100
MAX HAYWARD
It is odd that the more imaginative post-Stalin leadership has
not realized that by granting this freedom it might
win
much more
effective support from the writers as propagandists for the Cause
(at least from those of them who still have not lost faith in it) and
at the same time deflect them from their interest in the extension
of more general freedoms. Since the events of 1956, this has been
understood by the party leadership in Poland and even in Hungary
and Czechoslovakia, where considerable discretion is allowed the
writers in their choice of style. Thus, while it retains control in the
realm of political ideas, the party gives the writer relative freedom
to be an
artist,
and by removing a major frustration, reduces his
potentialities as a rebel. This particular lesson of the Polish-Hunga–
rian revolts has not been learned by the Soviet Central Committee.
Instead of allowing writers to be artists it forces them to be second–
rate publicists--"second-rate," because to be a first-rate publicist
one needs a political and intellectual freedom much wider than the
license of form required by an artist. The policy of the Central
Committee, therefore, has compelled Soviet writers to seek an
im–
provement in their position by striving for a measure of liberty,
which,
if
granted, would undermine the political and ideological
foundations of the regime.
The "controversial" novels, plays and articles of the last few
years (Ehrenburg's
Thaw,
Zorin's
Guests,
Pomerantsev on "Sin–
cerity in Literature," Dudintsev's
Not
by
Bread Alone,
etc.) were
the first truly publicist works to appear in the Soviet Union for
decades. They also demonstrated that the realist style is effective
only when it
is
employed to express the mood and outlook of those
Russian writers of the last century who created it. In other words,
they broke down the specious distinction between "socialist real–
ism" and "critical realism."
The Thaw
reintroduced the theme of
the Superfluous Man into Russian literature. Instead of faith in the
future we find uncertainty in the present. Reality becomes complex
and hence rather sad, instead of simple and joyous. Doubt, hesita–
tion and introspection ("What is the meaning of life?" asks a char–
acter in one of Vera Panova's novels) belie the optimism of the
still obligatory happy ending. In all this post-Stalin literature, how-
