The Union
of Soviet Writers was formed by the Central Committee of the Communist
Party on 23rd April, 1932. All other literary organizations such
as the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers were dissolved.
Those writers who did not belong to the official union found it almost
impossible to get their work published.
In 1934
the Union of Soviet Writers adopted the theory of Socialist
Realism. Approved by Joseph Stalin,
Nickolai Bukharin, Maxim
Gorky and Andrey Zhdanov, the theory
demanded that 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.
The doctrine
of Socialist Realism was propagated by
the union's newspaper, The Literary Gazette.
If writers rebelled against this policy their work was criticized
in the newspaper. If writers did not conform they were expelled from
the union. When Yevgeni Zamyatin was
refused membership he described the decision as a "writer's death
sentence" and wrote to Joseph Stalin
requesting to emigrate claiming that "no creative activity is
possible in an atmosphere of systematic persecution that increases
in intensity from year to year."
Other writers
such as Isaac Babel rebelled by ceasing
to write. Babel told the 1934 Congress of Soviet Writers that: "I
have invented a new genre - the genre of silence". To encourage
writers to conform they were among the highest paid people in the
Soviet Union.
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 the policy of Socialist Realism.
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.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
