Who headed the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers

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1st Congress of Soviet Writers - Congress of Lessons

August 17 - September 1, 1924, in the Column Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow, the I Congress of Soviet Writers was held - an event as significant as it is mysterious ...

A line of national, internal support was being built in the country. Most of our leaders began to understand that in the upcoming battle with the world of fascism and capital, we could not count on the help of the world proletariat, we must rely on our people, our economy, history and culture.

And at this time the People's Commissariat for Education, where N.K. Krupskaya tried to rule, "expelled" from school libraries Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and other "non-proletarian" writers. But the patriotic group of the country's leaders gave the signal to publish the classics domestic literature millions of copies, the creation of libraries for schoolchildren, peasants, Komsomol members, Red Army men from the works of N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, A. Pushkin, N. Nekrasov, M. Lermontov, I. Krylov.

Books of Pushkin's works filled the country in 1937.

Historical traditions were revived, forging the character of the Russian people as the victor over foreign invaders.

Revolutionaries of all eras have made room, giving way to St. Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Peter the Great. In the letter of the country's leaders - Stalin, Zhdanov, Kirov - it was said that the history of the country and its heroes should be respected: military men, scientists, cultural figures.

The First Congress of Soviet Writers became an ideological battlefield for many forces, and not only within the country. A considerable part of Russian writers, not accepting the actions of the Soviet regime in the maelstrom historical events, left Russia. Russian literature in exile for many years retained its spirit, style, image Russian classics... Among them are the great I. Bunin, I. Shmelev, I. Ilyin.

Someone returned home (A. Tolstoy, I. Kuprin, M. Gorky). On the territory of Soviet Russia, as it seemed to many, literature would never be revived. The leaders of those who declared themselves "proletarian" writers did not accept any continuity and proclaimed: "In the name of our Tomorrow, we will burn Raphael, We will destroy museums, trample the flowers of art ..." appropriated the right to be considered representatives of literature. All these Averbakhs, Lelevichs, Bezymensky, Libedinsky, Utkins, Ermilovs crucified any attempts to think nationally, to look deeply into life, to make it an object of artistic comprehension, the search for truth. Everything in literature was subordinated to the idea of ​​a world revolution, the destruction of the old world "to the ground" and a throw into the future. They did not notice the outstanding stories of M. Sholokhov, through clenched teeth they talked about the talent of L. Leonov, V. Shishkov, contemptuously calling them "fellow travelers."

The main road of literature ended up in the hands of the RAPP, VOAPP, MAPP - the so-called proletarian organizations of writers. They seized almost all literary and socio-political publications, brandishing a criticism club, beating up all recalcitrant, non-standard, trying to create national literature.

Society was then heterogeneous, there were many people who were the basis of the pre-revolutionary system. And although by 1936 it was declared in the Constitution about the equality of all people, in reality this was not.

The first warning to the "frantic zealots" was in 1932 the party decree "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations", according to which it was decided to liquidate the association of proletarian writers and unite all writers who support the platform of Soviet power into a single Union of Soviet Writers. M. Gorky, who is considered the initiator of this decision, nevertheless spoke in support of the RAPP, in which, according to him, "the most literate and cultured literary party members are united."

The congress was opened on August 17, 1934 with his report by A.M. Gorky. By this time he had finally returned to the Soviet Union. Of course, one can be skeptical and critical of the First Congress of Writers, but it nevertheless unfolded the panorama of the country's current, growing, diverse literature. Has he named all worthy names? No, of course. The Rappovshchina did not give up its positions, the Trotskyite-Bukharin opposition gave its "battle" at the congress.

One can ascribe "excesses" to Stalin, but one must not forget that, apart from A. Gorky, N. Bukharin (on poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetry) and K. Radek (on world literature and the tasks of proletarian art) made the main reports. But it was N. Bukharin who, back in 1927, published the famous "Evil Notes" about Sergei Yesenin. After that, for almost 30 years, Yesenin disappeared from the publishing plans, school textbooks and anthologies. Bukharin was also merciless towards Mayakovsky. K. Radek was just as cruel to the Russian poets.

They wanted to form their own line of recognized poets and leaders who were close to them in spirit. M. Gorky was used to put pressure on Stalin and Zhdanov. But talking about literature artistic creation, folk origins, Russian history, talent and language nevertheless took place, despite the loud proletarian rhetoric of the Rappians. M. Gorky said: “The beginning of the art of words is in folklore. Collect our folklore, learn from it, process it ... The better we know the past, the easier it is, the more deeply and joyfully we will understand the great significance of our present creativity ”.

The Writers' Union was to a large extent subordinated to the state and the party leadership, but the conditions for creativity, material support were given to the writers.

Option 2.

The first congress of Soviet writers took place from 17 to 30 August 1934. This truly significant event was preceded by the Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations", from which it followed that numerous writers' organizations had to unite into one, consisting of writers fully "supporting the platform of Soviet power." The authorities wanted to unite people who are completely different in worldview, creative methods and aesthetic inclinations. The venue for the First All-Union Congress of Writers was Column Hall houses of the Unions. For such a solemn event, it was necessary to decorate the room, after a small number of debates, it was decided to hang portraits of the classics of literature in the hall. What immediately became the reason for the irony of evil-tongued writers: There was enough room for everyone, Some on the podium, some in the stalls, And some just on the wall! So, for example, she was stunned by everyone, The fact appeared to us like in a dream - At the pulpit of Tolstoy Alyosha, Tolstoy Leva - on the wall. One of the delegates to the First Congress of the USSR Writers' Union A. Karavaeva recalled the opening day of the forum: “On a sunny August morning in 1934, approaching the House of Unions, I saw a large and lively crowd. Amid the dialect and applause - just like in the theater - a young voice was heard, which energetically called: “Comrades, delegates to the First Congress of Soviet Writers! Entering this hall, do not forget to raise your historical mandate! ... The Soviet people wish to see and know you all! Give, comrades, your name and show your delegate card! ”According to the mandate data, men predominated among the delegates to the First Congress of USSR Writers - 96.3%. The average age of the participants is 36 years. The average literary experience is 13.2 years. By origin, the first place comes from peasants - 42.6%, from workers - 27.3%, working intelligentsia - 12.9%. Of the nobility, only 2.4%, clergymen - 1.4%. Half of the delegates are members of the CPSU (b), 3.7% of the candidates for members of the CPSU (b) and 7.6% of the Komsomol members. The number of prose writers among the congress participants is 32.9%, poets - 19.2%, playwrights - 4.7%, critics - 12.7. Children's writers - 1.3% and journalists - 1.8%. National composition Congress. Russians - 201 people; Jews - 113; Georgians - 28; Ukrainians - 25; Armenians - 19; Tatars - 19; Belarusians - 17; Uzbeks -12. Representatives of another 43 nationalities were represented by 10 to one delegates. There were even Chinese, Italians, Greeks and Persians.

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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 conditions of revolutionary upheavals, civil war managed to withstand, survive as the most important element of the spiritual life of the country. Undoubtedly, the detachment of writers thinned, many of them left Russia, rearing in revolutionary ecstasy. Others remained, rallying in various literary associations... The talent of a number of young writers and poets showed up. In the 1920s, works appeared that have become classics of modern Russian literature.

On the other side, new government and its ideology approached literature from utilitarian class positions, from the point of view of the expediency of the 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 literary circles country. Soon after October revolution attempts were made to isolate the proletarian writers and poets into a single creative organizations, the term writer-fellow traveler appeared. The activity of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), which has arrogated to itself the right to teach other writers how and what to write, to speak on behalf of the Bolshevik Party, has brought significant damage to literature. With the establishment of totalitarianism in the USSR, there was no place in literature for dissent, diversity creative methods, activities of various writing and poetry groups. In such an atmosphere, a course was taken to prepare and conduct 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.

V Soviet literature up to 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. believed that this congress demonstrated the ideological community of artists of the word. "It was a brilliant victory for our party (VKP (b) - VM) in one of the most difficult areas of ideology - in the field of literature."

Scientific research, documentary publications of the 90s of the last century allow you to learn a lot about the preparation and course of the writers' congress in 1934. These are, 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 writers' forces, in defining the tasks and creative methods of Soviet literature. The CPSU (b) abandoned its neutral (at least in words) position in relation to various creative writing groups, etc. The details of the work of the writers' congress, the creative positions of the writers, their ever-growing conformity, etc., became known to a wide readership.

The history of the organization of the First All-Russian Congress Soviet writers.

An important step towards the creation of the SSP was made 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 issued. This resolution liquidated the associations of proletarian writers (VOAPP, RAPP) and outlined a course towards uniting all writers who supported the platform of Soviet power and striving to participate in socialist construction into 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 to the congress was conducted under the watchful control of the PB and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

In early May of the same year, a group of poets (N. Aseev, A. Bezymensky, A. Zharov, V. Inber, M. Svetlov and others) sent a letter to the secretariat of the CPSU (b), in which they welcomed the party's course towards creating a union of writers ... At the same time, they expressed their fear that in the new union, the poets, as before, would not be allowed to lead it, that in the new union the Rappians would rule: " Separate groups and the comrades are trying to smear the decision of the Central Committee, they are trying to present the matter in such a way that nothing happened, that only the name of the union has changed, and not the content of its work ... We ask you to take all measures to eliminate such tendencies, promising the Central Committee the most ardent, most active support in the direction of the struggle with hostile currents and influences on Soviet literature, in the direction of the struggle against circle, literary, group, etc. "

On May 7, 1932, the Resolution of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on measures to implement the PB decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations" appeared, 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 CPSU (b) faction at the writers' congress), V. Ya. Kirpotin (secretary of the union), 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 in the organizing committee of the All-Union Federation of Soviet Writers.

At its first meeting, the Presidium of the SSP Organizing Committee appealed to 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 a Literary Post", "Krasnaya Nov '," October "," Novy Mir "and others.

