People under communism; Soviet literary straitjacket

This is people under communism. A series of documentaries interviews and talks based upon documented evidence and expert knowledge about the power and intentions of the Soviet Union. The series is presented transcribed by the National Association of educational broadcasters in consultation with scholars from the Russian Research Center Harvard University the Russian Institute Columbia University and the Hoover Institute and library of Stanford University. The program you're about to hear in people under communism the Soviet literary straight jacket is an analysis of Soviet government controls over literature by Dr Ernest J Simmons chairman of the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University and professor of Russian literature and its Russian Institute. Dr. Simmons biographical and critical studies of Pushkin dusty esky and Tolstoy are standard works. He has made five trips to the Soviet Union for research purposes. And here is Dr. Simmons and the Soviet literary

straitjacket. Much confusion and not a little despair reigns in the Soviet literary world these days as six years have passed since the 1946 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and literature and drama the resolution Hosley criticised Soviet writers but their toadying to Western culture and failure to reflect in their works the true spirit of the new Soviet man in the new postwar period of the so-called transition from socialism to communism. Stalin himself had announced the new goals in terms of production figures and anticipated economic advances. The late Andres Dunne a member of the Polit Bureau and cultural X-Men of the party laid down the new goals in the art world indicating plainly not only what literature would be considered anti-Soviet but also the kinds of books that ought to be written by post-war authors of bell

that as is now well-known the resolution on literature touched off a vast frontal attack by the party on all aspects of Soviet artistic and intellectual like. Before in this new period of the gradual transition from socialism to communism this shift in the ideological line must be understood as a reflection of the new postwar national and international policy of the party in the purification drive that followed. There were no doubt several objectives but certainly one of them was the determination that all intellectual and artistic effort must be utterly subservient to party control and should have as one of its aims the glorification of the Soviet Union and its accomplishments over the capitalist West and America. In fact the most

obvious feature of the interference in literature of this new period as contrasted with the earlier ones is the direct openly declared and total domination of the party in the whole literary direction of things in its blatant public identification with literature or the party now demands from all writers adherents to the grinding principle of part of Tinas that is of party spirit which assumes an all pervading organic connection between literature and politics. Shortly after the war began the propaganda emphasis had shifted from its focus of the directing genius of the Communist party to that of the unity and patriotism of the Multi National Peoples of the Soviet Union. One could detect them a relaxation of party

controls on all the media of art and intellectual light. In the spirit of this unexpected freedom a right is poured for sentiments and feelings in their works which often had little connection with their form of prescribed pattern of communist emotions. Even direct any implied criticism of party dictation may be found in this deeply patriotic war literature and at the end of the war a public report of the tenth plead him of the Executive Committee of the Union of Soviet writers recorded Frank expressions of hope by prominent authors that interference in the arts would be discontinued. These hopes have now been blasted by the 1946 resolution of the party on literature indeed the worst period of regimentation of the arts in the whole history of the Soviet Union

had set in at the outset. Certain popular pre-war right is such as are marked over and as Austin called we're driven from the Writers Union. Others were publicly excoriated some dead authors already among the Soviet immortals such as my a cup Steve and the humorous infant the log had to be rehabilitated to fit into the ideology of the new line even works is recent as seen in other war poems tremendously popular during the struggle have lately been fiercely denounce. There is some reason to believe that certain of the older and more famous writers such as Charlotte call then Leon of showing their resentment to the rigid controls by keeping silent for neither has written anything of consequence since the end of the war. As a matter of fact predominant among the post-war Stalin Prize winners in literature our new

young writers are older but here the two unknown ones and the training of nearly all of them has been in journalism. This situation in itself is no doubt a reflection of the antagonism and even despair felt among real artists of the wood because of the severity of the present controls in literature law and the fear inspiring methods employed to implement them. After six years of operation it is now possible to get some idea of how this uncompromising dictation has brought Soviet literature or to perhaps its lowest level in 35 years of development. One of the most important directives of the new post war party line in that ritual is to develop a communist consciousness a necessary state of mind say the Soviet theorists in the transition from socialism to communism.

