24
PARTISAN REVIEW
embassy representing hundreds of thousands of Russian Pentacostal–
ists who suffer, who cannot have their own prayer houses , who can–
not meet and pray together; and there are other religious groups like
Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, and hundreds of thousands if not
millions of others, including Russian orthodox believers. The Soviets
would have shown him Baptist and Russian Orthodox churches and
their leaders, who no doubt told Billy Graham that everything is all
right- they have beautiful churches, icons, services, and so on.
They found a man who is sincere and very naive, and they thought
they could probably use him for their propaganda.
I have noticed in my travels around the United States that
American Jews, for example, are very active in their support of So–
viet Jews; but American Baptists, who are much more numerous,
don't care. And their attitude, even when they call themselves anti–
Communist, has to do with not making waves, not talking about hu–
man rights. They're not the same as the American Jews who have a
long history of persecution. The Soviets invited Billy Graham purely
for propaganda purposes .
MAN FROM AUDIENCE: My program says "Writers in Exile,"
and so far the only thing you've mentioned about writers in the So–
viet Union and the Eastern bloc is your comment that there is no lit–
erature other than that which is in exile. I think that's a statement
somewhat akin to saying that there is no American literature other
than that of the beatniks or the moderns. All you've done has been to
use these gentlemen, whom you repeatedly refer to as "dissidents"–
though I'm not certain they'd all want to be branded as such - to
spout your own politics.
I recently read a collection of works by the Yugoslav author
Mahlovan Djilas , who has the double distinction of having been
jailed as both a Communist and an anti-Communist . In the final
analysis, though, he's still a crummy writer. Could you perhaps give
these gentlemen a chance to talk about their work?
WILLIAM PHILLIPS : That's your own opinion about Djilas.
Aksyonov?
VASSILY AKSYONOV: Well , here we use the word "dissident" as
if it were some kind of occupation . I'm not much of a politician, you
know, and I would prefer to talk about literature.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS. He's saying that we have no right to say that
much of Russian literature and culture - to leave out the Eastern
bloc countries for a moment-exists outside the Soviet Union, or
underground in
samizdat.