However, "peace" among literary people after the above-mentioned decision was not established. This is evidenced, for example, by the letters of A.A. Fadeeva L.M. Kaganovich and V.M. I. V. Kirshona Stalin and L.M. Kaganovich in May 1932. Prominent members of the RAAPA complained that they were out of work, they were criticized for the activities of this organization. Fadeev did not agree with the assertion that he had spent 8 years on some kind of groupism and circle activity and that he should publicly sign this to ridicule all the enemies of the proletarian revolution. In turn, Kirshon believed that the removal of the RAPP members from work in the editorial boards of magazines would not lead to the consolidation of the Communists in the literary union: from working in the editorial offices of literary journals cannot but be perceived as unwillingness of our participation in carrying out the party line on the literary front ... Comrade Stalin spoke of the need to put us on "equal conditions." rout ". And further: "It is very difficult and difficult to work in an atmosphere of mistrust. We want to give Bolshevik works. We ask you to give us the opportunity to work on the literary front, correct our mistakes, and reorganize in new conditions." Kirshon asked the former members of the Rapp to leave the magazine "On a literary post". The party leadership took into account the requests of the Rapp members. In June 1932, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted a resolution "On literary journals". A number of them were merged. In particular, the magazine" On a literary post "merged with the magazine" For Marxist-Leninist Art Studies "and" Proletarian Literature "into one publication. Kirshon, Fadeev and other members of the Rapop were included in the editorial boards of a number of magazines.

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

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 forum of writers. 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 already now (i.e., in March 1933):
1. To approve the order of the day of work of the congress and speakers.
2. The rate of representation at the congress. The following procedure was proposed for the work of the congress:
1. introduction Gorky about the tasks of the SSP.
2. Political report (from the Central Committee of the CPSU (b)).
3. Report of the organizing committee of the SSP (report by I. Gronsky).
4. The tasks of Soviet drama (suggested as a speaker by A.I. Stetsky - head of the department of cultural and educational work of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b)
5. Charter of the SSP (report by Subotsky).
6. Report of the credentials committee.
7. Election of the board of the union and the 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 suggested that the theses of the reports and resolutions of the congress be approved in advance by the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

A few days later, the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution "On the All-Union Congress of Writers", which fixed a new date for convening 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 report was scheduled by the head. the sector of fiction of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) V.Ya. Kirpotin and co-reports of 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 under the Writers' Union, designed to improve cultural and everyday services and the material situation of writers. Funds for the fund were to come from publishing, 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 Central Committee of the party about the mood in the writers' environment, the course of the election of delegates to the congress, etc. In particular, on the eve of its government leaders were informed about the composition of the delegations of writers from different regions countries with the characteristics of many writers. In fact, these were small dossiers on the participants of the congress, which contained information about their party past, participation in nationalist movements, etc.

The list of delegates included 597 people. Of these, 377 people had a casting vote, 220 were deliberative. 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-partisan. The average age of the delegates was about 36 years, and the 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 the working and peasant environment

The genre composition of the participants in the writing forum was diverse: there were about 33% of prose writers, poets - 19.2%, playwrights - 4.7%, literary critics - 12.7%, essays - 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 writers' 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 Zavadovsky L.N., writer Kretova O.K., prose writer, translator M.M. Kireev, prose writer, journalist Podobedov M.M., critic, literary critic Plotkin took part in the work of the congress from the Central Black Earth Region. L., editor of the newspaper "Commune" Shver A.V.

Finally, the congress was attended by 40 foreign writers, including Louis Aragon, Martin Andersen Nexe, Jean-Richard Blok, Willie Bredel, and others. Some of them spoke in the debate. Thus, the authorities could hope for predictable decisions corresponding to the then ideology and politics of the writers' congress.

M. Gorky's speech

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 the reports of A.M. Gorky about Soviet literature, S.Ya. Marshak about children's literature, K. Radek about contemporary world literature and the tasks of proletarian art, V.Ya. Kirpotina, N.F. Pogodin, V.M. Kirshon on Soviet drama, N.I. Bukharin on poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetry in the USSR, V.P. Stavsky about the literary youth of the country, K.Ya. Gorbunov on the work of publishing houses with novice 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 congress of writers was remarkable. It was discovered by A.M. Gorky, a man who became famous at one time as a "petrel of the revolution", who stood up in opposition to the Soviet leadership in the October days of 1917. Now he spoke at the congress as an apologist Soviet system... Hence such pompous words in his speech: "We act as judges of a world doomed to destruction, and as people who affirm the genuine humanism of the revolutionary proletariat, the humanism of a force called by history to free the whole world of working people from envy, bribery, from all the deformities that for centuries we have distorted working people.We are enemies of property, a terrible and vile goddess of the bourgeois world, enemies of zoological individualism, affirmed by the religion of this goddess ... We appear 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 about Soviet literature cannot be called analytical. According to V. Baranov, he was a concise sketch of the development of artistic consciousness, starting with the oral folk art and ending with the most mature forms of generalization, established in world literature. Having included a lot of specific material and demonstrated great 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 the 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 assigned to the tasks of Soviet literature. In particular, he stressed that she cannot boast of the ability to be creative in the analysis of life. The stock of impressions, the amount of knowledge of the writers is not great, and there is no particular concern for expanding, deepening it. There is a lot of philistinism among writers. The main hero of Soviet literature must be a man of labor. Writers should pay more attention to children, Soviet women, history of your country, etc. This call will be developed at the congress in the greetings and orders of numerous delegations from the Red Army, collective farmers and others. From the order of the Red Army delegation: “We expect you to write about the Red Army, about its fighters, Everyday life"..." If a black raven croaks at the borders and white tanks roar, we will take the steering wheel in our hands, and our motors will rush into battle with the fourth speed. "

Speaking about the writers' union, Gorky emphasized that he (the union) should set the task not only to protect the professional interests of writers, but also the interests of literature in general. The union should, to some extent, take over the leadership of the army of novice writers, should organize it, teach it 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 provision on party leadership of literature was axiomatic. Thus, he fulfilled the functions of the mouthpiece of party politics in literature. However, this did not save the writer from raving criticism on the sidelines of the congress. According to M. Shaginyan, his report was incorrect, incorrect, by no means Marxist, and everyone is unhappy with him, even the foreign delegates. Shahinyan suggested that Gorky's report would be disavowed by Stalin. However, this assumption did not come true.

Zhdanov's speech

A. Zhdanov, secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), set the tone for the work of the congress of writers. In his speech, ideological clichés were vivid: "The USSR has become an advanced industrial country, the country of the world's largest socialist agriculture. The USSR has become a country in which our soviet culture... 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 because of the decline and decomposition of the capitalist system. She is characterized by rampant mysticism, clericalism, passion for pornography. The "notable people" of bourgeois literature are now thieves, detectives, prostitutes, hooligans. It is quite another matter in the USSR, here there are other heroes. Soviet literature is full of enthusiasm and heroism. She 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 not scholastic, deadly, not just as "objective reality", but to depict reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and historical concreteness must be combined with the task of ideological remaking and educating the working people in the spirit of socialism. This is the method socialist realism... Zhdanov believed that Soviet literature was not afraid of accusations of bias. It is tendentious, because in the era of class struggle there is no literature that is not class, not tendentious, and allegedly apolitical. He proclaimed a break with the old type of romanticism, which depicted a non-existent life and non-existent heroes, taking the reader away from the contradictions and oppression of life into the unrealizable world, into the world of utopias. We, they say, need revolutionary romanticism. We note right away that the claims made by Zhdanov against the old romanticism should be fully attributed to Soviet literature of the 30s and subsequent years. Revolutionary romanticism has become essentially utopian. Unfortunately, the theses of Zhdanov's report have become targets for Russian writers. From under their pen will come out and tendentious and utopian works, far from the truth of life, but at the same time corresponding to party attitudes.

Zhdanov's report also contained reasonable ideas. In particular, he called on writers to master the so-called technique of literary work, to collect, study, critically master literary heritage of the past, to fight for the culture of the language, for the high quality of works. The available literature did not yet meet the requirements of the era. However, all these instructions and assessments 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, ideas and provisions of the reports of Gorky and Zhdanov were developed. F. Gladkov could declare, for example, that the success of their artistic work depends to a large extent on whether the writer stands highly as a cultural force, how deeply he has assimilated the theory of Marx-Lenin-Stalin. To the shortcomings of Soviet literature, he attributed the impotence to create a typical human figure, which would be the leading one, which would excite, call for, raise. There are no heroes like Bazarov, Rudin, Chelkash, F. Gordeev, etc. The writer criticized the inability of the writers to maintain the plot of their works, which led to its disintegration. The reader began to languish over the book, reading it became for him a depressing, boring occupation. For him, the book became "chewing gum". Gladkov highly appreciated the work of F. Dostoevsky, who knew how to fill a criminal intricate plot with deep content, create amazing types of his time, rise to philosophical heights. Gladkov, like other writers, was worried about the problem of the language of works of art, but his judgments were clearly erroneous when he considered the language of the Soviet workers to be richer, more dynamic, cultural, compared to pre-revolutionary times. He contradicted himself, recognizing the presence in the language Soviet era a lot of all sorts of layers, dirt, criminality, abuse, old mutilated words.

In turn, L. Leonov expressed confidence that Soviet writers would take part 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, expanding human activities in space. Our century is this morning 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, thinner, more complex than his shadow on the pages of books. Instead of a warm vibrating life, instead of an organic biography, we now and then get a declaration, supplied with a drummer's card and a dozen well-known thoughts. ... Quite often we see people only in workshops or in the board of a collective farm. The scaffolding of the construction site is turning into an ultra-theatrical stage. ”Instead of living people, the reader sometimes sees mannequins. modern man many writers follow the path of least resistance. They replace the painful process of creativity with skillful maneuvering. They carefully bypass topics that seem difficult to them, brush aside the truthful portrayal of the intricacies of human psychology at the turn of eras. Ehrenburg sharply raised the question of literary criticism. The latter, in his opinion, puts writers either on a red or black board, while easily changing the position of writers. "It should not be allowed," asserts Ehrenburg, "so that the literary analysis of works immediately affects social status writers. The distribution of benefits should not be dependent oncfrom the opinion of the critic. It is impossible ... to consider the failures and breakdowns of the artist of the word as crimes, and successes as rehabilitation. ”The thought was sharply expressed that writers are not consumer goods, there is no such machine that would allow making writers in series. Thus, Ehrenburg struck a blow at the widespread opinion that any person who mastered the technique of writing can become a writer in the Soviet country. artwork an individual case, ... intimate, and literary brigades will remain in the history of Soviet literature as a picturesque but brief detail youthful years... In all likelihood, the writer had in mind a brigade of writers who visited the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which was being built by the forces of prisoners, and wrote a shameful book of essays. This trip was described in some detail by A. Avdeenko in the story "Excommunication". Some of the congress participants regarded Ehrenburg's remark as an attack on them. In particular, Gorky defended collective publications, and Vs. Ivanov was openly proud of his trip to the canal and sarcastically remarked: “This does not mean that I am persuading the incomparable Ehrenburg to join one of these brigades. Who likes the international carriage built in 1893, and who likes the Maxim Gorky plane.

