THE RUSSIANS CAN BE HAD
SHUB, BORIS
The Russians Can Be Had Part 2 — The Man Won the Stalin Prize By BiShub " rr\ HERE U deep-rooted anxiety." wrote Boris Shub last weak in tho first of his controvorslal articles on bis talks with...
...He was trying to prove to himself that, despite it all, he was a decent human being...
...It Is probably true that the common people of Russia—the peasants, the workers and millions in forced labor camps—can do little against the MVD machinery of repression...
...and the man turns out to be riddled by inner conflict, anxiety and doubt...
...But you can push us just so far...
...In presenting this unparalleled picture of anxiety and doubt...
...The case of Boris Gorbatov pjoves it...
...j Thinking he referred to the early American setbacks I reminded him that .the...
...Politics...
...Just got back from tho same sort of thing in Yugoslavia-- I could have written 25 pages sines wo left Moscow...
...Then why are concentration camps necessary...
...But if the book had appeared this year instead of during the war, we'd have had enough paper to print a. million and I could have made enough to buy up this town...
...Information Control Branch in Berlin, shook his head...
...I know that among the most ardent listeners of our anti-totalitarian broadcasts (such as a radio version of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon) were high Soviet officials in Berlin and the Soviet occupation zone of Germany...
...Gorbatov would love to forget politics...
...Boris Gorbatov...
...And remember, when you tackle us, you're up against two continents—Europe and Asia...
...Stalin must not be discussed...
...Boris Gorbatov is a leading Soviet author who won the Stalin prize for his patriotic novel, The Unconquered, published in 1943...
...By this time nothing coming from the man wearing Stalin's image on his right lapel and the Soviet Deputy's flag on his left could surprise me...
...and Vsevolod Vishnevsky, author of the blood-and-thunder movie We Are From Kronstadt and editor of a Red Army magazine...
...It has nothing to do with politics...
...We proved to him why the pictures were bad— and wo finally convinced him...
...His writings ring with summons to moral courage...
...I was certain he would never speak to me again...
...We know how soul-crushing it Is," Lasky told the truth-shocked Soviet writers sitting in the front row...
...O Stallnye nelzia govoritl Nelsial) ItVfmpesslblel Impossible...
...American writers were sincerely concerned about the Soviet literary purge...
...It's a long way from Moscow to Vladivostok...
...Boris Shub last week told the story of Yuri Korolkov...
...It was time to get back inside...
...No, the Americans don't like to fight...
...Nelsial" he whispered ominously...
...Then the man begins to show beneath the machine-trained robot...
...year to bo writing...
...Lest I be misunderstood: This is not Intended as an argument against all-out American military preparedness, against providing Western Europe with the weapons to resist Soviet aggression...
...I first met Gorbatov on the Elbe in May, 1945, while he was a war correspondent...
...Had there been time enough, Gorbatov could have pulled hundreds of such white rabbits out of his hat...
...That was pretty funny coming irom the Soviet propagandist who had spent most his time since V-J Day traveling .around the Far East, the Balkans and Germany telling the world what was wrong with the United States...
...We risk nothing by making a determined effort to do so...
...My friend Gorbatov thinks ten years of peace are possible...
...I know that our radio documentary, quoting Lenin's indictment of Stalin and demanding his removal as General Secretary of the Bolshevik ' Party, was privately criticized by an important Soviet political officer as being "too mild," "too bourgeois" and "not enough in the style of an indictment...
...He was answering the Russian people...
...countxyl" Then he stalked off into the auditorium...
...Gorbatov sighed, "nothing but politics...
...Ambassador Bedell Smith protested toMolotov: "I cannot recall that Dr...
...THE FOLLOWING MORNING as I drove into the theatre courtyard for the next round of the Writers' Congress, I found Gorbatov and Vishnevsky standing in the early October sunshine, surrounded by German Communist admirers, including seVeral Russian-speaking veterans of the Moscow Free Germany Committee...
...I've been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he told the Germans, with the Soviet interpreter echoing his words, "and the devil isn't as bad as he's painted—I spent two days in Moscow with John Steinbeck...
...Why the present enmity...
...I asked Josselson what Gorbatov had said...
...All of us who had read Russian literature were im...
...With that off his chest, Gorbatov became much friendlier than he had ever been...
...The American soldier certainly doesn't like to fight...
...Gorbatov snapped...
...We showed him the paintings...
...It means that if the United States government devotee only a fraction of the Imagination and the brains that go into the production of lethal weapons to reaching those disaffected Russians directly below the Politburo level, we may still win the war to prevent World War III...
...But he can't have his cake and eat it, as he knows better than anyone else...
