. I
do not have to justify any of my actions to you."
The two men part at this point and the significance of their
encounter only becomes evident much later in the course of the narrative,
when the second meeting between them takes place in the same area many
months after the first.
Zhivago has, in the meantime, become the lover of Antipov's
abandoned wife. He has been kidnapped by Red Partisans and has gone
through the most cruel and inhuman campaign ever fought in the Russian
Civil War, that of the Siberian Partisans. After his return to the Urals,
in a fit of despair he has let the woman whom he loved go away to the Far
East in order to save her from possible political complications in which
he might become involved. He lives alone in the house where they had
been happy together, and there he meets Strelnikov/Antibov again.
Strelnikov's position has also changed in the meantime. Like so many
of the ex-officers employed in the Civil War as defenders of the Soviet
power, he was denounced As a traitor and a price was put on his head. He
went into hiding in the forestsj but is hounded down and, as a last resort,
cones to the lonely house inhabited by Zhivago. The meeting of the two
men marks the highest point of the drama in which they are involved.
They establish a kind of brotherhood which calls to mind the last scene
in Dostoevsky's "Idiot," the scene in Rogozhin's house near the corpse
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
-26-
of Nastasia Filipovna. Strelnikov shoots himself in the night, and
Zhivago remains alive to go back on a long trek through Russia to Moscow,
where he vegetates for a few years as a kind of free-lance educationalist
and then ends up an intellectual tramp, an outcast of a society whose
standards he cannot accept.
The contrast between the two characters -- Zhivago and Strelnikov/
Antipov -- is the central ideological theme of the novel. It is the
contrast between the "obyvatel," who possesses the qualities of heart
necessary to do the microscopic good of which alone he feels that man is
capable in this world, and the "activist" or fanatic. Both perish in the
social turmoil ruled by laws which have nothing to do either with the
emotions and the common-sense of Zhivago, or the high ideals and the
stilted theories of Strelnikov/Antipov. Pasternak leaves us in no doubt
where his sympathies lie in the contest between these two characters.
Speaking of Antipov and his like earlier in the novel, he says:
"For them, transitional periods, worlds in
the making are ends in themselves. They are not
trained for anything else, they don't know anything
else. And. do you know why there is this incessant
whorl of never-ending preparations? It's because
they have no specific natural talents, they are
not gifted for anything. Man is born to live,
not to prepare for life. Life itself -- the gift
of life -- is such a breathtakingly serious thing --
so why substitute this childish harlequinade of
adolescent phantasies, these schoolboy escapades?"
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PASTERNAK1S "DR. ZRIVAGO"
- 27 -
Because of this talent for life Zhivago is loved, by all those
to whose happiness he has been so tragically impotent to contribute.
There is no selfish egotism in this man, as Pasternak shows. Weak and
doomed to failure as he might appear when judged by the results of his
ventures, his hero, the great "superfluous man," is the bearer of that
tolerant, merciful attitude towards other human beings on which alone a
human society not doomed to self-destruction can be founded. It is in
the poetry at the end of the volume that this point is made most clearly.
These twenty-five poems are, in a sense, the most important part of the
work. Taken by themselves, however, they would have been only samples of
personal, erotic and devotional lyric. By attaching them to his one
hundred and forty thousand-word novel, Pasternak demonstrates the live
connection of these poem with at least one possible set of individual
human circumstances: those of his hero's life.
Who are the people to whom Pasternak is sending his message,
and whom the Soviet authorities are now so eager to prevent hearing it?
TtAr are neither Communist "activists" nor revolutionaries who would
rise up in arms in order to overthrow the Soviet regime and, in this
sense, any accusation that the novel is "counter-revolutionary" is
absurd. The people to whom Pasternak appeals are the Russian "obyvatel"
of our days, mainly intellectuals and also the small, unimportant people
who neither join actively in Party and Government campaigns nor resist
them actively; and who, by their very passivity, preserve a certain
degree of integrity of judgment and of emotional spontaneity. Such
people, in fact the overwhelming majority of the population of the
-",
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PAWIRRAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
- 28 -
U.S.S.R., have been taught to believe for the last 40 ylars that they,are
in every respect inferior to the selected active fighters for a better
society. In the official view, those who dare tC fight for social ideals
may perish when they go wrong, but they have nevertheless led a conscious,
purposeful life and they are far above any loyal and well-intentioned
"obyvatel." The latter is destined for ever to remain a mere object of
political action and it is his duty patiently to endure every discomfort
and to acojuiesce in the praise with which the "activists" reward their
own efforts for the establishment of general happiness.
