64
PARTISAN REVIEW
grace. I would, like a child, year after year, breathing the dampness
of the cellars, ignoring the scurrying about of mice, turn the pages
printed by printing presses, by hand, by typewriters. I would turn
the pages of truth, of deceits, passions, despair, hopes, disillusion–
ment, and freedom!
I painfully recollect the furrowed forehead of the major, • while
he turned the pages of Nabokov's novel. He was looking for some
political intrigue in the pages of this inventive, yet tender and mov–
ing, mysterious and capricious author. As I remember the crinkled
rag of the major's forehead, I begin to feel sorry for him. What kind
of hero can this be with the insane name of Cincinnatus C.? .. What
is the crime? First of all, where is all this taking place anway? In
Russia, in America, on Mars? Yet all the time he could sense with
his spy's nose that there is something in this book that is not quite
right and should not be known to any Soviet person.
Placing my hand over my heart, I confess that I see all genuine
literature as anti-Soviet. There are sociological, political, essayist
books, which openly criticize and attack totalitarian regimes that
masquerade under communist slogans. Such books do not hide their
anti-Soviet character. But I feel that any good book which acknowl–
edges the human being, its individuality, uniqueness, its right to its
own beliefs, feelings, and vision, is also anti-Soviet, because the
state dictatorship is directed against the human being as an individ–
ual. In the official report of the search carried out in the home of the
twenty-two year old Petro Vins,·" a member of the Ukrainian Hel–
sinki Monitoring Group, a confiscated Bible was labelled as anti–
Soviet literature. I take offense for the slight done to William
Shakespeare. Why did they not confiscate him, too? After all, does
Macbeth
say less about my country than
The Gulag Archipelago?
'In the Soviet Union, KGB officers hold military ranks .
"Cincinnatus C. is the main character in Nabokov's novel ,
Invitation to a Beheading.
Cincinnatus was sentenced to be executed for possessing his own sense of identity,
which made him "opaque" in a country where the norm was to be "transparent."
"'Since the time of this writing, Petro Vins was allowed to emigrate to the United
States shortly after his father, Georgi Vins , was exchanged with four other Soviet
political prisoners for two Soviet spies.
