For the Good of the Cause (2 page)

The period following the Twentieth Congress of 1956 was one of great hope but also of great uncertainty in Soviet political and intellectual life. Khrushchev was committed to a policy of liquidating the worst aspects of Stalin’s rule—the unrestricted powers of the secret police, the mass arrests of suspected opponents of the regime, the concentration camp system—in short, rule by terror. There was no successor in sight comparable to Stalin, and Khrushchev apparently recognized that no one any less inhumane than Stalin could hope to keep up the rule of terror. There had to be reform. But Khrushchev, himself a product of the Stalin era, had no intention of introducing fundamental reforms likely to undermine the system as a whole. Khrushchev found himself, in fact, between two forces—on the one hand, the ordinary people and the intellectuals, who wanted above all an end to the horrors of Stalinism, and, on the other hand, the vast army of Communist officials, who were primarily concerned with preserving the system that had given them power and authority. These conflicting and irreconcilable forces were reflected in Khrushchev’s zigzagging from one side to the other, sometimes appearing as a “liberalizer,” at other times revealing himself as the most narrow-minded defender of the Soviet dictatorship.

For the intellectuals, especially for the writers and artists, it was a very perplexing period. In the world of literature no one quite knew what could and what could not be published. That there was a kind of intellectual “thaw” was clear, but no one was sure how far it would go. Writers and editors alike could only probe the old barriers to see how far they would yield. The defenders of orthodoxy were presumably equally uncertain of their powers and the censors unsure of the criteria by which they had been taught to judge the written word.

No one knew better how to exploit this situation in the interests of literary freedom than Alexander Tvardovsky. From 1958, when he was reappointed its editor, he made the pages of
Novy Mir
available to all of the most liberal Soviet writers, and in November, 1962, he published Solzhenitsyn’s
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
. This was to prove the major literary event of the postwar Soviet Union, where 95,000 copies of the review were quickly sold. Today, printed versions of the work are unobtainable there, but it still circulates in typescript form.

Ivan Denisovich
is the name given by Solzhenitsyn to a prisoner in one of Stalin’s prison camps, and the story is merely the unvarnished account of one day in Ivan’s life in the camp. Through this “prisoner’s-eye view” of one camp, Solzhenitsyn painted a more devastating picture of the whole concentration camp system than any number of general denunciations, complete with figures and statistics, could ever have done. The popularity of the work in Russia was accounted for not only by the quality of Solzhenitsyn’s writing and his skillful use of earthy camp language but also by the fact that there were very few Russian families not having at least one member who had suffered or died in a camp. In
Ivan Denisovich
, Russians saw some retribution for past sufferings and perhaps some promise that they would not return.

Even so, the publication of
Ivan Denisovich
was not a simple matter. It required intervention on the highest level before it could be printed. Tvardovsky is said, on reading the book, to have recognized Solzhenitsyn as a writer in the great tradition and to have sent a copy of it to Khrushchev. It happened to suit the Soviet leader at the time to deliver another blow at Stalin’s memory, and he is said to have had twenty copies of
Ivan Denisovich
printed especially for the members of the ruling Party Presidium, who dared raise no objections to its publication. The Soviet press duly hailed Solzhenitsyn as a great writer and
Ivan Denisovich
as a great piece of literature.

But 1962 was perhaps the peak of the “thaw” period. Khrushchev was riding the crest of a wave. He had removed all major opponents or rivals at the top and was on his way to establishing a personal dictatorship; but his reckless policies at home and abroad were building up a dangerous resistance in the huge Party machine. At the end of 1962, he suffered a major defeat over his attempt to base Russian missiles in Cuba. Two years later, he was removed from power in a swift palace revolution.

