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From Survey, International Socialism, No.43, April/May 1970, pp.6-7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The current tribulations of the writers and intellectuals in the USSR represent the most obvious part of an increasingly dreary picture. The development of the economy is still not having any appreciable positive effect on easing the lives of the urban dwellers. The much-vaunted economic reform is bogged down. The gaoling of actively discontented individuals combined with other forms of repression has thrown the political life of the country back to a point where the Khrushev era is now regarded by the mass of Soviet intellectuals as a golden age. While the economists continue their debate on the economy either on a highly technical or mathematical level or on the basis of anti-worker reforms, they are naturally tolerated. [1] The military debate on strategy goes on. Less esoteric discussions as in history or sociology are now not printed. The real political discussion has thus been left in the hands of the writers.
There is, as is well known, a long Russian tradition of expressing social and political ideas through fiction. The special feature of the post-Stalin period in this respect, however, is that there is hardly a Soviet writer worth while reading who is not attempting to explain his own political outlook. In other periods there has usually been a parallel non-fictional literature except during the Stalin period, when there was neither social science nor literature. It was, in fact, only with Stalin’s death that Soviet journals again became readable. The change was heralded precisely in Soviet fiction as in Ehrenburg’s Thaw. If anyone wants to obtain a reasonably accurate description of Soviet society or the Soviet economy he can do no better than read Soviet fiction. In other words, whereas in other periods of Soviet or Russian history fiction may have played an important role in expressing popular discontent, today it fulfils the same function much enhanced. Even in the period when critical non-fictional articles were tolerated they tended to be either trivia) or highly specific. [2] Literature has been far less circumscribed. This is not to imply that the censors either do not exist or are too stupid to understand the implication of much of what is written.
Glavlitt, the censorship body, is said to have around 70,000 employees. Since every printed word passes through several censors in one way or another, this is not altogether surprising. Nor does it occasion any surprise that they should permit a little more to be said in fiction than in straight analysis. The key, however, lies in the attenuated and aesopian form of the generalisations made in fiction, which allows the censor to pass the material. It has been pointed out that up to recently almost anything could be said in the USSR provided it appeared in this special form. The result is that unless the reader knows both Russian and Soviet society very well he is unlikely to appreciate the significance of the works. This does not only rule out most foreigners but the relatively less well-educated workers are unlikely to struggle through a novel written in abstruse language with obscure allusions. This is not to say that they are harmless but they are not usually agitational or to be equated with anything as straightforward as Zamyatin’s We. It is this literature which has grown to very sizeable proportions that is now under attack. The increasing severity of the censorship essentially means all open political discussion is being brought to an end. This represents a return to the position before 1953, or would do so if there were a total clamp-down, which may yet come.
Historically some would put the high-water mark of this genre in December 1962 with the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. It is true that the Ideological Commission was established shortly afterwards as a type of supercensorship board and that nothing so dramatically political was published after this point. Nonetheless the Ideological Commission was itself abolished after Khrushchev’s fall and quite a number of important and critical novels were produced until recently. A more reasonable periodisation could accept the political significance of December 1962 but would point out that in 1965 there was a much greater degree of freedom than before and that the 1966 Daniel-Sinyavsky trial represents a deliberate warning to the liberal intelligentsia. It is in this period, too, that aesopian language is challenged but it is only with the rise of Dubcek and the subsequent invasion that the criticism of the non-hack writers drowns out practically all reasonable social fiction. [3]
Evtushenko’s career illustrates the literary-political period well. After making the requisite confession in 1963 he continued writing, producing his longest and deepest poem published in April 1965. [4] It is also probably his most critical. He has continued to write with critical allusion but nothing as socially inspiring as the 1965 work. He is probably the most socially orientated of the serious poets and probably for this reason is less liked by many Western academics. He stands politically with the left of the bureaucracy, whereas most of the intelligentsia stands on its right. Neither group, however, can be regarded as for equality of social opportunity.
Tvardovsky’s removal from Novyi Mir does not mean that he is without all influence. He is still on the board of the Writers Union but his career also illustrates the decline of oppositional power. He ceased to be a Central Committee member after the 23rd Congress in 1966. His replacement essentially means that the opposition have lost their main organ. It would be logical to expect them to lose Yunost’ and the opportunity of being published in some of the other periodicals. Politically Novyi Mir expressed under Tvardovsky’s editorship a variety of opinions ranging from workers’ control to the importance of the profit motive based on the market. If Evtushenko may be regarded as a liberal with socialist tendencies, Tvardovsky appears to be a socialist with liberal tendencies. He exhibits in his work a more profound social understanding than of most of the other writers. The vitriolic campaign against him and his editorship had already achieved its object in the course of 1969, since little of note was published in the past year. In a sense, therefore, he has only formally abdicated a chair already filled by the censor.
