Jacoby, Susan. Moscow Conversations. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972.
"Moscow is one of the easiest places in the world for a journalist to become dishonest with himself and his readers." 15
"Dishonesty becomes a part of journalism in Moscow when correspondents fail to tell their readers about these inhibitions and the profound effect they have on a reporter's perceptions of Russian life. The reluctance of the Moscow press corps to write about its working conditions is less a conspiracy of silence than a product of frustrated resignations; an abnormal situation begins to seem quite normal after only a few months of life in Russia." 15
"Foreign correspondents do not travel as much as they would like to, partly because editors at home demand a steady flow of political news from the capital and partly because each trip involves endless bureacratic snags. A correspondent must obtain special permission from the press departmente of the Soveit Foreign Ministry if he wishes to travel outside a twenty-five mile radius of Moscow and even for some points inside the circle" 19
"THe dissenters are a small, diverse collection of people who disagree strongly on long-range goals for Russia; their main area of agreement is their determination to make the Soviet authorities observe their own laws. Their chief activity is publicizing official actions against other dissenters; they view the publicity as an important guarantee that no one will quietly disappear into prison or exile, as in the Stalin years. The dissenters naturally need foreign journalists to transmit the news of their activities to the outside world. Stories about Soviet political dissent published in foreign newspapers ensure that many Russians also hear the news." 22-23
"Some journalists are happy to consider dissidents friends as well as news sources; relationships with dissenters involve somewhat less strain and prestense than relationships with ther Russians. The skepticism about absolute truth that is characteristic of most truly educated minds in the west is completely foreign to the majority of Russians; only with a few of the dissidents did I find a common approach to intellectual questions that had nothing to do with politics." 23
"Khrushchev abolished formal censorship of correspondents outgoing news dispatches in 1961. Foreign journalists are now free to transmit their articles by telephone, Telex or cable without prior approval of a Soviet official. The authorities now attempt to censor news dispatches indirectly, through post-publication earnings, KGB harassment and the ultimate sanction of expulsion from the country. Officials in the press deparment in Soviet embassies throughout the world read articles that appear in newspapers and magazines with Moscow correspondents. If an article is both highly important and abrasive, a correspondent may receive an officialwarning from the press department in Moscow within two or three days of publication." 23
"Soviet officials are clearly furious about being unable to prevent contacts between foreign correspondents and political dissidents. The press department has established a pattern of harrassing and trying to get rid of correspondents who see dissidents frequently." 23
"Four foreign journalists were expelled from the Soviet Union during 1970; three of them had been particularly active in gathering news about political dissent and relaying it to other correspondents. Because it is difficult to arrange meetings and also because only the most urgent news is relayed over tapped phone lines, it is impractical for every correspondent to track down rach piece of dissident news himself. One or two correspondents usually meet with a dissenter and pass the news on to the rest of the Moscow press corps. Unfortunately, many spineless Moscow correspondents are only too happy to acquire the news of political dissent from their colleagues but are unwilling to incur official displeasure by meeting dissidents themselves." 23-24
26-most of the sources are intellectuals
"The reluctance to talk about Stalin today is deep and wide-spread, even amonf people who recognize the dimensions of spread, even among people who recognize the dimensions of the tragedy that befell their country under his dictatorship. Admissions of Stalin's evil, which meant the death and imprisonment of millions of Russians are not forthcoming from most Soviet citizens who grew up during that period. To acknowledge the full extent of the tragedy would be to admit complicity in horrors too great for most people even to think about: The refusal of many middle-aged Germans to admit they knew about the Nazi concentration camps is a similar reaction." 42
"Stalin was never fully toppled from his pedestal, even when Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign was at its height. Too many officials still in power had been the executors of Stalin's policies; indeed, many Western analysts believe Khrushchev's seriousness about de-Stalinization was the major gavtor that led to his loss of support within the Party Central Committee. After Khrushchev's partial cleansing operation, the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership said in effect, 'Enough is enough,' and clamped hte lid back on the sewer. " 42
"I never met a student in any part of the Societ Union who did not listen to the VOA. Although reception is hampered by jamming, Russians patiently persevere. For obvious reasons, English language broadcasts are interfered with less than Russian language runs. Many students also listened to the BBC, saying they preferred its news broadcasts because the reports were less slanted by American government propaganda. (I prefereed the BBC for the same reason in Moscow.) The student consensus, however, was that the VOA offered better music than the BBC." 94
"The girls said they did not believe everything in Soviet newspapers 'any more than you believe everything in yours.' Tanya's favorite paper was Komsomolskaya pravda, the organ of the Komsomol Central Committee.
Oskar Rabin- Unofficial painter
on Hope against Hope: "He felt that one of its greatest strengths was its recognition that what happened under Stalin was not a passing aberration--the product of one man's insanity--but a national sickness that permitted the Stalinist terrror to develop and may appear in mutant forms for generations to come." 171
"Realism is a word that loses its meaning in such an ideological context. If a painter chooses to depict a shabby apartment or a drunk, he is being a "critical realist" rather a Socialist realist, and the authorities frown on critical realism. In the Soviet Union, realism refers to reality as Soviet ideologues think it should be--not to a reality that an individual artist might perceive." 173
"Soviet papers--like books, magazines, canned food labels and every other form of printed material--are subject to official censorship. The existence of censorship does not, however, mean that every statement in every newspaper represent the official policy of the Soviet government. Pravda, the organ of the Party Central Committee, and to a slightly lesser extent Ivestia, the government newspaper, are forums for top-level statements on foreign and domestic policy. To use a favorite phrase of Stalin's, 'it is not by accident' that articles appear in Pravda and Ivestia. Columns by important political commentators sometimes reflect the official government position on important matters." 213
"Ideas for articles are initiated by party authorities, editors, reporters, outside specialists and sometimes by readers. Letters-to-the-editor columns are extremely important in Soviet newspapers; they provide what is essentially the only public forum for complaints about the way various institutions are run." 216
"Government offices often take percautions to prevent their typewriters from being stolen or used for nefarious purposes. At Vera's newspaper, every typewriter had to be locked away before the staff went home at night."234
Dmitri-college student
"At the same time all of this was rumbling around in my head, One Day came out. I thought things might have changed enough so there was actually a possibility of publishing honest writing." 237
"Dmitri's attitude toward the official writers is, quite simply that they are prostitutes. It is an attitude shared by all committted samizdatchiki and political dissidents." 242
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Shatz, The Soviet dissidents
138: highly education
"The demand for human rights and for civil liberties and political self-expression is very much a demand emanating from the educated segment of Soviet society." (Shatz, 138)
-product of the Russian state, Stalin compared to PTG
"Unquestionably, the names of Soviet dissidents most familiar to wEsterners have been those of writers..."
