A Troubled Dialogue

...Now, after Hungary has just gone through such a terrible upheaval, it is too soon to say what prospects for further development confront her literature and which writers will take up this or that position...

...5, The recent changes in Russia have provoked a great deal of plain speaking in Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, especially among writers and artists...

...It only remains for me to answer the personal questions which you ask me at the end of your letter...

...And when will light be shed on the others, on the deportees who were sentenced to death without trial...

...There are, however, certain unimpeachable witnesses whom you cannot possibly ingnore—witnesses from your own ranks...

...Literary exercises of that kind are broadcast every day by Radio Free Europe and similar broadcasting stations...

...All these discussions are directed toward liberating our literature and our art, as well as our historical science, from dogmatism, to which the cult of personality was indissolubly tied, so as to eliminate all that is lifeless and false, and clear away the dust that has darkened the horizon...

...True, but you, as a writer, must know that the shifts and changes that make up an epoch in literature cannot be measured merely by calendar dates...

...Our relations with Poland, following the recent talks between the political leaders of our two countries, have become particularly cordial...

...1 ou know better than I do that, about 1932, most Russian writers of some repute in your country fell victims to a reign of terror...

...It becomes more and more clear each day that, in Hungary, reaction was playing for high stakes...

...In the meantime, however, might it not be useful to acquaint Russian readers with a number of reputable works on the subject which have already appeared elsewhere...

...are most reactionary and that the great social upheavals taking place in the life of contemporary man seem to you hateful and repulsive...

...Therefore, we shall not renew the dialogue until you are in a position to reply fully to the questions I have asked and to those I have in reserve, just as I have replied and am ready to continue to reply to yours...

...but this is a case in which polemics, however harsh, is better than hypocritical reticence...

...Marina Tsetayeva: but the terrible circumstances of some of these suicides have never been revealed...

...And just as the socialist development of our whole way of life was not brought to a halt in the period of the Stalin cult, so Soviet literature could not be halted in its socialist development...

...You were kind enough to ask my opinion as to which independent left-wing foreign writers, hitherto unavailable in Russian, would be worth translating...

...I do not feel that my digression on this burning topic is superfluous...

...Today as never before, there is a powerful striving in our literature to get down to the roots of its great traditions, to draw strength from them and to develop all their concealed potentialities, so that in its every word our literature will be alive, forthright, authoritative and worthy of its great purpose...

...That is why insults and unseemly statements flow from your pen...

...Everyone knows, although you are unaware of it, that the heart of the revolt was not the archbishopric, but the university and the Csepel factory, and that the regular army supplied the insurgents with weapons and munitions...

...It stands to reason that your leaders are afraid of a debate on the subject...

...I asked you the five questions chiefly with the hope of bringing our conversation around to certain important facts—facts of universal interest—concerning your recent literary history...

...Historical circumstances so dictated that, for a certain period of time, Soviet literature was obliged to exist under the unfavorable conditions of the Stalin cult...

...I think that perhaps my chief merit, both as a socialist and as a writer, is to have refuted in practice the assertion with which you constantly terrorize a number of perfectly honorable people: namely, that anyone who leaves the Communist party must inevitably end up a fascist...

...In Italy, a similar phenomenon occurred during the last years leading to the collapse of the dictatorship...

...Silone, I should like to pose a few questions myself: What do you think of the situation of literature in the present-day world, and particularly, of course, in Italy...

...Fadeyev's suicide served recently to remind us of all the other Soviet writers before him who took their own lives: Mayakovskv, Yesenin...

...Your own students, I am convinced, would make a better choice than anybody, if only they had free access to the original editions of the books at present forbidden and if foreign cultural periodicals were to be found in your bookshop windows and library reading-rooms as easily as your own publications are available in the West...

...He at least is certain to be judged not by his faith but by his works...

...The fact remains that, whenever we happen to talk to a Russian belonging to the new orthodoxy, we almost invariably get the impression that, however much he may know about the rest of the world, he does not know the essential things...

...You do not like figures, and I will not go into them here, although they give clear proof...

