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PARTISAN REVIEW
And we even forgave Stalin the terror, the collectivization, and the
blood of our land. But, as you know, this didn't last long. Ideology
crept in-for me personally in the journal
Znamya,
where in 1946 I
published my first piece of work,
In the Trenches oj Stalingrad.
This
novella was published at the same time as the resolution by the Cen–
tral Committee to destroy Akhmatova and Zoshchenko. This was
the first sign - we shall call it a sign - of ideology and tragedy creep–
ing into our lives. After that there was a crescendo: June 17 in Ber–
lin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Afghanistan, etc.
MAN FROM AUDIENCE: A couple of months ago I was at a rally
at Town Hall of artists and writers in support of the Solidarity move–
ment - the famous meeting at which Susan Sontag made her com–
parison between communism and fascism, which most of the people
in the audience booed. For me the most controversial remark of the
meeting was when the American writer Gore Vidal got up, and,
after a few perfunctory remarks in support of Solidarity, went on to
say something to the effect that, here in the United States we are also
an occupied country, that from the moment President Truman
started the cold war, we've been occupied by the military-industrial
complex. That remark drew a lot of applause. I'm sure that this kind
of attitude on the part of American writers and intellectuals is not
particularly unique; there is a tendency to borrow the metaphors of
your experience, of totalitarianism, and to apply them loosely and
indiscriminately to any perceived injustices in the West.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: I thank you all, the panelists and the audi–
ence, for an interesting and provocative if somewhat anarchical ex–
change. Maybe someday we can have another conference in Moscow.
