Leonid Maximenkov and Christopher Barnes
Boris Pasternak in August 1936
- An NKVD Memorandum
At the very end of 1935, the International Organization of Revolutionary Writers (MORP) was dissolved in Moscow. An affiliate of Comintern, MORP had been the twin organization of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) that was disbanded in April of 1932. Paraphrasing Stalin's famous words on Yagoda's NKVD, one might say that Agitprop had procrastinated over the dissolution of MORP for four years. After the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Ilya Ehrenburg had asked Stalin to act quickly. According to Ehrenburg, the new organization needed a "very wide" and at the same "very precise" political program comprising, first of all, the "fight against fascism" and, secondly, the "active defense of the USSR". [1] Stalin at that point had liked Ehrenburg's idea and gave orders to "liquidate the RAPP traditions within MORP". However, he hesitated about disbanding MORP altogether and instead suggested putting Ehrenburg himself in charge of the organization. [2]
The year 1935, however, showed that any plan to reform MORP was beyond any hope of realization, since it was by definition a semi-paralyzed structure existing within Comintern. Coinciding with proclamation by Comintern of the People's Front (an alliance of all left-wing forces) in the summer of 1935, the formation of a new International Association of Writers for the Defense of Culture was announced during the International Writers' Congress in Paris. A year prior to that, Gorky had already maintained that Romain Rolland and Andre Gide had every right to call themselves "engineers of the soul". Now that a new formal structure headed by Rolland and Gide was in place, MORP could safely be dismantled. One further result of the Paris Congress was a Soviet Politburo decision to invite between ten and a dozen prominent foreign writers to Russia every year in order to acquaint them with life in the Soviet Union.
The idea for this new cultural offensive was formulated in another letter to Stalin. The writer this time was Mikhail Koltsov, Ehrenburg's old arch-rival for the title of Soviet cultural ambassador abroad. "Comrade Stalin," Koltsov wrote, "I would like to ask you to receive me as soon as possible regarding international writers' issues. The International Association of Writers created at the Paris Congress for the Defense of Culture according to your instructions is in a very difficult situation. After the noisy success of the Paris Congress, it now threatens to quietly disintegrate. The reason for this lies in the passivity of its leadership and in a total lack of funds…" [3]
Stalin agreed to finance several enterprises launched by the Paris Association. But in his usual way of disagreeing with other people's proposals, he dismissed Koltsov's idea of "carrying out active, constant work directed at consolidation of the broad circle of writers of all countries, aimed at fighting against fascism and war, the protection of cultural values, and active defense of the Soviet Union". Moreover, since Koltsov asked for himself to be designated along with Gorky to work on the Presidium, Secretariat and the Bureau of the Association, Stalin turned down Koltsov's proposal for self-nomination. [4]
All this pointed to a declining interest at high level in the Paris organization. The first major test of the Soviet Union's new cultural peace offensive was the planned visit to Moscow of Andre Gide. Gide was the de facto leader of the International Association of Writers, and his name headed the list of Presidium members of the Bureau of the International Association. His visit thus hardly seemed to present his Soviet hosts with any special challenge.
During the 1920s and 1930s, one of the recurrent rituals in the Soviet political circus consisted in inviting the most eminent "teachers of [their] generation" to visit the country. The tradition was inaugurated by H.G.Wells in 1920. Among other such gurus, George Bernard Shaw visited the USSR in 1931, followed the next year by Emil Ludwig. The same pilgrimage was made by Romain Rolland in 1935, and by Leon Feuchtwanger in 1937. Henri Barbusse, too, was a frequent guest in Moscow before he died there in the summer of 1935, and there was also an endless procession of less illustrious visitors, hosted by the International Organization of Workers' Aid (MOPR), by the All-Union Society for Cultural Links with Abroad (VOKS), by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (until 1932), and by the Intourist organization. [5]
In a country with strict hierarchical rules and with carefully rationed access to its leaders, the chosen few visitors were given a more or less standard guided tour of the country, with some participation in public rallies, conferences, and meetings with certain selected Soviet artists, writers and intellectuals. The climax of these visits consisted in a private audience with Stalin. What was expected from the visitors on their return home was some report on their visit in the form of a book, essay, or monograph to be published in the West. This final production took various forms. Barbusse in 1935 composed an apologetic biography of Stalin. [6] Emil Ludwig even produced three versions of his portrait of the tyrant - in 1933, 1940, and 1942. [7] Leon Feuchtwanger's book of 1937, although published in the USSR, was quickly withdrawn and censored however. [8] (Soviet evaluation and censorship of every published report on the country was in fact rapid and decisive. In September 1932, for instance, the Politburo of the CPSU(b) Central Committee decreed the expulsion of the Daily Express correspondent on 48 hours' notice, her crime consisting in "perniciously discrediting the USSR in the eyes of international public opinion".) [9] There was a tacit understanding that the Soviet hosts and their leaders should have some preliminary say before final publication of visitors' travel reports, and constant textual adjustments were a standard feature of this process. For example, the original report on the conversation between Stalin and H.G.Wells was carefully rewritten by its two participants. Stalin touched up many ambiguous remarks, and at the end of the approved version excised the following concluding statement:
Stalin: Not with the idea of flattering you, but absolutely honestly I have to tell you that my conversation with you gave me more pleasure than the one with Bernard Shaw.
Wells: For sure, Lady Astor wouldn't allow anyone to say a word.
Stalin: Shaw demanded that she should be present. [10]
Using the poetic license offered by Stalin to touch up the record of their recent conversation, Wells advocated that the Soviet Union of Writers should join the International Pen Club. He had not dared suggest this idea to Stalin in person, but felt free to ventilate it in indirect form by editing the script that he later submitted by mail. Wells in fact said that "[the Pen Club] insists on the right to free expression of all opinions, including oppositional ones. I plan to talk on this subject with Maxim Gorky. Though I do not know whether such a broad freedom can be offered here…" Stalin was not slow to add his own concluding remark to the effect that "We Bolsheviks call this 'self-criticism' [samokritika]. It is widely applied in the USSR." [11]
Just as the final reports on these pilgrimages were severely doctored, so the actual itineraries mostly followed the Soviet organizers' requirements. It was standard procedure to give foreigners the benefit of the doubt and to offer them the pleasure of relative freedom of movement and communication. In 1930 the Politburo approved a special set of rules for foreign correspondents and, by implication, for foreigners visitors too. The Enlightenment Ministry (Narkompros) was mandated to invite them to dress rehearsals and premieres of new plays. Also specifically advocated was the practice of allowing diplomats and foreign correspondents to meet with "representatives of Soviet public opinion (painters, actors, scientists, representatives of the liberal professions)". [12] These agents of influence were meant to produce a favorable impression on foreign visitors. Nevertheless, there were some untypical visitors to the worker state, and one of them was Andre Gide. His two-month trip to the USSR in summer of 1936 turned out to be a public relations fiasco both for the Soviet government and for the Union of Soviet Writers. The visit took place in unusual circumstances, Inside the USSR the draft of the New Constitution had just been published. On paper it offered Soviet citizens substantial freedoms. By the late summer, however, a somewhat different train of events ended in public announcement of the trial verdicts on Lev Kamenev, Grigorii Zinoviev, and their fellow accused.