...There is no point in continuing, in further subjecting ¦our readers to this monotonous litany of the dead, of names lined up on the page, one beside the other, like tows of identical crosses in a war cemetery...

...How else can one define an esthetic canon which demands from the writer and the artist an optimistic picture of a society where human beings are so oppressed and terrorized...

...A World Apart, by Gustav Herling...

...Furthermore, you know very well that, after a letter such as that which you have taken the liberty of sending to me, a dialogue between us is no longer possible...

...Old, pre-socialist forms of realism continue to exist...

...To begin with, one can deduce from it that you listen every day to the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe and other Western stations...

...Koltsoy, Tretyakov luiye now, according to recent reports, been posthumously rehabilitated...

...It is hardly necessary to draw a parallel here with the principles that govern the bourgeois esthetic...

...These are merely promises...

...How do you regard the incontestable fact that this literature is developing ever more vigorously at the present time...

...Let me now reply to the questions you have raised: 1. Mikhail Sholokhov never at any time linked his criticisms with any directives of any sort from the Government in relation to writers...

...I beg your pardon —I was almost forgetting that you cannot reply...

...The first piece of concrete information," one reads in this report, "came from a visit to the Lenin State Library...

...For example, you mention Gorky: but don't you think, just for a start, that it is time something was done to clear up the mystery of his death...

...What happened to the rest...

...We were greatly relieved to learn that some of them (Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yuri Olesha, N. Erdman) have been heard of again recently...

...but I would have no difficulty in proving that it was your own propagandists who spread that illusory catchword in the West, and that it was accepted, guaranteed and extolled by your "progressive" friends...

...For the Spanish Civil War merely sharpened the cleavage between Right and Left, whereas the Hungarian insurrection, by bringing back to the mainstream of freedom a number of forces which had previously been captives of Communism, may yet give birth to a new Left...

...But, in your discussion of the period I referred to, you have achieved the feat of not once letting the name of Zhdanov escape your pen...

...To admit that there can be more than one way of criticizing bourgeois society, more than one way of envisaging a different social order, would drain your political monopoly of all moral justification, leaving it only the claims of force and the fait accompli...

...Silone, long a foe of the Fascist regime in Italy and since the war « leader of Italian Social Democracy, addressed the following questions to members of the Soviet delegation: "1...

...Could not a fund be set up for this purpose, to which writers all over the world might contribute...

...Your political regime is totally incompatible with any realistic representation of society...

...I fear] that your frontiers will continue to remain closed to the most significant works of the left-wing independents as long as you have a totalitarian state...

...But your second admission is far more important— and, moreover, is particularly pointed up by your picturesque and truculent expressions of feigned indignation...

...Let me begin by saying that I am well aware of the enormous number of translations, from every conceivable language, that are being done in Russia...

...asenskv...

...Silone, is why you are getting so nervous...

...I can only assume that someone must have led you into error...

...But you know perfectly well, Ivan Anissimov, that they were not mass-produced men...

...state realism" would be a more "realistic" term and would render its true meaning more accurately...

...At the outset, however, one must advance a few general considerations...

...that your irritated letter, which deliberately falsifies the facts and destroys all perspective, and which is so violently anti-socialist and anti-Marxist, is evidence of the fact that your intention...

...It is a literature containing much innovation, which at times may appear incomprehensible...

...Your letter shows that it is precisely you who do not want— and even fear—a continuation of this dialogue, because you know that, despite the furious attacks of the reactionaries, the socialist world is getting stronger and stronger and that the new wave of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist •slander, to the unleashing of which you make your own eager contribution, is already decreasing and must inevitably collapse...

...But our agreement stands, and, as you will see, our magazine Tempo Presente is publishing your letter in full...

...It is imperative that one should study this literature in depth and that one should approach it without prejudice...

...If you have not read these books, would you like me to ask the publishers to send them to you...

...In conclusion, Mr...

...In spite of this...

...There can be no other country in which so many translations from foreign languages are published...

...I. Anissimov Dear Mr...

