The first congress of Soviet writers. First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers

You say: 1934, and the human blood rises in your consciousness, which after the murder of Kirov began to be shed like water. And this, of course, is the main thing. But as soon as we put a magnifying glass on the past, we are no less struck by something else: the apocalyptic seriousness with which it was played out Russian folk Kafka . German stone seriousness. This must be admitted: the style of conducting party affairs (not to mention scientific) was borrowed by the Russians from the Germans. It determined the tone of the first half of the 20th century - more than any “ideas”. If the leaders had been a little lighter, more frivolous (in the French or at least the British way), if they had had more humor, less academicism, - and the number of people who died violent deaths in the camps and wars of the 20th century would have been millions less.

In 1934, the first “congress of victors” took place: the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which announced to the world the victory of the party’s general line in building socialism. Interesting! General - and suddenly she won! But who should win? Marginal, or what? But now it's interesting. And then - 1108 out of 1966 delegates to the party congress were repressed. Of the 139 members and candidates for membership of the Central Committee, 41 survived. A big purge began. Big Kafka. Russian - with all its German seriousness, with all the national diversity of the USSR. The style of the era was created in that only city in the world that does not believe in tears - and it was created in Russian.

PARADE OF IMMORTALS

Following the party congress, another, no less victorious, took place: the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. They met from August 17 to September 1, 1934 - with the same ominous, world-historical seriousness that does not fit into the mind. Everything was planned out like clockwork. Manifestos purer than the Erfurt Program were being prepared: the resolution of the first congress of Soviet writers, the charter of the union of Soviet writers. They wrote in golden letters, erected miraculous monument. They were built to last, no worse than the Ramses-Ozymandias. They even argued (there were disputes and disagreements) with an eye to eternity.

The official statistics of the congress are incomplete, but can be easily supplemented. 22 reports were read; 183 speeches delivered; 42 greetings to the congress were read out (almost all of them were phenomena: delegations from the most unexpected groups and societies entered the meeting room: from the Sami people of the Kola Peninsula; from workers' literary circles in Moscow; from the reserve sailors of Osoaviakhim; from working women, work reporters and aspiring writers; from Palestinian artists; from advanced workers, authors of technical literature; from the Lyubertsy Labor Commune; from the pioneers of the snub-nosed base...).

There were also all kinds greetings from the congress (6 in number; can you guess who? That’s right: first of all - to the leader-and-teacher; but not only to him, also to the People’s Commissar of Defense Voroshilov, Romain Rolland, and at the end, at the last meeting, to the central committee of the CPSU(B), Council of People's Commissars and plus an appeal to Ernst Thälmann). There were closing words (2), responses to greetings, announcements and votes (7), resolutions (2) and statements (2). There were no protests or objections. Where would they come from in the monolithic camp of the winners?

  I calculated that at 26 meetings, approximately 100 hours were spoken in Russian, and half a million words were spoken in this language. Russian, after all, was the working language of the congress, which, of course, was not noted anywhere, because - what else? They didn't play the fool. One can guarantee that no one even thought about voluntary-compulsory Russification of the outskirts, and this word (Russification) was not in use. Representatives of peoples much superior to the Russians in historical age and literary tradition spoke in a young language that had barely taken shape one hundred and fifty years before the congress.

We were unable to estimate how many other languages ​​(foreign) were spoken (Russian retellings of these speeches fall into the mentioned 100 hours and half a million words). There is generally a lot of confusion with foreigners who played the role of wedding generals. There are only four well-known names: Louis Aragon, Jean-Richard Bloch, Klaus Mann, Vitezslav Nezval. The official list includes 40 foreign guests, but the German Friedrich Wolf, forgotten on the list, also took the podium. Is on the list dead Souls, unknown writers(it is unknown whether they were writers): the mysterious Udeanu from France, Amabel Williams-Ellis from Britain (listed as Amabel-Williams Ellis) and Robert Gesner from the USA. Encyclopedias are silent about them. There were 10 Germans, 6 Czechs and Slovaks, 5 French, 3 Swedes, a pair of Spaniards, Danes, Greeks, Turks (both Turkish names are distorted) and Americans (one fake) were included in this ark, one each from the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, China, Austria and Britain (the delegate is fake; no one has heard of Lady Amabel). Quorum anywhere!

Non-writers also spoke in tongues. The last surviving member of the Paris Commune, specially discharged from France, delivered a greeting to the congress in French.

There were 377 delegates with a casting vote, and 220 with an advisory vote (some animals are more equal than others); in total, that means 597 people. Impressive, great literature! One problem: today the Brief Literary Encyclopedia knows only 389 of them; 208 people (35%) did not even reach this special edition.

The big Kafka, of course, did not bypass writers. In subsequent years, 182 participants (30%) died in dungeons and the Gulag; another 38 were subjected to varying degrees of repression, but survived. And on the fronts of the Second World War, only 17 people died, all with a decisive vote and (for some reason) mostly bearers of non-Russian surnames.

Another curious feature of the convention is that it was a men's convention. Women accounted for only 3.7%. Moreover, out of 22 writers, four are foreigners (therefore, among foreigners, 10% are women; one wonders where women were liberated before?).

The congress was young: the average age of the writer was 36 years. The youngest, Alexander Filatov (1912-1985), was 22 years old. "Communism is the youth of the world..."

And here is the national composition (official data): Russians - 201 (33.7%), Jews - 113 (18.9%), Georgians - 28 (4.7%), Ukrainians - 25 (4.2%), Armenians - 19 (3.2%), Tatars - 19 (3.2%), Belarusians 17 (2.8%), Turks 14 (2.3%), Uzbeks 12 (2.0%), Tajiks - 10 (1.7%), Germans - 8 (1.3%). A total of 52 nationalities are represented, including Hungarians and Greeks. There was one Italian, one Chinese woman and one Lak (do not think that the varnisher is a reality; there is such a nationality in Dagestan; however, it would be more accurate to say: Lak, or Kazikumukhets).

Well, and the party composition: 65% communists and Komsomol members.

Before the great Kafka, as before God, all nations were equal. We take the Jews as a touchstone. As far as I can see, 35 out of 182 died, that is, 19%, and the percentage of the number of delegates was, as we just noted, 18.9%. No preference! Although... There is another account. There were 17 Jewish writers, Yiddishists, present at the congress. With Babel, who can be considered a Jewish writer, there are 18. Three survived. Destroyed - 79%.

WHO ROARED PROUDLY

You guessed wrong. Bitter. Mentioned on 271 of the 714 pages of the verbatim report (excluding 6 pages of table of contents).

The one you sinned against is strikingly behind: mentioned on 167 pages. How could he not have heard this? I heard. Gorky had less than two years to live.

Lenin is mentioned on 152 pages, Pushkin - on 82, Mayakovsky - on 75, Marx - on 71, Shakespeare - on 62, Pasternak (not yet completely disgraced, but, on the contrary, a member of the presidium) - on 56, Leo Tolstoy - on 55, Sholokhov (he is 29 years old) - on 49, Gogol - on 43, Olesha - on 42, Dostoevsky - on 27, Babel - on 17, Yesenin - on 12, Zabolotsky (who did not make it to the congress) - on 4 pages.

We have heard about these writers. But who is Vladimir Mikhailovich Kirshon with a rating of 67, just below Marx, just above Shakespeare? Sic transit gloria mundi!

But if you look at the matter more closely, it is still not the storm petrel of the revolution that soars proudly at the congress, but the same one (“there is no need for a name: everyone has it in their mouth, like the terrible name of the lord of the underworld”). If they mention him, it’s not like Pasternak (“on the one hand... on the other hand...”). How?

“...the iron will of Joseph Stalin works tirelessly and miraculously...” (Gorky)

“...Comrade Stalin at the 17th Party Congress gave an unsurpassed, brilliant analysis of our victories...” (Zhdanov)

“...to our friend and teacher... Dear and dear Joseph Vissarionovich... Long live the class that gave birth to you, and the party that raised you for the happiness of the working people of the whole world!” (congress greetings to the leader).

“...Long live our first and best drummer, our teacher and leader, beloved Comrade Stalin!” (greetings to the congress from the milkmaids).

Less than 17 years have passed since the establishment of Soviet power. Stalin has been in power for ten years (twelve as General Secretary).

WHO WAS ABSENT

And more: Gorodetsky, Kruchenykh, Isakovsky (?), Zabolotsky (arrested in 1938), Lozinsky, Shengeli, Pavel Vasiliev...

Could be present: Bulgakov, Vaginov, Platonov, Pavel Bazhov, Alexander Belyaev, Leonid Borisov, Grossman, Rurik Ivnev, Panteleev, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Sokolov-Mikitov, Erdman...

Four - Arseny Tarkovsky, Dmitry Kedrin, Maria Petrovykh and Leonid Martynov - were absent, one might say, because of their youth, although there were younger delegates.

Many - at all absent: not mentioned even once in 714 pages. Among them are Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Kuzmin.

NO OBJECTIONS

Of course, there were no objections along the general line, but the appearance of democracy was strictly observed.

Gorky opens the congress with a short word and rightfully so chairman of the organizing committee (and not a candidate for Nobel laureate, which he was, at least before moving to the USSR). Having opened it, he gives the floor to the Ukrainian writer Ivan Mikitenko (destroyed in 1937). He proposes to elect “the governing bodies of the congress.” The list of the honorary presidium is announced: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Ordzhonikidze (committed suicide in 1937), Kuibyshev, Kirov (killed in 1934), Andreev, Kosior (written: Kossior; destroyed in 1939 ), Thälmann (sitting in a Berlin prison, will be transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in August), Dimitrov (acquitted of charges of setting fire to the Reichstag in December 1933, has lived in Moscow since March 1934), Gorky... Stormy applause; everyone stands up... Notice that Bukharin is not there. That's who they'll object to.

“Allow me, comrades, to consider your warm applause as the approval of the honorary presidium of the congress...”

Also, with applause, Gorky was elected chairman of the congress.

“52 people are proposed for the presidium [by number nationalities ? witty!]… No objections? No objections…"

Let us note some members of the presidium: Zhdanov (sic!), Bedny, Mehlis (!), Pasternak (!), A. Tolstoy, Tikhonov, Fefer (shot in 1952), Sholokhov, Shaginyan, Erenburg... Bukharin is not here either, but he's an editor after all Izvestia .

In exactly the same way, the secretariat is elected (“Are there any objections to the number? No...”, etc.), the credentials commission (?) and the editorial commission, and the procedure for the work of the congress and regulations are approved.

A characteristic point: at the current congresses of Russian writers (they are called congresses) all this tinsel and window dressing has been swept aside. The presidium is appointed in advance, the delegates do not discuss it. Everyone knows who is the boss and who is the extras.

NATIONAL LITERATURES

There were nine of them, according to the number of large reports about them, which were in the following order: Ukrainian, Belarusian, Tatar (despite the fact that Tataria is an autonomous SSR), Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Turkmen and Tajik literature.

Here is a fragment from the report of Comrade. Ivan Kulik about the literature of the Ukrainian SSR:

“... a significant part... went on a writers' excursion to the White Sea-Baltic Canal, saw how genuine miracles were created there, impossible under any other system, observed with their own eyes how, under the influence of the Bolshevik shock work, the Bolshevik truth, yesterday's criminals, the dregs of society, are reborn into conscious, active participants in socialist construction. We saw the conditions in which these criminals are kept there. Such conditions would be the envy of many Western workers who are suffering severely from the crisis and unemployment...”

Ivan Yulianovich himself became the scum of society in 1937. He didn’t have time to be reborn; he died in the camp.

POOR BUKHARIN

Poor Nikolai Ivanovich! How terribly he died! How he didn’t want to die... Nobody wants to, but it was as if he had found himself in a distorting mirror. That's where Kafka was! From the hands of a former friend and colleague. Stalin assured him (through the investigator-executioner; he refused a personal meeting, did not respond to letters from prison) that he needed to die for the cause of the world proletariat, and this poor fellow almost persuaded himself to agree... and yet he begged for mercy, the boots were ready for the Kremlin ghoul hug.

Bukharin had less than four years to live.

His report at the congress was... about poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity in the USSR. The congress delegates knew that Bukharin’s report was not entirely official, like Zhdanov’s report, that it did not express the party line. Did Bukharin know about this? Did you understand that the ax had already been raised?

“Comrades, I direct your applause to that great party...”

Academician Bukharin begins from afar: with St. Augustine, with the Indian teaching of Anandavardhana. He criticizes the Britannica definition of poetry (for being tautological). Quotes the bourgeois Gumilyov, the bourgeois Balmont. For Andrei Bely, “the fetishization of the word has reached Himalayan heights.” Speech flows like a river. The theorizing is accompanied by references to sources... Nikolai Ivanovich spoke non-stop for more than three hours!

“We have had magnificent successes in the field of the class struggle of the proletariat, primarily thanks to the wise leadership headed by Comrade Stalin...”

“Our country is facing great battles...”

“...in our time, the issue of quality is extremely sharply emphasized on all fronts. The problem of quality is a problem of diversity, multiplicity of special approaches, individualization [?!] ... "

“...poetic creativity is one of the types of ideological creativity...”

“...now the problem of quality, the problem of mastering the technique of poetic creativity, the problem of mastery... are coming to the fore..."
“We now need to have the courage and daring to set real, global criteria for our art and poetic creativity. We must catch up and overtake Europe and America in skill..."

“...in the field of literature, the time has come for a general showdown...”

“These are dialectical quantities that make up unity... In the phenomenon the essence appears. The essence turns into a phenomenon..."

“In the phenomenon is...” Hm! Annomination - I think that’s what scientists call it?

Humboldt, Potebnya, Lucretius, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Homer, Lessing, Horace, Averroes... In places the academician deviated from the written (and already published) text and improvised. Zhirmunsky and Eikhenbaum got it - but not too much, just a little.

“We must understand with all clarity the enormous difference between formalism in art, which must be decisively rejected, formalism in literary criticism, which is equally unacceptable, and the analysis of the formal aspects of art (which is by no means formalism) ...”

Blok, Yesenin, Bryusov, Demyan Bedny (applause) and Mayakovsky (stormy applause; everyone stands up) landed in the report section Fracture .

And here is the section Contemporaries : Vladimir Kirillov (1890-1937), Bezymensky (applause), Bagritsky (applause; everyone stands up), Svetlov, Zharov, Utkin, Ushakov, Boris Kornilov, Pasternak (stormy applause), Nikolai Tikhonov (stormy applause), Selvinsky (applause), Aseev (applause), Lugovskoy, Prokofiev, Pavel Vasiliev, Vasily Kamensky (applause). Some are only mentioned, some have pages with quotations. Nobody is perfect. They scold everyone (and laugh at Utkin), praise is pronounced as if through clenched teeth, with obvious effort (“Is it possible to find “Lutetia” [Heine] in Svetlov’s book?”). Pasternak and Tikhonov received the most praise, but both are too subjective, too individual, and violate the “laws of “complex simplicity””...

Twenty-four large pages, 750 words each, for a total of 18,000 words. Where the speaker is right, there he is, alas, vulgar, and vulgarity, as Babel will put it at this congress, is counter-revolutionary...

“The favorite of the entire party” (according to Lenin’s definition), simple, amiable, democratic, cheerful, accessible, intelligent Bukharin... In 1934, the poor fellow just got married (for the third time). In 1936, I was abroad, based on some signs, I guessed where things were going, but I still didn’t believe it - how could I believe in this? - and returned...

