Hards and Softs in Soviet Literature

...It is by such gestures that the Party occasionally reminds the Softs that there are Hard figures waiting in the wings...

...Such measures could not entirely check the feeling of liberation which young Russians found in "Baby Yar...

...Yevtushenko contradicted two official theses on the Jews: (1) there is no anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union...

...Their major publications are the monthly October and the newspaper Literature and Life...

...Many foreign observers have attested to the loosening up of discussion which took place in Russia at the time...

...Witness the reception given to what is probably the most important literary work written by a Hard in the last few months: Vsevolod Kochetov's novel, Secretary of the District Committee...

...And as long as the Party remains dominant in Soviet life, without changing its own nature, the prospects for really significant relaxation are nil...

...Once again the Party acted to preserve decorum...

...But he describes them with a vivid sympathy which is one of the many charms of his light-hearted novel...

...Here the magazine Youth has been in the vanguard...

...Their efforts probably had less readers than the "neutral" writings, but plenty of them were printed...

...A few of the more hot-headed spirits on both sides, however, have brought up heavy mortars and bazookas and it is interesting to note how the Party has been dealing with this problem...

...By now, almost every noteworthy literary figure and publication has moved wholeheartedly into one or other of these groups...

...In sum, while there has been some loosening up, or apparent loosening up, in Soviet intellectual life, there does not seem to be any prospect of a real "thaw" in the immediate future...

...Obviously, this does not mean that Soviet writers and critics are in a position to say and print what they like...

...among others, they include the short-story writers mentioned above...

...A state of officially tolerated feud exists between the two camps...

...Internal pressure has been kept fairly high...

...Characteristically, the terms of the concordat were not laid down explicitly, but were implied in a long speech which Nikita Khrushchev made on the occasion...

...Yevtushenko's real offense, though, was not so much questioning dogma as it was that he had dared, on his own initiative, to open a political discussion at all...

...Over the years, Soviet writers have increasingly tended to range themselves in either the more liberal "Soft" camp, or the more orthodox "Hard" camp...

...It is not surprising, therefore, that Aksyonov's novel was attacked by Soviet officialdom...

...It is likely that writers such as Aksyonov and Rozov will be wasting their time if they submit any more manuscripts of this type to Youth, though no obvious change of policy has yet been reflected in the magazine...

...The Hards, whose main standard-bearer until recently was the poet and literary official Aleksey Surkov, now seem to be coming increasingly under the domination of two younger men, the poet Nikolai Gribachev and the novelist Vsevolod Kochetov...

...Of course, supporters of the traditional technique of "Socialist Realism" continued to stick to the Party line and to produce works which in spirit belong more to the world of Agitprop than to the world of art...

...For a while this arrangement worked smoothly...

...Although the author shows little direct interest in politics, there is unveiled contempt in all his references to the political implications of Soviet life...

...Instead of taking a ticket for the Virgin Lands, as do all good young Russians in officially approved literature, they move in the exactly opposite direction by traveling to a coastal resort on the Baltic, where they do their best to enjoy themselves...

...Employing the accents of Stalin's main literary hatchet-man, Andrey Zhdanov, Starikov accused Yevtushenko of betraying Communism and kowtowing to bourgeois ideology...

...Evidently in this instance the Party felt that the bounds of decorum had been overstepped on both sides...

...This is because the authorities, for whatever reason, allow more genuine public controversy in literary matters than in any other sphere of Soviet life...

...Near the statue of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky some young Moscovites interrupted the tiresome, officially sponsored declamations of politically harmless verse by calling for Yevtushenko and reciting "Baby Yar" in chorus...

...and (2) the Nazis did not discriminate against Jews any more than they did against other Russians...

...He criticizes everything from the Soviet space program to authority in general: "People are about to fly to the moon, but they are neither more honest nor more happy from doing so to me all authority is relative.' Neither of these two works was at all in the style of the "protest literature" of 1956...

...In a distorted form, Soviet literature can still to some extent maintain the great tradition of Russian 19th century letters as a forum for the propagation of ideas not necessarily approved by the Government...

...Kochetov, editor of the Hard journal October, is one of the most persistent Soft-baiters...

...More recently, however, Kochetov has been awarded an Order of Lenin...

...the Party retains control of the valve...

...It tells the story of some young people who decide to run away from home...

...he made a particularly vicious attack on both Ehrenburg and Yevtushenko at the 22nd Party Congress...

...The latter subjected the aims and methods of Soviet society to close scrutiny and at times to outspoken criticism...

...The understanding was as follows: For their part, the writers agreed to refrain from producing the kind of "protest literature" especially associated with the year 1956 and with such publications as Vladimir Dudintsev's novel, Not By Bread Alone, and the two inflammatory anthologies called Literary Moscow...

...There has been a constant interchange of fire, in the form of hostile articles and private gossip, and for some time we have witnessed a spectacle unusual in Soviet life: a controversy conducted in terms which are not rigged in advance by officials...

...It contains a moving lamentation on the fate of the thousands of Jews slaughtered by the Germans at Baby Yar, near Kiev, and hints that antiSemitism is still alive in the USSR...

