THE SOVIET LITERARY PURGE
sary education that might possibly lead them ideologically astray....
One of the critics calls a spade a spade: "harmful in the education
of the young generation."
Akhmatova and Pasternak belong to the old generation, who
started to write before the revolution. But, strange to say, we hear
similar words of disapproval about quite young poets. One of the
main problems is pessimism. In present-day Russia there are ap–
parently so many reasons for pessimism that optimism had to be offi–
cially proclaimed compulsory in literature. The official ideology is:
the present is so happy and the future so rosy that there cannot be
any pessimistic works. This official optimism is by no means original.
At the time of Nicholas I we encounter a similar tendency:
"Le passe
de la Russie est admirable, le present est plus que magnifique-quant
a
son avenir, il est au dela de tout ce que !'imagination la plus hardie
peut se figurer."
Yet, despite the rosy future, we hear in the year 1946:
"In the work of a few young poets has appeared a morbid joy in suf–
fering and mortification. Several experienced writers have pessimistic
undertones"
(Pravda,
8.9.46). The season for this declaration of war
on the weak-minded is obvious: present material and spiritual con–
ditions of life in Russia are so miserable that people would despair
without the hope in a better future.
(5) The Critics. Let us select three more or less typical cases:
Petro Panch, Vasilii Grossman, and Panferov.
The Ukrainian Panch is a member of the Presidium of the
Authors' Union in his homeland. This, however, has not protected
him from slaps from right and left, after he demanded the "freedom
to err" in an article several months ago. He meant the freedom to
make mistakes without immediate punishment-in other words
more freedom for the artist. One can only wonder-although this
demand is fully justified-how he could muster the courage to make
such a request in the Soviet Union in 1946? During the war years,
there was a vague feeling among Russian writers (especially those
fighting in the frontlines) that after the war everything must change,
that there would be greater freedom. They saw that the political and
military leadership made mistakes (mistakes which were dearly paid
for by the Soviet people) -why should they be forbidden to commit
much less important blunders? This was a fatal illusion. Notwith–
standing their easy material position in the Soviet Union, these authors
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