Ehrenburg took under his protection the works of V. Mayakovsky and B. Pasternak. Acquaintance with their works requires general cultural and special literary training from the reader. "Romances on the accordion are much easier to come by than Beethoven," he said ironically.

Obviously in the spirit of the party guidelines of A. Zhdanov's speech, L. Sobolev spoke at the congress, whose novel " Overhaul"then it was rated quite high (for example, by Gorky). 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, the half-truth is closely intertwined with hypocrisy and clothed in a beautiful verbal form. Hardly anyone at the congress took the words of A. Sobolev seriously, although Gorky praised the writer's dictum, adding to it the words that the party and the government deprive writers of the right to command each other, presenting the right to teach each other in terms of exchange of experience.

A. Fadeev's speech was remarkable. Even then, entering the literary power, he did not limit himself to assessing literary life country, burst out in praises of the party leadership, describing the friendship of people from the highest party echelon as courageous, principled, iron, cheerful, heroic. Fadeev, perhaps the first at the writers' forum, urged his colleagues to portray the figure of such a powerful working class genius 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 in this way on words in literary works how Stalin works on his speeches; Arosev's statements that Stalin is the best friend and leader of our literature and rabid speech of Vs. Vishnevsky. The latter expressed his joy at the fulfillment of Lenin's behest on the transformation of Soviet literature into a part of the general proletarian cause. Vishnevsky's speech was notable for its pathos, testifying 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. The dithyrambs to Stalin also surpassed all boundaries: "Who knows that Stalin silently led the entire Siberian partisan movement? He ensured the defeat of Kolchak's white front and the Far Eastern intervention. a calm human leader. "

A contradictory feeling was caused by the speech of Yu. Olesha. In his opinion, all vices and all virtues live in the artist. Every artist can only paint what he is able to paint. The writer admitted that until recently, socialist industry, new buildings were not his topic: "I could go to a construction site, live at a factory among workers, describe them in an essay, even in a novel, but that was not my topic ... It is difficult for me to understand the type of worker, type of revolutionary hero. I can't be. " 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 young man, endowing him with the best of what was in my youth. "It can be assumed that Olesha fell into the mood of the writers' congress with his promises, instructions, oaths. It is known that Olesha did not create a single remarkable, solid work in the spirit of socialist realism after the congress. , glorification of the Soviet system, etc.

The same can be said about L. Seifullina, a bold and honest writer who openly expressed her views on Soviet literature. At the congress, she could declare that there was no need for writers to swear in their loyalty to the Soviet regime. Being writers Soviet country, they cannot be hostile to her. 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 Politburo with the proofreading of his works. We are accustomed to addressing the party and the government with every trifle and waiting for us. 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 must talk about it not in quiet behind-the-scenes conversations, but loudly to achieve it. ... In the writer's room. the environment still retains Rapp's habits. We need smart, intelligent leaders of the writers' union, not bureaucrats. " It was appropriate and criticism to the Soviet drama: "It is not Kirshon's fault that he walks in Shakespeare. It is not Kirshon's fault, but our fault that he walks in Shakespeare." This is how Seifullina expressed her attitude to the undeservedly highly appreciated play of this playwright "Wonderful Alloy".

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

At the congress, two principles of the 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 the question. 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. All the orators, basically, talked about the great role of Stalin in all spheres of the country's life (he was called “the architect” and “helmsman”), including in literature and art. As a result, an artistic ideology was formulated at the congress, and not artistic method... All the previous artistic activity of mankind was considered a prehistory to the culture of a “new type”, “the culture of the higher stage,” that is, the socialist one. The most important criterion artistic activities- the principle of humanism - at the suggestion of Gorky, they included "love - hate": love for the people, the party, Stalin and hatred for the enemies of the homeland. This humanism has been called “socialist humanism”. From this understanding of humanism, the principle of the partisanship of art and its back 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 reflecting the ideological sentiments of Soviet society, guided by Stalin's slogan of intensifying the class struggle in the course of building socialism, was increasingly drawn into the search for "enemies." Abram Tertz (A. Sinyavsky) in his article "What is socialist realism" (1957) defined its essence as follows: Target. The works of socialist realism are very diverse in style and content. But in each of them there is the concept of a goal in a direct or indirect meaning, in an open or veiled expression. This is either a panegyric to communism and everything connected with it, or a satire on its many enemies. "

Really, characteristic feature literature of socialist realism, socio-pedagogical, according to Gorky's definition, is its pronounced fusion with ideology, sacredness, as well as the fact that this literature was actually a special kind of mass literature, in any case, fulfilled its functions. These were socialist agitational functions.

The pronounced propaganda of the literature of socialist realism was manifested in a noticeable predestination of the plot, composition, often alternative (ours / enemies), in the author's obvious concern for the availability of his artistic preaching, that is, some pragmatism. The principle of idealizing reality, underlying the “method,” was Stalin's main tenet. Literature was supposed to raise the spirit of people, create an atmosphere of expectation " happy life”. In itself, the aspiration of the writer of socialist realism “to the stars” - to the ideal model, which is likened to reality - is not a vice, it could be normally perceived in a number of alternative principles of depicting a person, but turned into an indisputable dogma, it became a brake on art.

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

Thus, the congress awakened many hopes among poets and writers. “Many perceived it as a moment of opposing the new socialist humanism, emerging from the blood and dust of the battles that had just thundered, against the beastly face of fascism, which was advancing in Europe. Different intonations sounded in the voices of the deputies, sometimes not devoid of critical accents ... The delegates were glad that thanks to the transformation of society, countless ranks of new readers were rising. "

Collective trips of writers, artists and musicians to construction sites, to republics became completely new methods in culture, which gave the character of a "campaign" to a purely individual creativity 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 end 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. And through newspaper articles and through the book that the writers created after a large collective trip in 1933 through the newly built canal, this topic was mainly covered - the reforging of criminals. ... all this was presented as something - on the scale of society - very optimistic, like shifts in the consciousness of people, as an opportunity to forget the past, to move on to new paths. ... It sounds naive, but it was. "

At the same time, the control over creative activity the entire Union and its individual members. The role of the censor and editor increased in all areas of culture. Many major phenomena of Russian literature remained hidden from the people, including the novels of Mikhail Bulgakov and Vasily Grossman, the works of writers abroad - 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 "The Run" an anti-Soviet phenomenon, an attempt to "justify or semi-justify the White Guard case," revolution and civil war poet like Demyan Bedny. However, in 1930-1931, Stalin called him a “frightened intellectual” who does not know the Bolsheviks well, and this was enough to close the doors of most editorial offices and publishing houses to D. Poor.

In the same years, Soviet children's literature flourished. This was largely facilitated by the fact that many artists and writers, whose work “did not fit” into the rigid framework of socialist realism, went to children's literature. Children's literature told about common human values: about kindness and nobility, about honesty and mercy, about family joys. Several generations of Soviet people grew up on the books of K.I. Chukovsky, S. Ya. Marshak, A.P. Gaidar, S.V. Mikhalkova, A.L. Barto, V.A. Kaverina, L.A. Kassil, 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 was finally rebuilt.

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

3. A war was declared to destroy all artistic styles, forms, tendencies that differ from the official dogma.

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

Literature:

Georgieva T.S. Russian Culture: History and Modernity: Tutorial for universities. - M., 2000 .-- 575 p.

The world of culture: Literature. Painting, Architecture. Ballet / Auth.-comp. O. M. Chernyakevich. - Smolensk, 2001 .-- 461 p.

The World of Russian Culture: Encyclopedic Reference / Ed. A.V. Agrashenkov, M.M. Shumilov. - M., 1997 .-- 618 p.

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

Internet resources.

The beginning of the 30s for the USSR meant that Soviet authority has existed in the country for 15 years and has become quite solidly entrenched, despite the catastrophic famine of 1933, excesses and excesses of collectivization. Before the eyes of the dumbfounded Europe and America, caught in an unprecedented economic crisis, the industrial might of the USSR was growing. In the United States, which disdained Soviet Russia, under the blows of the Great Depression and growing social protest, they recognize the Soviet Union and establish diplomatic relations with it. Europe regurgitated the economic crisis with fascism. It smelled like a new world war.

Within the party of communists, supporters of Trotsky, the world revolution, all the wings of pre-revolutionary revisionist social democracy, left-wing irresponsible rebellion, waiting for its hour Zionism, all these Bukharins, Zinovievs, Radeks, pushed away from the first and leading places, were preparing for revenge. In the country, a line was looming towards national, internal supports, most of leaders began to understand that in the upcoming battle with the world of fascism and nationalless capital, we cannot count on the help of the world proletariat, but must rely on our own people, on our own economy, on own story, to their own culture. During the revelry of the People's Commissariat for Education, where N.K. Krupskaya, was expelled from school libraries "singer noble estates"Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and other" non-proletarian "writers. But at this time, a group of the country's leaders gave a signal for a massive, millionth edition of the classics of Russian literature, creating libraries for schoolchildren, peasants, Komsomol members, Red Army soldiers from the works of N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, A. Pushkin, N. Nekrasov, M. Lermontov, I. Krylova. Pushkin filled the country in 1937, but can you imagine what it would have been if in these years, when Russia produced a genuine cultural revolution and when millions of people overcame illiteracy, would she have received as reading American comics, detective stories of today's ladies, literature of horror, violence, pornography? At this point, no Oleg Koshevs and Zoya Kosmodemyanskiy would have grown up in the country before World War II.