...But I am grateful in advance for your offer to send me the books referred to in the fourth question...

...The subject of Hungary was, of course, not included in the questions I asked you last September, but you correctly surmised that any discussion between us, now and for a long time to come, must inevitably take it into account...

...2. Soviet literature is, at the present time, in a complex state of creative tension...

...It cannot be doubted that it thereby suffered serious harm...

...Heimland, a Yiddish journal, was in the library up to the volumes of 1948 and no later...

...3. The concept of "the thaw...

...that is what the Hungarian defenders of the people's democracy and the Soviet soldiers had to do, and they did not hesitate...

...It seems to us that our Polish friends still have much to reconsider and think hard on before the truth is revealed to them...

...Would it not now be possible for the Soviet Writers' Union to sponsor a thoroughgoing inquiry into that vast holocaust of eminent men...

...You exceed all limits, Mr...

...Belief in, and the deepest respect for, the aspirations and exigencies of the masses are the imprescriptible characteristics of socialist realism...

...La terre inhumaine, by Joseph Czapski...

...I must tell you straight away that, when I came to the part of your letter dealing with the recent Hungarian insurrection and found you simply repeating the scandalous thesis of your government, I was filled with indignation and disgust...

...How is one to judge your attitude...

...then came Granin's turn for his story "An Opinion of One's Own," Yevtushenko's for his poem "The Others," and Kirsanov's for his poem "The Seven Days of the Week...

...Peter the First...

...We have almost all the facts about the politicians and generals who succumbed in the same "purges...

...But does this not prevent the artist from revealing himself...

...Soviet literature emerged out of the heart of a great socialist upheaval and is distinguished by many characteristics which had not until then been discernible to even the most sensitive seismographs of criticism...

...I am further disturbed by the fact that you have not been authorized to accept my invitation to a public confrontation of our respective information concerning the origins and character of the Hungarian insurrection of October 1956 and concerning its repression by the Russian armed forces...

...This is not primarily due to political or ideological differences...

...In Zurich, where we began our dialogue, your attitude was different...

...The most widespread phenomenon was a shallow and superficial representation of Soviet reality, which ignored its complexity, failed to deal with many of its aspects, and remained, in short, two-dimensional...

...Ultimately, they may even prove to be deeper, more important and more regenerating than those of the Spanish Civil War...

...unfortunately, not in a position to answer any of my propositions, inspired though they are by a sincere desire to improve relations between Russian and Western writers...

...Eleven Years in Siberia, by Elinor Upper...

...Silone, when you try to teach lessons to the representatives of Soviet literature...

...Quite apart from whether one likes it or not, capitalism and socialism do in fact coexist in our world at the present time...

...Naturally, there were also many others who saw a positive advantage in the expansion of the cult of personality, and this was particularly the case among our portrait painters...

...but it was the Americans who published it, and moreover there are rumors that the author now intends to disclaim it...

...We accepted it, too, because it gladdened us, and because this meteorological image seemed the most appropriate one to describe an improvement in the political and cultural climate of a country where no public opinion exists...

...Now, finally, to deal with Hungary, in whose literary life, unfortunately, I have taken less interest, through not knowing the language and because the historical links which exist, for example, between the Slavonic literatures have in this case been nothing like so close...

...We learned most of the details about the continuing persecution of Jewish culture in Russia from a source which can hardly be suspect to you: the report of a British Communist delegation which appeared in the official party weekly World News on January 12, 1957...

...Frankly, I cannot see how you could justify a refusal, since there is nothing private about the questions we are discussing and they will undoubtedly interest your readers quite as much as ours...

...At the very least, you should acquaint yourself with the eye-witness accounts of the Polish Communist writers who happened to be in Budapest at the time...

...Kuznetsov...

...In my opinion, your "socialist realism' usurps the name...

...It was just these states of mind that became inflamed in the Petofi Club, in the writers' organizations, and in their review Irodalmi Ujsag...

...How is this possible...

...After all that you have written, the terms "independent revolutionary" and "socialist" can only be a caricature when applied to you...

