The Dilemma of Detente
BOLL, HEINRICH
The Dilemma of Detente by heinrch boll Heinrich Boll, the 1972 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, recently offered some unusually sharp criticism of the persecution of writers and...
...Q.: You are skeptical about the value of East-West conferences...
...Q.: Nonetheless, a special note of sharpness and bitterness is noticeable in your latest statements: You describe the recent threats against Amalrik as "atrocities" and "madness...
...Those who have accused or suspected me of being lukewarm probably have delibrately overlooked certain things in my statements...
...The reference is to the Right-wing Hamburg daily owned by the German press lord Axel Springer.] Boll: Yes, and if you will permit me to say so, I consider praise from Die Welt and other conservative papers to be a worse denunciation than an attack in the Soviet press...
...Boll: Yes, the possibilities appear to be slight...
...are you also skeptical about the potential for East-West or German-Soviet cultural exchanges...
...Boll: I can't see that my attitude has changed at all, when I consider everything I have previously written and said on this subject in public...
...There are forms of denunciation that consist of praise...
...I am still just as much in favor of the Ostpolitik as before, because I am convinced that without it the situation of our colleagues in the East would have been even worse...
...Still, I think that now and then the participants speak with one another off the record at such meetings...
...Q.: Herr Boll, until now you have always been rather cautious in your public statements about the oppression of Russian writers...
...Q.: You have no sympathy, then, for the contradiction you have cited between East-West relaxation abroad and a tightening-up of cultural policy inside the Soviet Union -which is possibly a necessity for the regime...
...Popular in Europe for his works depicting the fall and rebirth of the German people, Boll is West Germany's best-known author and has been president of the International PEN Club since 1971...
...I found it a very telling picture, the enormous euphoria and acquiescence, the cheap stuff that was going on there...
...But I don't regard that as a pessimistic view because I still believe, and in fact know, that in the political leadership of the Soviet Union as well as in the leadership of its cultural organizations, there are two groups-one hard-line and the other liberal...
...What has moved you to take, for the first time, such a clear and strong position against the Soviets' literary policy and, by way of example, to threaten the Soviet Union with an international campaign on Amalrik's behalf...
...Boll: I am quite sure of it...
...Boll: My tactics have not changed...
...Q.: In the last election campaign you were committed to Willy Brandt and his Ostpolitik . . . Boll: That is not a contradiction of my skepticism about the value of official cultural exchanges managed by state authorities...
...I think the time has now come to take energetic action in public for the following reason: News of the trial against Amalrik arrived at exactly the same time that Party Secretary Brezhnev, visiting President Nixon in San Clemente, was letting himself be heaved into the air by that Hollywood cowboy [Chuck Connors...
...they have merely been adapted to the demands of the moment...
...Here Walter Scheel [West German Foreign Minister], Egon Bahr [Bonn's Eastern negotiator], Brandt and anyone else who has the opportunity could try to make clear to the Soviet politicians how much they are damaging themselves and their culture, their established culture even, with the current practices...
...He went on to deplore the "contradiction" between the progress of East-West detente and the simultaneous crackdown on dissidents within the Soviet Union, and asserted that Western authors could not remain silent any longer...
...Referring particularly to last summer's trial of Andrei Amalrik, he declared, "The Soviet authorities must realize that they are completely isolating themselves...
...In an interview with the editors of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, reprinted below, he elaborated on his reaction to the current situation in the USSR and the problem it poses for Western intellectuals...
...Q.: Do you think that Western politicians should deal with Brezhnev differently for the sake of the oppressed Soviet intellectuals...
...Q.: Do you expect or fear that, after being held in high esteem for many years, you will now be declared persona non grata or the like in Moscow because of your latest statements...
...Thus I regard the Soviet policy-this may sound condescending-as absolute foolishness...
...These writers are not dissidents, you understand...
...I believe it is not hopeless to speculate on a possible victory for the liberals...
...I view the prospect of attacks from that quarter far more calmly than the prospect of praise from the wrong people here at home...
...Boll: No, the Soviet intellectuals cannot, of course, be the subject of negotiations at meetings of a political and economic nature...
...Q.: Which authors are you thinking of...
...Q.: Springer's Die Welt has already taken you to its heart...
...Q.: Are you recommending a change of tactics-no more secret diplomacy but loud public protests...
...I have gone back through my papers and confirmed that on 12-15 past occasions I have been no less outspoken on this matter...
...Boll: No, I have absolutely none...
...The 54-year-old Boll's latest novel, Group Portrait with Lady ("Writers & Writing," NL, June 11), concerns the effects of war on its heroine and her Russian POW lover...
...For the persecution of a particular group of authors-whose plight, as we all know, is sometimes played up in the West for reasons of sensationalism and profit-has the result that a whole line of very good, politically acceptable writers, whom we ought to become acquainted with, are being left untranslated by our publishers and without any publicity here at all...
...The Dilemma of Detente by heinrch boll Heinrich Boll, the 1972 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, recently offered some unusually sharp criticism of the persecution of writers and intellectuals in the USSR...
...It is incomprehensible to me how the stability of the Soviet Union can be endangered by about 25-50 opponents now, when it is experiencing a virtual festival of recognition...
...Boll: There may be attacks on me in the Soviet press, perhaps first in Literaturnaya Gazeta...
...You warn the Soviet Union that its "Solzhenitsyn psychosyndrome" will have "terrible consequences...
...Q.: Even worse than at present...
...Boll: Though I would expect the Soviet Union to recognize the cultural consequences of its actions, I don't understand why it pursues a policy against writers and intellectuals who are out of favor that damages not only itself but the authors it approves of-who also include many good writers...
...973 Der Spitgd...
...Since you are a Western author whose books have been very successful in the Soviet Union and president of the PEN Club, you have therefore been the object of a good deal of criticism and suspicion...
...Boll: In the Soviet Union there is, for example, a whole movement called-to translate it perhaps somewhat crudely?Literature of the Village...
...That I just don't understand...
...This is a literary form that is not hostile to industrialism but more related to the countryside, and I would find it tremendously interest'ng...
...And you express much more skepticism and pessimism than before about the chances of Western authors interceding with the Soviet Union on behalf of their Russian colleagues...
Vol. 56 • October 1973 • No. 19