"Given the traditional role of literature as the 'conscience' of Russia and the high moral calling that many writers consequently feel, it is not surprising that literature and nonconformity show a marked affinity for one another. Because of it's social commitment and its frequent use as a vehicle of critical ideas, literature naturally attracts the restless, the questioning, the individualistic spitits." (Shatz, 141)
"Under Soviet conditions, however, literature does not merely attract dissidents, it generates them; for the amount of creative liberty granetd to it, though greater than in some othe endeavors, has strict limits. THe very nature of his work propels the wrier into a head-on confrontation with the control apparatus of the state through the latter's excersise of censorship....Censorship thwarts his creative impulses-and hence his very personality- and at the same time humiliates him by subjecting him to te dictates of individuals who are less knowledgeable, less imaginiative, less sensitive than he feels himself to be." (Shatz, 141)
Generations:
"According to this theory, dissent is largely the work of the postwar generation. THis younger generation was shocked and repelled by the revelations of its parent complicity, whether active or passive, in Staln's repression; having grown up in relative secutiry and prosperity, it is more willing to assume the risks of outspoken criticism than its elders, who cherish the peace and stability they have at last achieved. From this perspectiv, Soviet dissent may appear to be a local branch of the worldwide youth rebellion of the late sixties and early seventies, rejecting, like its foreign counterparts, 'bourgeoise' materialism, social conformity, and political hypocrisy-an example, perhaps, of the 'convergence' of industrial societies, whether socialist or capitalist.
...BUT..."Despite some external similarities to contemporary currents in the West, the characer of Soviet dissent has been determined by specigic Russian historical and political circumstances and is a response to local events."(shatz, 149-150)
"One of the themes the dissidents voice most frequently when asked to explain their actions is a strong sense of personal guilt over the repressions of the Stalin era, and a determination to redeem that guilt by combating injustice in the present. Even when they themselves in no way participated in the repressions, the silent acquiescence, the passivity, and the unquestioned faith in the authorities that Soviet society displayed under Stalin torment them and compel them to speak out." (Shatz, 150)
Skaharov: "[A man] may hope for nothing but nonetheless speak, because he cannot, simply cannot remain silent."
NG: on Czech protest "The purpose of our demonstration was, so it seems to me, not merely to give expression to our own remorse, but also to redeem at least a freaction of our people's guilt before history" Shatz 150
secret speech as awakening
Evutshenko
"Although I had some idea of Stalin's guilt, I could not imagine, until Khrushchev mad his speech, how tremendous it was. Most people had the same experience. After the text was read to them at Party meetings they went away, their eyes on the ground. Probably many among the older people tortured themselves with the question: had they lived their lives in vain." (Shatz, 151)
"As a group experience, the impact of Khrushchev's secret speech on the educated eleite of Soviet society was as decisive as the impact of the wholesale importation of Western culture had been on the Russian nobility in the eighteenth century." (Shatz, 153)
Sakharov- written by Shatz "THe effecto f the exposure of Stalin's injustivices was to mak him examin his own relation to the forces of good and evil in the world and to arouse within him a latent sense of guilt over his contribution to the forces of nuclear destruction" (Shatz 154)
"More frequently, however, a deeply affecting personal taste of Stalnisim helps to explain the feelings and determination of the dissident.."
"The demand for human rights and for civil liberties and political self-expression is very much a demand emanating from the educated segment of Soviet society." (Shatz, 138)
-product of the Russian state, Stalin compared to PTG
"Unquestionably, the names of Soviet dissidents most familiar to wEsterners have been those of writers..."
"Given the traditional role of literature as the 'conscience' of Russia and the high moral calling that many writers consequently feel, it is not surprising that literature and nonconformity show a marked affinity for one another. Because of it's social commitment and its frequent use as a vehicle of critical ideas, literature naturally attracts the restless, the questioning, the individualistic spitits." (Shatz, 141)
"Under Soviet conditions, however, literature does not merely attract dissidents, it generates them; for the amount of creative liberty granetd to it, though greater than in some othe endeavors, has strict limits. THe very nature of his work propels the wrier into a head-on confrontation with the control apparatus of the state through the latter's excersise of censorship....Censorship thwarts his creative impulses-and hence his very personality- and at the same time humiliates him by subjecting him to te dictates of individuals who are less knowledgeable, less imaginiative, less sensitive than he feels himself to be." (Shatz, 141)
Generations:
"According to this theory, dissent is largely the work of the postwar generation. THis younger generation was shocked and repelled by the revelations of its parent complicity, whether active or passive, in Staln's repression; having grown up in relative secutiry and prosperity, it is more willing to assume the risks of outspoken criticism than its elders, who cherish the peace and stability they have at last achieved. From this perspectiv, Soviet dissent may appear to be a local branch of the worldwide youth rebellion of the late sixties and early seventies, rejecting, like its foreign counterparts, 'bourgeoise' materialism, social conformity, and political hypocrisy-an example, perhaps, of the 'convergence' of industrial societies, whether socialist or capitalist.
