First Congress Soviet writers took place from August 17 to August 30, 1934. This truly significant event was preceded by the Decree of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations,” from which it followed that numerous writers’ organizations were to unite into one, consisting of writers who fully “support the platform of Soviet power.” The authorities wanted to unite people who were completely different in their worldview, creative methods and aesthetic inclinations.
The venue for the First All-Union Writers' Congress was the Column Hall of the House of Unions. For such a solemn event, it was necessary to decorate the room; after a few debates, it was decided to hang portraits of literary classics in the hall. Which immediately became a reason for the irony of evil-tongued writers:
There was enough room for everyone
Who's on the podium, who's on the ground,
And who is just on the wall!
So, for example, everyone was taken aback,
The fact appeared to us as if in a dream -
At the department Tolstoy Alyosha,
Tolstoy's Leva is on the wall.
One of the delegates of the First Congress of the Union of Writers of the USSR, A. Karavaeva, recalled the opening day of the forum: “On a sunny August morning in 1934, approaching the House of Unions, I saw a large and lively crowd. Among the chatter and applause - just like in the theater - someone’s young voice was heard energetically calling: “Comrade delegates of the First Congress of Soviet Writers! When entering this hall, do not forget to raise your historical mandate!... The Soviet people want to see and know you all! Tell me, comrades, your last name and present your delegate card!”
According to mandate data, men predominated among the delegates to the First Congress of USSR Writers - 96.3%. The average age of participants is 36 years. The average literary experience is 13.2 years. By origin, the first place comes from peasant backgrounds - 42.6%, workers - 27.3%, and working intelligentsia - 12.9%. Only 2.4% were nobles, 1.4% were clergy. Half of the delegates are members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 3.7% are candidates for membership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and 7.6% are Komsomol members.
The number of prose writers among the congress participants was 32.9%, poets - 19.2%, playwrights - 4.7%, critics - 12.7. Children's writers - 1.3% and journalists - 1.8%.
Curious and national composition congress. Russians - 201 people; Jews - 113; Georgians - 28; Ukrainians - 25; Armenians - 19; Tatars - 19; Belarusians - 17; Uzbeks -12. A further 43 nationalities were represented by between 10 and one delegates. There were even Chinese, Italians, Greeks and Persians.
In addition to the performances of venerable and not so venerable writers, the Soviet government provided for its “engineers of human souls” (by the way, one of the popular aphorisms of the First Congress of Soviet Writers, the authorship is attributed to Yu. Olesha) and material benefits.
Meals for the congress participants were centralized and free for delegates. It was organized in a restaurant on Bolshoi Filippovsky Lane. The cost of the writers' daily meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) was 35 rubles.
For the movement of delegates and organizers of the First All-Union Congress of Writers, 25 passenger cars, 6 buses for collective trips, and 5 trucks for transportation were allocated. All delegates were given the right to use public transport in Moscow free of charge. Delegates were transported centrally for breakfast, lunch and after dinner. Seats on the railway for the return journey were also reserved.
The authorities are also concerned about the cultural program for delegates. Theater tickets were purchased, film screenings were organized, evenings of national literature, excursions, and dinner with academicians and scientists were organized. All writers who arrived at their First Congress were photographed for free. They were given newspapers and given specially published congress magazines.
So, the comrades “at the top” could quite responsibly summarize: “The party and the government gave the writer everything, taking away only one thing from him - the right to write badly.”
The authorities demonstrated their care for the writers devoted to them and their generosity. In turn, the writers demonstrated outward unity and consolidated their skill in doublethink. A big deal called the First Congress of the USSR Writers' Union took place.
Tatiana Voronina
The First All-Union Congress of Writers was held from August 17 to September 1, 1934. During this time, 26 meetings were held at which reports by A.M. were heard and discussed. Gorky about Soviet literature, S.Ya Marshak about children’s literature, K. Radek about modern world literature and the tasks of proletarian art, V.Ya. Kirpotina, N.F. Pogodina, V.M. Kirshon on Soviet drama, N.I. Bukharin on poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity in the USSR, V.P. Stavsky about the literary youth of the country, K.Ya. Gorbunova about the work of publishing houses with beginning writers, P.F. Yudin on the charter of the Union of Soviet Writers. The state of literature in the national republics was analyzed.
The genre composition of the participants in the writers' forum was diverse: prose writers accounted for about 33%, poets - 19.2%, playwrights - 4.7%, literary critics - 12.7%, essayists - 2%, journalists - 1.8%, children's writers - 1.3%, etc. 12
Writers and poets of 52 nationalities of the country were represented at the congress, including Russians - 201 people, Jews - 113 people, Georgians - 28, Ukrainians - 25, Armenians - 19, Tatars - 19, Belarusians - 17, Uzbeks - 12, Tajiks - 10, etc. The most representative were the writing delegations from Moscow - 175 people, Leningrad - 45, Ukraine - 42, Belarus - 26, Georgia - 30, Armenia - 18, Azerbaijan - 17, Uzbekistan - 16, Tajikistan - 14.
The congress was attended by 40 foreign writers, including Louis Aragon, Martin Andersen Nexe, Jean-Richard Bloch, Willy Bredel and others. Some of them spoke in the debate. Thus, the authorities could hope for predictable decisions from the writers' congress that corresponded to the then ideology and politics.
The beginning of the writers' congress was remarkable. It was discovered by A.M. Bitter. Among the problems raised by Gorky in his report, a significant place was devoted to the tasks of Soviet literature. In particular, he emphasized that she cannot boast of the ability to take a creative approach to analyzing life. The stock of impressions, the amount of knowledge of writers is not large, and there is no special concern for expanding or deepening it. The main hero of Soviet literature should be the working man. Writers should pay more attention children, Soviet women, the history of their country, etc. Speaking about the Writers' Union, Gorky emphasized that he (union) must set a task not only to protect the professional interests of writers, but also the interests of literature as a whole. The union must, to some extent, take upon itself the leadership of the army of aspiring writers, must organize it, teach it how to work with literary material, etc. This explains Gorky’s thesis that Soviet literature should be organized as a single collective whole, as a powerful instrument of socialist culture.
Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. Zhdanov. He called on writers to master the so-called literary technique, to collect, study, critically master the literary heritage of the past, to fight for the culture of language, for high quality works. The existing literature did not yet meet the requirements of the era. However, all these instructions and assessment of Soviet literature were elementary, non-specific and had the same directive character.
Ehrenburg put it sharply question about literary criticism. The latter, in his opinion, puts writers either on the red or black board, while easily changing the position of writers. “We cannot allow,” Ehrenburg asserts, “that literary analysis of works immediately influence the social position of writers. The question of the distribution of benefits should not depend on the opinion of the critic. It is impossible ... to consider the failures and failures of an artist of words as crimes, and successes as rehabilitation." The idea was sharply voiced that writers are not consumer goods; there is no machine that would make it possible to produce writers in series. You can’t approach a writer’s work by measuring the pace of construction. Thus, Ehrenburg dealt a blow to the popular belief that a writer in a Soviet country can become any person who has mastered the technique of writing. In his opinion, the creation of a work of art is an individual, ... intimate matter, and literary teams will remain in the history of Soviet literature as a picturesque, but brief detail of his youth.
L. Seifullina noted: “The Soviet government cherishes writers like nowhere else, and they are already accustomed to this. The writer is not averse to entrusting the proofreading of his works to the Politburo. With every little thing, we are accustomed to turning to the party and the government and waiting for how they will help us. We We are not looking for new names... We have no criticism at all. Writers must create responsible criticism for themselves, and must defend themselves if it is irresponsible. Writers should talk about this not behind the scenes. quiet conversations, and to achieve this loudly. ...In the writing community, Rappian habits still persist. We need smart, sensible leaders of the writers' union, not bureaucrats."
There was no literary criticism as such. Everything was subordinated to ideology.
The main criterion of criticism in evaluating works, which was adopted at the Congress: adherence to the method socialist realism.
The only artistic method at the Congress was recognized socialist realism, the principles of which were first formulated in the “Charter of the Union of Writers of the USSR” (1934).
The main postulate of socialist realism was partisanship, socialist ideology (subordination of literature and art to the principles of ideology and politics, emasculation of the very content of art).
Socialist realism was a universal method prescribed, in addition to literature, music, cinema, fine arts and even ballet. An entire era in Russian culture passed under his flag.
Many artists whose work did not fit into the Procrustean bed of socialist realism were, at best, excommunicated from literature and art, and at worst, subjected to repression (Mandelshtam, Meyerhold, Pilnyak, Babel, Kharms, Pavel Vasiliev, etc.).
The “development” of the method led to the fact that in the 1960s - 1980s, the official authorities chose the most loyal ones from the huge mass of socialist realism singers, showering them with awards and titles in abundance; even the term “secretary literature” appeared (this is how the works of the secretaries of the Union were called writers published in millions of copies.
Despite the fact that official criticism and literary criticism ranked among the outstanding representatives of socialist realism such writers as A. N. Tolstoy, M. A. Sholokhov, A. A. Fadeev, L. M. Leonov, they were not such in their pure form ( although some of their works fully met the requirements of the basic method). The strength of their talent and original talent pushed the limited boundaries of socialist realism; the truly talented books of these writers entered the treasury of great Russian literature.
You say: 1934, and the human blood rises in your consciousness, which after the murder of Kirov began to be shed like water. And this, of course, is the main thing. But as soon as we put a magnifying glass on the past, we are no less struck by something else: the apocalyptic seriousness with which it was played out Russian folk Kafka . German stone seriousness. This must be admitted: the style of conducting party affairs (not to mention scientific) was borrowed by the Russians from the Germans. It determined the tone of the first half of the 20th century - more than any “ideas”. If the leaders were a little lighter, more frivolous (in the French or at least in the British way), if they had more humor, less academicism, the number of people who would die violent death in the camps and wars of the 20th century, there would have been millions less.
In 1934, the first “congress of victors” took place: the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which announced to the world the victory of the party’s general line in building socialism. Interesting! General - and suddenly she won! But who should win? Marginal, or what? But now it's interesting. And then - 1108 out of 1966 delegates to the party congress were repressed. Of the 139 members and candidates for membership of the Central Committee, 41 survived. A big purge began. Big Kafka. Russian - with all its German seriousness, with all the national diversity of the USSR. The style of the era was created in that only city in the world that does not believe in tears - and it was created in Russian.
PARADE OF IMMORTALS
Following the party congress, another, no less victorious, took place: the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. They met from August 17 to September 1, 1934 - with the same ominous, world-historical seriousness that does not fit into the mind. Everything was planned out like clockwork. Manifestos purer than the Erfurt Program were being prepared: the resolution of the first congress of Soviet writers, the charter of the union of Soviet writers. They wrote in golden letters and erected a miraculous monument. They were built to last, no worse than the Ramses-Ozymandias. They even argued (there were disputes and disagreements) with an eye to eternity.
