350
MAX HAYWARD
sia. In
this,
for all those capable of interpreting his subtle
am–
biguities, he succeeded well. His most impressive "feat" was the
novel
Russian Forest,
written in the most difficult years preced–
ing Stalin's death and published in 1953. Impeccably "socialist
realist" in tone and structure,
this
novel yet manages to suggest
by devious symbolism that human affairs and the fate of Russia
are much more complex than the crude over-simplifications of of–
ficial thought would ever follow. Ilya Ehrenburg adapted
him·
self to circumstances, but with far less success from a literary
point of view, for very different reasons from those of Leonid
Leonov. Essentially an internationalist in outlook, he adopted
the "lesser evil" fallacy that fascism, of the two competing totali–
tarian systems which threatened to dominate the world, was
palpably the more evil; an intellectual who wished to work
I
for its defeat could not logically refuse support to Soviet com–
munism, even in its rapidly degenerating Stalinist fonn. Who
shall say he was wrong? Judging from his work after Stalin's
death he has considerably modified
his
previous attitude and he
now appears as a strong champion of greater independence for
Soviet writers.
Leonov and Ehrenburg are the best examples of the two
main types of adaptation to the exigencies of socialist realism and
stringent Party control over literary life. There were of course
other categories. A small minority, including Alexander Fadeyev
who committed suicide in 1956, fanatically believed in socialist
realism and, by virtue of their sincerity, they were able to use
the
method with somewhat greater effect than those, like Alexei Sur–
kov (a fonner RAPPist and Fadeyev's successor as secretary of
the Union of Soviet Writers) in whom one may suspect a
con–
siderable element of cynical opportunism. Sholokhov stood apart,
apparently not caring, writing scarcely anything and basking
complacently in his officially-sponsored and quite incongruous
reputation as the greatest socialist realist of them all.
This
judg–
ment, together with Stalin's canonization of Mayakovsky, made
the work of the literary theorists even more difficult.
And Quiet
