WRITERS IN EXILE
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sue of any journal testifies to the agreement between the pub–
lisher and the author on the one hand, and between the pub–
lisher and the reader on the other. Such an agreement is
concluded between the Soviet author and the reader as well: to
understand and not betray one another. The reader does not be–
tray Cecilia Keene, or even Vitaly Ozerov and the editor of the
journal, Mikhail Kuzmin; after all, all three of them are lying,
all for their own purposes: Cecilia Keene, in order to talk about
the Catholic writers of Italy; Vitaly Ozerov, to receive a prize and
a high position; Mikhail Kuzmin, to publish Cecilia Keene on
the one hand, and on the other, to keep his readers and not lose
his editorship. A multistage lie is the law of existence of litera–
ture in the USSR. But Soviet people need literature. All the par–
ticipants in this agreement know this. In essence there are no
other forms of spiritual food that are acceptable in the USSR.
This is demonstrated by the fact that Soviet literature is indirect.
It
can say a lot without saying anything directly. Prohibitions
apply to the direct word, but it is difficult to apply them to the
indirect one.
As a result of the fact that the functions of literature in the
USSR differ from those in the West: differences in their inner
make-up are natural. I am referring to certain genre-form peculi–
arities. About the fact, for example, that the novel, and in partic–
ular the epic novel in the Soviet Union, has a much greater sig–
nificance than in the West, because the novel takes the place of
both sociological and historical research. Specifically, large epic
works are much more important to the Soviet writer than to the
Western writer, and this is particularly true of the historical
novel. This is also true of historical subject matter in poetry. For
example, even in the thirties, the years of The Great Terror, we
read verses about Ivan the Terrible and understood whom the
author really had in .mind. Dmitri Kedrin had then written a
poem called"Architects," in which he spoke of those who built
St. Basil's Cathedral, and how Tsar Ivan supposedly ordered that
their eyes be cut out so they could never create such beauty again.
But every line of the historical poem "Architects" hit the mark. I
am speaking of the romanticized biographies in the series " Lives
of Extraordinary People" and in general of biographies that ac–
quire great significance in the Soviet Union. But I am also
speaking of the genres of classicism, which no longer exist in the