The official statistics of the congress are incomplete, but can be easily supplemented. 22 reports were read; 183 speeches delivered; 42 greetings to the congress were read out (almost all of them were phenomena: delegations from the most unexpected groups and societies entered the meeting room: from the Sami people of the Kola Peninsula; from the workers literary circles Moscow; from the reserve sailors of Osoaviakhim; from working women, work reporters and aspiring writers; from Palestinian artists; from advanced workers, authors of technical literature; from the Lyubertsy Labor Commune; from the pioneers of the snub-nosed base...).
There were also all sorts of welcoming words from the congress (6 in number; can you guess who? That’s right: first of all - to the leader-and-teacher; but not only to him, also to the People’s Commissar of Defense Voroshilov, Romain Rolland, and at the end, at the last meeting, to the central committee CPSU(B), council people's commissars yes, plus an appeal to Ernst Thälmann). There were closing words (2), responses to greetings, announcements and votes (7), resolutions (2) and statements (2). There were no protests or objections. Where would they come from in the monolithic camp of the winners?
I calculated that at 26 meetings, approximately 100 hours were spoken in Russian, and half a million words were spoken in this language. Russian, after all, was the working language of the congress, which, of course, was not noted anywhere, because - what else? They didn't play the fool. You can guarantee that no one even thought about voluntary-forced Russification of the outskirts, and this word (Russification) was not in use. Representatives of peoples much superior to the Russians in historical age and literary tradition spoke in a young language that had barely taken shape one hundred and fifty years before the congress.
We were unable to estimate how many other languages (foreign) were spoken (Russian retellings of these speeches fall into the mentioned 100 hours and half a million words). There is generally a lot of confusion with foreigners who played the role of wedding generals. There are only four well-known names: Louis Aragon, Jean-Richard Bloch, Klaus Mann, Vitezslav Nezval. The official list includes 40 foreign guests, but the German Friedrich Wolf, forgotten on the list, also took the podium. Is on the list dead souls, unknown writers (it is unknown whether they were writers): the mysterious Oudeanu from France, Amabel Williams-Ellis from Britain (listed as Amabel-Williams Ellis) and Robert Gesner from the USA. Encyclopedias are silent about them. There were 10 Germans, 6 Czechs and Slovaks, 5 French, 3 Swedes, a pair of Spaniards, Danes, Greeks, Turks (both Turkish names are distorted) and Americans (one fake) were included in this ark, one each from the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, China, Austria and Britain (the delegate is fake; no one has heard of Lady Amabel). Quorum anywhere!
Non-writers also spoke in tongues. The last surviving member of the Paris Commune, specially discharged from France, delivered a greeting to the congress in French.
There were 377 delegates with a casting vote, and 220 with an advisory vote (some animals are more equal than others); in total, that means 597 people. Impressive, great literature! One problem: today the Brief Literary Encyclopedia knows only 389 of them; 208 people (35%) did not even reach this special edition.
The big Kafka, of course, did not bypass writers. In subsequent years, 182 participants (30%) died in dungeons and the Gulag; another 38 were subjected to varying degrees of repression, but survived. And on the fronts of the Second World War, only 17 people died, all with a decisive vote and (for some reason) mostly bearers of non-Russian surnames.
Another curious feature of the convention is that it was a men's convention. Women accounted for only 3.7%. Moreover, out of 22 writers, four are foreigners (therefore, among foreigners, 10% are women; one wonders where women were liberated before?).
The congress was young: the average age of the writer was 36 years. The youngest, Alexander Filatov (1912-1985), was 22 years old. "Communism is the youth of the world..."
And here is the national composition (official data): Russians - 201 (33.7%), Jews - 113 (18.9%), Georgians - 28 (4.7%), Ukrainians - 25 (4.2%), Armenians - 19 (3.2%), Tatars - 19 (3.2%), Belarusians 17 (2.8%), Turks 14 (2.3%), Uzbeks 12 (2.0%), Tajiks - 10 (1.7%), Germans - 8 (1.3%). A total of 52 nationalities are represented, including Hungarians and Greeks. There was one Italian, one Chinese woman and one Lak (do not think that the varnisher is a reality; there is such a nationality in Dagestan; however, it would be more accurate to say: Lak, or Kazikumukhets).
Well, and the party composition: 65% communists and Komsomol members.
Before the great Kafka, as before God, all nations were equal. We take the Jews as a touchstone. As far as I can see, 35 out of 182 died, that is, 19%, and the percentage of the number of delegates was, as we just noted, 18.9%. No preference! Although... There is another account. There were 17 Jewish writers, Yiddishists, present at the congress. With Babel, who can be considered a Jewish writer, there are 18. Three survived. Destroyed - 79%.
WHO ROARED PROUDLY
You guessed wrong. Bitter. Mentioned on 271 of the 714 pages of the verbatim report (excluding 6 pages of table of contents).
The one you sinned against is strikingly behind: mentioned on 167 pages. How could he not have heard this? I heard. Gorky had less than two years to live.
Lenin is mentioned on 152 pages, Pushkin - on 82, Mayakovsky - on 75, Marx - on 71, Shakespeare - on 62, Pasternak (not yet completely disgraced, but, on the contrary, a member of the presidium) - on 56, Leo Tolstoy - on 55, Sholokhov (he is 29 years old) - on 49, Gogol - on 43, Olesha - on 42, Dostoevsky - on 27, Babel - on 17, Yesenin - on 12, Zabolotsky (who did not make it to the congress) - on 4 pages.
We have heard about these writers. But who is Vladimir Mikhailovich Kirshon with a rating of 67, just below Marx, just above Shakespeare? Sic transit gloria mundi!
But if you look at the matter more closely, it is still not the storm petrel of the revolution that soars proudly at the congress, but the same one (“no need for a name: everyone has it in their mouth, like the terrible name of the lord of the underworld”). If they mention him, it’s not like Pasternak (“on the one hand... on the other hand...”). How?
“...the iron will of Joseph Stalin works tirelessly and miraculously...” (Gorky)
“...Comrade Stalin at the 17th Party Congress gave an unsurpassed, brilliant analysis of our victories...” (Zhdanov)
“...to our friend and teacher... Dear and dear Joseph Vissarionovich... Long live the class that gave birth to you, and the party that raised you for the happiness of the working people of the whole world!” (congress greetings to the leader).
“...Long live our first and best drummer, our teacher and leader, beloved Comrade Stalin!” (greetings to the congress from the milkmaids).
Less than 17 years have passed since the establishment of Soviet power. Stalin has been in power for ten years (twelve as General Secretary).
WHO WAS ABSENT
And more: Gorodetsky, Kruchenykh, Isakovsky (?), Zabolotsky (arrested in 1938), Lozinsky, Shengeli, Pavel Vasiliev...
Could be present: Bulgakov, Vaginov, Platonov, Pavel Bazhov, Alexander Belyaev, Leonid Borisov, Grossman, Rurik Ivnev, Panteleev, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Sokolov-Mikitov, Erdman...
Four - Arseny Tarkovsky, Dmitry Kedrin, Maria Petrovykh and Leonid Martynov - were absent, one might say, because of their youth, although there were younger delegates.
Many - at all absent: not mentioned even once in 714 pages. Among them are Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Kuzmin.
NO OBJECTIONS
Of course, there were no objections along the general line, but the appearance of democracy was strictly observed.
Gorky opens the congress with a short word and rightfully so chairman of the organizing committee (and not a candidate for Nobel laureate, which he was, at least before moving to the USSR). Opening it, he passes the word Ukrainian writer Ivan Mikitenko (destroyed in 1937). He proposes to elect “the governing bodies of the congress.” The list of the honorary presidium is announced: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Ordzhonikidze (committed suicide in 1937), Kuibyshev, Kirov (killed in 1934), Andreev, Kosior (written: Kossior; destroyed in 1939 ), Thälmann (sitting in a Berlin prison, will be transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in August), Dimitrov (acquitted of charges of setting fire to the Reichstag in December 1933, has lived in Moscow since March 1934), Gorky... Stormy applause; everyone stands up... Notice that Bukharin is not there. That's who they'll object to.
“Allow me, comrades, to consider your warm applause as the approval of the honorary presidium of the congress...”
Also, with applause, Gorky was elected chairman of the congress.
“52 people are proposed for the presidium [by number nationalities ? witty!]... Any objections? There are no objections..."
Let us note some members of the presidium: Zhdanov (sic!), Bedny, Mehlis (!), Pasternak (!), A. Tolstoy, Tikhonov, Fefer (shot in 1952), Sholokhov, Shaginyan, Erenburg... Bukharin is not here either, but he's an editor after all Izvestia .
In exactly the same way, the secretariat is elected (“Are there any objections to the number? No...”, etc.), the credentials commission (?) and the editorial commission, and the procedure for the work of the congress and regulations are approved.
A characteristic point: at the current congresses of Russian writers (they are called congresses) all this tinsel and window dressing has been swept aside. The presidium is appointed in advance, the delegates do not discuss it. Everyone knows who is the boss and who is the extras.
NATIONAL LITERATURES
There were nine of them, according to the number of large reports about them, which were in the following order: Ukrainian, Belarusian, Tatar (despite the fact that Tataria is an autonomous SSR), Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Turkmen and Tajik literature.
Here is a fragment from the report of Comrade. Ivan Kulik about the literature of the Ukrainian SSR:
“... a significant part... went on a writers' excursion to the White Sea-Baltic Canal, saw how genuine miracles were created there, impossible under any other system, observed with their own eyes how, under the influence of the Bolshevik shock work, the Bolshevik truth, yesterday's criminals, the dregs of society, are reborn into conscious, active participants in socialist construction. We saw the conditions in which these criminals are kept there. Such conditions would be the envy of many Western workers who are suffering severely from the crisis and unemployment...”
Ivan Yulianovich himself became the scum of society in 1937. He didn’t have time to be reborn; he died in the camp.
POOR BUKHARIN
Poor Nikolai Ivanovich! How terribly he died! How he didn’t want to die... Nobody wants to, but it was as if he had found himself in a distorting mirror. That's where Kafka was! From the hands of a former friend and colleague. Stalin assured him (through the investigator-executioner; he refused a personal meeting, did not respond to letters from prison) that he needed to die for the cause of the world proletariat, and this poor fellow almost persuaded himself to agree... and yet he begged for mercy, the boots were ready for the Kremlin ghoul hug.
Bukharin had less than four years to live.
His report at the congress was... about poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity in the USSR. The congress delegates knew that Bukharin’s report was not entirely official, like Zhdanov’s report, that it did not express the party line. Did Bukharin know about this? Did you understand that the ax had already been raised?
“Comrades, I direct your applause to that great party...”
