'Disturbances' Among the Writers
'Disturbances' Among the Writers THE NEXT DOCUMENT sounds paler than the student's letter (it must be read between the lines), but it may be more significant, for it reveals a bold and dissident...
...She found no harmful tendencies in these works...
...M. Aliger noted the tactlessness of V. Kaverin's speech and said that "his main thesis was intolerance of criticism...
...A non-professional if literary-minded audience, which attended in sizable numbers, created unhealthy disturbances...
...I use the word 'disputes' to stress the fact that I do not have in mind our enemies from the Western bourgeois camp...
...Fruitful discussion was impeded also by the short-tempered and angry tone of a number of speeches...
...took the sharpest stand against its critics and attacked both D. Yeremin's report and his article...
...With this conflict in the air, the Moscow Branch of the Soviet Writers' Union met in plenary session two months ago...
...Protracted argument went on at the plenary session about the works printed in Literaturnaya Moskva, about D. Yeremin's article in Literaturnaya Gazeta criticizing them and about V. Dudintsev's novel, A of By Bread Alone...
...lie said: "It is clear to all of us, even to those who do not particularly follow foreign literary and public life, what the topics of the disputes are...
...He demanded friendly participation for himself, but reviled others with abusive words...
...although he used strong language himself and eden threatened to take his opponent to court...
...Unfortunately, the speaker was not guided by this dictum...
...A. Turkov, taking exception to several statements in D. Yeremin's article, tried to justify petty themes and nihilism in Soviet litrature...
...A deepened interest in the contradictions and complexities of life, in man's inner life, and in the formulation of great social and political questions...
...D. Yeremin's report failed to touch upon a number of important problems that trouble the literary community...
...Debate was not essentially concerned with problems but with the evaluation of particular works, and few of those were discussed...
...Many works have appeared that evoked broad interest and were hotly discussed and disputed...
...Something snapped in me, because I had always heard that our planes were the fastest and the best...
...And it keeps me from swimming...
...Expressing doubt as to the possibility of truly creative discussions, V. Dudintsev depicted criticism as a man striking out angrily with a club...
...One must seek the reasons for these failings in Lhe ideological immaturity of these writers...
...N. Chertova gave a detailed analysis of V. Dudintsev's novel Not By Bread Alone...
...Messerschmitts were shooting down our planes, although our planes were superior in numbers...
...V. Dudintsev, who spoke twice at the plenary session, attempted to tell those present how the idea of his novel Not By Bread Alone arose in his mind...
...Some of the points V. Kaverin made were taken up bv other speakers...
...That is why the plenary session of the Moscow branch of the USSR Writers' Union was important D. Yeremin delivered a report entitled "Some Problems in the Development of Prose...
...Chukovska, for example, "that D. Yeremin,s article, which employs arbitrary interpretation and quotation, idju-tly accuses the editors of Literaturnaya Moskra of tendentious selection...
...Disturbances' Among the Writers THE NEXT DOCUMENT sounds paler than the student's letter (it must be read between the lines), but it may be more significant, for it reveals a bold and dissident spirit in a class long docile: Soviet writers, who through the years had alternately yielded to economic pampering and political persecution...
...It would also help if the leaders of the USSR Writers' Union played a more active role in the plenary sessions of the organization of the Moscow writers, the largest detachment in our literature...
...V. Kaverin demonstrated a bitter intolerance of criticism...
...This applies particularly to V. Dudintsev's Not By Bread Alone and D. Granin's Personal Opinion, published in the magazine Novy Mir...
...However, she too exhibited intolerance of criticism in rejecting all criticism of the second issue of Literaturnaya Moskva...
...The plenary session lacked a truly businesslike and creative atmosphere...
...S...
...The writers of these works proceed from isolated instances and not from the fundamental laws governing our development...
...It seems to me that Dudintsev did not fully and carefully consider the fact that there is only one road to complete Communism, the road of the dictatorship of the proletariat, with all that this implies...
...I have a right to such a wish...
...Some foreign critics demand that we forego the main thing, demand a revision of all the principles on which socialist literature is based...
...Y. Yevtushenko, in asking that "labels not be pasted on people," at the same time used such expressions in his speech as "We'll give them a sharp rap across the knuckles," referring to those who do not share his literary sympathies...
...A few remarks in conclusion...
...I remember the early days of [World War II]," he said...
...The only report on the Moscow meeting we have is that of tile Party-controlled Literaturnaya Cazeta (March 19...
...I had an increasing sense of hurt, spiritual chill and offense...
...A. Chakovsky spoke of the literary discussions that have taken place abroad during recent months...
...Dudintsev called those who had sharply criticized his novel "panic-mongers...