Gide arrived in Moscow on 17 June 1936 and started his visit with a prominent appearance at the Mausoleum for the funeral oration over Maxim Gorky's dead body. A few weeks later he returned to the Mausoleum to watch a Soviet sports parade, and he was prominently featured on the front page of Literaturnaya gazeta. Subsequently, however, he traveled south, to Soviet Georgia and the Crimea, and later left the country in very private manner, almost incognito. Even more significantly, and unlike other visiting intellectuals, Gide was not received by Stalin. [13] He was not invited to the show trial in August 1936, as Feuchtwanger was to be the following January, and it was clear that during his two-month visit the importance assigned to his figure had rapidly faded. Seemingly, the authorities had picked up negative messages about the true reactions and feelings of their guest. One of the channels for this feedback were the NKVD informants within the Writers' Union.
In terms of understanding the immediate tasks and general policy within the microcosm of the Writers' Union, the summer of 1936 was a somewhat vague and inconclusive period. The Anti-Formalist campaign unleashed in January had died away without visible personnel changes in the literary hierarchy, nor was it followed by any actual arrests of writers. Gorky's death was followed by the sudden transfer of Aleksandr Shcherbakov from de facto First Secretary of the Board of the Writers' Union to the purely Party position of Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee (i.e. Obkom Secretary, second in command to Zhdanov). Thus the Writers' Union suddenly appeared to have been decapitated and half paralyzed. It was another two months before the ominous figure of Vladimir Stavsky acquired the stature of a mini-dictator and Ezhov's first lieutenant among the writing community. From a literary standpoint, Gide's visit thus took place in a certain political vacuum. Yet he was in the Soviet Union at a very special time - on the eve of the Great Purge.
The worst official Soviet fears were realized in December of 1936, when following his return to France, Gide published his book Retour de l'URSS, giving an account of his recent visit. The book was immediately branded in Moscow as a piece of anti-Soviet slander. Inter alia, Gide's book retrospectively explained the somewhat tepid attitude toward him by the Soviet organizers of his trip. Certainly, he was a leading figure among the international community of antifascist writers, but the international situation was changing so rapidly that by the summer of 1936 the axioms of the previous year's Congress in Paris appeared far less convincing. It was not so much the outbreak of civil war in Spain and infighting among several left-wing parties, but the approaching Great Purge in the USSR, preceded by an unprecedented campaign "against formalism and naturalism in the arts", which prompted a gradual abandonment by Western intellectuals of their earlier unconditional alliance with the Stalin regime.
The abrupt change of Soviet literary policy in April of 1932 - from militant RAPP extremism to a more tolerant People's Front approach to fellow-travelers - was followed by a change in the list of characters who were allowed to enjoy exclusive rights to contact with visiting foreign guests. Up to April 1932 these personalities had included Leopold Averbach, Vladimir Kirshon, Aleksandr Afinogenov, and other similar individuals. These men not only carried out special missions within Comintern-oriented western political and cultural organizations (mostly in Germany and France), but also hosted writers such as George Bernard Shaw during their visits to the USSR. The "new course" of April 1932 totally replaced the list of approved personalities, and as a result persons such as Isaak Babel and Boris Pasternak were upgraded and now permitted to have broader contacts with foreigners.
Beginning in the late 1980s, a number of materials have been published concerning the organization of pilgrimages by westerners to the USSR, and for the first time Gide's book has been published in Russian. [14] However, some key documents still remain unpublished. Entirely missing from the body of published primary archival sources are the NKVD reports concerning the activities of famous visitors and their Soviet hosts. Specifically, dossiers with agents' memoranda that sometimes relate almost verbatim the discussions and statements by targeted figures have not been released for publication. One of the reasons for this silence is the principle of protecting the identity of both the authors and the objects of these reports - namely the NKVD agents and their victims.
A number of such reports have been discovered in Moscow in the files of Nikolai Ezhov at the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (RGASPI, formerly the Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism attached to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). One of these documents relates to an account of Boris Pasternak's meeting with Andre Gide. Certain information about their encounters was never in fact kept a total secret, and had been in the public domain thanks not least to Pasternak himself. The impact of their exchanges in the eyes of contemporaries was significant. It can be summarized as follows in the words of Pasternak's biographer Christopher Barnes: "[…] in conversation with Pasternak Gide commented on the lack of personal freedom in the USSR, and certain truths were imparted not just by Pasternak, but by others Gide met, including Tabidze. Pasternak was however evidently the main person who opened Gide's eyes to what was going on around him, and warned him against being deceived by official pronouncements and Soviet Potemkin villages." [15] The NKVD report confirms this. But it is also the first known document that monitors, via an NKVD agent, Pasternak's prompt though indirect report on this meeting. It is a typewritten unsigned document, headed by the word "agenturno", and its source is described as being "the literary critic Fevralsky". The main conclusion of the report consists in the signal that Andre Gide was thinking about writing "an article" containing some potentially critical charges against the USSR. The report was sent directly to Nikolai Ezhov who at that point was Secretary of the Central Committee.
There were significant variations in the way in which these top-secret confidential documents were prepared. The lack of any formal reader's underlining of the name Pasternak in this particular document suggests that no criminal or punitive conclusions were drawn in respect to the poet and his information. For example, in a different document compiled on Isaak Babel six weeks later, the content of the report and therefore its form differed greatly. While Pasternak spoke mainly of purely writers' affairs (which was perfectly justifiable and legitimate), Babel elaborated on the sacrosanct subject of an internal power struggle within the Politburo. Therefore a report on Babel's Odessa conversations in late August and September of 1936 was formally submitted specifically to Nikolai Ezhov on September 22, 1936, by Deputy People's Commissar for the NKVD Yakov Agranov, and the document was filed and signed the same day by Berman, deputy head of the Secret Political Department of the Main Directorate for State Security. All this was a strict military bureaucratic procedure. But the lack of any criminal content in the report on Pasternak, at least according to the standards of August 1936, explains why we have no formal police attribution of this document. This in fact makes the document of greater literary and historical interest than a mere police report prepared in order to justify some person's arrest.