The present dominant ideology being peddled by the hack writers has a number of new features. Chief among them is the intensified revival of nationalism. The liberal and opposition writers are accused of lack of patriotism. Above all, however, the atmosphere has been poisoned by the propagation of the threat of the yellow hordes. Writers have prostituted themselves describing absurdities under Mao. Literaturnaya Gazeta has hysterical nonsense on the Chinese threat nearly every issue. The crudity of the Chinese Maoists in supporting Stalin has meant that the whole intelligentsia is anti-Mao. It is of course a measure of the present low political level of the writers that they should be taken in by such a crude political manoeuvre. It would be easy to conclude that the anti-Zionist campaign is anti-semitic and intended, inter alia, to render the largely anti-semitic intelligentsia impotent. It is inevitable that any anti-Zionist campaign be, in a largely anti-semitic environment, anti-Jewish but it is not clear in how far this is deliberate policy as it was in Poland. Put succinctly, it is not apparent whether the anti-Zionist campaign is what it seems with expected anti-semitic effects or deliberately and largely anti-semitic. Another interesting feature of the current scene is the revival of anti-Trotsky works ranging from fiction to Lenin on Trotsky. Since this is not intended for outside consumption, it can only be assumed that the interest engendered by the student movements and particularly the May 1968 French events have to be warded off by prophylactic doses of the correct ideology.
A second important feature of the current scene is the continuing strength of underground publications, largely of fiction. In view of their large number, even in the West, it is necessary to raise the question of why they are tolerated. The essential point is that they are not revolutionary and certainly not Marxist, as people like Sakharov make very clear. His viewpoint underlies much of what appears in fictionalised form in the so-called underground. Much of the literature, too, conforms to the outlook of Litvinov, Grigorenko and others who believe in open protest. These opinions, which are basically liberal and non-violent, constitute no fundamental threat to the regime. It is also no accident that many of the writers or protesters involved come from the elite themselves. Their non-fictional writing, such as that of Amalric, makes it very clear that they have a very elitist attitude towards the working class. In essence their programme boils down to the maintenance of privilege without repression, plus the extension of privilege to include their occupational group. Apart from the cases where the elite does not like to gaol its own members, this type of opposition constitutes a nuisance rather than a threat.
Finally, there is another reason which explains both why the legal oppositional, if aesopian, literature as well as the underground typescripts are permitted. The all-pervasive discontent within the USSR embraces the elite itself, and much of the criticism whether above or below ground is accepted by the circles of power. They, themselves, would prefer to exercise their privileges more openly through money, rather than as now through secret or hidden means, since this will simplify their position considerably. Political exigencies, however, make this too difficult. In a word, they fear that once the process of repression is relaxed, while anti-working-class economic reforms are introduced, the degree of instability of the regime may be such that they will lose control completely. The oppositional intelligentsia is blinded by its own elitist attitude towards the workers, who are regarded as an inert and ignorant mass. The central committee apparatus through both the party and the secret police are in far better contact with the attitudes of the working class and will not move until they feel safe to do so – unless they have no alternative, which may still come. They fear, however, in the meanwhile, precipitate action by their own militants and when they can no longer persuade them they are compelled to take stronger action. The genuine left, the Marxists, are summarily dealt with, receiving much harsher punishment. There is still no worse political crime than that of being a Trotskyist.
1. See on this as an example: T. Baranenkova: Technical progress and personnel mobility in industry, Voprosy Ekonomiki, February 1970. In an article largely devoted to problems of redundancy she calls for the right of the enterprise director to dismiss ‘surplus’ workers without finding them alternative employment.
2. The sociological literature on social structure may appear to be an exception but the high degree of aggregation involved meant that only guesses could be made at the politically sensitive aspects – as on the nature of the Soviet elite. See for instance Shubkin in 64/S Voprosy Filisogic.
3. The picture is well illustrated by perusing the Information Supplement to Soviet Studies, Literary Section, for these years.
4. Yunost’ 4/1965: Bratskii Ges.
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