Fateh Vergasov. Union of Writers

From the Charter of the Union of Writers in the edition of 1934 (the charter was repeatedly edited and changed): “The Union of Soviet Writers sets as its general goal the creation of works of high artistic value, saturated with the heroic struggle of the international proletariat, the pathos of the victory of socialism, reflecting the great wisdom and heroism of the Communist Party. The Union of Soviet Writers aims to create works of art worthy of the great era of socialism.

According to the charter as amended in 1971, the Union of Writers of the USSR is "a voluntary public creative organization that unites professional writers of the Soviet Union, participating with their creativity in the struggle for building communism, for social progress, for peace and friendship between peoples."

The charter defined socialist realism as the main method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, following which was a prerequisite for the membership of the joint venture.

Organization of the joint venture of the USSR

The highest body of the Writers' Union of the USSR was the congress of writers (between 1934 and 1954, contrary to the Charter, it was not convened), which elected the Board of the USSR Writers' Union (150 people in 1986), which, in turn, elected the chairman of the board (since 1977 - - first secretary) and formed the secretariat of the board (36 people in 1986), which managed the affairs of the joint venture between congresses. The Board of Directors of the Joint Venture met at least once a year. The Board, according to the Charter of 1971, also elected a bureau of the secretariat, which included about 10 people, while the actual leadership was in the hands of the working secretariat group (about 10 full-time positions, occupied more by administrative workers than by writers). Yu. N. Verchenko was appointed head of this group in 1986 (until 1991).

The structural subdivisions of the Writers' Union of the USSR were regional writers' organizations with a structure similar to the central organization: the joint ventures of the union and autonomous republics, writers' organizations of regions, territories, the cities of Moscow and Leningrad.

The press organs of the USSR Writers' Union were Literaturnaya Gazeta, the magazines Novy Mir, Znamya, Friendship of Peoples, Questions of Literature, Literary Review, Children's Literature, Foreign Literature, Youth, Soviet Literature" (published in foreign languages), "Theatre", "Sovetish Gameland" (in Yiddish), "Star", "Bonfire".

Under the jurisdiction of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR was the publishing house "Soviet writer", Literary consultation for novice authors, the All-Union bureau for the promotion of fiction, the Central House of Writers. A. A. Fadeev in Moscow and others.

Also in the structure of the joint venture there were various divisions that performed the functions of management and control. Thus, all trips abroad by members of the SP were subject to approval by the foreign commission of the SP of the USSR.

Under the board of the Writers' Union of the USSR, the Literary Fund operated, and regional writers' organizations also had their own literary funds. The task of the literary funds was to provide members of the joint venture with material support (according to the "rank" of the writer) in the form of housing, construction and maintenance of "writers'" summer cottages, medical and sanatorium services, the provision of vouchers to the "houses of creativity of writers", the provision of household services, supplies of scarce commodities and foodstuffs.

Membership

Admission to the Writers' Union was made on the basis of an application, to which the recommendations of three members of the Writers' Union were to be attached. A writer wishing to join the Union had to have two published books and submit reviews of them. The application was considered at a meeting of the local branch of the USSR Writers' Union and had to receive at least two-thirds of the votes when voting, then it was considered by the secretariat or the board of the USSR Writers' Union and at least half of their votes were required for admission to membership.

The number of members of the Union of Writers of the USSR by years (according to the organizing committees of the congresses of the Union of Writers):

• 1934-1500 members
• 1954 - 3695
• 1959 - 4801
• 1967 - 6608
• 1971 - 7290
• 1976 - 7942
• 1981 - 8773
• 1986 - 9584
• 1989 - 9920

In 1976, it was reported that of the total number of members of the Union, 3,665 write in Russian.

The writer could be expelled from the Writers' Union "for misdeeds that damage the honor and dignity of the Soviet writer" and for "departure from the principles and tasks formulated in the Charter of the Writers' Union of the USSR." In practice, the following could serve as a reason for exclusion:

• Criticism of the writer from the highest party authorities. An example is the exclusion of M. M. Zoshchenko and A. A. Akhmatova, which followed the report of Zhdanov in August 1946 and the party resolution "On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad".
• Publication abroad of works not published in the USSR. B. L. Pasternak was the first to be excluded for this reason for the publication in Italy of his novel Doctor Zhivago in 1957.
• Publication in "samizdat"
• Openly expressed disagreement with the policy of the CPSU and the Soviet state.
• Participation in public speeches (signing open letters) protesting against the persecution of dissidents.

Those expelled from the Union of Writers were denied the publication of books and publication in journals subordinate to the joint venture; they were practically deprived of the opportunity to earn money by literary work. With the exception of the Union, an exclusion from the Literary Fund followed, entailing tangible financial difficulties. Exclusion from the joint venture for political reasons, as a rule, was widely publicized, sometimes turning into real persecution. In a number of cases, the expulsion was accompanied by criminal prosecution under the articles “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system”, deprivation of citizenship of the USSR, forced emigration.

For political reasons, A. Sinyavsky, Yu. Daniel, N. Korzhavin, G. Vladimov, L. Chukovskaya, A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Maksimov, V. Nekrasov, A. Galich, E. Etkind, V. Voinovich , I. Dziuba , N. Lukash , Viktor Erofeev , E. Popov , F. Svetov .

In protest against the exclusion of Popov and Erofeev from the joint venture in December 1979, V. Aksyonov, I. Lisnyanskaya and S. Lipkin announced their withdrawal from the Union of Writers of the USSR.

Leaders

According to the Charter of 1934, the head of the USSR Writers' Union was the Chairman of the Board.

• Alexei Tolstoy (from 1936 to 1936); the actual leadership until 1941 was carried out by the Secretary General of the USSR Writers' Union Vladimir Stavsky;
• Alexander Fadeev (from 1938 to and from to gg.);
• Nikolay Tikhonov (from 1944 to 1946);

According to the Charter of 1977, the leadership of the Writers' Union was carried out by the First Secretary of the Board. This position was held by:

• Vladimir Karpov (since 1986; resigned in November 1990, but continued to conduct business until August 1991);

SP USSR after the collapse of the USSR

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Union of Writers of the USSR was divided into many organizations in various countries of the post-Soviet space.

The main successors of the USSR SP in Russia and the CIS are the International Commonwealth of Writers' Unions (led for a long time by Sergei Mikhalkov), the Writers' Union of Russia, and the Union of Russian Writers.

USSR joint venture in art

Soviet writers and cinematographers in their work have repeatedly turned to the theme of the SP of the USSR.

• In the novel "Master and Margarita" by M. A. Bulgakov, under the fictitious name "Massolit", the Soviet writers' organization is depicted as an association of opportunists.
• The play by V. Voinovich and G. Gorin "A domestic cat, medium fluffy" is dedicated to the behind-the-scenes side of the activity of the joint venture. Based on the play by K. Voinov, he made the film "Hat"
• IN essays on literary life“A calf butted with an oak” A. I. Solzhenitsyn characterizes the SP of the USSR as one of the main instruments of total party-state control over literary activity in the USSR.