...I am speaking of those points of view that are beir.g voiced in certain non-capitalist countries, particularly Poland and Yugoslavia...
...His defense of A. Yashin's story "Levers" and N. Zhdanov's story "A Trip Home" sounded strange...
...What halter is it that prevents a man from swimming who has begun his swimming by having his novel printed in 140,000 copies...
...But with the "thaw" in the spring of 1954 and the consequent rehabilitation of many "forbidden" writers, younger novelists and poets took new heart...
...He said: "I think that we might be allowed, like beginning swimmers, to try to swim on our own, to take our own chances of drowning...
...Let us consider whether the works which the critic picked out for the 'bouquet' of gloom and despondency occupy a large place in the issue," said V. Kaverin...
...He is also the author of the sensible dictum that "literature, naturally, can best develop in a friendly atmosphere of broad discussion...
...Dudintsev's words about the 'little halter' that ostensibly prevents him from swimming leave the most painful impression...
...D. Yeremin asked...
...I must say that it was the active Soviet person, the Communist, in me that was offended above all...
...What are the particular characteristics of the prose of 1956...
...But, alas, I always feel a halter, like the harness that children are sometimes held on...
...Considering the complete context of Dudintsev's speech, it must be said that something much broader is al stake...
...Thev come to two signatures out of 52 signatures in the issue...
...D. Yeremin's article, which justly criticized certain of the works published in the second issue of Literaturnaya Moskva, evoked the speaker's particular wrath...
...The most celebrated such work was Vladimir Dudintsev's novel, Not By Bread Alone, published almost year ago and under Party fire since the ideological belt-tightening last December...
...Many of the speakers who took the floor after V. Dudintsev rightly criticized his haughty and immodest stand as out of keeping with the duty and obligations of a Soviet writer...
...This is particularly obvious where the critic analyzes the poetry published in the anthology...
...said I...
...Occasionally one got the impression that only the Literaturnaya Moskva anthology and V. Dudintsev's novel Not By Bread Alone were being discussed, rather than all the prose written in 1956 by Moscow writers...
...Those who took part in the discussions failed to make up this deficiency...
...Nihilism is a bad word, employed to frighten us...
...L. Chukov-skaya also disagreed with D. Yeremin's appraisal of A. Yashin's "Levers" and N. Zhdanov's "A Trip Home...
...Unfortunately, the past year also saw the appearance of many works in which the authors failed to take the proper stand and were unable to solve their ideological and artistic tasks in a fully realistic way...
...Such sessions of the Hungarian Writers' Union in 1955 gave birth to the Petofi Circle...
...The various points of view expressed in the discussions were not given thorough evaluation...
...Editors soon began publishing stories with so-called "negative heroes"—self-contained men who silently or actively fought the brutality and corruption of Stalinism...
...More recently, .. group of stories in the annual anthology Literaturnaya Moskva also hit home...
...I should like to urge as forcibly as possible that we categorically reject all ideological compromises...
...V. Kaverin, one of the editors of Literaturnaya Moskva...
...It seems lo me...
...Revolutionary development, which consists of a struggle of opposed forces, was given a one-sided interpretation, and the favorable side was emphasized exclusively...
...K. Simonov answered Dudintsev's speech on behalf of the editors of Novy Mir: "[Dudintsev] has stood upon his novel, so to speak, and rather immodestly called upon us to regard it not as a book by the writer Dudintsev, but as a sort of programmatic document of the epoch...
...This led to distortion...
...M. Aliger saw no serious shortcomings in A. Yashin's story "Levers...
...But most people forget that nihilism was once a revelation," said A. Turkov...
...We have no reason to be embarrassed and silent about this, because the writer in a socialist society is not weighed down by but proud of the fact that he works under the guidance of the Party and consciously rejects everything fortuitous and superficial in his creative work that might in any way operate at odds with the interests of this dictatorship...
...I simply do not want to see a repetition of what I saw then...
...There was unfortunately a great deal in the work of the plenary session that was unsatisfactory...
...Despite its one-sided Bolshevik rhetoric, the intensity of the conflict emerges with striking clarity from this condensation: The past literary year has been quite productive...
...to A. Yashin's 'Levers,' N. Zhdanov's 'A Trip Home' and Y. Nagibin's 'A Light in the Window,' which appeared in the second issue of the Literaturnaya Moskva anthology...
...Many important questions in our literary life were touched upon in the discussion that developed after D. Yeremin's report...
...Kirsanov spoke of] "the one-sidedness of a number of literary works in past years, a one-sidedness that was called 'lack of conflict,' or, when laid on more heavily, "embellishing.' First the writer selected a definite appropriate model, then he tailored the character to its measure...
...It is said that I express 'blackening' tendencies...
...That is not so...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 20
