VICTOR NEKRASOV
Forty Years Later
May
7, 1981
Jerusalem
Anniversaries abound as I write these painful lines in 1981. Had they lived
this long, Pablo Picasso, Stefan Zweig, the Russian ballet star Anna
Pavlova, and "the great red officer" K. K. Voroshilov would be one
hundred years old. And so would my Aunt S. N. Motovilova. My Aunt
Sonya, although never famous, was afraid of no one, speaking out with
Korolenko-like defiance against all lawless acts. Forty years ago the
Great Patriotic War broke out. In the West it is known as World War
II, the war against Fascism, or, to use
L 'Humanite's
term, the Great
International War.
My novel,
Frontline Stalingrad,
is also observing its thirty-fifth an–
niversary. To be precise, it first appeared in 1946, in the August, Septem–
ber, and October issues of the magazine
Znamya .
Some literary func–
tionaries found the title blasphemous, and in subsequent editions the
book was changed from a novel to a novella, while the title was altered
to the less ideologically loaded
In the Trenches of Stalingrad
(Stalingrad
being a kind of symbol for the big man). The author, a newcomer to
the fine points of socialist realism, accepted this, his first setback, with
surprise and courage.
The very appearance of the book at the time was incredible and
unprecedented. The literary establishment was taken aback. A book
about the war and Stalingrad written by a simple officer and not a pro–
fessional writer? Without a single reference to the Party and only three
lines about Stalin?
It
defied categorization. Yet the authoritative journal
Znamya,
and its legendary editor Vishnevsky, had published it. Vish–
nevsky, after all, was one of the most experienced members of the Writ–
ers' Union, tuned into everything and completely aware of what was
and was not politically acceptable. The book triggered an avalanche of
articles and polemics. "True, it is a realistic portrayal written by an actual
participant, but it lacks breadth and depth . . . as if viewed from a
Editor's Note: This essay is a slightly abridged version of the original, first
published in an anthology of Victor Nekrasov's writing by Posev Verlag in
1981.