...Writing in the Literary Gazette of September 20, 1947, he insinuated that the President of the United States once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and was now following in Hitler's footsteps...
...If we fail, we are no worse off than now., If we succeed, we may still prevent World War HZ...
...We talked straight through the long luncheon recess...
...About a, week later, Gorbatov arrived in Berlin to attend the first postwar German Writers' Congress, lie was accompanied by Valentin Kataev, author of Squaring the Circle, the satire on Moscow housing which made Broadway audiences laugh in 1935...
...Soon tho rains will start—heavy clouds and mud, and the mood will be gone...
...You fellows didn't do vecy well in the Philippines...
...That was going too far...
...Do you believe I believe...
...America needed our blood then," Gorbatov replied, "you don't need it any longer...
...Listen to men like him droning away through an interpreter on "American Imperialism," and they'll dish out the Vishinsky line until the cows come home...
...The Western world was all wrong, too, about Party censorship of art and literature, Gorbatov continued...
...I asked naively...
...We must make it clear to them that we are their best ally in their struggle against their worst enemy — and ours — the present regime...
...In a few moments, Gorbatov was "to address Germany's leading writers in the name of the Soviet Union...
...I said turning to Gorbatov...
...The piece was so scurrilous that U.S...
...It is our job to reach the men who can effect this change before it is too late...
...He replied with a broad grin: "He says you're a .good guy, but why did you have to talk about Stalin...
...If it's all a political matter, as you seem to think," he smiled, "why don't we like Picasso...
...What does all this mean...
...We talked very little politics and a great deal about literature...
...E4rr*nburgr...
...Ton must try to understand...
...A.dozen or so American correspondents and mintary government officials were also on the scene...
...I apologised to Gorbatov...
...Then he tried to sell me the idea that the Russian people were solidly behind the Communist Party...
...Vishnevsky and Gorbatov were in the lobby* smoking and exchanging whispered comments on the unexpected disaster...
...But the policy of containment is hot-enough, unless the world is to remain indefinitely an armed camp, teetering on the verge of indescribable disaster...
...They certainly are...
...Did the Russians...
...Nelzia" U untranslatable...
...Let me give you an example: "Ilya Ehrenburg liked those French paintera...
...Did we force our vieWs on Ehrenburg...
...But we condemn Picasso, together with the other French modernists, because he's a bad artist...
...I know of a Soviet commandant who listened regularly—and with wholehearted approval— to our political commentaries lambasting his government's actions in Berlin...
...Did he believe the United States wanted war with Russia...
...pressed by the inspiring role which Russia's ^ great writers had played in the struggle against Czarist tyranny...
...directed German "radio station...
...Obviously, the stronger we and our allies are, the less likely the Kremlin is to light the fuse—until it has stockpiled the weapons to do so with some prospect of success...
...AT THE MIDDAY RECESS I saw him talking to Josselson...
...Gorbatov knew which side his bread was buttered oh...
...We reminisced over our earlier meeting and agreed that back on the Elbe, the Americans and Russians had hit it off very well...
...We can discuss everything," he said in a low voice, "everything except Stalin...
...When I saw him again in Berlin in October,4 1947, he nad just made world headlines with an article on Truman...
...But Gorbatov continued: "No, your soldiers didn't fight well when they returned to the Philippines either...
...I know a high official of Soviet Military Government who said not long ago that Germany lost the war against Russia because of Hitler's political stupidity...
...Then he walked away, and stood alone...
...We showed him the films...
...No, I don't think so," he replied sarcastically...
...the Pravda correspondent in Berlin, where Mr...
...IN DEALING WITH THE SOVIET military and political easte for two years, I found that the confusion, anxiety and doubt in men like Korolkov and Gorbatov permeates the whole Soviet hierarchy...
...Would they be satisfied with his answer...
...Nothing of the sort...
...I don't...
...His reply had come from a million miles away...
...and when, the heroic Russian people finally regain their freedom and they ask you...
...In the corridors, the wife of a German novelist remarked that they looked like a pair of Kulturpanzer ("cultural tanks") flown in from Moscow to capture the Berlin intelligentsia...
...Something was gnawing away inside him, giving him no peace...
...He would love to settle down in that country home and write...
...THERE'S NOTHING UNIQUE about the case of Yuri Korolkov, described in last* week's article...
...In many case* we didn't have originals, but we had films made...
...I'm losing valuable time with all these congresses...
...He wasn't doing a very good job...
...to work and write when behind us atanda a political censor and behind him" stands the police...
...Goebbels of unsavory memory, at tho height of our common struggle against Nasi Germany, ever stooped to greater ridicule and vituperation against tho head of-an enemy country than has Mr...