...BUT..."Despite some external similarities to contemporary currents in the West, the characer of Soviet dissent has been determined by specigic Russian historical and political circumstances and is a response to local events."(shatz, 149-150)
"One of the themes the dissidents voice most frequently when asked to explain their actions is a strong sense of personal guilt over the repressions of the Stalin era, and a determination to redeem that guilt by combating injustice in the present. Even when they themselves in no way participated in the repressions, the silent acquiescence, the passivity, and the unquestioned faith in the authorities that Soviet society displayed under Stalin torment them and compel them to speak out." (Shatz, 150)
Skaharov: "[A man] may hope for nothing but nonetheless speak, because he cannot, simply cannot remain silent."
NG: on Czech protest "The purpose of our demonstration was, so it seems to me, not merely to give expression to our own remorse, but also to redeem at least a freaction of our people's guilt before history" Shatz 150
secret speech as awakening
Evutshenko
"Although I had some idea of Stalin's guilt, I could not imagine, until Khrushchev mad his speech, how tremendous it was. Most people had the same experience. After the text was read to them at Party meetings they went away, their eyes on the ground. Probably many among the older people tortured themselves with the question: had they lived their lives in vain." (Shatz, 151)
"As a group experience, the impact of Khrushchev's secret speech on the educated eleite of Soviet society was as decisive as the impact of the wholesale importation of Western culture had been on the Russian nobility in the eighteenth century." (Shatz, 153)
Sakharov- written by Shatz "THe effecto f the exposure of Stalin's injustivices was to mak him examin his own relation to the forces of good and evil in the world and to arouse within him a latent sense of guilt over his contribution to the forces of nuclear destruction" (Shatz 154)
"More frequently, however, a deeply affecting personal taste of Stalnisim helps to explain the feelings and determination of the dissident.."
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Shatz, Khrushchev and the de-Stalinization campaign: the development of literary dissent
Shatz, Marshall. 1980. Soviet dissent in historical perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
"Open criticism of the past and demand for improvement in the present did not well up spontaneously from below as soon as the heavy hand of the dictator was removed; Soviet society in the preceding decades had been too thoroughly atomized and effectively cowed for that. Instead criticism filtered down from the very summit of the political structure, initiated by non other than the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, in his 'secret speech' of 1956." (Shatz, 95)
Motivations:
"It is certainly not inconceivable that he genuinely wished to provide the Soviet people with a greater degree of security in their daily lives in renouncing the use of mass terror. The pervasive gear and insecurity that Stalin had encouraged, and which appeared to building a to new climax on the eve of his death were repulsive in their barbarity." (Shatz, 96)
""STalin's methods of rule were not just inhumane; they threatened to paralyze the system itself by so terrorizing those responible for running it that they could no longer work effectively." (Shatz, 96)
"By claiming that from this point had Stalin gone astray without opening to questions the foundations of the Soviet system and the methods by which it had been constructed." (Shatz, 97)
"Conspicuously absent from his speech was any reference o the legal, political or institutional sources of STalinism, and the necessity of change in these areas. He dealt exclusively with the symptom of Stalinism- the arbitrary misuse of power-while carefully avoiding any mention of its underlying causes, the features of the Soviet system that gave Stalin his power and permitted him to misuse it." (Shatz, 99)
"More specifically, the central feature of the Soviet political ststem the Communist PArty's monopoly on power, never came into question in Khrushchev's speech. Instead Khrushchev sought to disassociate the Party with Stalin's atrocities while crediting it with all the positive accomplishments of the Stalin period." (Shatz, 99)
"By and large, unofficial criticisms of Stalinism accepted the limits Khrushchev had imposed on the subject. For the next ten years, until the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial of 1966, the voices of dissent evoked by Khrushchev's speech confined themselves largely to the moral plane, calling for a change in the character and atitudes of the people running the Soviet system while exempting the system itself from direct criticism of serious analysis." (Shatz, 100)
-lit played a significant role
"Not only did dissidents resort to literature to express their views but Khrushchev and his supporters were attempting to bend literature to their own purposes, utilizing it as an instrument of de-Stalinization while at the same time trying to ensure it did not cut more deeply than they wished." (Shatz, 100)
110: One day in the life- "highwater in the de-Stalinization" tide
"What Solzhenitsyn's novel implied by subtle omision rather than explicit stateme, but nonetheless unmistakabely-was that Stalinism was a mass phenomoneon. It was not simply the product of individual 'excesses' that claimed individual victims, but something that affected the whole of Soviet society." (Shatz, 111)
"To a Western observer, one of the most distinctive features of Soviet dissent as the preceding discussion demonstrates, is the prominence of literature as its form of expression. Under Khrushchev, the boldest ststements of unofficial criticism were embodied in novels, stories and poetry; greater freedom of artistic expression was of of the demands most frequently made of the authorities and one of the yardsticks used to measure the extent of de-Stalinization; and the rewards and punishments accorded to writers and editors showed which way the political wind was blowing at any given moment." (Shatz. 112)
historical precedent- lit bears a "heavy burden of social resposibility."