“I end my report with the slogan: we must dare, comrades!” (stormy applause from the audience, turning into ovation. Shouts of “Hurray.” The whole audience stands up.)

Nowadays, almost everyone understands Stalin as an outright power-hunger - and this explains his unquenchable thirst for blood. He, they say, killed to rule. But he did not need the death of the crushed and humiliated Bukharin. Bukharin, even in his best days, did not strive for supreme power, but in the end he gave in to everything and groveled. Why kill? To make others uncomfortable? Does not look like it. Everyone around was already shaking with fear. And there were any number of potential victims. It was not at all necessary to finish off this theoretical sheep. After all, it’s not Trotsky. Although - ... maybe the ghoul himself was shaking with fear in his wild grandeur, wild loneliness? Then it’s clearer.

There is a mocking and witty hypothesis. (I heard it from the Israeli chemist Sergei Brown.) Stalin did not recognize himself as a power-hunger, did not serve himself (in everyday life he was unpretentious to the point of asceticism), but honestly and selflessly fought the bourgeoisie (which inspired him with sincere disgust) - in the name of the happiness of the world proletariat, for the sake of creating a classless society. He was a consistent Marxist; He derived his right to supreme power from the belief that he understood Marxism better than others. What does Marxism say? That in one country, and an agrarian one at that, you cannot build a classless communist society. This is precisely what the Mensheviks insisted on. Stalin took their opinion very seriously - and found a way out. He killed those who had become bourgeois. After all, what was happening before his eyes? Yesterday's hungry people, having seized power, became richer. Society did not become classless; on the contrary, the power class and wealthy people were revived. And where there are classes, there is class struggle. Stalin decided that the fight must be this way: on the one hand, create the proletariat (industrialization and collectivization); on the other hand, to eradicate the snickering. A layer of people rises to power and begins to acquire things, read poetry, and look into Schopenhauer. Yesterday they were their own, socially close; today - strangers. They are at the root. We live in a capitalist environment, with enemies all around us. The next layer will rise - and it will go there too. And so - until the very beginning of the world revolution.

If so (if Sergei Braun is right), Bukharin simply could not be left alive. He was petty bourgeois to the core.

WHAT THE WRITERS SAID

BITTER

“...You know that the material for the history of primitive culture was archaeological data and reflections of ancient religious cults...”

This is from the beginning of Gorky's report about the Soviet literature. Why are you laughing? The literature is enormous, the event is world-historical, and you need to dig deep.

“Already in ancient times, people dreamed of being able to fly through the air...”

Not by water, mind you.

“The history of technical and scientific discoveries is rich in facts of resistance of the bourgeoisie even to the growth of technical culture...”

“The time from 1907 to 1917 was a time of complete self-will of irresponsible thought...”

“It seems to me that I am not mistaken in noticing that fathers are beginning to be more and more caring towards their children...”

About fathers - on the tenth (!) page of the report. The founder has been speaking for 75 minutes - and has not yet uttered a single name of a Soviet writer, but he touched on de Coster, Merezhkovsky, Louis XI, Ivan the Terrible and the execution at the Lena mines.

“We still don’t know the reality well...”

The names will never appear (Maria Shkapskaya and Maria Levberg do not count; they are “working great” on the history of factories and factories), but a figure will appear:

“The Union of Soviet Writers unites 1,500 people...”

This means that more than a third of all Soviet writers were at the congress!

“...calculated by mass we get: one writer per 100 thousand people. This is not much, because the inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula at the beginning of this century had one writer for every 230 readers...”

At the end, on page 13 of his canvas, Gorky formulates his goal:

“We need to know everything that happened in the past, but not as it has already been told, but as it is all illuminated by the teachings of Marx-Lenin-Stalin and how it is realized by labor in factories and in the fields... This is what, in my opinion, view, the task of the Union of Writers..." (stormy applause; the audience cheers standing...).

VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY

“Dostoevsky cannot be understood outside the revolution and cannot be understood except as a traitor... if Fyodor Mikhailovich had come here, then we could judge him as heirs of humanity, as people who judge a traitor...”

“...we have become the only humanists in the world...”

“Mayakovsky is to blame not for the fact that he shot himself, but for the fact that he shot at the wrong time...”

ITZIK FEFER

(shot in 1952)

“Cheerfulness and optimism are the characteristic features of Jewish Soviet poetry. This distinguishes it from pre-October Jewish poetry, and from Jewish poetry in modern capitalist countries...”

“At the head of our prose is the great master David Bergelson [shot in 1952]. He leads our prose forward [!]..."

“...Jewish literature of no capitalist country can compare with the level of Jewish Soviet literature...”

“...the temperature of the heroes of the Soviet Union is not yet in our Soviet literature...”

“...when a muddy wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping all capitalist countries, the Soviet government organizes an independent Jewish region - Birobidzhan, which is very popular. Many of the Jewish writers from bourgeois countries are coming here, many Palestinian workers are fleeing this so-called “homeland” to their true homeland - the Soviet Union ... "

“...Palestine has never been the homeland of Jewish workers. Palestine was the homeland of Jewish exploiters..."

KORNEY CHUKOVSKY

K.I. devotes a fair part of his speech to an analysis of Nikolai Aseev’s poem from Murzilki, which he calls disgusting: “The sun beats down the May street, the wind blows banners along the street. Having filled them all up to the sides, the workers took to the streets...” And you can’t argue with him. But he himself expresses himself strangely:

“Charskaya poisoned children with syphilis of militaristic and barracks-patriotic feelings...”

MARIETTA SHAGINYAN

A peculiarity of the congress was that writers were called to the podium without names - only by last name: Comrade Berezovsky, for example (and that he was Feoktist Nikolaevich, this had to be kept in mind; now only KLE remembers this). For Comrade Shaginyan, among the few, an exception was made: she was called by her first and last name.

“Once upon a time, enemies and traitors to our cause argued that it was impossible to build socialism in one country...”

“This process cannot be characterized otherwise than by the immortal Stalinist formula given three years ago...”

“Judging by our serial novels - “Quiet Don”, “Bruski” [Panferov's novel about collectivization], “Virgin Soil Upturned” - it’s as if we are dealing with an interrupted collision... In the West, such novels in the form of the story of one human life make sense... For us, comrades, it loses its meaning. ... our “disease of continuations” is not at all caused by necessity - it only proves the inability to finish, the inability to build an entire form...”

“It is in personal love, as in nothing else, that the class and its ideology are revealed most clearly, with the greatest clarity in literature... It seems as if Now only we in the whole world have the key of love , only we know the secret of eros, connecting people of different skins and races... only we, all over the world, nurture in our art the idea of ​​a new humanity ..." [italics M.Sh.]

“...I was amazed at the tenderness with which our little guys treated the children of a foreign race... ...we raised this tenderness with the whole atmosphere of our culture and the first lessons of the proletarian worldview...”

VERA INBER

“Truly optimism is a little-explored area, about which even the Small Soviet encyclopedia knows little... (laughter)"

“Our main tone is happiness... We seem to be going against the grain of world literature...”

“...the main quality of socialism is condensation, compression, saturation... a diamond is coal, but only said briefly...”

The speech was a success. The writer, if we talk about her writings, too. Twelve years later she will receive a state prize - for the poem Pulkovo meridian . But Inber entered the history of literature differently. Firstly, the immortal poetic line that followed the pathetic refrain in her masterpiece: “Cut off the dashing head!” (This miraculous monument will cease to exist only together with the Russian language.) Secondly, by what is said about her (although not about her alone): “Ehrenburg howls wildly. Inber repeats his game. Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg will replace Berdichev with him...” This will also last for a long time, if not forever.

ILYA ERENBURG

“Our foreign guests are now taking a trip in a time machine...”

“Isn’t the pride of our country the truly national love with which Maxim Gorky is surrounded?”

“In my life I have made mistakes many times... I am an ordinary Soviet writer (applause). This is my joy, this is my pride (applause) ... "

“I wrote the novel “The Love of Jeanne Ney” and I assure you that any writer who has gotten good at it can do ten such stories in one month (laughter) ...”

“I’m not at all concerned about myself. I personally am as fertile as a rabbit (laughter), but I defend the right of female elephants to be pregnant longer than female rabbits (laughter)... When I hear conversations about why Babel writes so little, why Olesha hasn’t written a new novel for so many years, why there is no new book by Pasternak... I feel that not everyone here understands the essence of artistic work..."

“Look at bourgeois society - a young writer there has to break through the wall with his forehead. We have placed him in excellent conditions...”

“We have the right to be proud that some of our novels are already available to millions...”

“Believe me, what I’m talking about with you is something I think about very often at my table...”

YAKOV BRONSHTEIN

Yes, yes, there was one. Delegate from Belarus, author Problems of the Leninist stage in literary criticism , professor, corresponding member. Now even KLE doesn’t know him. Shot, rehabilitated and forgotten. But he said interesting things - about autocriticism.

“In Russian criticism they recently started talking in passing about the peculiar, proofreading type of auto-polemic that Pilnyak waged against [his] “Roots of the Japanese Sun.” Why shouldn’t Russian leading criticism [!] become interested in such a question as the problem of restructuring a number of writers of the peoples of the USSR in an area more original and more serious than Pilnyak’s - in the area of ​​figurative autocriticism? ... The writer, burdened in the past with the burden of reactionary images, calls up from the depths of the past his favorite gallery of images and guillotines it, removes it with autocriticism - not journalistic, but figurative ... "

“If Russian literary criticism could get acquainted with the poem of the Jewish poet Kulbak [destroyed in 1937, a year before Bronstein]"Childe Harold of the Desna", she would understand..."

“Let me remind you of the slogan that was recently thrown into Jewish literature by Comrade Fefer: “Let us sing in the voice of Bérenger!” The struggle for Bérenger’s voice, for satire, is a positive struggle...”

“A few words about how we fight the class enemy... At the exhibition there is a wall dedicated to the Latinization of Eastern languages. It also had Hebrew text. The content of this text is as follows: “According to the 1932 census, the number of the peasant Jewish population in Palestine is 45,000, the Jewish urban population is 130,000”... bourgeois Jewish nationalist Zionists are using a number of very hidden maneuvers in order to conduct their propaganda of Zionism..."

“...we had the good fortune to work under the leadership of a party unprecedented in the world, under the leadership of the party of Lenin and Stalin (applause).

YURI OLESHA

“You cannot describe a third person without becoming at least for a minute this third person. All the vices and all the virtues live in the artist... When you portray a negative hero, you yourself become negative, you raise the bad, dirty from the bottom of the soul, i.e. make sure that you have it in you..."

“Yes, Kavalerov looked at the world through my eyes... And then they said that Kavalerov was a vulgarity and a nonentity... I accepted this accusation of insignificance and vulgarity, and it shocked me [now they would say: “shocked”]... I didn’t believe it and hid..."

“Each artist can only write what he is able to write... It is difficult for me to understand the type of worker, the type of revolutionary hero. I can’t be him..."

“Somewhere in me there lives the conviction that communism is not only an economic, but also a moral system...”

How did the man survive?! And he’s also a nobleman to boot.

ALEXANDER AVDEENKO

Don't strain your memory. He is 25 years old and socially close, which is why he was called to the congress. Not noticed in any special writing.

“Several years ago I was sitting in prison cell in Orenburg... I lived in this world, the world of people, like a beast - I could cut another’s throat, commit the most terrible crime... I have a lot of dirt. I am sure that you are not clean either..."

“I am a fresh person in literature...”

"Indifference is the worst thing..."

“We, the young, will live up to the hopes placed on us...”

Avdeenka has a decisive vote at the congress. Antokolsky, Agnia Barto, Bukharin, Gaidar, German, Kazin, Kamensky, Kirsanov, Oleinikov, Paustovsky, Radek, Skitalets, Tvardovsky, Shklovsky, Utkin, Eisenstein have advisory votes.

AGNIYA BARTO

“For the first time in the entire life of mankind, children are not the heirs of money, houses and furniture of their parents, but the heirs of a real and powerful value - the socialist state...”

DAVID BERGELSON

“...Jewish literature stands on a par with all the great literatures of the Union...”

“Comrades, as a Jewish writer, I would like to add from this rostrum that one of the most powerful speeches I heard here was the speech of the people’s poet of Dagestan. I did not understand a single word from this speech, but nevertheless it was a sheet of paper of blinding whiteness, on which an extraordinary poem about Lenin-Stalin national politics was written ... "

Shot in 1952 in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

ISAAC BABEL

He was greeted with prolonged applause - one of very few.

“Vulgarity these days is no longer a bad character trait, but a crime. Moreover: vulgarity is a counter-revolution... The mechanic next door beat his wife... this is a counter-revolutionary..."

“We talk unbearably loudly about love... And it has already reached the point where the objects of love are beginning to protest, just like Gorky yesterday...”

“...look how Stalin forges his speech, how forged his few words are, how full of muscles. I’m not saying that everyone needs to write like Stalin, but we need to work like Stalin on the word (applause) ... "

“... on our banner should be written the words of Sobolev, that everything was given to us by the party and the government and only one thing was taken away: the right to write badly... This was a privilege that we widely used... let's give this privilege at the writers' congress, and may God help us. However, there is no God, we will help ourselves (applause) ... "

“If we started talking about silence, then we can’t help but talk about me, the great master of this genre (laughter)... I must say frankly that in any self-respecting bourgeois country I would have died of hunger long ago...”

He was killed in state prisons four years later.

VSEVOLOD VISHNEVSKY

“...In 1919, deprived of bread, light, and stripped, our country in one Yaroslavl province had more theaters than the whole of France had (applause) ..."

“Remember how in 1905 Lenin wrote: “Stock up on brass knuckles, sticks, stock up on resin material, stock up on everything…”…”

“Who knows that the entire Siberian partisan movement was silently [!] led by Stalin?”

“A number of our writers - I’m addressing in particular my friend Yuri Olesha - have entered the realm of abstract, crystal-transparent constructions about the future... Don’t think that this is something new... during the times of military communism, N.I. Bukharin once said this: there will be a classless society... people will lose the feeling of eternal tension... The late A.V. Lunacharsky in one of his plays... showed how people of the future, participants in battles, people of two camps - white and red - will meet and half-sadly, half-affectionately will talk about the blood they have shed, and what a strange fraternal dialogue will be conducted between Lenin and Wrangel..."

“My friend Olesha... you write about crystal, about love, about tenderness and so on. But at the same time, we must always keep a good revolver in service... We must understand that we are facing a big and final reckoning with five-sixths of the world (applause)..."

BORIS PASTERNAK

He was called to the podium (from the presidium) without the word comrade, but like Boris Pasternak and, like Babel, he was greeted with “prolonged applause.”

“...I am not a fighter. Don’t look for personalities in my words... Comrades, my appearance on the podium is not spontaneous. I was afraid that you might think something bad if I didn’t speak out...”

“For twelve days we were united by overwhelming happiness...”

“What is poetry, comrades? Poetry is prose, prose not in the sense of the totality of anyone else's prose works, but prose itself, the voice of prose, prose in action, and not in retelling. Poetry is the language of organic fact, i.e. a fact with living consequences..."

“If happiness smiles on one of us, we will be prosperous (but may the wealth that devastates a person pass us by). Don’t break away from the masses, says the party in such cases. I have done nothing to win the right to use her expressions... With the enormous warmth with which the people and the state surround us, it is too easy to become a literary dignitary. Away from this affection in the name of its direct sources, in the name of great, practical, and fruitful love for the homeland and today’s greatest people...”

