WITCH-HUNT: RUSSIAN STYLE

...Formalism and bourgeois cosmopolitanism are inseparable from Veselovsky's teaching...

...published in 1947 (/« Dtetoevsy's Creative Laboratory), was sharply criticized in Literary Gazette and elsewhere, and he had now to confess that, being over a period of years "Saricd away" by the Dostoevsky theme, he "spoke in- too mild a tone of his re...

...Zhirmunsky voiced his agreement with the attack on Veselovsky in Culture and Life and called upon Soviet literary scholars to bo "militant, ideological and party-minded" in appraising literature, both of the past and of the present...

...This book, published by the Leningrad University in 1946, pays a warm tribute to the genius of Veselovsky and studies certain standard motifs and images in Russian tales as a reflection of historically known rituals and social institutions, drawing largely upon comparative material from the folklore of various peoples...

...until his name4 begah *to tgute in the official Soviet campaign against the West, ought to be thankful IS Zhirmunsky for thinking so highly of them...

...Here the chief victim was Professor Vinogradov whose scholarly treatise on the Russian language was until then regarded as the authoritative work on the subject...

...Professor Tronsky and others all urging Soviet literary scholars to become "party-minded and purposeful...

...PROFESSOR B. EICHENBAUM...

...This is the Soviet story...

...This book of mine proved also mistaken...

...Letters were also .sent by Professor V. Dcsnitsky and Professor M. A/atiovsky...

...Russian novelist Peter Pavlenk© said last week, "our literature, journalism, theatre and cinema have (been) inspired with the ideas of peace and friendship between peoples...

...Tarasenkov in Novy Afir (February, 1948) wrote that Propp represented "Veselovsky carried to absurdity and obscurantism," and that his book sometimes gave the impression not so much of a publication of the Lenigrad University as of a Berlin or London telephone directory — so many foreign authorities were cited and quoted in it...

...Parallel with this, a campaign was launched against similar trends in Soviet linguistics...

...Aftei this, no one dared, of course, even to dream of detending Veselovsky or attempting to trim him up as a materialist, a typical man of the 1860's, who was in sympathy with the iedas of revolutionary democracy, with Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov—this was the line previously taken by Veselovsky's partisans...

...SOME SOVIET LITERARY scholars, he said, turned to the traditions of the liberal-bourgeois scholarship of the past and in the first place to the heritage of Veselovsky, and consciously or unconsciously idealized that past and often repeated the old mistakes which are particularly harmful at the present juncture...

...THE FIRST TO SPEAK in the "debate" that followed, or rather to mount up the confessional, was Professor V. Ye...

...The meeting passed unanimously a resolution proclaiming Veselovsky a characteristic representative of bourgeois-liberal academic scholarship, "alien and hostile to us," and his method "diametrically opposed to Marxism...

...Hence my critics' charges of harmful cosmopolitanism which I certainly cannot reject...

...Ms is the story of'a new type of purge—a purge of literary scholars...

...he was proclaimed one of Veselovsky's surviving followers and accused, according to the standard recipe, of "kow-towing and servility before the bourgeois West...

...Doltnin went even so far as to admit that he had "distorted the truth about Dostoevsky," but he, too, "subjectively" was convinced that in his latest work he was already treading the right path...

...The procession of the penitents and iheir critics continued, Professor Gukovsky...

...The man who last week received the applause of thousands at New York's Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace—Alexander Fadeev—4s the man who led that purge...

...To link up," he said, "presentday Soviet scholarship with the old acadomic tradition was to forget that between them and us stands Great October...

...KSSSm to srfresanhto SSifc (at Est to the past) iifNndto pelitajtUv naarttghtod...

...The book was, on ifs publication, favorably reviewed by Professor V. M. Zhirmunsky...

...Professor H-irkhudarov, to the fact that they have so far fulled to conic forward with sufficiently sharp criticism of Vinogradov's book on Russian language...

...American "Imperialists" were not forgotten In the resolution: the tendency of some scholars to revive Veselovsky's teaching and to "impose" on Soviet scholarship alien bourgeois-liberal principle...

...He criticized a number of works by Leningrad scholars, which in different degrees "repeat the errors of comparativism, and suffer from objectivism, apoliticalness and "kow-towing...

...Dolinin agreed also with the sharp criticisms of his earlier work on The Brothers Kit/ramazov which was "based on the erroneous application to the appraisal of Dostoevsky's work of Lenin's words about Tolstoy...

...Since then every Soviet article on general questions of literature, every book review has the inevitable references to Veselovsky and his harmful cdmpafaiivUm and liberal-bourgeois cosmopolitanism...