Accordingly the vast majority of the heroes and heroines in post-war fiction and drama are communists and they are mechanically placed in situations that will demonstrate to the hundred and ninety six million Soviet citizens who are not communists just follow the party man overcomes every conceivable obstacle in life's experiences to win through to a victory in the end. Presumably this kind of picture is intended to convince the population of the infallibility of the party of the capacity of its members to achieve great deeds of heroism and to lead the country on to the ultimate triumph of communism. The plot situations with maddening monotony nearly always involve a superhuman efforts in industry construction or agriculture in which the propaganda motif is to show how the communist leader by organizing collective efforts

and stick kind of work at competitions and manages to overcome all the obstructions of Man and Nature to achieve final success. But the glory of the country and the toiling masses on their way to the earthly paradise of communism. To illustrate let us cite the themes of a few post-war novels. All of them Stalin Prize winners public goes happiness is the story of a returning Red Army officer who organizes the ravaged people of a district in the Crimea and leads them to triumph in rehab militating their collective farm. Zhai abse far from Moscow is an incredible account of the laying of an oil pipeline in Siberia. In the course of which the communist leaders have to overcome impossible hardships imposed upon them by the elements and not a few that are manmade

but by of Steve's cavalier of the gold star and its sequel light over the earth is the story of the inspired efforts of the Communist hero in convincing the people in an agricultural district of the bond of the virtues of electricity and of the many obstacles he encounters before he directs a power station paranormals crusie looka tells of the various difficulties of a communist hero in changing over a large factory from well work to the work of peace. And another novel of hers bright farm is on the familiar fictional theme of the rehabilitation of a rundown collective farm. This is also the theme of Nikolai Evers harvest. By way of variation however chuck of Steve's novel it is morning here takes us to the fisheries of sucker leaving but the activity is essentially the same. There are many difficulties the communist hero

has to overcome before he is able to convince the fisherman by stuck kind of methods to earlier fulfill their norms and beat all records for catching fish in the light of the present Soviet claims of advanced techniques in construction work industrialization and agriculture. The American reader is surprised at the backwardness inefficiency poor planning and often primitive equipment revealed in these novels. Construction our work efforts that would be regarded as commonplace occurrences here take on the proportions of heroic sagas of labor involving unbelievable human sacrifices. The atmosphere recalls that of our pioneer days opening up new front tiers. This is not to suggest that in the reality of Soviet life great constructions and industrial feats are not accomplished but the evidence of the novels

indicates at what tremendous human cost the picture is hardly one of a country about to turn the corner to communism where all will work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. For example in far from Moscow hundreds of pages are devoted to the laying of the oil pipeline in the early days of the war. Lorry drivers in subzero weather are sent plunging over roadless waste loaded with huge lengths of pipe which they drop anywhere when they get stuck in a snowdrift and overzealous driver plunges his tractor through the ice of the river and is drowned the telephone line is laid along the work road at great cost in Frostbite and even loss of life in one of the camps at the end of the line. Workers are described as busily riveting pieces of iron together but the improbable reason that they had to keep working even if their

inefficient director could not devise regular tasks for them. Speed and frantic competition are emphasized to the point of the ludicrous. The work route is divided into battle sectors and the heads of each sector buy with one another in a dizzy effort of labor that takes no thought of the human waste. Yet throughout this long and tiresome account the hundreds of workers from the lowest to the highest are represented as dedicated souls ready to indoor every human privation not for the sake of any material gain but for the glory of the job and what it will mean to the country their collective attitude may be summed up in the words of Tania Head of the telephone line laying sect. We honestly confess to you comrades that it was a hard job

hewing our way through the tiger. But every one of us was actuated by the thought of our country's destiny the fate of Moscow and every one of us carried in his heart the image of the great Stalin. With him we had nothing to fear. In Babai of ski's cavalier of the gold star and its sequel light over the earth we are appalled to discover that the whole theme of these two novels is bringing electricity to an important farming region in the Ku band. After more than 30 years of communist rule in fact the main element of struggle in these two novels is centered on the difficulties the young communist hero has to overcome in convincing these backward peasants to accept electricity and then once it has been put in to overcome their opposition to making full practical use of it

