WRITERS IN EXILE
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the fate of all these peoples is interconnected: no one nation will
be able to resolve its fate separately.
The Soviet Union is in a crisis situation-politically, stra–
tegically, economically.
It
is a sick organism, whose boils are
breaking out in Poland. Sooner or later the Soviet government
will have to come to grips with a growing number of problems.
Things cannot remain as they are: current problems cannot be re–
solved by a mere turn of the screw. This would be possible only
for a state at the peak of its power.
Noone any longer believes in this system, or that it could
continue to function . Perhaps democracy is the only real way out.
I know the response to this argument is that neither the Soviet
leadership nor the population have any concept of democracy.
But in the history of Russia, the period following 1861 was a
period of democratic reform in a serf state. And these reforms were
accepted by society. So if we Russian emigres wish to work for the
good of our country, we must do everything we can to promote
the development of democratic thought among Soviet citizens.
And then, perhaps, the Soviet Union will slowly-very
slowly-set out along that path. Thank you.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: The next speaker is Andrei Siniavski.
He is the editor of
Syntaxis,
an emigre magazine. A publishing
house attached to it is run by his wife, Maria Rozanov. He is the
author of a famous essay on socialist realism written under a
pseudonym, Abram Tertz, and smuggled out of the Soviet Union.
ANDREI SINIAVSKI : Probably many of us-I have in mind re–
cent emigrants-have a perceptual experience of the West that is
very diverse, vivid, even exceptional in its acuteness, while at the
same time it is quite confused, impressionistic, and not thought
out. In any case, I cannot personally say that I live in the West and
understand the West in the full sense of the word. I still don't live,
but look through the eyes of a traveler who finds himself in the
next world. Everything is very interesting, unusual, strange, and
diHerent than you imagined.
Eight years ago we were flying from Paris to Rome. The air–
plane circled over the Leonardo da Vinci airport and could not
land. The Earth would not receive us, on Earth there was a
strike. We circled for ten minutes, twenty, "So what?" I think.
"Now we'll keep circling around or we'll fly back. But what if
there's not enough fuel, what will we do? Crash? Or will we go to