Methods of document management in the former Soviet Union followed certain set rules. Agents' reports had to be informative, factual and concise, almost following the rules of good journalism. At the same time this type of report was bound by law to refrain from offering formal proposals regarding the fate of the people involved. Decisions of this type had to be made by the Party organization, following specific recommendations by the government bodies concerned (e.g. the Writers' Union).
In the case of the Pasternak report, we have a document somewhat different from a verbatim account of the actual meeting. First of all, Pasternak spoke with Gide without the presence of witnesses. Even the official translator ("comrade Bolia") was sent away. Secondly, Pasternak himself related the contents of their talk to the informing agent. This was, therefore, already a subjective and personally censored version. Thirdly, the informant related Pasternak's information to his superiors without any obvious additional subjective comments. (By contrast, in Babel's case not only was the informant physically present during the writer's monologue, but he also recorded it almost verbatim.)
Pasternak's discourse was carefully worded. He talked within the limits of his competence and almost exclusively on issues of literary politics. The person who later relayed his words was also friendly disposed toward the poet. The overall balance of evidence gave no grounds to prosecute or even punish the poet. By contrast, a month later, in the silent presence of Sergei Eisenstein, Isaak Babel gave a detailed (though subjective) assessment of personnel problems within the Politburo and of the relations between Stalin and the victims of the first Moscow Trial (both of these being taboo subjects). As on many other occasions, Babel's behaviour exceeded the permissible limits and strayed into the domain of Article 58 of the criminal code. [16]
Pasternak did not conceal his views on various fellow writers. The Znamya magazine correspondent and literary critic Anatoly Tarasenkov in his diary notes for the summer of 1936 listed some conversation topics with Pasternak identical to those mentioned in the NKVD report. [17] Tarasenkov disliked Pilnyak and Selvinsky's friendship with Pasternak. He greatly disagreed with Pasternak's evaluation of the peasant poet Pavel Vasilyev, and they seemingly shared a similar negative attitude only toward the RAPP poets Aleksandr Zharov and Dzhek Altauzen. In conversation with Tarasenkov, Pasternak complained about journalists and deliveries of foodstore products. He also spoke about his novel. More importantly, Pasternak told Tarasenkov about his conversation with Andre Gide in which the French writer had denied "the existence of personal freedom in the USSR". The concrete content of Tarasenkov's memoirs coincides with the main points of the NKVD report. What is absent is the subject of Mayakovsky and Stalin, a topic so close to the interests of the critic and informer Aleksandr Fevralsky. Yet even in Tarasenkov's version, Pasternak's views can hardly be regarded as dangerous to the Soviet state and its leaders.
By 1946 the tasks of Soviet censorship regarding the work of foreign correspondents in the USSR were finally institutionalized. The following materials were banned for transmission abroad: a) military, economic, and other state secrets; b) "attacks against the USSR and fabrications regarding its statesmen"; c) "perverted coverage of Soviet politics and life in the USSR", and d) "all other materials that can damage the state interests of the USSR". [18] Isaak Babel's monologues, or Andre Gide's book, could have qualified for prohibition on all counts other than the first one. Not so Boris Pasternak's words in the summer of 1936. This NKVD report on his meeting with Gide can be considered as a blueprint for the practical survival of a Soviet intellectual in the era preceding the Great Purge: it demonstrated Pasternak's recognition of authority, a healthy patriotism, and an accepted degree of subjective self-criticism.
The following is a summary of Pasternak's ideas:
a) Pasternak doubts the "practical results of the article planned by Andre Gide. What was the rationale? Even Maxim Gorky and Romain Rolland "did not dare" to give advice. The poet refers to consecrated supreme authorities (one Soviet and one Western European) and by implication places Gide below them;
b) Pasternak correctly refers his guest's concerns to Mikhail Koltsov;
c) Pasternak questions the hypothetical relations between Stalin and Mayakovsky, but he does so in the case of an already deceased poet;
d) Pasternak praises Pavel Vasilyev, who was then enjoying a short interval of freedom from prison;
e) Pasternak mentions a group of the Union's feudal lords in the persons of Selvinsky, Lidin, Pilnyak and Leonov, and criticizes their middle-class mediocrity;
f) The odious name of RAPP leader Vladimir Kirshon is used in the mockingly venerating plural in a highly negative connotation; Ivan Gronsky is described as "stupid"; both these evaluations were in tune with the times;
g) Pasternak includes himself and the poet Nikolai Tikhonov in a category of people who "speak a indifferent and diplomatic language";
h) According to Pasternak, the figure of a semi-mythical pravdolyubets (seeker after righteousness), or a Tolstoyan-style moral giant, was totally absent from Soviet literature.
The "Table of Ranks" in the Writers' Union was drawn up by Pasternak with almost mathematical precision. It appeared almost like a literary iconostasis, and in fact reflected the deep crisis afflicting the Union of Writers only two years after its pompous inauguration. This depiction of the universe of Soviet literature and culture was all-encompassing, and it included: the deceased patriarch (Gorky), the dead prophets (the "proletarian" Mayakovsky and peasant Esenin), former RAPP watchdogs ("Kirshony"), the current neo-bourgeois arrivistes (Leonov and Lidin), and the party hack functionary (Gronsky). And the final touch was a self-critical and almost Hegelian submission to the authority of the personified Weltseele (Stalin). Meanwhile, the noted lack of any Soviet Tolstoy simply completed the picture of this troubled microcosm.
Thus, starting with a brief reference to a conversation with Gide, Pasternak moves on to an objective explanation of reasons for the failure of the Soviet experiment. Soviet Russia is "neither a Renaissance, nor a Hellas". The crisis consists in a lack of any pravdolyubets, in a pervasive falsehood, in the "stupid parading of bad taste", and in a Pharisee-like sanctimoniousness (khanzhestvo). It is not hard to see a certain similarity between the logical foundation for this conclusion and the situation described in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. The arrival of Woland in Moscow in Bulgakov's novel is depicted through convulsions within MASSOLIT (i.e. the Writers' Union). Woland (and Gide, though to a much lesser degree) galvanized an endemic crisis in the writers' world and caused a veritable explosion. Against the background of this new Bolshevik world in crisis, the Great Purge thus appeared like some cathartic quasi-revolutionary upheaval.