"Few Western political figures would pay much attention to anything from the pen of a poet, but in the Soviet Union literatures has always be a very serious matter, sometimes deadly serious. 'Why do you complain?' the great poet Osip Mandelstan, who died in one of Stalin's camps, would ask his long-suffering wife. 'Poetry is respected only in this country-people are killed for it. There's no other place where moer people are killed for it.'" (Shatz, 114)
Solzh letter to Congress
"Literature, or disciourse, are the most convenient and effective camouflague for ideas or complaints that cannot be stated directly. Hence the rise in imperial Russia, and prersistence in the Soviet Union, of a tradition of 'Aesopian language,' a language of hints and allusions which the writer or literary critic uses to evade censorship and which the initiated reader knows how to translate. In a society where a variety of channels are available for the expression of public opinion, literature takes its rightful place as one of the many ways of commenting on pulbic issues. But in a society where censorship prevails, literature inevitably comes to bear far more of the burden." (Shatz, 114)
"Open criticism of the past and demand for improvement in the present did not well up spontaneously from below as soon as the heavy hand of the dictator was removed; Soviet society in the preceding decades had been too thoroughly atomized and effectively cowed for that. Instead criticism filtered down from the very summit of the political structure, initiated by non other than the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, in his 'secret speech' of 1956." (Shatz, 95)
Motivations:
"It is certainly not inconceivable that he genuinely wished to provide the Soviet people with a greater degree of security in their daily lives in renouncing the use of mass terror. The pervasive gear and insecurity that Stalin had encouraged, and which appeared to building a to new climax on the eve of his death were repulsive in their barbarity." (Shatz, 96)
""STalin's methods of rule were not just inhumane; they threatened to paralyze the system itself by so terrorizing those responible for running it that they could no longer work effectively." (Shatz, 96)
"By claiming that from this point had Stalin gone astray without opening to questions the foundations of the Soviet system and the methods by which it had been constructed." (Shatz, 97)
"Conspicuously absent from his speech was any reference o the legal, political or institutional sources of STalinism, and the necessity of change in these areas. He dealt exclusively with the symptom of Stalinism- the arbitrary misuse of power-while carefully avoiding any mention of its underlying causes, the features of the Soviet system that gave Stalin his power and permitted him to misuse it." (Shatz, 99)
"More specifically, the central feature of the Soviet political ststem the Communist PArty's monopoly on power, never came into question in Khrushchev's speech. Instead Khrushchev sought to disassociate the Party with Stalin's atrocities while crediting it with all the positive accomplishments of the Stalin period." (Shatz, 99)
"By and large, unofficial criticisms of Stalinism accepted the limits Khrushchev had imposed on the subject. For the next ten years, until the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial of 1966, the voices of dissent evoked by Khrushchev's speech confined themselves largely to the moral plane, calling for a change in the character and atitudes of the people running the Soviet system while exempting the system itself from direct criticism of serious analysis." (Shatz, 100)
-lit played a significant role
"Not only did dissidents resort to literature to express their views but Khrushchev and his supporters were attempting to bend literature to their own purposes, utilizing it as an instrument of de-Stalinization while at the same time trying to ensure it did not cut more deeply than they wished." (Shatz, 100)
110: One day in the life- "highwater in the de-Stalinization" tide
"What Solzhenitsyn's novel implied by subtle omision rather than explicit stateme, but nonetheless unmistakabely-was that Stalinism was a mass phenomoneon. It was not simply the product of individual 'excesses' that claimed individual victims, but something that affected the whole of Soviet society." (Shatz, 111)
"To a Western observer, one of the most distinctive features of Soviet dissent as the preceding discussion demonstrates, is the prominence of literature as its form of expression. Under Khrushchev, the boldest ststements of unofficial criticism were embodied in novels, stories and poetry; greater freedom of artistic expression was of of the demands most frequently made of the authorities and one of the yardsticks used to measure the extent of de-Stalinization; and the rewards and punishments accorded to writers and editors showed which way the political wind was blowing at any given moment." (Shatz. 112)
historical precedent- lit bears a "heavy burden of social resposibility."
"Few Western political figures would pay much attention to anything from the pen of a poet, but in the Soviet Union literatures has always be a very serious matter, sometimes deadly serious. 'Why do you complain?' the great poet Osip Mandelstan, who died in one of Stalin's camps, would ask his long-suffering wife. 'Poetry is respected only in this country-people are killed for it. There's no other place where moer people are killed for it.'" (Shatz, 114)
Solzh letter to Congress
"Literature, or disciourse, are the most convenient and effective camouflague for ideas or complaints that cannot be stated directly. Hence the rise in imperial Russia, and prersistence in the Soviet Union, of a tradition of 'Aesopian language,' a language of hints and allusions which the writer or literary critic uses to evade censorship and which the initiated reader knows how to translate. In a society where a variety of channels are available for the expression of public opinion, literature takes its rightful place as one of the many ways of commenting on pulbic issues. But in a society where censorship prevails, literature inevitably comes to bear far more of the burden." (Shatz, 114)
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Sinyavsky "The Literary Process in Russia"
Sinyavsky, Andrei. "The Literary Process in Russia." Kontinent. New York: Anchor Books, 1976.