in farming operations there is something childishly naive in the reaction of the collectivized farmers once they learn of the benefits of electricity. One of them remarked on this score. People are finding life easier already and they're quite contented. The important thing is that it's so devilishly cultural almost every home now has a radio set and generally all kinds of electrical gadgets cookers and what not. You want to see what that manager of a collective farm caught us Junkin has done. He's gone in fixed up buttons in his office in when he presses one of them a barrel tingles and the men he wants springs up in front of him. In less than no time. That's what I call mechanisation. Yet the announced purpose of Bebai of these novels according to Soviet

critics is to show the victory in consolidation of socialism in the countryside and the effort to develop a communist consciousness among the peasants. Before the formation of a single writers union in 1934 when the party was able to exercise more effective control a literature reflected with varying degrees of faithfulness. The central problem of Soviet life over those early years the mortal struggle between the old and the new in the rapid efforts to build a socialist society. This problem took numerous forms in the early literature all but the reality of its abiding tragedy was rarely sacrificed to communist doctrine. Accordingly revealing studies of these various types portrayed in the early literature could be made which would shed a good deal of light on life in the Soviet Union for the social historian studying that country. And it is

noticeable that the most memorable heroes of novels and plays them had in them a large admixture of the tragic which no doubt contributed to their successful portrayal. In the post-war period however the idealized picture of Soviet life which the party had thrust upon right is has resulted apart from the sameness in plot situations in a similar sameness in the heroes and heroines the positive hero of postwar literature all must conform to the Soviet psychologists version of man as a responsible self disciplined individual who dedicates himself through the efforts of his own will to truest DIC purposes. Obviously this type of person provides better raw material for heroism than that permitted by the early deterministic view of men responding

more or less blindly to cultural psychological or physiological stimuli. Thus the positive hero of the Soviet post-war literature or is not men as he is but the Communist man as he should be. Whereas the right is tried to give the impression that these heroes stalked the Soviet today. In order to provide some sense of dramatic conflict these Soviet Knights of Labor of valor are nearly always portrayed as having a slight defect in their otherwise perfect communist behavior pattern and much of the action of the story is dedicated to the manner in which they are made to see the error of their ways. Loose the pad the hero of clues Ulick is too headstrong and tries to get along without the aid of the collective. 2:13 of in the cavalier of the

gold star and laid over the earth is over enthusiastic and hence impatient with planning. Don't and in chuck of ski's novel it is morning here finds it difficult to take advice and in keeping with the party domination in all this literature or in virtually every case it is a party official. The district secretary of the party or the party organizer who shows the earning hero his mistakes and how to correct them. In fact this secondary character representing the final wisdom of the party has become as much of a stereotype as the communist hero. The other principal form of dramatic action is to be found in the invariable villain or a near villain who is guilty of possessing What are always described as booze watched survival. It's the persistence of this motif again comes as something of a

surprise to the American reader of Soviet literature of how after 35 years of rule and the daily anti booze war propaganda drumbeat in a country almost hermetically sealed off from Western and American influences there can still exist booze wah survivals to the extent that they appear in nearly every play and novel may well be regarded as a very revealing fact. A careful study of these so called Blues was survivals in Soviet literature or might tell us a good deal about the extent and kind of opposition to the regime. Soviet displaced persons tell us that it is the so-called negative characters in the literature or cursed with booze was survivals who appealed to the average Soviet reader as the only believable characterisations.

Today the baleful results of some six years of such rigid regimentation in literature are making themselves all too plain to the Soviet authorities. Masses of Soviet citizens are expected to buy the novels and see the plays which are manufactured according to the blueprint of the Communist Party. It is clear that of late there has been a revulsion to this stereotyped canned literature all writers are reverting to historical themes of the past and some of the best known authors have fallen strangely silent dramatists failing to fulfill their quotas up plays dealing with the contemporary scene. The playwrights have even developed a theory of drama without conflict in order to avoid the pitfalls of offending the official party critics. People are not buying the novels and audiences refused to attend performances of boring contemporary plays. The sale of