...Our political relations with Yugoslavia have been regularized to the satisfaction of both parties, although there are still a few controversial matters outstanding on which discussions are now in progress...

...2, Has the open denunciation of the 'abuse of the personality cult' and 'violations of socialist legality' begun to produce any works of literature...

...The Soviet Encyclopedia, which in its 1932 edition devoted about 160 columns to the Jews, reduces this in the 1952 edition to four columns...

...Do any controls still exist...

...Ignazio Silone...

...furthermore...

...Vladimir Piast, Andrei Sobol...

...Was Gorky really poisoned...

...Yes, says the report...

...but whether or not they are being allowed to publish their books is as yet by no means clear...

...I equally reject all the other theories of inevitability inherent in your "vulgar Marxist" way of thinking...

...According to Ilya Ehrenburg, it is certain that Boris Pilnyak was shot and that Isaac Babel died in a concentration camp...

...Vast sectors of the Communist parties and trade unions of the West are now in a state of profound moral uneasiness because they know the truth about Hungary...

...Whereas, after the events in Hungary, it is more important than ever that writers be recalled to a sense of the nobility and responsibility of their profession...

...If what is said is correct, if listening to foreign radios is very frequent in Russia, especially among students, this is, beyond any doubt, a positive fact...

...In recent months, and more particularly in recent weeks, these tender shoots of artistic freedom seem to have been blasted by a new spell of Siberian cold...

...It was precisely these writers that reaction put to its own uses...

...Anyone who approaches Soviet literature from the outside should recognize that the criteria he has become accustomed to in his own country are far from being always universal...

...It may be appropriate at this point to give a further clarification: Socialist realism is by no means the only form of literature to be found in the Soviet Union...

...it is the others that interest me...

...Such works were not given the appraisal they merited by the critics...

...In our literature, which by its very nature is closely bound up with the life of our society, reigns an awareness that new possibilities have now effectively emerged and that, after a difficult period, literature itself must take a decisive step forward...

...No, on the contrary, it helps him to find himself, having thrown overboard the illusions of bourgeois individualism...

...It is necessary to grasp the fact that the concept of Soviet literature is a great deal wider than the concept of socialist realism...

...And, though you may reject the words "thaw" and "de-Stalinization," the importance you attribute to certain recent literary developments in the Soviet Union proves that you admit, at least in part, the condition which these terms serve to indicate...

...Has there oyer been a review of that trial...

...From this one must draw the full consequences, and any contemporary political concept taken alone can have no meaning unless considered in the light of this dominant characteristic of the present epoch...

...Jewish writers and poets are forbidden to use their language, a fact which explains the absence in libraries of anything published in Yiddish after 1948...

...There is no basis for taking the title of a story (which, in my view, was a creative failure by an otherwise excellent writer) as a symbol for the deep and far-reaching changes which have taken place in the Soviet Union following the abandonment of the Stalin cult, and one need not go to the weather reports for terms adequate to express those changes...

...However, since I can hardly expect you to have read mine, I shall merely say that I have been a socialist since my youth and a realist from the time I began to write...

...why should the fate of the writers and artists still be shrouded in darkness...

...But your letter, in which an indecent casualness goes hand in hand with a feverish nervousness (caused, very obviously, by the fact that the card of the Hungarian counter-revolution on which you had bet proved to be valueless)—your letter, I repeat, shows your personality in its true light, and I must say that the resulting picture is not a pretty thing to see...

...Having made it, I shall turn at once to the various questions you have raised...

...Shall I speak of the others—of the long line of Jewish writers condemned and executed oil the grotesque charge of "cosmopolitanism...

...One result of the meeting was this exchange of letters between Ivan Anissimov, editor of the Soviet journal Inostrannaya Literatura ("Foreign Literature"), and Ignazio Silone, the noted author of Bread and Wine, Fontamara, The Seed Beneath the Snow and other books...

...In relation to these questions, it would be interesting to know what place you attribute to that "independent Left" of which you have spoken in your questions, and what are the prospects for its future...