satirical
"The Russian author does not want to write to the state's direction has assumed the nightmarish status of an underground writer, that is to say, from the state's point of view he has chosen a life of crime for which strict penalties and deterrents are laid down. Literature has become a forbidden, risky and thus all the more fascinating activity." (S, 77)
"The writer had to be reduced to the status of a criminal, a lawbreaker-to which some writers first had to be driven to suicide, others expelled, still others tortured. Thousand of writers had to be corrupted and castrated-a task undertaken for several decades by the founders and stormy petrels of Soviet literature." (S, 78)
"Thus at a certain stage the literary process has assumed the character of a double-edged game, an escapade which in itself could well provide the plot of an entertaining novel. Authors have been turned into the heroes of as yet unwritten books; they have tasted the savor of an intrigue which may end in disaster ('If you play with fire, you can burn your fingers,' as Khrushchev warned writers with his customary bluntness), but which on the other hand lends a certain higher meaning-a gaiety, an interest, 'a pledge who knows, of immortality'--to the writer's otherwise drab existence." (S,79)
"The wrier nowadays is walking a knife-edge; but unlike the old days, when writers were simply eliminated one after another, he now derives pleasure and moral satisfaction from this curious pastime. The writer is now someone to be reckoned with." (S, 79)
"When they discovered that a woman of my acquaintance going to Russia from the West, was carrying a copy of Doctor Zhivago in her suitcase, she was immediately put into a gynecological chair and subjected to a medical examination to find out whether she might be carrying any more banned novels. This is excellent. This all to the good. It means that a book is worth something, it is sought after pursued; and by escaping, hiding, or being buried in the ground it gathers weight and power." (S, 80-81)
"We shall not be far wrong if we say that the major topics are prison and labor camps. The themes which inspire the Russian writer today are not stories about collective farms, or factories, not love stories or even the pangs of youth, but how people are imprisoned, where they are sent into exile and exactly how (interesting topic, you must admit) they shoot you in the back of the neck. The labor camp is now the central, the dominant them of literature." (S, 81)
"Whether we take Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, or for greater respectability Tolstoy's Resurrection, we will notice that both of them are based on the notion of escape, of breaking the bounds; that the writer's very soul longs to escape; that the savor, the sense, the ideal of being a writer has nothing whatever to do with 'telling the truth' (go an tell it if you want to-in a tramcar), but it has to do with planting that so-called 'truth' across the tracks of the 'lie' which is universally, legally, and publicly accepted as truth-- and thus to assume, as a duty, the role of 'criminal,' 'lawbreaker,' 'renegade,' 'degenerate,' or (what an apt new word they have invented) as 'ideological saboteur (hell-no dynamite!) and as he surveys the horizon wondering what to write about, more often than not he will chose some forbidden topic." (S, 84)
"It would be hard to invent a more precise and more inoffensive name than samizdat, indicating no more than that a person has simply written everything he wanted to say as he thought fit, and has published it himself, regardless of the consequences, by passing a wad of typewritten sheets to a friend. The friend has gone running to boas about it to two more like-minded drop-outs-and we are witnessing the conception of something great, fantastic, unique, incomparable: the embryo of Russian literature, which once before in the in the nineteenth century, delighted mankind, and is now once more feeling the urge to return to the old battleground." (S, 87)
"In historical perspective of the literary process in Russia, that period which for convenience we have marked with the searing brand of 'Stalinism' has also, perhaps made its modest but legitimate contributin to this process. It may be that too long a spell of silence and despair has made us speak up with such passion and fervor in the conditions of today's relatively tolerable (and even, as I have said, in some ways beneficial) unfreedom--in other words, as soon as the writers were able so much as to open thier mouths. If nowadays we shout so loudly to the world at large about the terrible and shameful things that are being done in Russia, then it is because among other things we have had direct experience eof the 'cold and murk of days to come' which Alexander Blok prophesied for us all." (S, 90)
"It is at this point that literature must be on its guard and must not give way to the seductive spell of speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. The danger threatening modern Russian literature--banned literature, of course (the other literature is not worth considering, since artistically it is about two hundred years out of date)--is assuming the role of a sort of whining complaints book, supposedly to be pursued by the leaders (who don't give a damn anyway), or to be stored away in a cupboard untli the advent of those better times when people will have learned to live by the light of truth." (S, 104)
"We are again faced by the eternal Russian dilemma: Where is your allegiance, you profession purveyors of culture? Whose side are you on? Are you for truth, or for the official lie? When the question is put like that, the writer obviously has no choice but to answer proudly: for truth! And that is the only fitting reply in such a situation. But in proclaiming oneself to be on the side of truth, it is worthwhile remembering what Stalin said when some brave members of the Union of Writers asked him to explain once and for all what socialist realism was, and how, in practical terms, to attain thos glittering heights. Without taking a moment's thought or batting an eyelid, the leader replied:
'Write the truth--and that will be socialist realism!'
The point has been reached where we should feat the truth, lest it hang round out necks again like an albatross. Let the writer refuse to tell lies, but let him create fiction--and in disregard of any kind of 'realism.'" (S, 104)
"All this is simply a set of variations on my original theme: the belief in the power of words. Everyone shares this belief: the common people, the writers, the authorities (who, having investigated the leaflets, immediately, as the rules prescribe, arrested and imprisoned the young truth-seekers), as well as the writers of those countless letters, complaints, and appeals to those same authorities. That is why people write, and why they are forbidden to write." (S, 108)
satirical
