A Letter To Stalin
Zamiatin, Eugene
On March 10, twenty-five years ago, there died in Paris, in voluntary exile, one of the finest Russian writers of the postwar period, Eugene Zamiatin. A man of rare distinction, he possessed a...
...The play had been read before a gathering of the artistic council of the Leningrad Grand Dramatic Theater to which representatives of eighteen city factories had been invited...
...To cure myself of an old and chronic illness, colitis, and to produce two of my plays which have been translated into English and Italian...
...The play makes a powerful impression and destroys the reproach made against contemporary dramaturgy that it fails to offer good plays...
...To write in English is, for me, hardly more difficult than writing in Russian...
...He recommended that its presentation coincide with the theatrical jubilee...
...So far as Shakespeare is concerned the comrade workers have gone too far—granted...
...I know that I have the unfortunate habit of saying not what is opportune at a given moment, but what seems to me the truth...
...From numerous other facts I shall cite another which deals not simply with an article, but with a dramatic work of considerable scope on which I had worked for nearly three years...
...This persecution was without precedent in Soviet literature and was noted even in the foreign press...
...My past indicates this convincingly...
...Such things I have always regarded—and continue to regard—as degrading both to the writer and to the revoltuion...
...The Lenin factory representative, noting the play's revolutionary character, found that it "recalls Shakespeare and his work in its artistic value...
...Spitting upon the Devil is considered a noble deed and everyone does so, according to his lights...
...My name is no doubt known to you...
...Independently of the contents of my writings, my signature alone was enough for it to be declared criminal...
...No, the play, half of whose rehearsals had already taken place, and which had already been publicly announced by posters, was banned...
...he is translated into many foreign languages...
...June, 1931...
...This is why I plead that my condemnation be replaced by expulsion from the USSR, with my wife given the right to accompany me...
...And so the novel written ten years before in 1920 was presented, at the same time as Mahagony, as my newest and latest work...
...I could base my request to leave on other motives which, while more banal, are nonetheless serious...
...Since then and in various ways this campaign has continued until today...
...I cite this fact because it indicates in a bare, chemically pure way, the attitude that exists toward me...
...I know...
...A man of rare distinction, he possessed a highly original talent...
...It is not my intention to put on an act of outraged innocence...
...Why should what is permitted Ehrenbourg be denied me...
...Some diabolical design is hunted for in everything I publish...
...To destroy the devil any trick will do of course...
...At that time, Stalin was not yet what he was later to become after tasting years of absolute power...
...In this article it goes without saying there was not, nor could there be, anything scandalous on my part...
...I was positive that my play, a tragedy entitled Attila, would once and for all silence those who delighted in picturing me as some sort of obscurantist...
...It was only after appealing to Moscow and when Glavlit had let it be understood that, after all, it was not possible to act with such naive frankness, that permission was given to publish both my article and my criminal name...
...If I really am a criminal who deserves punishment, I believe it ought not to be, in spite of everything, anything so painful as my literary death...
...Furthermore, my situation has become such that I cannot continue my work because work is inconceivable if it must be carried out in an atmosphere of systematic persecution that grows year by year...
...The letter of Zamiatin marks a date in the history of Russian letters...
...It has now reached a point that I can only call fetichistic, just as once the Christians created the Devil to more conveniently personify Evil in all its form...
...I had revised the translation of Sheridan's School for Scandal for the Academia edition and had written an article on the life and work of the author...
...Particularly, I have never concealed the feelings that servility, complaisance and conformism in literature arouse in me...
...Just in time, too, for the affair would certainly have turned out badly later on when the tyrant's megalomania took on paranoiac forms...
...along with me he has played the role of the Devil...
...I will find some way of writing and getting published, even in another language than Russian...
...He was secretly flattered to be solicited directly by writers, artists, and intellectuals who, overwhelmed by insurmountable difficulties inherent in the regime, turned toward him as one appeals to the natural protector of arts and letters...
...The melancholy fate of my Attila tragedy was a personal tragedy for me...
...But even in the most difficult circumstances, I will not be condemned to silence there...
...My comrades of the day before, the publishing houses and the theaters began to fear any contact with me...
...Everything was done to bar any future work for me...
...I had, so it would appear, every reason to believe this...
...of the right to write is the equivalent of the death penalty...
...Zamiatin had speculated on Stalin's psychology, and his perception was accurate...
...I know that in the three or four years after the revolution there were things in my writings which lent themselves to attack...
...1, 1920) in an incisive way which many found offensive, was the signal for launching a press campaign against me...
...For a long time, Ilya Ehrenbourg, while remaining a Soviet writer, has contributed particularly to European literature...
