358
PARTISAN REVIEW
literary scene. The amount of material of this type that reaches
the West and circulates, I would say, doubles almost every three
years. And it created a new type of literature-literature in de–
fense not only of writers, but of other people, of different groups
in the Soviet population. Of course, some of you will ask, Is it lit–
erature? A lot of it is, in fact, quite poorly written perhaps. Soviet
propaganda once said that even a typist for
Chronicle
is called a
writer in the West when so-called Western propaganda tries to
raise questions about the Soviet Union.
It
is true that such things
could happen-that some people who are not traditionally con–
sidered writers would be called writers in this case. But the truth
is, when censorship and secret police exist, when the KGB har–
rasses literature and writers, good and bad writers are, in a way,
equal. They are persecuted for what they write, not for the qual–
ity of their writing.
It
might not be literature, but it is a call for
help. And when you hear a call for help, it's no time to ask for
quality.
Being here in the West, and trying to help those who are
still in the Soviet Union, who are part of the noble tradition of
this literature, I call upon all'of you here to continue to work in
defense of literature in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
And let's not forget today 's writers who are persecuted or in pri–
son. I think it 's our duty today, in the open society where we live
now-including those people who have always been here-not
to forget about. those other people and about the importance of
speaking out for them. Write letters and telegrams; provide in–
formation for international organizations that try to defend
human rights in the Soviet Union and other countries.
I'd like to mention just a few writers who are currently
being harrassed or who. are in prison. Among them is my friend
Anatoly Marchenko, author of the famous book
My
Testimony,
about the post-Stalin Gulag, who, after spending more than ten
years in prison camps, was sentenced for his attempts to write
other books and for defending other people who were sentenced
to ten years of labor camp. I want you to remember that he is very
ill and most probably won't survive another prison term. We
have to do something, we have to speak up and call upon world
public opinion to help Anatoly Marchenko. There is another
writer, Evgeny Kozlovsky, whom I've never met, a fiction writer
who was a member of
A lmanac
and who is now in prison and
