18
PARTISAN REVIEW
'(prove" that I have been "bought" to express pro-Soviet views. But not
content with this "point," he proceeds to invent out of whole cloth a
COll–
versation which never took place between myself and
1.
M. Gronsky,
editor of
Izvestia:
The "very wealthy Pilnyak," according to Eastman, asked Gronsky
about a visa to go abroad. "Of course! Of course !"-said Gronsky (in
Eastman's imagination). "But I wonder what you will use for money
abroad. We cannot afford the valuta, of course. Surely you wouldn't
suggest that we spend on your personal needs money needed for the Five
Year Plan which you yourself have been so enthusiastically extolling."
This "conversation," invented by Eastman, contains internal evidence
of its fabrication. Anyone who knows anything about the USSR knows
that Soviet citizens travelling abroad do not receive money from the
Soviet government unless they are sent on a government mission. But
what is even more striking about this invented "conversation" is that it
contradicts Eastman's case. The "exceedingly rich Pilnyak" had no money
with which to go abroad! How then did the rich but penniless Pilnyak
manage to go to the United States. Eastman "explains":
"Only that divine American providence which watches over artists
who 'violate their talents' can explain the arrival in Moscow at this
critical moment of Ray Long in search of a Russian genius to exploit.
The cash for Pilnyak's holiday was provided like manna from heaven-a
story paid for, an advance made against the Volga novel." The "ex–
ceedingly rich Pilnyak," then, went to America for the sake of American
dollars. And in America "he was feted at a great banquet of American
arts and letters. . .. And in Hollywood-so great is America's eagerness
to hear about the Five Year Plan-he found Irving Thalberg waiting for
him with a salary of
$500
a week for ten weeks." In short, an American
paradise! Five hundred dollars a week; that's twenty-six thousand dol–
lars a year, not
a.
mere thirty thousand Soviet rubles which have no pur–
chasing power outside the USSR, but real American dollars useful all
over the world, from New York to Prinkipo. The "corrupt Pilnyak," then,
is "bought" not only at home but abroad; and in the United States his
sales-price is higher. In America, Pilnyak was in paradise-banquets,
automobiles, five hundred dollars a week. Nevertheless, according to East–
man, who for a change tells the truth, Pilnyak returned from this paradise
to the USSR "where he wrote an indictment of American capitalism under
the title:
OK."
Once more Eastman contradicts himself, for it turns out
that neither the American dollar nor the Soviet ruble have any effect
all
my views.