SEMYON KIRSANOV

“Who doesn’t know that as soon as someone started talking about the problem of form, about metaphors, about rhyme or an epithet, the cry immediately rang out: “Stop the formalists!”...

“In the part where Comrade Bukharin sums up the results and outlines the budget of our poetry, we need to argue... The speaker exclaims: we need to dare!... but if to dare means to find tearing contradictions in yourself, then I am decisively against such daring...”

“Of course, comrades, a huge political task and a poetic task is to find new stage to the word "kiss"..."

“Weaving wreaths from breasts is not a burning problem for the revolutionary workers of Germany and France...”

“I’m shouting here at the top of my voice…”

NIKOLAY TIKHONOV

He gave a report on Leningrad poets. There was no report on Moscow poets. The cultural center has not yet moved to Moscow. Tikhonov himself, Marshak, Chukovsky, Zabolotsky, Evgeny Schwartz and many others lived on the banks of the Neva at that time. In Leningrad there existed the last of the old type of literary groups: the Oberiuts.

“Which poets had the greatest influence on the Leningrad young poets? Sergey Yesenin. ... He could not overcome the man of yesterday for the sake of the man of the future... Mayakovsky. He faced such a creative crisis, the very consciousness of which made him feel deathly dizzy. And futurism in his person approached the poem “At the top of his voice” with the loss of all his powerful poetic arsenal, having as a weapon only the canonical verse that he had previously rejected ... "

“Boris Pasternak’s most difficult tongue twister, this collapse of words” also had an impact; and Bagritsky’s verse, which “was close to Acmeistic”; and Aseev, “this great poet, this black worker of verse”...

In general, the young Leningrad poets have noticeable: “rhythmic poverty, poetic cliches, direct epigonism... room experiences, disputes about books, meetings, editorial offices, studying the little secrets of the craft instead of studying a new person and a new society...”

“How much we talk about poetic heritage! The truth must be said that the old people did not write so badly...”

Prokofiev, Sayanov and Kornilov show promise. “Kornilov must remember that he succeeded in many things in the poem only through direct inspiration, but that inspiration alone is not enough...” (Boris Kornilov had about four years to remember; he would die in the camps in 1938, at the age of 31.) No one else among the young (in an hour and ten minutes on the podium) was mentioned. Even Zabolotsky, whom Tikhonov favors. The satrap is cautious.

But Pushkin and Lermontov are often involved, Tyutchev is not forgotten (about whom “the bilious old poet Sollogub” says: "noble rhymes."

“We have qualified translators in Leningrad... Tynyanov [!], Lifshits... [probably Benedikt Lifshits]...Lozinsky..."

“Let’s take the poem “Mountain Peaks,” translated by Lermontov. This is a work of genius... Goethe's poem "Mountain Peaks" is a mediocre poem... " [This opinion, completely erroneous, remained stuck in the minds of those who did not look into Goethe’s original.]

“Worldview is the master of creativity...”

“What are poems? Poems are, as it were, in eternal formation, in eternal change..." [the question was never answered; what a pity!].

“Pacifism is alien to the spirit of our poetry. None of the exotic conquests that excited the minds of the singers of Russian imperialism live in the poems of Soviet poets..."

“Our poetry has not yet reached world heights...”

ALEXEY SURKOV

Remember this poet?

“Comrade Bukharin, in his introduction to the report, stated that he was making the report on behalf of the party. I don’t know what Comrade Bukharin wanted to say by this. In any case, this does not mean that everything in his report is correct and certain provisions are not subject to criticism. In addition, at our congress all reports are made on behalf of the organizing committee. It seems to me that the report is only a starting point for judgment, and not a directive beginning in the distribution of light and shadow in our poetry (applause) ... "

“...for a large group of people growing up in our literature, the work of B.L. Pasternak is an inappropriate point of orientation in their growth (applause) ... "

An uninitiated person may imagine that we are talking here about an aesthetic struggle, and not about the physical eradication of a class enemy. But Surkov knows what he is doing.

Other delegates also knew that Bukharin was a complete loser; attacked boldly. It is possible that it was on instructions from the organizing committee. And the “favorite of the whole party” had to justify himself right at the congress.

“At our congress, one word received full rights of citizenship, which until recently we treated with distrust or even hostility. This word is humanism. Born in a wonderful era, this word was polluted and slobbered by puny degenerates. They replaced its powerful sound - humanity - with Christian lisp - love for mankind... In our country, the concepts of love, joy, pride, which make up the content of humanism, rightfully enter into broad poetic usage. But some poets somehow bypass the fourth side of humanism, expressed in the harsh and beautiful word hatred (prolonged applause)…»

“On the pages of the newspaper, next to notes of international information that smell of gunpowder and blood, next to TASS messages, forcing you to take out a revolver from a distant drawer in the evening and re-clean and lubricate it, lyrical birds are chirping... Let's not demagnetize the young Red Guard heart of our good youth with intimate and lyrical water. Let's not forget that the time is not far off when poetry from the pages of thick magazines will have to move to the pages of front-line newspapers and divisional field newspapers. Let's keep our lyrical powder dry! (prolonged applause)…»

WHAT THE FOREIGNERS SAID

ANDRE MALRAUX

Malraux began his life very revolutionary, but then came to his senses. Minister of Culture of France in 1959-69 (that is, under de Gaulle and... under Furtseva). The speech at the congress was read by Olesha, obviously in his translation (which sins against the Russian language).

“You can already work for the proletariat, we - the revolutionary writers of the West - are still forced to work against the bourgeoisie (applause) ...”

“But you should know that only truly new works will be able to support the cultural prestige of the Soviet Union abroad, as Mayakovsky supported it, as Pasternak supports it (applause) ...”

Here you understand how the Big Four poets were torn apart: Mandelstam - in exile, in Cherdyn, on the brink of life and death; Akhmatova - in semi-underground, awaiting arrest; Tsvetaeva - in Paris (Malraux had never heard of her); Pasternak - on the presidium; he - thanks to Bukharin - is the glory of the Soviet Union (this is how the name of the country was written then: the first word is capitalized, the second - lowercase).

RAFAEL ALBERTIE

“The magazine “October” that we founded... is richly illustrated with photographs about the Soviet Union...”

“...we firmly know that the day will come when Soviet Spain will widely open its borders to you. The Spanish revolution cannot fail to win..."

Other foreigners also spoke about Soviet France and Soviet Germany in the near future.

THIS IS THE CONGRESS

This is how the congress turned out. Walpurgis Night - but at the same time the Council of Nicaea (only the emperor was not present). The heralds of the new world, admitted into the palace, branded heresies, rejoiced, feasted and dispersed, each to meet his own destiny. For others, “everything down to the smallest fraction of a hundredth in it was justified and came true.” For most it turned out differently.

As one nameless young poet of the time said (quoted at the congress):

“Dear comrades! Before us is a huge, varied work for the benefit of our homeland, which we are creating as the homeland of the proletariat of all countries. Get to work, comrades! Friendly, harmonious, passionate - let’s get to work!”

A lot of truth was said at the congress. One of the truths is this: the congress was, after all, world-historical. Neither before nor after history has known anything like this. And he won't know.

in the book:
Yuri Kolker. OSAMA VELIMIROVIC AND OTHER FOUILLETONS . [Articles and essays] Tirex, St. Petersburg, 2006