Pasternak's report was practically one of the last testimonies to what Akhmatova described as still "vegetarian times" in the history of the Soviet regime. In December of 1936 a translation of Gide's book was hurriedly made for the Soviet leadership. One mimeographed copy with Andrei Zhdanov's comments is still available in the archives (RGASPI, fond 77, opis' 3-c, ed.khr.117,b). The Soviet tactical response varied, but consisted mostly of rancid propaganda statements. [19] First of all, the Politburo thought that Mikhail Koltsov should issue a rebuttal. But Koltsov was too busy on the fighting front in the Spanish Civil War. But the spring of 1937 he was to be involved in new infighting with his rival Ilya Ehrenburg, and preparations for the Madrid Antifascist Congress and the dynamics of war within Spain indefinitely postponed this other task. The second choice contemplated was Leon Feuchtwanger. While stationed in Spain, Koltsov lobbied for the prompt organization of Feuchtwanger's trip to the Soviet Union. The visit was approved by the Politburo, and was regarded as important because the German author had taken a negative view of the August 1936 Moscow Trial. In November 1936, Koltsov requested that Feuchtwanger be treated with the same attention accorded to Andre Gide. [20]
Although not openly polemicizing with Gide, the book that Feuchtwanger produced nevertheless had its own serious ideological shortcomings. While reading the manuscript of Feuchtwanger's report, Vsevolod Vishnevsky recalled experiencing a "strange feeling" and perceived in the text "a lot of European arrogance". Vishnevsky perhaps best of all expressed the new attitude of the Soviet leadership towards Western fellow travelers in his statement that "Neither Malraux, nor all these western 'public figures' (deyateli) are of any use to us … Their historical value is much smaller than ours … Let everything be ours. Let the Law begin with us." (from a letter to Sergei Eisenstein, May 24, 1937). [21]
The significance of Andre Gide's meeting with Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino in August of 1936 has been common knowledge for many decades. What was missing was Soviet recognition of the importance of that meeting. Now the history of Soviet literature has factual information from official archives about the Gide-Pasternak exchanges in the report attributed by the NKVD to the "literary critic Fevralsky".
The subject of Pasternak's conversation with Gide was to surface again in December of 1937. In the arrest warrant for Boris Pilnyak, it was mentioned that he and Pasternak had misinformed Gide about the situation in the USSR during "secret meetings". "There is no doubt that this information was used by Gide in his book against the USSR." [22] But that claim was not sufficient to alter Pasternak's fate. After all, as the informer Fevralsky testified, he did issue a warning about the book that Gide was planning…
NOTES
2./АС
Г.Молч[анов] [подпись]
7/VIII
АГЕНТУРНО *
Источник "Февральский" -
лит.критик. *
Б.ПАСТЕРНАК о своих встречах с Андрэ ЖИДОМ *
Беседа ПАСТЕРНАКА с источником происходила 2/VIII * на даче у ПАСТЕРНАКА в Переделкине. * Предупредив источника, что тот должен сохранить в тайне все, что он будет говорить, ПАСТЕРНАК рассказал:
- "У меня здесь на даче был А.ЖИД два раза. * В первый раз он был с
Пьером ЭРБАР * (об этой встрече ПАСТЕРНАК не рассказал ничего), во второй
раз приехала с ними еще БОЛЕСЛАВСКАЯ * (из МОПР'а), * но он ее попросил
удалиться и начал задавать мне вопросы:
- Я полон сомнений - сказал Андрэ ЖИД, я увидел у вас в стране совсем не
то, что ожидал. Здесь невероятен авторитет, здесь очень много равнодушия,
косности, парадной шумихи. Ведь казалось мне из Франции, что здесь свобода
личности, а на самом деле я ее не вижу. Меня это очень беспокоит, я хочу
написать обо всем этом статью и приехал посоветоваться с вами по этому поводу.
- Что же мне вам сказать - сказал ПАСТЕРНАК ЖИДУ и ЭРБАРУ -
написать такую статью, конечно, можно, но реальных результатов она не принесет.
Ваше имя в нашей стране значит меньше чем имена ГОРЬКОГО * и РОЛЛАНА, *
но даже они не решались подавать советы. У нас уничтожена эксплоатация. Но
мы лишь мечемся в поисках путей, никакой это не Ренессанс и не Эллада. * А
вообще я в таких делах не мастак, лучше посоветуйтесь с КОЛЬЦОВЫМ. *
В ответ на это ЖИД и ЭРБАР испуганно замахали руками и ответили, что КОЛЬЦОВ лицо официальное.
"И вот едет теперь А.ЖИД по стране - говорил ПАСТЕРНАК - кричит "Ура!", и больше ему ничего не остается делать. * А написать эту статью по приезде во Францию вряд ли можно ЖИДУ, ведь тогда придется ему ссориться Народным фронтом". * х)
х) ПРИМЕЧАНИЕ По нашим сведениям А.ЖИД намеревается в ближайшие дни выехать из СССР (морем из Абхазии) не заезжая в Москву. *
Далее разговор носил очень длинный и разнообразный характер. Наиболее яркое и интересное из слов ПАСТЕРНАКА следующее:
"Вот построили нам дачи, учредили нечто вроде частной пожизненной
собственности, * и думают, что глядя на землекопов и плотников, возящихся под моими окнами, я буду воспевать, как им приятно строить эту дачу для меня. Ерунда. Я слишком взрослый, чтобы можно было перестроиться. * Кругом фальшь, невероятная глупая парадная шумиха самого дурного сорта (меня вчера хотел снять репортер "Торгово-промышленной газеты" * при получении продуктов из авто "Гастронома"), * ложь, неискренность, фарисейство. Этим фарисейством и ханжеством пропитано все так называемое женское движение (жены инженеров, писателей).* Они думают, что люди заводные и что жены писателей смогут заставить писать мужей идеологически выдержанные произведения.
- Вот вы говорите - "если б жил МАЯКОВСКИЙ". * Неужели вы думаете,
что он умер от гриппа? Наивно. Ведь неизвестно как бы сложились отношения
СТАЛИНА и МАЯКОВСКОГО, если б МАЯКОВСКИЙ был жив. Может быть,
он был бы сейчас в ссылке. Время другое. Его борьба с пошлостью, ханжеством
не была бы сегодня победоносной.
