Writers in Russia: 1917-1978

...The condescending idea that Russian writing was at some point dissected out of Russia seems absurd...

...By these accounts he was a formidable eccentric in the British tradition: a marvelous if erratic companion, brilliantly talented, something of a drunk and a d e p r e s s i v e , and a tremendous amateur in the b e s t sense of the word, with all his heart in his work, though lacking the c a r e e r i s t flair for slotting into a corporate environment...

...They are at odds not just with the Russian government and most Soviet citizens (without whose toleration and support the government could not function), but with each other...

...After all, Hitler's victims were mostly from among our sort...

...128 pages, 7x10, 31 photos...

...There is no point in entering the sectarian debate...

...When a man comes along with the singular talent for opening this difficult field to us he deserves the most generous p r a i s e , and his work ought to be handled with the g r e a t e s t care...

...The tie between a nation and its literature is not severed by the mechanics of political repression, and it is clear from Hayward's accounts that this did not happen in Russia even during the terrible Stalinist era...

...318 pp...

...Above all they offer a good deal of useful background to the one a s p e c t of Russian l i t e r a t u r e which colors its appearance in the West: the peculiar relationship between writers and the political f a b r i c of society...

...Working with others he also provided versions of writing by Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Yevgeny Schwartz and (among others) later authors like Andrei Amalrik and Andrei Sinyavsky...

...In the end, Harrington must be called to account for his own desperate "orthodoxy...

...Thus it becomes e a s i e r for a p p a r e n t l y sane people to-excuse Stalin and even to praise him...

...It follows that if this minority of brutes can be swept aside by a dissident-led movement of some kind, the mass of the Russian people will support this uprising and turn Russia into a free country just like ours...

...Feeling that life among Asiatic barbarians is cheap, the cliche-prone Westerner can hate Hitler with a virulence that does not extend to the late and bloodthirsty dictator of Russia and his system...

...This c a s t s Russia as a fundamentally u n s t a b l e society, seething with popular discontent and held t o g e t h e r only by the r u t h l e s s There was nothing civil about i t . . . By Craig/k Symonds Cartography by Wilham J. Chpson This portable guide describes each battle in an authoritative narrative keyed to 43 full page...

...But our publishers and journalists are ingenious and manage to combine the two very profitably, using publicity which presents a crude picture of the writer of quality (and only of quality) as a gladiatorial dissident...

...Vtsa [] MasterCard Card Number Expires Cardholder's Signature The Nautical & Aviation P u b l i s b l n g Co...

...This is a report of a government propaganda exercise in *Random House, 1979...

...Admittedly some of the best original talents have suffered unbearable psychological tension and severe cultural paralysis...

...A true original, this impressive work deals with a subject that is central to military strategy yet has been little studied in itself . . . . An outstanding piece of scholarship...

...1982 / paper 0-8157-0929-3 59.95 / cloth 0-8157-0930-7 526.95 Please send payment with orders to I[ I ~4 L~ THE AMERICAN SPHCTATOR . JANUARY 1984 37 pressure of a Communist elite and its ubiquitous secret police force...

...But as the word indicates, the dissidents are a minority and a small one...

...It is a pity, because there is far more to this story than the questions of whether writers are spiritually and/or politically "on our s i d e . " Either by accident or design Hayward's posthumous collection is made to pander a little to the gladiatorial p r e j u d i c e n b u t only a little...

...There is a more comprehensive treatment of the problem in Russian Writers and Soviet Society: 1917-1978 by Hayward's colleague and drinking companion Ronald Hingley.* In a way that Hayward's anthology does not, Hingley illuminates the stabilizing factors in Soviet society, and comments: We must avoid suggesting that all writers of the Soviet period have necessarily felt intolerably frustrated by the restrictions to which they have been subjected...

...The nerves of Russia are uncommonly important to us, and so are her social nuts and bolts, so far as we can spy them out across a wide linguistic and political abyss...

...That Roman excitement has a strong and--I sometimes think--vicious analogue in the Western media response to dissidents, especially authors...

...Ideal for battlefield hikinp~ classroom study, or as a gift to that Ctvll War buff in your family...

...Standing outside it, Hayward might have pointed to this type of guff as a necessary reminder that we are still encumbered by a popular cartoon of the Russians as whiskered or l a n t e r n - j a w e d b a r b a r i a n s using stolen technology, the natives of a semi-Asiatic world quite apart from our own...

...However, many others have positively thrived in literature's hot-house atmosphere, as it has been well called, without being unduly exposed to successive freezes and t h a w s . . . One of Hayward's anecdotes provides an unexpected sidelight on our own experience of Russian authors, partly by contrast and partly as it were by echo...

...Patricia Blake writes that Hayward "acted as the custodian of Russian literature in the West, until such time as it could be restored to Russia...

...It can help to explain, for instance, why the liquidation of tens of millions of Russians carries less emotional impact in the West than the murder of six million Jews by Middle European Germans...

...Only $11.95 Please add $1 75 for each book ordered to cover shippmgand handling...

...With close attention plus a bit of supplementary material (I strongly recommend Hingley's book), Americans should find this work more absorbing, richer, and more sobering than they may have imagined...

...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1984...

...When we outside the specialist world think of Russian writing, this tends to shape our impression of these authors, and of Russian literature...

...The attraction was not the theme ("Down With the [Western] Warmongers...