Criticism. Quotes

Notes

see also

• SP RSFSR

Links

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M. Gorky

M. Gorky. Collected works in thirty volumes M., GIHL, 1953 Volume 27. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings (1933-1936) So - the first general congress of writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and regions finished its work. This work turned out to be so significant and diverse that now, in a concluding remark, I can only outwardly outline its deep meaning, I can note only the most significant of what it discovered. Before the congress and at the beginning of it, some and even, it seems, many writers did not understand the meaning of organizing the congress. "What is he for?" these people asked. These are very strange people, and at the congress they were rightly called indifferent. Their eyes see that in our reality something still remains “as it was,” but their indifference does not allow them to realize that it remains only because the proletariat, the master of the country, does not have enough time to finally destroy, destroy these remnants. These people are quite satisfied with what has already been done, which has helped them move forward into comfortable positions, and which has strengthened their natural indifference of individualists. They do not understand that we are all very small people in comparison with the great things that are happening in the world, they do not understand that we live and work at the beginning of the first act of the last tragedy of working humanity. They have become accustomed to living without a sense of pride in the meaning of personal existence and are only concerned about preserving the dull lordship, the dull radiance of their small, poorly polished talents. They do not understand that the meaning of personal existence is to deepen and expand the meaning of existence of the many millions of working people. But these vast masses sent their representatives to the congress: workers in various fields of production, inventors, collective farmers, pioneers. The whole country stood up before the writers of the Union of Socialist Soviets, stood up and made high demands on them - for their talents, for their work. These people are the great present and future of the Land of the Soviets. Interrupting our conversations, Blinding with the brilliance of unseen deeds, They brought their victories - Bread, planes, metal - themselves, - They brought themselves as a theme, As their work, love, life. And each of them sounded like a poem, Because Bolshevism thundered in each. Raw, hastily made lines of poetry Viktor Gusev correctly note the meaning of the event: once again the thunder of Bolshevism, the fundamental reformer of the world and the harbinger of terrible events throughout the world, thundered triumphantly. Where do I see the victory of Bolshevism at the Congress of Writers? In the fact that those of them who were considered non-Party, "waverers", admitted - with sincerity, in the fullness of which I do not dare to doubt - recognized Bolshevism as the only militant guiding idea in creativity, in word painting. I highly value this victory, because I, a writer, know from my own experience how arbitrary the thought and feeling of a writer who tries to find freedom of creativity outside the strict instructions of history, outside its basic, organizing idea. Deviations from the mathematically straight line worked out by the bloody history of working mankind and brightly illuminated by the doctrine that establishes that the world can be changed only by the proletariat and only through a revolutionary blow, and then through the socialist organized labor of workers and peasants - deviations from the mathematically straight line are explained by that our emotions are older than our intellect, by the fact that there is much inherited in our emotions and this inheritance is hostilely contrary to the testimony of reason. We were born in a class society, where everyone needs to defend themselves against everyone, and many enter a classless society as people from whom trust in each other has been etched out, in whom the sense of respect and love for working humanity, the creator of all values, has been killed by the age-old struggle for a convenient place in life. . We lack the sincerity necessary for self-criticism, we show too much petty bourgeois anger when we criticize each other. It still seems to us that we are criticizing a competitor for our piece of bread, and not a comrade in work, which is taking on an ever deeper significance as the stimulus of all the best revolutionary forces in the world. We writers, workers in the art of the most individual, are mistaken in considering our experience as the sole property, while it is the suggestion of reality and - in the past - a very heavy gift from it. In the past, comrades, for we all have already seen and see that the new reality, created by the Bolshevik Party, embodying the mind and will of the masses, the new reality offers us a wonderful gift, an unprecedented gift of the intellectual flowering of many millions of working people. I will recall a wonderful speech Vsevolod Ivanov, this speech should remain in our memory as an example of sincere self-criticism of a politically minded artist. The speeches deserve the same attention. Y. Olesha, L. Seifullina and many others. About two years ago Joseph Stalin, Concerned about raising the quality of literature, he told communist writers: "Learn to write from non-party people." Without speaking of whether the Communists learned anything from the non-Party artists, I must say that the non-Party did not learn badly from the proletariat how to think. (Applause.) Once, in a fit of hungover pessimism, Leonid Andreev said: “A confectioner is happier than a writer, he knows that children and young ladies love cake. And a writer is a bad person who does a good thing, not knowing for whom and doubting that this business is generally necessary That is why most writers have no desire to please someone, and want to offend everyone. The writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics see for whom they are working. The reader himself comes to them, the reader calls them "engineers of souls" and demands that they organize in simple words in good, truthful images of his sensations, feelings, thoughts, his heroic work. There has never been such a close, direct unity between the reader and the writer, and in this fact lies the difficulty that we must overcome, but in this fact lies our happiness, which we have not yet learned to appreciate. Just as the cultures of our fraternal republics, national in form, remain and must be socialist in essence, our creativity must remain individual in form and be socialist Leninist in the sense of its basic, guiding idea. This meaning is the liberation of people from the remnants of the past, from the suggestion of a criminal class history that distorts thought and feeling, a history that educates working people as slaves, intellectuals as double-minded or indifferent, anarchists or renegades, skeptics and critics or conciliators of the irreconcilable . In the end, the congress gives the right to hope that from now on the concept of "non-Party writer" will remain only a formal concept, while inwardly each of us will feel like a real member of the Leninist Party, which has so beautifully and timely proved its confidence in the honor and work of non-Party writers by the permission of the All-Union Congress. At this congress we issued large bills of exchange to the multi-million reader and the government, and, of course, now we are obliged to pay the bills with honest, good work. We will do this if we do not forget what our readers, including our children, have suggested to us, if we do not forget how enormous the importance of literature is in our country, what variously high demands are placed on us. We will not forget this if we immediately exterminate in our midst all remnants of group relations, relations that are ridiculously and disgustingly similar to the struggle of the Moscow boyars for parochialism - for places in the boyar duma and at the banquets of the tsar closer to him. We should well remember the smart words of Comrade Seifullina, who rightly said, That "we were too soon and willingly made writers." And do not forget the instructions of a friend Nakoryakov, that in the years 1928-1931 we produced 75 per cent of the books that did not have the right to second editions, that is, very bad books. “You understand how much we have published superfluous, how much extra costs we have made, not only material, but also spiritual costs of our people, our creators of socialism, who read a gray, bad, and sometimes hacky book. This is not only a mistake of the writing team, but it is also one of the worst mistakes in publishing." I consider the end of Comrade Nakoryakov's last sentence to be too soft and amiable. With everything that has been said, I addressed the writers of the entire congress and, therefore, the representatives of the fraternal republics. I have no reason or desire to single them out in a special place, because they work not only each for their own people, but each for all the peoples of the Union of Socialist Republics and autonomous regions. History places on them the same responsibility for their work as on the Russians. Due to lack of time, I read little of the books written by the writers of the Union republics, but even the little that I have read inspires me with firm confidence that we will soon receive from them a book remarkable for the novelty of the material and the power of the image. Let me remind you that the number of people does not affect the quality of talent. Little Norway created huge figures of Hamsun, Ibsen. The Jews recently died the almost brilliant poet Bialik and had an exceptionally talented satirist and humorist Sholom Aleichem, the Latvians created a powerful poet Rainis, Finland - Eino-Leino - there is no such small country that would not give great artists of the word. I have named only the largest and far from all, and I have named writers who were born in the conditions of a capitalist society. In the republics of peoples that are fraternal to us, writers are born from the proletariat, and by the example of our country we see what talented children the proletariat has created in a short time and how continuously it creates them. But I am addressing friendly advice, which can be understood as a request, to representatives of the nationalities of the Caucasus and Central Asia. On me, and - I know - not only on me, the ashug Suleiman Stalsky. I saw how this old man, illiterate but wise, sitting in the podium, whispered, creating his poems, then he, Homer of the 20th century, amazingly read them. (Applause.) Take care of people who are able to create such pearls of poetry as Suleiman creates. I repeat: the beginning of the art of the word is in folklore. Collect your folklore, learn from it, process it. He gives a lot of material to you and to us, poets and prose writers of the Union. The better we know the past, the easier, the more deeply and joyfully we will understand the great significance of the present we are creating. The speeches at the meetings of the congress and conversations outside the meeting room revealed the unity of our feelings and desires, the unity of purposefulness and revealed our unacceptably little acquaintance with art and, in general, with the culture of the fraternal republics. If we do not want the fire that has flared up at the congress to be extinguished, we must take all measures to make it flare up even brighter. It is necessary to begin mutual and broad acquaintance with the cultures of the fraternal republics. To begin with, it would be necessary to organize an "All-Union Theater" in Moscow, which would show on stage, in drama and comedy, the life and way of life of the national republics in their historical past and heroic present. (Applause.) Further: it is necessary to publish in Russian collections of current prose and poetry of the national republics and regions, in good translations. (Applause.) Literature for children also needs to be translated. The writers and scholars of the national republics must write the histories of their countries and states, stories that would acquaint the peoples of all the republics with each other. These histories of the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will serve as a very good means of mutual understanding and internal, ideological cohesion of all the people of the seven republics. This mutual understanding, this unity of forces is necessary not only for all the people of the Union of Republics, they are necessary as a lesson and an example for the entire working people of the earth, against whom their old enemy, capitalism, is organized under