�
It is to this mass of passive sufferers, and mainly to those
whose passivity is intentional, that Pasternak addresses his message.
He does not urge them to activity, to an organized resistance, of which
they are probably not capable. What he does is to instil in them a
sense of dignity'ariduperiority over the "activists," a superiority
which 116 claims for his hero and of which he himself is so justifiably
conscious.
But; although-in no vulgar sense subversive, the novel certainly
contains a most devastating criticism of the very foundations of official
Soviet enthusiasm. The real danger it presents to the regime is that it
destroys the position of moral superiority of the political "activists"
and restores the confidence of those who are seeking nothing more than
their right to love nature and to follow in their actions the inclinations
of their heart. The compelling power of Pasternak's argument is not based
on any theoretical view, but on a direct poetical Vision of Soviet society
and of the mechanism by which its ideological foundations are maintained.
PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZRIVAGO" - 29 -
In a scene towards the end of the novel, two friends of Dr. Zhivago,
Dudorov and Gordon, are talking, and one of them whohas just completed
his first stay in a concentration camp and has been restored to his
position as a university teacher explains how grateful he is to his
G.P.U. interrogator and to his experience in prison and in the camp for
having helped him to grow in stature. Pasternak describes Zhivago 'S
reaction:
"Dudorov's reasoning appealed to Gordon
precisely because it was so hackneyed. He nodded
in sympathy and agreed with everything. Dudorov
said. He was touched by the very triteness of
Dudorov's words and thoughts, and he took the
second-hand nature of these copybook sentences as
a sign of their human universality. Dudorov's
virtuous words were in the spirit
and it was just because they were
so transparently sanctimonious,
revolted by them. A man who is
idealises his bondage.
This is
of the times,
so pre-ordained,
that Zhivago was
not free always
how it was in the
Middle Ages and the Jesuits always made play with
it. Zhivago could not stand the political mysticism
of the Soviet intelligentsia which was the height
of its achievement, or, as they would have said in
those days, the spiritual ceiling of the epoch.
"I found it painful to listen to you, Dudorov, when
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PASTERNAK/S "DR. ZHIVAGO" 30 -
you told us how you were re-educated and grew in
stature while you were in gaol; it was like listen-
ing to a circus horse describing how it broke
itself in.'"
It is hardly probable that such literary bureaucrats as Surkov
could understand and estimate all the dangers Pasternak's novel presents
for the ideological foundations for the regime. But they must instinc.;.-
tively realise that once a work of art of such spontaneity has reached
the public, they will not be able to look their readers in the eye when
repeating the hackneyed conventional phrases with which they fill their
writings. The situation is made even more complicated by the well-known
tendency of the Russian reader to identify himself with a literary type,
sometimes without a shadow of justification. How many junior lieutenants
of the Red Army have thought of themselves as Prince Andrey of "War and
Peace"? How many passive, lazy, submissive, forever frightened "obyvatels,"
having read "Dr. Zhivago," Will identify themselves with Pasternak's hero
and become less manageable through having their self-respect and human
dignity restored to them, as more than one hundred years ago Gogol tried
to do for the oppressed and humiliated of his day in "The Overcoat"?
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PASTERNAK'S "DR. ZHIVAGO"
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- 31 -
This may well be the reason why the "activists" of our day are trying tc
prevent the Russians from reading the greatest novel which has been written
in their tongue in this century.
far, �'"
END
This article appeared in the May 1958 issue of
Encounter, a monthly journal of opinion published
in London. The writer, an outstanding scholar
in the field of Soviet affairs, was one of the
translators who rendered "Dr. Zhivago" into Eng-
lish. He is presently at the Russian Research
Center at Harvard University on a fellowship.
The article has been cleared for republication in
English and in translation outside the United States
and Canada provided credit is given to the author and
Encounter. Abridgment rights were not obtained.