The line for revival began to be drawn historical traditions, focus on the victory of the Russian people over foreign invaders. Red devils, revolutionaries of all eras, communards made room for Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Peter I. There was a letter from the leaders of the country (Stalin, Zhdanov, Kirov) that it is necessary to show respect for the history of the country, its real historical personalities, for its military, scientific, cultural achievements... True, this was all somewhat later. But already in 1933-34, this manifested itself in the preparation and conduct of the First Congress of Writers. Thus, the First Congress of Soviet Writers became an ideological battlefield for many forces, and not only those that were inside the country. A considerable part of Russian writers, not accepting the platform and actions of the Soviet regime, or simply falling into the maelstrom of historical events, left Russia. For many years Russian literature in exile retained the spirit, style, and image of Russian classics. Among them were stars of the first magnitude (I. Bunin, I. Shmelev, I. Ilyin). Due to age reasons, it gradually faded away, someone returned to their homeland (A. Tolstoy, I. Kuprin, M. Gorky). On the territory of Soviet Russia, as it seemed to many, literature in the national Russian sense would never be revived. And where did it come from? When the leaders of those who declared themselves "proletarian" writers did not accept any continuity and proclaimed: "In the name of our Tomorrow, we will burn Raphael, \\ Destroy museums, trample the flowers of art ..." appropriated the right to be considered representatives of literature. All these Averbakhs, Lelevichs, Bezymensky, Libedinsky, Utkins, Ermilovs crucified any attempts to think nationally, to look deeply into life, to make it an object of artistic comprehension, the search for truth. Everything was subordinated to the idea of ​​a world revolution, the idea of ​​destroying the old world "to the ground" and throwing itself into the future. They did not notice the outstanding stories of M. Sholokhov, through clenched teeth they spoke about the superior artistic talents of L. Leonov, V. Shishkov, contemptuously calling them "fellow travelers."

The main road of literature ended up in the hands of the RAPP, VOAPP, MAPP - the so-called proletarian organizations of writers. They created, or seized, almost all literary and socio-political publications, brandishing a club of criticism, they beat up all recalcitrant, non-standard, trying to create national literature. How it reminded 80-90s, when the whole society and, naturally, literature were driven into the channel of "democracy", forced nepopsy to join "true civilization". It's amazing how the tricks and slogans have changed, but the methods of the “frantic zealots”, who dress up now in proletarian, now in liberal, now in democratic clothes, have not changed.

As I understand it, in those 30s, in the depths of power and society, many thought about the fate of Russia, looked for strategic and tactical moves for its revival, without raising the question of restoring the pre-revolutionary system. Of course, you can talk a lot about this, but this is a special study, in which there can be no one color, because at each interval of time, the country and the authorities faced the country and the authorities in their own way, and it was necessary to answer them in a non-standard and often fateful. Society was then heterogeneous, there were many people who were the basis of the pre-revolutionary system. Among them were those who were ranked among the exploiters, who were among the poor, the proletarians. Although by 1936 it was declared in the Constitution of the equality of all people. In the 60s, I met with one prominent scientist who in full swing criticized communism and the government. I asked cautiously: "You have medals all over your chest, you are a laureate of the State Prize and so scold communism, why?" - “Well, what, I scolded the authorities in the 30s, but when I realized that there was a war ahead, that there, in the West, no one would save Russia, I decided to strengthen the Fatherland and create new technique". I think that this mood was typical for many people in the 30s.

And for writers with talent, a realistic "fellowship" was a characteristic path in the literature of that time. This could not fail to be noticed by the "realists" of the authorities. The first warning to the "frantic zealots" was in 1932 the party decree "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations", according to which it was decided to liquidate the association of proletarian writers and unite all writers supporting the platform of Soviet power into a single Union of Soviet Writers. M. Gorky, who is considered the initiator of such a decision, nevertheless supported the RAPP, which, in his words, "brings together the most literate and cultured literary party members." Apparently, the idea to unite writers and overcome the bacchanalia of groupings arose in the country's leadership and, first of all, in Stalin. There is no doubt that this was also dictated by the desire to adapt the literary organization to national needs and general Party tasks. But behind this there was also an attempt to curb the "violent zealots" in the culture, who constituted the second Trotskyist-Bukharin echelon.

The date of the congress was postponed several times, and it opened on August 15, 1934. Opened it and delivered the main report by A.M. Bitter. By this time he had finally returned to the Soviet Union, “squeezed out” by the crisis and fascism from Europe. Of course, one can be skeptical and critical of the First Congress of Writers, which nevertheless unfolded the panorama of the country's current, growing, diverse literature. Did he show all the available strength, did he give all worthy names? No, of course. The Rappovshchina did not give up its positions, the Trotskyite-Bukharin opposition fought its way at the congress. One can attribute all the "excesses" to Stalin, but one must not forget that, apart from A. Gorky, N. Bukharin (on poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity), K. Radek (on world literature and the tasks of proletarian art) made the main reports. But it was N. Bukharin who, back in 1927, published the famous "Evil Notes" with the defeat of Sergei Yesenin. After that, for almost 30 years, Yesenin disappeared from publishing plans, school textbooks and anthologies. He was merciless to Mayakovsky. A good connoisseur of poetry! K. Radek was just as peremptory, building a number of poets close to his heart. These oppositionists to Stalin formed their literary opposition and wanted to form their own recognized number of poets and leaders who were close to them in spirit. They used M. Gorky to put pressure on Stalin and Zhdanov. Of course, all this may look like a purely political congress kitchen. Yes, and that is also true. But nevertheless, the literary component was also lined up. The following were elected to the presidium of the congress famous writers as A. Gorky, F. Gladkov, V. Ivanov, L. Leonov, P. Pavlenko, L. Seifulina, A. Serafimovich, N. Tikhonov, A. Fadeev, K. Fedin, M. Sholokhov, I. Ehrenburg. A. Shcherbakov was elected from the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). And the conversation about literature, about artistic creation, about national origins, about history, about talent, about language took place, despite the loud proletarian rhetoric of the Rapp people. What are the words of M. Gorky: “the beginning of the art of words is in folklore. Collect our folklore, learn from it, process it ... The better we know the past, the easier it is, the more deeply and joyfully we will understand the great significance of our present creativity ”?

Most of the writers left from under the patronage of the Trotskyite-Bukharin leadership. Of course, the Writers' Union was to a large extent subordinated to the state and the party leadership, but a certain scope, conditions for creativity and especially material support (it is enough to recall the Literary Fund formed in those years, built considerable amount rented dachas in Peredelkino, the House of Creativity, the House of Writers, the publishing house "Soviet Writer", etc.).

Many, probably, had time to forget that before the Great Patriotic War The Writers' Union of Russia did not exist. There was a Union of Soviet Writers created by Alexei Maksimovich Gorky, which had republican branches in all Soviet republics, except for Russia. This strange situation was a consequence of the policy laid down in the post-revolutionary 1920s by Trotsky and his associates, who dreamed of a world international and hated everything Russian. The Russian people, selflessly bearing on their shoulders the burden of the development of our state, found themselves in a disadvantaged position. Other national entities that were part of the USSR developed, supported by their national culture and self-awareness, and in Russian Federation there was not only its own writers' union, the Academy of Sciences, but even the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which for that time was simply amazing. Russian self-awareness not only did not develop, but, on the contrary, was suppressed, was considered chauvinistic, nationalistic, although in relation to other peoples of the Soviet Union for this it was called the development of national self-awareness and national culture.

But after the war, the attitude towards the Russian people began to change. The Russian people showed their selflessness, their fundamental essence of a state-forming people, it was the Russian people who made the main contribution to the Victory, and it was the Russian people who most of all died in the war. The turning point, probably, was the historical toast of Generalissimo Stalin "to the great Russian people." The revival of Russian self-consciousness in the USSR has its roots in Great Victory... On this wave, in 1957-1958, the Writers 'Union of the RSFSR, now the Writers' Union of Russia, was created. It was headed by the outstanding Russian writer Leonid Sobolev (by the way, surprisingly, he was not a party member). In the first years of activity, regional branches of the Union were created, governing bodies were formed, and writers were reunited into a single social organism. At the same time, the spiritual and ideological component of the activity of the Russian joint venture became clear. And although it was not possible to reflect it in any resolutions of congresses or program documents, the book Vladimir Soloukhin, published in 1957, “Vladimirskie gorseloki”, carried a powerful charge of Russian ideology. It was then that a group of writers appeared who were not afraid to pronounce and write the words Rus, Russia, Russian ... In essence, the created Union of Writers of the RSFSR became the only legally operating organization that stood up to protect Russians in the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev, with his disheveled policy, himself did a lot of harm to the Russian people, and this also distinguished his environment, which included such odious personalities as Adzhubei and Ilyichev, who built the national policy according to the pre-war model. In addition, Nikita Khrushchev had a negative attitude towards the generation of winners. We remember how he dealt with Marshal Zhukov, how he was afraid of the military who won the war. Patriotism was then clearly not held in high esteem, it was subjected to special persecution Orthodox Church... During the reign of Khrushchev, his wife was destroyed Orthodox churches more than in the 20-30s. After Khrushchev was removed from his posts for vulgarity and voluntarism in politics, it became easier to breathe.

It so happened that by the beginning of perestroika, the Russian revival movement approached somewhat confused and disunited, and therefore lost the "battle for the minds" of the "perestroika" and liberal lamas-Westernizers. But by 1994, the Writers' Union of Russia, already cleared of anti-Russian sentiments, at its congress proclaimed our basic principles:

Follow the traditions of classical Russian literature;

To assert realism as the main artistic direction;

To assert morality;

Fight for the purity of the Russian language;

Be sovereigns.

From that moment, one might say, the third stage in the history of the Writers' Union of Russia began, when our creative union became a union of like-minded writers united by the idea of ​​the spiritual revival of Russia.