M. Gorky

M. Gorky. Collected works in thirty volumes M., GIHL, 1953 Volume 27. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings (1933-1936) So - the first general congress of writers of the Soviet Union Socialist Republics and the regions finished their work. This work turned out to be so significant and varied that now, in closing remarks, I can only outwardly outline its deep meaning, I can only note the most significant of what it discovered. Before the congress and at the beginning of it, some and even, it seems, many writers did not understand the meaning of organizing the congress. “Why is he?” these people asked. “We’ll talk, we’ll go our separate ways, and everything will remain the same.” This is very strange people, and at the congress they were rightly called indifferent. Their eyes see that in our reality some things still remain “as they were,” but their indifference does not allow them to realize that what remains is only because the proletariat, the owner of the country, does not have enough time to completely destroy and destroy these remnants. These people are quite satisfied with what has already been done, which has helped them move forward into comfortable positions, and which has strengthened their natural indifference as individualists. They don’t understand that we are all very small people in comparison with the great things that are happening in the world, they don’t understand that we live and work at the beginning of the first act the latest tragedy working humanity. They are already accustomed to living without a sense of pride in the meaning of personal existence and only care about preserving the dull lordship, the dull excellency of their small, poorly polished talents. They do not understand that the meaning of personal existence is to deepen and expand the meaning of existence of the multi-million masses of working humanity. But these millions of people sent their representatives to the congress: workers from various fields of production, inventors, collective farmers, pioneers. The whole country stood up before the writers of the Union of Socialist Soviets, stood up and made high demands on them, their talents, their work. These people are the great present and future of the Land of Soviets. Interrupting our conversations, Blinding with the brilliance of unprecedented deeds, They brought their victories - Bread, airplanes, metal - themselves, - They brought themselves as a theme, Like their work, love, life. And each of them sounded like a poem, Because Bolshevism thundered in each. Raw, hastily made lines of poetry Victor Gusev correctly note the meaning of the event: once again the thunder of Bolshevism, the radical transformer of the world and the harbinger of terrible events throughout the world, thundered victoriously. How do I see the victory of Bolshevism at the Writers' Congress? The fact that those of them who were considered non-party, “hesitant”, admitted - with sincerity, the completeness of which I do not dare to doubt - recognized Bolshevism as the only militant guiding idea in creativity, in painting in a word. I highly value this victory, because I, a writer, know from myself how self-willed the thoughts and feelings of a writer are, who tries to find creative freedom outside the strict instructions of history, outside its basic, organizing idea. Deviations from a mathematically straight line developed bloody history working humanity and the brightly illuminated teaching that establishes that the world can be changed only by the proletariat and only through a revolutionary blow, and then through the socialistically organized labor of workers and peasants - deviations from the mathematical straight line are explained by the fact that our emotions are older than our intellect , by the fact that in our emotions there is a lot that is inherited and this inheritance hostilely contradicts the testimony of reason. We were born into a class society, where everyone needs to defend themselves against everyone else, and many enter a classless society as people from whom trust in each other has been eradicated, from whom the centuries-old struggle for a comfortable place in life has killed the sense of respect and love for working humanity, the creator of all values. . We lack the sincerity necessary for self-criticism, we show too much petty philistine anger when we criticize each other. It still seems to us that we are criticizing a competitor for our piece of bread, and not a comrade at work, which is taking on an increasingly deeper significance as the motivator of all the best revolutionary forces in the world. We, writers, workers of the most individual art, are mistaken in considering our experience to be our sole property, whereas it is a suggestion of reality and, in the past, a very heavy gift from it. In the past, comrades, for we have all already seen and are seeing that the new reality created by the Bolshevik Party, which embodies the mind and will of the masses, - the new reality offers us a wonderful gift - an unprecedented gift of intellectual flowering of many millions of working people. I will remind you of a wonderful speech Vsevolod Ivanov, this speech should remain in our memory as an example of sincere self-criticism of an artist who thinks politically. Speeches deserve the same attention Y. Olesha, L. Seifullina and many others. About two years ago Joseph Stalin, caring about improving the quality of literature, he told communist writers: “Learn to write from non-party people.” Without speaking about whether the communists learned anything from non-party artists, I must note that the non-party people learned to think quite well from the proletariat. (Applause.) Once, in a fit of hangover pessimism, Leonid Andreev said: “A pastry chef is happier than a writer, he knows that children and young ladies love cake. bad person who does a good job, not knowing for whom and doubting that this work is even necessary. That is why most writers have no desire to please anyone, and want to offend everyone." The writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics see for whom they are working. The reader himself comes to them, the reader calls them "engineers of souls" and demands that they organize in simple words in good, truthful images of his sensations, feelings, thoughts, his heroic work. Such a close, direct unity of the reader with the writer has never happened anywhere, and in this fact there is a difficulty that we must overcome, but in this fact is our happiness, which we have not yet learned to appreciate. Just like the cultures of our fraternal republics, national in form, remain and must be socialist in essence, our creativity must remain individual in form and be socialist-Leninist in the sense of its basic, guiding idea. This meaning is the liberation of people from the remnants of the past, from the indoctrination of a criminal and distorting thought and feeling of class history - a history that educates working people as slaves, intellectuals - double-minded or indifferent, anarchists or renegades, skeptics and critics or reconcilers of the irreconcilable . In the end, the congress gives the right to hope that from now on the concept of “non-party writer” will remain only a formal concept, but internally each of us will feel like a real member of the Leninist party, which so beautifully and timely proved its trust in the honor and work of non-party writers with the permission of the All-Union Congress. At this congress, we issued large bills to the multimillion-dollar reader and the government, and, of course, now we are obliged to pay the bills with honest, good work. We will do this if we do not forget what was suggested to us by the speeches of our readers - and among them our children - we do not forget how enormous the importance of literature is in our country, what various high demands are placed on us. We will not forget this if we immediately destroy in our midst all remnants of group relations - relations that are ridiculously and disgustingly similar to the struggle of the Moscow boyars for localism - for places in the boyar duma and at the tsar's feasts closer to him. We should remember well the clever words of Comrade Seifullina, who correctly said that “we were too quickly and willingly made writers.” And don’t forget your friend’s instructions Nakoryakova, that in 1928-1931 we gave 75 percent of books that did not have the right to second editions, that is, very bad books. “You understand how much we have published in excess, how many unnecessary expenses we have made, not only material, but also spiritual expenses of our people, our creators of socialism, who read a gray, bad, and sometimes shoddy book. This is not only a mistake of the writing team, but it is also one of the biggest mistakes in publishing." I think the end of Comrade Nakoryakov’s last sentence is too soft and kind. With all that has been said, I addressed the writers of the entire congress and, therefore, the representatives of the fraternal republics. I have no reason or desire to give them a special place, because they work not only each for their own people, but each for all the peoples of the Union of Socialist Republics and autonomous regions. History holds them as responsible for their work as the Russians. Due to lack of time, I read few books written by writers of the Union republics, but even the little that I have read inspires me with firm confidence that soon we will receive from them a book remarkable for the novelty of the material and the power of the image. Let me remind you that the number of people does not affect the quality of talent. Little Norway created huge figures of Hamsun and Ibsen. The Jews recently died the almost brilliant poet Bialik and had the exceptionally talented satirist and humorist Sholom Aleichem, the Latvians created the powerful poet Rainis, Finland - Eino-Leino - there is no such small country that does not give great artists the word. I named only the largest and not all of them, and I named writers born in a capitalist society. In the republics of our fraternal peoples, writers are born from the proletariat, and from the example of our country we see what talented children the proletariat has created in a short time and how continuously it creates them. But I am addressing friendly advice, which can also be understood as a request, to representatives of the nationalities of the Caucasus and Central Asia. The ashig made an amazing impression on me, and - I know - not only on me. Suleiman Stalsky. I saw how this old man, illiterate but wise, sitting on the podium, whispered, creating his poems, then he, Homer of the 20th century, amazingly read them. (Applause.) Take care of people who are capable of creating such pearls of poetry as Suleiman creates. I repeat: the beginning of the art of words is in folklore. Collect your folklore, learn from it, process it. He gives a lot of material to both you and us, the poets and prose writers of the Union. The better we know the past, the easier, the more deeply and joyfully we will understand the great significance of the present we create. Speeches at the meetings of the congress and conversations outside the meeting hall revealed the unity of our feelings and desires, the unity of purpose and revealed our unacceptably small familiarity with art and, in general, with the culture of the fraternal republics. If we do not want the fire that broke out at the congress to go out, we must take all measures to ensure that it flares up even brighter. It is necessary to begin mutual and widespread acquaintance with the cultures of the fraternal republics. To begin with, it would be necessary to organize an “All-Union Theater” in Moscow, which would show on stage, in drama and comedy, the life and way of life of the national republics in their historical past and heroic present. (Applause.) Further: it is necessary to publish collections of current prose and poetry of national republics and regions in Russian, in good translations. (Applause.) Literature for children also needs to be translated. Writers and scientists of national republics must write histories of their countries and states - histories that would acquaint the peoples of all republics with each other. These stories of the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will serve very well good remedy mutual understanding and internal, ideological cohesion of all people of the seven republics. This mutual understanding, this unity of forces is necessary not only for all the people of the Union of Republics, - they are necessary as a lesson and example for all the working people of the earth, against whom its old enemy, capitalism, is organizing itself under a new guise - fascism. A good, practical method of highlighting the cultural ties and business interdependencies of the Union of our republics can be collective work on the creation of the book “Affairs and People of the Two Five-Year Plans.” This book should show the labor force of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the form of essays and stories the results of their labor and the facts of the cultural and educational influence of labor on people, on the growth of intelligence, etc. the will of individuals, to liberate them from the narrow boundaries of the petty-bourgeois individualism of owners, to educate a new, socialist individuality in the conditions of collective labor - to show the spiral along which we move forward and ascend higher and higher. Participation in this work is absolutely necessary for writers of all fraternal republics, all regions. We are still at that stage of development when we must convince ourselves of our cultural growth. Of all that was said at the congress, the most significant and important thing is that many young writers for the first time felt their importance and responsibility to the country and realized their insufficient preparation for work. Collective work on the creation of books that highlight the processes of grandiose work that changes the world and people will serve as an excellent means of self-education and self-strengthening for us. In the absence of serious, philosophical criticism, so sadly shown by the fact of the muteness of professional critics at the congress, we ourselves need to take up self-criticism, not in words, but in deeds, directly in working on the material. Comrade to the method of collective work of writers Ehrenburg was skeptical, fearing that the method of such work could harmfully limit the development of the individual abilities of the work unit. Comrades Vsevolod Ivanov and Lydia Seifullina, objecting to him, it seems to me, dispelled his fears. It seems to Comrade Ehrenburg that the method of collective work is the method of team work. These techniques have no other similarity with each other, except for the physical: in both cases, groups and teams work. But the team works with reinforced concrete, wood, metal, etc., always with a definitely uniform material that needs to be given a predetermined shape. In a team, individuality can only reveal itself through the intensity of its work. Collective work on the material of social phenomena, work on reflection, depiction of life processes - among which, in particular, the actions of shock brigades have their place - is work on infinitely varied facts, and each individual unit, each writer has the right to choose for himself this or that series of facts in accordance with his gravity, his interests and abilities. The collective work of writers on the phenomena of life in the past and present for the brightest illumination of paths to the future has some similarities with the work of laboratories that scientifically and experimentally study certain phenomena of organic life. It is known that the basis of any method is experiment - research, study - and this method, in turn, indicates further paths of study. I have the courage to think that it is precisely the method of collective work with material that will help us best understand what socialist realism should be. Comrades, in our country the logic of actions is ahead of the logic of concepts, this is what we must feel. My confidence that this method of collective creativity can produce completely original, unprecedentedly interesting books is such that I take the liberty of offering such work to our guests, excellent masters of European literature. (Applause.) Will they try to give a book that would depict the day of the bourgeois world? I mean any day: September 25, October 7 or December 15, it doesn’t matter. We need to take an everyday day as the world press reflected it on its pages. We need to show all the motley chaos modern life in Paris and Grenoble, in London and Shanghai, in San Francisco, Geneva, Rome, Dublin, etc., etc., in cities, villages, on water and on land. It is necessary to give holidays of the rich and suicides of the poor, meetings of academies, learned societies and facts reflected in newspaper chronicles of wild illiteracy, superstitions, crimes, facts of the sophistication of refined culture, strikes of workers, anecdotes and everyday dramas - insolent cries of luxury, exploits of swindlers, lies of political leaders, - it is necessary, I repeat, to give an ordinary, everyday day with all the crazy, fantastic diversity of its phenomena. This is the work of scissors much more than the work of a pen. Of course, comments are inevitable, but I think they should be as brief as they are brilliant. But facts must be commented on by facts, and on these rags, on this rags of the day, a writer’s commentary should shine like a spark igniting the flame of thought. In general, you need to show the “artistic” creativity of history during one day. No one has ever done this, but it should be done! And if a group of our guests takes on such work, they, of course, will give the world something unprecedented, unusually interesting, dazzlingly bright and deeply instructive. (Applause.) The organizing idea of ​​fascism is racial theory - a theory that elevates the Germanic, Roman, Latin or Anglo-Saxon race as the only force supposedly capable of continuing the further development of culture - a “pure-blooded” racial culture based, as is well known, on a merciless and the increasingly cynical exploitation of the vast majority of people by a numerically insignificant minority. This numerically insignificant minority is also insignificant in its intellectual strength, wasted on inventing methods of exploiting working people and the treasures of nature that belong to working people. Of all the talents of capitalism, which once played a positive role as the organizer of civilization and material culture, modern capitalism has retained only a mystical confidence in its right to rule over the proletariat and peasantry. But history has brought forward against this mysticism of the capitalists real fact- the strength of the revolutionary proletariat, organized by the indestructible and unquenchable, historically grounded, formidable truth of teaching Marx-- Lenin, put forward the fact of the “united front” in France and an even more physically tangible fact - the union of the proletariat of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Faced with the power of these facts, the poisonous, but light and thin fog of fascism will inevitably and soon dissipate. This fog, as we see, poisons and seduces only adventurers, only unprincipled, indifferent people - people for whom “everything is all the same” and who do not care who they kill - people who are products of the degeneration of bourgeois society and mercenaries of capitalism for its most vile, vile and bloody deeds. The main strength of the feudal lords of capitalism is the weapons that the working class makes for them - guns, machine guns, cannons, poison gases and everything else that at any moment can be and is directed by the capitalists against the workers. But the time is not far when the revolutionary legal consciousness of the workers will destroy the mysticism of the capitalists. However, they are preparing a new worldwide massacre, organizing the mass extermination of the proletarians of the whole world on the fields of national capitalist battles, the purpose of which is profit, the enslavement of small nationalities, turning them into slaves of Africa - half-starved animals who are obliged to work hard and buy nasty, rotten goods only so that the kings of industry accumulate rich gold - the curse of the working people - gold, with insignificant specks of dust the capitalists pay the workers for forging chains for themselves, developing weapons against themselves. It is in the face of such acute class relations that our All-Union Congress worked, and on the eve of such a catastrophe we, the writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, will continue our work! There cannot and should be no place for personal trifles in this work. Revolutionary internationalism against bourgeois nationalism, racism, fascism—that is the historical meaning of our days. What we can do? We've already done some things. We are doing a good job of uniting all the forces of the radical, anti-fascist intelligentsia, and we are bringing to life proletarian, revolutionary literature in all countries of the world. In our midst there are representatives of almost all European literatures. The magnet that attracted them to our country is not only the wise work of the party, the mind of the country, the heroic energy of the proletariat of the republics, but also our work. To some extent, every writer is the leader of his readers - I think this can be said. Roman Rolland, Andre Gide have the legal right to call themselves “engineers of souls.” Jean Richard Bloch, Andre Malraux, Plivier, Aragon, Toller, Becher, Some- I won’t list them all - these are only bright names talented people, and all of these are harsh judges of the bourgeoisie of their countries, all of these are people who know how to hate, but also know how to love. (Applause.) We did not know how to invite many more, who also possess in full force the wonderful human gift of love and hatred, we did not know how to invite them, and this is our considerable fault before them. But I am sure that the second congress of Soviet writers will be graced by many dozens of writers from the West and East, writers from China and India, and there is no doubt that we are on the eve of the unification around the Third International of all the best and most honest people of art, science and technology. (Applause.) A small and - for me personally - not entirely clear disagreement arose between the foreigners and us on the issue of assessing the position of the individual in a classless society... This question has a predominantly academic, philosophical character, and, of course, it could not be well illuminated on one or two meetings or in one conversation... The essence of the matter is that in Europe and everywhere in the world a writer who cherishes the centuries-old cultural achievements and who sees that in the eyes of the capitalist bourgeoisie these cultural achievements have lost their value, that any day a book any honest writer can be publicly burned - in Europe, the writer increasingly feels the pain of the oppression of the bourgeoisie, fears the revival of medieval barbarism, which, probably, would not exclude the establishment of the Inquisition for heretical thinkers. In Europe, the bourgeoisie and its governments are increasingly hostile towards the honest writer. We do not have a bourgeoisie, and our government is our teachers and our comrades, comrades in the full sense of the word. The conditions of the moment sometimes prompt one to protest against the willfulness of individualistic thought, but the country and the government are deeply interested in the need for the free growth of individuality and provide for this every means as possible in the conditions of a country which is forced to spend huge amounts of money on self-defense against the new barbarian - the European bourgeoisie, armed from teeth to toes. Our congress worked on high notes of sincere passion for our art and under the slogan: raise the quality of work! Needless to say, the more perfect the weapon, the better it ensures victory. The book is the most important and powerful instrument of socialist culture. Books of high quality are demanded by the proletariat, our main, multimillion-dollar reader; books of high quality are necessary for hundreds of aspiring writers who go into literature from among the proletariat - from factories and collective farms of all republics and regions of our country. We must carefully, continuously and lovingly help these youth on the difficult path they have chosen, but, as Seifullina rightly said, we should not rush to “make them writers” and we should remember the instructions of Comrade Nakoryakoz about fruitless, unprofitable waste folk remedies for the production of book defects. We must be collectively responsible for this marriage. All our playwrights spoke passionately and convincingly about the need to improve the quality of our drama. I am sure that the organization of the “All-Union Theater” and the “Classics Theater” will greatly help us to master the high technique of ancient and medieval playwrights, and the dramaturgy of the fraternal republics will expand the scope of themes and indicate new original collisions. in the report Bukharin There is one point that requires objection. Talking about poetry Mayakovsky, N.I. Bukharin did not note the harmful - in my opinion - “hyperbolism” characteristic of this very influential and original poet. As an example of such influence, I take the poems of a very gifted poet Prokofiev,- it seems he edited the novel Molchanova“The Peasant” is a novel that was discussed in “Literary Amusements”, in which the fist-like peasant was glorified as our contemporary Mikula Selyaninovich. Prokofiev depicts in poetry a certain Pavel Gromov - a “great hero”, also Mikula. Pavel Gromov is an amazing monster. The world song is sung about him, How he walked, fierce with sword and fire. He -- shoulders like doors- thundered on the Don. And the dust from the campaign obscured the moon. He -- mouth like a cellar- he walked, having survived everything. So the wolf does not pass and the lynx does not run. He -- cheekbones like boards and a mouth like a coffin- He was the complete master of the clearings and paths. In another poem, Prokofiev depicts such a terrible thing: The eldest son knows no equal, Legs-- logs, chest-- mountain. He's alone stands like a laurel Along the paved courtyard. ...Him mustache-- that the reins Beard-- what a harrow....Seven desired ones suddenly love. What a goat! By the way, the Lavra is a rich, populous monastery, almost a town, like, for example, the Kiev and Trinity-Sergius Lavra. This is what Mayakovsky's hyperbolism leads to! In Prokofiev, it seems that it is also complicated by hyperbolism Klyueva, singer of the mystical essence of the peasantry and the even more mystical “power of the earth.” I do not deny Prokofiev’s talent; his desire for epic imagery is even commendable. However, the desire for epic requires knowledge of the epic, and on the way to it one can no longer write such poems: Glory flew across the fields, Thunderbolt controlled fate. If the storms went to the right, Thunderbolt went to the left. The storms again breathed anger, a strong cold of all latitudes (?). If the storms went to the left, Thunderbolt went the other way. I think this is no longer epic. This is like a rehash of an old poem that wanted to be funny: Two friends lived in Kyiv - Amazing people. The first was from the south, and the second was the opposite. The first terrible one was a glutton, And the second one was an idiot, The first one died of constipation, And the second one - on the contrary. Our Soviet poetry has achieved very significant successes in the short period of its life, but just like prose, it contains a very fair amount of barren flowers, chaff and straw. In the fight for high quality prose and poetry, we must update and deepen the theme, purity and sonority of the language. History has brought us forward as builders new culture, and this obliges us to strive even further forward and higher, so that the whole working world can see us and hear our voices. The world would very well and gratefully hear the voices of poets if they, together with musicians, tried to create songs - new ones that the world does not have, but which it should have. It is far from true that the melodies of ancient songs of Russians, Ukrainians, and Georgians are filled with grief and sadness; probably, the Tatars and Armenians also have songs of marching, round dance, comic, dance, labor rhythms, but I am only talking about what I know. Old Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian songs have an endless variety of musicality, and our poets should familiarize themselves with such collections of songs as, for example, “Velikoross” Shayna, as a collection Dragomanova And Kulisha and others of this type. I am sure that such an acquaintance would serve as a source of inspiration for poets and musicians and that the working people would receive wonderful new songs - a gift they have long deserved. It must be taken into account that an old melody, even slightly modified, but filled with new words, creates a song that will be learned easily and quickly. You just need to understand the meaning of rhythm: the chorus of “Dubinushka” can be stretched to the length of a minute, but you can also sing it to a dance rhythm. Our young poets should not disdain creating folk songs. Forward and higher is the path for all of us, comrades, this is the only path worthy of the people of our country, of our era. What does higher mean? This means: we must rise above petty, personal squabbles, above pride, above the struggle for first place, above the desire to command others - above everything that we have inherited from the vulgarity and stupidity of the past. We are involved in a huge cause, a cause of world significance, and we must be personally worthy to take part in it. We are entering an era full of the greatest tragedy, and we must prepare, learn to transform this tragedy in those perfect forms, as the ancient tragedians knew how to portray it. We must not forget for a minute that the whole world of working people is thinking about us as they listen to us, that we are working in front of a reader and viewer that has never been seen before in the entire history of mankind. I urge you, comrades, to study - to learn to think, to work, to learn to respect and appreciate each other, as soldiers value each other on the battlefield, and not waste your energy fighting each other over trifles, at a time when history has called you to merciless struggle with the old world. The Japanese spoke at the congress Hijikato, Chinese Hu Lan-chi and Chinese Amy Xiao. These comrades, as it were, verbally shook hands with each other, signifying the unity of purpose of the revolutionary proletariat of a country whose bourgeoisie was infected from Europe by an acute and fatal attack of the madness of imperialism, and a country whose bourgeoisie not only betrays its people as sacrifices to the robber-imperialists, but also exterminates them themselves to please the imperialism of foreigners, just as Russian landowners and factory owners did this in 1918-1922, using the cynical help of shopkeepers in Europe, America, and Japan. The congress did not clearly enough note the speeches of the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the two countries of the East, which can only be explained by the extreme fatigue caused by two weeks of work, which required an enormous amount of attention, and finally tired attention. Having completed its work, the All-Union Congress of Writers unanimously expresses sincere gratitude to the government for allowing the congress and broad assistance to its work. The All-Union Congress of Writers notes that the successes of the internal, ideological association of writers, clearly and solidly revealed at the meetings of the congress, are the result of a resolution of the Central Committee of the Lenin-Stalin Party of April 23, 1932, a resolution that condemned groups of writers for reasons that have nothing to do with common with the great tasks of our Soviet literature as a whole, but by no means denying associations on technical issues of various creative work. The Congress of Writers is deeply pleased and proud of the attention generously shown to it by numerous delegations of readers. The writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will not forget the high demands placed on them by readers and will honestly try to satisfy these demands. Most of the writers, judging by the structure of their speeches, perfectly understood how enormous the importance of literature as a whole is in our homeland, they understood what they were obliged to do by the impressive, continuous demonstration of the strict but loving attitude of readers to literature throughout the entire congress. We have the right to believe that this love is caused by the merits and work of our young literature. The reader has given us the right to be proud of the attitude of the reader and Lenin’s party towards us, but we should not exaggerate the importance of our work, which is still far from perfect. Self-education through self-criticism, continuous struggle for the quality of books, planned work - as far as it is permissible in our craft - understanding literature as a process created collectively and imposing on us mutual responsibility for each other’s work, responsibility to the reader - these are the conclusions which we must infer from the demonstration of readers at the convention. These conclusions oblige us to immediately begin practical work—the organization of all-Union literature as a whole. We must process the enormous and most valuable material of speeches at the congress so that it serves us temporary- I emphasize the word “temporary” - leadership in our further work, we must in every possible way strengthen and expand the connection formed at the congress with the literature of the fraternal republics. At the congress, in the presence of representatives of revolutionary literature in Europe, it was sadly and unworthy of our literature that our poor knowledge or complete ignorance of European languages ​​was revealed. In view of the fact that our connections with the writers of Europe will inevitably expand, we must introduce the study of European languages ​​into our everyday life. This is also necessary because it will open up the possibility of reading in originals. greatest works painting with words. No less important is our knowledge of the languages ​​of Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Turks, etc. We need to develop a general program for classes with beginning writers, a program that would exclude from this work subjectivism, which is extremely harmful for young writers. To do this, you need to combine the magazines "Growth" and " Literary studies"into one magazine of a literary and pedagogical nature and cancel the less successful classes of individual writers with beginners. There is a lot of work, all this is an absolutely necessary matter. In our country it is unacceptable for the growth of literature to develop by itself, we are obliged to prepare a replacement for ourselves, to expand the number of workers ourselves words. Then we must ask the government to discuss the need to organize an “All-Union Theater” in Moscow, in which artists of all nationalities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would have the opportunity to acquaint us Russians with their dramatic art and, through it, with their past and present. cultural life. The main, permanent troupe of this theater should be Russian, which would perform plays by Azerbaijan, Armenians, Belarusians, Georgians, Tatars and all other nationalities of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia - in Russian, in exemplary translations. The rapid growth of fraternal literature republics obliges us to seriously monitor the growth of these literatures and can significantly contribute to the growth of Russian drama. It is necessary to discuss the issue of organizing a “Classics Theater” in Moscow, in which exclusively plays from the classical repertoire would be performed. They, by introducing the viewer to writers to examples of dramatic creativity of the ancient Greeks, Spaniards and English of the Middle Ages, would increase the viewer's demands on the theater, and the writers' demands on themselves. We need to pay attention to the literature of the regions, especially the Eastern and Western Siberia, to bring her into the circle of our attention, to publish in the magazines of the center, to take into account her importance as an organizer of culture. We must ask the government to allow the Union of Writers to erect a monument to the pioneer hero Pavel Morozov, who was killed by his relatives because, having understood the sabotage activities of his blood relatives, he preferred the interests of the working people to kinship with them. It is necessary to allow the publication of almanacs of current fiction of the fraternal national republics, at least four books per year, and give the almanacs the title “Union” or “Brotherhood” with the subtitle: “Collections of modern fiction of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.” Dear comrades! Before us is a huge, varied work for the benefit of our homeland, which we are creating as the homeland of the proletariat of all countries. Get to work, comrades! Friendly, harmonious, fiery-- get to work! Long live the friendly, strong unity of workers and fighters in a word, long live the All-Union Red Army of Writers! And long live the all-Union proletariat, our reader,-- reader-friend, whom the honest writers of Russia were so passionately waiting forXIXcentury and who has appeared, lovingly surrounds us and teaches us to work! Long live Lenin's party-- Leader of the proletariat, long live the leader of the party, Joseph Stalin! (Stormy, long-lasting applause, turning into ovation. Everyone stands up and sings “The Internationale.”)