Academician Bukharin begins from afar: with St. Augustine, with the Indian teaching of Anandavardhana. He criticizes the Britannica definition of poetry (for being tautological). Quotes the bourgeois Gumilyov, the bourgeois Balmont. For Andrei Bely, “the fetishization of the word has reached Himalayan heights.” Speech flows like a river. The theorizing is accompanied by references to sources... Nikolai Ivanovich spoke non-stop for more than three hours!
“We have had magnificent successes in the field of the class struggle of the proletariat, primarily thanks to the wise leadership headed by Comrade Stalin...”
“Our country is facing great battles...”
“...in our time, the issue of quality is extremely sharply emphasized on all fronts. The problem of quality is the problem of diversity, multiplicity of special approaches, individualization [?!] ... "
“...poetic creativity is one of the types of ideological creativity...”
“...now the problem of quality, the problem of mastering the technique of poetic creativity, the problem of mastery... are coming to the fore..."
“We now need to have the courage and daring to set real, global criteria for our art and poetic creativity. We must catch up and overtake Europe and America in skill..."
“...in the field of literature, the time has come for a general showdown...”
“These are dialectical quantities that make up unity... In the phenomenon the essence appears. The essence turns into a phenomenon..."
“In the phenomenon is...” Hm! Annomination - I think that’s what scientists call it?
Humboldt, Potebnya, Lucretius, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Homer, Lessing, Horace, Averroes... In places the academician deviated from the written (and already published) text and improvised. Zhirmunsky and Eikhenbaum got it - but not too much, just a little.
“We must understand with all clarity the enormous difference between formalism in art, which must be decisively rejected, formalism in literary criticism, which is equally unacceptable, and the analysis of the formal aspects of art (which is by no means formalism) ...”
Blok, Yesenin, Bryusov, Demyan Bedny (applause) and Mayakovsky (stormy applause; everyone stands up) landed in the report section Fracture .
And here is the section Contemporaries : Vladimir Kirillov (1890-1937), Bezymensky (applause), Bagritsky (applause; everyone stands up), Svetlov, Zharov, Utkin, Ushakov, Boris Kornilov, Pasternak (stormy applause), Nikolai Tikhonov (stormy applause), Selvinsky (applause), Aseev (applause), Lugovskoy, Prokofiev, Pavel Vasiliev, Vasily Kamensky (applause). Some are only mentioned, some have pages with quotations. Nobody is perfect. They scold everyone (and laugh at Utkin), praise is pronounced as if through clenched teeth, with obvious effort (“Is it possible to find “Lutetia” [Heine] from Svetlov?”). Pasternak and Tikhonov received the most praise, but both are too subjective, too individual, and violate the “laws of “complex simplicity””...
Twenty-four large pages, 750 words each, for a total of 18,000 words. Where the speaker is right, there he is, alas, vulgar, and vulgarity, as Babel will put it at this congress, is counter-revolutionary...
“The favorite of the entire party” (according to Lenin’s definition), simple, amiable, democratic, cheerful, accessible, intelligent Bukharin... In 1934, the poor fellow just got married (for the third time). In 1936, I was abroad, based on some signs, I guessed where things were going, but I still didn’t believe it - how could I believe in this? - and returned...
“I end my report with the slogan: we must dare, comrades!” (stormy applause from the audience, turning into ovation. Shouts of “Hurray.” The whole audience stands up.)
Nowadays, almost everyone understands Stalin as an outright power-hunger - and this explains his unquenchable thirst for blood. He, they say, killed to rule. But he did not need the death of the crushed and humiliated Bukharin. Bukharin, even in his best days, did not strive for supreme power, but in the end he gave in to everything and groveled. Why kill? To make others uncomfortable? It doesn't look like it. Everyone around was already shaking with fear. And there were any number of potential victims. It was not at all necessary to finish off this theoretical sheep. After all, it’s not Trotsky. Although - ... maybe the ghoul himself was shaking with fear in his wild grandeur, wild loneliness? Then it’s clearer.
There is a mocking and witty hypothesis. (I heard it from the Israeli chemist Sergei Brown.) Stalin did not recognize himself as a power-hunger, did not serve himself (in everyday life he was unpretentious to the point of asceticism), but honestly and selflessly fought the bourgeoisie (which inspired him with sincere disgust) - in the name of the happiness of the world proletariat, for the sake of creating a classless society. He was a consistent Marxist; He derived his right to supreme power from the belief that he understood Marxism better than others. What does Marxism say? That in one country, and an agrarian one at that, you cannot build a classless communist society. This is precisely what the Mensheviks insisted on. Stalin took their opinion very seriously - and found a way out. He killed those who managed to become bourgeois. After all, what was happening before his eyes? Yesterday's hungry people, having seized power, became richer. Society did not become classless; on the contrary, the power class and wealthy people were revived. And where there are classes, there is class struggle. Stalin decided that the fight must be this way: on the one hand, create the proletariat (industrialization and collectivization); on the other hand, to eradicate the snickering. A layer of people rises to power and begins to acquire things, read poetry, and look into Schopenhauer. Yesterday they were their own, socially close; today - strangers. They are at the root. We live in a capitalist environment, with enemies all around us. The next layer will rise - and it will go there too. And so - until the very beginning of the world revolution.
If so (if Sergei Braun is right), Bukharin simply could not be left alive. He was petty bourgeois to the core.
WHAT THE WRITERS SAID
BITTER
“...You know that the material for history primitive culture served as data from archeology and reflections of ancient religious cults...”
This is from the beginning of Gorky's report about the Soviet literature. Why are you laughing? The literature is enormous, the event is world-historical, and you need to dig deep.
“Already in ancient times, people dreamed of being able to fly through the air...”
Not by water, mind you.
"History of technical and scientific discoveries is rich in facts of resistance of the bourgeoisie even to the growth of technical culture..."
“The time from 1907 to 1917 was a time of complete self-will of irresponsible thought...”
“It seems to me that I am not mistaken in noticing that fathers are beginning to be more and more caring towards their children...”
About fathers - on the tenth (!) page of the report. The founder has been speaking for 75 minutes - and has not yet uttered a single name of a Soviet writer, but he touched on de Coster, Merezhkovsky, Louis XI, Ivan the Terrible and the execution at the Lena mines.
“We still don’t know the reality well...”
The names will never appear (Maria Shkapskaya and Maria Levberg do not count; they are “working great” on the history of factories and factories), but a figure will appear:
“The Union of Soviet Writers unites 1,500 people...”
This means that more than a third of all Soviet writers were at the congress!
“...calculated by mass we get: one writer per 100 thousand people. This is not much, because the inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula at the beginning of this century had one writer for every 230 readers...”
At the end, on page 13 of his canvas, Gorky formulates his goal:
?“We need to know everything that happened in the past, but not as it has already been told, but as it is all illuminated by the teachings of Marx-Lenin-Stalin and how it is realized by labor in factories and in the fields... This is what, in my opinion, view, the task of the Union of Writers..." (stormy applause; the audience cheers standing...).
VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY
“Dostoevsky cannot be understood outside the revolution and cannot be understood except as a traitor... if Fyodor Mikhailovich had come here, then we could judge him as the heirs of humanity, as people who judge a traitor...”
“...we have become the only humanists in the world...”
“Mayakovsky’s fault is not that he shot himself, but that he shot at the wrong time...”
ITZIK FEFER
(shot in 1952)
"Cheerfulness and optimism - that's characteristic features Jewish Soviet poetry. This distinguishes it from pre-October Jewish poetry, and from Jewish poetry in modern capitalist countries...”
“At the head of our prose is the great master David Bergelson [shot in 1952]. He leads our prose forward [!]..."
“...Jewish literature of no capitalist country can compare with the level of Jewish Soviet literature...”
“...the temperature of the heroes of the Soviet Union is not yet in our Soviet literature...”
“...when a muddy wave of anti-Semitism sweeps across all capitalist countries, the Soviet government organizes an independent Jewish region - Birobidzhan, which is very popular. Many of the Jewish writers from bourgeois countries are coming here, many Palestinian workers are fleeing this so-called “homeland” to their true homeland - the Soviet Union ... "
“...Palestine has never been the homeland of Jewish workers. Palestine was the homeland of Jewish exploiters..."
KORNEY CHUKOVSKY
K.I. devotes a fair part of his speech to an analysis of Nikolai Aseev’s poem from Murzilki, which he calls disgusting: “The sun beats down the May street, the wind blows banners along the street. Having filled them all up to the sides, the workers took to the streets...” And you can’t argue with him. But he himself expresses himself strangely:
“Charskaya poisoned children with syphilis of militaristic and barracks-patriotic feelings...”
MARIETTA SHAGINYAN
A feature of the congress was that writers were called to the podium without names - only by last name: Comrade Berezovsky, for example (and that he was Feoktist Nikolaevich, this had to be kept in mind; now only KLE remembers this). For Comrade Shaginyan, among the few, an exception was made: she was called by her first and last name.
“Once upon a time, enemies and traitors to our cause argued that it was impossible to build socialism in one country...”
“This process cannot be characterized otherwise than by the immortal Stalinist formula given three years ago...”
“Judging by our serial novels - “Quiet Don”, “Bruski” [Panferov's novel about collectivization], “Virgin Soil Upturned” - it’s as if we are dealing with an interrupted collision... In the West, such novels in the form of the story of one human life make sense... For us, comrades, it loses its meaning. ...our “disease of continuations” is not at all caused by necessity - it only proves the inability to finish, the inability to build a whole form...”
“It is in personal love, as in nothing else, that the class and its ideology are revealed most clearly, with the greatest clarity in literature... It seems as if Now only we in the whole world have the key of love , only we know the secret of eros, connecting people of different skins and races... only we, all over the world, nurture in our art the idea of a new humanity ..." [italics M.Sh.]
“...I was amazed at the tenderness with which our little guys treated the children of a foreign race... ...we raised this tenderness with the whole atmosphere of our culture and the first lessons of the proletarian worldview...”
VERA INBER
This writer was called to the podium even by her first name and patronymic and was greeted with applause. I wonder how many people knew that she was Trotsky’s cousin? If they had known, they would have eaten him alive. Inber began with a story about her unfinished play, in which there was negative character. He says: “I don’t believe in the proletariat at all. Despite its masculine appearance, it is a fragile and short-lived class. It will soon become extinct. And why did you think? From art...” How the man looked into the water! Much better than the writer's cousin. In essence, Inber brought out the prophet. More precisely, it was under-delivered; I didn’t dare. And here is the writer herself:“Truly optimism is a little-studied area, about which even the Small Soviet Encyclopedia knows little... (laughter)”
“Our main tone is happiness... We seem to be going against the grain of world literature...”
“...the main quality of socialism is condensation, compression, saturation... a diamond is coal, but only said briefly...”
The speech was a success. The writer, if we talk about her writings, too. Twelve years later she will receive a state prize - for the poem Pulkovo meridian . But Inber entered the history of literature differently. Firstly, the immortal poetic line that followed the pathetic refrain in her masterpiece: “Cut off the dashing head!” (This miraculous monument will cease to exist only together with the Russian language.) Secondly, by what is said about her (although not about her alone): “Ehrenburg howls wildly. Inber repeats his game. Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg will replace Berdichev with him...” This will also last for a long time, if not forever.