...They saved the world and Hungary, over which the malevolent shade of Horthy's followers had already begun to stretch...

...What is your attitude to the struggle between the two basic currents in contemporary literature—for and against socialism...

...Let me ask you without further preamble: Since even you yourselves now admit that period to be over and done with, may we at last be allowed to know the truth—the -whole truth—about what happened, in the course of those years, to Russian art, literature, theater and historiography...

...I am thinking in particular of the following books: The Accused, by Alexander Weissberg...

...Polish newspapers and reviews enjoy a wide circulation in the Soviet Union, so that there has been a lively reaction here to Polish literary discussions, and it is not by chance that our own reviews and newspapers have added their critical voice to these discussions...

...If we publish what we please, that is our right, and in any case we do not only publish "anti-American pamphlets" (perhaps you include in this category the collected works of Theodore Dreiser, which appeared here before they did in America...

...Under these conditions, Mr...

...I admit that in Zurich I did not have many illusions as to the nature of your "independent revolution...

...You begin with a clear statement of your attitude to the recent events in Hungary, and for this I should like to thank you...

...Any information we have about them (by "we" I mean all of us outside Russia) is fragmentary, vague and unreliable...

...Ignazio Silone Dear Mr...

...What has been the fate of your colleagues, the literary critics Leopold Averbakh, Gorbat-yov, Lelevich, Lesenev...

...Do your superiors realize that these are shameful, unavowable acts...

...Dear Mr...

...However, I was already familiar with it, since it coincides exactly with the attitude of your government...

...Admittedly the subject is a difficult one for us, and it is unlikely that we shall be able to speak of it with serenity or detachment...

...Did the persecution stop after Stalin's death...

...Did any echo of these discussions reach the ears of Soviet writers...

...Ivan Anissimov's reply to these questions was not received until last December, and the resulting correspondence extended over period of four months...

...I should like—in your defense—at least to imagine that you have been prevented from doing so...

...The works of a writer like Sergevev-Tsensky, for example, a writer whom we greatly admire, are of this kind, for they have not undergone that profound transformation which produced such a fresh and powerful result in Aleksei Tolstoy's novel...

...There is good reason to believe that the repercussions of Budapest are going to be felt for a long time to come...

...I am surprised, for example, that you are not in a position to give us the definitive version of the death of Maxim Gorki...

...Anissimov: The questions I asked you in Zurich last September, Ivan Anissimov, have, I think, retained their interest and topicality despite your delay in answering them...

...The liquidation of the legacies of the cult of personality and a careful study of our own experience are the prerequisites for giving a fresh upward impulse to our literature...

...It is embodied in the best and most progressive works, those works in which literature receives a new forward impulse and man is enriched by newly discovered spiritual values...

...If in a country where the expression of •public opinion is unrestricted a single poet were to be shot for his ideas, public indignation would tear up the paving-stones and the asphalt...

...The world-famous Jewish theater is still closed down...

...jvan Anissimov Dear Mr...

...There must have been a good reason for the fact that Molotov, after his removal from the Government for being too openly compromised by the policies of the past, was summoned to take the place of the infamous Zhdanov at the head of all your cultural activities...

...In this way, however, you are reducing the world of ideas to a schematic abstraction...

...It seems to us that we are facing a future that will bring solid achievements to Soviet literature, but you, as a writer, must know that one cannot foretell with complete accuracy just when such works will emerge...

...This subdivision is false in that it identifies the writer's working and living conditions with his inspiration...

...I am inclined to look for the explanation in the passage where you deny that there exists in your country any such thing as the "thaw...

...But I then realized that you had quite simply lost your head and conesquently the possibility of speaking any other language...

...But perhaps it is not altogether correct to speak of a return to Zhdanovism, since in some respects—essential ones for judging the degree of civilization of any regime —you never, practically speaking, abandoned it...

...The first principle, without which it is impossible to gain a correct image of Soviet literature, is the principle of continuous expansion of its sphere of action, which is indeed directly linked with the socialist nature of our literature...