classical Russian literature or an attendance at pre-revolutionary plays are on the increase. The party purpose of propaganda on behalf of the transition from socialism to communism is meeting a defeat in literature. For some months now this whole wretched state of affairs has been revealed with startling clarity in public statements in the press and in the accounts of meetings of writers and dramatists the party by a technique not unusual when some official policy fails is deliberately prompting widespread criticism not of the failure of the policy itself but simply of the failures in literature and drama. However out from under this facade of sincerity their image from this recent abundant criticism not only the literary artist's helplessness under the controls of the party but even the

way some of these controls are exercises to take just one example. The novelists get a panel of in an article in Literary Gazette discusses the positive or negative qualities which a hero should have. She complains of the publishers and critics who demand that authors should produce an army of entirely positive heroes ought to quote her a tend and tell it why are consisting of only the sweetest tenors. And she accuses the publishers with wanting the hero to be entirely perfect. The red pencils she writes carefully marks every slip of the hero every wrong step taken by him and even every glass of vodka drawn by him. Then she goes on to point out that in real life there is no separate group of perfect harmonious angels but that the hero who corrects another

man's mistakes today may tomorrow find his own shortcomings pointed out by that very man. Further she declares If people were really as good as critics want literary heroes to be and one ought to substitute for critics here the leaders of the party who control literature then she continues. There would be no need to struggle against survivals of capitalism and no need for any further progress. And she concludes her article by blaming the critics for demanding that heroes speak to quote in the purest literary language and blaming the publishers for deleting words in manuscripts that do not correspond to their conception of the speech are positive heroes. When it is realized that the critics whom this novelist berates are following an official party line in literature

and that the publisher she blames for read penciling the language and the failings of the heroes in him manuscripts have as one of their principal duties to see to it that all books before being published conform to the ideological line of the party. Then a correct estimate can be made of the extent and kind of control that is exercised in the Soviet Union. Many similar recent outcries could be quoted aimed not only against this demand for what another indignant author describes as super positive heroes but also against the endlessly stereotyped motivation and situations that constitute the plots of these post-war novels and plagues. It is unlikely however that this rash of party inspired criticism will put an end to the creation of a flat two dimensional heroes and heroines devoid

of any psychological subtlety and the identical central situations in Soviet literature or that have begun to worry the party leadership. But the real cause is this sweeping control exercised on literature or by the leadership of the party. The imagination of the artist is vetted and compelled through fear to subscribe to a uniform idealized conception of Soviet life prescribed by the party as a propaganda device to convince the Soviet people that they are living in a kind of socialist Wonderland on its way to becoming a communist utopia. And the party is not likely to change this policy in literature or until it changes its whole national and international line. When a Soviet writer has been so conditioned by the demand for

conformity to an absurd party ideal of unreality as the dramatist Alexander KRON in the following scene in his recent play candidate of the party then the communist art of sinking in literature or has reached its lowest point the hero and the heroine are described in a climactic scene sitting in the open terrace of the roof of the Muscovite hotel. It is a beautiful night. The ruby stars of the Kremlin glow. The couple sipped their wine and talk to the soft strains of a waltz in a situation that is romantic and in an atmosphere that is vibrant with love. The eager heroine asks the leading question Tell me do you ever have a sacred daydream. Do you know what I mean is something fantastic almost

unattainable but yet something that you do not wish to forego. Do you the Fourth Reich communist hero answers. I don't. I would like to talk with Comrade Stalin. Thank you Dr. Simmons. That was Dr. Ernest J Simmons and the Soviet literary straitjacket. Dr. Simmons is chairman of the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University and professor of Russian literature in Columbia's Russian Institute. Dr. Simmons talk was another transcribed program in the series people under communism. The series as a whole was prepared in consultation with scholars from the Russian Institute at Columbia University the Hoover Institute a library Stanford University and the Russian Research Center Harvard University. Your program producer was Ralph Tang me. This is Parker Wheatley. These programs in

people under communism are prepared and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters and are made possible under a grant from the fund for adult education an independent organization established by the Ford Foundation. This is the N A B tape network.