ILYA ERENBURG
“Our foreign guests are now taking a trip in a time machine...”
“Isn’t the pride of our country the truly national love with which Maxim Gorky is surrounded?”
“In my life I have made mistakes many times... I am an ordinary Soviet writer (applause). This is my joy, this is my pride (applause) ... "
“I wrote the novel “The Love of Jeanne Ney” and I assure you that any writer who has gotten good at it can do ten such stories in one month (laughter) ...”
“I’m not at all concerned about myself. I personally am as fertile as a rabbit (laughter), but I defend the right of female elephants to be pregnant longer than female rabbits (laughter) ... When I hear conversations - why does Babel write so little, why has Olesha not written a new novel for so many years, why there is no new book by Pasternak... I feel that not everyone here understands the essence of artistic work..."
“Look at bourgeois society - a young writer there has to break through the wall with his forehead. We have placed him in excellent conditions...”
“We have the right to be proud that some of our novels are already available to millions...”
“Believe me, what I’m talking about with you is something I think about very often at my table...”
YAKOV BRONSHTEIN
Yes, yes, there was one. Delegate from Belarus, author Problems of the Leninist stage in literary criticism , professor, corresponding member. Now even KLE doesn’t know him. Shot, rehabilitated and forgotten. But he said interesting things - about autocriticism.
“In Russian criticism they recently started talking in passing about the peculiar, proofreading type of auto-polemic that Pilnyak waged against [his] “Roots of the Japanese Sun.” Why shouldn’t Russian leading criticism [!] become interested in such a question as the problem of restructuring a number of writers of the peoples of the USSR in an area more original and more serious than Pilnyak’s - in the area of figurative autocriticism? ... The writer, burdened in the past with the burden of reactionary images, calls up from the depths of the past his favorite gallery of images and guillotines it, removes it with autocriticism - not journalistic, but figurative ... "
“If Russian literary criticism could get acquainted with the poem of the Jewish poet Kulbak [destroyed in 1937, a year before Bronstein]"Childe Harold of the Desna", she would understand..."
“Let me remind you of the slogan that was recently thrown into Jewish literature by Comrade Fefer: “Let us sing in the voice of Bérenger!” The struggle for Bérenger’s voice, for satire, is a positive struggle...”
“A few words about how we fight the class enemy... At the exhibition there is a wall dedicated to the Latinization of Eastern languages. It also had Hebrew text. The content of this text is as follows: “According to the 1932 census, the number of the peasant Jewish population in Palestine is 45,000, the Jewish urban population is 130,000”... bourgeois Jewish nationalist Zionists are using a number of very hidden maneuvers so that even on the territory of our Central Park culture and recreation to conduct their propaganda of Zionism..."
“...we had the good fortune to work under the leadership of a party unprecedented in the world, under the leadership of the party of Lenin and Stalin (applause).
YURI OLESHA
“You cannot describe a third person without becoming at least for a minute this third person. All the vices and all the virtues live in the artist... When you portray a negative hero, you yourself become negative, you raise the bad, dirty from the bottom of the soul, i.e. make sure that you have it in you..."
“Yes, Kavalerov looked at the world through my eyes... And then they said that Kavalerov was a vulgarity and a nonentity... I accepted this accusation of insignificance and vulgarity, and it shocked me [now they would say: “shocked”]... I didn’t believe it and hid..."
“Each artist can only paint what he is able to write... It is difficult for me to understand the type of worker, the type of revolutionary hero. I can’t be him..."
“Somewhere in me there lives the conviction that communism is not only an economic, but also a moral system...”
How did the man survive?! And he’s also a nobleman to boot.
ALEXANDER AVDEENKO
Don't strain your memory. He is 25 years old and socially close, which is why he was called to the congress. Not noticed in any special writing.
“Several years ago I was sitting in a prison cell in Orenburg... I lived in this world, the world of people, like an animal - I could cut another’s throat, commit the most terrible crime... I have a lot of dirt. I am sure that you are not clean either..."
“I am a fresh person in literature...”
"Indifference is the worst thing..."
“We, the young, will live up to the hopes placed on us...”
Avdeenka has a decisive vote at the congress. Antokolsky, Agnia Barto, Bukharin, Gaidar, German, Kazin, Kamensky, Kirsanov, Oleinikov, Paustovsky, Radek, Skitalets, Tvardovsky, Shklovsky, Utkin, Eisenstein have advisory votes.
AGNIYA BARTO
“For the first time in the entire life of mankind, children are not the heirs of money, houses and furniture of their parents, but the heirs of a real and powerful value - the socialist state...”
DAVID BERGELSON
“...Jewish literature stands on a par with all the great literatures of the Union...”
“Comrades, as a Jewish writer, I would like to add from this rostrum that one of the most powerful speeches I heard here was the speech of the people’s poet of Dagestan. I didn’t understand a single word from this speech, but nevertheless it was a sheet of paper of blinding whiteness, on which an extraordinary poem about Lenin-Stalin national politics was written ... "
Shot in 1952 in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
ISAAC BABEL
He was greeted with prolonged applause - one of very few.
“Vulgarity these days is no longer a bad character trait, but a crime. Moreover: vulgarity is a counter-revolution... The mechanic next door beat his wife... this is a counter-revolutionary..."
“They talk unbearably loudly about love... And it has already reached the point where the objects of love are beginning to protest, just like Gorky yesterday...”
“...look how Stalin forges his speech, how forged his few words are, how full of muscles. I’m not saying that everyone needs to write like Stalin, but we need to work like Stalin on the word (applause) ... "
“... on our banner should be written the words of Sobolev, that everything was given to us by the party and the government and only one thing was taken away: the right to write badly... This was a privilege that we widely used... let's give this privilege at the writers' congress, and may God help us. However, there is no God, we will help ourselves (applause) ... "
“If we started talking about silence, then we can’t help but talk about me, the great master of this genre (laughter)... I must say frankly that in any self-respecting bourgeois country I would have died of hunger long ago...”
He was killed in state prisons four years later.
VSEVOLOD VISHNEVSKY
“...In 1919, deprived of bread, light, and stripped, our country in one Yaroslavl province had more theaters than the whole of France had (applause) ..."
“Remember how in 1905 Lenin wrote: “Stock up on brass knuckles, sticks, stock up on resin material, stock up on everything…”…”
“Who knows that the entire Siberian partisan movement was silently [!] led by Stalin?”
“A number of our writers - I’m addressing in particular my friend Yuri Olesha - have entered the realm of abstract, crystal-transparent constructions about the future... Don’t think that this is something new... during the times of military communism, N.I. Bukharin once said this: there will be a classless society... people will lose the feeling of eternal tension... The late A.V. Lunacharsky in one of his plays... showed how people of the future, participants in battles, people of two camps - white and red - will meet and half-sadly, half-affectionately will talk about the blood they have shed, and what a strange fraternal dialogue will be conducted between Lenin and Wrangel..."
“My friend Olesha... you write about crystal, about love, about tenderness and so on. But at the same time, we must always keep a good revolver in working order... We must understand that we are facing a big and final settlement with five-sixths of the world (applause)..."
BORIS PASTERNAK
He was called to the podium (from the presidium) without the word comrade, but like Boris Pasternak and, like Babel, he was greeted with “prolonged applause.”
“...I am not a fighter. Don’t look for personalities in my words... Comrades, my appearance on the podium is not spontaneous. I was afraid that you might think something bad if I didn’t speak out...”
“For twelve days we were united by overwhelming happiness...”
“What is poetry, comrades? Poetry is prose, prose not in the sense of the totality of anyone’s prose works, but prose itself, the voice of prose, prose in action, and not in retelling. Poetry is the language of organic fact, i.e. a fact with living consequences..."
“If happiness smiles on one of us, we will be prosperous (but may the wealth that devastates a person pass us by). Don’t break away from the masses, says the party in such cases. I have done nothing to win the right to use her expressions... With the enormous warmth with which the people and the state surround us, it is too easy to become a literary dignitary. Away from this affection in the name of its direct sources, in the name of great, practical, and fruitful love for the homeland and today’s greatest people...”
SEMYON KIRSANOV
“Who doesn’t know that as soon as someone started talking about the problem of form, about metaphors, about rhyme or an epithet, the cry immediately rang out: “Stop the formalists!”...
“In the part where Comrade Bukharin sums up the results and outlines the budget of our poetry, we need to argue... The speaker exclaims: we need to dare!... but if to dare means to find tearing contradictions in yourself, then I am resolutely against such daring...”
“Of course, comrades, a huge political task and a poetic task is to find new stage to the word "kiss"..."
“Weaving wreaths from breasts is not a burning problem for the revolutionary workers of Germany and France...”
“I’m shouting here at the top of my voice…”
NIKOLAY TIKHONOV
He gave a report on Leningrad poets. There was no report on Moscow poets. The cultural center has not yet moved to Moscow. Tikhonov himself, Marshak, Chukovsky, Zabolotsky, Evgeny Schwartz and many others lived on the banks of the Neva at that time. In Leningrad there existed the last of the old type of literary groups: the Oberiuts.
“Which poets had the greatest influence on the Leningrad young poets? Sergei Yesenin. ... He could not overcome the man of yesterday for the sake of the man of the future... Mayakovsky. He faced such a creative crisis, the very consciousness of which made him feel deathly dizzy. And futurism in his person approached the poem “At the top of his voice” with the loss of all his powerful poetic arsenal, having as a weapon only the canonical verse that he had previously rejected ... "
“Boris Pasternak’s most difficult tongue twister, this collapse of words” also had an impact; and Bagritsky’s verse, which “was close to Acmeistic”; and Aseev, “this great poet, this black worker of verse”...
In general, the young Leningrad poets have noticeable: “rhythmic poverty, poetic cliches, direct epigonism... room experiences, disputes about books, meetings, editorial offices, studying the little secrets of the craft instead of studying a new person and a new society...”
“How much we talk about poetic heritage! The truth must be said that the old people did not write so badly...”
Prokofiev, Sayanov and Kornilov show promise. “Kornilov must remember that he succeeded in many things in the poem only through direct inspiration, but that inspiration alone is not enough...” (Boris Kornilov had about four years to remember; he would die in the camps in 1938, at the age of 31.) No one else among the young (in an hour and ten minutes on the podium) was mentioned. Even Zabolotsky, whom Tikhonov favors. The satrap is cautious.
But Pushkin and Lermontov are often involved, Tyutchev is not forgotten (about whom “the bilious old poet Sollogub” says: "noble rhymes."
“We have qualified translators in Leningrad... Tynyanov [!], Lifshits... [probably Benedikt Lifshits]...Lozinsky..."
