CALENDAR OF THE REVOLUTION
265
ful force, frequently felt and heard, in Poland, Hungary, Eastern Ger–
many, and elsewhere
in
Eastern Europe; but
in
the Soviet Union he is
the survivor of a lost tribe. In the fifth decade of the revolution it is time
to view him with detachment and tolerance and to let
him
mourn his
dead.
Pasternak's censors, too, are evidently confusing the calendar of the
revolution. They have broken away from the Stalin era, or have been
wrenched out of it; but somehow they still imagine themselves to be
living in it. They are still superstitiously seized by old and habitual fears
and resort to the customary charms and exorcisms. Above all, they dis–
trust their own, modern and educated, society which is growing mightily
above their heads as well as Pasternak's.
Time does not stand still, however. Ten years ago
l'affaire Pasternak
would not have been possible. Pasternak would not have dared to write
this novel, to offer it for publication in Russia, and to have it published
abroad.
If
he had done this, Stalin's frown would have sent him to a
concentration camp or to death. Despite all the present witch-hunting in
Moscow, however, Pasternak's personal freedom and well-being have so
far remained undisturbed; let us hope that they will remain so to the
end. He might have gone abroad and in the West enjoyed fame, wealth,
and honor; but he has refused to "choose freedom" in that way. Perhaps
he does indeed hear that "silent music of happiness," of which he says,
in the last sentences of
Doctor Zhivago,
that it spreads over his country,
even if he does not quite understand that music. Slowly yet rapidly, pain–
fully yet hopefully, the Soviet Union has moved into a new epoch, in
which the mass of its people is seizing anew the sense of socialism. And
perhaps in ten years time another
affaire Pasternak
will also be impossi–
ble, because by then the fears and the superstitions of Stalinism will have
long been forgotten.