�
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We must eliminate the gap between the wishes of the unsophisticated masses and
the superior claims of Socialist culture." -- 1958 directive of the Hungarian Communist
Party
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Tibor Dery, often referred to as the intellectual leader of Hungary's 1956 freedom
uprising, was given a nine�year pri�n sentence in November, 1957, for what the
Kadar regime called "leadership of an organization aimed at overthrowing state
order." Long a prominent Hungarian writer, the aging Dery had been expelled from
the Communist Party in the summer of 1956 for making statements critical of party
practices.
GYORGY LUKACS: HUNGARY'S HERETICAL MARXIST
By Paul Landy
(Mr. Landy, one of the writers who left Hungary after that
country's unsuccessful 1956 independence uprising, has
written numerous articles on Eastern European affair's.)
Hungary's famous Marxist theoretician, writer and philosopher
Gyorgy Lukacs, is one of the best examples I know of what happens to
Communist subjects whose thinking ranges too far from the party's ideo-
logical position at any given time.
This aging, internationally known scholar, who was exiled to
Rumania after the Hungarian uprising, recently was denounced anew because
he refused to recant his "revisionist" ideas concerning the rights of
individuals in a Marxist state.
Specifically, Lukacs was attacked for making "wrong" statements
about the Hungarian anti-Soviet rebellion of 1956 and for harboring
various views on Marxism not in keeping with the party's interpretation.
As an object lesson to those intellectuals who still imagine
that a certain amount of free thinking is permitted in Communist-ruled
countriess Lukacs1 experiences are particularly noteworthy.
Now in his mid-seventies, Lukacs' career has embraced the whole
period of Soviet Communism. A scholarly student of both Marxism and
literature who has produced a number of works on both subjects, he was
one of the founders of the Hungarian Communist party) served as cultural
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GYORGY LUKACS: HUNGARY'S HERETICAL MARXIST - 2 -
commissar in his country's short-lived 1919 Communist regime and, more
recently, was Minister of Culture during the administration of Imre Nagy.
Never a strict conformist to narrow party concepts, Lukacs was often at
logger-heads with Marxist theorists in the Soviet Union, where he lived
for a number of years.
Perhaps because he was so highly regarded by European students
of Marxism, Lukacs escaped open attack by reigning Communist officials
until the upsurge of Hungarian resistance to Soviet rule in 1956.
Regarded by some as the spiritual father of the Petofi literary
group which helped spark the popular uprising in Budapest, Lukacs ex-
pressed views' about that movement which he has consistently refused to
renounce, despite the party's determined efforts to force him into con-
fessing his past "errors."
Inquisitors of the current Kadar regime, apparently on Soviet
orders, have attacked the venerable philosopher for insisting that the
Hungarian freedom revolt was a. genuine revolution, and not, as the regime
claims, a counter-revolutionary plot sponsored by fascist or "imperialist"
agents. They were particularly infuriated by Lukacs' statement, in October
of 1956, that "real democracy, embodied in revolutionary youth, is capable
of sweeping away the remnants of Stalirism. The enhancing of democratic
freedom ad self-autonomy is the real basis for determining the Hungarian
road to socialism."
For expressing such heretical views, and because he was also ,a
member of the Nagy government, Lukacs was exiled to Rumania along with
Hungary's freedom premier and other associates.
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GYORGY LUKACS: HUNGARY'S HERETICAL MARXIST
- 3 -
Although spared the death penalty imposed later on Nagy, General
Pal Maleter and other leaders of Hungary's uprising, Lukacs was brought
back to his homeland in 1957 and given an ultimatum to recant his views
and lend his support to the regime's activities.
Lukacs' refusal to cooperate was followed by a series of ideo-
logical attacks in the party press and the imposition of whet can only
be described as "internal exile." Whether or not Lukacs has been under
actual house arrest, as reported, he is obviously being treated as a
traitor to the Communist state. His future, barring a pressured confession,
is no more promising that that of any other Communist subject who has
been branded as a revisionist. Revisionists, of course, are those who
refuse to accept every Communist party ideological pronouncement as un-
questionable truth.
In the field of literary criticism, Lukacs' belief that "the
task of Marxist science is to consider literary works objectively" is
anathema to those Soviet and satellite leaders who have condemned Boris
Pasternak and other writers for committing the crime of thinking for
themselves. The Hungarian philosopher has been subjected to a particularly
sharp series of attacks for rejecting the party's right to control litera-
ture and for daring to state that Lenin himself had no such permanent
intention.
