WRITERS IN EXILE:
A Conference of Soviet and East European Dissidents
The Writer and His Past
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: This conference is sponsored by
Partisan
Review
with the cooperation of Boston University. You are look–
ing at a considerable part of Soviet literature and cu lture, and to
some extent, at the literature and culture of the East European
countries as well.
It
has been observed that Russian literature
and culture no longer exist solely within the Soviet Union; they
exist to a considerable extent outside. That's an amazing historic
phenomenon, and to my knowledge it happened only once before
in our history: Nazi Germany also exported its literature and its
culture, so that during the Nazi regime it really existed only out–
side of Germany. Since then some German writers and artists
have returned home. I hope we can look forward to some such
event in the history of the Soviet Union.
The moderator of this panel will be Professor Bell of Har–
vard University.
DANIEL BELL: One might say that
Partisan Review
is a land–
mark both in the English and the Russian sense of the term,
given the fact that it is probably the oldest magazine of a cultural
kind in this country. Perhaps people who came out of the avant–
garde don't like to think of themselves as the oldest, but
Partisan
Review
is, and it's one of the luminaries. I'm very pleased to be
here.
I would like to make a few remarks, perhaps to set lhe lone
of some of the issues we would like to discuss at this session. The
experience of being violently uprooted and emigrating to'another
Editor's NOle: Wrilers in Exile: A Conference of Soviet and Easl European Dis–
sidents, was held on May 7 and 8, 1982, al Boslon Univers ilY. The conference
was made possible by grants from the Nalional Endowmenl for the Humanilies,
lhe Boston UniversilY Humanilies Foundalion, the Massachuseus Foundalion
for Humanilies and Public Policy, and by the contribulions of several privale
donors. Addilional sessions of the conference will be published in subsequent
issues of
Partisan Review.
The Russian lexlS were lranslaled by John Glad, Di–
rector, Kennan Inslilule for Advanced Russian Sludies allhe Woodrow Wilson
Center.for Scholars. Edilh Kurzweil was responsible for the organizalion of lhe
conference.
