306
SOVIET COMMENT
of Paustovsky and Ehrenburg are controversial, some objections have
been raised to certain passages
in
those works but it would never occur
to anyone to classify them as "dissonant voices" that is, works foreign
to Soviet literature. The editors of
Partisan Review
have resorted to an
artificial dressing of the memoirs of Paustovsky and Ehrenburg, extract–
ing from them passages that are far from the most typical. However
even this operation does not help them to turn white into black. . . .
Max Hayward's survey "Soviet Literature 1917-1961" not only fails
to save the situation but on the contrary aggravates the false bias that
is
to be seen
in
the selection of the literary "illustrations."
Max Hayward's article repeats all the hackneyed fabrications of
Gleb Struve, Ernest Simmons, George Gibian and other "experts" on
Soviet literature. Like them he is silent about the work of Gorky, paints
the NEP years as a golden age of Soviet letters and tries
in
every way
to discredit the literature of the thirties and forties, attempting to set
up Blok, Esenin and even Mayakovsky against the Revolution and
socialism and to wrench Sholokhov's
And Quiet Flows the Don,
the
works of Leonov and Ehrenburg out of Soviet literature. And he does
this without adducing any proof, without producing any evidence, with–
out any analysis-even the most fleeting or superficial--of the novels,
short stories, poems or plays written by Soviet authors. ...
[Dementiev here attacks Hayward for not dealing with genuine Soviet
literature (the "non-dissonant voices") , and for alleging that there exists
in the Soviet Union an absence of freedom which impedes the develop–
ment of literature. He is further criticised for resorting to mere gossip:
to studying life "through the keyhole" when he writes that a battle
is
in
progress between neo-Stalinists and liberals among the intelligentsia.
-Po B.]
It is patently clear that Hayward's article and the entire special
edition of
Partisan Review
set themselves the task not of acquainting
the reader with Soviet literature but on the contrary of doing everything
possible to misinform and mislead him. I shall give a few more examples
to show the low level of Max Hayward's performance and the poverty
of the stock of knowledge with which he is provided for throwing light
on the history of Soviet literature.
1. The enormous importance that Lenin's essay
Party Literature and
the Party Organization
has for our literature is well known. In his article
Hayward says that it was written in 1906 and that in talking of "litera–
ture" Lenin was not specifically referring to
"belles-lettres."
Actually
Lenin's work was published in November 1905, but this
is,
of course, a