Khrushchev’s defeat was a victory for the forces of orthodoxy and neo-Stalinism; it gave courage to the heavy-handed officials of the regime, and it marked the end of any “liberalizing” trends in Soviet life. But between the appearance of
Ivan Denisovich
in 1962 and Khrushchev’s fall in 1964, Tvardovsky managed to publish a few more works by Solzhenitsyn. In January, 1963, two short stories, both gems of their kind, appeared in
Novy Mir
: “Matryona’s Home” and “An Incident at Krechetovka Station.” And in July, 1963,
Novy Mir
, printed a longer work by Solzhenitsyn entitled
For the Good of the Cause
. With the curious exception of a short story—“Zakhar Kalita”—which appeared in
Novy Mir
as late as January, 1966, that was the last work of Solzhenitsyn’s to be published in his native land to the present day. His later works reached the Russian reading public only in copies circulated clandestinely, though they reached a wide public abroad in translation.

In
Ivan Denisovich
, Solzhenitsyn had attacked Stalinism by reference to the past; in
For the Good of the Cause
, he turned his attention to the surviving elements of Stalinism, in particular, to the many “little Stalins” who continued to play so important a role in the everyday life of the Soviet Union. He drew a sharp contrast between the ordinary people and the Communist officials, whose whole mentality and behavior were firmly set in a Stalinist mold. What is more, Solzhenitsyn deliberately left the reader with the impression that the little Stalins were firmly entrenched in Soviet society and were typical of the ruling bureaucratic apparatus. Subsequent developments have shown that his assessment of the strength of the Soviet “establishment” was well founded.

In
For the Good of the Cause
, Solzhenitsyn presents a remarkable cross-section of Soviet life. He runs the whole gamut, from ordinary students, workers, and teachers to the omnipotent officials in Moscow, terrifying in their faceless, Kafkaesque anonymity. In between is the hierarchy of local officialdom—Knorozov, the Stalinist boss of the district Party committee; Khabalygin, the self-seeking director of the local relay plant; Grachikov, the “liberal” secretary of the local Party organization who is, however, helpless to counteract Knorozov’s influence.

So outspoken an attack on the pillars of the regime inevitably drew the fire of hostile critics, and the battle of words that ensued provided a valuable insight into the attitudes of the “liberal” and “Stalinist” camps and into the way such affairs are handled in the Soviet Union. For this reason, we have translated the principal reviews of
For the Good of the Cause
that appeared in the Soviet press and have included them as an appendix to this volume.

What happened, in brief, was the following: In August, 1963, a month after publication of the story, the defenders of Party bureaucracy launched their first attack in the Literary Gazette
(Literaturnaya Gazeta
) with an article entitled “What Is ‘Right’?” It was written by Yuri Barabash, associate editor of the paper and a man of apparent authority among the literary bureaucracy.

Barabash’s article was mainly a political commentary on the picture and characters drawn by Solzhenitsyn. Barabash found himself obliged to acknowledge Solzhenitsyn’s ability as a writer and spoke of his “great and honest quality” and his “unique sensitivity to any manifestation of evil or untruth or injustice.” But then he went on to dismiss his work as a “failure,” on the grounds that the situation that Solzhenitsyn described could not occur in real life. The little Stalins he described were already figures of the past, said Barabash, and the new men who had come forward to replace them were by no means the helpless characters typified by Grachikov.

Barabash’s article indicated Party disapproval of Solzhenitsyn’s story. In the past, such an article would have been followed by others in the same vein and ultimately by a
mea culpa
on the part of the author. But in 1963, things were different, and there were no further comments in the
Literary Gazette
for several weeks. Indeed, the only other important blow to be struck by the Stalinists was a bad-tempered comment in the September issue of their principal journal,
Oktyabr
. In this, the reviewer was mainly concerned with ridiculing Solzhenitsyn’s “idealistic concept of good and evil” and his division of Soviet society into “saints” and “devils.”

Then, surprisingly enough, the
Literary Gazette
of October 15 printed a vigorous reply to Barabash by a well-known novelist, Dmitri Granin. Like Barabash, Granin avoided purely literary criticism and discussed only the rights and wrongs of the issue raised in Solzhenitsyn’s work. He concluded that the story was a serious and courageous attempt to grapple with the question of what the “good of the cause” was, and rejected Barabash’s charge that Solzhenitsyn had been untrue to life.