...Even today, we cannot in many cases be certain whether they were brought to trial, executed, deported or simply forbidden to write—and thereby condemned to starvation...

...The vaunted range of your translations is mere window-dressing...

...May I ask you again whether the full text of your letters will appear (as we originally agreed) in your magazine Inostrannaya Literatura...

...Then there are all the writers whom we yaguoh knew to be still alive despite their enforced silence...

...Socialist realism, with all its originality, its courageous refusal lo be satisfied, its drive toward the future, its confidence in the triumph of the socialist ideal, its wise understanding of life and ability to probe into life's most complex conflicts, naturally takes tangible shape in the major achievements of Soviet literature but is not in the least an automatically guaranteed quality...

...And there are many more, all of them vanished without leaving a trace beyond their old, out-of-print stories and •essays: Ossip Mandelshtam, Ivan Katayev, Alexander Voronsky, A. Voloshin, N. Kluyev, A. Vesyoly, Tarasov-Rodyonov, P. Romanov, G. Serebryakova, M. Oksman, D. S. Mirsky, Mikitenko...

...At the present time, we are engaged in a whole series of frank and vigorous discussions on literature, on painting, and on the writing of history...

...Anissimov : AS I AM somewhat used to interpreting letters from totalitarian countries, I am able to note two important admissions in yours...

...A writer expresses himself in his books...

...According to the prosecution and to official admissions made at a trial in March 193...

...and something has been done to rehabilitate the memory of certain writers who had been executed...

...and I hope you will do me the honor of taking these words literally...

...Thus, when Simonov wrote an article asking that socialist realism no longer be prescribed as an obligatory method for writers but merely recommended as a subsidiary technique, he was officially reprimanded and called to order...

...Marx was no longer referred to as a Jew...

...Realism presupposes freedom of critical vision, and socialism presupposes a choice, which used to be simply between poor and rich and now tends increasingly to be between the oppressed multitude and the interest of the state...

...Sergeyev-Tsensky, who has published a multitude of new novels under the Soviet regime, is one of our best-known and most highly esteemed writers...

...I wish to say to you...

...Are you not afraid that this effort to repair an injustice, an effort we all owe to their memory, will become more and more difficult as the years go by...

...From this point •of view, your letter unmasks you completely...

...Now that the climate has 'thawed' and that intellectual activities are being liberalized, do you not think it is time the Russian public was allowed to read not only the anti-American satires or run-of-the-mill novels of certain Western writers, but also the works of the independent Left...

...Some writers who had mysteriously disappeared—Kirshon...

...What has happened to the historians of Marxism, V. Nevsky, D. Ryazanov, N. Popov, A. Anichev, S. Pyotkovsky, Friedland, Zeidel...

...The distinguished Russian novelist Mikhail Sholo-khov, in his speech to the 20th Party Congress, declared that, as a result of the controls enforced on writers by the state, Russian literature has in recent decades been a literature of 'dead souls.7 Have these controls been relaxed, and, if so, to what extent...

...Silone : Thave received your long letter and at first thought you had sent it to the wrong address...

...I shall begin my reply by dealing with the last-named...

...Indeed, for us writers he was in some ways more important than Stalin...

...How long shall we have to wait before you inform us whether he was poisoned in application of a sentence— which has never been reviewed—of one of your courts, or whether he died a natural death...

...Dudintsev's novel Not by Bread Alone, despite an enthusiastic reception by readers, was immediately condemned...

...There exists to my knowledge only one work by a Russian author that might, at a pinch, be catalogued under the heading of "socialist realism"—the secret report of Khrushchev...

...A whole accumulation of misunderstandings has been cleared up...

...This fact imbued the errors of many writers with a significance far removed from any form of servility and saved them from artistic bankruptcy...

...I hope that time is not too far off...

...As for your desire to see us publish the works of "the independent Left," to that we have no objection in principle...

...The situation of writers, and indeed of anyone engaged in intellectual activity in the Soviet Union, seems to have been getting worse rather than better, a fact unfortunately borne out by some of your own remarks...