Ironically, the dilemma of Communism's official spokesmen has
been intensified because, in spite of the campaign to discredit his views,
Lukacs is still admired and respected by individual intellectuals through-
out the Soviet bloc.
77.
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LET THE AUDIENCE DECIDE:
(A Hungarian Dramatist's Conclusion About Theatrical Propaganda)
By Janos Torok
(Mr. Torok, a young playwright and director who was intimately
associated with Hungarian theatrical life for six years, left
Hungary after his country's unsuccessful 1956 freedom revolt.)
I entered the Hungarian theatrical field in 1949 -- the year
the Communist regime nationalized all the theaters which until then had
operated under private management. Materially, nationalization benefited
our theatrical people. The regime poured money into the theater. There
was no unemployment among us. Theaters were opened throughout the
provinces, in towns that had never before had a permanent, resident
theatrical troupe. These provincial theaters were fully staffed, which
meant security for actors and actresses who had grown accustomed to a
, precarious existence between jobs. The pay was good -- as a director,
I earned between six thousand and seven thousand forints per month, or
nearly ten times as much as the average laborer. And two of those twelve
months were for vacation, with full pay.
We were important to the Communist regime -- state funds were
lavished upon us. Half a million forints was not too great a sum to
spend on the stage sets for a single play. A playwright who was com-
missioned to write a new work would receive an advance payment of thirty
thousand forints, sometimes more, against his potential royalties. Even
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LET THE AUDIENCE DECIDE!
SIND
without a specific commission, he could apply to the Writers' Union
for the loan of a sum like ten thousand forints, which was provided with-
out interest and deducted in easy instalments from his future income.
If the playwright wanted to work in the quiet of the country, the 'Union
would see to that too -- arranging minimal rates at one of the several
luxury retreats set aside for the "new aristocracy."
The theater was a� spearhead of Communist propaganda. That was
why we belonged to the "net aristocracy." Consider what this meant in
terms of practical economics. A ticket for the best seat in a Budapest
theater cost eighteen forints -- the rates of admission were deliberately
kept reasonable, to encourage attendance. It cost the management thirty-
six forints per seat to raise he curtain each night. In view of the
plays we were presenting, a' theater would lose fourteen thousand forints
per performance-- and continue night after night. Our theaters were'
operating at a loss.
The principal ingredient of a theatrical production is a' play.
But the playwright was operating at a loss too -- a loss of integrity
and individuality. The substantial advance he received was for a play �
written to order. Here is how it worked: the leaders of the Writers'
Union, or the manager of a theater, would suggest the theme for a play.
Union leaders and theatrical managers, if not Communist Party members I
themselves, were responsible to the Party and acutely responsive to the'
Party line. The manager of one theater at which I worked in Budapest
was a former trade union leader, qualified for this post only because he
had taken part in amateur theatricals. In other words, he was not qual-
ified at all, except as an acquiescent supporter of the regime. The play
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LET THE AUDIENCE DECIDE! - 3
proposed 'by such a figurehead had to be written fast -- while the theme
he suggested-was still politically valid. The most successful play-
wright was the lone. who could turn out a play overnight, or in a week's
time. Otherwise the play-night not be accepted, much less produced -- so
rapidly did the Party line change.
The fact is that a playwright's economic security depended upon
his political versatility� the skill and speed with which he could
custom-tailor the desired product. It was hackwork.
Some will argue that many plays in the theaters of the free
world too, by and large, are tailored to suit the public taste. This
misses the point. Under our system, plays were written to suit the offi-
cial taste. A direbtor and his cast would struggle to breathe vitality
into... the script they were given. Then the entire Party secretariat would
appear at the dress rehearsal �.and the subsequent comments might delay
an opening night for an entire week, while adjustments of script and
presentation were made.
A theatrical performance, anywhere, is a dynamic thfng -- adjust-
ments are always made, both:Ibtfore and after the opening night. An audi-
ence fails to grasp the meaning of a piece of stage business -- you adjust
the gesture or the scene to sharpen its dramatic truth. A line of dia-
logue, which you thought so telling, falls flat -- you rewrite it. But
we were doing, the opposite., Let the audience decide? We were adjusting
dramatic truth to official4ruth. The bureaucrat's criticism replaced the
weight of audience response. -And so, when we presented our glittering,
expensive, custom-built fabrications, the spectators -- whose taxes paid
for the subsidized theater -- stayed away.