...On the insistence of Oblit...
...Nevertheless, Oblit not only forbade publication of my article, but even forbade the publishing house the right to mention my name as editor of the translation...
...I was a member of the Bolshevik Party in Czarist times...
...For me, a writer, to be deprived • This letter appeared in the March—April issue of Le Contrat Social...
...it will impassion the spectator...
...Was it shown to the working-class audience whose representatives had shown such appreciation...
...After that, the futility of all attempts made to change my situation appeared clear to me, as well as the well-known incident soon to occur with regard to my novel We and Pilniak's Mahagony...
...A hydro-mechanical factory representative stated that "the play is powerful and captivating throughout...
...it is the sentence of death pronounced against me here as a writer...
...But in any case, Maxim Gorky wrote of this play that he considered it "of the highest value, both from the literary and social point of view, and that its heroic subject and tone are most useful, for our times...
...I knew prison, two deportations and a trial during the war for having written an anti-militarist story...
...And precisely this question, which I dealt with in the review House of Arts (No...
...I know that if here, because of my habit of writing according to my conscience and not on command, I am accused of being a "rightist," over there sooner or later, and for the same reason, I will be charged with Bolshevism...
...Zamiatin is particularly known for his' utopian novel, We, which paved the way for the books Aldous Huxley and George Orwell were to write later on...
...Recently, in March of this year, Oblit (Regional Literary Censorship Committee) took steps which removed all doubts...
...The exceptional solicitude which you have accorded other writers who have appealed to you permits me to hope that my request will also receive favorable consideration...
...If circumstances deny me—temporarily, I hope—the possibility of being a Russian writer, perhaps as with the Polish Joseph Conrad— it will be possible for me to temporarily be an English writer since I have already written in Russian about England...
...Criticism has made of me the Devil of Soviet literature...
...To find it, they did not hesitate to endow me even with the gift of prophecy...
...The representatives of the Volodarski factory wrote, "It is a play by a modern author who treats the subject of the class struggle during antiquity in harmony with the present...
...The play is a tragedy, filled with action...
...The theater agreed to produce the play, the Glavrepertkom (principal repertory committee) authorized it and then...
...Why should what is permitted Pilniak be denied me...
...But if I am not a criminal, I ask that I be temporarily permitted to leave for a year abroad accompanied by my wife, it being understood that I shall return as soon as it is possible to serve the literature of great ideas without courting mean-minded men, and as soon as we shall have changed—at least partly—our way of envisaging the role of writers...
...it is translated from the French with permission...
...Authorization for self-exile was granted—apparently one of the last humane acts carried out by Stalin out of some secret motive of personal pride...
...Like me these last years he has been the principal target of the critics...
...Zamiatin's We appeared "prematurely" in 1929, that is, before Western society had had a foretaste of totalitarianism...
...Here are excerpts from their reports, cited in the proceedings of the meeting held May 15, 1928...
...it describes a situation which already paralyzed writers of merit and which would shortly become a regime of terror.—EDITORS HONORED JOSEPH VISSARIONOVITCH: One who has been condemned to the supreme punish ment—the writer of this letter—appeals to you for commutation of his punishment...
...Zamiatin addressed the letter that follows to Stalin, motivated by his desire to leave his native land...
...In my narrative, "The Monk Erasmus," written in 1920, another critic named Machbitz-Verov discerned a "parable of leaders made wise after the NEP...
...Here Zamiatin recounts a series of measures taken against him by the Soviet authorities which culminated in his total suppression as a writer.] According to the Soviet code, after the death penalty the next lowest degree of punishment is the criminal's expulsion beyond the country's boundaries...
...I shall bring up another name here: Boris Pilniak...
...mocking of the Revolution at the time of the adoption of the NEP program...
...Such motives are authentic, but I do not wish to conceal the essential reason for this request for authorization to leave the country with my wife: it is the hopeless situation in which I, as a writer, find myself here...
...Yet, to rest from this persecution, he was allowed to travel abroad...
...And such a time is already close at hand, I am sure, because as soon as the establishment of the material base will have succeeded, the question of creating the superstructure of an art and a literature truly worth the revolution will inevitably be posed...
...Ideologically speaking, the play is completely acceptable...
...Thus, in my story "God," published in the review Annals in 1916, a certain critic went so far as to see a...
...It will not be easy for me to live abroad either, for over there I cannot be in the camp of reaction...
...My books were forbidden to circulate in the libraries...
...My play The Flea, which had played successfully at the Mxat II (hall of the Moscow Arts Theater) for four seasons was withdrawn from the repertory, etc...
Vol. 9 • July 1962 • No. 3
