The next (May-lune) issue of Partisan Review
will be a special double number, edited by
Patricia Blake and Max Hayward
CONFLICT AND COMPLIANCE
IN SOVIET WRITING
Pasternak
Babel
Pilnyak
Grin
Kassil
Chukovsky
Dudintsev
Shklovsky
Zamyatin
Zoshchenko
Paustovsky
Ehrenburg
Esenin
Kharabarov
Evtushenko
Zabolotsky
Polyakov
The issue comprises a selection from the literary
work of the best and most influential writers in the
Soviet Union from 1918 to the present. This work
has never before been available in English.
The editors' choice of texts is based entirely on
literary merit-not on political piquancy. All the
texts are therefore of permanent literary-historical
value.
Max Hayward 's introduction places these works in
the context of Soviet literary and political history.
That history being what it is-tortuous and violent–
most of the pieces are imbedded in some sort of
political tale of tragic consequence.
The works selected from the relatively free period
of the twenties cost their authors their freedom, or
their lives, under Stalin. The texts of the Stalin era
are among the very rare expressions of dissidence
and criticism stated in the Aesopian language which
is characteristic of the period. The works of the post–
Stalin "thaw" show the remarkable effort made by
Russian writers of all ages to break the stranglehold
of Socialist Realism, both in style and content. Last–
ly, the "underground" literature of recent years,
circulated in typescript among the youthful mem–
bers of dissident literary circles, suggests how far
younger writers and poets are straying from the
acceptable preoccupations of Soviet society.