a new guise - fascism. A good, practical method for elucidating the cultural ties and business interdependencies of the Union of our republics can be the collective work on the creation of the book "Cases and People of Two Five-Year Plans." This book should show the labor force of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the form of essays and stories the results of their work and the facts of the cultural and educational influence of labor on people, on the growth of reason, etc. the will of a few, to liberate them from the narrow boundaries of the petty-bourgeois individualism of owners, to educate a new, socialist individuality under the conditions of collective labor, to show the spiral along which we are moving forward and ascending ever higher. Participation in this work is absolutely essential for writers of all fraternal republics and all regions. We are still at that stage of development when we must convince ourselves of our cultural growth. Of all that was said at the congress, the most significant and important thing is that for the first time many young writers felt their importance and responsibility to the country and realized their insufficient preparation for work. Collective work on the creation of books covering the processes of grandiose labor that is changing the world and people will serve us as an excellent means of self-education and self-strengthening. In the absence of serious, philosophical criticism, so sadly shown by the fact of the muteness of professional critics at the congress, we ourselves must take up self-criticism not in words, but in deeds, directly in the work on the material. On the method of collective labor of writers, comrade Ehrenburg was skeptical, fearing that the method of such work could harmfully limit the development of the individual, abilities of the work unit. Comrades Vsevolod Ivanov and Lidia Seifullina, by objecting to him, it seems to me, dispelled his fears. It seems to Comrade Ehrenburg that the method of collective work is the method of brigade work. These techniques have no other resemblance to each other, except for the physical: in both cases, groups, collectives work. But the team works with reinforced concrete, wood, metal, etc., always with a definitely uniform material that needs to be given a predetermined shape. In the brigade, individuality can reveal itself only by the strength of the tension of its work. Collective work on the material of social phenomena, work on reflection, depiction of the processes of life - among which, in particular, the actions of shock brigades have their place - this is work on infinitely diverse facts, and each individual unit, each writer has the right to choose for himself this or that series of facts according to his gravitation, his interests and abilities. The collective work of writers on the phenomena of life in the past and present for the most vivid illumination of the paths to the future bears some resemblance to the work of laboratories scientifically and experimentally investigating certain phenomena of organic life. It is known that the basis of any method is an experiment - research, study - and this method, in turn, indicates further paths of study. I have the courage to think that it is the method of collective work with material that will help us best to understand what socialist realism should be. Comrades, in our country the logic of actions overtakes the logic of concepts, that's what we must feel. My confidence that this method of collective creativity can produce completely original, unprecedentedly interesting books is such that I take the liberty of offering such work to our guests, excellent masters of European literature. (Applause.) Will they not try to give a book that would depict the day of the bourgeois world? I mean any day: September 25th, October 7th or December 15th, it doesn't matter. We need to take a weekday the way it was reflected in the world press on its pages. It is necessary to show all the motley chaos of modern life in Paris and Grenoble, in London and Shanghai, in San Francisco, Geneva, Rome, Dublin, etc., etc., in cities, villages, on water and on land. We must give the holidays of the rich and the suicides of the poor, the meetings of the academies, learned societies and the facts of wild illiteracy, superstitions, crimes reflected in the chronicle of newspapers, the facts of the refinement of refined culture, the strikes of workers, anecdotes and everyday dramas - impudent cries of luxury, exploits of swindlers, lies of political leaders, - it is necessary, I repeat, to give an ordinary, everyday day with all the crazy, fantastic diversity of its phenomena. It is the work of scissors much more than the work of a pen. Of course comments are inevitable, but I think they should be as brief as they are brilliant. But facts must be commented on by facts, and on these tatters, on this rag of the day, the commentary of a writer must shine like a spark kindling the flame of thought. In general, it is necessary to show the "artistic" creativity of history within one day. No one has ever done this, but it should! And if a group of our guests undertake such work, they, of course, will give the world something unprecedented, unusually interesting, dazzlingly bright and deeply instructive. (Applause.) The organizing idea of ​​fascism is the racial theory, a theory that erects the Germanic, Romanesque, Latin or Anglo-Saxon race as the only force supposedly capable of continuing the further development of culture, a "purebred" racial culture based, as it is known, on a merciless and increasingly cynical exploitation of the vast majority of people by a numerically insignificant minority. This numerically insignificant minority is also insignificant in terms of their intellectual power, wasted on inventing methods of exploiting working people and the treasures of nature belonging to working people. Of all the talents of capitalism, which once played a positive role as an organizer of civilization and material culture, modern capitalism has retained only a mystical confidence in its right to rule over the proletariat and peasantry. But against this mysticism of the capitalists, history has put forward a real fact - the strength of the revolutionary proletariat, organized by the invincible and inextinguishable, historically justified, formidable truth of the doctrine Marx-- Lenin, brought forward the fact of a "united front" in France and an even more physically tangible fact - the union of the proletariat of the Soviet Socialist Republics. In the face of the force of these facts, the poisonous, but light and thin fog of fascism will inevitably and soon dissipate. This fog, as we see, poisons and seduces only adventurers, only unprincipled, indifferent people, people for whom "everything is all the same" and who do not care who they kill, people who are the products of the degeneration of bourgeois society and mercenaries of capitalism for its most vile, vile and bloody deeds. The main strength of the feudal lords of capitalism is the weapons that the working class manufactures for them—guns, machine guns, cannons, poison gases, and everything else that at any moment can be and is being used by the capitalists against the workers. But the time is not far off when the revolutionary legal consciousness of the workers will destroy the mysticism of the capitalists. However, they are preparing a new worldwide slaughter, they are organizing the mass extermination of the proletarians of the whole world on the fields of national-capitalist battles, the purpose of which is to profit, enslave small nationalities, turn them into slaves of Africa - half-starved animals who are obliged to work hard labor and buy bad, rotten goods. only for the kings of industry to accumulate fat gold - the curse of the working people - gold, with insignificant grains of which the capitalists pay the workers for forging chains for themselves, for making weapons against themselves. It is in the face of such acute class relations that our All-Union Congress worked, and on the eve of what a catastrophe we writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will continue our work! In this work there cannot be and should not be any place for personal trifles. Revolutionary internationalism against bourgeois nationalism, racism, fascism—that is the historical meaning of our day. What we can do? We have already done something. We are doing a good job of uniting all the forces of the radical, anti-fascist intelligentsia, and we are calling to life proletarian, revolutionary literature in all countries of the world. In our midst there are representatives of almost all the literatures of Europe. The magnet that attracted them to our country is not only the wise work of the Party, the mind of the country, the heroic energy of the proletariat of the republics, but also our work. To some extent, every writer is the leader of his readers - I think this can be said. Roman Rolland, André Gide have the most legitimate right to call themselves "engineers of souls". Jean Richard Block, André Malraux, Plivier, Aragon, Toller, Becher, Some- I will not list them all - these are the bright names of exceptionally talented people, and all of these are stern judges of the bourgeoisie of their countries, all these are people who know how to hate, but also know how to love. (Applause.) We did not know how to invite many more, who also possess in all their strength the wonderful human gift of love and hatred, we did not know how to invite them, and this is our considerable fault before them. But I am sure that the second congress of Soviet writers will be adorned by dozens of writers from the West and the East, writers from China and India, and there is no doubt that we are on the eve of uniting around the Third International all the best and most honest people of art, science and technology. (Applause.) A small and - for me personally - not entirely clear disagreement arose between foreigners and us on the question of assessing the position of the individual in a classless society ... This question is predominantly academic, philosophical, and, of course, it could not be well covered on one or two meetings or in one conversation ... The essence of the matter is that in Europe and everywhere in the world a writer who cherishes centuries-old cultural conquests and who sees that in the eyes of the capitalist bourgeoisie these cultural conquests have lost their value, that any day a book any honest writer can be burned publicly - in Europe, the writer feels more and more strongly the pain of the oppression of the bourgeoisie, fears the revival of medieval barbarism, which, probably, would not exclude the institution of the Inquisition for heretical thinkers. In Europe, the bourgeoisie and its governments are increasingly hostile to the honest writer. We have no bourgeoisie, and our government is our teachers and our comrades, comrades in the full sense of the word. The conditions of the moment sometimes call for protest against the willfulness of individualistic thought, but the country and the government are deeply interested in the need for the free growth of the individual and provide all the means for this, as far as possible in the conditions of a country that is forced to spend a huge amount of money in self-defense against the new barbarian - the European bourgeoisie, armed from teeth to toes. Our congress worked on the high notes of a sincere passion for our art and under the slogan: Raise the quality of work! Needless to say, the more perfect the weapon, the better it ensures victory. The book is the most important and powerful tool of socialist culture. Books of high quality are demanded by the proletariat, our main, multi-million reader; books of high quality are indispensable for hundreds of novice writers who enter literature from among the proletariat, from factories and collective farms in all the republics and regions of our country. We must carefully, continuously and lovingly help these young people on the difficult path they have chosen, but, as Seifullina rightly said, we should not rush to "make them writers" and we should remember Comrade Nakoryakoz's instruction about the fruitless, unprofitable waste of people's funds for the production of book defects. For this marriage, we must be responsible collectively. All our playwrights spoke passionately and convincingly about the need to improve the quality of our dramaturgy. I am sure that the organization of the "All-Union Theater" and the "Theatre of Classics" will greatly help us to assimilate the high technique of ancient and medieval playwrights, and the dramaturgy of the fraternal republics will expand the limits of the subject, point out new original conflicts. in the report Bukharin There is one point that requires an