PARTISAN REVIEW
tical autobiography (epithets provided by Soviet critics). During the
war, when writers were given a little rein, Zoshenko made a cau–
tious and not very successful attempt at a return to his real do–
main: humoristic short stories. He also wrote a novel,
The Adventures
of an Ape,
which was not exactly a masterpiece, but did not arouse
any sharp criticism or dislike in official quarters. His books were
printed in large editions by the best-known publishers.
Let us now see what the critics have to say after the purge had
started. "Harmful influence," "base and wicked canard on the Soviet
people and the Soviet regime," "alien to Soviet literature, Zoshenko,
to his disgrace, took no part in the case of the Sovied people even
during the years of the patriotic war," "dirty, calumnious," etc.
Zoshenko was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union.
(3 and 4) The "Pure Artists" and the "Pessimists." Among
the "expelled" we find Anna Akhmatova, among the "attacked"
Boris Pasternak- the two greatest living Russian lyric writers–
if one does not consider Simonov's
]di Menya
(Wait for Me)
as the most perfect expression of lyric. They are accused of writ–
ing poetry that has no relation to reality and the present. Anna
Akhmatova is described as "bourgeois-aristocrat" (the critics are not
very precise in their "marxist" analysis), "mystical," "decadent,"
"unimaginative," etc. Let us add one more crime: Anna Akhmatova
is one of the very few Soviet authors who has never (
! )
written any–
thing about Stalin. Anna Akhmatova never occupied herself with
politics- during the years 1923-1939 she maintained complete silence.
Neither is Pasternak a "politician" by nature, but it was easier for
him to find a road to revolutionary lyric ("Lieutenant Schmidt,"
"Kremlin 1918") than to the GPU lyric of the Stalinist epoch. During
the last decade, therefore, he mainly worked as a translator (Shake–
speare, Asiatic folk literature).
Actually, the accusation of "unpolitical" and "unimaginative"
writing is not meant very seriously. The mlers of Soviet Russia know
very well that a good lyric writer will probably never make a ([OOd
"politician" or ideologist. Thus, if Akhmatova were to write popular
verses read by the masses of workers and peasants, she would be
allowed to be even more apolitical. Unfortunately, Akhmatova is
mostly read by the intellectual youth, and this youth must on no
account be influenced apolitically, since it is they who have the neces-
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