...but which in the dsjaafogical use of U by paassni-day American Imperialist has reveals* gbelf as a seal throat to freedom and Em* ladif isisHPi of the paaptaa «f the world.- - ?Perhaps, 'American "Imperialists," vjho ra»J> eeMainiy never heard of rtaeJovshy...

...PROFESSOR B. TOMASHEVSKY, whose contribution,^) the study of literature, both in its historical and theoretical aspect, in the earlier period ¦ >f the Revolution was very important, and who was unable to lie present at the meeting, published an article the next clay in the newspaper The Leningrad University in which he also chimed in with the chorus of penitents: "I regard the fight against cosmopolitism in literary science as essential, not only because cosmopolitanism leads us into a blind alley, but because it serves the forces of world reaction...

...The present campaign against comparativism and "cosmopolitanism" in literary science is, however, extremely symptomatic and fits well into the general anti-Western pattern prevailing in the USSR...

...At the end of 1947 Oktinbr published several articles against Veselovsky and his "heirs," his school in literary science...

...I DID NOT consider myself a comp'arativist," he said, "but I interpreted the Russian tales through the creations of other peoples which belonged to earlier phases id the development of human culture...

...Although the passage about Veselovsky was cut out of the printed version of Fadeev's speech when it appeared in the review Oktiabr (October), it was he who started the Veselovsky 'controversy...

...Like Propp, he tried to deny his own and Ms colleagues' "subjective" guilt, but admitted the "objectively" harmful effect of those survivals of-the past which are, he said, to be found also in his own works on Tolstoy and Lermontov...

...Next to these, the review., however, somewhat unexpectedly gave room to two articles in defense of Veselovsky...

...However, his use of the comparative method and his respect for the acknowledged Western authorities were enough to expose him to attacks, and so now he had to mount the rostrum and admit before the Learned Council of the Leningrad University the fallacy of his views and method...

...Asadovsky, a noted folklore scholar, also stigmatised his adherence to "old pre-Marxian science of literature...

...Zhirmunsky ended by recognizing that his-position in the discassion en Veaelevsky was wrong from tie political point of view and therefore also from the scholarly...

...This may be partly due to the fact that in this case there have so far been no outright purges, and partly to the fact that the names of the men involved are comparatively unfamiliar outside a narrow circle of specialists, though they include some of the best in Soviet literary scholarship...

...Awareness of one's mistakes imposes many obligations...

...One of these observers is GLEB STRUVE...

...Meetings were held in 1948 in the Universities of Moscow and Leningrad to expose and denounce the Veselovsky school and its "survivals...

...This was followed bv an even more scathing and unbridled attack on Veselovsky by Tarusenkov in Novy Mir (The New World) for February 1948...

...Later, however, when the attack on Veselovsky and his "heirs" was in full swing, Propp came In for his share of abuse...

...A professor of Russian at the University of California and visiting lecturer in Russian literature at Harvard...

...the one, rather dignified, by Professor Shishmarev, and the other, ;i little ambiguous, by'the critic Viktor Shklovsky, himself a former "suspect" as one of the leaders of the so-called 'Formalist" school in literary criticism...

...and somewhat later by the official ex-cathedra "excommunication" of Veselovsky and hi* followers in Kultura i Zhizn (Culture and Life...

...And Professor Dolinin informed the audience that he was now turning, his attention from the apparently slippery subject of Dostoevsky to the safer one of the "revolutionary democrats" and concentrating on the work of Belinsky and Herzen, * * * THEN CAME THE TURN of Professor M. P. Alekseycv, who has been specializing for some time in the relations between Russian a/id Western European literatures (his studies of Pushkin and English literature, etc...

...The resolution speaks of Shishmarev, Zhirmunsky, Alekseycv and Azadovsky as active champions of Veselovsky, and iif F.iehenbaum.Tomushevsky and others as their abetters...

...people to be sparely *»> innocent peartim* of abIraet lesunkao...

...The book was published way back in 1941, but it came in for an attack only in 1947, and Fadeev was duly followed by an all-too-willing procession of other Soviet critics, all of whom denounced Nusinov as unpatriotic, servile, a bootlicker, etc...

...The chief articles were written by the widely known Communist critic V. Kirpotin...

...Struve is the author of the volumntnous and definitive "25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature...

...actionary ideology...

...Not to understand this, not to understand the most important thing, is objectively tantamount to sliding down onto tha tracks of bourgeois cosmopolitanism...

...He was followed by Professor A. S. Dolinin, author of a number of interesting and valuable ^biographical and critical studies of Dostoevsky...

...The Party's directives," he said, "open the only right path for correcting our mistakes...

...SHISHMAREV'S and Shklovsky's timid attempts at defending Veselovsky and his legacy, and reconciling it with Marxism and Leninism-Stalinnm, received a crushing retort from the •une Kirpotin in a new lead article in Oklinhr for January 1948...