A few days later, the Gazette published a further article, this time from the pen of a certain R. N. Seliverstov, an official of the Communist Party in Leningrad, whose work brought him into regular contact with many educational establishments of the kind described by Solzhenitsyn. He was, presumably, a carefully selected mouthpiece of the Party
apparat
. The main burden of his criticism was that, though Solzhenitsyn’s condemnation of the little Stalins was effective, it was irrelevant, because such characters belonged to the past. Solzhenitsyn was behind the times.

More important, however, than Seliverstov’s article was the statement by the editors of the
Literary Gazette
that accompanied it, a statement well worth careful study for the light it throws on the official Soviet view of literary creation. The editors admitted the value of an “exchange of opinions”; they were even prepared to accept the existence of people like Solzhenitsyn’s villains. What they objected to was his failure to commit himself to a clear-cut Party point of view on the issues his story raised. It was obvious that what they really disapproved of was Solzhenitsyn’s stark realism, or “critical realism,” in the words of a high Party official whom the editors quoted. The Party can accept realism, but not unadulterated realism. It always has to be mixed with a good measure of optimism to make it palatable. In short, it is one thing to depict and denounce little Stalins but another thing to give the impression that they are still all-powerful.

None of this criticism was particularly damaging from Solzhenitsyn’s point of view or that of his readers, nor was it powerful or concerted enough to put an end to the debate.

It was left to Tvardovsky and
Novy Mir
to show the contempt with which such attacks could then be treated. In the October, 1963, issue (which, however, did not go on sale until December), Tvardovsky published three carefully chosen contributions, all approving strongly of
For the Good of the Cause
. With his clever exploitation of this material, Tvardovsky revealed his thorough command of the techniques of Soviet political controversy.

The first contribution was a letter from three “old Communists,” one of whom—Yampolskaya—was, conveniently, a former associate of Lenin’s. Couched in delightfully ingenuous and unintellectual terms, the letter simply said flatly that Solzhenitsyn had done a good job and that Barabash had tried to mislead his readers. The telling quality of such a letter in present-day Soviet conditions can be understood only if it is realized that it has become
de rigueur
for the Party to solicit the support of “old Leninists” on all possible occasions.

The second contribution was a straightforward demolition of Barabash’s arguments by an obscure but hard-hitting literary critic. He placed Barabash clearly on the side of the Stalinists and appealed for support for an author of Solzhenitsyn’s great talent.

Finally, there was a letter from two Leningrad workers, who took sides with Solzhenitsyn and supported his pillorying of the Stalinist bureaucrats. Here, too, the argument itself was less important than the social status of the writers. The
Literary Gazette
had produced an “ordinary reader” in support of its views. Tvardovsky went one better and produced two genuine, real-life workers, to whose “authority” lip-service has to be paid in a proletarian society.

Thus, Tvardovsky showed that he could outplay the Stalinists at their own game. If they could find people to say that Solzhenitsyn’s treatment of his theme is “abstract” and out-of-date, Tvardovsky could find as many or more who would affirm that, on the contrary, it was true to life. Furthermore, if anyone cared to discuss the rights and wrongs of the incident depicted by Solzhenitsyn and the characters of men like Knorozov, that was just what the liberals wanted.

The public argument about
For the Good of the Cause
in 1963 showed at least that the liberal cause was not lost. But in the course of 1964 and 1965, the Soviet authorities went over to the offensive and in September, 1965, arrested two writers, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, whose works had been published in the west under the names of “Abram Tertz” and “Nikolai Arzhak.” The two men were first subjected to a scurrilous propaganda campaign in the Soviet press aimed at showing that they had been out to subvert and weaken the whole Soviet system. In February, 1966, the two men were brought to trial and sentenced to long terms of detention in prison camps. (Sinyavsky is still serving his sentence; Daniel was released in 1970.)

The inhuman punishment of two writers for the actual content of their literary work was clearly intended to intimidate the whole intellectual community in the Soviet Union. As had happened so often before in the history of Russia, the rulers could think of no better device for dealing with free-thinkers and inquiring minds than sheer brute force. But it has to be said that the more liberal-minded of the intellectuals, few in number though they were, did not give in without a fight. And the chosen battlefield was the work of Solzhenitsyn.