Павел Васильевич * имеет общую практическую судьбу с ЕСЕНИНЫМ. Он очень даровит и в нем есть - хоть и уродливый - протест. А вот СЕЛЬВИНСКИЙ * - человек благополучный, никаких ни бездн, ни благородства у него нет. В сущности также дело и с ЛИДИНЫМ, * и с ПИЛЬНЯКОМ, * и с ЛЕОНОВЫМ. *
Идет страшная волна мещанства, - у нас все хотят сделать навечно, ведь
сейчас добрались до семьи и хотят к ней насильно привязать человека.*
/Конечно все это создали разные КИРШОНЫ. * Но страшно то, что даже честные люди начинают говорить лживые вещи, не придавая, впрочем, им серьезного значения. ГРОНСКИЙ * глуп, но даже он понимает, что все высказываемые им политические пустые слова - просто обязательная дань, не больше. Его даже за это упрекнуть нельзя.
У нас из всего делают обязанность, официальщину. Ведь в 1933 г. я бежал в Грузию от этой официальщины. * А теперь в 1936 г. мою любовь к Грузии превращают в службу - насильно заставляют меня писать для сборника о Грузии. *
У нас все трусливы, беспомощны. Ведь надо же как то протестовать или
хоть не потакать всей этой лжи и шумихе парадности. Вот нам хорошо, возят
продукты из "Гастронома", но уже на второй день является женщина с альбомом и
просит записать ей туда похвальный отзыв. Зачем это? Что это: достижение Советской власти? Ведь доставка продуктов на дом есть во всем мире, была и у нас до революции. Не на что опереться, нет правдолюбца, который вел бы. Все мы, даже я и ТИХОНОВ,* делаем и говорим равнодушные и дипломатические слова.
- Я устал. Бороться не буду, но и потакать всему этому тоже не собираюсь.
Сейчас хочу снова писать прозу. * И затем - мечтаю уехать за границу, поездить,
поглядеть мир.*
РГАСПИ, ф.57, оп.1, д.64, л. 58-51
NOTES
* "agenturno" - The report, now preserved in RGASPI, fond 57, opis', 1, ed.khr. 64, listy 58-61, was received by the NKVD via an informant. In the mid 1930s there were several ways to present these reports. They were called variously: "Agent's Note" (agenturnaya zapiska), or "Agent's Communique" (agenturnaya svodka). Sometimes there was a typewritten heading indicating the NKVD department that formally recorded the report. In this particular case it was the "Secret Political Department of the Main Directorate of State Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR"(SPO GUGB NKVD). When this heading was present, the document acquired official status and had to be signed by the Deputy Head of the Department (i.e. Senior Major of State Security B.D. Berman). The next degree of official status for secret reports consisted in presentation of a collection of documents on a certain subject. It had to be accompanied by a letter signed by a Deputy Narkom for the NKVD. Even documents carrying the lowest level of information nevertheless carried recorded names of the "source" (e.g. a nickname such as "Minaret") and the name of the officer who received the report. The Pasternak document in this respect represents a purely "formal record", It carries no departmental headings or signatures. The partially illegible signature "G.Mol" most probably belongs to G.A. Molchanov (1897-1937), the head of the Secret Political Department. On another document regarding the dramatist Georgii Nikulin, which Molchanov sent to Ezhov in July of 1935, there is a comment by Molchanov: "To Com[rade] Ezhov N.I. Material of a personal nature re Nikulin is being sent to you, requesting your instructions." The Fourth Section of the SPO GUGB NKVD dealt specifically with writers and other intellectuals. In 1936 it was headed by A.S. Zhurbenko (1903-40). Molchanov, Berman and Zhurbenko disappeared during the purges. See A.I.Kokurin and N.V.Petrov (eds), Lubyanka VChK-KGB. Dokumenty. Spravochnik (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi Fond "Demokratiya", 1997).
* "Fevralsky" - Though the names of agents as a rule were omitted, their nicknames were recorded. This particular case is complicated by the fact that Aleksandr Vilyamovich Fevralsky (1901-84) did exist in reality. He was a literary critic and theatrical historian. He had worked at ROSTA, in Pravda, and in 1936 was working in the Meyerhold State Theater. He edited a few volumes of Mayakovsky's complete works, in particular the eleventh volume (consisting of theatrical plays and scripts). The volume was set up in type on 31 November 1935, and went into print on 4 August 1936. In the preface Fevralsky thanked Meyerhold, Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Radlov, and Maksim Shtraukh, among others, for their help with work on the volume. If the name of the source was correctly identified in this report, then this constituted a gross violation of secret service procedure, although such irregularities were not unknown in Yagoda's last two months in office as Narkom of the NKVD. Shortcomings and infringement of rules were soon to be denounced on orders from Stalin. In August of 1937, for instance, the arrested writer Sergei Tretyakov denounced Fevralsky's alleged contacts with Japanese theatrical workers. See V.F.Kalyazin (ed.), Vernite mne svobodu! (Moscow: Medium, 1997), p.61.
* - Though Pasternak met Andre Gide twice, he spoke with the informant only about his second meeting.
* - The 2nd August 1936 was a Sunday. On that date Gide was leaving Tiflis (Georgia) for Sochi. On 3rd August, Pravda published a letter to Lavrentii Beria, First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party Central Committee. Gide wrote that he was "leaving such a wonderful country with regret". (TASS, quoted in Pravda, 3 August, 1936).
* - Pasternak's dacha in Peredelkino. Pasternak moved to the writers' village at Peredelkino in the summer of 1936. These were his first months in this Moscow suburban retreat. See Christopher Barnes, op.cit., pp.127-32.
* - Pierre Herbart (1903-74) published his own account of a trip to the USSR in En URSS. 1936 (Paris: Gallimard, 1937). A French Communist, Herbart had arrived in Moscow in November of 1935 to work on the French edition of the MORP monthly magazine International Literature, and the French version of Moscow News. Herbart witnessed first hand the entire Anti-Formalist campaign staged against Shostakovich, Einstein, and others, and he undoubtedly advised Andre Gide on background events in the USSR, although he later disagreed with certain aspects of Gide's book.