“Let’s take the poem “Mountain Peaks,” translated by Lermontov. This is a work of genius... Goethe's poem "Mountain Peaks" is a mediocre poem... " [This opinion, completely erroneous, remained stuck in the minds of those who did not look into Goethe’s original.]
“Worldview is the master of creativity...”
“What are poems? Poems are, as it were, in eternal formation, in eternal change..." [the question was never answered; what a shame!].
“Pacifism is alien to the spirit of our poetry. None of the exotic conquests that excited the minds of the singers of Russian imperialism live in the verses of Soviet poets..."
“Our poetry has not yet reached world heights...”
ALEXEY SURKOV
Remember this poet?
“Comrade Bukharin, in his introduction to the report, stated that he was making the report on behalf of the party. I don’t know what Comrade Bukharin wanted to say by this. In any case, this does not mean that everything in his report is correct and certain provisions are not subject to criticism. In addition, at our congress all reports are made on behalf of the organizing committee. It seems to me that the report is only a starting point for judgment, and not a directive beginning in the distribution of light and shadow in our poetry (applause) ... "
"…For large group people growing up in our literature, the creativity of B.L. Pasternak is an inappropriate point of orientation in their growth (applause) ... "
An uninitiated person may imagine that we are talking here about an aesthetic struggle, and not about the physical eradication of a class enemy. But Surkov knows what he is doing.
Other delegates also knew that Bukharin was a complete loser; attacked boldly. It is possible that it was on instructions from the organizing committee. And the “favorite of the whole party” had to justify himself right at the congress.
“At our congress, one word received full rights of citizenship, which until recently we treated with distrust or even hostility. This word is humanism. Born in a wonderful era, this word was polluted and slobbered by puny degenerates. They replaced its powerful sound - humanity - with Christian lisp - love for mankind... In our country, the concepts of love, joy, pride, which make up the content of humanism, rightfully enter into broad poetic usage. But some poets somehow bypass the fourth side of humanism, expressed in the harsh and beautiful word hatred (prolonged applause)…»
“On the pages of the newspaper, next to notes of international information that smell of gunpowder and blood, next to TASS messages, forcing you to take out a revolver from a distant drawer in the evening and re-clean and lubricate it, lyrical birds are chirping... Let's not demagnetize the young Red Guard heart of our good youth with intimate and lyrical water. Let's not forget that the time is not far off when poetry from the pages of thick magazines will have to move to the pages of front-line newspapers and divisional field newspapers. Let's keep our lyrical powder dry! (prolonged applause)…»
WHAT THE FOREIGNERS SAID
ANDRE MALRAUX
Malraux began his life very revolutionary, but then came to his senses. Minister of Culture of France in 1959-69 (that is, under de Gaulle and... under Furtseva). The speech at the congress was read by Olesha, obviously in his translation (which sins against the Russian language).
“You can already work for the proletariat, we - the revolutionary writers of the West - are still forced to work against the bourgeoisie (applause) ...”
“But you should know that only truly new works will be able to support the cultural prestige of the Soviet Union abroad, as Mayakovsky supported it, as Pasternak supports it (applause) ...”
Here you understand how the Big Four poets were torn apart: Mandelstam - in exile, in Cherdyn, on the brink of life and death; Akhmatova - in semi-underground, awaiting arrest; Tsvetaeva - in Paris (Malraux had never heard of her); Pasternak - on the presidium; he - thanks to Bukharin - is the glory of the Soviet Union (this is how the name of the country was written then: the first word is capitalized, the second - lowercase).
RAFAEL ALBERTIE
“The magazine “October” that we founded... is richly illustrated with photographs about the Soviet Union...”
“...we firmly know that the day will come when Soviet Spain will widely open its borders to you. The Spanish revolution cannot fail to win..."
Other foreigners also spoke about Soviet France and Soviet Germany in the near future.
THIS IS THE CONGRESS
This is how the congress turned out. Walpurgis Night - but at the same time the Council of Nicaea (only the emperor was not present). The heralds of the new world, admitted into the palace, branded heresies, rejoiced, feasted and dispersed, each to meet his own destiny. For others, “everything down to the smallest fraction of a hundredth in it was justified and came true.” For most it turned out differently.
As one nameless young poet of the time said (quoted at the congress):
“Dear comrades! Before us is a huge, varied work for the benefit of our homeland, which we are creating as the homeland of the proletariat of all countries. Get to work, comrades! Friendly, harmonious, passionate - let’s get to work!”
A lot of truth was said at the congress. One of the truths is this: the congress was, after all, world-historical. Neither before nor after history has known anything like this. And he won't know.
in the book:
Yuri Kolker. OSAMA VELIMIROVIC AND OTHER FOUILLETONS
. [Articles and essays] Tirex, St. Petersburg, 2006
2.2. First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers
In 1934, the first writers' congress attracted everyone's attention. The creative method of Soviet literature and Soviet art“socialist realism” was declared.
The mere fact of creating a new artistic method cannot be reprehensible. The trouble was that the principles of this method, as I.N. writes. Golomshtok “were matured somewhere at the top of the Soviet party apparatus, brought to the attention of a select part of the creative intelligentsia at closed meetings, meetings, briefings, and then in calculated doses they were published in print. The term “socialist realism” first appeared on May 25, 1932 on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta, and a few months later its principles were proposed as fundamental for all Soviet art at a mysterious meeting between Stalin and Soviet writers at Gorky’s apartment, held on October 26, 1932 . This meeting, too (like similar performances by Hitler) was surrounded by an atmosphere of gloomy symbolism in the taste of its main organizer.” At this meeting the foundations for the future organization of writers were also laid.
The first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers (held in Moscow from August 17 to 31, 1934) became the platform from which socialist realism was proclaimed as a method that soon became universal for all Soviet culture: “Comrade Stalin called you engineers of human souls. What responsibilities does this title impose on you? This is, firstly, to know life in order to be able to truthfully portray it in works of art, to portray not scholastically, not dead, not simply as “objective reality,” but to depict reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, the truthfulness and historical specificity of the artistic depiction must be combined with the task of ideological reworking and education of workers in the spirit of socialist realism” (Zhdanov’s speech). “Literature, and art in general, was thereby assigned a subordinate role as an educational tool, and nothing more. As can be seen, this formulation of the question was very far from the premises on the basis of which literary issues were discussed ten years earlier, at the height of the NEP.”
At the congress, two principles of future totalitarianism in culture were demonstrated: the cult of the leader and unanimous approval of all decisions. The principles of socialist realism were out of discussion. All decisions of the congress were written in advance and delegates were given the right to vote for them. None of the 600 delegates voted against it. All speakers mainly talked about the great role of Stalin in all spheres of the country’s life (he was called “architect” and “helmsman”), including in literature and art. As a result, the congress formulated an artistic ideology, not an artistic method. All previous artistic activity of mankind was considered a prehistory to a “new type” of culture, “a culture of the highest stage,” that is, socialist. At Gorky’s suggestion, the most important criterion for artistic activity, the principle of humanism, included “love-hate”: love for the people, the party, Stalin and hatred for the enemies of the motherland. This kind of humanism was called “socialist humanism.” From this understanding of humanism logically followed the principle of partisanship of art and its reverse side - the principle of a class approach to all phenomena public life.
It is obvious that socialist realism, which has its own artistic achievements and had a certain influence on the literature of the twentieth century. nevertheless, it is a much narrower trend than the realism of the twentieth century in general. Literature, which reflected the ideological mood of Soviet society, guided by Stalin’s slogan about strengthening the class struggle during the construction of socialism, was increasingly drawn into the search for “enemies.” Abram Tertz (A. Sinyavsky) in the article “What is socialist realism” (1957) defined its essence as follows: “The theological specificity of the Marxist way of thinking pushes to bring all concepts and objects, without exception, to the Goal, correlate with the Goal, define through Purpose... Works of socialist realism are very diverse in style and content. But in each of them there is a concept of purpose in direct or indirect meaning, in open or veiled expression. This is either a panegyric to communism and everything connected with it, or a satire on its many enemies.”
Really, characteristic feature The literature of socialist realism, social and pedagogical, according to Gorky’s definition, is its pronounced fusion with ideology, sacredness, and also the fact that this literature was in fact a special type of mass literature, in any case, it performed its functions. These were propaganda socialist functions.
The pronounced agitational nature of the literature of socialist realism was manifested in a noticeable predetermined plot, composition, often alternative (friends/enemies), in the author’s obvious concern for the accessibility of his artistic preaching, that is, a certain pragmatism. The principle of idealization of reality, which underlies the “method,” was Stalin’s main principle. Literature was supposed to lift people's spirits and create an atmosphere of anticipation for a “happy life.” In itself, the aspiration of the writer of socialist realism “to the stars” - to the ideal model to which reality is likened - is not a vice, it could be normally perceived among the alternative principles of depicting a person, but turned into an indisputable dogma, it became a brake on art.
But in the literature of these years there were also other voices - reflections on life and anticipation of its future difficulties and upheavals - in the poetry of Alexander Tvardovsky and Konstantin Simonov, in the prose of Andrei Platonov, etc. A major role in the literature of those years was played by an appeal to the past and its bitter lessons (historical novels by Alexei Tolstoy).
Thus, the congress awakened a lot of hope among poets and writers. “Many perceived it as a moment of contrasting the new socialist humanism, rising from the blood and dust of the battles that had just died down, with the bestial face of fascism, which was advancing in Europe. There were different intonations in the voices of the deputies, sometimes not without critical accents... The delegates rejoiced that, thanks to the transformation of society, countless ranks of new readers were rising.”
Collective trips of writers, artists and musicians to construction sites and republics became completely new methods in culture, which gave the character of a “campaign” to the purely individual work of a poet, composer or painter.
K. Simonov in his book “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation” recalls: “Both the construction of the White Sea Canal and the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, which began immediately after the completion of the first construction, were then, in general and in my perception, not only construction, but also a humane school reforging people from bad to good, from criminals to builders of five-year plans. Both through newspaper articles and through the book that the writers created after a large collective trip in 1933 along the newly built canal, this topic was mainly discussed - the reforging of criminals. ... all this was presented as something – on a societal scale – very optimistic, as a shift in people’s consciousness, as an opportunity to forget the past and move on to new paths. ... It sounds naive, but that’s how it was.”
At the same time, control over creative activity the entire Union and its individual members. The role of the censor and editor in all areas of culture increased. Many major phenomena of Russian literature remained hidden from the people, including the novels of Mikhail Bulgakov and Vasily Grossman, the works of foreign writers - Ivan Bunin, V. Khodasevich, and the work of repressed writers - Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam. Back in the early 1930s, Stalin called M. Bulgakov’s play “Running” an anti-Soviet phenomenon, an attempt to “justify or half-justify the White Guard cause,” Stalin allowed himself rude and insulting reviews to address something that seemed closely connected with the party and the whole history revolution and civil war poet, like Demyan Bedny. However, in 1930-1931, Stalin called him a “cowardly intellectual” who did not know the Bolsheviks well, and this was enough for the doors of most editorial offices and publishing houses to be closed in front of D. Bedny.