When in 2005, in the Kremlin, President Putin presented me with the Order of Honor, I thanked him and said that I consider this order “an award to the classical literature, moral and spiritual literature, the Union, which stands guard over the Russian language, the languages ​​of the peoples of our country. The nation persists, even if it changes completely economic basis... The nation is preserved if the state structure changes, even if the state disappears. But if the language disappears, the nation ceases to be such. Remains the population of the people. We assess today's award as the concern of society and the authorities for the Russian language, for our spiritual bond, for the moral basis of literature. "

We work in many areas, but the main thing we strive for is for our Union to always participate in creative actions for the good of the Fatherland. We are co-founders of the All Peaceful Russian People's Council, which is headed by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. I am the Deputy Head of the World Russian People's Council. The Writers' Union of Russia has been actively involved in the organization and work of Councils since its inception, in 1993. At each of them, we consider the main, most pressing issues of the life of the Russian people - spiritual revival, the problems of the Russian language, the Russian national school, the health of the nation, Orthodoxy, the position of Russians in the world at the end of the 20th century. early XXI century. Constantly held round tables with the participation of the clergy, writers, representatives of patriotic circles, and the intelligentsia.

Today the interference of the authorities in literary affairs is not so noticeable, but the economic dictate is much tougher and more relentless. All the houses of creativity (with the exception of Peredelkino) developed and created, including at the expense of writers' funds, were withdrawn, publishing houses became private, and writers lost any social statute, because the Law on Creative Unions, despite the promises of all legislators, is still not accepted. They are trying to take away the house of Russian writers.

And nevertheless, Russian literature exists. Seven and a half thousand writers are united in the Writers' Union of Russia, which ranks itself among the successors of the traditions of Russian classical literature, among the people of the sovereign and moral position that does not reject the achievements of realistic and honest literature of the Russian diaspora, Russian Soviet literature. And in this sense, the first congress of Soviet writers in 1934 is historically important milestone, which makes us remember all the complexity of the path of Russian literature, clearly see the efforts that have been and are being made by many to divert it from the path of serving the people and their Fatherland.

Valery Ganichev

First Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934

Your report on Soviet poetry is listed on the agenda of the upcoming congress of Soviet writers, and this gives me the courage to address my questions directly to you.

These questions are as follows: the most difficult to understand at the present time, among the many representatives modern poetry, the place and significance of one of the most talented masters - Boris Pasternak. Lyrics equal in strength, expressiveness, novelty of sound and some kind of inexplicable, contradictory, rather predictable rather than consciously huge connection with the deepest aspects of socialist, that is, tomorrow's art, is not present in modern poetry.<…>Do I need to prove to you that the poet, led by all his being, on the high mountain pass of his path to exclaim: "You are near, the distance of socialism" - really great poet? Pasternak's exclamation is worth much more than other dissertations that begin and end with hosannas for the new world. His lyrical truthfulness is such that every "wrong sound" he expelled takes revenge on him, like a hundred thousand demons do not know how to take revenge ... Such is his biography, and such is his poetry<…>.

Pasternak said that earlier he had high hopes for the congress - he hoped to hear at the congress of writers something quite different from what the orators dedicated their speeches to. Pasternak was waiting for speeches of great philosophical content, he believed that the congress would turn into a meeting of Russian thinkers. Maxim Gorky's speech seemed to him lonely at the congress. What Pasternak considered the most important for the fate of Russian literature was not discussed at the congress. Pasternak was disappointed:

“I’m devastatingly discouraged,” he repeated several times. - You understand, it's just deadly.

(Mindlin Em. Unusual Interlocutors: A Book of Memoirs. M., 1968.S. 429)

Boris Pasternak is the poet who is most distant from the spite of the day, even understood in a very broad sense. This is a poet-songwriter of the old intelligentsia, which became the Soviet intelligentsia. He certainly accepts the revolution, but he is far from the peculiar technicalism of the era, from the noise of battles, from the passions of struggle. He ideologically broke with the old world (or, rather, severed ties with it) even during the imperialist war. The bloody mess, the huckstering of the bourgeois world were deeply repugnant to him, and he "broke away", left the world, locked himself in the mother-of-pearl shell of individual experiences, the most tender and delicate, fragile tremors of a wounded and easily vulnerable soul.<…>Pasternak's happiness is that he is far from being consistent. After the message to Bryusov, he places a magnificent eulogy dedicated to the memory of Larisa Reisner; he glorifies the "crazy" year 1905 in a whole series of poems; he writes his "Lieutenant Schmidt", "January 9" - and all this in full-fledged stanzas of real poetry. He gave a very prominent image of Lenin. And yet, even in his revolutionary poems, revolutionary in their own way ideological sense, one can find a number of approaches in this sense through associations, completely unexpected and often narrowly individual. The parsnip is original. This is both his strength and his weakness at the same time. This is his strength, because he is infinitely far from the template, stereotyped, rhymed prose. This is his weakness, because this originality turns into egocentrism for him, when his images cease to be comprehensible, when the thrill of his breathless rhythm and the bends of the finest verbal instrumentation turn, beyond a certain limit, into differences of incomprehensible image combinations - they are so subjective and intimately subtle.<…>Such is Boris Pasternak, one of the most remarkable masters of verse in our time, who not only strung a whole string of lyrical pearls on the threads of his work, but also gave a number of deep sincerity of revolutionary things.

(Bukharin N.I. Poetry, poetics and tasks of poetry in the USSR: report at the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers // Izvestia. 1934.30 August. No. 204 (5452). S. 3-4)

Bukharin's speech, which everyone likes, does not represent anything remarkable. What can one expect from Bukharin if he proclaims the senseless and meaningless Pasternak as the first poet? It is necessary to lose the last remnants of reason in order to proclaim formal trinkets as the basis of poetry. And the fact that the struggle is raging all around, that the revolution continues - this has been completely forgotten. You cannot approach poetry as Bukharin does. This plays into the hands of those who want poetry to be an "exquisite dish" for a few in our country.

(Oreshin P.V. Between a rock and a hard place. Union of Soviet Writers of the USSR. M., 2011.Vol. 1.P. 351–352)

It turned out in Bukharin that the center, the summit expression of our today's poetry is concentrated on the names of B.L. Pasternak, Selvinsky and two or three other poets. With all my deepest respect for Pasternak as a master and poet, I still have to say that for a large group of people who grow up in our literature, Pasternak's work is an inappropriate point of orientation. Comrade Bukharin here made a reservation that he discusses questions of poetry from the point of view of building up skill. Okay. But after all, we know that there is no mastery outside of a concrete historical setting, that mastery fully and completely lives in the epoch. And from this point of view, Comrade Bukharin turned out to be rather regrettable. Comrade Bukharin here, from this rostrum, quietly eliminated all proletarian poetry, which was gaining strength with such difficulty, poetry, which with such difficulty strengthened its authors in the reading environment. It is possible and necessary to talk about the great shortcomings that proletarian poetry suffers from, but when the speaker gave the coverage of the issue, it turns out not what we need. I think that it would be necessary here, at the congress, to say about a number of poets who have great prospects, who have extremely deep breathing, to say how bravely, how courageously they will cross the line that makes them embarrassed by the question of whether there is enough breath for making the air of revolution. This question will be very acute until they establish that a deep all-round realization of their capabilities is only historically possible when, say, Pasternak's talent is deployed on the adequately huge rich material of our revolution. When, say, the same Pasternak, until now luring the Universe to a very narrow platform of his vision of the world, will make reverse movement and with her capabilities she will enter this spacious world; then his capabilities will sound a thousand times brighter.

(Surkov A.A. Features of our humanism // Izvestia. 1934.September 1. No. 205 (5453). P. 3)

Poetry is prose, prose is not in the sense of the totality of someone else's prose works, but the prose itself, the voice of prose, prose in action, and not in a fictional retelling. Poetry is the language of organic fact, that is, fact with living consequences. And, of course, like everything else in the world, it can be good or bad, depending on whether we keep it intact or manage to spoil it. But be that as it may, this is precisely this, that is, pure prose in its original tension, is poetry<…>.

There are norms of behavior that make it easier for an artist to work. We must use them. Here is one of them: if happiness smiles at one of us, we will be prosperous, but let the wealth that devastates man pass us by. "Do not tear yourself away from the masses," the party says in such cases. I have no right to use her expressions. “Do not sacrifice your face for the sake of the position,” I will say in exactly the same sense as she did. With the tremendous warmth that surrounds us the people and the state, the danger of becoming a socialist dignitary is too great. Away from this affection in the name of its direct sources, in the name of a great, and real, and fruitful love for the homeland and its current greatest people, at a business-like distance from them, burdened with affairs and worries. Everyone who does not know this turns from a wolf to a lapdog ...

(Pasternak B.L. Speech at the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers // Pasternak B.L. PSS. T. 5.P. 228)

Behavior and some awkward actions of B.L. often caused laughter and smiles. During the work of the First Congress of Writers, a delegation of metro workers came to the Column Hall with a greeting. Among them were girls in rubberized overalls - their industrial clothes. One of them carried a heavy metal instrument on her shoulder. She stood just next to Pasternak, who was sitting in the presidium, and he jumped up and began to take the instrument away from her. The girl did not give it back: the instrument on her shoulder - a calculated theatrical effect - was supposed to show that the metro construction worker had come here directly from the mine. Not realizing this, B.L. wanted to lighten her burden. Watching their struggle, the audience laughed. Pasternak was embarrassed and began his speech with explanations on this matter.

(Gladkov A.K. Meetings with Boris Pasternak. P. 74)

And when, in an unaccountable impulse, I wanted to remove from the shoulder of the Metrostroy worker a heavy downhole tool, the name of which I do not know (laughter), but which pulled her shoulder downwards, could a comrade from the presidium who embroidered my intelligentsia sensitivity know that in multi-atmospheric vapors, created by the situation, she was in some instant sense my sister, and I wanted to help a close and long-familiar person.

