106
MAX HAYWARD
Culture and Corn
It was only the appearance of Khrushchev which enlivened the
Congress and perhaps saved it from being a fiasco. His speech was
an impressive example of his impromptu oratory in the intimate
and rather bantering style that he adopts in his discourses to the
peasants and other producers of material goods. There are even
agricultural similes: the fostering of young literary talent, for in–
stance, is elaborately compared with the cultivation of corn.
It would be useless to look for any new thinking on ideological
or cultural questions in Khrushchev's address. What he says is so
conventional as to be irrelevant to the problems which vex the
writers. Gone is the angry exhortative note which marked his three
"literary" speeches of 1957, when he personally intervened to rap
the knuckles of the "revisionist" recalcitrants. Indeed he now
evinces something close to boredom with literary questions, and
there is a note of mock-humility in his constant assurance to the
audience that he is not really competent to judge literary matters.
He informed them apologetically that he didn't really have much
time left over from matters of state to do much reading and even
then he often needed to prick himself with a pin to keep awake.
One can only imagine the discomfiture of certain people in the hall
when he went on to mention one book he had read recently with–
out the aid of a pin, namely
Not
by
Bread Alone:
"Anastas Ivano–
vich Mikoyan, who read this work before me, said to me, 'Read it
-from some of the things he says it looks as though he has been
eavesdropping on you!'" The embarrassment of those who led the
campaign against Dudintsev can have been matched only by the
relief of the majority on hearing that their works are no longer
passed upon by an omniscient and malignant judge.
Khrushchev's main concern is evidently not that the writers
should be ideologically pure but that they should keep the peace
and not trouble the government with their interminable squabbles.
He also makes it quite clear that they are no longer regarded as
being so important as they believe: "Life is incomparably richer,
more full-blooded and deeper than any work of art." Their mis–
takes, therefore, scarcely warrant all the fuss made about them. The