...Road to Calvary, or in his historical novel...

...it is reactionary in that it provides weak characters with convenient alibis for their passivity and irresponsibility...

...Surely you are not going to deny that he wielded a certain influence on Soviet arts and letters throughout those dark years...

...Meanwhile—and to begin with—despite the commitment made in Zurich, you have not published my letter in your review, whereas our readers have been able to read your entire letter, which, through my intermediary, was translated into several languages...

...Silone, for your invitation to join in a discussion, and I think that a frank exchange on the problems in which we are both interested will help you to gain a clearer understanding of the complex contradictions of contemporary culture...

...But one thing is clear: Literature in a socialist country can only be a literature of the people, for its links with the people are its vital arteries and if it severs these it condemns itself to death...

...What explanation of his death do you give to young Russians who wish to study the last great writer of the older generation...

...5. You talk of Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia...

...all that is needed is for you to provide the names and titles, and I hope that the Soviet publishing houses will follow your advice if the works in question are of good quality and interesting to our readers...

...I have only a few names: D. Bergelson, IVrets Markish, Itsik FetTer, IVr Nistar...

...The collected works of Halkin and Vergelis, Jewish poets still alive, were there up to 1948...

...In Russia it is just the contrary—a Government ideology, a law...

...The reason is that you are...

...Gorky was poisoned by the political police...

...4. The authors and books which you mention are unfortunately unknown to me, and I could only talk about them when I had gotten to know them...

...The biographies of many eminent Jews had been removed...

...Between Russian intellectuals and Western Marxists the difficulties of communication, on anything but the most superficial level, are no less apparent...

...and they were cut off in the full flowering of their gifts, each in himself a world of sensibility and imagination, an unrepeatable cosmos...

...I should be most grateful to have your answer...

...At present, reaction is using the events in Hungary to wage the most unbridled campaign against the socialist camp...

...These consist, quite simply, in an honest use of the intellect...

...What is your attitude toward those manifestations of literature which openly ally themselves to the struggle of the working class for the socialist reconstruction of the world...

...But not for nothing is Soviet literature a people's literature...

...All this, alas, was only a fleeting spring...

...In capitalist countries, Marxism is still an opposition theory, a heresy...

...Silone, you exceed all limits when you allow yourself to speak of my country in so disrespectful a tone, when you allow yourself to slander the Soviet socialist structure, which is governed by the will of a nation of two hundred million persons...

...The censorship constrains you to feign deafness...

...After the conference, Mr...

...And although the ideological divergencies between the two coexisting systems run very deep, it is extremely important to find ways of continuing the dialogue between them, even at a moment like the present when all the specters of the "cold war" have emerged once more and the blackest forces of reaction are spreading their slanders and brandishing the big stick...

...which you yourself use and which has been widely employed in Western European newspapers, has not found fa\or, and never will, in the Soviet press...

...But one must also understand that, to a considerable extent, writers were perfectly sincere and had no arriere-pensee in introducing these ideas, since Stalin was for them the personification of the people and of a lofty ideal...

...So I shall be brief...

...Being aware of this, you Russians confine yourselves to translating only those parts of Western Marxist literature that serve your ends, and you reject the rest, the living ferments that might cast doubt on the historical inevitability of the forms which power assumed in Russia after the Revolution...

...I should like not only to reply to your questions but also to pose some of my own...

...We did not have to wait long for the results...

...It no longer requires much perspicacity to recognize the inescapable influence of society on every form of human expression: but to divide literature, or art or science, into two camps, capitalist and proletarian, is sheer stupidity...

...I am referring to anti-Semitism and, in particular, to the persecution of Jewish intellectuals, of their language, press, literature and drama...

...It turned out that there is nothing in Yiddish later than 1948, when publication of Yiddish papers and journals must therefore have ceased...

...but an enormous stream of contemporary literature from every country in the world...

...What kind of death was inflicted on the dramatists Meyerhold, Lyadov, Arakadin, Rafalsky, Auraglobali, Nathalie Salz...

