MOSCOW TRIAL
237
by a campaign of defamation in the press, would antagonize public
opinion both at home and abroad, and once more bring Soviet jus–
tice into disrepute.
Public opinion inside the Soviet Union has demonstrated its sym–
pathy in the only way open to it-the now traditional way of massive
silence, which was employed to show moral support to Pasternak when
he was being hounded because of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize.
It has been possible to find only three-almost unknown-writers to
attack Sinyavsky and Daniel: Eremin and Kedrina, who appeared at
the trial as "public accuser," and a certain Arkadi Vasilyev, an
almost unknown novelist. (The latter is reported as having said at the
trial, to discredit the two men as writers: "How can one describe as
works of art concoctions in which there is a preoccupation with
murder, sexual perversion and psychological abnormality?") Not one
writer of any stature has voiced approval of the sentences. Such nega–
tive unanimity is almost unprecedented. Six Uzbek writers sent a tele–
gram, couched in pathetically stereotyped Russian to
Izvestia
(Feb–
ruary 23), saying among other things : "We have greeted with satisfac–
tion the news that the traitors have been brought before a people's
court and received their deserts." No Russian writer (except, predictably,
Sholokhov) has thus far joined his voice to those of the six Uzbeks.
There was only a brief arid anonymous statement of approval of the
sentence, in strikingly hackneyed language, in the form of an open
letter
to
the
Literary Gazette
(February 22) from the "Secretariat of the
Board of the Union of Writers." The only signed collective letter the
authorities have been able to organize comes not from writers, but from
a group of professors and teachers of the philological faculty of Moscow
university, where Sinyavsky was once a student.
What is tragic about this trial
is
not only that the two men have
been tried and sentenced for heresy, sacrilege and blasphemy, but that
the trend towards an improvement in the administration of justice, the
frequently expressed desire to do away with "distortions of justice" as part
of Stalin's legacy-all this has received a severe setback. Sinyavsky and
Daniel's trial
C'Ould
have been a test case to show that "socialist legality"
had really been restored, that the earnest debate among Soviet jurists in
recent years about the need to see that due legal procedures were observed
really counted for something. Once, however, these good intentions were
put to the test in a political trial, we find that, just as in Stalin's time,
reason of state prevailed over the rule of law. It was decided beforehand
that an example had to be made of the two writers, and an example
was made--the law was set at nought in a flagrant fashion. This is what