objection. Speaking of poetry Mayakovsky, N. I. Bukharin did not note the harmful - in my opinion - "hyperbolism" characteristic of this very influential and original poet. As an example of such an influence, I take the poems of a very gifted poet Prokofiev,- it seems that he edited the novel Molchanova"The Peasant" is a novel, which was mentioned in "Literary Amusements", in which the fist-like peasant was glorified as our modern Mikula Selyaninovich. Prokofiev depicts in verse a certain Pavel Gromov, a "great hero", also Mikula. Pavel Gromov is an amazing monster. The world song is sung about him, How he walked, fierce with sword and fire. He -- shoulders that doors- thundered on the Don. And the dust from the campaign eclipsed the moon. He -- mouth like a cellar- went through everything. So the wolf does not pass and the lynx does not run. He -- cheekbones like boards and a mouth like a coffin- He was a complete master of clearings and paths. In another poem, Prokofiev depicts such a terrible one: The eldest son knows no equal, Legs-- logs, chest-- mountain. He is alone stands like a laurel Along the paved courtyard. ...Him mustache-- what reins, Beard-- what a harrow....Seven desired loves suddenly. What a goat! By the way, a lavra is a rich, crowded monastery, almost a town, like, for example, the Kiev and Trinity-Sergius lavras. This is what Mayakovsky's hyperbolism leads to! In Prokofiev, it seems to be complicated by hyperbolism Klyuev, singer of the mystical essence of the peasantry and even more mystical "power of the earth." I do not deny Prokofiev's giftedness; his desire for epic imagery is even commendable. However, the desire for epic requires knowledge of the epic, and on the way to it it is no longer possible to write such verses: Glory flew across the fields, Thunderbolt owned fate. If the storms went to the right - Thunderbolt went to the left. Storms again breathed anger, Strong cold of all latitudes (?). If the storms went to the left, Thunderbolt - on the contrary. I don't think this is epic anymore. It looks like a rehash of an old poem that wanted to be funny: Two friends lived in Kyiv - Amazing people. The first homeland was from the south, And the second - on the contrary. The first was a terrible glutton, And the second was an idiot, The first died of constipation, And the second - on the contrary. Our Soviet poetry in the short period of its life has achieved very significant successes, but just like prose, it contains a very fair amount of empty flowers, chaff and straw. In the struggle for the high quality of prose and poetry, we must update and deepen the themes, the purity and sonority of the language. History has pushed us forward as builders of a new culture, and this obliges us to strive even further forward and higher, so that the whole world of working people can see us and hear our voices. The world would very well and gratefully hear the voices of poets if they, together with musicians, tried to create new songs, new ones that the world does not have, but which it must have. It is far from true that the melodies of the old songs of Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians are full of grief and sadness, probably the Tatars and Armenians also have songs of marching, round dance, comic, dance, labor rhythms, but I only speak about what I know. Old Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian songs have an endless variety of musicality, and our poets should familiarize themselves with such collections of songs as, for example, "Velikoross" Shane, like a compilation Drahomanov And Kulish and others of this type. I am sure that such an acquaintance would serve as a source of inspiration for poets and musicians and that the working people would receive beautiful new songs - a gift they have long deserved. It must be taken into account that an old melody, even slightly changed, but filled with new words, creates a song that will be learned easily and quickly. You just need to understand the meaning of the rhythm: the chorus of "Dubinushka" can be stretched for the length of a minute, but you can also sing to the dance rhythm. Our young poets should not disdain the creation of folk songs. Forward and higher is the path for all of us, comrades, it is the only path worthy of the people of our country, of our era. What does higher mean? This means: we must rise above petty, personal squabbles, above pride, above the struggle for first place, above the desire to command others - above everything that we have inherited from the vulgarity and stupidity of the past. We are involved in a great cause, a cause of world significance, and we must personally be worthy to take part in it. We are entering an era full of the greatest tragedy, and we must prepare ourselves, learn to transform this tragedy in those perfect forms, as the ancient tragedians were able to portray it. We must not for a moment forget what the whole world of the working people thinks about us, listening to us, that we are working before the reader and viewer, which has never happened before in the entire history of mankind. I urge you, comrades, to learn - to learn to think, to work, to learn to respect and appreciate each other, as fighters on the battlefield appreciate each other, and not to waste strength in fighting each other for trifles, at a time when history called you to relentless struggle with the old world. The Japanese spoke at the congress Hijikato, Chinese Hu Lan-chi and Chinese Amy Xiao. These comrades, as it were verbally, shook hands with each other, signifying the unity of purpose of the revolutionary proletariat of the country whose bourgeoisie was infected by Europe with the sharp and deadly fit of the madness of imperialism, and the country whose bourgeoisie not only betrays its people as a sacrifice to the robber imperialists, but also exterminates them themselves. to please the imperialism of foreigners, just as the Russian landlords and manufacturers did in 1918-1922, with the cynical help of the shopkeepers of Europe, America and Japan. The congress did not clearly enough note the speeches of the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the two countries of the East, which can only be explained by the extreme fatigue caused by two weeks of work, which demanded an enormous strain of attention and, finally, exhausted attention. Having finished its work, the All-Union Congress of Writers unanimously expresses its sincere gratitude to the government for allowing the congress and extensive assistance to its work. The All-Union Congress of Writers notes that the successes of the internal, ideological association of writers, clearly and solidly revealed at the meetings of the congress, are the result of the decision of the Central Committee of the Lenin-Stalin Party of April 23, 1932, a decision that condemned groups of writers for motives that have nothing in common with the great tasks of our Soviet literature as a whole, but by no means denying associations on technical issues of diverse creative work. The Congress of Writers is deeply pleased and proud of the attention generously accorded to it by numerous delegations of readers. The writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will not forget the lofty demands placed on them by their readers and will honestly try to meet these demands. The majority of writers, judging by the structure of their speeches, perfectly understood how enormous the significance of literature as a whole in our homeland, understood what they were obligated to do by the impressive, uninterrupted demonstration of the strict but loving attitude of readers to literature throughout the entire congress. We have the right to believe that this love is due to merit, the work of our young literature. The reader has given us the right to be proud of the attitude of the reader and Lenin's party towards us, but we must not exaggerate the significance of our work, which is still far from being completed. Self-education through self-criticism, the continuous struggle for the quality of books, the planned work - as far as it is permissible in our craft - the understanding of literature as a process created collectively and placing on us mutual responsibility for each other's work, responsibility to the reader - these are the conclusions, which we must make of the demonstration of the readers at the congress. These conclusions oblige us to immediately begin practical work—the organization of all-Union literature as a whole. We must process the enormous and most valuable material of speeches at the Congress, so that it may serve us. temporary -- I emphasize the word "temporary" -- guidance in our further work, should in every possible way strengthen and expand the connection formed at the congress with the literatures of the fraternal republics. At the congress, before the representatives of the revolutionary literature of Europe, sadly and unworthy of our literature, our poor knowledge or complete ignorance of European languages ​​was revealed. In view of the fact that our connections with the writers of Europe will inevitably expand, we must introduce our own study of European languages. This is also necessary because it will open before us the possibility of reading in the original the greatest works of painting with a word. No less important is our knowledge of the languages ​​of the Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Turks, etc. We need to work out a general program for classes with beginning writers, a program that would exclude subjectivism from this work, which is extremely harmful to young people. To do this, it is necessary to combine the journals "Growth" and "Literary Study" into one journal of a literary and pedagogical nature and cancel the little successful studies of individual writers with beginners. There is a lot of work, all this is an absolutely necessary thing. In our country it is unacceptable for the growth of literature to develop by itself, we must prepare a replacement for ourselves, ourselves to expand the number of workers of the word. Then we should ask the government to discuss the need to organize an "All-Union Theater" in Moscow, in which artists of all nationalities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would have the opportunity to acquaint us Russians with their dramatic art and through it with the past and present of their cultural life. . The main, permanent troupe of this theater should be Russian, which would play the plays of Azerbaijan, Armenians, Belarusians, Georgians, Tatars and all other nationalities of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia - in Russian, in exemplary translations. The rapid growth of the literature of the fraternal republics obliges us to seriously follow the growth of these literatures and can significantly contribute to the growth of Russian dramaturgy. It is necessary to discuss the question of organizing in Moscow a "Theatre of Classics" in which plays of the classical repertoire would be performed exclusively. They, acquainting the viewer to the writers with examples of the dramatic creativity of the ancient Greeks, Spaniards and Englishmen of the Middle Ages, would raise the viewer's demands on the theater, writers - on themselves. We need to pay attention to the literature of the regions, especially Eastern and Western Siberia, draw it into the circle of our attention, publish it in the magazines of the center, take into account its significance as an organizer of culture. We must ask the government to allow the union of writers to erect a monument to the pioneer hero Pavel Morozov, who was killed by his relatives because, having understood the wrecking activities of his blood relatives, he preferred the interests of the working people to kinship with them. It is necessary to allow the publication of almanacs of the current fiction of the fraternal national republics, at least four books a year, and give the almanacs the title "Union" or "Brotherhood" with the subtitle: "Collections of modern fiction of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics." Dear comrades! Before us is a huge, varied work for the good of our country, which we are creating as the motherland of the proletariat of all countries. Get to work, comrades! Friendly, slender, fiery-- for work! Long live the friendly, strong unity of workers and fighters, in a word, long live the All-Union Red Army of Writers! And long live the all-Union proletariat, our reader,-- a reader-friend, whom the honest writers of Russia so passionately waited forXIXcentury and who has appeared, lovingly surrounds us and teaches us to work! Long live the party of Lenin-- leader of the proletariat, long live the leader of the party, Joseph Stalin! (Stormy, long-lasting applause, turning into an ovation. Everyone stands up and sings the "Internationale".)

