INTRODUCTION
3<49
quoted
this
article as his authority for making
tt
p<trtiinost"
(roughly: complete submission to the Party line and acceptance
of its guidance in all things) the cornerstone of socialist realism.
Whether Lenin would have been displeased or not at this chican–
ery is open to question.
In these conditions, coupled with increasing terror which
culminated in the
Yezhovshchina
of 1937, most Soviet writers
were faced with an agonizing choice: either to collaborate or to
cease writing altogether. Some, like Pasternak and Babel, virtual–
ly
ceased to publish. Some sought refuge in translation and, to a
lesser extent, in writing for children. The majority, however, col-
I
Iaborated to some degree or another. For the collaborators, will–
ing or unwilling, various inner accommodations were necessary.
It was no longer possible, as it had been during the 'twenties, to
merge body and soul with the proletariat. Nobody merged with
anybody anymore. The alienation of man from man was more
complete, in the name of collectivism, than it had ever been,
possibly, in the whole of human history. Leonid Leonov, easily
the most distinguished and subtle of the surviving Soviet novel–
ists, and an avowed disciple of Dostoevsky, continued to write
all
through the worst period without unduly compromising his
artistic integrity. But this was an isolated case. Leonov's ration–
alization of his position was based on the same sort of mystic na–
tionalism, and probably combined with the same religious mes–
sianism,
as one finds in Dostoevsky's
Diary of a Writer.
For
Leonov bolshevism is only one episode in the eternal destinies of
Russia. He may even have been intrigued by the special problems
of writing within the cramped confines of socialist realism and he
may well have regarded his work in these conditions as a kind of
podvig
(spiritual feat) in the Russian Orthodox tradition. His
was the noblest type of collaboration and it was undoubtedly
motivated by a feeling of duty towards his generation. Not every–
body could enjoy the relative luxury of silence and he felt it
necessary to convey to his readers-through
all
the almost
in–
superable barriers--something of the truth about man and Rus-
