MARK PERAKH
251
the paper had been published, and neither editor nor author was
executed or even arrested.
The next breakthrough came following Khrushchev's "secret"
report. In the fall of
1956,
in the same
Navy Mir
magazine of which
Simonev was then editor-in-chief, a novel appeared by an almost
unknown writer, Vladimir Dudintsev, entitled
Not From Bread
A lone.
...
Simonev, who had access to the Party's top stratum, had
evidently felt the new winds and hurried to display "audacity."
The impact of Dudintsev's novel was enormous. For a Western
reader the novel would hardly appear to be very courageous or even
anti-Soviet. But from the viewpoint of the Soviet literature of those
years it was like thunder out of a clear sky. The novel describes the
vicissitudes of an inventor, Lopatkin, who fights with great fortitude
against the monstrous Soviet bureaucratic machine. The true picture of
. Soviet bureaucracy was a new phenomenon in Soviet literature. The
novel contains vivid characterizations of Soviet bureaucrats, such as
top-ranking officials like Drosdov, minister Afanassiy Ivanovich Dyad–
gora, ministerial executive official Vadik Nevrayev, and others.
Today Dudintsev's novel is rarely mentioned, but I think its
significance at the time was even greater than Solzhenitsyn's
One·Day
in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
would have later on. Simonov, who had
not sensed the exact direction of the wind, was dismissed from his
position as editor. The novel became the object of malicious abuse
from the Soviet literary bosses frightened by the fact that truths in it
disclosed the lies of their own existence. However, it was too late. The
winds of dissent began to blow with the .appearance of Dudintsev's
novel.
In
1956-57,
in many parts of the country circles began to form for
the purpose of discussing political and social problems. Public opin–
ion, entirely absent in Stalin's Russia, was about to emerge. The most
important role in these circles was played by the youth, those who had
been children during Stalin's bloodlettings and, in comparison to their
elders, relatively free from the omnipresent fear.
One of the most interesting events of those years, almost unknown
in the West, occurred in
1956
at the Urals Polytechnic Institute, a huge
institution for the preparation of all,types of engineers, in Sverdlovsk,
the greatest city of the industrial Urals. In
1955
a regular "election" of
Komsomol functionaries was to be held. The usual procedure in those
"elections" consisted of some standard performance in which all
candidates for the positions of Komsomol secretaries, members of
Komsomol committees, etc., were appointed in advance by the Party
organs, while at the election meetings themselves only long and