NOTES

The twenty-seventh volume includes articles, reports, speeches, greetings written and delivered by M. Gorky in 1933-1936. Some of them were included in authorized collections of journalistic and literary-critical works ("Publicistic Articles", edition 2nd - 1933; "On Literature", edition 1st - 1933, edition 2nd - 1935, as well as in the 3rd edition - 1937, prepared for publication during the life of the author) and were repeatedly edited by M. Gorky. Most of the articles, reports, speeches, and greetings included in the volume were published in periodicals and were not included in authorized collections. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings of M. Gorky are included in the collection of works for the first time.

First published in the newspapers Pravda, 1934, No 242, September 2, Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, 1934, No 206, September 2, Literaturnaya Gazeta, 1934, No 117, September 2, and Literary Leningrad , 1934, No. 45, September 3, as well as in the publications: "The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers", Verbatim report, M. 1934; M. Gorky, Soviet Literature, Goslitizdat, M. 1934. Included in the second and third editions of M. Gorky's collection of articles "On Literature". Published with a slight reduction according to the text of the second edition of the specified collection, checked with manuscripts and typescripts (Archive of A. M. Gorky).

LETTER TO THE USSR SP

Many circumstances, historical cataclysms, institutions and persons contributed to the destruction of great Russian literature, and in their list, together with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the State Security Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Union of Writers plays a responsible role.

The emergence of a literary empire with a huge apparatus of legislators, executors, judges and executioners was inevitable and happened at the same time and for the same reasons for which the mass destruction of the 1930s was organized. The Union of Writers of the USSR was created in 1934, from which the chronicle of Soviet self-destruction begins: it begins with the murder of Kirov, which made it possible to kill everyone. It was necessary to destroy everything that bore the splendor of the gift, for the gift is intolerant of evil. The gravest evil was imposed on the country: the reign of mediocrity. The Writers' Union was invented in order to manage literature (which has finally become "part of the common proletarian cause"), that is, to get from it what the ruthless and intolerant, ignorant, all-devouring power needs. The authorities needed to educate vicious and devoted cattle, ready to unleash wars, kill dissidents and like-minded people, blow into the solemn fanfare of the glory of a wonderful man who managed to exterminate the largest number of people on earth.

I never wrote a line that was required of a well-intentioned Soviet writer, and I never considered myself a loyal subject of a state of liars, tyrants, criminals and freedom-stranglers.

The Writers' Union is an institution of the police state, the same as all its other institutions, no worse and no better than the police or the fire brigade.

I do not share the views of the Soviet police state, its police, fire brigade and other institutions, including the Writers' Union.

I think that my stay in the writers' organization is completely unnatural. I just have nothing to do there. Drink cognac in the restaurant of the Central House of Writers (in the company of Kochetov and Fedin)? Thank you. I am a non-drinker.

I have never indulged in illusions and hopes that the Soviet government can improve. But since the arrival of the latter - the most stupid, most insignificant, most unintellectual government of Soviet power, it has become clear that a confident and inevitable restoration of Stalinism has come, that Stalinist leaders, slightly pinched in sensitive places, straighten their shoulders, roll up their sleeves and spit in their palms, waiting for their time. The return of Stalin-Beria-Zhdanov ideas began; stagnant revenge-seekers line up in columns and check lists of enemies. I think the time has come when this needs to be said out loud.

Soviet power is incorrigible, incurable.

Its meaning and goal is in undivided and unrestrained domination over people, and therefore it received its full and perfect expression in tyrants, of which Lenin could not do everything, because he did not have time to destroy the opposition, and Stalin could do everything, because he destroyed the opposition.

Stalin became the purest, highest and most expressive embodiment of Soviet power. He is her symbol, portrait, banner. And therefore, everything that happens and will happen in Russia will always turn out to be connected with a greater or lesser amount of Stalinism released into public life. The Soviet authorities could not discover anything better than Stalin in their bowels, because in him there was an exhaustive combination of the needs of a dictatorial state and the personal qualities of a villain. Therefore, everything that happened after it was connected only with a weakening or strengthening of the magnetic field, which then let go a little, then again pulled towards courts and reprisals, cave censorship, unbridled lies and Zamoskvoretsky complacency. And therefore, the heaviest blow of this powerful and predatory power fell on the person who was the first to take aim at the purest embodiment of the Soviet ideal.

Vengeful hatred for Khrushchev was based on the adoration of the best examples of Soviet power. Stalin was the best example. Khrushchev spat in the soul of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the police and the crowd, showing that their selfless love, feverish devotion and fitful adoration were given to a gloomy Marxist, stupid maniac, cunning intriguer, jailer, poisoner and possible employee of the tsarist secret police - the true and complete embodiment of Soviet power , its symbol, portrait and banner.

The country is excommunicated from political life. A handful of political conspirators who have seized power decide the fate of the people crushed and deafened by the propaganda trumpet.