During these same years, Soviet children's literature flourished. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that many artists and writers, whose work “did not fit” into the strict framework of socialist realism, went into children’s literature. Children's literature talked about universal human values: about kindness and nobility, about honesty and mercy, about family joys. Several generations Soviet people grew up on the books of K.I. Chukovsky, S.Ya. Marshak, A.P. Gaidar, S.V. Mikhalkova, A.L. Barto, V.A. Kaverina, L.A. Kassilya, V.P. Kataeva.
Thus, the period from 1932 to 1934 in the USSR was a decisive turn towards totalitarian culture:
1. The apparatus of art management and control over it was finally rebuilt.
2. The dogma of totalitarian art - socialist realism - has found its final formulation.
3. War was declared to destroy all artistic styles, forms, trends that differ from the official dogma.
Chapter 11.
FIRST CONGRESS OF WRITERS
Zhdanov's Sochi vacation was short - one of the most significant public events of the 1930s awaited him. On August 17, 1934 in Moscow, in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, a meeting of the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers opened. The whole flower of literature was present - all the names known then and now were in the hall; there is simply no point in listing them.
582 delegates represented all genres of literature and all regions of the large country. Among them are about two hundred Russians (as they still wrote - Great Russians), about a hundred Jews and thirty Georgians, 25 Ukrainians, about twenty Tatars and Belarusians, 12 Uzbeks. Another 43 nationalities were represented by ten to one delegate. Even the Chinese, Italians, Greeks and Persians were represented. Many eminent foreign writers were present at the congress as guests.
Almost all are men, only a few women. The average age of the participants is 36 years, the average literary experience is 13 years. Half are communists and Komsomol members. In terms of the origin of the delegates, the first place comes from peasant backgrounds - slightly less than half of them. A quarter are workers, a tenth are intellectuals. There are only a few of the nobles and clergy. Almost half of those present will not survive the next decade - they will fall under the rink of repression or die on the fronts of an already imminent war...
In the center of the presidium are two main figures of the congress - the patriarch of Russian literature, the living classic Maxim Gorky and the secretary of the Central Committee Andrei Zhdanov. He was plump, with a round, shaved head, wearing a jacket over a blouse.
The idea for this event arose in the Stalinist Politburo back in 1932. Initially, the writers' congress was scheduled for the spring of 1933, but the task of uniting all writers of the USSR turned out to be difficult. Firstly, the literary figures themselves, as in all times, did not like each other too much. Secondly, the “proletarian” writers, united in RAPP, who felt on horseback throughout the 1920s, actively did not want to lose their political monopoly in the field of literature. However, the demonstrative class struggle in literature, according to the party, had to end. The time had come for the ideological consolidation of society; from now on the party was going to use the creative potential of all literary forces to mobilize the people to carry out the tasks of state building.
Therefore, the summer of 1934 passed for the new Secretary of the Central Committee in the efforts of preparing and holding the Congress of Writers of the Soviet Union. In the top leadership of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the newcomer Zhdanov was known as an “intellectual.” Some of the flatterers (and for a person at this level they inevitably appear) will soon even call him “the second Lunacharsky.” This, of course, is flattery, but our hero really stood out from the rest of the top Soviet leadership with his heightened, even demonstrative interest in issues of culture and art in general and in the role of the creative intelligentsia in the new society in particular.
Having, by those standards, a good education in the humanities, Zhdanov was not only interested in all the new literature, music, and cinema of those years, but also tried to theoretically comprehend questions about the role and place of the intelligentsia in a socialist state. Let us remember his first articles on this topic in the Shadrinsk newspaper “Iset” or “Tverskaya Pravda”. Stalin, who paid a lot of attention to the issues of the new Soviet culture, directed Zhdanov’s interests in a practical direction.
The first writers' congress built a fairly effective system of state and party management in this area. At the same time, the goal was not only totalitarian control over the writing fraternity - first of all, it was necessary to bring literature and the still illiterate masses closer together. In the new Stalinist state, literature (as well as all art) was supposed to become not sophisticated entertainment for the jaded “elitist,” but a means of educating and improving the culture of the entire people. An applied tool - for further more effective development countries.
Stalin spoke bitterly about the past: “Russia was beaten for military backwardness, for cultural backwardness...” It is no coincidence that cultural backwardness, as the cause of many failures and defeats of Russian civilization, was named one of the first, right after military backwardness. The new Secretary of the Central Committee, Zhdanov, was supposed to tackle the task of overcoming cultural backwardness.
In the 1930s-1940s, our hero will demand from creative personalities and the tension and self-restraint of unbridled talents - it is clear that not all “geniuses” liked this: after all, it is much easier to poke around in your own muddy “I”, pulling out something from it for the amusement of the generous bourgeois public.
It is from here - from Zhdanov’s pressure on creative talents- and the origins of that hatred towards him go back to the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika and the origins of the “black legend” about Zhdanov as the main persecutor of the creative intelligentsia.
The First Congress of Writers not only shaped the literary policy of “socialist realism” for decades to come. It was conceived and became an effective propaganda act for the outside world. At that time, the intelligentsia of the entire planet closely followed the events in the USSR, and events such as the writers’ congress did not previously have even close precedents in world practice. This side of the congress was also organized by Comrade Zhdanov.
On August 15, 1934, under the leadership of Zhdanov, a meeting of the party group of the organizing committee of the future Writers' Union was held, dedicated to solving the final nuances in the preparation of the congress. It was Zhdanov who determined in general terms the personal composition of the presidium, the credentials committee and other bodies of the congress. The transcript preserved his words: “The congress is obviously opened by Alexey Maksimovich” (177).
Maxim Gorky and Andrei Zhdanov, as we remember, had known each other since 1928, when famous writer visited his homeland and the young leader of the region was a guide for the famous Nizhny Novgorod resident. It was under Zhdanov that they renamed Nizhny Novgorod to Gorky. So a good personal relationship with a very difficult person who knew his worth was another reason for Zhdanov’s appointment as responsible for the successful holding of the First Congress of USSR Writers.
One of Zhdanov’s tasks was to prevent the congress from turning into a demonstration and confrontation between writers’ ambitions and groups. Zhdanov demanded, for example, from the Rappovites that literary discussions at the congress should not, as was their custom, turn into the area of political accusations. There were also formally apolitical, in the words of Zhdanov himself, “incorrigible skeptics and ironists, of whom there are so many in the literary community,” at the congress.
Outlining the program of the congress, Zhdanov especially mentioned the “poetic” aspects: “Two reports on poetry. We will devote one day to this issue. By the way, there will probably be quite a few fights over questions of poetry...” (178)
Our hero persistently advised writers to discuss creative issues “with passion and fervor” and not to get bogged down in organizational issues, quarrelsome issues... According to Zhdanov, the congress will give “a clear analysis of Soviet literature in all its branches,” and the task of the future union will be to educate many thousands of new writers. According to Zhdanov’s estimates, the Writers’ Union should have 30-40 thousand members.
Opening the event on August 17, 1934, Zhdanov addressed those gathered with greetings from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. Three days later, his speech will be published in Pravda under the title “Soviet literature is the most ideological, most advanced literature in the world.”
Against the backdrop of subsequent discussions about poetics and romance, Zhdanov’s speech was very businesslike and frank: “Our Soviet literature is not afraid of accusations of bias. Yes, Soviet literature is tendentious, because in the era of class struggle there is not and cannot be literature that is not class-based, not biased, supposedly apolitical...” (179)
In essence, this was the quintessence of the Soviet approach to literature, both in form and content: “In our country, the main characters literary work- these are active builders of a new life: workers and workers, collective farmers and collective farmers, party members, business executives, engineers, Komsomol members, pioneers. Our literature is full of enthusiasm and heroism. It is optimistic because it is the literature of the rising class - the proletariat. Our Soviet literature is strong because it serves a new cause - the cause of socialist construction."
In his report, Zhdanov, on behalf of the party and government, explained the essence of one of the main issues of the congress: “... The truthfulness and historical specificity of artistic representation must be combined with the task of ideological reworking and education of working people in the spirit of socialism. This method of fiction and literary criticism there is what we call the method of socialist realism.”
According to the opinion of the Party Central Committee voiced by Zhdanov, Soviet literature should combine “the most sober practical work with the greatest heroism and grandiose prospects.”
Refuting in advance possible objections about the incompatibility of literary romance with realism, especially socialist, the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars spoke through the mouth of Zhdanov: “... Romance of a new type, revolutionary romance - the whole life of our party, the whole life of the working class and its struggle lies in the combination of the most severe practical work with the greatest heroism and grandiose prospects. This will not be a utopia, because our tomorrow is being prepared by systematic, conscious work today.”
As if complementing Stalin’s famous expression, Comrade Zhdanov explained: “To be engineers of human souls means to actively fight for the culture of language, for the quality of works. That is why tireless work on oneself and on one’s ideological weapons in the spirit of socialism is an indispensable condition without which Soviet writers cannot remake the consciousness of their readers and thereby be engineers of human souls.” One must “know life, be able to depict it truthfully in works of art, not depict it scholastically, not dead, not simply as an objective reality, but to depict reality in its revolutionary development.”
There were also phrases characteristic of the style of the era: “Comrade Stalin completely revealed the roots of our difficulties and shortcomings. They stem from the lag of organizational and practical work from the requirements of the party’s political line and the requests put forward by the implementation of the second five-year plan” (180).
The words that “our writer draws his material from the heroic epic of the Chelyuskinites”, that “all conditions have been created for our writer”, that “only in our country literature and the writer have been raised to such a height”, a call to master the “technique of the craft” are also characteristic ", etc. And, of course, words about the "banner of Marx - Engels - Lenin - Stalin", the victory of which made it possible to convene this congress. “If there had not been this victory, there would have been no your congress,” Zhdanov said to unanimous applause, concluding this party directive to Soviet writers.
With all the “proletarian” enthusiasm, who sincerely loved Russian classical literature our hero urged writers, when creating “socialist realism,” not to forget the literary heritage of the Russian past. As for Soviet literature of the 1930s and 1940s, an indicative fact is that Zhdanov at the congress and later was supported by writers who had no place in today’s Russia, in which the history of literature of that era is mainly represented by those who are now perceived as anti-Soviet. The books and names of Zhdanov’s comrades on the “literary front” - for example, Leonid Sobolev or Pyotr Pavlenko - are essentially inaccessible to modern readers.
Again, the words of our hero at the writers’ congress come to mind - “there is not and cannot be, in the era of class struggle, literature that is not class-based, not biased, supposedly apolitical...”. Only now the class of “effective owners” has won in this class struggle.
