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PARTISAN REVIEW
argued that we should not show the work of the most extreme avant–
gardists. Bilyutin wanted to limit the show to paintings, but I
insisted that we should display the works of my group, which
included the more avant-garde artists.
RS:
After the exhibition did you become friends with Khrushchev?
EN:
Khrushchev's assistant Lebedev demanded that I announce pub–
licly that I respected Khrushchev and that his criticism of my work
was correct. I refused to do this. All the other artists did it. I wrote a
letter to Khrushchev in which I excused myself for any impoliteness,
but then I expressed my views on art, which were the same as those I
had offered in our argument at the unofficial exhibition, though this
time I put them in a more polite form.
They told me: "Nikita Sergeyevich read your letter with interest
but the Ideological Committee was not satisfied with your letter. We
need several phrases and sentences from you." These were: you
respect Khrushchev's criticism; you respect Khrushchev; and the
criticism helped you in your creative work. I refused to do what they
wanted. On the day that Khrushchev was removed, I called and asked
that he be told the following: that I really deeply do respect Khrush–
chev because he let millions of people out of prison. Our aesthetic
differences I considered nonessential. Lebedev said something inter–
esting to me: "I didn't expect anything else from you."
For two years Lebedev called me once a week on Khrushchev's
instructions. We [Neizvestny and Lebedev] met many times. Once I
said to him: "We'll consider our conversation public having in mind
the fact that the phone is bugged." The next day a representative of
the K.G.B. comes to see me and said that the K.G.B. does not
understand me. Why am I wrecking my life? I said
to
them that in
order to understand me you cannot be a eunuch.
Lebedev died soon after our conversation about bugging, but he
managed to relay what I said to Khrushchev. I was told that
Khrushchev cried. He invited me
to
see him several times. I refused.
Why? We would have started arguing again. That's stupid. On the
day of Khrushchev's funeral, Khrushchev's son Sergei came to see
me, and Mikoyan's son Sergei too. In Khrushchev's name they asked
me
to
do the monument. Some time later Nina Petrovna, Khrush–
chev's wife, sent me a letter in which Khrushchev apologized for his
rudeness to me. I said that an artist cannot be nastier than a
politician, and I undertook that commission.
RS:
Did Khrushchev help ease restrictions on what artists could
produce?