Only people who have not sold out, who have not been tempted, who have not been corrupted and who have not been intimidated in this class, hierarchical, class, subordination prejudice society, which has been declared “socialist”, only people who have understood that the time has come again to destroy the remnants of physical and spiritual freedom, resist . The unstoppable war of the free intelligentsia against the cruel, unchoosing state began, and the state, severely wounded by the revelations of 1956-1962, realized that if it did not win this battle immediately, then it could lose it forever. And it began to win this battle. The methods were old, tested on Chaliapin and Gumilyov, Bulgakov and Platonov, Meyerhold and Falk, Babel, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky, Pasternak, Zoshchenko and Akhmatova. Knowing the former infallibility of the method, the state imprisoned professional writers and young writers who had just started working - Brodsky, Sinyavsky and Daniel, Khaustov, Bukovsky, Ginzburg, Galanskov and many others, put poetess Inna Lisnyanskaya, mathematician Yesenin-Volpin, general Grigorenko, the writer Naritsu and many others, forbade composer Andrei Volkonsky from performing their works, expelled Pavel Litvinov from work, expelled from the party and expelled film critic N. Zorkuya, Karyakin, Pajitnov, Shragin, Zolotukhin and many others, dumped sets of books by Kardin and Kopelev and many others, sent out a black list of authors who were forbidden to publish to publishing houses and editorial offices, expelled Boris Birger from the Union of Artists, Aleksey Kosterin, G. Svirsky from the Union of Writers, released with another predatory speech (for more he is not good) "the former writer , awarded with prestige and becoming a scarecrow, a Vendean, a Cossack, a drabant, a city of Russian literature ”-Mikhail Sholokhov (I am proud that these words are printed in my book“ Yuri Tynyanov ”, ed. 2nd, "Soviet Writer", Moscow, 1965, p. 56-57), published a three-volume book by Kochetov, a one-volume book by Gribachev, prepared and carefully put in a warehouse to wait in the wings a two-volume book of selected works of his luminary and teacher, the best friend of Soviet fiction, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

For four years there has been a slaughter due to the publication of the novel "The Cancer Ward" and the novel "In the First Circle" by the great Russian writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. This fight is not won, and I am not sure that the writer will win it in the Soviet publishing field. But there are great manuscripts - and it is no longer possible to destroy them. They are immortal and undeniable, in contrast to the frightened tyrannical power that the Nuremberg trials are inexorably waiting for.

How much has been done to destroy Russian culture, human dignity, physical and spiritual freedom! But the plan has not yet been fulfilled, the battle has not been won, the free intelligentsia has not yet been completely destroyed. Planted, expelled, removed, expelled, published, not published. Does not help. Why did it help so well in the old days, under Stalin, and help so poorly with this miserable, most unpopular government even in Russia, where cool power has always been adored since Ivan the Terrible? (Even Russia, which is used to all kinds of governments, God forgive me, did not know such a mediocre and hopeless government. Except under Alexander III. Only, they say, they found in historical sources that there were more potatoes. Per capita.) Doesn’t help. Does not help. Why doesn't it help? Because few. They plant little. And they are afraid to plant as much as necessary. Here is the former chairman of the State Security Committee Semichastny at a meeting of the Ideological Commission under the Central Committee of the CPSU (November 1960), when they discussed how the Soviet state (area 22.4 million square meters, population 208,827,000 people in 1959) should to organize a systematic struggle with the rhymes of the beginning poet, begged to be given to plant 1200 (1200 in total!) renegades, lackeys of the West and Jews, who are defiling our basically healthy society and corrupting its mostly healthy youth. But they didn't give it to him. He was “given” a little later: under a tender and overgrown place in a responsible Soviet service.

Afraid. They are afraid of the smart young man Khaustov, who dared to tell the draconian and wild Soviet judges that he rejects the Soviet faith (Marxism-Leninism), they are afraid of the wonderful artist of Russia Alexander Solzhenitsyn, they are afraid of America, they are afraid of China, they are afraid of Polish students and Czechoslovak non-rumors, they are afraid of the Yugoslav revisionists, Albanian dogmatists, Romanian nationalists, Cuban extremists, East German dullards, North Korean cunning, workers of Novocherkassk who rebelled and were shot, Vorkuta prisoners who rebelled and were shot from airplanes and Ekibastuz prisoners crushed by tanks, Crimean Tatars driven from their lands, and Jewish physicists expelled from their laboratories They are afraid of hungry collective farmers and shoeless workers, they are afraid of each other, of themselves, all together, each one separately.

The hair on the back of the secretaries of the Central Committee stands on end. The chairmen of the Councils of Ministers of the Union republics squat on their hind legs. Fear shakes them. And if these lowly organized animals understood and remembered anything, it was how they were turned inside out from fear under Stalin. They look inquisitively at each other and ask themselves with horror: “What if this (Shelepin? Polyansky? Rustle?) is Stalin?” It takes a strong personality to finally curb these eternal enemies of the police state - these boys, artists, poets, Jews. And a strong personality really always starts by curbing them. And ends up killing everyone. Their predecessors also wanted to curb the opposition and called for this strong personality. A strong personality came and curbed. And having curbed, she began to destroy everything. And now they already know what a strong personality is. But there are such difficult times when a strong personality is better than boys, artists, poets and Jews.

Everything that I am writing now, my dear brothers from the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of the USSR and sisters from the Peredelkino House of Creativity, is no different from what I wrote before. However, there is a difference. It lies in the fact that in my works published by Soviet publishing houses, when there was no other possibility, I called villainy Ivan the Terrible or Paul I, and now I call him by your name. From hundreds of letters I learned that my readers understand well who Ivan the Terrible is.

But Paul I and Ivan IV are not only allegories, analogies, associations and allusions. They are your source and root, your origin, your past, the soil in which you grew up, and the blood that flows in your vessels. I wrote about them because history and the people that have produced and tolerated villains have innate qualities that are ready to give birth to villains again. And so the history of this country and this people did what it could do: it replaced the most reactionary monarchy in Europe with the most reactionary dictatorship in the world.

I write so little about the mighty Union of Writers of the USSR and consumptive Soviet literature, because why write about secondary evil when you need to write about the main thing? The main evil is the bestial fascism of the Soviet socialist ideology.

The post-Khrushchev government, rehabilitating Stalin with growing bitterness, inevitably found itself forced to intensify repressions with growing bitterness. And Stalin's renaissance had this goal among the main ones. By birth and profession, I belong to the circle of people who are constantly attacked by the Soviet government, that is, to the intelligentsia, which does not tolerate violation of its sovereignty. Like many other intellectuals, I hear the same question in various variations: “Why should the most powerful state persecute people who do not agree with its ideology, a state that knows very well that these persecutions irritate the public opinion of the whole world most of all?” I have never understood this confusion.

The beings at the head of the Soviet state strangle freedom, trample on human dignity and destroy national culture, not only because they are bad politicians, but also because they are doomed to strangle, trample and destroy. And if they do not choke, trample and destroy, then even in this country, with its grave historical heredity and constant inclination towards absolutism, normal social relations can arise, that is, such that people who think no-one will not be able to destroy people who think differently. And then it will inevitably turn out that people who think differently are infinitely higher and more significant than the rulers, and this will inevitably lead first to a violent political struggle, and then because of the tragic features of Russian historical development, Asian hostility to democracy, the traditional habit of cruelty and sharply continental properties of the national character - to the civil war. And therefore, it is catastrophic not only that this cruel and arrogant slave-owning state is headed by bad politicians who are strangling freedom, trampling on human dignity and destroying national culture, but also that in a state that has the form of Soviet power, others cannot stand. And this is not a historical transient particularity, this is the regularity of the Soviet and any other fascist concept. And what happens in China or Spain, Albania or Egypt, Poland or South Africa differs from the Soviet norm only in the national character of the absurdity and the amount of rapacity used.

Soviet power is incorrigible, incurable; she can only be what she is - vindictive, intolerant, capricious, arrogant and noisy.

I reject the prevailing middle-liberal opinion: we are for Soviet power, plus the electrification of the entire country, minus the completely unnecessary and even harmful petty guardianship of the creative intelligentsia. I affirm that Soviet power is incorrigible and must be fought against. With its ideology and politics, methodology and way of thinking. But the most dangerous thing is to forget her own terrible experience: to resort to methods (in the name of the "higher goal") in which there is at least a shadow of immorality and a shade of violence.

Now for the Soviet intelligentsia, that is, for that circle of it that does not serve destructive power, after the expulsions, arrests, reprisals and violence that began by decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU immediately after the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, the possibility of resistance was significantly limited. The adored government triumphs over its eternal enemy - the thinking part of humanity. With narrowed eyes, it follows the history of persecution and is again convinced of the tried and tested fidelity of its method: to crush all resistance, while it has not yet realized its strength.