NOTES

The twenty-seventh volume includes articles, reports, speeches, greetings written and delivered by M. Gorky in 1933-1936. Some of them were included in authorized collections of journalistic and literary-critical works ("Publicistic Articles", 2nd edition - 1933; "On Literature", 1st edition - 1933, 2nd edition - 1935, as well as in the 3rd edition - 1937, prepared for publication during the author’s lifetime) and were repeatedly edited by M. Gorky. Most of the articles, reports, speeches, and greetings included in the volume were published in periodicals and were not included in authorized collections. Articles, reports, speeches, and greetings from M. Gorky are included in the collected works for the first time.

First published in the newspapers "Pravda", 1934, No. 242, September 2, "Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee", 1934, No. 206, September 2, "Literary Gazette", 1934, No. 117, September 2, and "Literary Leningrad" , 1934, No. 45, September 3, as well as in the publications: “The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers,” Verbatim Report, M. 1934; M. Gorky, Soviet literature, Goslitizdat, M. 1934. Included in the second and third editions of the collection of articles by M. Gorky “On Literature.” Published with a slight reduction from the text of the second edition of the specified collection, verified with manuscripts and typescripts (A. M. Gorky Archive).

The formation and development of Soviet literature should be regarded as a complex and contradictory process. On the one hand, the rich literary culture of Russia, even in the conditions of revolutionary upheavals, civil war managed to survive and survive as the most important element of the country’s spiritual life. Of course, the corps of writers thinned out; many of them left Russia, which had risen in revolutionary ecstasy. Others remained, uniting in various literary associations. The talent of a number of young writers and poets emerged. In the 20s of the last century, works appeared that became classics of modern Russian literature.

On the other hand, the new government and its ideology approached literature from a utilitarian class position, from the point of view of the expediency of time. For them, the ideas of Lenin’s article “Party Organization and Party Literature,” written back in 1905 and which caused a negative reaction in the country’s literary circles, remained fundamental in literary politics. Soon after October revolution Attempts were made to isolate proletarian writers and poets in single creative organizations, and the term fellow traveler writer appeared. Significant damage to literature was caused by the activities of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), which arrogated to itself the right to teach other writers how and what to write, to speak on behalf of the Bolshevik Party. As totalitarianism became established in the USSR, there was no place in literature for dissent, a variety of creative methods, or the activities of various writing and poetic groups. In such a situation, a course was set for preparing and holding an All-Union Congress of Writers, aimed at organizing a single creative union of writers, with the help of which it was possible to guide and control literature.

In Soviet literature until the end of the 80s of the twentieth century. The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers was assessed extremely positively. So, Ershov L.F. I believed that this congress demonstrated the ideological community of word artists. “This was a brilliant victory for our party (VKP (b) - V.M.) in one of the most difficult areas of ideology - in the field of literature."

Scientific research and documentary publications of the 90s of the last century make it possible to learn a lot of new things about the preparation and progress of the writers' congress of 1934. This is, first of all, the Verbatim Report of the Congress and the documentary collection "Power and the Artistic Intelligentsia." These and other publications clearly show the leading role of the Bolshevik Party in the process of uniting the forces of writers, in determining the tasks and creative methods of Soviet literature. The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) abandoned its neutral (at least in words) position in relation to various creative writing groups, etc. The previously hidden details of the work of the writers' congress, the creative positions of the writers, their increasingly growing conformism, etc. became known to a wide readership.

History of the organization of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviet Writers.

An important step towards the creation of the SSP was taken on April 23, 1932, when the Decree of the PB of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations” was published. This decree liquidated the associations of proletarian writers (VOAPP, RAPP) and outlined a course towards the unification of all writers who supported the platform Soviet power and striving to participate in socialist construction, in a single union of Soviet writers with the communist faction in it. It was also decided to develop measures to implement this decision. All preparatory work for the congress was carried out under the vigilant control of the PB and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

At the beginning of May of the same year, a group of poets (N. Aseev, A. Bezymensky, A. Zharov, V. Inber, M. Svetlov, etc.) sent a letter to the secretariat of the CPSU (b) in which they welcomed the party’s course towards creating a writers’ union . At the same time, they expressed concern that in the new union, poets, as before, would not be allowed to lead it, and that in the new union, the Rappovites would also rule: “Certain groups and comrades are trying to blur the decision of the Central Committee, trying to present the matter as if nothing happened , that only the name of the union has changed, and not the content of its work... We ask that all measures be taken to eliminate such tendencies, promising the Central Committee the warmest, most active support in the fight against hostile trends and influences on Soviet literature, in the direction of the fight against circleism, literaryism , groupism, etc.”

On May 7, 1932, a Decree of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) appeared on measures to implement the resolution of the PB of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations,” which approved the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers for the RSFSR, consisting of 24 people. It included: M. Gorky (honorary chairman), I.M. Gronsky (chairman of the union and secretary of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) faction at the Writers' Congress), V.Ya. Kirpotin (union secretary), A.A. Fadeev, F.I. Panferov, V.M. Kirshon, A.S. Serafimovich, A.I. Bezymensky, V.V. Ivanov, L.N. Seifullina, L.M. Leonov and others. Similar organizing committees were created in national republics. All of them united into the organizing committee of the All-Union Federation of Soviet Writers.

At its first meeting, the Presidium of the SSP Organizing Committee addressed the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with a request to approve the composition of the editorial boards of a number of magazines: “At the Literary Post”, “Krasnaya Nov”, “October”, “ New world" and etc.

However, “peace” was not established among writers after the above decree. This is evidenced, for example, by letters from A.A. Fadeeva L.M. Kaganovich and V.M. Kirshona I.V. Stalin and L.M. Kaganovich in May 1932. Prominent members of RAAPA complained that they were out of work and were criticized for the activities of this organization. Fadeev did not agree with the statement that he spent 8 years on some kind of groupism and circleism and that he should publicly sign this to the ridicule of all enemies of the proletarian revolution. In turn, Kirshon believed that the removal of Rappovites from work on the editorial boards of magazines would not lead to the consolidation of communists in literary union: “In the context of the campaign waged against us by our literary opponents, shouting that RAPP has been liquidated for the mistakes of the RAPP leadership, our complete removal from work in the editorial offices of literary magazines cannot but be perceived as our reluctance to participate in pursuing the party line on the literary front... Comrade Stalin spoke about the need to put us on “equal conditions.” But in such a situation, the result may not be “equal conditions,” but defeat.” And further: “Working in an atmosphere of mistrust is very difficult and difficult. We want to give Bolshevik works. We ask for the opportunity to work on the literary front, correct the mistakes we have made, and rebuild in new conditions.” Kirshon asked to leave the magazine “At the Literary Post” to the former Rappovites. The party leadership took into account the requests of the Rappovites. In June 1932, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On Literary Magazines”. A number of them were combined. In particular, the magazine “At the Literary Post” merged with the magazine “For Marxist-Leninist Art History” and “Proletarian Literature” into one publication. Kirshon, Fadeev and other Rappovites joined the editorial boards of a number of magazines.

The opening date of the congress was repeatedly postponed. Initially it was planned for 1932, but the PB of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on September 27, 1932 postponed the congress until mid-May 1933. However, this date was not final.

On March 16, 1933, I. Gronsky, in a memo to Stalin and Kaganovich, reported on the work done by the organizing committee of the congress and made a number of proposals related to the upcoming writers' forum. He believed that there was no reason to postpone the congress from May 1933 to a later date and that the following steps should be taken now (i.e. in March 1933):
1. Approve the order of the day of the congress and speakers.
2. The norm of representation at the congress. The following order of work of the congress was proposed:
1. Opening speech by Gorky on the tasks of the SSP.
2. Political report (from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b)).
3. Report of the SSP organizing committee (report by I. Gronsky).
4. The tasks of Soviet drama (proposed as a speaker by A.I. Stetsky - head of the department of cultural education of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks)
5. Charter of the SSP (report by Subotsky).
6. Report of the Credentials Committee.
7. Elections of the union board and audit commission.

The norm of representation at the congress was proposed as follows: one delegate from 10 members of the Union. Thus, it was planned to elect 500-600 people to the congress. Gronsky proposed to approve in advance the theses of the reports and resolutions of the congress in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

A few days later, there was a resolution of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the All-Union Congress of Writers", which fixed a new date for the convening of the Congress of Writers - July 20, 1933 in Moscow and essentially approved all of Gronsky's proposals. Only the speaker on Soviet drama was replaced. The manager's report was scheduled. sector of fiction of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks V.Ya. Kirpotin and co-reports by playwrights V. Kirshon, N. Pogodin and A. Tolstoy.

However, for some reason, the writers' congress was once again postponed to 1934. Even before the congress, the Politburo decided to create a literary fund at the writers' union, designed to improve the cultural and everyday services and financial situation of writers. Funds for the fund were to come from publishing activities, theater fees, and contributions from members of the Union of Soviet Writers.

Since the spring of 1934, the secret political department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR organized regular informing of the leadership of the People's Commissariat and the Party Central Committee about the mood in the writing community, the progress of the election of delegates to the congress, etc. In particular, the day before, government leaders were informed about the composition of delegations of writers from different regions of the country with characteristics of many writers. In essence, these were small dossiers on the congress participants, which contained information about their party background, participation in nationalist movements, etc.

The list of delegates included 597 people. Of these, 377 people had a casting vote, 220 had an advisory vote. It is noteworthy that among the delegates with a casting vote, 206 were members of the CPSU(b) or candidates, 29 were members of the Komsomol and 142 were non-party members. The average age of the delegates was about 36 years, and their writing experience was about 13 years. Thus, quite young and professional writers took part in the work of the congress. The organizers of the congress were also satisfied with the social composition of the delegates. About 70% of them came from working and peasant backgrounds

The genre composition of the participants in the writers' forum was diverse: prose writers accounted for about 33%, poets - 19.2%, playwrights - 4.7%, literary critics - 12.7%, essayists - 2%, journalists - 1.8%, children's writers - 1.3%, etc.

Writers and poets of 52 nationalities of the country were represented at the congress, including Russians - 201 people, Jews - 113 people, Georgians - 28, Ukrainians - 25, Armenians - 19, Tatars - 19, Belarusians - 17, Uzbeks - 12, Tajiks - 10, etc. The most representative were the writing delegations from Moscow - 175 people, Leningrad - 45, Ukraine - 42, Belarus - 26, Georgia - 30, Armenia - 18, Azerbaijan - 17, Uzbekistan - 16, Tajikistan - 14.

In particular, Tambov writer L.N. Zavadovsky, writer O.K. Kretova, prose writer, translator M.M. Kireev, prose writer, journalist M.M. Podobedov, critic, literary critic Plotkin took part in the congress from the Central Black Earth Region L., editor of the newspaper "Commune" Shver A.V.