"The Russian author does not want to write to the state's direction has assumed the nightmarish status of an underground writer, that is to say, from the state's point of view he has chosen a life of crime for which strict penalties and deterrents are laid down. Literature has become a forbidden, risky and thus all the more fascinating activity." (S, 77)
"The writer had to be reduced to the status of a criminal, a lawbreaker-to which some writers first had to be driven to suicide, others expelled, still others tortured. Thousand of writers had to be corrupted and castrated-a task undertaken for several decades by the founders and stormy petrels of Soviet literature." (S, 78)
"Thus at a certain stage the literary process has assumed the character of a double-edged game, an escapade which in itself could well provide the plot of an entertaining novel. Authors have been turned into the heroes of as yet unwritten books; they have tasted the savor of an intrigue which may end in disaster ('If you play with fire, you can burn your fingers,' as Khrushchev warned writers with his customary bluntness), but which on the other hand lends a certain higher meaning-a gaiety, an interest, 'a pledge who knows, of immortality'--to the writer's otherwise drab existence." (S,79)
"The wrier nowadays is walking a knife-edge; but unlike the old days, when writers were simply eliminated one after another, he now derives pleasure and moral satisfaction from this curious pastime. The writer is now someone to be reckoned with." (S, 79)
"When they discovered that a woman of my acquaintance going to Russia from the West, was carrying a copy of Doctor Zhivago in her suitcase, she was immediately put into a gynecological chair and subjected to a medical examination to find out whether she might be carrying any more banned novels. This is excellent. This all to the good. It means that a book is worth something, it is sought after pursued; and by escaping, hiding, or being buried in the ground it gathers weight and power." (S, 80-81)
"We shall not be far wrong if we say that the major topics are prison and labor camps. The themes which inspire the Russian writer today are not stories about collective farms, or factories, not love stories or even the pangs of youth, but how people are imprisoned, where they are sent into exile and exactly how (interesting topic, you must admit) they shoot you in the back of the neck. The labor camp is now the central, the dominant them of literature." (S, 81)
"Whether we take Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, or for greater respectability Tolstoy's Resurrection, we will notice that both of them are based on the notion of escape, of breaking the bounds; that the writer's very soul longs to escape; that the savor, the sense, the ideal of being a writer has nothing whatever to do with 'telling the truth' (go an tell it if you want to-in a tramcar), but it has to do with planting that so-called 'truth' across the tracks of the 'lie' which is universally, legally, and publicly accepted as truth-- and thus to assume, as a duty, the role of 'criminal,' 'lawbreaker,' 'renegade,' 'degenerate,' or (what an apt new word they have invented) as 'ideological saboteur (hell-no dynamite!) and as he surveys the horizon wondering what to write about, more often than not he will chose some forbidden topic." (S, 84)
"It would be hard to invent a more precise and more inoffensive name than samizdat, indicating no more than that a person has simply written everything he wanted to say as he thought fit, and has published it himself, regardless of the consequences, by passing a wad of typewritten sheets to a friend. The friend has gone running to boas about it to two more like-minded drop-outs-and we are witnessing the conception of something great, fantastic, unique, incomparable: the embryo of Russian literature, which once before in the in the nineteenth century, delighted mankind, and is now once more feeling the urge to return to the old battleground." (S, 87)
"In historical perspective of the literary process in Russia, that period which for convenience we have marked with the searing brand of 'Stalinism' has also, perhaps made its modest but legitimate contributin to this process. It may be that too long a spell of silence and despair has made us speak up with such passion and fervor in the conditions of today's relatively tolerable (and even, as I have said, in some ways beneficial) unfreedom--in other words, as soon as the writers were able so much as to open thier mouths. If nowadays we shout so loudly to the world at large about the terrible and shameful things that are being done in Russia, then it is because among other things we have had direct experience eof the 'cold and murk of days to come' which Alexander Blok prophesied for us all." (S, 90)
"It is at this point that literature must be on its guard and must not give way to the seductive spell of speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. The danger threatening modern Russian literature--banned literature, of course (the other literature is not worth considering, since artistically it is about two hundred years out of date)--is assuming the role of a sort of whining complaints book, supposedly to be pursued by the leaders (who don't give a damn anyway), or to be stored away in a cupboard untli the advent of those better times when people will have learned to live by the light of truth." (S, 104)
"We are again faced by the eternal Russian dilemma: Where is your allegiance, you profession purveyors of culture? Whose side are you on? Are you for truth, or for the official lie? When the question is put like that, the writer obviously has no choice but to answer proudly: for truth! And that is the only fitting reply in such a situation. But in proclaiming oneself to be on the side of truth, it is worthwhile remembering what Stalin said when some brave members of the Union of Writers asked him to explain once and for all what socialist realism was, and how, in practical terms, to attain thos glittering heights. Without taking a moment's thought or batting an eyelid, the leader replied:
'Write the truth--and that will be socialist realism!'
The point has been reached where we should feat the truth, lest it hang round out necks again like an albatross. Let the writer refuse to tell lies, but let him create fiction--and in disregard of any kind of 'realism.'" (S, 104)
"All this is simply a set of variations on my original theme: the belief in the power of words. Everyone shares this belief: the common people, the writers, the authorities (who, having investigated the leaflets, immediately, as the rules prescribe, arrested and imprisoned the young truth-seekers), as well as the writers of those countless letters, complaints, and appeals to those same authorities. That is why people write, and why they are forbidden to write." (S, 108)
Nelidov "Ideocratic Consciousness and Personality"
Nelidov, Dmitiri. "Ideocratic Consciousness and Personality." In The Political, Social and Religious Thought of Russian 'Samizdat'- An Anthology. Edited by Michael Meerson-Aksenov and Boris Shagrin. Translated by Nicolas Lupinin. 19-46. Massachusetts: Nordland Publishing Company, 1977.