It crushes resistance from state and personal motives, which, as you know, can never be separated in a truly Soviet person.

And so it happened with two truly Soviet people - Konstantin Alexandrovich Fedin, the acting classic of Soviet literature, and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, a simple Soviet man and metallurgist.

A simple Soviet man and a metallurgist, having planted, killed as much as he could in the good Stalinist times (damn them), in liberal days (damn them), after exhausting training for a humane attitude towards people (training was carried out on six South Russian shepherd dogs), decided to become wise statesman. Therefore, in the furious quarrels at the Presidium of the Central Committee (collective leadership and democracy!) after the arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel, he defended the advantages of quietly strangling all anti-Sovietists compared to a loud trial of only two of them.

In order to strengthen his decision and bring the people as proof, Leonid Ilyich decided to arrange a historic meeting.

Konstantin Alexandrovich also attached great importance to the historic meeting. But the hero of Sinyavsky-Tertz's story "Graphomaniacs" Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin groaned in his sleep from the desire to gnaw out an eye (and then another, and then another!) With his own false teeth, from a vile anti-Soviet slanderer and in his insane blindness did not realize why he had come to him a man with a metallurgical soul of truly Soviet production.

Konstantin Aleksandrovich, who to some extent managed to remain calm when discussing the question of imperialism and even found the physical and moral strength in himself to restrain himself when discussing urgent measures to sharply increase popular anti-Semitism, having heard the name of a renegade and slanderer, a former member of the USSR Writers' Union, in a rage jumped out of his own pants and, spitting at the First Secretary of the Central Committee dentures of a girlish pale pink-white color, began to shout rabid words, repeating more and more such words as “rack”, “bonfire”, “wheeling”, “quartering ”, “acetic acid” and “sharks of imperialism”.

Then he came to his senses a little, got into his pants, stuck in artificial limbs and immediately became Chairman of the Society of Soviet-German Friendship and a classic.

So the first secretaries sat opposite each other in the literary drifts of the Peredelkino station. And the secretary who had no idea for a long time, persistently and convincingly proved to the secretary who had already realized everything the most urgent need in the era of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, the end of colonialism and the onset of revisionism, when discrimination in his face of Soviet literature is especially intolerable, in which the party and the people are entrusted to him difficult but honorable post of a classic, as soon as possible and as severe as possible reprisals against two vile anti-Soviet and renegades.

The process postponed the day before was scheduled for February 10, 1966. On this day, one hundred and twenty-nine years ago, Pushkin was assassinated and Pasternak was born seventy-five years ago.

The Soviet government has always been mortally afraid of any overshadowing complications at the hour of its triumph. It hates those who can ruin its holiday. Therefore, in Stalin's time, on the eve of holidays, it stuffed the prisons into a frenzy, and in the present, it has arranged trials in Leningrad at which people were tried who allegedly plotted terrorist acts against it on anniversary days.

The Soviet government, having won (as it believes) over the intelligentsia, is celebrating the hour of its triumph. I think that just at this time it is best to spoil the bright Soviet holiday.

I am writing this letter to prove that the intelligentsia of Russia is alive, fighting, not for sale, not giving up, that it has the strength.

I am not in your party. I do not enjoy more privileges than those enjoyed by every working person in your state. I don't have your ranks and I don't have your awards. Do not shame me with higher education, an apartment and a clinic, augustly bestowed by your government. Do not reproach me with the bread that I eat and the fat that I do not like. I worked out your bread, your shelter for 13 years in prisons and camps, number 1-B-860, which you awarded me. In order to study, to receive shelter and bread, it is not necessary to have Soviet power with prisons and censorship. Even the peoples groaning under the yoke of imperialism have all this. But you cannot help boasting, reproaching, judging, destroying. You burned my old books and do not publish new ones. But even you, even now, in the articles that blurted out in the first lines of my last book (whose title alone makes you cramp - the book is called "Surrender and death of the Soviet intellectual. Yuri Olesha"), you never said that I write badly or frivolous, or mediocre. You always said something else: "In your books," you said, "there is too much misplaced aversion to violence, intolerance to fanaticism." And you also asked, poking at the page about the Inquisition: “Is this a hint? Yes? this is about us? Yes?" A country of slaves, a country of masters... It is terrible to live next to you, to read your books, to walk along your streets. Fortunately, the only connection that exists between you and me is being in a shameless organization - the Union of Writers of the USSR, which, together with your party bishops, your secret police, your army, unleashing wars and enslaving countries, poisoned the poor, unfortunate, miserable obedient people. This connection, this only contact with you disgusts me, and I leave you to admire unheard of victories, unseen successes, invisible harvests, amazing achievements, amazing accomplishments and mind-blowing decisions - without me, without me. Separation will not bring bitterness and sadness to you or me. And you will have time to deal with me this night.

I am returning you the ticket of a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR, because I consider it unworthy of an honest person to stay in an organization that, with dogish devotion, serves the most cruel, inhuman and merciless political regime of all centuries of human history.

Artists and scientists of this tormented, tormented country, all who have retained dignity and decency, come to your senses, remember that you are writers of great literature, and not waiters of a rotten regime, throw your writer's cards in their faces, take your manuscripts from their publishing houses, stop participating in the planned and malicious destruction of the personality, despise them, despise their mediocre and noisy, fruitless and merciless state, beating the incessant drum of victories and successes.

20.6.68, Tallinn - Moscow

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Proletcult

A literary, artistic, cultural and educational organization that arose on the eve of the Great October Socialist Revolution and launched an active activity in 1917-20.

It proclaimed the task of forming a proletarian culture through the development of the creative amateur activity of the proletariat, united the working people who aspired to artistic creativity and culture. By 1920, P.'s organizations numbered up to 400,000 members, and 80,000 people were engaged in art studios and clubs. Approximately 20 P. magazines were published (Gorn in Moscow, Future in Petrograd, Zaryevo Zavodov in Samara, and others).

P. organizations arose in the early 1920s. in Great Britain, Germany, etc., but turned out to be unviable, the activity of poets is connected with P.: M. P. Gerasimov, V. D. Aleksandrovsky, V. T. Kirillov, S. A. Obradovich, A. Mashirov-Samobytnik, N. G. Poletaeva, V. V. Kazina and others.

Their work, imbued with revolutionary romantic pathos, was influenced by symbolist and populist poetry. In 1920, the poets Aleksandrovsky, Kazin, Obradovich, and Poletaev left P. and formed the Kuznitsa group.

Activity P. marked by serious contradictions. P. theorists promoted aesthetic principles that are alien to Leninism. They are most fully set out in the works of A. A. Bogdanov, who spoke in the journal Proletarian Culture. The concept of a "pure" proletarian culture that arose in the pre-revolutionary years, created only by the proletarians themselves, practically led to the denial of the connection between socialist culture and the culture of the past, to the isolation of the proletariat in the field of cultural construction from the peasantry and the intelligentsia.

To a certain extent, Bogdanov's views were shared by other leaders P. I. Lebedev-Polyansky, P. M. Kerzhentsev, V. F. Pletnev, F. I. Kalinin, and P. K. Bessalko. Petrograd's tendencies toward separatism and autonomy ran counter to the Leninist principles of building a socialist society. The question of Poland's independence from the state and the party was the subject of serious discussion in the press.

On October 8, 1920, in connection with the congress of Poland, at which the need for the autonomy of Poland was again emphasized, V. I. Lenin prepared a draft resolution “On Proletarian Culture.” At the suggestion of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the congress of P. adopted a resolution according to which P. was a member of the People's Commissariat of Education in the position of his department, guided in the work by the direction dictated by the People's Commissariat of Education of the RCP (b).

In the letter of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) "On Proletcults", published in Pravda on December 1, 1920, the attitude of the party towards P. was explained, and the theoretical views of its leaders were criticized. However, the leadership of P. stood on the same positions, as evidenced by Art. V. Pletnev's On the Ideological Front (Pravda, September 27, 1922), which provoked sharp criticism of Lenin (see Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 54, p. 291).

The Communist Party resolutely condemned and rejected the nihilistic attitude of the ideologists of Poland towards the progressive culture of the past, which was of great importance for the formation of a new, socialist culture.

