A Study of Three Soviet Writers

...One might have only wished that Simmons had given more space to the demonstration of what the exigencies of the Communist party line actually do to fiction...

...Each has been, therefore, at one time or another, suspect to the regime, a condition which, as the title Russian Fiction and Soviet Ideology implies, the author proposes to analyze in detail...

...This is far less a criticism than a statement of fact in regard to the staggering travails of literary traffic across culture and language barriers of which Simmons is better aware than anyone...

...No novel, not even a Soviet one, can be "retold" without becoming a parody...

...What seems to be somewhat more debatable than the choice of subject matter is Simmon's obvious preference for Sholokhov among the three...

...The fact that such an examination is almost impossible does not make this task any easier...

...I f I enter a plea for a more precise text and content analysis, I am aware that this was not Simmon's chosen purpose...

...4.50...

...It offers far greater satisfaction to the non-specialist than the more exhaustive telephone-directory approach to the overwhelming outpour of Soviet prose...

...This kind of comprehensive study must be welcomed by all those who feel that Russian contemporary fiction is a reliable key to Soviet culture...

...Since the end of World War I I , the reflexes of Soviet fiction conditioned by the violent gyrations of literary and political policies have been so dramatic that the belief that Soviet fiction can tell a great deal about Soviet life has spread beyond the small circles of Soviet specialists...

...Simmons properly stresses that which brings the three close to each other...

...The book suffers, ironically because of its thoroughness, from the simultaneity of the presentation of materials the reader is unfamiliar with and of an interpretation thereof, ? f one is to accept the value and aesthetic judgments of the interpreter, then the abundance of quotations from discussed novels seems unnecessary...

...Simmons has found a clue to this complex problem: the deletions and changes from edition to edition of those novels the regime considers pedagogically valuable...

...Whereas Simmons is illuminating on the subject of fiction, its relationship to official ideology remains somewhat obscure...

...However, the work of the three authors forms—due to the accidental and happy fact of their survival—the firm core of that Soviet novel which stands in sharp contrast to the avalanche of prefabricated and standardized works of fiction...

...An occasional translation, such as Vladimir Dudintsev's erroneously sensational Not By Bread Alone, read out of context, obscures the comprehenThe present study provides the non-specialist with literary materials placed into the larger historical perspective and into the narrower, but equally as important, of the unique development of each writer...

...Ideology underwent a far greater change in the timespan under discussion than fiction, and the relationship between the two can hardly be discussed, beyond the obvious observation of the existence of political controls, without a thorough examination of a Soviet writer's changing personal attitude toward the official dogma...

...The literary life of these three men of integrity represents, indeed, the difficult history of that Soviet fiction which is worthy of actually being called art...

...The trouble with this assignment is its antithetic nature...

...One more difficulty this study disclosed...

...and in that sense all three are "carry-overs...

...A more thorough examination of the nature and predicament of Soviet fiction will have to be attempted with a method other than introductory...

...He traces their development and examines the prominent place they occupy in Soviet letters...

...I would argue that Leonov is a more gifted and subtle writer, with a more clearly developed and sustained oeuvre, and that Fedin's vision and torment are far less parochial and timebound than the message of the "Tolstovan" epic of the Cossack chronicler, whose main virtue is his limitation...

...This, however, is largely a question of taste...

...267 pp...

...The breech between the two has never been static...

...WITH HIS USUAL CLARITY and competence, Professor Simmons discusses the major works of three Russian novelists: Konstantin Fedin, Leonid Leonov and Mikhail Sholokhov...

...What he set out to do —to introduce Fedin, Leonov and Sholokhov to the American reader— he did as succinctly as one may wish...

...Different as they are, the best these three have to say is on the ageless topic of the struggle of the old with the new...

...Since this study should inspire any reader to turn to novels as important as Fedin's Cities and Years, Leonov's Thief and Sholokhov's Quiet Don, he might be better prepared for the understanding of the Soviet literary situation by a greater emphasis on the peculiarities of each writer's style, that inner force of fiction which truly matters, whatever the culture...

...The necessary multiplicity of purpose reveals, however, the methodological difficulty connected with it...

...If, on the other hand, the reader is to form his own judgment, then the translated fictional shreds are neither sufficient in number nor convincing in themselves...

...But for the wide public the access to original materials is still closed...

...One might argue that by selecting these writers not loo much justice is done to the exhilarating and erratic spirit of the revolutionary period, which left its impact more palpably on the work of such men as Isaac Babel and Venjamin Kaverin nor to the new "revelatory" trend in current fiction as found, for instance, in Vera Panova's prose...