* - "Bolya" Boleslavskaya (executed in 1941), described as "notre interprete-compagne, la fidele camerade Bola" in Gide, Retour de l'URSS, p.29. In his "Afterthoughts" to the book, Gide elaborated on the personal and intellectual evaluation of his interpreter. "Most of these people's minds enjoy vagueness and redundancy - particularly that of the charming comrade [Bolya] who serves us as guide and interpreter. Nothing indeed ever floors her, and she provides an answer to everything; the more ignorant she is of a subject, the more cocksure she becomes … Our charming guide is as obliging and devoted as it is possible to be. But there is this about her that is rather fatiguing - the information she gives us is never precise except when it is wrong." Andre Gide, Afterthoughts. A Sequel to Back from the USSR, translated by Dorothy Bussy (London: Martin Secker, 1938), pp.102-3. The head of VOKS, Aleksandr Arosev, speaking at the aktiv meeting in his organization in May of 1935 on the role of interpreter-guides accompanying foreign guests, stated: "Our comrade interpreters are very important people. Our interpreters play the role of defensive detachments (zagraditel'nye otryady) that march at the head of the columns." See A.V. Golubev and V.A. Nevezhin, "VOKS v 1930-1940ye gody", Minuvshee, vol.14 (Moscow: Feniks, 1993), p.350. A special instruction specified that reports on the activities of the foreign guest had to be submitted within 24 hours (ibid., p.320). At the time of her arrest, Boleslavskaya worked with the Foreign Commission of the Writers' Union. See Vernite mne svobodu! Pp.288-90, 293-6.
* - MOPR - Russian acronym for Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya pomoshchi bortsam revolyutsii ("Red Aid"), founded in 1922 and disbanded on the eve of World War 2, although it existed in the USSR until 1947. Gide, who headed the International Writers' Bureau created at the 1935 Paris Congress, was invited ex officio by MOPR, since this was the leading antifascist organization devoid of openly pro-Soviet political engagement (as was the case with Comintern and its literary branch, the International Organization of Proletarian Writers, MORP).
* - Gorky privately lobbied on behalf of certain individuals. But both his and Romain Rolland's pleas were private, confidential, and directed to top Soviet officials. In one of his letters of 1930 to the then deputy chief of OGPU, Yagoda, Gorky wrote: "[Rolland sent a letter] in which, while administering a most eloquent lesson on justice to the Soviet state, he suggested that I should help to release the anarchist Francesco Bezzi from the prison and have him expelled to France." After criticizing Rolland, Gorky sided with his plea. See Neizvestnyi Gor'kii (Moscow: Nasledie, 1994), p.172.
* - Romain Rolland placed a fifty-year ban on publication of his notes on his 1935 trip to the Soviet Union and also of the verbatim report of his conversation with Stalin on that trip. These were first published in Russian in 1989. See "Moskovskii dnevnik Romen Rollana", Voprosy literatury, 3-5 (1989). In March of 1937 Rolland sent a letter to Stalin regarding the fate of Nikolai Bukharin. "For the sake of Gorky I am asking you for mercy, even if he may be guilty of something." Loc.cit, No.5 (1989), p.192. The letter was redirected to Mikhail Kalinin, and Stalin gave a specific instruction: "It does not have to be answered. Stalin." RGASPI, fond 558, opis' 1, ed.khr. 3225.
* - Renaissance … Hellas. Comparing Soviet Russia with these past eras was commonplace in the 1930s.In his "Ode" to Stalin, Osip Mandelstam wrote: "Не я не другой - ему народ родной / Народ-Гомер хвалу утроит." In another poem of 1937 Mandelstam insisted: "Toму не быть - трагедий не вернуть, / Но эти наступающие губы, / Но эти губы вводят прямо в суть / Эсхилa-грузчика, Софоклa-лесоруба." (Gde svyazannyi i prigvozhdennyi ston…" in O. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, vol.3 (Moscow: Art-Biznes-Tsentr, 1993), pp.113, 115. On the other hand, in his verse of the 1930s at least, Pasternak avoided parallels with the Hellenic past. Rather, he looked for analogies and comparisons in the purely Russian past, either pre-Christian (see "Vesennie den' tridtsatogo aprelya…") or the period of Peter the Great ("Stolet'e s lishnim - ne vchera…"). Gide's analogies advocated in his Retour were not shared by Pasternak. (Gide's book opened up with the words "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter…")
* - Mikhail Koltsov (1898-1940), an establishment literary figure. In summer of 1936 he was a member of the editorial board of Pravda. He headed the International Commission of the Soviet Writers' Union and was de facto coordinator of all intellectual activities figuring in Soviet foreign policy. Closely associated with Ezhov, he was arrested in December of 1938 and executed in February 1940.
* - Pravda gave routine, though not prominent, attention to Gide's comments made during his travels in the USSR. On a visit to Nikolai Ostrovsky in Sochi, he repeated his favourite phrase to the effect that "In our countries the writers have to write against somebody, while in your country they can write in favour of somebody," Pravda, 10 August, 1936.
* - The People's Front government in France existed from January 1936 to 1938. Based on a strategic alliance between the French communist and socialist parties, the Front banned fascist organizations and introduced measures for a 40-hour working week and paid vacations. The personal quarrels and dislikes between Soviet intellectuals were a powerful tool in the hands of Soviet cultural politicians, who first tried to explain their behaviour and then manipulated it according to the constantly changing aims of the Soviet leadership. In June 1937 Koltsov wrote to Vladimir Stavsky a coded letter on preparations for another antifascist congress in Madrid. This message was effectively a police denunciation of Ilya Ehrenburg. Stavsky sent it to Stalin, Kaganovich, Andreyev and Ezhov with the following accompanying remark: "Na Il'yu Erenburga nadezhda plokhaya". However, while validating other requests forwarded by Koltsov, the Central Committee ignored the anti-Ehrenburg innuendoes. See RGASPI, fond 17, opis' 163, ed.khr. 616, listy 26-31.
* - Andre Gide did not leave the USSR by sea from Sukhumi. After Georgia, he visited Sochi, and left for Paris via Moscow, accompanied by Pierre Herbart on 24 August, 1936. He sent a telegram praising his "unforgettable trip to the great motherland of triumphant socialism". See "Andre Zhid vyletel v Parizh iz Moskvy", Pravda, 25 August, 1936.
* - The cottages in Peredelkino formally belonged to the Literary Fund (Litfond), i.e. the finance department of the Writers' Union. Litfond leased these villas to the writers. The chief official in the Central Committee's Cultural Department, Aleksei Angarov, complained in August 1936 that "the writers living in this town in Peredelkino do not even pay the regular rent [otherwise] contributed by any member of a villa cooperative". Rent in Peredelkino was in fact paid by only four people. See D.Babichenko, Literaturnyi front: istoriya politicheskoi tsenzury (Moscow: Entsiklopediya rossiiskoi derevni, 1994), p.18. According to Angarov, by May 1937, of forty writers' families living in Peredelkino, only fifteen were Communist Party members. "Non-Party writers discuss the issues of their work and the work of the Union separately from Party members." (ibid., p.24) Here Pasternak was too optimistic in claiming that the villas had been given to the writers as "a sort of private lifelong property"; the purges were soon to unleash an avalanche of eviction and confiscations in Peredelkino.