Finally, 40 foreign writers were present at the congress, including Louis Aragon, Martin Andersen Nexe, Jean-Richard Bloch, Willy Bredel and others. Some of them spoke in the debate. Thus, the authorities could hope for predictable decisions from the writers' congress that corresponded to the then ideology and politics.

Speech by M. Gorky

The First All-Union Congress of Writers was held from August 17 to September 1, 1934. During this time, 26 meetings were held at which reports by A.M. were heard and discussed. Gorky about Soviet literature, S.Ya Marshak about children’s literature, K. Radek about modern world literature and the tasks of proletarian art, V.Ya. Kirpotina, N.F. Pogodina, V.M. Kirshon on Soviet drama, N.I. Bukharin on poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity in the USSR, V.P. Stavsky about the literary youth of the country, K.Ya. Gorbunova about the work of publishing houses with beginning writers, P.F. Yudin on the charter of the Union of Soviet Writers. The state of literature in the national republics was analyzed.

The beginning of the writers' congress was remarkable. It was discovered by A.M. Gorky, a man who became famous in his time as the “petrel of the revolution,” who stood in opposition to the Soviet leadership in the October days of 1917. Now he spoke at the congress as an apologist for the Soviet system. Hence such pathetic words in his speech: “We act as judges of a world doomed to destruction, and as people who affirm the true humanism of the revolutionary proletariat, the humanism of a force called upon by history to free the entire world of working people from envy, bribery, from all the ugliness that over centuries, they have distorted working people. We are the enemies of property, the terrible and vile goddess of the bourgeois world, the enemies of zoological individualism, affirmed by the religion of this goddess... We speak in a country illuminated by the genius of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, in a country where the iron will of Joseph Stalin works tirelessly and miraculously ". In our opinion, the report of A.M. Gorky’s views on Soviet literature cannot be called analytical. According to V. Baranov, it was a concise outline of the development of artistic consciousness, starting with oral folk art and ending with the most mature forms of generalization, established in world literature. Having included a considerable amount of specific material and demonstrating enormous erudition, the speaker managed not to name a single name of Soviet writers. V. Baranov refers to the version according to which Gorky’s speech was only part of a report that contained a specific conversation about writers and works. But this conversation did not suit the Soviet leadership and therefore did not take place. This version has a right to exist and then the impersonality of Gorky’s report is understandable.

Among the problems raised by Gorky in his report, a significant place was devoted to the tasks of Soviet literature. In particular, he emphasized that she cannot boast of the ability to take a creative approach to analyzing life. The stock of impressions and the amount of knowledge of writers is not large, and there is no special concern for expanding or deepening it. There is a lot of philistinism among writers. The main hero of Soviet literature should be the working man. Writers should pay more attention to children, Soviet women, the history of their country, etc. This call will be developed at the congress in the greetings and orders of numerous delegations from the Red Army, collective farmers, etc. From the order of the Red Army delegation: “We are waiting for you to write about the Red Army, about its fighters, to reflect the most important thing - the ordinary soldier in all his Everyday life“… “If a black raven croaks on the borders and white tanks roar, we will take the steering wheel in our hands, and our engines will rush into battle at fourth speed.”

Speaking about the Writers' Union, Gorky emphasized that it (the union) must set the task not only of protecting the professional interests of writers, but also the interests of literature as a whole. The union must, to some extent, take upon itself the leadership of the army of aspiring writers, must organize it, teach it how to work with literary material, etc. This explains Gorky’s thesis that Soviet literature should be organized as a single collective whole, as a powerful instrument of socialist culture. For Gorky, the principle of party leadership of literature was axiomatic. Thus, he served as a mouthpiece for party politics in literature. However, this did not save the writer from scathing criticism on the sidelines of the congress. According to M. Shahinyan, his report was incorrect, incorrect, not at all Marxist, and everyone was dissatisfied with him, even foreign delegates. Shaginyan suggested that Gorky’s report would be disavowed by Stalin. However, this assumption did not come true.

Zhdanov's speech

The secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, A. Zhdanov, also set the tone for the work of the Writers' Congress. In his speech, ideological cliches were clear: “The USSR has become an advanced industrial country, the country of the largest socialist agriculture in the world. The USSR has become a country in which our Soviet culture is developing and growing in full bloom. For Zhdanov, Soviet literature was presented as the most ideological, the most advanced and the most revolutionary. The current state of bourgeois literature is such that it can no longer create great works due to the decline and disintegration of the capitalist system. It is characterized by rampant mysticism, clericalism, and a passion for pornography. The “notable people” of bourgeois literature are now thieves, detectives, prostitutes , hooligans. It’s a completely different matter in the USSR, there are different heroes. Soviet literature is full of enthusiasm and heroism. It is optimistic. Zhdanov recalled Stalin’s words about writers as engineers human souls. They must know life in order to be able to depict everything truthfully in works of art, to depict it not scholastically, lifelessly, not simply as “objective reality,” but to depict reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and historical specificity must be combined with the task of ideological transformation and education of working people in the spirit of socialism. This is the method of socialist realism. Zhdanov believed that Soviet literature is not afraid of accusations of bias. It is tendentious, because in the era of class struggle there is not and cannot be literature that is not class-based, not biased, and supposedly apolitical. He proclaimed a break with the old type of romanticism, which depicted a non-existent life and non-existent heroes, leading the reader away from the contradictions and oppression of life into the world of the unrealizable, into the world of utopias. We, they say, need revolutionary romanticism. Let us note right away that the claims made by Zhdanov against old romanticism should be attributed in full to Soviet literature of the 30s and subsequent years. Revolutionary romanticism became essentially utopian. Unfortunately, the theses of Zhdanov’s report turned into targets for domestic writers. From their pen will come both tendentious and utopian works, far from the truth of life, but corresponding to party guidelines.

Zhdanov's report also contained reasonable ideas. In particular, he called on writers to master the so-called literary technique, to collect, study, critically master the literary heritage of the past, to fight for the culture of the language, for the high quality of works. The existing literature did not yet meet the requirements of the era. However, all these instructions and assessment of Soviet literature were elementary, non-specific and had the same directive character.

Debate after the speech of Gorky and Zhdanov

Many of the then famous writers took part in the debate that unfolded at the writers' congress. In their speeches, the ideas and provisions of the reports of Gorky and Zhdanov were developed. F. Gladkov could declare, for example, that the success of their artistic creativity depends to a large extent on whether the writer stands high as a cultural force, how deeply he has assimilated the theory of Marx-Lenin-Stalin. Among the shortcomings of Soviet literature, he attributed the powerlessness to create a typical human figure who would be a leader, who would excite, call for, and raise. There are no heroes like Bazarov, Rudin, Chelkash, F. Gordeev, etc. The writer criticized the inability of writers to maintain the plot of their works, which led to its collapse. The reader began to languish over the book; reading it became a depressing, boring task for him. For him, the book became “chewing gum.” Gladkov highly valued the work of F. Dostoevsky, who knew how to fill a complicated criminal plot with deep content, create amazing types of his time, and rise to philosophical heights. Gladkov, like other writers, was concerned about the problem of the language of works of art, but his judgments were clearly erroneous when he considered the language of Soviet workers to be richer, more dynamic, and cultural compared to pre-revolutionary times. He contradicted himself, admitting the presence in the language of the Soviet era of many different layers, dirt, cronyism, swearing, and old mutilated words.

In turn, L. Leonov expressed confidence that Soviet writers would participate in world congresses of socialist literature. The agenda will include not only issues related to the new man, but also issues of combating the elements and expanding human activity in space. Our century is the morning of a new era. Fiction ceases to be just fiction, it becomes one of the most important tools in the sculpting of a new person.

This idea was developed by I. Ehrenburg: “Our new person much richer, subtler, more complex than his shadow on the pages of books. Instead of a warm, vibrating life, instead of an organic biography, every now and then we end up with a declaration, equipped with a drummer’s card and a dozen well-known thoughts. ...Often we see people only in the workshops or on the board of the collective farm. Construction scaffolding is turning into an ultra-theatrical stage." Instead of living people, the reader sometimes sees mannequins. In showing modern man, many writers follow the path of least resistance. They replace the painful process of creativity with skillful maneuvering. They carefully avoid topics that seem difficult to them, brush aside true portrayal the intricacies of human psychology at the turn of the epoch. Ehrenburg sharply raised the question of literary criticism. The latter, in his opinion, puts writers either on the red or black board, while easily changing the position of writers. “We cannot allow,” Ehrenburg asserts, “that literary analysis of works immediately influence the social position of writers. The question of the distribution of benefits should not be dependent oncty from the critic's opinion. You cannot... consider the failures and breakdowns of an artist of words as crimes, and successes as rehabilitation." The idea was sharply voiced that writers are not consumer goods, there is no such machine that would allow the production of writers in series. You cannot approach the work of a writer with the yardstick of construction pace Thus, Ehrenburg dealt a blow to the popular opinion that any person who has mastered the technique of writing can become a writer in the Soviet country. In his opinion, the creation of a work of art is an individual, ... intimate matter, and literary teams will remain in the history of Soviet literature as picturesque , but a brief detail of his youth. In all likelihood, the writer had in mind a brigade of writers who visited the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which was being built by prisoners, and wrote a shameful book of essays. This trip was described in some detail by A. Avdeenko in the story “Excommunication.” Some participants in the congress regarded Ehrenburg's remark as an attack against them. In particular, Gorky defended collective publications, and Vs. Ivanov was openly proud of the trip to the canal and remarked venomously: “This does not mean that I am persuading the incomparable Ehrenburg to join one of these brigades. Some people like the international carriage built in 1893, and others like the Maxim Gorky airplane.”

Ehrenburg took under protection the works of V. Mayakovsky and B. Pasternak. Acquaintance with their works requires the reader to have general cultural and special literary training. “Romances on the harmonica are much easier than Beethoven,” he noted ironically.

Clearly in the spirit of the party guidelines of A. Zhdanov’s report, L. Sobolev, whose novel “Major Repairs” was then rated quite highly (for example, by Gorky), spoke at the congress. Popular on long years became his phrase: “The party and the government gave the Soviet writer absolutely everything. They took away from him only one thing - the right to write badly.” In this phrase, half-truth is closely intertwined with hypocrisy and clothed in a beautiful verbal shell. It is unlikely that anyone at the congress took seriously the words of A. Sobolev, although Gorky praised the writer’s saying, adding to it the words that the party and the government are depriving writers of the right to command each other, representing the right to teach each other in terms of sharing experience.

The performance of A. Fadeev was noteworthy. Already then included in literary power, he did not limit himself to assessing the literary life of the country, he burst out with praises to the party leadership, describing the friendship of people from the highest party echelon as courageous, principled, iron-clad, cheerful, and heroic. Fadeev, perhaps the first at the writers' forum, called on his colleagues to portray the figure of such a powerful genius of the working class as Stalin. However, this topic was not developed by other delegates of the congress, except for some points in I. Babel’s speech about the need to work on words in literary works in the same way as Stalin works on his speeches; Arosev's statements that Stalin is best friend and the leader of our literature and frenzied speech, Vs. Vishnevsky. The latter expressed his joy at the fulfillment of Lenin’s behest to transform Soviet literature into part of the common proletarian cause. Vishnevsky’s speech was pathetic and testified to his devotion to the ideals of the October Revolution and the Civil War. He called on writers to show Lenin in 1917 as the deepest, most interesting, most brilliant example of a commander and military leader in all of world history. Praises to Stalin also surpassed all boundaries: “Who knows that the entire Siberian partisan movement was silently led by Stalin? He ensured the defeat of Kolchak’s white front and the Far Eastern intervention. We contrast the cult of the superman in Germany, the cult of the “son of heaven” in Japan with the image of a true proletarian leader - a simple a calm human leader."

Y. Olesha’s speech evoked conflicting feelings. In his opinion, all the vices and all the virtues live in the artist. Each artist can only write what he is able to write. The writer admitted that until recently socialist industry and new buildings were not his topic: “I could go to a construction site, live at a factory among the workers, describe them in an essay, even in a novel, but this was not my topic... It’s difficult for me to understand the type of worker the type of revolutionary hero. I can't be that." Such a statement can be regarded as bold and frank. But then the writer will say: “Now is a different time. I want to create a type of young man, giving him the best of what was in my youth.” It can be assumed that Olesha fell under the spirit of the writers' congress with its promises, instructions, and oaths. It is known that Olesha, even after the congress, did not create a single remarkable, solid work in the spirit of socialist realism, glorification of the Soviet system, etc.

The same can be said about L. Seifullina, a brave and honest writer who openly expressed her views on Soviet literature. At the congress, she could declare that writers had no need to swear their loyalty to Soviet power. Being writers of the Soviet country, they cannot be hostile to it. On the other hand, Seifullina sarcastically remarked: “The Soviet government cherishes writers like nowhere else, and they are already accustomed to this. The writer is not averse to entrusting the proofreading of his works to the Politburo. With every little thing, we are accustomed to turning to the party and the government and waiting, than we will help. We are not looking for new names... We have no criticism at all. Writers must create responsible criticism for themselves, must defend themselves if it is irresponsible. Writers should not talk about this in quiet conversations behind the scenes, but strive for this loudly. ... In the writers' room "Rapp's habits still persist in the environment. We need smart, sensible leaders of the writers' union, not bureaucrats." A critical remark about Soviet drama was also appropriate: “It’s not Kirshon’s fault that he plays Shakespeare. It’s not Kirshon’s fault, but our fault that he already plays Shakespeare.” This is how Seifullina expressed her attitude towards this playwright’s undeservedly highly rated play “Wonderful Alloy”.

Results of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviet Writers.

At the congress, two principles of future totalitarianism in culture were demonstrated: the cult of the leader and unanimous approval of all decisions. The principles of socialist realism were out of discussion. All decisions of the congress were written in advance and delegates were given the right to vote for them. None of the 600 delegates voted against it. All speakers mainly talked about the great role of Stalin in all spheres of the country’s life (he was called “architect” and “helmsman”), including in literature and art. As a result, an artistic ideology was formulated at the congress, and not artistic method. All previous artistic activity of mankind was considered a prehistory to a “new type” of culture, “a culture of the highest stage,” that is, socialist. At Gorky’s suggestion, the most important criterion for artistic activity, the principle of humanism, included “love-hate”: love for the people, the party, Stalin and hatred for the enemies of the motherland. This kind of humanism was called “socialist humanism.” From this understanding of humanism logically followed the principle of partisanship in art and its reverse side - the principle of a class approach to all phenomena of social life.

It is obvious that socialist realism, which has its own artistic achievements and had a certain influence on the literature of the twentieth century. nevertheless, it is a much narrower trend than the realism of the twentieth century in general. Literature, which reflected the ideological mood of Soviet society, guided by Stalin’s slogan about strengthening the class struggle during the construction of socialism, was increasingly drawn into the search for “enemies.” Abram Tertz (A. Sinyavsky) in the article “What is socialist realism” (1957) defined its essence as follows: “The theological specificity of the Marxist way of thinking pushes to bring all concepts and objects, without exception, to the Goal, correlate with the Goal, define through Target. Works of socialist realism are very diverse in style and content. But in each of them there is a concept of purpose in direct or indirect meaning, in open or veiled expression. This is either a panegyric to communism and everything connected with it, or a satire on its many enemies.”