...We called a meeting of our leading Soviet art critics and Invited Ehrenburg to attend...
...Your atom bombs mean very little in a country as large as ours...
...But talk to them in Russian on matters touching them mo|e vitally, and the protective coat acquired lrt the Party school begins to split at the seams...
...The Russians are a heroic people," Vishnevsky warmly agreed...
...It was just after Melvin J. Lasky, The New Leader's Berlin correspondent, had thrown a monkey wrench into the elaborate Soviet scheme to use the Writers' Congress to mobilize German intellectuals for Moscow's stepped-up anti-Ameiican campaign...
...What did we do...
...Why don't you stick te your American problems and let me worry about Russia...
...Instead, Gorbatov exclaimed: y, "111 tell them I fought for my...
...The Russians are a patient, peace-loving people," Gorbatov replied, "a very patient people...
...But when, as now/ disaffection permeates the upper stratum, when it exists high In the Red Army, In the Party and in the MVD, when the privileged intellectual and scientific elite have grievances Just as deeply rooted as those of the helpless masses, all the ingredients for radical change are present...
...Gorbatov's outraged German Communist comrades waited for the withering reply that would put the insolent American in his place...
...He tried hard to convince me he was basically a regular guy, a good Russian born of humble working class parents who had risen the hard way, by the sweat of his brain...
...The Russians were still smarting under, the impact of the Lasky speech,"Which the morning Berlin press gave a big play...
...We had two pleasant evenings...
...Maybe he'd like to write about the things that torment him...
...And this Is the best time of tho...
...He is a member of the Supreme Soviet, owns two cars, a country*house, and is married to a movie star...
...Gorbatov turned scarlet...
...If you drop jour bomb, we'll find a suitable reply...
...I RAN INTO GORBATOV in the lobby of the redecorated annex to the Max Reinhardt Theatre, located a stone's throw from the Berlin headquarters of the MVD...
...He knows that, too...
...He is one of the editors of the Literary Gazette, a Moscow weekly which for the past two years has carried stronger anti-American propaganda than the Pravda...
...But he wasn't content to let it go at that...
...We have no concentration camps," Gorbatov declared, "that sort of thing existed in 1937 when we were eliminating the Trotskyite Fifth Column, but we have none of that now...
...Gorbatov had dreadful doubts...
...His final defense had come from the same .dark recess as "I'll tell them I fought /or my country," * • * BEFORE THE MICROPHONE on the floodlit platform ten minutes later, Gorbatov was back at the old stand...
...He cut short his monologue abruptly...
...If the Soviet Government doesn't have the solid loyalty of tho man at this level, there may still be a cheaper way of cracking open tho Stalin regime than by fighting an atomic world war...
...It's bad business starting up with us...
...It means muat not be don*, can't be done, dare not be done, all wrapped up In one...
...he pleaded with me—,"1 was nine years old at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution—twelve when I joined the Young Communist League—at eighteen I was In the Party—I've lived under she Soviet system all my life—I've never known anything else—I believe...
...Yes, we are a patient people," Vishnevsky chimed in, "but our patience is almost exhausted...
...Iti did Very well," he replied, "a half million copies were printed...
...It wasn't addressed to- me at all...
...After all, he's a Communist...
...Shub was political advisor to RIAS, tho U.S...
...I replied that he had misunderstood Lasky's speech...
...All I want Is to finish my now • country homo and get back to work on my novel...
...Red Army had had its initial difficulties against the Wehrv macht...
...Why...
...Russian-born Mike Josselson, then Deputy Chief of the U.S...
...To banish the spectre of war, we must give the Russians positive proof that their liberation serves our self-interest as well as theirs...
...Gorbatov with his massive body, bull neck and a large eggbald head, and Vishnevsky, his barrel chest covered with three rows of campaign ribbons, were formidably a * Despite thfir exterior, the Soviet writers were anything but aggressive when we began to talk...
...I know that our documentary play on the Soviet-run former Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen—climaxed by the flight of an MVD officer who could no longer stomach sitting behind the desk formerly occupied by an SS man—caused virtual panic, in the offices of the Taegliche Rundschau, the official Soviet organ for Germany...
...wrote Boris Shub last weak in tho first of his controvorslal articles on bis talks with the Russians, "right up near the top of Soviet power pyramid...
...Was it...
...what did you do to help them win their liberation from Stalin's rule, what will you reply...
...Gorbatov against tho chief of a ' friendly and Allied stats...
...I asked...
...Some day he'll have to make up his mind...
...studied them with us...
...I asked Gbrbatov how his last novel had made out...
...I had read enough of Gorbatov to know that he wasn't the good-natured fool he was pretending to be...
Vol. 32 • May 1949 • No. 21
