WRITERS IN EXILE
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namic, forward-moving one.
It
is a retrenching system that is very
much dependent on threats and favors which loses effectiveness once
the source of goodies - the productivity - is no longer there. An em–
pire has to be able to heal or satisfy the frustration of its people,
either with bread or with circuses. The circus that we've had - it was
called the Great Russian Revolution and its Aftermath - has lost its
attractiveness. Now the economic system is less and less able to pro–
vide the bread. This is why the system cannot continue.
WOMAN FROM AUDIENCE : Has dissent among the East Euro–
pean countries and between the Soviet Union and the East European
countries been connected? Is there some kind of network? Someone
said that Poland's opposition had been made possible in part by the
democratic movement within the Soviet Union . Is the Polish opposi–
tion feeding back into the other countries to create some kind of
sense of solidarity among them , giving them greater strength than
they would have had on their own?
BORIS SHRAGIN: Unfortunately, such interconnections don't ex–
ist. Even worse , I would say that we know too little and too superfi–
cially about the achievements in Poland and Czechoslovakia. In this
connection, I would like to tell you that this year, in New York, we
began to publish a Russian magazine called
Problems oj Eastern Europe.
This magazine includes many translations of dissident works from
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. So far as I know,
this is the first attempt of its kind to make connections on an intellec–
tuallevel. I think this is tremendously important, because as you can
see from our discussions here, our political perspective, for several
reasons, such as those mentioned by Mr. Chalidze, is rather vague .
The dissident movement in Eastern Europe is stronger than in
Russia.
WOMAN FROM AUDIENCE: Several of you have mentioned the
fact that ideology is not alive now in the Soviet Union. I'd like to ask
when exactly it died. In the period between the war and, maybe, the
death of Stalin or the emergence of Khrushchev, did Soviet writers
believe in an actual ideology, or was it rather a kind of mechanical
rhetoric that was used for certain purposes?
VIKTOR NEKRASSOV: No, in my country ideology never existed
in people's hearts , only in
Pravda.
Instead of ideology, during the war
and the postwar period, there was the euphoria of victory . And in
this lies the tragedy of my own generation. We thought that we had
defeated fascism and that we had brought the world truth and beauty.