(Pasternak B.L. Speech at the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers // Pasternak B.L. PSS. T. 5.P. 227-228)

I will not describe in detail<…>, as in the spring of nine hundred and one, a detachment of Dahomey Amazons was shown in the zoological garden. As the first sensation of a woman, I connected with the sensation of a naked system, a closed suffering, a tropical parade with a drum. As soon as necessary, I became a slave of forms, because early on I saw the form of slaves on them.

(Pasternak B.L. Security certificate)

I did not sit until the end of the congress and left after Stetsky's speech, before Gorky's concluding remarks.

The first days after arriving here, I dreamed of answering you with a spaciousness that would be of benefit to me, because it would streamline my impressions of the congress, but then I sat down to work, which always goes worse than my calculations, and so a month passed.

Now I see that it is better to talk about all these topics when we meet (after all, you are probably going to Moscow at the beginning of winter?), And I'm not sure if I have a greater need for such a conversation than you.

The fact is that although you were not deceived about the telephone (it was in the spring, and not before the congress) and the attitude towards me at the congress was a complete surprise, but all this is much more complicated than you might imagine, and most importantly: indirection the reasons connecting these things with me are grayer and more non-festive.

And I already made a mistake, starting with myself under the influence of your letter. After all, the congress itself represented the same awkwardness, in a much greater sense, for all of us and for me, an extraordinary phenomenon in all respects. After all, it was he who struck me most of all and could have amazed you with the spontaneity with which he threw from heat to cold and replaced some joyful surprise with a long-familiar and all-destroying conclusion.

It was the one already familiar to us musical order, in which two false ones are attributed to three correct sounds, but on this and in this key was performed whole symphony and this was, of course, new.

The intensified emphasis on the importance of Pasternak at the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, which embarrassed many and understood by them as an attitude towards "pure", that is, non-social, narrowly personal lyrics, was in fact the correct attitude towards the poet's freedom and self-law, for the poet talks with an era without someone else's mediation and accepts her orders directly from her mouth. Raising Pasternak to the shield, we raise to the shield not the "purity" and seclusion of his poetry, but his loyalty to his talent.

(Svyatopolk-Mirsky D.P. Notes on poetry // Banner. 1935. No. 12.P. 231)

the author Lyakhovsky Alexander Antonovich

Chapter VI First stage of withdrawal Soviet troops

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From the book Lenin. Emigration and Russia the author Zazersky Evgeny Yakovlevich

Course towards a new congress Lenin turns to the experience of the Paris Commune, its conquests and achievements, shortcomings and mistakes, regarding the Commune as the greatest example of the greatest proletarian movement of the 19th century. And on March days here in Geneva, at a meeting of the Social Democrats,

From the book When the Second World War began and when it ended the author Parshev Andrey Petrovich

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From the book Rise of Consumers the author Panyushkin Valery

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From the book The Origin of the Partocracy the author Avtorkhanov Abdurakhman Genazovich

Chapter 16. VII EMERGENCY CONGRESS OF THE PARTY The seventh emergency congress of the party, convened to ratify the peace, took place on March 6-8, 1918. This was the first congress of the party after the seizure of power. By this time, the party numbered about 300 thousand members, but at the congress it was represented

From the book The Crime Regime. " Liberal tyranny"Yeltsin the author Khasbulatov Ruslan Imranovich

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Chapter 23. THE LAST CONGRESS WITHOUT LENIN The last congress during Lenin's life was the 12th congress, which took place in April 1923. The hopes for Lenin's participation in the work of the congress were so great that the Politburo on January 11, 1923 approved him as rapporteur on the political report of the Central Committee. But

From the book The Main Process of Humanity. Report from the past. Looking to the future the author Zvyagintsev Alexander Grigorievich

VII Congress of Deputies on the new Constitution

From the book The Unknown Revolution. Collection of works by John Reed by Reed John

XIX Congress The first attempt to remove the Central Committee of the party from power and transfer power to the people failed not only because of the resistance of the dictator - the Central Committee, but also for an objective reason - the threat of war. But in 1945 there was a victory that struck the world, and by 1952 the development of the country was so successful, and

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From the book "Catch the pigeon mail ...". Letters (1940-1990) the author Vasily Aksenov

Chapter XII. Peasants' congress on November 18 (5), snow fell. Waking up in the morning, we saw that the cornices of the windows were completely white. The snow was so thick that nothing could be seen ten paces away. The dirt is gone. The gloomy city suddenly became dazzling white. The tremors were replaced by boots, with

From the book Word and Deed by Osip Mandelstam. Book of denunciations, interrogations and indictments author Nerler Pavel

"Congress of winners", aka "Congress of the executed" So, the confrontation was growing. At the same time, by 1934 it became clear that the policy of the authorities was justifying itself. The country was gradually emerging from the devastation, not the one that, in the words of Professor Preobrazhensky, “not in closets, but in

From the author's book

To the Presidium of the IV Congress of Soviet Writers from the delegate of the Congress V.P. Aksenov Moscow I inform the Presidium that I have received a letter from the writer A.I. Solzhenitsyn, which he sent to the Congress and must have already been known to the Presidium. I want to declare that I agree with Solzhenitsyn on

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United State Political Administration of the USSR (1934): Stalin Prize for 1934 1 Preparation of arrest and arrest And all night long I wait for dear guests ... O. Mandelstam For OM came on the night of May 16-17, 1934. At about one in the morning, there was a distinct, characteristic knock:

From the author's book

‹10› Extract from the minutes of the Special Meeting at the Collegium of the OGPU of the USSR dated June 10, 1934 with a resolution to amend the Resolution of the CCO dated May 26, 1934 Extract from the minutes of the Special Meeting at the Collegium of the OGPU dated June 10, 1934 Secretary of the OGPU Board

You say: 1934, and human blood rises in consciousness, which after the murder of Kirov they began to pour like water. And this, of course, is the main thing. But it is worth bringing a magnifying glass to the past, and we are no less amazed at something else: the apocalyptic seriousness with which russian folk kafka ... German stone seriousness. This, after all, must be admitted: the style of conducting party affairs (not to mention scientific ones) was borrowed by the Russians from the Germans. He defined the tonality of the first half of the 20th century - more than any "ideas". Be the leaders a little more lightweight, frivolous (in French or at least in the British way), if they more humor, less academic, - and the number of people who died a violent death in the camps and wars of the 20th century, it would have been millions less.

In 1934, the first "congress of winners" was held: the 17th congress of the CPSU (b), which announced to the world the victory of the general line of the party in building socialism. Interesting! General - and suddenly won! But who should win? Marginal, or what? But this is amusing now. And then - 1108 out of 1966 party congress delegates were repressed. Out of 139 members and candidates for members of the Central Committee, 41 survived. A big purge began. Large kafka. Russian - for all its German seriousness, for all the national diversity of the USSR. The style of the era was created in the only city in the world that does not believe in tears - and 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 sat from August 17 to September 1, 1934 - with the same ominous, in the minds of a world-historical seriousness that does not fit. Everything was scheduled according to notes. Manifestos were prepared cleaner than the Erfurt program: the resolution of the first congress of Soviet writers, the charter of the union of Soviet writers. They wrote in gold letters, erected a monument not made by hands. Built for centuries, no worse than the Ramses-Ozymandy. They even argued (there were disputes and disagreements) with an eye to eternity.

The official statistics of the congress are incomplete, but easily supplemented. 22 reports were read; speeches delivered 183; 42 greetings were read to the congress (almost entirely phenomena: delegations from the most unexpected groups and societies came to the meeting room: from the Sami people of the Kola Peninsula; from workers' literary circles in Moscow; from the seamen-commanders of the reserve Osoaviakhim; from female workers, worker correspondents and novice writers; from the Paleshin artists; from leading workers, authors of technical literature; from the Lyubertsy Labor Commune; from the pioneers of the Snub-Nosed Base ...).

There were also all sorts of welcoming words from the congress (6 in number; guess who? Right: first of all - the leader-and-teacher; but not only to him, even to the People's Commissar of Defense Voroshilov, Romain Rolland, but at the end of the curtain, at the last meeting, to the Central Committee VKP (B), council people's commissars yes, plus an appeal to Ernst Thälmann). 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 a monolithic camp of winners?

& nbsp I calculated that at 26 meetings, they spoke Russian for about 100 hours, and half a million words were spoken in this language. After all, Russian was the working language of the Congress, which, of course, is not mentioned anywhere, because - what else? They did not play the fool. One can vouch for the voluntary-compulsory Russification of the outskirts, no one even thought, and this word (Russification) was not in use. Representatives of peoples much older than Russians in historical age and literary tradition, expressed themselves in a young language that had barely taken shape one and a half hundred years before the congress.

We did not manage to estimate how many people spoke in other languages ​​(foreign) (Russian retellings of these speeches fall into the mentioned 100 hours and half a million words). With foreigners playing the role of wedding generals, there is generally a lot of confusion. There are only four well-known names: Louis Aragon, Jean-Richard Blok, Klaus Mann, Witezslav Nezval. There are 40 foreign guests on the official list, but the German Friedrich Wolf, forgotten on the list, also rose to the podium. Is on the list and dead Souls, unknown writers(it is not known if they were writers): the mysterious Udeanou 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, Czechs and Slovaks - 6, French - 5, Swedes - 3, a couple of Spaniards, Danes, Greeks, Turks (both Turkish names distorted) and Americans (one fake), 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, gave a greeting to the congress in French.

There were 377 delegates with a decisive vote, 220 with an advisory vote (some animals are more equal than others); in total, this means 597 people. Impressive, great literature! One trouble: today is 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 the writers. In subsequent years, 182 participants (30%) died in dungeons and the Gulag, 38 more 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 voice and (for some reason) mostly bearers of non-Russian surnames.

Another curious feature of the congress is that it was a congress of men. Women accounted for only 3.7%. At the same time, out of 22 writers, four are foreigners (therefore, among foreigners, women - 10%; the question is, where did they liberate a woman earlier?).

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

And here is the ethnic 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 and one varnish (do not think that he is a varnisher of reality; there is such a people in Dagestan; however, it would be more accurate to say: a Lak, or Kazikumukhets).

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

Before the big kafka, as before God, all nations were equal. We take the Jews as a touchstone. As far as I can see, 35 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, attending the congress. Babel, who can be considered a Jewish writer, comes out with 18. Three survived. Destroyed - 79%.

