338
PARTISAN REVIEW
meetings where someone was getting a beating, we tried to restrain
ourselves as much as possible (this was considered a certain form
of heroism); but we paid our Party membership dues on time,
subscribed to
Pravda
and raised our political awareness, pretend–
ing that at home in the evenings we pored over the works of the
classics of Marxism. (I, for example, for five years in a row, when
asked by .the Party bosses what I was working on, answered
without lifting a brow: "Engels about war," never once in my
life having read a single line of Engels.) No; we were no dissidents.
They appeared later.
True, sometimes we signed letters of protest, were delighted
with the conduct of Siniavsky and Daniel at the trial, but more
than anything we wanted to be published, to be read. And each
in his own way carried to this audience his own truth. And if
things didn't work out quite so well with the truth, then we tried
not to tell too many lies, to write for children, for the young,
about safe figures such as Przhevalsky, Tsiolkovsky, or Miklukho–
Maklay.
I have seen here on television Aleksandr Borisovich
Chakovsky, editor of the
Literary Gazette,
and Viktor Grigoryevich
Afanasyev, editor of
Pravda.
It's embarrassing to watch. They
wriggle, extricate themselves, try to convince everyone that
there's no anti-Semitism in the country: ''I'm a Jew, and I'm the
chief editor of the
Literary Gazette!"
Chakovsky gives a broad,
false-toothed smile. Take it or leave it.
No, something is rotten in this Denmark, this Union of free
republics.... By the way, things are not particularly good here,
either. But we'll put politics aside, it's too complicated. We shall
talk only of literature, of Russian literature.
Have I answered the question which I myself posed? What
to write about? For whom? To whom should we address our–
selves-we who have acquired freedom and are now able to
write the whole truth? The dream of a lifetime, the pinnacle of
all desires. . . .
And the OVIRs, customs, parting embraces, all this is already
behind you. You no longer depend on Valechka Karpova in the
Soviet Writer publishing house, and Comrade Perminova,
Chairperson of the District Committee's Party Commission,
can't ask you any more questions such as, "When did you read
Lenin last? I can tell from your conduct that you haven't turned