Indeed, a characteristic feature of the literature of socialist realism, socio-pedagogical, according to Gorky’s definition, is its pronounced fusion with ideology, sacredness, and also the fact that this literature was actually a special type of mass literature, in any case, it performed its functions. These were propaganda socialist functions.

The pronounced agitational nature of the literature of socialist realism was manifested in a noticeable predetermined plot, composition, often alternative (friends/enemies), in the author’s obvious concern for the accessibility of his artistic preaching, that is, a certain pragmatism. The principle of idealization of reality, which underlies the “method,” was Stalin’s main principle. Literature was supposed to lift people's spirits and create an atmosphere of anticipation for a “happy life.” In itself, the aspiration of the writer of socialist realism “to the stars” - to the ideal model to which reality is likened - is not a vice, it could be normally perceived among the alternative principles of depicting a person, but turned into an indisputable dogma, it became a brake on art.

But in the literature of these years there were also other voices - reflections on life and anticipation of its future difficulties and upheavals - in the poetry of Alexander Tvardovsky and Konstantin Simonov, in the prose of Andrei Platonov, etc. A major role in the literature of those years was played by an appeal to the past and its bitter lessons (historical novels by Alexei Tolstoy).

Thus, the congress awakened a lot of hope among poets and writers. “Many perceived it as a moment of contrasting the new socialist humanism, rising from the blood and dust of the battles that had just died down, with the bestial face of fascism, which was advancing in Europe. There were different intonations in the voices of the deputies, sometimes not without critical accents... The delegates rejoiced that, thanks to the transformation of society, countless ranks of new readers were rising.”

Collective trips of writers, artists and musicians to construction sites and republics became completely new methods in culture, which gave the character of a “campaign” to the purely individual work of a poet, composer or painter.

K. Simonov in his book “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation” recalls: “Both the construction of the White Sea Canal and the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, which began immediately after the completion of the first construction, were then, in general and in my perception, not only construction, but also a humane school reforging people from bad to good, from criminals to builders of five-year plans. Both through newspaper articles and through the book that the writers created after a large collective trip in 1933 along the newly built canal, this topic was mainly discussed - the reforging of criminals. ... all this was presented as something – on a societal scale – very optimistic, as a shift in people’s consciousness, as an opportunity to forget the past and move on to new paths. ... It sounds naive, but that’s how it was.”

At the same time, control over the creative activities of the entire Union and its individual members increased. The role of the censor and editor in all areas of culture increased. Many major phenomena of Russian literature remained hidden from the people, including the novels of Mikhail Bulgakov and Vasily Grossman, the works of foreign writers - Ivan Bunin, V. Khodasevich, and the work of repressed writers - Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam. Back in the early 1930s, Stalin called M. Bulgakov’s play “Running” an anti-Soviet phenomenon, an attempt to “justify or half-justify the White Guard cause,” Stalin allowed himself rude and insulting reviews to address something that seemed closely connected with the party and the whole history revolution and civil war poet, like Demyan Bedny. However, in 1930-1931, Stalin called him a “cowardly intellectual” who did not know the Bolsheviks well, and this was enough for the doors of most editorial offices and publishing houses to be closed in front of D. Bedny.

During these same years, Soviet children's literature flourished. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that many artists and writers, whose work “did not fit” into the rigid framework of socialist realism, went into children’s literature. Children's literature talked about universal human values: about kindness and nobility, about honesty and mercy, about family joys. Several generations of Soviet people grew up reading the books of K.I. Chukovsky, S.Ya. Marshak, A.P. Gaidar, S.V. Mikhalkova, A.L. Barto, V.A. Kaverina, L.A. Kassilya, V.P. Kataeva.

Thus, the period from 1932 to 1934 in the USSR was a decisive turn towards totalitarian culture:

1. The apparatus of art management and control over it was finally rebuilt.

2. The dogma of totalitarian art - socialist realism - has found its final formulation.

3. War was declared to destroy all artistic styles, forms, trends that differ from the official dogma.

In other words, in artistic life entered and fully defined its three specific phenomena as the main signs of totalitarianism: organization, ideology and terror.

Literature:

Georgieva T.S. Russian culture: History and modernity: Textbook for universities. – M., 2000. – 575 p.

World of Culture: Literature. Painting, Architecture. Ballet/Author-comp. O.M. Chernyakevich. – Smolensk, 2001. – 461 p.

World of Russian culture: Encyclopedic reference book/Auth. A.V. Agrashenkov, M.M. Shumilov. – M., 1997. – 618 p.

Russian literature of the 20th century. Reader. Compiled by N.A. Trifonov. - M., 1970.

Internet resources.

First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers

In 1934, the first writers' congress attracted everyone's attention. “Socialist realism” was declared the creative method of Soviet literature and Soviet art.

The mere fact of creating a new artistic method cannot be reprehensible. The trouble was that the principles of this method, as I.N. writes. Golomshtok “were matured somewhere at the top of the Soviet party apparatus, brought to the attention of a select part of the creative intelligentsia at closed meetings, meetings, briefings, and then in calculated doses they were published in print. The term “socialist realism” first appeared on May 25, 1932 on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta, and a few months later its principles were proposed as fundamental for all Soviet art at a mysterious meeting between Stalin and Soviet writers at Gorky’s apartment, held on October 26, 1932 . This meeting, too (like similar performances by Hitler) was surrounded by an atmosphere of gloomy symbolism in the taste of its main organizer.” At this meeting the foundations for the future organization of writers were also laid.

The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers (held in Moscow from August 17 to August 31, 1934) became the platform from which socialist realism was proclaimed as a method that soon became universal for all Soviet culture: “Comrade Stalin called you engineers of human souls. What responsibilities does this title impose on you? This is, firstly, to know life in order to be able to depict it truthfully in works of art, to depict it not scholastically, not dead, not simply as “objective reality,” but to depict reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and historical specificity artistic image must be combined with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialist realism” (Zhdanov’s speech). “Literature, and art in general, was thereby assigned a subordinate role as an educational tool, and nothing more. As can be seen, this formulation of the question was very far from the premises on the basis of which literary issues were discussed ten years earlier, at the height of the NEP.”

At the congress, two principles of future totalitarianism in culture were demonstrated: the cult of the leader and unanimous approval of all decisions. The principles of socialist realism were out of discussion. All decisions of the congress were written in advance and delegates were given the right to vote for them. None of the 600 delegates voted against it. All speakers mainly talked about the great role of Stalin in all spheres of the country’s life (he was called “architect” and “helmsman”), including in literature and art. As a result, the congress formulated an artistic ideology, not an artistic method. All previous artistic activity of mankind was considered a prehistory to a “new type” of culture, “a culture of the highest stage,” that is, socialist. At Gorky’s suggestion, the most important criterion for artistic activity, the principle of humanism, included “love-hate”: love for the people, the party, Stalin and hatred for the enemies of the motherland. This kind of humanism was called “socialist humanism.” From this understanding of humanism logically followed the principle of partisanship in art and its reverse side - the principle of a class approach to all phenomena of social life.

It is obvious that socialist realism, which has its own artistic achievements and had a certain influence on the literature of the twentieth century. nevertheless, it is a much narrower trend than the realism of the twentieth century in general. Literature, which reflected the ideological mood of Soviet society, guided by Stalin’s slogan about strengthening the class struggle during the construction of socialism, was increasingly drawn into the search for “enemies.” Abram Tertz (A. Sinyavsky) in the article “What is socialist realism” (1957) defined its essence as follows: “The theological specificity of the Marxist way of thinking pushes to bring all concepts and objects, without exception, to the Goal, correlate with the Goal, define through Target. Works of socialist realism are very diverse in style and content. But in each of them there is a concept of purpose in direct or indirect meaning, in open or veiled expression. This is either a panegyric to communism and everything connected with it, or a satire on its many enemies.”

Indeed, a characteristic feature of the literature of socialist realism, socio-pedagogical, according to Gorky’s definition, is its pronounced fusion with ideology, sacredness, and also the fact that this literature was actually a special type of mass literature, in any case, it performed its functions. These were propaganda socialist functions.

The pronounced agitational nature of the literature of socialist realism was manifested in a noticeable predetermined plot, composition, often alternative (friends/enemies), in the author’s obvious concern for the accessibility of his artistic preaching, that is, a certain pragmatism. The principle of idealization of reality, which underlies the “method,” was Stalin’s main principle. Literature was supposed to lift people's spirits and create an atmosphere of anticipation for a “happy life.” In itself, the aspiration of the writer of socialist realism “to the stars” - to the ideal model to which reality is likened - is not a vice, it could be normally perceived among the alternative principles of depicting a person, but turned into an indisputable dogma, it became a brake on art.

But in the literature of these years there were also other voices - reflections on life and anticipation of its future difficulties and upheavals - in the poetry of Alexander Tvardovsky and Konstantin Simonov, in the prose of Andrei Platonov, etc. A major role in the literature of those years was played by an appeal to the past and its bitter lessons (historical novels by Alexei Tolstoy).

Thus, the congress awakened a lot of hope among poets and writers. “Many perceived it as a moment of contrasting the new socialist humanism, rising from the blood and dust of the battles that had just died down, with the bestial face of fascism, which was advancing in Europe. There were different intonations in the voices of the deputies, sometimes not without critical accents... The delegates rejoiced that, thanks to the transformation of society, countless ranks of new readers were rising.”

Collective trips of writers, artists and musicians to construction sites and republics became completely new methods in culture, which gave the character of a “campaign” to the purely individual work of a poet, composer or painter.

K. Simonov in his book “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation” recalls: “Both the construction of the White Sea Canal and the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, which began immediately after the completion of the first construction, were then, in general and in my perception, not only construction, but also a humane school reforging people from bad to good, from criminals to builders of five-year plans. Both through newspaper articles and through the book that the writers created after a large collective trip in 1933 along the newly built canal, this topic was mainly discussed - the reforging of criminals. ... all this was presented as something – on a societal scale – very optimistic, as a shift in people’s consciousness, as an opportunity to forget the past and move on to new paths. ... It sounds naive, but that’s how it was.”

At the same time, control over the creative activities of the entire Union and its individual members increased. The role of the censor and editor in all areas of culture increased. Many major phenomena of Russian literature remained hidden from the people, including the novels of Mikhail Bulgakov and Vasily Grossman, the works of foreign writers - Ivan Bunin, V. Khodasevich, and the work of repressed writers - Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam. Back in the early 1930s, Stalin called M. Bulgakov’s play “Running” an anti-Soviet phenomenon, an attempt to “justify or half-justify the White Guard cause,” Stalin allowed himself rude and insulting reviews to address something that seemed closely connected with the party and the whole history revolution and civil war poet, like Demyan Bedny. However, in 1930-1931, Stalin called him a “cowardly intellectual” who did not know the Bolsheviks well, and this was enough for the doors of most editorial offices and publishing houses to be closed in front of D. Bedny.

During these same years, Soviet children's literature flourished. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that many artists and writers, whose work “did not fit” into the rigid framework of socialist realism, went into children’s literature. Children's literature talked about universal human values: about kindness and nobility, about honesty and mercy, about family joys. Several generations of Soviet people grew up reading the books of K.I. Chukovsky, S.Ya. Marshak, A.P. Gaidar, S.V. Mikhalkova, A.L. Barto, V.A. Kaverina, L.A. Kassilya, V.P. Kataeva.

Thus, the period from 1932 to 1934 in the USSR was a decisive turn towards totalitarian culture:

1. The apparatus of art management and control over it was finally rebuilt.

2. The dogma of totalitarian art - socialist realism - has found its final formulation.

3. War was declared to destroy all artistic styles, forms, trends that differ from the official dogma.

In other words, three specific phenomena entered artistic life and completely defined it as the main signs of totalitarianism: organization, ideology and terror.

State policy in the field of literature in the second half of the 30s.

Many hoped that the liquidation of RAPP and some other groups and the formation of a single Writers' Union would create a new atmosphere in the cultural life of the country and put an end to sectarian-dogmatic restrictions. These hopes were not destined to come true. In the conditions of growing bureaucratic centralism and the cult of Stalin, the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers made it possible to strengthen control over the work of literary figures, increase pressure on their personality and creativity, and the same fate befell other artists. The system of political control in the field of culture and public consciousness that had developed in the country by the mid-30s was a complex formation in which the Agitprop of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the NKVD and Glavlit existed in close contact and interaction. Formed in 1936, the Committee for Arts Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, along with purely administrative and economic activities, also performed censorship and control functions, like many other state and public organizations. Each department separately and the entire system together, mutually checking each other for the “purity” of the criteria and the thoroughness of the search for anti-Soviet elements, acted as efficiently as possible as a result of cross-information.

Having carried out organizational unification in literature, the Stalinist regime set about stylistic and ideological unification. The author's position is beginning to be replaced by a party point of view that is obligatory for everyone. In the concept of the hero, as it developed in the 30-40s, normativism imposed by power structures began to prevail: “An attempt was made on historical organics - the process of self-development of artistic thought, the “natural” logic of creative quests.”

The monistic concept of literary development corresponded to totalitarianism political regime. Socialist realism was soon declared “ highest stage V artistic development humanity." The party elite, led by Stalin, seeks to promote communist writers to leading literary positions.

However, since 1934 the nature of life and culture has changed markedly. The country is being prepared for the big “last” war - aggressive and victorious. Meanwhile, local wars are going on: Japanese attacks on Lake Khasan and Mongolia were repulsed in the Far East, the Baltic countries, Moldova, and the eastern regions of Poland, where many Ukrainians and Belarusians lived, were annexed in the west; there was a bloody, unsuccessful war with Finland. In the period 1934 - 1940, the apparatus of repression was launched at full capacity, the trials of Stalin's former comrades-in-arms were underway, now they were declared “enemies of the people” and agents of foreign intelligence services. Among these people are large business executives who once saved Russia from famine and devastation, the top of the military command, who imagined a future war better than Stalin. Millions of arrested people fill the Gulag labor camps, they complete the grandiose racks of power plants, canals, and military factories. At the same time, there is a powerful ideological indoctrination of the masses living on the brink of poverty. Culture plays a major role in this processing. From 1933 to 1939 - six years - there was very active anti-fascist propaganda. Hundreds of books have been published on this topic, books with anti-fascist content. But in 1939, after the conclusion of the pact, the propaganda machine turned 180 degrees, and yesterday's enemies became ours. not exactly friends, but, in any case, it was no longer allowed to write badly about them. From the mid-1930s, official propaganda began to preach a “new morality,” the essence of which was the affirmation of “strict morals” and strict discipline of people, especially young people. We again remembered traditional Russian values: patriotism, strong family, care for the younger and older generations. Russian nationalism was revived, Russian history and culture were promoted. Noting that such morality is characteristic of totalitarian regimes, Trotsky wrote that “many pedagogical aphorisms and copybooks of recent times could seem copied from Goebbels, if he himself had not copied them to a large extent from Stalin’s collaborators.”

R. Medvedev writes: The situation in the Soviet Union can be judged by many circumstances related to the trip to our country in the summer of 1936 by the largest French writer Andre Gide. ...On his trip, Andre Gide had to follow a predetermined route. He spoke often, but all his speeches were subject to strict censorship. So, for example, from the speech that Andre Gide was preparing to read in Leningrad, the following “seditious” paragraph was removed:

“After the triumph of the revolution, art is always in danger, since it can become orthodox. The triumph of the revolution must first of all give freedom to art. If it does not have complete freedom, it will lose all significance and value. And since the applause of the majority means success, awards and fame will be the lot of only those works that the reader can understand the first time. I often worry about whether there might not be a new Keats, Baudelaire or Rambo languishing in obscurity somewhere in the USSR, unheard of because of their strength and originality.”