The First All-Union Writers' Congress lasted two weeks. Naturally, its main participants and speakers were writers. But besides Zhdanov, two more famous politicians of those years spoke at the congress - Nikolai Bukharin and Karl Radek. Both represented political factions that were at the helm in the 1920s. Both were talented and fruitful publicists; during the years of their political rise they tried to actively influence the writers of Soviet Russia.
In contrast to the dry and purely businesslike, essentially directive speech of Zhdanov, former member of the Central Committee Bukharin at the congress read an extensive report on the topic “On poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity in the USSR” with quotes from St. Augustine, references to ancient Chinese treatises and Arabic wise men. Bukharin actively promoted Pasternak to the best Soviet poets, dissed Yesenin and criticized Mayakovsky, whom Stalin predicted to be the best Soviet poets.
The presence of Bukharin and Radek at the writers’ congress was an echo on the “literary front” of the political struggle that had been going on at the top of the USSR all the years after Lenin’s death. Supervision of this behind-the-scenes fuss was also one of Zhdanov’s delicate tasks at the congress. Many of the delegates, not without internal gloating, watched the literary exercises of Bukharin, who had fallen from Olympus.
On the eve of the end of the congress, on the last summer morning of 1934, a telephone rang in the office of the deputy head of the department of leading party bodies of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The owner of the office, 33-year-old Alexander Shcherbakov, picked up the phone and heard a strange voice: “Who’s on the phone?”
Who's asking? - Shcherbakov, already accustomed to the authority of the authorities, was a little surprised.
But who's on the phone anyway? - the strange voice did not stop.
Finally, the owner of the office heard Kaganovich’s familiar voice on the phone, cheerfully telling someone, probably sitting next to him: “He doesn’t speak and thinks, what kind of impudent guy is talking to me so impudently.”
Is that you, Shcherbakov? - Kaganovich continued into the phone.
I, Lazar Moiseevich.
So, did you recognize me?
Well, come to me now.
In Kaganovich’s office, Shcherbakov saw Zhdanov laughing: “What, did I prank you?” It was the new secretary of the Central Committee, changing his voice, who called his old acquaintance. Everyone chuckled at the simple joke and immediately switched to a businesslike tone. “Here’s the thing,” Zhdanov turned to Shcherbakov, “we want to entrust you with a job that is extremely important and difficult, you’ll probably be stunned when I tell you what kind of work it is. We went through dozens of people before we settled on your candidacy" (181).
In the 1920s, Shcherbakov worked for many years in the Nizhny Novgorod regional committee under the leadership of Zhdanov and was now listening to an old acquaintance, trying to figure out where he could be sent. As deputy head of the department of the leading party bodies of the Central Committee, he knew very well where reinforcement of personnel was needed - East Kazakhstan, the Urals, or even the Council of People's Commissars. Having joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks as a seventeen-year-old youth, Shcherbakov was ready, without hesitation, to carry out any order of the party. But the offer to become secretary of the Writers' Union seemed like a prank worse than a telephone prank to the young Central Committee official.
“I thought about what this meant for a few minutes,” Shcherbakov wrote in his diary, “and then burst into a cascade of “against”... Now I was asked to go to the congress, to start getting acquainted with the writing public.”
Shcherbakov disciplinedly followed the orders of the party leadership and went to the Column Hall of the House of Unions. The writers did not inspire him; an entry appeared in his diary: “It was half an hour at the congress. Left. It’s sickening” (182).
The upset Shcherbakov was immediately summoned to the office of another all-powerful member of the Politburo, Molotov. “I engage in literature only as a reader,” Shcherbakov worried in response to the entreaties of his superiors. Through joint efforts, Zhdanov, Molotov and Kaganovich “persuaded” their younger comrade. In the evening, Zhdanov took the doomed Shcherbakov to Gorky’s dacha. The living classic liked the future nomenklatura secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR - and above all precisely because of his lack of literary ambitions.
This whole story shows that relations at the very top of power were still far from callous bureaucracy, and the young, even the most ambitious leaders of those years were not unprincipled careerists who did not care where they were in charge.
A handwritten letter from Zhdanov sent to Stalin on the same day, August 31, 1934 (183) has been preserved. Our hero prepared it carefully, in fact, as an informal report on his work. The draft of the letter, which Zhdanov began to draft on August 28, also remained in the archives (184), so it is interesting to compare it with the finished version of the letter.
“At the writers’ congress there is now a debate on reports on dramaturgy,” Zhdanov wrote in a draft. - In the evening, Bukharin's report on poetry. We think the congress will end on the 31st. People were already starting to get tired. The delegates are in a very good mood. The congress is praised by everyone, including the incorrigible skeptics and ironists, of whom there are so many in the literary community.
In the first two days, when reports on the first issue were read, there were serious concerns about the congress. People were wandering around on the sidelines, the congress somehow couldn’t find itself. But the debate on both Gorky’s report and Radek’s report was very lively. The Columned Hall was crowded with audiences. The rise was such that we sat for 4 hours without a break and the delegates hardly walked. The jam-packed audience, crowded parallel halls, bright greetings, especially from the pioneers, and Smirnova's collective farmers from the Moscow region had a great effect on the writers. The general unanimous impression is that the congress was a success.”
The final version of the letter dated August 31 began like this: “We have finished business with the Congress of Soviet Writers. Yesterday, the list of the Presidium and the Secretariat of the Board was very unanimously elected... Yesterday before the plenum, Gorky once again tried to be capricious and criticize the lists that had been agreed upon with him more than once... He did not want to go to the plenum, to preside at the plenum. Humanly speaking, I felt sorry for him, as he was very tired, talking about going to Crimea on vacation. We had to push him quite hard, and the plenum was held in such a way that the old man admired the unanimity in the leadership.
The congress turned out well. This is a general review of all writers, both ours and foreign ones, both of whom are delighted with the congress.
The most incorrigible skeptics, who prophesied the failure of the congress, are now forced to admit its colossal success...
Most of the noise was around Bukharin's report, and especially around the concluding remarks. Due to the fact that communist poets Demyan Bedny, Bezymensky and others gathered to criticize his report, Bukharin, in a panic, asked to intervene and prevent political attacks. We came to his aid in this matter by gathering the leading workers of the congress and giving instructions that Comrade. The communists did not allow any political generalizations against Bukharin in their criticism. The criticism, however, came out quite strong. In his final speech, Bukharin dealt with his opponents in a simply square manner... The formalism was reflected in Bukharin here too. In his final speech, he deepened the formalistic errors that were made in the report... I am sending you an uncorrected transcript of Bukharin’s final speech, which emphasizes individual attacks that he had no right to make at the congress. Therefore, we obliged him to make a statement at the congress and, in addition, offered to rework the transcript, which he did.”
On this occasion, a note from Bukharin to Zhdanov, written on Izvestia letterhead (the former opposition leader was then the editor of this second newspaper in the USSR), has been preserved. In his note, Bukharin is very respectful to the new secretary of the Central Committee: “Dear A.A.! For God's sake, read it quickly... I straightened out all the harsh places. I beg you to read noci opee so that you can definitely give it to the newspaper today. Otherwise, it's a real scandal. Hello. Your Bukharin" (185). As a result of this appeal to Zhdanov, on September 3, 1934, Pravda published final word Bukharin at the Congress of Soviet Writers “according to a transcript processed and shortened by the author.”
But let’s return to our hero’s letter to Stalin dated August 31. “The most work was with Gorky,” Zhdanov tells his senior comrade. - In the middle of the congress, he once again submitted his resignation. I was tasked with convincing him to withdraw the statement, which I did... All the time he was incited, in my deepest conviction, to all sorts of speeches, such as resignations, his own leadership lists, etc. All the time he talked about the inability of communist writers to lead the literary movement, about wrong attitudes towards Averbakh, etc. At the end of the congress, a general upsurge captured him too, giving way to streaks of decline and skepticism and the desire to escape from the “quarrelsome people” into literary work.”
From literary questions, Zhdanov immediately moves on to a purely businesslike description of the problems of the People's Commissariat of Trade and the People's Commissariat food industry: “We have developed a draft structure of NKTorg and NKPishcheprom and proposals for the composition of department heads. In addition, we transferred to NKTorg from NKSnab Soyuzplodovoshch, i.e., all vegetable procurements. As for the People's Commissariat of Food Industry, the main subject of dispute here was the transfer to the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Food Industry of a number of enterprises in the confectionery, fat, perfume and brewing industries, which until now were under local jurisdiction..."
It is noteworthy that some researchers of the cultural policy of that time, who flourished in the 1990s, even tried to insert another sting into the Soviet leadership on this occasion - “Zhdanov, in a letter to Stalin, talks about writers and trade without taking a breath” (186). It is unlikely that the authors of such maxims themselves talk about literature exclusively standing and in a tuxedo, with the sincere conviction that rolls and vegetables grow in the city market. Soyuzplodovoshch, Brynzotrest and Soyuzvintrest, coming in Zhdanov’s letter immediately after Gorky and other writers, reflect only all the complexity and tension of that time, when literally from scratch from a poor peasant country in all spheres of life without exception - from agriculture to literature - a developed modern state. By the way, it was Brynzotrest, that is, the Union Trust of the Milk, Cheese and Cheese Making Industry, that in those years, for the first time in our history, established mass production of ice cream, previously available only in expensive restaurants - it was then that the majority of urban children in our country were able to learn for the first time its taste.
In a short postscript to the letter related to the “historical” conversations at Stalin’s dacha, Zhdanov reports: “Notes on new history and the history of the USSR is being remade and will be presented one of these days.”
Stalin responded to Zhdanov with a short note six days later: “Thank you for the letter. Overall the congress went well. Truth: 1) Gorky’s report turned out to be somewhat pale from the point of view of Soviet literature; 2) Bukharin spoiled things by introducing elements of hysteria into the discussion (D. Bedny shaved him off well and venomously); and for some reason the speakers did not use the well-known decision of the Central Committee to liquidate RAPP to reveal the mistakes of the latter - but, despite these three undesirable phenomena, the congress still turned out to be good” (187). In the second paragraph of the note, Stalin approved Zhdanov’s proposals to reform the structure of the People’s Commissariat of Trade and Food Industry, advising that consumer cooperation and public canteens be subordinated to the People’s Commissariat of Domestic Trade.
Thus, the authorities considered the last writing event quite successful. The result of the congress that ended on September 1, 1934 was not only the organizational subordination of literature to party power and the formation of a writing community throughout the country - the Union of Writers of the USSR. The congress showed at home and abroad the democratization of the Soviet state - instead of a country divided Civil War into irreconcilable classes, a monolithic society appeared, united in a single impulse of socialist construction. The apogee of this external democratization and consolidation will be the Stalinist Constitution of 1936...
The USSR Writers' Union replaced all previously existing associations and organizations of writers. The union was headed by Maxim Gorky, but direct political leadership was exercised by “Zhdanov’s man” - Central Committee employee Alexander Shcherbakov.