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LET THE AUDIENCE DECIDE! - 4
What 'happened in Moscow determined political validity in capitals
like Budapest -- and these capitals were always behind the Moscow trend,
which veeed without warning. Often in disgust a playwright dropped his
efforts at originality and turned to adaptations of Soviet plays. . Such
adaptations were safer to produce, and theater managers accepted them
somewhat more readily than they accepted Hungarian originals. Adaptation
of a Soviet play for stage or radio -- this was especially well paid.
It did not matter that Hungarian audiences were largely in-
different to such Soviet exports. They were by no means indifferent to
the real merit of Russian dramatic art, which at its best is truly great.
The dazzling Moscow theatrical company, like the Moscow ballet, won wide
enthusiasm in Budapest. The classics of the Russian stage, presented as
accomplished Soviet troupes present them, draw large audiences everywhere.
But Soviet propaganda plays, however well adapted, and staged, cannot hold
a Hungarian audience.
On the screen and on stage we saw the heroics of the Bolshevik
Revolution as that revolution is now officially portrayed -- the guerilla
warfare, the triumph of partisan elements over organized military might.
Hungarian authorities distributed free tickets to trade unions, to youth
groups, to university students, to students at the Dramatic Arts Academy
and the Institute of Cinematographic Arts.
I don't suggest that nobody used those free tickets, even though
theaters in Budapest were half-empty when propaganda plays and films were-
shown. Seeing those plays and films, students and young workers learned
the tactics of street fighting -- and applied the lesson to'advantage dur-
ing the uprising.
1.
LET THE AUDIENCE DECIDE! - 5
I have sometimes been asked why so many Hungarian theatrical
personalities, individual artists who unlike myself took no active part
in the revolt and were not sought by the hated secret police, left Hungary
when the opportunity for flight came.
There is no question about the privileges we had in Hungary--
we were among the elite. I guess those of us who left, regardless of
whether we had fought in the streets or not, simply did not want to be
puppets in an official showcase any longer. We were tired of the subter-
fuge required of those who wanted to strike even the slightest note of
originality and were willing to let the audience decide. We had enough
of doctrine instead of dramatic art. We wanted a chance to be ourselves,
professionally and personally.
I don't want to draw a picture of pure idealism. I imagine
each of us wants to succeed in his field, be well paid again and enjoy
public prestige-- I know I do. Whatever the country we are in, it is
clearly not going to be easy. For stage or radio or television, one has
to learn the language of the audience and the practices of the profession.
That can be done. Hungarian actors and directors and writers have achieved
success abroad in the past. Success or not, we want a chance to show what
we can do -- and let the audience decide.
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LITERARY OMENS IN EASTERN EUROPE
By Paul Landy
(Mr. Landy is a former Budapest writer and editor who left
Hungary after his countryts unsuccessful 1956 freedom,re-
bellion and now makes his home in Austria. He has written
numerous articles about current conditions in Eastern
Europe.)
Gradually, almost unnoticed as yet but promising to become pro-
foundly significant, a new organization is taking shape in Eastern Europe.
It is a sort of "Council for Mutual Cultural Assistance" which, with its
sub-committees and inconspicuous communiques, bears a certain resemblance
to the well-known Communist Council of Mutual Economic Assistance. Its
undeclared but recognized purpose is to stifle and channelize intellectual
ferment, to set the tone and pace of cultural development -- and to decide
the measure of freedom to be allowed in the creative arts.
What seemed to be solitary developments in the field of so-
called "cultural exchangel." have now become part of an emerging pattern.
The meeting of Soviet and satellite historians in East Germany last year,
for example, was followed in quick succession by conferences of Communist
architects, film and theater experts, representatives of the entertainment
industries, jazz composers, circus and variety show directors. The
communique issued after the Prague conference on entertainment and jazz,
on October 29, 1958, called on Socialist musicians "to compose songs for
the people which are imbued with the spirit of our Socialist present."
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LITERARY OMENS IN EASTERN EUROPE
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The visits of writers and cultural delegations to other Bloc
countries have set a hitherto unprecedented pace. In one recent ten-
month period, for instance, 12 official delegations, seven groups of
artists and 370 cultural experts visited Soviet Russia from Hungary alone.
Additionally, East German and Czech cultural functionaries have lectured
Hungarian artists and writers on the lofty ideals of Socialist realism.