1973
"The culture of social adaptation or the negative ideology of which we speak and which firs into a sepcial, semi-displaced, semi-conscious part of the soul, is at the same time a system of internal filters or censorship. Censorship forms as the results of the hardening of settled reactions to ideological energy impulses which are regularly sent and organized in a special way. It pre-determines the mastering of information being received, enlivening and coloring some, sterilizing and ousting others." (M-A, 274)
"Today we see the consequences of this process in the culture of social adaptation (i.e. in the meaning which this idea acquires), in the attempt to raise a new type of people whose ctions and views are already predetermined prior to birth. People are born condemned to atheism, doublethink, and ideological instincts. The oppresion of the truth imposed on them is far more serious than the oppression of sultan or dictator. Truth not only demands that you sacrifice be brought to it. Truth breaks into the consciousness and creeps into the heart. It wishes to rule you from the outside." (M-A, 278)
healing the double speak
"A government, after al, which endlessly speaks about freedom and the thorough development of the personality, cannot simply write in its constitution: there is no freedom of conscience, there is no freedom of the press, there is no freedom of speech nd of demonstration. It acs much more cunningly. It concludes something like a secret agreement with its citizens. I will speak to you of your freedom but you act as if there was no freedom. And, in general, that was how the citizens behaved. Otherwise they would not have had to pay so deatly. These are the elementary ethics of doublethink, understandable to a child." (M-A, 281)
"An elementary reflection, i.e. a certain rejection of these contradictions, speaks of erosion of such consciousness. Reflection makes the accommodation purely external. It makes its realization possible and, in individual cases its repudiation. It is precisely from this simple realization (accepted spiritually, not cynically) and the rejection of doublethink which followed that the 'Democratic Movement' began." (M-A, 282)
"Special mention must be made about the publication of the Chronicle of Current events which, it is possible, was not the direct labor of the 'movement,' but which was contiguous to it. The Chronicle elicited the greatest fear in the State's subconscious. This was not slow in appearing in those repressions which it drew upon itself. In its form, the Chronicle is most inoffensive. It has only information regarding the persecution of ideologically inconvenient people: the arrests, searches, protocols of trials, starvation in camps, the closing of churches, or simply the addresses of the incarcerated. Only information, almost no commentary, and no emotion. Here is just on example..." (M-A, 282)
"These names are not a secret and nothing will happen if they will be known. These, after all, are criminal offenders condemned by Soviet laws and for the most part, probably in juridically normal trials. Nothing will hapen even if the facts about them are openly published and anyone who wishes will be able to find them out, to know the length of their sentences, their guilt, their age. Everyone knows that the State is is not the kind fairy, that is has long hands and cold nerves. And no one will be particularly surprised at such publicity. Nevertheless, some instictive, not fully realized wisdom forces it conceal this as much as military secrets. If one speaks of this publicly, some rules of the game are violated. Toorrow there may be other rules but today in our country, as well as in the "international arena," as few people as possible should know about the composition of the women's labor camp, ZhKh 385/3, or about political prisoners in the Soviet Union in general. All of these not even longs lists somehow out of rhythm with the great stride of the magnanimous patron of of the poorly developed nations and the implacable champion of democracy And it is quite indecent to recall this after so many words regarding the 'thorough development' or 'dirty slanderers,' know all the properties very well and know perfectly well how to exclude all that people should not know about." (M-A, 284)
"The Chronicle witnesses to coercion and, in so doing, draws coercion upon itself. IT cites facts of government cruelty which are so systematically and shamelessly concealed. It thus forces one to look at that which is forbidden by some unaccountable law. All of this is done with blindfolded eyes so as not to know, not to see, so as to forget. Even those at whose hands this is done are afraid to take full account of themselves." (M-A, 284)
"The perversion of consciousness becomes a principle which attempts to impose itself on vision, hearing, and speech. The Chronicle, in calling things by their real names, opposed this perversion. It is percisely to the perverted consciousness that it appears to be deliberatley criminal. If this is analyzed, the whole system of the coercions of a totalitarian state proves to have grown out of the ancient sub-conscious fear of the magical significance of certain works." (M-A, 285)
"The essential point is not that a person is put in jail for expressing his convictions (even though they be in the form of objectionable information). It is in the fact that even prior to any jailing he is deprived of the right to the fundamental, universal choice of his spiritual orientation. Then, by the very means of punishment, the attempt is to physically destroy the possibility of this choice. It has already left the sphere of ideological hypnosis and ceremony is not stood upon in relation to it. What is particularly astounding is a certain petty calculatedness of this overwhelming cruelty: the instructions to organize starvation, cold, searches, denunciations, eavesdropping and the sadism of political indoctrination. THe idea of the punishments is to have the political prisoner lose his personality, to have him accept the imposed scenario or vanish completely. But the pressure of the jail is not enough and someone's fantasy events imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals." (M-A, 285)
"This is no simply a 'change in the means of repression.' It is a revolutionary leap. The quantity of the punishment transforms into quality. The political prisoner remains a personality. He can announce a hunger-strike write a letter to the prosecutor on a scrap of paper, and no matter how much was added on to his sentence, it would still end one day and he would be released. The mental patient is deprived of being a personality. His protests can be ignored, his hunger-strike may only be a symptom of his illness, he can be legally beaten, poisoned with medicine for the sake of his well being, and subjected to insulin shock. He is not given a pen, is kept with the truly ill, and can only leave when he is considered by the doctors to have recovered. Healthiness means the acceptance of stipulated rules,of the laws of doublethink, of the 'culture of social adaptation.' What is demanded are not prescribed thoughts but accepted gestures, and conditioned instincts. The norm of doublethink put forth its human norm and man's full value was gauged by it. THe whole idea of the political protest of the 'democratic movement; consisted in the fact that it showed a different norm of human health which turned out to be intolerable to a society infected by a spiritual epidemic." (M-A, 286)
1973
"The culture of social adaptation or the negative ideology of which we speak and which firs into a sepcial, semi-displaced, semi-conscious part of the soul, is at the same time a system of internal filters or censorship. Censorship forms as the results of the hardening of settled reactions to ideological energy impulses which are regularly sent and organized in a special way. It pre-determines the mastering of information being received, enlivening and coloring some, sterilizing and ousting others." (M-A, 274)
"Today we see the consequences of this process in the culture of social adaptation (i.e. in the meaning which this idea acquires), in the attempt to raise a new type of people whose ctions and views are already predetermined prior to birth. People are born condemned to atheism, doublethink, and ideological instincts. The oppresion of the truth imposed on them is far more serious than the oppression of sultan or dictator. Truth not only demands that you sacrifice be brought to it. Truth breaks into the consciousness and creeps into the heart. It wishes to rule you from the outside." (M-A, 278)
