Brodsky: Reactions in Moscow

...They doubted that it was planned "at the top,' as was suggested in some Western accounts, in order to discredit the entire liberal intelligentsia or to foreshadow another sweeping campaign against "bourgeois" infection of the arts...

...Several of them who had told me years ago of their abhorrence of the parasite law spoke last month of the Brodsky case with especial distaste...

...With newspaper articles against him, with a whole campaign whipped up, with 'public opinion' demanding 'justice...

...The trouble is that too many well-meaning Americans think our war for openness is their business...

...But in fact, we are the ones who must fight, and in our own way—quietly...

...Perhaps you cannot—but that's secondary, came the reply...

...but American publishers hinder our progress more than anything else...

...Then you have 'cases' like these a poet banished for five years not for any crime—nothing criminal was even charged—but simply because he irritated the wrong people by living an independent life...

...Who is this Brodsky, anyway...

...And of course it sticks...

...Once underway, however, the affair became a symbol of the liberal intellectuals' cause, the latest skirmish in what a young critic on a major literary magazine called "our inner war...

...That Soviet literature critical of Soviet life has a reverse effect when reprinted in America...

...For there is this great inner war going on here all the time—I call it a war for openness...

...What he ought to have done is simply gotten some kind of a job, swallowed his pride —and he could have written poetry forever, and circulated his manuscripts...

...A young lawyer recently admitted to the Moscow Bar told me: "The Brodsky case, if I have the facts right, makes a mockery of Socialist legality...

...but in fact, nine out of 10 times you embarrass us and make them more obstinate...

...And in the long run, I've no doubt that we'll win...

...American magazines shamelessly select, slant, excerpt and distort our meaning...

...Brodsky's in the clear—he'll be all right from now on.' Are you sure...

...Every great writer is also a great patriot...

...I asked my literary friends...

...We who write about Russia love it deeply—we are patriots first of all, and most of all when we criticize...

...But when our literature appears in America, all our patriotism is deleted: We are made to appear as renegades who disapprove of Soviet rule...

...Besides, the attacks are largely misplaced: You consistently underestimate the strength of the Stalinists, and Khrushchev's good work in controlling them, I was told...

...Because they relentlessly seek out every sign of nonconformist literature and focus foreign attention upon it, because they consistently feature those works or parts of works which are most critical of Soviet life, because they seem to publish them not so much for their literary merit but for their value as condemnation of Soviet rule, these magazines, the argument goes, play into the hands of Soviet reactionaries...

...Other acquaintances—and taxidrivers and barbers—took the affair, about which most of them had heard, equally lightly...

...Not so the lawyers...

...yours is liberal—you can take it and you won't stop criticizing...

...Leave the fighting to us...

...some say that Chairman Khrushchev finally put his thumb up...

...I mentioned to my friends that a Russian emigrE magazine in New York is planning to publish Brodsky's poems in the fall...

...I'm sick and tired, he said, of American manipulation of Soviet literature...

...Nevertheless, Yevtushenko's concern about American treatment of Soviet literature is shared by many of the most liberal young intellectuals...

...You who talk of the freedom of literature—you make our literature the servant of sensation and the dollar, and the handmaiden of your politics...

...That Leningrad poet banished for parasitism," responded an old tennis chum of mine, an engineer who can muster no interest in politics, domestic or foreign...

...That the Brodsky affairs, especially the dark sides of the Brodsky affairs, are given lopsided coverage compared to the victories...

...That would be much better for him, and for us...

...I wish your commentators would remember our war here and ask themselves, before they publish, which side their writings will help...

...They were not quite sure of how the victory was won...

...Like in the Brodsky case...

...Another friend, a librarian, reported there were rumors of Brodsky's having wangled an unfit-forphysical-labor release from a doctor on the State farm to which he was assigned, after which he rushed back to Leningrad, stormed the court which sentenced him, stuck out his tongue, figuratively, at the judge, and bragged that they could not keep him on any State farm...

...Not very big, of course...

...Luckily that didn't happen in the Brodsky case—but just luckily...

...So he was banished, so what...

...But how can we get the facts...

...Americans insist on making anti-Soviet ammunition of the literature of our younger generation— from which it is easily converted, here, into ammunition for those forces which oppose experimentation in writing...

...To a lawyer," said a greying lady advocate, "it was a terrible case...

...This thought was the principal preoccupation of Evgeny Yevtushenko at a supper given for several Americans in Moscow's Union of Writers in August...

...That American concentration on nonconformist Soviet literature makes further publication of such writing more difficult...

...Plenty of others do...

...That outsiders, not knowing the ways and the facts of Soviet infighting, often score improperly and make the fight more difficult...

...Mention of his name usually elicits a shrug of the shoulders...