In 1959, from all indications, the output of publishing com-
panies will be more tightly coordinated than ever before. Soviet, East
German, Hungarian and other Communist-controlled countries have arranged
for scores of joint publications and for the "comparing, exchanging and
coordinating" of publication lists in advance. These measures are in-
tended to repair the cultural facade of the Communist bloc, which was
cracked by disintegration in the post-Stalin period.
Hungary, perhaps better than any other country, demonstrates
the interdependent relationship between "brotherly criticism" by Soviet
spokesmen and the internal anti-intellectual drive.
Recently, in a review of Hungarian theatrical life, the Moscow
Literary Gazette warned that "no good can come for the building of Com-
munism from such plays as "Teahouse of the August Moon" (which proved
highly popular with Budapest audiences) or from the decadence of French
existentialist plays." The Moscow critic added: "Some Hungarian
theatrical workers are kow-towing to the decadent American theatre and
are full of aamiration for the art of Broadway."
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LITERARY OMENS IN EASTERN EUROPE
- 3 -
Somewhat later, Elet es Irodalom interviewed Balint Magyar, the
famed director of the Theater of the Army. Magyar defended his presenta-
tion of non-Communist plays by explaining that "our program expresses the
ideals of humanism." Party critics immediately attacked Magyar's stand
and charged that the Theater of the Army was not worthy of its name. As
a result, three Budapest theater directors, including Balint Magyar, and
five directors of provincial theatres were fired. Hungarian theaters
now play heavily-subsidized propaganda plays, such as "Blindfolded,"
which concerns a young student who "turned against his own class during
the counterrevolution."
The recently-published Communist cultural directives reaffirm
that no totalitarian society can tolerate free expression. The general
dilemma of creative artists is that of conforming to a myth of unknown
proportions, which is commonly called "socialist realism." Ever since
Maxim Gorki coined the term in the early thirties, Communist theorists
have been arguing and differing as to the precise meaning, and content
of these two vague words. There is still no clear cut general definition
of whether they denote a method, trend or theory. But every "apparatchik"
seems to know what socialist realism is not.
In theory at least, writers, painters and playwrights are
supposed to be their own censors. But the State, which has all the
printing and publishing facilities, has built up an elaborate structure
of control to make sure there are no slips. A writer can write and
submit any manuscript. Its publication, however, depends on the opinion,
first of the trained copy-reader, then on officials in the Ministry of
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40.
LITERARY OMENS IN EASTERN EUROPE - 4
Culture and the Party's Agit-Prop Department. The same applies to all
aspects of the creative arts.
Recently, the Party also criticised the Fund of Creative Arts;
which buys paintings. This organization bought: almost exclusively,
landscapes and still life, paintings and drawings which "are permeated
with naturalism and imliressionism." Later.,- Nepszabadsag rebuked the
School of Modern. Arts, where there are merelY 11 Party members out of
150 students. The young painters were accused of indulging in anti-
realistic experiments.
"The Party does not demand that every writer create in the '
spirit of socialist realism," Communist cultural directives specify.
"But it cannot tolerate a literature which advocates hopelessness, dis-
illusionment, paralyzes the thinking of the people or nurtures nation-
alist, chauvinist and. bourgeois remnants in the minds of the people."
The choice of subject or approach, therefore: is limited and the indi-
vidual artist is at the mercy of the Party's control-organs.
There are varying penalties for deviation from the approved
line. Some offenders are merely rebuked, such as the promising young
essayist, Mihaly Suekoesd, who wrote an enthusiastic introduction to a
Hemingway novel: but forgot to point out "the author's ingrained pessimism
and decadence;" or Gyula Illyes, the greatest living poet of Hungary, who,
ea
after a silence of two years, published a slender volume of :his trans-
lations of Chinese poems. He was reprimanded: however, becalle neg-
lected to praise the "new China" in his introduction and because he failed
to include works by Communist poets.
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LITERARY OMENS IN EASTERN EUROPE - 5 -
Other offenders are fired, such as Tames Toeroek, a young and
too original Radio Budapest script writer: and Geza Hegedues, director
of a firm which dared to publish the poems and essays of "compromised"
authors.