Who proudly came

Not guessing. Bitter. Mentioned on 271 of the 714 pages of the verbatim report (excluding 6 pages of the table of contents).

The one for whom you have sinned strikingly lags behind: mentioned on 167 pages. How could he not hear it? I heard. Gorky had less than two years to live.

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

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

But if you look at the matter more closely, then it is not the petrel of the revolution that is proudly soaring at the congress, but the very one (“no need for a name: on everyone’s lips it’s like a terrible name of the ruler of the underworld”). If he is already mentioned, then not as 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!" (greeting of the congress 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 missing

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

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

NO OBJECTIONS

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

Gorky opens the congress, with a short word and - by right chairman of the organizing committee (and not a candidate for nobel laureates, what he was - in any case, before moving to the USSR). Opening, conveys the word 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, in August he will be transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp), Dimitrov (acquitted on charges of setting fire to the Reichstag in December 1933, lives in Moscow since March 1934), Gorky ... Stormy applause; everyone gets up ... Note that Bukharin is not there. This is who they will object to.

"Allow me, comrades, to regard 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 to the presidium [by number nationalities ? witty!]… No objections? No objections…"

Let's note some members of the presidium: Zhdanov (sic!), Poor, Mekhlis (!), Pasternak (!), A. Tolstoy, Tikhonov, Fefer (shot in 1952), Sholokhov, Shaginyan, Ehrenburg ... Bukharin is not here, but because he is an editor Izvestia .

The secretariat is elected in exactly the same way ("There are no objections to the quantity? No ...", etc.), the credentials committee (?) And the editorial committee, the congress work order and regulations are approved.

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

NATIONAL LITERATURE

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

Here is an excerpt from the report of Comrade. Ivan Kulik about the literature of the Ukrainian SSR:

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

Ivan Yulianovich himself became a scum of society in 1937. He did not have time to be reborn, he died in the camp.

Poor Bukharin

Poor Nikolai Ivanovich! How terribly he was dying! How he did not want to die ... No one wants to, but he seemed to false mirror hit. That's where the kafka was! By hand former friend and a companion. Stalin assured him (through an executioner-investigator; he refused to meet in person, did not answer letters from prison) that he needed to die for the cause of the world proletariat, and this poor fellow almost persuaded himself to agree ... but nevertheless he begged for mercy, the bootleg was ready for the Kremlin ghoul to embrace.

Bukharin had less than four years to live.

His report at the congress was ... about poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetry in the USSR. The delegates to the congress knew that Bukharin's report was not quite official, like Zhdanov's, that he was not expressing the party line. Did Bukharin know about this? Did you realize that the ax had already been brought in?

"Comrades, I am bringing your applause to that great party ..."

Academician Bukharin begins from afar: with blessed Augustine, with the Indian teachings of Anandavardhana. He criticizes Britannica's definition of poetry (for tautology). Quotes bourgeois Gumilyov, bourgeois Balmont. Andrei Bely's "fetishization of the word reached Himalayan heights." Speech flows like a river. Theorizing is surrounded by references to sources ... Nikolai Ivanovich spoke without stopping for more than three hours!

"We have had splendid 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 problem of quality is strongly emphasized on all fronts. The problem of quality is a problem of diversity, a plurality of special approaches, individualization [?!] ... "

"... poetry 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 need now the courage and daring to set up real, world criteria for our art and poetry. 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 the unity ... The essence appears in the phenomenon. The essence passes into a phenomenon ... "

"In the phenomenon is ..." Hm! Annomination - it seems like this learned people called?

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

"We need to understand with all clarity the huge difference between formalism in art, which must be resolutely rejected, formalism in literary criticism, which is just as unacceptable, and the analysis of the formal aspects of art (which is by no means formalism) ..."

Blok, Yesenin, Bryusov, Demyan Bedny (applause) and Mayakovsky (thunderous applause; everyone stands up) ended up 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 (thunderous applause), Nikolay Tikhonov (thunderous applause), Selvinsky (applause), Aseev (applause), Lugovskoy, Prokofiev, Pavel Vasiliev, Vasily Kamensky (applause). Some are only mentioned, some have quotation pages. Nobody's perfect. Everyone is joking (and laughing at Utkin), praises are pronounced as if through clenched teeth, with obvious effort (“How can you find Lutetia [Heine] at Svetlov?”). Pasternak and Tikhonov received the most praise, but - both are too subjective, too individual, violate the "laws of" complex simplicity "" ...

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

"The favorite of the whole party" (according to Lenin's definition), simple, amiable, democratic, cheerful, accessible, intelligent Bukharin ... In 1934, the poor man just got married (for the third time). In 1936 he was abroad, according to some signs, he guessed where things were going, but still did not believe - how to believe such a thing? - and returned ...

"I conclude my report with the slogan: you need to dare, comrades!" (stormy applause from the audience, turning into a standing ovation. Shouts of "hurray." The whole audience stands up.)

Nowadays, almost everyone understands Stalin as an outspoken power-hungry man - and this explains his insatiable thirst for blood. He, they say, killed in order to rule. But he did not need the death of the crushed and humiliated Bukharin. Bukharin and in better days did not rush to the supreme power, but in the end gave in in everything, groveling. Why kill? To discourage others? Does not look like it. Everyone around was shaking with fear. And there were as many potential victims. It was not at all necessary to finish off this theoretical sheep. After all, not Trotsky. Although - ... maybe the ghoul himself was shaking with fear in his wild greatness, wild loneliness? Then it's clearer.

There is a derisive and witty hypothesis. (I heard it from the Israeli chemist Sergei Brown.) Stalin did not recognize himself as a power-hungry person, did not serve himself (in everyday life he was unpretentious to asceticism), but honestly and selflessly fought the bourgeoisie (which inspired him 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 deduced his right to supreme power from the belief that he understood Marxism better than others. What does Marxism say? That in one country, and even an agrarian one, 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 managed to become bourgeois. After all, what was happening before his eyes? Yesterday's hicks, having seized power, got rich. Society did not become classless; on the contrary, the power class, wealthy people, was reviving. And where there are classes, there is also a class struggle. To fight, Stalin decided, it is necessary to do this: on the one hand, to create the proletariat (industrialization and collectivization); on the other hand, to eradicate those who are snuffed up. A stratum of the people will rise to power - and begin to overgrow things, read poetry, look into Schopenhauer. Yesterday they were their own, socially close; today - strangers. Their - at the root. We live in a capitalist encirclement, enemies are everywhere. The next layer will rise - and its there too. And so - until the very beginning of the world revolution.

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

WHAT THE WRITERS SAID

BITTER

“... you know that the material for history primitive culture served as data of archeology and reflection of ancient religious cults ... "

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

"Already in ancient times, people dreamed of the possibility of flying through the air ..."

Not on the water, mind you.

"The history of technical and scientific discoveries is rich in facts of the 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, noticing that fathers are beginning to be more and more caring for their children ..."

About fathers - on the tenth (!) Page of the report. The founder has already been speaking for 75 minutes - and has not yet uttered a single name of the Soviet writer, but he touched on de Coster, Merezhkovsky, Louis XI, Ivan the Terrible and the execution in 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 perfectly" on the history of factories and plants), but a number will appear:

"The Union of Soviet Writers unites 1,500 people ..."

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

“… Based on the 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 230 readers ... "

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

?

“We need to know everything that happened in the past, but not in the way that it has already been told, but in the way that all this is illuminated by the teachings of Marx-Lenin-Stalin and how this is realized by labor in factories and in the fields ... look, the task of the literary union ... " (thunderous applause; the audience welcomes standing ...).

VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY

"Dostoevsky cannot be understood outside the revolution and cannot be understood otherwise than as a traitor ... if Fyodor Mikhailovich came here, then we could judge him as the heirs of humanity, as people who judge a traitor ..."

"... we have become the only humanists in the world ..."

"Mayakovsky is not to blame 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 - that's specific traits Jewish Soviet poetry. This distinguishes it from both 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 any capitalist country cannot be compared with the level of Jewish Soviet literature ..."

"... the temperatures of the heroes Soviet Union not yet in our Soviet literature ... "

“… When a murky wave of anti-Semitism sweeps over all capitalist countries, the Soviet government organizes a Jewish independent region - Birobidzhan, which is very popular. Many of the Jewish writers of bourgeois countries come here, many Palestinian workers are fleeing from this so-called "homeland" to their true homeland - the Soviet Union ... "

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

KORNEY CHUKOVSKY

K.I. devotes a fair part of his speech to the analysis of the poem by Nikolai Aseev from Murzilki, which he calls disgusting: “The sun beats down the street in May, the wind flies banners down the street. Having filled them all along the side, the workers took to the streets ... ". And you won't argue with him. But he himself expresses himself strangely:

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

MARIETTA SHAGINYAN

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

"Once the enemies and traitors of our cause argued that it is impossible to build socialism in one country ..."

"This process cannot be characterized otherwise than as the immortal Stalinist formula, given three years ago ..."

"Judging by our serial novels -" Quiet Don"," Bars " [Panferov's novel about collectivization], "Virgin Soil Upturned" - we seem to be dealing with an interrupted collision ... In the West, such novels in the form of a story of one human life make sense ... With us, comrades, it makes no sense. ... our "disease of continuations" is not at all caused by necessity - it only proves the inability to finish, the inability to build a whole form ... "

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

"... I was struck by the tenderness with which our little guys treated children of a foreign race ... ... we brought up this tenderness with the whole atmosphere of our culture and the first lessons of the proletarian worldview ..."

VERA INBER

This writer was even summoned to the podium by her first name and patronymic and was greeted with applause. I wonder how many people knew that she - cousin Trotsky? If they knew, they would have eaten alive. '' Inber began with a story about her unfinished play, in which there was negative character... He says: “I don’t believe in the proletariat at all. Despite its masculine appearance, it is a fragile and short-lived class. It will die out soon. And why did you think? From art ... "How a man looked into the water! Much better than the writer’s cousin. In essence, Inber brought out the prophet. More precisely, it was undermatched; did not dare. But the writer herself:

"Truly, optimism is a little explored area that even the Small Soviet Encyclopedia knows little about ... (laughter)"

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

"... the main quality of socialism lies in condensation, compactness, saturation ... a diamond is coal, but only said briefly ..."