Having become, in Lenin’s words, a wheel and a cog in the administrative system, socialist realism became untouchable, a dogma, a label that ensures existence or “non-existence” in the literary process. An article about the literary group “Pereval”, which appeared in an encyclopedic publication in 1935, is indicative in this regard. The struggle of “Pereval” against everydayism, naturalism, conjuncture, and illustrativeness was regarded as a conscious attack on proletarian literature. “ Artistic creativity, - wrote the author of the article A. Prozorov, - the Perevalians interpreted it openly and idealistically, as a kind of super-reasonable, intuitive, spontaneous-emotional, mostly subconscious process... The non-historical, non-class, “humanistic” approach to reality repeatedly led the Perevalians in their work to conciliation according to towards the class enemy." Works traditional realism, if they did not contain visible deviations from the accepted ideology, they were aligned with socialist realism (A.M. Gorky, A.N. Tolstoy, N.A. Ostrovsky, A.S. Makarenko, M.V. Isakovsky, B.L. Gorbatov , D. Bedny, A.E. Korneychuk, N.F. Pogodin, etc.), and not realistic - even the romantic prose of A. Green, K. Paustovsky was considered as a peripheral phenomenon, not worthy of taking a place in the history of literature. That is why, in order to save this or that writer, to protect him not only from the swing of the critical baton, but also from possible administrative consequences, literary critics hastened to pronounce the saving formula: the name is a prominent representative of socialist realism, sometimes without even thinking about the meaning of what was said. Such an atmosphere contributed to opportunism and a decrease in the level of artistry, since the main thing was not it, but the ability to quickly respond to the next party document.

R. Medvedev writes: “They tried to find “enemy influences” in the slightest inaccuracies in formulations; under the guise of revolutionary vigilance, sectarian narrow-mindedness, intolerance and rudeness were cultivated. Here, for example, is some reasonable advice given in one of the wall newspapers of the Institute of Journalism: “Colleague newspapermen, the reader begs you not to instruct him, not to teach, not to encourage, not to urge, but to sensibly and clearly tell him, set out, explain - what, where and how. The teachings and calls flow from this themselves.” And here is what was said about this council in a special resolution of the meeting of the Institute of Journalism: “These are the most harmful bourgeois theories that deny the organizational role of the Bolshevik press, and they must be completely destroyed.”

In 1936, the “discussion about formalism” unfolded. During the “discussion”, through harsh criticism, persecution began of those representatives of the creative intelligentsia whose aesthetic principles differed from “socialist realism”, which had become generally binding. Symbolists, futurists, impressionists, imagists, etc. came under a barrage of offensive attacks. They were accused of “formalistic quirks”, that their art was not needed by the Soviet people, that it was rooted in soil hostile to socialism. Essentially, the “fight against formalism” had the goal of destroying all those whose talent was not put to the service of power. Remembering 1935, Ilya Erenburg wrote: “At meetings of theater workers, Tairov and Meyerhold were reviled... Literary critics initially denounced Pasternak, Zabolotsky, Aseev, Kirsanov, Olesha, but, as the French say, appetite comes with eating, and soon in “formalistic quirks “Kataev, Fedin, Leonov, Vs. turned out to be guilty. Ivanov, Lidin, Ehrenburg. Finally, we reached Tikhonov, Babel, and Kukryniksy. ...The filmmakers took on Dovzhenko and Eisenstein...”

Many literary figures were repressed.

B.A. were declared “enemies of the people” and Trotskyists. Pilnyak (with whom Stalin had long-standing scores) and the young writer G. Serebryakova. O. Berggolts was arrested and languished in prison for about two years, accused of double-dealing and “Trotskyist-Averbakh deviation.” This is how the regional newspaper “Kirovskaya Pravda” reflected this event: “On May 22, a meeting of writers and journalists from the city of Kirov took place. A report on the fight against Trotskyists and other double-dealers in literature was made by Comrade. Aldan, who told the meeting about the double-dealing deeds of the Trotskyite Averbakhite Olga Berggolts... In 1934, Berggolts wrote the story “Journalists,” where she shamelessly slandered our Soviet reality and Soviet journalists. The hero of this story, Banquo, is a double-dealer, a fascist youth, and in the story he is portrayed as a positive type, as an example of a Soviet journalist.” In 1936-1939, I.E. was arrested and died. Babel, O. Mandelstam, L.L. Averbakh, A.K. Voronsky, M. Koltsov and many other writers, playwrights, poets, critics. The prominent literary critic Yu.G. was arrested, but survived. Oksman. Writers' organizations in the republics suffered great losses. Such famous Russian poets as Nikolai Klyuev, Pyotr Oreshin, Sergei Klychkov, Vasily Nasedkin, Ivan Pribludny were shot on fictitious charges.

Young literature also suffered major losses. K. Simonov recalled: “Among the young, aspiring writers, to whom the circle of the Literary Institute was associated, there were arrests, several of them memorable, especially the arrest of Smelyakov, whom I knew a little, more through Dolmatovsky than directly. Several students at our Literary Institute were also arrested.”

While in prison, Bruno Yasensky continued to write poetry; He managed to give one of them to his friends.

... Wars of dry winds are raging over the world,

Disturbing my country with a nasal howl,

But to me, imprisoned in a stone shroud,

Not to be among her sons at this moment...

But I don’t reproach you, Motherland,

I know that only by losing faith in my sons,

Could you believe such heresy?

And my song is like breaking a sword.

...Walk, my song, in the banner formation,

Don’t cry that we lived so short with you.

Our lot is inglorious, but sooner or later?

The Fatherland will notice its mistake.

The Fatherland “noticed its mistake” too late. All of the above and many other writers were rehabilitated only 18 years after B. Yasensky wrote this poem. Moreover, even the archives of almost all arrested writers were confiscated after arrest and destroyed after sentencing.

And yet, what was Soviet literature like during this difficult, even tragic period of its development? On the one hand, there is the complete dominance of official propaganda and Stalinist ideology. Words about the rise of the country, about unity, about people's support for all party initiatives and instructions, constant unanimous votes in which famous, respected people were mixed up with dirt. Society (including literary figures) is suppressed, strangled. And on the other hand, at the other pole, but in the same world, there are living, thinking people who understand everything. In society, in literature, spiritual life has not died out, has not frozen.

We can talk a lot and for a long time about how this second, hidden side of Soviet reality was expressed in censored literature, especially, of course, in children's literature. There, behind the joke, behind the grin, the adult reader will suddenly sense something not at all childish. For example, who is in the cage - the animals or those who look at them through the bars. etc. Both Marshak and Zoshchenko had lines on this topic (“it’s easier to breathe in a cage than among Soviet people” - Zhdanov about Zoshchenko’s story).

G.V. Zhirkov even praises censorship for the fact that it gave birth to Aesopian language and an “active”, “thinking and reflective” reader capable of perceiving it. While we do not agree with the author in such an optimistic understanding of censorship, we note that the phenomenon of metaphor, “Aesopian language” still took place in the period we are considering.

From this point of view, homemade poetry, various parodies and epigrams that were distributed among friends and acquaintances are very interesting. For example, the wonderful poet N. Oleinikov sends a friendly message to the artist Levin about his love for Shurochka Lyubarskaya. All smiles. And suddenly - tragic lines:

It's scary to live in this world,

There is no comfort in it, -

The wind howls at dawn

The wolves are gnawing the bunny.

Little calf crying

Under the butcher's dagger

Poor fish, sleepy

Climbing into the fisherman's net.

The lion roars in the darkness of the night,

The cat is moaning on the pipe

Bourgeois beetle and worker beetle

They die in the class struggle. (1932).

The artist Yuri Annenkov wrote in his memoirs: “Doctor Zhivago” is so far the only, but indisputable proof that living, authentic, free and advanced Russian art, Russian literature continues to exist in the death dungeons Soviet Union" V.S. Bakhtin, analyzing the literature, journalism and folklore of the 30s, comes to the conclusion that in addition to emigrant literature, which preserved the traditions of classical Russian literature and children's literature, where the problems of Soviet society were metaphorically expressed, there was another layer in literature, hidden from the eyes of the censor - political folklore. V.S. Bakhtin writes: “So, we see that all the main strata of the Russian people in free, uncensored oral literature, if they did not directly oppose the Soviet communist regime, then in any case condemned it, saw its shortcomings, cruelty, and stupidity. This is the people’s own art, their own assessments, expressed without any intermediaries.”

Speaking about this duality of literary life in the second half of the 30s, one can, of course, refer to Nikolai Berdyaev, who spoke about the contradictory and antinomic nature of Russia, about the creativity of the Russian spirit, which is dual, like Russian existence. But the point is still not so much in the peculiarities of Russia and the Russian spirit, but in the specifics of the repressive system.

Concluding the analysis of the party's policy in the field of literature in the 30s, we note that Soviet publications of the post-Stalin period, referring to Lenin's criticism of the exaltation of the individual, condemned the cult of Stalin, which flourished in the 30s and 40s, as a phenomenon not characteristic of communist ideology. The cult of personality allegedly generally contradicted the very nature of communism as a movement and as a system. But we, following Taper, must note that the emergence of the personality cult of Stalin was determined primarily by the general cult of “Marxism-Leninism”, which received greatest development after Lenin’s death, when “some of the most enlightened (from the point of view of Western culture) Bolsheviks expressed their emotions especially vividly and passionately. It is possible that Bukharin’s editorial lacked the ritual rhythm of Stalin’s “oath” speech (the text of which appeared in Pravda only on January 30), but its emotional impact was much stronger, and it apparently contributed more to the emergence of the cult Lenin. This cult, at the time of its formation, was a collective manifestation of party feelings towards its leader.”

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Proclamation of the method of socialist realism as the main one in new literature. The congress was preceded by the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932 “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations,” which abolished many literary organizations - and above all RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) - and created a single Union of Writers. Its goal was declared “to unite all writers who support the platform of Soviet power and strive to participate in socialist construction...”. The Congress was preceded by some liberal changes in the public atmosphere:

1) culture came to the fore as the most reliable bastion in the fight against fascism. At this time, M. Gorky’s famous article “Who are you with, masters of culture?” appeared, addressed to the writers of the world, to their reason and conscience: it formed the basis for many decisions of the Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture (Paris, 1935), in which among others, B. L. Pasternak participated;

2) on the eve of the congress, many “fierce zealots”, carriers of communist arrogance, real “demons” - persecutors of M. A. Bulgakov, A. P. Platonov, N. A. Klyuev, S. A. Klychkov, V. lost their influence. Y. Shishkova and others, such peddlers of vigilance and a caste approach to culture as L. Averbakh, S. Rodov, G. Lelevich, O. Beskin and others. And vice versa, some former oppositionists were involved in active work in the field of culture ( N. I. Bukharin was appointed editor of Izvestia and was even approved as a speaker on poetry at the First Congress instead of N. Aseev);

3) already before the congress, the idea of ​​the greatest responsibility of creative achievements, their words for the people in the harsh, actually pre-war decade, when gunpowder smelled from all borders, was introduced into the minds of writers - sometimes despotic - about the inadmissibility of fruitless formalistic experiments, trickery, naturalistic everyday writing, and especially preaching the powerlessness of man, immorality, etc.

The Congress of Writers was opened on August 17, 1934 in the Hall of Columns in Moscow with an opening speech by M. Gorky, in which the words were heard: “With pride and joy I open the first Congress of Writers in the history of the world.” Subsequently, there were alternate reports from writers - M. Gorky himself, S. Ya. Marshak (on children's literature), A. N. Tolstoy (on drama) - and party functionaries N. I. Bukharin, K. B. Radek, speeches by A. A. Zhdanov, E. M. Yaroslavsky and others.

What and how did the writers themselves talk about - not functionaries at all, not obsequious rushers in creativity - Yuri Olesha, Boris Pasternak, V. Lugovskoy? They talked about the sharply increased role of the people in the character, type of creativity, and in the fate of writers.

“Do not break away from the masses... Do not sacrifice face for the sake of position... With the enormous warmth with which the people and the state surround us, the danger of becoming a literary dignitary is too great. Away from this affection in the name of its direct sources, in the name of great, practical, and fruitful love for the homeland and today’s greatest people” (B. Pasternak).

“We took and nibbled on topics. In many ways, we walked along the top, not into the depths... This coincides with the drying up of the influx of fresh material, with the loss of a coherent and dynamic sense of the world. We need to free up space in front of ourselves... Our goal is poetry, free in scope, poetry coming not from the elbow, but from the shoulder. Long live space! (V. Lugovskoy).

The positive side of the work of the congress was that although the names of M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, O. Mandelstam, N. Klyuev were not mentioned, A. Bezymensky and D. Bedny were silently relegated to the background. And the frantic singer of collectivization F. Panferov (with his multi-page “Whetstones”) appeared as a phenomenon of very low artistic culture.

Was the method (the principle of world exploration, the initial spiritual and moral position) of socialist realism to blame for many of the sins of literature?

When developing the definition of the method, the fact that it was necessary was clearly taken into account - this was the spirit of the 30s, the spirit of a return to the Russian classics, to Russia the motherland! - discard the aesthetic directives of L. D. Trotsky, the “demon of revolution”, in the 20s. which prescribed a break with the past, the denial of any continuity: “The revolution crossed time in half... Time is cut into living and dead halves, and one must choose the living one” (1923). It turns out that in the dead half of culture are Pushkin, Tolstoy, and all the literature of critical realism?!

Under these conditions, a kind of “aesthetic revolution” took place; a definition of the method and the main point, the requirement for its functioning was found: “a truthful, historically specific image of reality in its development.” Witness and participant in conversations between writers (most often in the house of M. Gorky), chairman of the Organizing Committee of the First Congress, editor of “New World” I. M. Gronsky recalled the path to this definition:

“...I proposed to call (the creative method. - V.Ch.) proletarian socialist, and even better, communist realism... We will emphasize two points: firstly, the class, proletarian nature of Soviet literature, and secondly, we will point out literature The goal of the entire movement, the entire struggle of the working class is communism.

“You correctly pointed out the class, proletarian character of Soviet literature,” Stalin remarked, answering me, “and you correctly named the goal of our entire struggle... Pointing out the ultimate goal of the struggle of the working class - communism - is also correct. But we do not pose as a practical task the question of the transition from socialism to communism... Pointing to communism as a practical goal, you are getting a little ahead of yourself... How would you react if we call the creative method of Soviet literature and art socialist? realism? The advantage of such a definition is, firstly, brevity (only two words), secondly, clarity and, thirdly, an indication of continuity in the development of literature.”

Socialist realism is an accurate reflection of the era of the 30s. as the pre-war era, which required extreme monolithicity, the absence of strife and even disputes, an ascetic era, in a certain sense simplified, but extremely holistic, hostile to individualism, immorality, and anti-patriotism. Having received retroactive force, that is, having been extended to the story “Mother” by Gorky, to the Soviet classics of the 20s, it gained powerful support and persuasiveness. But called upon to be “responsible” for the ideologically depleted, normative literature of the 40s and 50s, almost for the entire “mass culture,” he became the object of feuilleton-cheeky irony.