In the 20s. P. was mainly engaged in theatrical and club work. The most notable phenomenon is the 1st Working Theater of Petrograd, where, in particular, S. M. Eisenstein, V. S. Smyshlyaev, I. A. Pyriev, M. M. Shtraukh, E. P. Garin, Yu. S. Glizer and others. In 1925 P. joined the trade unions, and in 1932 ceased to exist.

Lit .: Lenin V.I., On literature and art. Sat. Art., M., 1969; Bugaenko P. A., A. V. Lunacharsky and the literary movement of the 20s, Saratov, 1967; Smirnov I., Lenin's concept of the cultural revolution and criticism of the Proletcult, in Sat: Historical science and some problems of our time, M., 1969; Gorbunov V., Lenin and socialist culture, M., 1972; his, V. I. Lenin and Proletkult, M., 1974; Margolin S., The first working theater of Proletkult, M., 1930

RAPP

Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, Soviet literary organization. It took shape in January 1925 as the main detachment of the All-Union Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP), which had existed since 1924 and whose theoretical organ was the journal On Post.

The RAPP was the most massive of the literary organizations of the second half of the 1920s, which included workers' correspondents and members of the Lit circle. D. A. Furmanov, Yu. N. Libedinsky, V. M. Kirshon, A. A. Fadeev, V. P. Stavsky, critics L. L. Averbakh, V. V. Ermilov, A. P. Selivanovsky and others.

The party supported the proletarian literary organizations, seeing them as one of the instruments of the cultural revolution, but already in the first years of the existence of the UAPP criticized them for sectarianism, "commitmentism", remnants of ideas Proletcult , intolerance towards Soviet writers from among the intelligentsia, the desire to achieve the hegemony of proletarian literature by administrative means. All these phenomena were criticized in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) of June 18, 1925 "On the policy of the party in the field of fiction."

The RAPP adopted the Resolution as a program document: it condemned the nihilistic attitude towards cultural heritage, put forward the slogan "learning from the classics", and gathered the forces of proletarian literature and criticism.

In literary discussions of the late 20s. with a group "Pass" ; with the school of V. F. Pereverzev and other Rappov criticism (in the journal "At a literary post" and other publications) opposed the belittling of the role of worldview in artistic creativity, but at the same time allowed for simplification, sticking political labels.

Lit.: LEF, in the book: Soviet art for 15 years. Materials and documentation, M. - L., 1933, p. 291-95; Pertsov V. O., Mayakovsky in the magazine "Lef", in his book: Mayakovsky. Life and work, vol. 2 (1917-1924), M., 1971; Surma Yu., Word in battle. Mayakovsky's aesthetics and literary struggle of the 20s, L., 1963; Metchenko A., Mayakovsky. Sketch of creativity, M., 1964; "LEF", "New LEF", in the book: Essays on the history of Russian Soviet journalism. 1917-1932, M., 1966.

« Pass»

Literation group. It arose at the end of 1923 under the first Soviet "thick" literary-artistic and scientific-journalistic journal Krasnaya Nov (published in Moscow in 1921-42); executive editor (until 1927) A.K. Voronsky, the first editor of the literary and artistic department M. Gorky; the so-called fellow travelers ("sympathizers" of the Soviet regime) were grouped around the magazine. The name is probably related to Voronsky's article "Onpass”, published in the journal Krasnaya Nov (1923, Ї 6). Initially a small groupPass” united young writers from the literary groups “October” and “Young Guard”.

In the collections Pass"(Ї 1-6, 1924-28) participated A. Vesely, M. Golodny, M.A. Svetlov, A. Yasny and others. When the group grew, the manifesto “pass”, signed by 56 writers (including M.M. Prishvin, E.G. Bagritsky, N. Ognev, I.I. Kataev, A.A. Karavaeva, D. Kedrin, A.G. Malyshkin, J. Altauzen And others.), who spoke out against "wingless everyday life" in literature, for the preservation of "a successive connection with the artistic mastery of Russian and world classical literature."

The aesthetic platform of the "Pass" put forward, in contrast to the rationalism of the LEF andconstructivists, the principles of "sincerity" and intuitionism - "Mozartianism" of creativity. At the end of 20-X- early 30s. Bagritsky, Prishvin and others left the "Pass". RAPPovskayaCriticism considered "Pass" as a grouping hostile to Soviet literature. "Pass" ceased to exist in 1932

Unionwriters from the SSR

RAPP , LEF , "Pass" , Union peasant writers and others. On April 23, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided "... to unite all writers supporting the platform of Soviet power and striving to participate in socialist construction, into a single union Soviet writers with the communist faction in it "(" On the Party and Soviet Press. Collection of Documents, 1954, p. 431). The 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers (August 1934) adopted the charter of the Writers' Union of the USSR, in which socialist peaism as the main method of owls. literature and literary criticism.

At all stages of history Owls. countries of the joint venture of the USSR under the leadership of the CPSU took an active part in the struggle for the creation of a new society. During the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of writers voluntarily went to the front, fought in the ranks of the Soviets. Army and Navy, worked as war correspondents for divisional, army, front and navy newspapers; 962 writers were awarded military orders and medals, 417 died the death of the brave.

In 1934, the SP of the USSR included 2,500 writers, now (as of March 1, 1976) - 7,833, writing in 76 languages; among them 1097 women. including 2839 prose writers, 2661 poets, 425 playwrights and film writers, 1072 critics and literary critics, 463 translators, 253 children's writers, 104 essay writers, 16 folklorists.

The supreme body of the Writers' Union of the USSR is the All-Union Congress of Writers (2nd congress in 1954, 3rd in 1959, 4th in 1967,5th in 1971) - elects Governing body, which forms secretariat forming to solve everyday issues the Bureau secretariat.

The Board of the USSR Writers' Union in 1934-36 was headed by M. Gorky, who played an outstanding role in its creation and ideological and organizational strengthening, then at different times V. P. Stavsky A. A. Fadeev, A. A. Surkov now - K. A. Fedin (Chairman of the Board, since 1971), G. M. Markov (1st Secretary, since 1971).

Under the board there are councils for the literature of the Union republics, for literary criticism, for essays and journalism, for drama and theater, for children's and youth literature, for literary translation, for international these writers' connections, etc.

Similar structureUnionswriters from the southern and autonomous republics; In the RSFSR and some other Union republics, there are regional and regional writers' organizations.

Since 1963 Board and Moscow Branch UnionwritersRSFSR publishes the weekly "Literary Russia". In 1974, the RSFSR published 4,940 journals, bulletins, scholarly notes, and other journal publications in Russian, 71 publications in other languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, and 142 publications in the languages ​​of the peoples of foreign countries. Literary, artistic and socio-political magazines are published: Moskva (since 1957), Neva (Leningrad, since 1955), Far East (Khabarovsk, since 1946), Don (Rostov-on-Don, since 1957). ), "Rise" (Voronezh, since 1957), "Volga" (Saratov, since 1966), etc.

The system of the USSR Writers' Union publishes 15 literary newspapers in 14 languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR and 86 literary, artistic and socio-political journals in 45 languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR and 5 foreign languages, including the organs of the Writers' Union of the USSR: "Literaturnaya Gazeta", magazines "New World" , "Banner", "Friendship of Peoples", "Questions of Literature", "Literary Review", "Children's Literature", "Foreign Literature", "Youth", "Soviet Literature" (published in foreign languages), "Theater", " Soviet Motherland" (published in Hebrew), "Star", "Bonfire".

Under the jurisdiction of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR are the publishing house "Soviet Writer",them. M. Gorky, Literary consultation for novice authors, Literary Fund USSR, All-Union Bureau of Fiction Propaganda, Central house of writers them. A. A. Fadeev in Moscow and others.

Directing the activity of writers towards the creation of works of a high ideological and artistic level, the Writers' Union of the USSR provides them with all-round assistance: it organizes creative business trips, discussions, seminars, etc., and protects the economic and legal interests of writers. The Writers' Union of the USSR develops and strengthens creative ties with foreign writers, represents Sov. literature in international writers' organizations. Awarded the Order of Lenin (1967).

Lit.; Gorky M., On literature, M., 1961: Fadeev A., For thirty years, M., Creative unions in the USSR. (Organizational and legal issues), M., 1970

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