...For its part, the Party undertook not to interfere with politically neutral writing...

...The controversy is not quite open...

...At a conference on ideology held in Moscow in December 1961, Leonid Ilyichev, now Central Committee Secretary for Propaganda and Agitation, rebuked Aksyonov as one of a number of young writers who "feel attracted to cheap subjects and shoddy themes.' Another work, V. Rozov's film script ABCDE (also published in Youth), came under attack at the same time...

...For the moment they are being kept in reasonable restraint, but the Softs must realize that if they are unwise enough to go too far in the direction of liberalization, there are always people who can be brought in to give them orders...

...Later information suggests that public discussion in Moscow has now been checked or driven elsewhere...

...Far from it...

...Another literary scandal followed early in October when the so-called "Day of Poetry" was celebrated...

...Stalin dealt in absolute repression...

...The Party appears willing to tolerate the literary hostilities as long as they are kept within reasonably decorous bounds...

...True, under Khrushchev intellectuals are controlled in an entirely different way than under Stalin...

...Attacks are often conducted in the form of allusions and hints rather than direct statements...

...Rozov's hero is an independent young man who likes to make his own decisions and rejects the advice of his elders and betters who are Party members...

...It led, in fact, to a notable revival of the Russian povest (or "long short story") by such authors as Vladimir Tendryakov, Yury Kazakov and Sergei Antonov...

...Prose, too, has been overstepping the mark and participating in the alternate loosening and tightening process which is so characteristic of recent Soviet life in general, and of literature in particular...

...Komsomolskay a Pravda, the Young Communist League newspaper, dismissed the protesters as degenerate beatniks and claimed that they had been quickly put in their place by some honest working men who happened to be passing by...

...But the code in which they are couched is not difficult to crack...

...Literature and Life was quick to reply on behalf of the Hards in a long article, signed by D. Starikov, one of the most scurrilous pieces of invective to have disfigured the literary hostilities...

...One particularly instructive battle began last September with the publication in the Literary Gazette of Yevtushenko's poem, "Baby Yar...

...Not all of the recent literary offensives have been directed against the Softs, however...

...Their main vehicles are the monthly New World (Novy Mir) and the newspaper Literary Gazette...

...Khrushchev operates a carefully regulated safetyvalve...

...Ilyichev's speech and numerous press criticisms were followed by an announcement early this year that the Union of Writers had "accepted the request" of Velentine Katayev, the editor of Youth, to be permitted to retire...

...Even the Soviet press reported the phenomenon...

...Ticket to the Stars is hardly a "neutral" work...

...Ronald Hingley, university lecturer in Russian at Oxford, is author of Soviet Prose and Under Soviet Skins...

...He was succeeded by one of the most egregious Hards, Boris Polevoy...

...Literature and Life came in for severer punishment: Its chief editor, Aleksey Poltoratsky, lost his job, probably for allowing Starikov's article to appear...

...Hards and Softs in Soviet Literature By Ronald Hingley To the student of Russian intellectual trends, literature and literary criticism remain the most profitable of all fields for observation...

...But the Softs have been able to get a little of their own back in the reviews of his novel published in Literary Gazette and New World...

...Writing in the latter organ, A. Maryamov quotes abundant evidence to show that Kochetov, while paying lip-service to the "de-Stalinisation" campaign which entered its second and more extreme phase at the 22nd Congress, remains a convinced Stalinist, opposed to the current Party line...

...But one should not be misled by the puffs of steam which are continually escaping from it, even when, as in recent months, the puffs have been unusually large...

...But given Soviet conditions, the poem was politically provocative...

...To anyone unschooled in matters Soviet the poem might seem inoffensive enough...

...But their rejection of the basic assumptions of Soviet society went at least as far...

...According to Moscow rumor, which I believe reliable, the assistant editor of the Literary Gazette responsible for publishing "Baby Yar" was sacked soon after the counterattack...

...Vastly Aksyonov's novel, Ticket to the Stars, only one of a number of recent surprises sprung by Youth, is certainly one of the most extraordinary works of fiction ever to appear in a Soviet publication...

...The Softs are headed by the poet-editor Aleksandr, Tvardovsky, the novelist-memoirist Ilya Ehrenburg and the young poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko...

...The writers are allowed to snipe at each other to their hearts content, if they restrict themselves to small-arms fire...

...But they are a great deal freer than Soviet experts on agriculture, foreign policy or history, though there have been times when jurists have enjoyed comparable privilege...

...Thus authors were left free to write stories, novels and poems describing private human predicaments without having to make constant affirmations of implied loyalty to Marxism-Leninism, as was compulsory under Stalin...

...This event occurred just before the 22nd Party Congress and its unexpected dénouement—the removal of Stalin's body from its place beside Lenin in the Red Square Mausoleum...

...For a while something approaching free political argument was heard among groups of people in Red Square, while the area near the statue of Mayakovsky was for a time the Moscow equivalent of London's Hyde Park Corner...

...All this would be perfectly in order if Aksyonov had made it clear that his boys and girls were a set of parasitical hooligans...

...This state of affairs is the result of an unwritten concordat, sealed at the Third Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers in May 1959, between the writers and the Party...