* - The theme of the impossibility of any personal perestroika was a constant one in Pasternak's poetry. E.g. "I was not born to gaze into people's eyes three different ways" (Vysokaya bolezn')
* - Torgovo-promyshlennaya gazeta appeared 1921-29, before being renamed Za industrializatsiyu. By the mid 1930s it had a circulation of 250 thousand. It seems Pasternak or Fevralsky erroneously believed the journalist represented this newspaper, this was an official organ of the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry and did not cover issues of commerce. Probably it was in fact the daily Sovetskaya torgovlya that was seeking Pasternak's comment.
* - In fact, in its edition of 28 July, 1936, Sovetskaya torgovlya wrote: "Food store [gastronom] No.1 is very popular among the population of Tbilisi. This store was the first one to organize the home delivery of products as well as a system of advanced ordering, a packing section, etc. The store's Stakhanovites constantly serve their customers."
* - The Women's Movement was a parallel to the "front runners" (peredoviki) movement in industry and agriculture. During 1936 several meetings of wives of the "commanders" of the coal and heavy industry, railroads, etc., were held at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, attended by Stalin and other leaders. What Pasternak meant by the "women's movement of writers' wives" was the "Council [Soviet] of Writers' Wives" formally organized in July 1936. One of its tasks was "elevation of its members' social, political and cultural level". This entailed formation of study circles on the history of the Communist Party, political economy, etc. See "V sovete zhen pisatelei", Literaturnaya gazeta, 26 July 1936. While preparing a report on one of the "socialist commander's" wives' meetings, the Pravda censor cut out the following passage of socialist-realist kitsch: "People wanted to sing, to be happy, to smile. There are not sufficient colours or words from the heart to depict this wondrous picture of a meeting of wonderful women … Cheering, happy women went - no, they flew! - to the morning meeting … 'Are you going to the meeting? How did you sleep? My dear, look at the sun! How beautiful Moscow is!'" (RGASPI, Pravda, 12 May 1936) This mood was reflected in the grandiose painting by Vasilii Efanov "Unforgettable Meeting" (1936-7), displayed in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery.
* - Pasternak touches on the highly sensitive subject of Mayakovsky's canonization. In his "Lyudi i polozheniya" (1956) he later referred in a typically cryptic way to Stalin's pronouncements on the subject ("There were two famous phrases about the time…") Pasternak did not mention Stalin's name or quote in full his verdict on Mayakovsky that was made public in December of 1935, and he omitted the words that "indifference to his memory and his works is a crime". The agent's reference in his report to Pasternak's evaluation of the Stalin/Mayakovsky relationship was potentially the greatest political charge in the entire document. Not only because of mentioning Stalin's name. It also contradicts the stated evaluation of Stalin's words made by Pasternak. The subject of Mayakovsky was evidently raised by the informant (Pasternak: "Here you are saying: 'If Mayakovsky were alive…'"). During summer of 1936 Aleksandr Fevralsky was proofreading volume nine of Mayakovsky's complete works; this subject was of particular interest to him. Tarasenkov did not mention the name of Mayakovsky in his notes of summer 1937.
* - Pavel Vasilyev (1909-37) The typed version mistakenly records "Pavel Vasilevich" and therefore omits to print the name in capitals. Vasilyev's via dolorosa followed various stages. From new archival evidence this can now be reconstructed in detail. According to Aleksandr Shcherbakov, "after a wild scandal and an anti-Semitic act" committed in the Soviet Writers' House in January 1935, Vasilyev was expelled from the Union. In May of 1935, while drunk, he "insulted a number of comrades and hit one of them". He was tried and imprisoned for eighteen months. In February 1936, the poet's wife petitioned the Soviet writers in order to transfer Vasilyev from the Ryazan Internment House (domzak - a prison for prestigious inmates) to its equivalent in Moscow, or to set him free altogether. In his letter to Ezhov, Shcherbakov reported that the Writers' Union Secretariat considered it improper to grant Vasilyev his freedom. Instead he asked for him to be transferred to the Dmitrov Camp, which was involved in building the Moscow-Volga Canal. A month later, Vasilyev wrote a personal appeal to Ezhov in which he vehemently denounced the pernicious influence on him of those "ideologues of the kulak class", the poet Nikolai Klyuev, and the peasant writer Sergei Klychkov. These individuals, according to Vasilyev, were the "fathers of my misfortunes and wrongdoings, the midwives of those most rude instincts of mine". The letter bears Ezhov's resolution: "Freed on 21 March 1936". (RGASPI, fond 51, opis' 1, ed.khr. 64, listy 13-17) Pasternak had held an untainted view of Vasilyev's poetry back in 1936, and when in 1956 Vasilyev was due for official posthumous rehabilitation, Pasternak wrote in his second autobiography: "In the early 1930s Pavel Vasilyev left an impression on me of more or less the same order as earlier Esenin and Mayakovsky had on our first encounter." (See L.Fleishman, Boris Pasternak v tridtsatye gody, p.125.) Ivan Gronsky, who in 1936 was de facto editor of Novyi mir, recalled that "very few literary figures supported the poet … I remember that Boris Leonidovich Pasternak phoned me: "Ivan Mikhailovich, they're attacking Pasha. They don't realize that his poem is a wonderful thing." See Ivan Gronsky, "Voskhozhdenie" in Vospominaniya o Pavle Vasil'eve (Alma-Ata: Zhazushi, 1989), p.201. There is another verbatim account of a talk by Gronsky at TsGALI in 1959, although it is unclear to which arrest Gronsky was referring (in 1935 or 1937): "When they arrested [Vasilyev], I even phoned Ezhov two or three times. We argued. I called up Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, and a very sharp conversation took place. We did battle…" See I.M.Gronsky, "O krest'yanskikh pisatelyakh" (talk at TsGALI on 30 September 1959). Minuvshee. Istoricheskii al'manakh, No.8 (Moscow: Feniks, 1992), p.158. At the same time, a 1936 article "Mnimyi talant" by Anatolii Tarasenkov was later characterized as "unprecedented in its tone and in the character of its accusations". See P.Vykhodtsev, Pavel Vasil'ev. Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1972), p.28. Tarasenkov insisted that Vasilyev was not only a bard of the kulak class, but also a "malicious enemy of Soviet rule".
