The theory
of Socialist Realism was adopted by the Congress of Soviet Writers
in 1934. Approved by Joseph Stalin, Nickolai
Bukharin, Maxim Gorky and Andrey
Zhdanov, Socialist Realism demanded that all art must depict some
aspect of man's struggle toward socialist progress for a better life.
It stressed the need for the creative artist to serve the proletariat
by being realistic, optimistic and heroic. The doctrine considered
all forms of experimentalism as degenerate and pessimistic.
Experimental
and non-conformist writers such as Yevgeni
Zamyatin, Isaac Babel, Boris
Pilnyak, Nickolai Tikhonov, Mikhail
Slonimski, Vsevolod Ivanov, Victor
Serge, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei
Yesenin, Konstantin Fedin, Victor
Shklovsky, Mikhail Zoshchenko
and Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered
under this policy. Zamyatin and Serge managed to leave the country,
whereas Mayakovsky and Yesenin committed suicide. Writers who refused
to change, such as Babel and Pilnyak, were executed or died in labour
camps.
(1)
Victor Serge, was a close friend
of Boris Pilnyak in the early 1930s.
He wrote about him in his book Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)
Boris Pilnyak was writing The Volga Flows into the
Caspian Sea. On his work-table I saw manuscripts under revision.
It had been suggested to him that, to avoid banishment from Soviet
literature, he should remodel Forest of the Isles, that 'counter-revolutionary'
tale of his, into a novel agreeable to the Central Committee. The
body's Cultural Section had assigned him a co-author who, page by
page, would ask him to suppress this and add that. The helpmate's
name was Yezhov, and a high career awaited him, followed by a violent
death: this was the successor to Yagoda as head of the GPU.
Pilnyak
would twist his great mouth: "He has given me a list of fifty
passages to change outright! "Ah!" he would exclaim, "if
only I could write freely! What I would I not do! At other times I
found him in the throes of depression. "They'll end up by throwing
me in jail. Don't you think so?" I gave him new heart by explaining
that his fame in Europe and America safeguarded him; I was right,
for a while. "There isn't a single thinking adult in this country",
he said, "who has not thought that he might be shot."
(2)
In 1924 Boris
Pilnyak wrote an article explaining why, despite receiving government
funds, he could not write Communist Party
propaganda.
I am against a writer having to live "willingly not
seeing," or, simply, lying. And a lie results when some sort
of statistical proportion is not observed. I am not a communist, and
for that reason I do not agree that I should have to write in a communist
manner. To the degree that the communists are with Russia, I am with
them. I admit that the fate of the communist party is less interesting
to me than the fate of Russia. The Communist Party to me is only a
link in the history of Russia.
(3)
Alexander Efremin attacked the writing of Yevgeni Zamyatin in his
article The Fatal Path (4th
January, 1930)
Zamyatin
has a complete and unmitigated disbelief in the Revolution, a thorough
and persistent skepticism, a departure from reality, an extreme individualism,
a clearly hostile attitude to the Marxist-Leninist world view, the
justification of any "heresy", of any protest in the name
of that protest, a hostile attitude to the factors of class war -
this is the complex of ideas within which Zamyatin revolves. Thrown
out beyond the bounds of the Revolution by its centrifugal force,
he, of necessity, is in the enemy camp, in the ranks of the bourgeoisie.
(4)
Yevgeni Zamyatin, letter
to Joseph Stalin (1931)
No creative
activity is possible in an atmosphere of systematic persecution that
increases in intensity from year to year. In each of my published
works these critics have inevitably discovered some diabolical intent.
Regardless of the content of a given work, the very fact of my signature
has become a sufficient reason for declaring the work criminal. Of
course, any falsification is permissible in fighting the devil. I
beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife with the right to return
as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas
in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there
is at least partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role
of the literary artist.
(5)
Victor
Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)
When the Press denounced Zamyatin and Pilniak as public
enemies, the first for a biting satire on totalitarianism, the other
for a fine realist novel, my author friends (in the Soviet Writers'
Union) voted everything that was expected of them against their two
comrades.
(6)
Boris Pilnyak, in conversation
with Victor Serge in 1933.
I do believe, Victor, that one day I too will send a bullet
into my head. Perhaps it would have been better if I had done that.
I cannot emigrate like Zamyatin: I could not live apart from Russia.
And I have the feeling that as I come and go, there is a gun in my
back, with a pack of blackguards on the trigger.
(7)
When Osip Mandelstam was being investigated
by the Secret Police he went to see the
short-story writer, Isaac Babel, who was
still a member of the Union of Soviet Writers.
The meeting was later recorded by Mandelstam's wife, Nadezhda
Khazina.
The next
person we consulted was Babel. We told him our troubles, and during
the whole of our long conversation he listened with remarkable intentness.
Everything about Babel gave an impression of all-consuming curiosity
- the way he held his head, his mouth and chin, and particularly his
eyes. It is not often that one sees such undisguised curiously in
the eyes of a grown-up. I had the feeling that Babel's main driving
force was the unbridled curiously with which he scrutinized life and
people.
With his
usual ability to size things up, he was quick to decide on the best
course for us. "Go out to Kalinin," he said, "Nikolai
Erdman is there - his old woman just love him." This was Babel's
cryptic way of saying that all Erdman's female admirers would never
have allowed him to settle in a bad place. He also thought we might
be able to get some help from them - in finding a room there, for
instance. Babel volunteered to get the money for our fare the next
day.
(8)
Nikita Khrushchev
was critical of Stalin's cultural policies implemented by Andrey
Zhdanov.
I think
Stalin's cultural policies, especially the cultural policies imposed
on Leningrad through Zhdanov, were cruel and senseless. You can't
regulate the development of literature, art, and culture with a stick,
or by barking orders. You can't lay down a furrow and then harness
all your artists to make sure they don't deviate from the straight
and narrow. If you try to control your artists too tightly, there
will be no clashing of opinions, consequently no criticism, and consequently
no truth. There will be just a gloomy stereotype, boring and useless.
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