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

ILYA ERENBURG

"Our foreign guests are now traveling in a time machine ..."

“Isn't it the pride of our country - that really popular love that Maxim Gorky is surrounded by?”

“In my life I have been wrong 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 got his hand can make such plots for ten in one month (laughter) ..."

“I don't care about myself at all. I am personally fertile as a rabbit (laughter), but I defend the right for the elephants to be pregnant longer than the rabbit (laughter) ... When I hear conversations - why Babel writes so little, why Olesha has not 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 punch the wall with his forehead. We put it in excellent conditions ... "

"We can be proud that some of our novels are already available to millions ..."

"Believe me that what I am talking about, I very often think at my table ..."

YAKOV BRONSHTEIN

Yes, yes, he was. Delegate from Belarus, author Problems of the Leninist Stage in Literary Criticism , professor, corresponding member Now even the KLE does not know him. Shot, rehabilitated and forgotten. But he said funny things - about auto criticism.

“Recently Russian criticism has spoken in passing about the peculiar, proofreading type of auto-polemics that Pilnyak led against [his]“ Roots of the Japanese Sun ”. And why shouldn't the Russian leading criticism [!] Be 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 that of Pilnyak - in the area of ​​figurative auto criticism? ... The writer, burdened in the past by the burden of reactionary images, brings up his favorite gallery of images from the depths of the past and guillotines it, removes it with autocriticism - not journalistic, but figurative ... "

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

“Let me remind you of the slogan that was recently thrown down in Jewish literature by Comrade Fefer:" Sing in Beranger's voice! " The fight for the voice of Beranger, for the satire is a positive fight ... "

“A few words about how we are fighting the class enemy ... There is a wall at the exhibition dedicated to the Latinization of Eastern languages. It also contained a Hebrew text. The content of this text is as follows: "According to the 1932 census, the number of the Jewish peasant population in Palestine is 45,000, the Jewish urban population is 130,000." Central Park culture and recreation to carry on their propaganda of Zionism ... "

“… It has been our lot to work under the leadership of a party unseen in the world, under the leadership of the party of Lenin and Stalin (applause).

YURI Olesha

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

“Yes, Kavalerov looked at the world through my eyes ... And then they said that Kavalerov is a vulgar and insignificant ... I took upon myself this accusation of insignificance and vulgarity, and it shocked me [now they would say: "shocked"]... I did not believe it and hid ... "

“Every artist can only paint what he is able to paint ... It is difficult for me to understand the type of worker, the type of revolutionary hero. I cannot be ... "

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

How did the person survive ?! And after all, a nobleman in addition.

ALEXANDER AVDEENKO

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

“Several years ago I was sitting in a 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, young people, will justify the hopes that are pinned on us ..."

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

AGNIYA BARTO

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

DAVID BERGELSON

"... Jewish literature is 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 that I have 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 was written an extraordinary poem about the Leninist-Stalinist nationality policy ... "

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

ISAAC BABEL

He was greeted with long applause - one of the very few.

“Nowadays vulgarity is no longer a bad character trait, but a crime. Moreover: vulgarity is a counter-revolution ... An electrician next door beat his wife ... this is a counter-revolutionary ... "

"We talk about love unbearably loudly ... And it has already come to the point that the objects of love begin to protest, like Gorky yesterday ..."

“… Look how Stalin forges his speech, how his few words are forged, how full of muscles they are. 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 ... It was a privilege that we widely enjoyed ... let us give this privilege at the Writers' Congress, and God help us. However, there is no God, we will help ourselves (applause) ... "

"If they started talking about silence, then one cannot but say 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 dungeons four years later.

VSEVOLOD VISHNEVSKY

"... In 1919, deprived of bread, light, stripped our country in one Yaroslavl province had more theaters than all of France had them (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 Stalin silently [!] Led the entire Siberian partisan movement?"

“We have a number of writers - I appeal in particular to my friend Yuri Olesha - have entered the field of abstract crystal-transparent constructions about the future ... 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, love, tenderness and so on. But at the same time, we must always keep a good revolver in good working order ... We must understand that we are standing in front of a large and final settlement with five-sixths of the world (applause) ... "

BORIS PASTERNAK

He was summoned to the rostrum (from the presidium) without a 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 word ... Comrades, my appearance on the podium is not spontaneous. I was afraid that you would not think something bad if I did not speak ... "

"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'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. fact with living consequences ... "

“If happiness smiles at one of us, we will be prosperous (but let the wealth that devastates man pass us by). Do not tear yourself away from the masses, says the party in such cases. I have not won the right to use her expressions ... With the enormous warmth that surrounds us the people and the state, it is too easy to become a literary dignitary. Away from this affection in the name of its direct sources, in the name of a great, efficient, and fruitful love for the homeland and today's greatest people ... "

SEMEN KIRSANOV

"Who does not know that as soon as someone started talking about the problem of form, about metaphors, about rhyme or epithet, a shout was immediately heard:" Stop the formalists! "..."

"In the part where Comrade Bukharin sums up the results and outlines the budget of our poetry, one must argue ... The speaker exclaims: you need to dare! ... but if you dare - it means finding rending contradictions in yourself, then I am resolutely against such daring ..."

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

"Breast wreath-making is not a burning problem for the revolutionary workers in Germany and France ..."

"I am shouting here in all my advisory voice ..."

NIKOLAY TIKHONOV

He delivered a lecture on the Leningrad poets. There was no report on the Moscow poets. Cultural Center has not yet moved to Moscow. Tikhonov himself, Marshak, Chukovsky, Zabolotsky, Evgeny Schwartz and many more at that time lived on the banks of the Neva. The last of the old-style literary groups existed in Leningrad: the Oberiuts.

“What poets had the greatest influence on young Leningrad poets? Sergey Yesenin. ... He could not overcome the yesterday's man in himself for the sake of the man of the future ... Mayakovsky. He faced such a creative crisis, from the very consciousness of which he was seized by a deadly dizziness. And futurism in his face approached the poem "At the top of his voice" with the loss of all its powerful poetic arsenal, having only the canonical verse that he had previously rejected as a weapon ... "

Influenced also "the most difficult tongue twister of Boris Pasternak, this collapse of words"; and Bagritsky's verse, which "was close to the acmeistic"; and Aseev, "this great poet, this black toiler of verse" ...

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

“How much they say about our poetic heritage! The truth must be said that the old people did not write so badly ... "

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

But Pushkin and Lermontov are often attracted, Tyutchev is not forgotten (about whom "the bilious old man poet Sollogub" says: "poems of the nobility."

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

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

"Worldview is the master of creativity ..."

“What is poetry? Poems are, as it were, in eternal formation, in eternal change ... " [there was no answer to the question; what a pity!].

“Pacifism is alien to the spirit of our poetry. No exotic conquests that excited the minds of the singers of Russian imperialism live in the poetry of Soviet poets ... "

"Our poetry has not yet reached world heights ..."

ALEXEY SURKOV

Remember this poet?

"Comrade. Bukharin, in his introduction to the report, declared that he was making a report on behalf of the party. I do not know what Comrade Bukharin wanted to say by that. In any case, this does not mean that everything in his report is correct and that individual 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 height (applause) ... "

An uninitiated person may imagine that this is about an aesthetic struggle, and not about the physical extermination of the class enemy. But Surkov knows what he is doing.

The other delegates also knew that Bukharin was a complete man; attacked boldly. It is possible that - on the instructions of the organizing committee. And "the favorite of the whole party" had to make excuses right at the congress.

“At our congress, one word received all the rights of citizenship, to which we have recently treated with distrust or even hostility. This word is humanism. Born in a wonderful era, this word has been tarnished and slobbering by puny degenerates. They have replaced its powerful sound - humanity - with Christian lisp - philanthropy ... We rightfully enter into wide poetic use the concepts of love, joy, pride, which make up the content of humanism. But some poets somehow sideways bypass the fourth side of humanism, expressed in the harsh and beautiful word hate (prolonged applause)…»

“On the pages of the newspaper, next to the notes of international information smelling of gunpowder and blood, next to the TASS reports, forcing in the evening to take out a revolver from a distant box and re-clean and grease it, lyrical birds chirp ... Let's not demagnetize the young Red Guard heart of our good youth with an intimate lyric 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 circulations. Let's keep the lyrical gunpowder dry! (prolonged applause)…»

WHAT THE FOREIGNERS SAID

ANDRE MALRO

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 (sinning against the Russian language).

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

"But you should know that only really new works can support the cultural prestige of the Soviet Union abroad, as Mayakovsky supported him, as Pasternak supports him (applause) ..."

This is where you understand how the poets of the Big Four were smashed: Mandelstam - in exile, in Cherdyn, on the verge of life and death; Akhmatova - in the semi-underground, awaiting arrest; Tsvetaeva - in Paris (Malraux had never heard of her); Pasternak - on the podium; he - thanks to Bukharin - the glory of the Soviet Union (this is how the name of the country was written then: the first word with an uppercase, the second - with a lowercase).

RAPHAEL ALBERTI

"The magazine" October "founded by us ... is richly illustrated with photographs about the Soviet Union ..."

“... we know for sure that the day will come and Soviet Spain will open its borders wide to you. The Spanish Revolution cannot fail to win ... "

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

THIS IS THE EXIT

Such is the congress turned out to be. Walpurgis night - but at the same time the Cathedral 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 towards his own destiny. For others, "everything to the smallest fraction of a hundredth in it was justified and came true." Most turned out differently.

As one unnamed young poet of the time put it (quoted at the convention):

“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! Amicably, harmoniously, ardently - to work! "

A lot of truth was said at the congress. One of the truths is this: the congress was, after all, world-wide. History has never known anything like this either before or after. And he won’t know.

in the book:
Yuri Kolker. USAMA VELIMIROVICH AND OTHER FELIETONS ... [Articles and essays] Tirex, St. Petersburg, 2006