16
PARTISAN REVIEW
all must support the benign development of nationalism, especially
in culture, which Andrei Siniavski has spoken about, and also in
politics and morals. Therefore, a clearly negative attitude toward
the healthy phenomena of nationalism is not tactful , not strategic ; it
alienates us from the desired goal, from the restoration of democracy
and normal conditions of existence in Russia and in all the countries
under its enslavement.
ANDREI SINIAVSKI: I disagree wholeheartedly with my friend
Aleshkovsky . There are situations when a nation's recovery begins
with nationalism, but in Russia, in my view, such a situation does
not exist. We knew the Russian nationalism of Stalin's time. This
grimace of present Soviet-Russian nationalism is not recovery; it is a
new illness, just like Communism.
SERGEI DOVLATOV: When Aksyonov says that nationalists and
human rights defenders have one enemy- totalitarianism, commu–
nism - he forgets that both Pushkin and Lenin also had one enemy
- autocracy. But Lenin's ideas triumphed, and this led to many un–
fortunate results. Aleshkovsky says that both nationalists and human
rights defenders are working to achieve the same thing- human dig–
nity, a tolerable existence ; but both Lenin and Trotsky, and their
supporters, were ready at any moment to give up their lives for just
these ideas, for a worthy human existence . We all know what that
led to .
If
one is to speak of, let's say , the writer Siniavski as a promi–
nent representative of the democratic tendency, and of Maximov,
the editor of
Kontinent,
as a representative of the opposite tendency,
then the difference between them is not whether one of them writes
better or worse than the other. And it is not that one of them is more
reserved and quieter, and the other tougher, stronger, and more ener–
getic; or even - which is very important - that if Maximov, let's say,
had attained some literary power, then Siniavski's journal
Syntaxis
would be immediately closed down, while if Siniavski had attained
power , the journal
Kontinent
would continue to exist .
It
is more im–
portant that if the democrat Siniavski came to power in a democratic
society , he would not have the means to close down
Kontinent.
He
would not possess such rights.
With all my respect for Siniavski , I consider democratic forms
of existence the most acceptable for myself, because I would not want
to be dependent upon any possible fluctuations in his consciousness.
The only normal society is one in which the literary, cultural , and