Some, such as Endre Gellert, Kossuth prize-winning director of
the National Theatre, who committed suicide in September of 1958: cannot
endure the intolerable strain of Communist censorship. But the majority
of those who can be called truly creative artists, while forced to assume
a cooperativeexterior: continue to think and dream in private, hoping for
a future time when they can work and produce as self-respecting individuals.
* * * * *
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SATELLITE THEATERGOERS REBEL AGAINST BOREDOM
By Paul LandY
(Mr. Landy is a former Budapest writer and editor who left
Hungary after his country's unsuccessful 1956 freedom up-
rising. From his vantage point in Vienna, he is currently
specializing as a commentator on East European affairs.)
STAT
Recent visitors to the satellite capitals of Eastern Europe have
been surprised to find excited crowds lining up to buy tickets for perform-
ances of non-Communist films, plays and musicals.
Communist officials, however, have their own reasons for permit-
ting this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs.
For one thing, satellite leaders apparently feel that the grant-
ing of minor entertainment concessions is a relatively harmless way of
allowing the people an escape valve for their pent-up irritation and
boredom.
Members of the Communist ruling apparatus, despite their in-
sistence that "all is calm and under control," seem to realize that the
boredom which appears to be an unavoidable accompaniment of the party's
dictatorship must be prevented from developing into a more serious type
of social unrest.
There is boredom with party jargon, boredom with the disparity
between word and deed, boredom with the whole heritage of a Communist
decade. The satellite regimes appear to be trying to counter this sense
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SATELLITE THEATERGOERS REBEL AGAINST BOREDOM
2
of irritation and isolation from the rest of the world partly by economic
concessions and partly by a more liberal attitude toward popular entertain-
ment.
Communist officials, however, are finding that a solution for
their self-created problem is far from simple.
An impressive list of facts points up the inherent dilemma of
entertainment circles in the Communist states. Plays and films which '
receive official praise and recognition have proved to be flops, while
films and theatrical products condemned for their "petty-bourgeois and
decadent tendencies" have had popular runs. In Poland, out of a total
of 3,400 motion pictur,e theaters, only 96 have been profitable. In
Hungary: 300 film theaters were on the verge of closing until a 30 per-
cent increase in the price of tickets and a system of government sub-
sidies saved them. In Bulgaria, the biggest box-office successes have
been the locally produced -"Legend of Love," "Year of Love" and "On A
Little Island." However, these very films were censured by the Party's
Central Committee for "undermining Communist ideology: distorting and
wrongly representing the character of the people's revolutionists."
What, on the other hand, has been the fate of works rich in
Communist ideology?
Some Hungarian provincial theaters which tried to conform with
party guidance and filled their repertoires with Soviet productions and
other straight propaganda plays finished their seasons in virtual bank-
ruptcy. The National Theater of Miskolc/ largest provincial town in
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STAT
SATELLITE THEATERGOERS REBEL AGAINST BOREDOM 3
Hungary, played consistently before houses a quarter or half-filled during
the last season. On one occasion only seven theater-goers turned up for
a performance of "One Night" by Gorbatov. The Kecskemet Theater finished
its season with a 50,000 dollar (one million forints) deficit. The
National Theater of Gyor was given high official praise for its "excellent
performances of Soviet and Czech plays." But the box-office results were
so appalling that the manager resigned in the middle of the season. This
theater went bankrupt despite heavy subsidies.
Conversely, those theaters and playhouses in Hungary and Poland
whose managerG bowed to popular demand have played to full houses. In
Poland, 19 modern "western" plays had successful 1958 runs. In Hungary
the plays of Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and John Osborne, as
well as pre-war operettas and light musical comedies, are unrivalled as
box-office hits.
Party spokesmen have repeatedly scolded directors of cultural
centers and theaters for saying "we go bankrupt with modern Socialist
plays, for works with topical themes can be neither artistic, nor suc-
cessful, so let's turn back to bourgeois entertainment."
The University Playhouse in Budapest has tried both ways. A
series of shows about revolutionary songs and poets were producd for
small audiences. The next program concentrated on popular folk songs
and a recital of Burns' poems. As Nepszabadsag remarked, the directors
"avoided with painful cautiousness the modern Soviet and Hungarian
Socialist works, assuming that in doing so they could avoid the empty
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release � 50 Yr 2014/06/17 � CIA-RDP81- 4
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release � 50-Yr 2014/06/17: CIA-RDP81-01043R003400130004-2
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