...Some of this is sketched out by Hayward in an interesting section on Solzhenitsyn and the Russian tradition, highlighting a few of the strands of debate in the dissident movement, and reminding us that some dissidents, like Solzhenitsyn, are harsh in their criticisms of Western society as well...

...P o s s i b l y our greatest problem in dealing with Russian writers is a residue of clich~ which clings to the Western perception of Russians and their culture...

...This book is deceptively titled...

...Maryland residents please add 5% sales tax...

...1948--a poetry reading which filled the largest auditorium in Moscow...

...Instead he recited some prewar work, which the audience knew well enough to prompt him when he forgot a line...

...Foreign Affairs...

...Even so, Hayward might have seen that such a proposition--aside from its flimsiness on primafacie grounds (collective g e n i u s ? ) - - i s a s t a l e dreg of the mystical rhetoric found in certain Russian writers of the last century, and not rare in this one...

...He is, as Hans Ehrenberg once said of Feuerbach, " a true child ~ of his century": a "non-knower" (Nichtkenner) o f death, and a "misknower" (Verkenner) of evil...

...It is hard to imagine such an audience at a Western poetry recital, even for the popstar performances of Dylan Thomas...

...through him we know Olga Ivinskaya's A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak...

...The dissident movement both inside Russia and among ~migr~s and exiles is complex, harboring fierce disagreements and often diametrically opposed ideas about the way Russia ought to evolve...

...These survivors did not have an easy time of it, but they did continue to produce marvelous work...

...Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich...

...an excellent and scholarly contribution to the area of strategic studies . . . The work will appeal to professionals in the field as well as to graduate and advanced undergraduate students...

...His g r e a t love was l a n g u a g e s , of which he knew several...

...Hayward, working for the British Embassy in Moscow at the time, was present...

...This is not to say that the material is thin or trivial...

...Those who entertain the idea of Russian leaders as boorish philistines who care more for guns than poetry may be interested to read Hayward's guess as to why Pasternak was not killed for his defiance...

...Hayward's account makes it clear that the occasion had a kind of Roman excitement about it, with many there to taste the spectacle of a poet defying a government which might at any moment crush and kill him, as it had done to his friend and colleague Osip Mandelstam...

...It is not a long and systematic essay on twentieth-century Russian literature but a set of prefaces to other people's work...

...In g e n e r a l , however, these relatively short pieces are full of the sort of detailed discussion t h a t comes only from a man who knows his stuff...

...In this book t h e r e is a l i t t l e l e s s care than p r a i s e . With its generous preface by Leonard Schapiro and a long, a f f e c t i o n a t e i n t r o d u c t i o n by Patricia Blake, Writers in Russia: 1917-1978 seems at first not so much a monument of scholarship as a sort of l i t e r a r y dolmen or cairn to Max Hayward himself...

...Choice...

...He gave us the English versions of Nadezhda Mandelstam's great memoirs, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned...

...Perspective...

...It would seem that Stalin had a kind of superstitious regard for him, which extended to others like Anna Akhmatova...

...Most of the religious lambs who lay willingly with Marxist lions have long since been devoured...

...two-color maps...

...It is an ideological mantra, the favorite of Marxists everywhere...

...Their numbers make a bitter mockery of any call, however well-intentioned, for future coalitions of this sort...

...But there was something else besides an intimate acquaintance with and love of the poetry...

...This is not a nitty, minor point...

...Harrington tries to avoid this problem with an appeal to the " r e a l " Marx of humanism and toleration...

...but the knowledge that Boris Pasternak would appear...

...In America it was vulgarized into the image of the h a l f - s a v a g e Russian with soul, so well known in the show b u s i n e s s , popular songs, and jokes of the 1930s and 1940s...

...He was the c o - t r a n s l a t o r of Doctor Zhivago (in which the c h a r a c t e r of Lara was based on Ivinskaya) and of Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright living in Europe...

...The editor is not very helpful in this context...

...the " o t h e r " Marx has had his theoreticians and his day...

...In the middle of his account of the Russian (nineteenth century) Empire, one stumbles across: The most impressive testimony to the collective genius of the peasantry is the Russian language itself...

...None other--not even the closely related Slavic languages --can match it in its breathtaking resourcefulness...

...but there is an occasional oddity which appears to be the result of haste or carelessness, e.g., the opening chapter's assertion that the Russian Empire passed away with the Romanovs...

...Another prejudice or bromide has been heavily reinforced by Western media treatment of dissenters and writers such as Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn...

...It follows that the products of Russian writers have a special interest for the West...

...Hayward himself is not always free of this...

...indeed Hitler himself was one of us, and so hideously offensive in a way that Stalin was not and is not felt to be...

...o f America 6-AS Randall Street Annapolis, MD 21401 (301} 267-8522 Richard K. Betts "Betts is one of the brightest and most productive of the young scholars in the national security field, and Surprise Attack may be his best work to d a t e . . . highly recommended for the advanced student, the strategist, and the policymaker...

...To the delight of the crowd Pasternak declined to speak on the official theme...

...Among these Russian took pride of place, and with it he developed his superb gift for translation...

...As Hayward shows, this is not exclusive to the Communist scheme of things, but goes well back into tsarist times, at least as far as Pushkin...

...This type of special pleading 'is understandable in a man who has spent far more time inside books than among Russian peasants...

...Among us writing suffers more financial exploitation than it does in Russia, where the political factor tends to dominate...