...It draws the attention of the Russian language section of the University of Leningrad and of its head...

...Professor V. F. Shishmarev, a specialist in French literature and Fellow of the Soviet Academy, on whom a French University conferred recently an honorary degree, did not appear in person, but sent a letter which, says the Literary Gazette, 'did not completely satisfy the gathering," although 'n it hi sayS that he shares completely the point of view of Culture and Lifa with regard to cosmopolitanism, "servil.ity" and the necessity "to fight 'resolutely bourgeois scholarship," and promises to take all this into consideration in his future work: "This is demanded from me by my scholar's conscience and my love for my Soviet country...

...Dolonin's latest work...

...In fact, Propp's footnotes give constant references to the standard works of Levy-Bruhl Boas, Webster, Kroebci, Fraser, Frobenius, Breasted and other outstanding anthropologists and folklorists, although it must be said that there are comparatively few recent works among those cited by Propp, and much of the newest American and British anthropological literature apparently remained unknown to him...

...to confess to his "uncritical attitude towards Veselovsky's works" and promise td revise completely his former standpoint...

...Witch-Hunt: Russian Style The Soviets Purge Literary Scholarship By Gleb Struve THE SOVIET WITCH-HUNT in the field of literary scholarship has so far attracted much less attention than the controversy over the Lysenko theory of genetics, the Varga incidents, or the purges of writers and composers...

...Propp was followed by his benevolent critic Zhirmunsky, one of the outstanding Soviet literary scholars with a pre-revolutionary training, who until recently was not ashamed to acknowledge his debt to Veselovsky and in 1940 wrote an appreciative introduction to a new edition of-Veselovsky's essays on Historical Potties...

...Veselovsky was now branded as a bourgeois liberal and a cosmopolitan, and the attack was launched all along the line...

...The former, a Communist who wrote numerous officially approved introductions to various reprints of Russian classics, pleaded guilty to not condemning more severely "the excessive delicacy" of his own attitude to Veselovsky and his "heirs" in an article written in 1938 and his advice to Soviet scholars to learn from Vosclovsky...

...The account of the meeting convened by the.Learned Council of the Leningrad University in response to the arthrle in Kultura i Zhizn vas published recently in the Proceedings of that University, and a detailed report of it appeared in Literarurriaya Gazeta (The Literary Gazette) of November 13, 1948...

...The attack on this particular sector of the anti-Western cultural front was launched in 1947 by Alexander Fadeev, the well-known Soviet novelist and Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers, when he, in a paper read at a writers' conference, took , to pieces a book on Pushkin and world literature by the well-known and erstwhile orthodox Communist critic I. Nusinpv, accusing the latter of servility befqre the West, of minimizing Pushkin's originality, of showing him as dependent on foreign stimuli...

...In the same speech Fadeyev accused a number of" Soviet literary scholars and linguists of still adhering to the comparative, "bourgeois," "cosmopolitan" theories of the great Russian 19th century scholar Alexander Veselovsky, who until then was held in great esteem in the Soviet Union, as witnessed not only by the article on him in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, but also by a number of special articles written by leading Soviet literary scholars (such as Orlov, Zhirmunsky, Desnitsky, Azadovsky, Shishmarev, and others) in 1938, in connection with the centenary of Veselovsky's birth...

...Apparently an inveterate disease is not so easily cured...

...DURING THE 31 YEARS of the existence of the Soviet state...

...Propp, author of a book called The Historical Roots of the Magic Tale...

...Poor Soviet scholars who have to give chapter and I verse from Lenin in support of their literary views—how easy it is for them to misapply those quotations and thus commit an unforgivable sin...

...The resolution calls upon Leningrad scholars to revise their theoretical, and practical work and to keep up a daily fight for "partyinindedness" in literature and art...

...Dementeev called upon literary scholars to take "an active offensive against all manifestations of an ideology alien to the Soviet people...

...Other observers know well that recent Russian literary history has cantered around the Bolshevik Party's struggle against "internationalist, cosmopolitan" forces...

...He spoke of folklore stody in the Soviet Union today "lagging behind the general surge of socialist reconstruction'' and urged that it was high time "to break with the backward tradition'' and "create works worthy of our great age...

...another prominent scholar and author of valuable works on Tolstoy and Lermontov, ascribed the mistakes and errors of certain literary scholars to a fallacy about "pure" academic scholarship said to exist for specialists, and to kow-towing before the West...

...is described as harmful, because It is being done from the standpoint which is occupied hysAmeriean and Western scholars who .represent the reaction and advocate the notion of "extra-national and supra-class scholarship...

...THE MEETING first listened to a report by A. G. Dementeev...