...We reject any "recipe" for socialist realism, as we reject every other dogma...

...Truth is regaining it place...

...and that consequently I abhor what you call "socialist realism...

...I am glad that you do—not, frankly speaking, because I think these stations represent the "source of truth," but because it is easier to approach the truth by a systematic comparison of conflicting opinions...

...Many voices were muffled or fell silent for ever, and now it is with deep emotion that we have been experiencing the return of many names and many works to the ranks of Soviet literature...

...Your silence about the fate of a large number of your country's eminent writers, historians, critics and dramatists, who disappeared during the Stalinist period without leaving any trace, casts a sinister doubt on the official condemnation of that terrifying period...

...It is a new creative method, but naturally enough not every book is written on the basis of that method...

...The general tone of your letter is that of a man living with perfect peace of mind in a stable and safe society...

...The reason for this lack of mutual understanding is perfectly clear...

...In view of all this, you will scarcely expect me to give you a specific list of authors to translate...

...I have no wish to indulge in psychological considerations or moralistic reflections on the "Government writers" who were immoderately eager to be subservient, or on those who, to quote Simonov, "swam with the current...

...Now, when we turn back and take a closer look at what was happening in Hungarian literature in the months before December, it becomes apparent that many Hungarian writers had lost their heads and were prepared to throw overboard, together with the errors of Rakosi, the whole social reorganization of Hungary...

...But the forced assimilation of Jews continues, and to insure its success they are denied all possibility of cultural expression...

...That, Mr...

...Anissimov, the fact that you were not authorized to accept my proposal to collect from the democratic writers of all the countries contributions for setting up a special fund to honor the memory of the Russian intellectuals who were victims of the Stalinist terror, by the publication of their recollections and unpublished writings and the testimonies concerning their martyrdom by their surviving comrades, is very serious indeed...

...I have already written professions of faith on several occasions, and I must confess I consider them a distasteful form of literature...

...Fortunately for the world, it lost the game...

...The works of Gorky and Mayakovsky are of this kind, as are those of our extraordinary Furmanov, about whom so little is known in the West, and those of Fadeyev and Sholokhov...

...Moshe Kolbak...

...He was the Grand Inquisitor, whose special task it was to stifle the creative spirit...

...They were writers, artists, thinkers, full of life and intelligence, some of them brilliantly talented...

...Silone: I am grateful to you, Mr...

...Why do you renounce the quest for the truth...

...The concluding phrase of your question is clearly the result of misinformation...

...If you mean that there was never any Party edict commanding or authorizing the "thaw," you are of course quite right...

...Russian historians and novelists will no doubt ultimately give their own account of what you have officially admitted to be the objective truth about the recent past...

...Irrespective of this, no commitment to society can ever exempt the writer from the demands of professional integrity...

...You, Signor Silone, as one who took part in the struggle against fascism in Spain, know what it means to stand and bar the way to fascism...

...You cannot ignore what Communists like Peter Fryer, the Daily Worker correspondent, or Giorgio Bontempi, correspondent of the Roman daily II Paese, or the correspondent of the weekly Vie Nuove (to mention only the cases I have come across) have testified about the origin and nature of the Hungarian revolt...

...Our literary relations have become much more frank and intimate, although Soviet and Yugoslav writers do not see eye to eye on everything...

...And why have you not been authorized to explain to us the reasons for the closing of the Jewish Theater of Moscow (which remains closed) and the banning of all publications in Yiddish...

...To speak only of matters directly relevant to our conversation, it is quite certain that in the last three years your writers and dramatists have been allowed to stray a considerable distance from the once obligatory optimism, alluding a little more freely, for instance, to the misdeeds of the bureaucracy and the cynicism and indifference of the younger generation...

...How can such a doubt be allowed to go unresolved...

...There were still others...

...Anissimov, you are right: A dialogue between us is impossible and would have no meaning...

...We present here an abridged translation from the Italian magazine Tempo Presente...

...Is anything being done to collect at least what is left of them—other people's memories of them, tangible relics of their work, notebooks...