...or they make up some ridiculous excuse like he didn't earn enough...

...The sad result," said the critic, "is that American critics who specialize in demonstrating our lack of liberty serve, in the end, to limit it yet further...

...Witness the Brodsky case...

...I asked...

...In any case, Brodsky was liberated, the Leningrad bureaucrats who hounded him were rebuked, and his future looks bright...

...The word went out: Get Brodsky—and any hope of a fair hearing was doomed...

...What are the implications of the Brodsky affair...

...Of course, I was answered, but our societies are very different...

...Anyway, what fascinates you so about this case...

...So—whatever the evidence—they call him untalented and his poems pornographic or anti-Soviet...

...That the attacks on Chairman Khrushchev for meddling in the arts can only encourage him to meddle further...

...Let me put it this way: I'm a Communist, I believe the future belongs to Communism...

...That many of Russia's most distinguished intellectuals, led by Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor of Novy Mir, intervened on Brodsky's behalf is common knowledge...

...Can we have done with this kind of provocation...

...Think of what Communist support for a cause in your politics means, and multiply that by one hundred...

...But Soviet publishers handle American criticism of American life far more viciously, I pointed out...

...That the sensation over Zhivago abroad all but eliminated its chance of being published in Russia...

...According to this rumor, Brodsky was sent back to serve out his five-year banishment spreading manure in the Arkhangelsk region...

...This was a little local mistake, the work of a few zealous, anti-intellectual Philistines who were eager to flex their muscles "It happens too often with us...

...Yevtushenko delivered a series of highly mannered, affected, but brilliant toasts in which he bitterly attacked American treatment of Soviet literature...

...Our law says a man can be criminally punished only by a formally constituted court operating under all procedural norms and guarantees—and only for a crime described in the code...

...The Central Committee, preoccupied with economic matters and with China, is not eager to violate its uneasy armistice with the intellectuals...

...Had higher Party officials been consulted at the start, I was told, they probably would have directed that Brodsky be left alone: His eventual liberation seemed evidence of that...

...His Siberian cycle, written after a recent tour there, was received with great disappointment...

...He is now, I was assured, living and working in Leningrad as before...

...Apparently the case reached the Central Committee of the Party...

...The young people are in this war we're fighting...

...They were sure...

...And no appeal...

...but very significant...

...The liberal intellectuals feel that it was a lower-level adventure conducted by local Leningrad apparatchiki who pursued the poet for the sake of their careers and, perhaps, self-satisfaction...

...How is it that Solzhenitsyn is published in millions of copies, and other equally excellent, and older, Soviet writers like Paustovsky are unknown to Americans...

...True, Brodsky was permitted defense counsel—an improvement over the original parasite procedure...

...The reactionaries point to them as one more reason why Soviet literature must maintain its ideological purity...

...For many younger members of the younger generation of intellectuals, Yevtushenko has lost his charisma as the champion of openness...

...Often American encouragement for a Soviet writer or a cause is the kiss of death...

...A victory...

...Again and again I was reminded that a silent war is being waged...

...But the definition of 'Communist' is very wide these days...

...The discouraging truth is that the general, non-intelligentsia Moscow public is no more indignant about the fate of the obscure Leningrad poet than concerned about the dangers of the parasite law itself...

...But what can a lawyer do in a case like that?—with a judge like that...

...All the evidence in the world can't help you in such a case...

...Why is it that my autobiography was introduced, in the Saturday Evening Post, by that esteemed literary critic—Allen Dulles...

...asked the librarian...

...Of course we criticize, of course we want Russia to move forward...

...It was in connection with this inner war that several young intellectuals complained to me about the liberal Western press, especially the American, which they said (mentioning The New Leader among other publications) more often hurts the liberal cause than helps it...

...Sometimes most of our strength is devoted to fighting people who also call themselves Communists, but who believe in a very different future, in 'closedness.' In some respects we're probably closer to you in our thinking than to these other Communists, just as you're probably closer to us than to capitalists like Goldwater...

...That war required some discretion on the part of a friendly press...

...They stated that the magazines which specialize in 'New Trends in Soviet Literature' often do the most damage...

...Better than before: His first public appearance as a poet, I was informed, is scheduled for October or November, when the literary magazine Yunost (Youth) will publish several of his poems in an issue devoted entirely to Leningrad writers...

...You seem to feel that you can embarrass our conservatives into remedial action...

...I hope," they answered, "he will appear first in Yunost...

...But it was, predictably, the students and young intellectuals who were most disturbed by the Brodsky affair—and it was from several of them I learned that Brodsky has been freed...

...His earlier poems are still appreciated, but one often hears that Yevtushenko has sold out—to the glamor of public life and politics, if not directly to the Establishment...