* - Vladimir Lidin (1894-1979). In 1926 as an editor, he published Avtobiografii i portrety russkikh prozaikov (Moscow: Sovremennye problemy, 1926), an edition in which Pasternak was immediately followed by Pilnyak.
* - Boris Pilnyak (Vogau) (1894-1938). In the summer of 1936 he was heavily criticized for his novel Myaso. See his letter to Anastas Mikoyan in D.Babichenko (ed.), Literaturnyi front, pp.15-16.
* - Leonid Leonov (1899-1991). Leonov was the only writer mentioned in this report who was to participate in the Writers' Union Presidium meeting on 25 August 1936. The meeting discussed the Supreme Court verdicts. At the meeting Yurii Olesha "defended Pasternak, who did not sign the demand to execute the counter-revolutionary terrorists". Olesha claimed Pasternak was "a perfectly Soviet person, but he could not sign a verdict with his own hand". D.Babichenko, op.cit., p.19. It is still not clear why Pasternak, who was a member of neither the Presidium nor the Secretariat of the Board of the Writers' Union, was obliged to sign the letter of denunciation.
* - Ilya Selvinsky (1899-1968) was trying to sell his poem "Chelyuskiniana". The work was heavily criticized by both literary and Party officials. His play Umka the Polar Bear (Umka, belyi medved') was banned by the Politburo in April of 1937.
* - On 20 May 1936 the Politburo discussed the bill "On Banning of Abortion, Assistance to Mothers, and Widening the Network of Nurseries and Orphanages".
* - Vladimir Kirshon (1902-38). Closely associated with Yagoda, he was on the payroll of the NKVD. Kirshon was not chosen to sign the famous letter published on 21 August 1936 after the first Moscow Show Trial. The day after the Moscow Writers' meeting, Kirshon wrote a heartrending letter to Kaganovich (Stalin had already moved to Sochi): "It is unbearably hard for me to be unjustifiably accused of some kind of acquiescence [primirenchestvo]." Komsomol'skaya Pravda and Izvestiya attacked Kirshon for not disclosing the names of an entire group linked to Aleksandr Voronsky and Nikolai Bukharin on the "literary front". In the common manner of the 1930s, Kirshon tried to defend himself by offering to denounce not the real targets of the literary purge (Averbackh, Afinogenov, et al.) but "a number of our greatest non-Party writers". Though he wrote to Kaganovich, his letter was rerouted to Ezhov, whose resolution read:" "Primu. [I'll meet with him] Ezhov."
* - Ivan Gronsky (1894-1985), editor of Novyi mir until May 1937. In the spring of 1936, Gronsky advocated the thesis that "formalism and naturalism are a camouflaged counter-revolutionary class struggle against Soviet rule and against socialism". He was bitterly criticized for this by Aleksandr Shcherbakov. See L.Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki (Moscow,1997), p.8. When Aleksei Angarov lobbied for the removal of Gronsky, he specifically mentioned that during 1935 and 1936 Novyi mir had published Selvinsky's "illiterate verses" and Pasternak's "politically harmful works". See D.Babichenko, op.cit., p.21.
* - On Pasternak's trip to Georgia in 1933, see C.Barnes, op.cit., pp.81-2. See also Pasternak's letter to Nikolai Tikhonov, dated 4 January 1934, mentioning the "optimism and enthusiasm" he brought back from Georgia. (Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol.93, 1983, pp.682-4) Pasternak went to Georgia on the advice of Gorky with a Writers' Union brigade headed by Petr Pavlenko. See "Antologiya gruzinskoi poezii", Literaturnaya gazeta, 5 August 1936. Pasternak's translations of Georgian poets appeared in Poety Gruzii (Tbilisi, 1935), Gruzinskaya lirika (Moscow, 1935) and Poeziya Gruzii s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei (Moscow, 1936). In the fall of 1936, increased implantation of modern Georgian culture ("national in form and socialist in content") was perceived as a direct byproduct of Stalin's personality cult. On 4 September 1936, Pravda published a spread of Russian translations of Georgian poets. In 1936 Pasternak's translations were published also in Stalin v pesnyakh narodov SSSR and Stikhi i pesni o Staline. See C.Barnes, op.cit., p.132.
* - Love of Georgia in 1936 acquired virtually the force of law. Stalin's motherland and Georgian classical poetry enjoyed quite disproportionate adulation during the Rustaveli festivities in December 1937. Cf. Vsevolod Ivanov's testimony on the writers' meeting with the Party Central Committee on 25 March 1938. Ivanov referred to Vladimir Stavsky's words: "For example, if I told him that for some reason I could not go to the [Writers' Union Board] Plenary Session in Tiflis, he would look at me attentively and say: 'This is the motherland of comrade Stalin, and you do not want to travel to the meeting'." (RGASPI, fond 17, opis' 120, ed.khr. 301, list 33) As a result of this method of ideological work, Stavsky was sacked and replaced by Aleksandr Fadeyev in the summer of 1939.
* - Nikolai Tikhonov (1896-1979) here looks almost like a role model for Pasternak ("even myself and Tikhonov"). Both poets shared a love of Georgian poetry. They were co-editors of translations of Georgian verse. However, the social and political status of Tikhonov was much higher. He was a member of the Presidium of the Writers' Union, and head of the Leningrad Writers' Organization. He was routinely included in official Soviet delegations traveling abroad. In fact, from now on Tikhonov and Pasternak's destinies followed sharply diverging paths.
* - On the last day of the year 1937, Literaturnaya gazeta carried a first extract from Pasternak's recent prose work. Entitled "Iz novogo romana o 1905 gode" (From a New Novel about the Year 1905), this was one of several prose fragments written in the later 1930s and forming part of an early prototype version of what became the novel Doctor Zhivago. See C.Barnes, op.cit., p.152.
* - Individual foreign trips by Soviet writers practically ceased after the First Writers' Congress in 1934. Hitherto the Politburo or Secretariat had approved individual foreign travel requests, and applicants had to explain the rationale for their trip and formally ask for a hard currency allowance. Starting in 1935, the practice of sending delegations of Soviet writers was instituted. Comprising between two and ten members, these delegations travelled to international congresses or festivals. By the summer of 1936, Pasternak's own dream of "going abroad, to travel and to see the world" was quite unrealistic.
© Christopher Barnes
© Leonid Maximenkov
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