In his diary, Shcherbakov mentions a conversation at Zhdanov’s dacha that took place on October 30, 1934 about work in the Writers’ Union and relations with writers. Shcherbakov gives the following characteristic phrases our hero: “Bourgeois culture must be mastered and processed”; “Gorky’s desire to become a literary leader, his “peasant” cunning, should also be taken into account” (188).
Having successfully completed the writers' congress, Andrei Zhdanov is again pulling a huge cart of ongoing work in the Politburo. So, it was to him on September 4, 1934 that the First Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR Andrei Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky approached with a representation against the arbitrariness of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda in the work of courts at the NKVD camps. A month later, on October 4, Zhdanov joined the secret commission of the Politburo to verify complaints against the actions of the NKVD. Until November, he sorts out the departmental squabble between the prosecutor's office and the formidable People's Commissariat; as a result, the new Politburo resolution somewhat limits the powers of the “authorities” in the judicial sphere.
It was to Zhdanov that in October of that year Stalin addressed short notes with a request to extend his vacation: “T-shu Zhdanov. I was sick with a runny nose and then the flu for more than a week. Now I’m getting better and trying to make up for lost time... How are you doing? Hello! I. Stalin" (189) .
Let us recall that, among other things, Zhdanov was responsible for agriculture in the Central Committee. The working documents of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks preserved a lot of evidence of our hero’s painstaking work in this industry. They are too extensive and professionally specific, but a few excerpts from them are worth citing to illustrate this work of Zhdanov.
So, on November 26, 1934, during a report at the plenum of the Central Committee on the development of livestock farming, Zhdanov unexpectedly touched upon the following topic: “One of the most difficult and serious questions is the question of the combine and the combine operator. This year's experience shows that the combine harvester is an indispensable machine in the most difficult area of agricultural work - grain harvesting. After all, if state farms harvested this year mainly without the help of collective farms, then the main reason in this matter is the saturation of state farms with combine harvesters. Without this, state farms would stand at a dead anchor. Collective farms are also vitally interested in getting out quickly and without losses. That is why we must make the combine harvester the most important machine in agriculture, along with the tractor, and perhaps even more important.
...It is necessary to make the combine operator a permanent worker at MTS, enroll him in the permanent workforce, give him a salary significantly higher than at present, and give him a second qualification so that he all year round had a job. If he is a combine operator, and therefore a driver, then he must be qualified as either a mechanic or a turner, and be provided with a sufficient salary both during the harvesting period and in the winter. It is necessary to reward the best combine operators in order to create a desire among people to work on a combine...” (190)
By the way, already in 1935, the Stakhanovite combine movement would appear in the USSR, and their first all-Union meeting would be held in the Kremlin.
On December 7, 1935, at a meeting of the Central Committee on agricultural issues in the non-chernozem zone, Zhdanov noted one of the fundamental points for this particular region: “I forgot to point out that in raising productivity we attach exceptional importance, and we indicate this in the resolution, to the use of all types fertilizers - use manure, peat bedding in the implementation of crop rotation, increasing flax yields, increasing the yield of grain crops. Because the best remedy is clover... the question of introducing clover crops is acquiring exceptional importance, and we are taking it very seriously” (191).
These are just two excerpts taken almost at random from Zhdanov’s impressive documentary heritage as head of the agricultural department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - of all the areas of his varied activities, not the most famous, but the most important for the life of the country.
Zhdanov’s work in the top management was associated with a formal violation of the Charter of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Thus, without even being elected as a candidate member of the Politburo, Zhdanov began to take part in all meetings of this party body and vote on all decisions made as equals. Moreover, in the absence of Stalin and Kaganovich, he has to manage the current work of the Politburo and sign the originals of its decisions. However, in the conditions of the 1930s, this formal violation of the party charter did not raise open objections.
The external political calm at the heights of the Kremlin power, which replaced the noisy and open political battles of the late 1920s, will collapse one evening on December 1, 1934. In the corridor of Smolny, the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Sergei Kirov, will be shot in the back of the head.
Somewhere between five and six o'clock in the evening, closer to six, from Kirov's office in Smolny to Moscow, an old acquaintance of our hero from the Tver days of 1919, the second secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Mikhail Chudov, calls the Central Committee via the special communication telephone. . At this time, Stalin has been having a meeting since three o’clock - Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Zhdanov are present. Kaganovich approaches the special communications apparatus. Having heard the message about the murder, he, an experienced “courier,” immediately stopped the conversation, only saying that he would now inform Stalin and they themselves would contact Smolny.
Stalin's call follows literally in a minute. At this moment, Kirov’s corpse lies next to the telephone on the table in his office, at the table there are six urgently assembled Leningrad medical professors who have declared death. Stalin speaks with Chudov, who lists the doctors, among them the Georgian surgeon Justin Javanadze. Stalin asks him to come to the apparatus, they begin to speak Russian, then, as is usually the case with fellow tribesmen in emergency moments, they switch to their native Georgian... All this unfolds before the eyes of our hero, Andrei Zhdanov, whose son was collecting blackberries from the murdered man four months ago . Just three days ago, on November 28, after the plenum of the Central Committee, before Kirov left for Leningrad, the whole trio watched Bulgakov’s play “Days of the Turbins” at the Moscow Art Theater from under the “oak of Mamre.”
The death of Kirov shocked the top authorities, and not only them. Despite its turbulent and militant history, the Bolshevik Party had not seen such murders since August 1918, when, at the height of the Civil War, a series of assassination attempts on Lenin and its other top leaders took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The entire internal political struggle before that was limited to exile to the provinces, honorary sinecures, or, in extreme cases, expulsion from the country, as was the case with Trotsky.
Early in the morning of December 2, Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Zhdanov were already in Leningrad. With them is a large retinue - People's Commissar of the NKVD Yagoda, Yezhov, Khrushchev, Vyshinsky and others. In the corridors of Smolny, in front of the Moscow delegation, defiantly covering Stalin, Genrikh Yagoda walks with a revolver in his hand, nervously commanding those he meets: “Face the wall! Hands down!”
Here, in Smolny, Zhdanov is present during Stalin’s interrogation of Kirov’s killer, the mentally unstable Nikolaev. On the same day, our hero was included in the commission for organizing the funeral and collecting the archive with documents of the murdered comrade.
According to the speculative version, Kirov was “killed” by Stalin - firstly, because he was a monster and killed everyone; secondly, because Kirov was supposedly his potential rival. All serious researchers of that period or of Kirov’s biography, even of an anti-Stalinist orientation, who claim to be scientific, consider such a legend to be unlikely and unfounded. The murdered head of Leningrad was Stalin's closest ally, one of those on whom he relied and could rely both in state building and in the internal political struggle. It was Kirov who “conquered” Leningrad for Stalin in a very tough struggle with the long-term head of the Petrograd Soviet, the “political heavyweight” of the 1920s, Zinoviev. Kirov was one of the main “engines” of industrialization, in which the developed industry of the city on the Neva was of utmost importance for the country. All “conflicts” between Stalin and Kirov were of a purely working and friendly nature - as is the case in real life in living people. In addition, Kirov was and is extremely necessary for Stalin in the near future. Therefore, the leader’s shock at the death of his comrade-in-arms does not seem feigned at all.
Nevertheless, the circumstances of this murder are so complicated that they allow any speculation. The direct killer was a mentally unstable person, quite capable of an individual terrorist attack for reasons that were more psychiatric than political. At the same time, his connections reached out to Zinoviev’s still numerous supporters in Leningrad and even to foreign embassies. The activities of the NKVD authorities also raise questions - they knew about the suspicious “interest” of the future killer in Kirov. The murder itself immediately gave rise to a heap of testimony, denunciations and gossip, which further confused the situation. The death of the Kirov security guard, summoned for questioning by Stalin on December 2, in a car accident is viewed with extreme suspicion - it looks like a sophisticated murder even in the minds of a person who is not at all suffering from paranoia. So the real circumstances of the death of Sergei Kirov will remain a mystery, obviously, forever.
The reaction to the death of Andrei Zhdanov Kirov reached us through third parties. According to his son, after 1945, in a conversation with his wife, when the conversation once again turned to the death of Kirov, to the question: “What was that?” - Zhdanov “sharply and passionately” replied: “Provocation of the NKVD!” (192)
The first version of the murder, which immediately arose in the Kremlin on the evening of December 1, was connected with the recent Civil War. Moreover, there was every reason for this - in the late 1920s and summer of 1934, agents of the EMRO and NTS operated in Leningrad and the region, one of whose goals was the murder of Kirov. Information about this was confirmed by NTS documents already in the 90s last century. In the summer of 1934, the USSR intelligence services knew about illegal immigrants, but failed to detain them.
However, the first interrogations of the killer made it clear that his connections were not with whites. Regardless of the versions, all researchers agree on one thing - Stalin made full use of the high-profile political murder to finally eliminate the numerous remnants of the Zinoviev and Trotskyist opposition.
On December 4, 1934, Zhdanov returned to Moscow in the retinue of the leader of the USSR. The next day, he, in a group of the country's top leaders led by Stalin, stands guard of honor at the coffin in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. More than a million Muscovites came to say goodbye to Kirov, and a delegation of over a thousand people arrived from Leningrad.
Maria Svanidze, a relative of Stalin who knew the leader of the USSR closely, leaves a note about the farewell ceremony in her personal diary: “Joseph climbs the steps of the coffin, his face is mournful, he bends down and kisses the forehead of the dead... The picture tears apart the soul, knowing how close they were, and the whole hall is sobbing, I hear the sobs of the men through my own sobs. Having also cried warmly, Sergo, his close comrade-in-arms, says goodbye, then the pale chalky Molotov rises, the plump Zhdanov climbs up funny..." (193)
Throughout the week until December 10, Zhdanov spent many hours every day, sometimes several times, in Stalin’s Kremlin office. It was during these days that the decision was made to bring down repression on the Zinovievites, and then the idea arose that it was Zhdanov who would be able to replace the late Kirov.
On December 11, our hero leaves for Leningrad again, for a long time. On December 15, 1934, the joint plenum of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks opens, where Zhdanov makes a report. Formally, this is a report on the plenum of the party Central Committee held in November, in fact it is a speech by the new head of the city and region. In the report, Zhdanov quite clearly links former opposition leaders with the murder of Kirov. As an eyewitness writes, “the atmosphere at the plenum was more than tense, there was deathly silence in the hall - not a whisper, not a rustle, and only the voices of the speaking comrades could be heard” (194).
Zhdanov himself, regarding his new appointment at the plenum, will speak out as follows: “I must state here that the trust that the Central Committee of the Party and the Leningrad organization placed in me... I will try to justify and will make every effort to, with your support, replace at least some of the the late comrade Kirov, because I cannot replace him at all, comrades” (195). From the book Journalism author Platonov Andrey Platonovich
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