healing the double speak
"A government, after al, which endlessly speaks about freedom and the thorough development of the personality, cannot simply write in its constitution: there is no freedom of conscience, there is no freedom of the press, there is no freedom of speech nd of demonstration. It acs much more cunningly. It concludes something like a secret agreement with its citizens. I will speak to you of your freedom but you act as if there was no freedom. And, in general, that was how the citizens behaved. Otherwise they would not have had to pay so deatly. These are the elementary ethics of doublethink, understandable to a child." (M-A, 281)
"An elementary reflection, i.e. a certain rejection of these contradictions, speaks of erosion of such consciousness. Reflection makes the accommodation purely external. It makes its realization possible and, in individual cases its repudiation. It is precisely from this simple realization (accepted spiritually, not cynically) and the rejection of doublethink which followed that the 'Democratic Movement' began." (M-A, 282)
"Special mention must be made about the publication of the Chronicle of Current events which, it is possible, was not the direct labor of the 'movement,' but which was contiguous to it. The Chronicle elicited the greatest fear in the State's subconscious. This was not slow in appearing in those repressions which it drew upon itself. In its form, the Chronicle is most inoffensive. It has only information regarding the persecution of ideologically inconvenient people: the arrests, searches, protocols of trials, starvation in camps, the closing of churches, or simply the addresses of the incarcerated. Only information, almost no commentary, and no emotion. Here is just on example..." (M-A, 282)
"These names are not a secret and nothing will happen if they will be known. These, after all, are criminal offenders condemned by Soviet laws and for the most part, probably in juridically normal trials. Nothing will hapen even if the facts about them are openly published and anyone who wishes will be able to find them out, to know the length of their sentences, their guilt, their age. Everyone knows that the State is is not the kind fairy, that is has long hands and cold nerves. And no one will be particularly surprised at such publicity. Nevertheless, some instictive, not fully realized wisdom forces it conceal this as much as military secrets. If one speaks of this publicly, some rules of the game are violated. Toorrow there may be other rules but today in our country, as well as in the "international arena," as few people as possible should know about the composition of the women's labor camp, ZhKh 385/3, or about political prisoners in the Soviet Union in general. All of these not even longs lists somehow out of rhythm with the great stride of the magnanimous patron of of the poorly developed nations and the implacable champion of democracy And it is quite indecent to recall this after so many words regarding the 'thorough development' or 'dirty slanderers,' know all the properties very well and know perfectly well how to exclude all that people should not know about." (M-A, 284)
"The Chronicle witnesses to coercion and, in so doing, draws coercion upon itself. IT cites facts of government cruelty which are so systematically and shamelessly concealed. It thus forces one to look at that which is forbidden by some unaccountable law. All of this is done with blindfolded eyes so as not to know, not to see, so as to forget. Even those at whose hands this is done are afraid to take full account of themselves." (M-A, 284)
"The perversion of consciousness becomes a principle which attempts to impose itself on vision, hearing, and speech. The Chronicle, in calling things by their real names, opposed this perversion. It is percisely to the perverted consciousness that it appears to be deliberatley criminal. If this is analyzed, the whole system of the coercions of a totalitarian state proves to have grown out of the ancient sub-conscious fear of the magical significance of certain works." (M-A, 285)
"The essential point is not that a person is put in jail for expressing his convictions (even though they be in the form of objectionable information). It is in the fact that even prior to any jailing he is deprived of the right to the fundamental, universal choice of his spiritual orientation. Then, by the very means of punishment, the attempt is to physically destroy the possibility of this choice. It has already left the sphere of ideological hypnosis and ceremony is not stood upon in relation to it. What is particularly astounding is a certain petty calculatedness of this overwhelming cruelty: the instructions to organize starvation, cold, searches, denunciations, eavesdropping and the sadism of political indoctrination. THe idea of the punishments is to have the political prisoner lose his personality, to have him accept the imposed scenario or vanish completely. But the pressure of the jail is not enough and someone's fantasy events imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals." (M-A, 285)
"This is no simply a 'change in the means of repression.' It is a revolutionary leap. The quantity of the punishment transforms into quality. The political prisoner remains a personality. He can announce a hunger-strike write a letter to the prosecutor on a scrap of paper, and no matter how much was added on to his sentence, it would still end one day and he would be released. The mental patient is deprived of being a personality. His protests can be ignored, his hunger-strike may only be a symptom of his illness, he can be legally beaten, poisoned with medicine for the sake of his well being, and subjected to insulin shock. He is not given a pen, is kept with the truly ill, and can only leave when he is considered by the doctors to have recovered. Healthiness means the acceptance of stipulated rules,of the laws of doublethink, of the 'culture of social adaptation.' What is demanded are not prescribed thoughts but accepted gestures, and conditioned instincts. The norm of doublethink put forth its human norm and man's full value was gauged by it. THe whole idea of the political protest of the 'democratic movement; consisted in the fact that it showed a different norm of human health which turned out to be intolerable to a society infected by a spiritual epidemic." (M-A, 286)
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Kenez Vol. 1
Kenez,
Peter. A History of
the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
"The first days after Stalin's death seemed to justify the fears that only he could guarantee order (Kenez, 185)."
"The character of the Soviet system as it developed under Stalin demanded a single ruler...In any case, they wanted to prevent the rise of another dictator because they feared for their personal security: they had every reason to fear and distrust one another. They had a great deal of practice in internal struggle, backstabbing and hypocrisy. (K, 186)
"From the very outset the leaders of the new regime faced insoluble dilemas: on the one hand, they neither could nor wanted to rule by Stalinist methods; on the other. the could not repudiate the past. These peole after all, had not been innocent bystanders but were heavily implicated in the crimes of the previous era. (K, 190)
"The writing of history was strictly supervised. The problems were delicate: ot was not easy to find a reasonably consistent and authoritative interpretation and stick to it. Books written by historians on some aspects of the Soviet past--such as the revolution, collectivization, the nature of terror, and foreign policy were so misleading and written in such a stilted languages as to be almost unreadable. Although several hundred such books were published each year, the vast majority of them remained unopened. (K, 190)"
"History writing was the voice of the Soviet regime and was therefore heavily controlled. By contrast, the work of artists could be left open to interpretation, coulf be regarded as something contingent. As aresult, writers and filmmakers could get much closer to telling the truth. From the point of view of creative artists, the difficulty was that the line between what was permissible and what was not constantly changed. In one year a writer could achieve success for discussing an issue openly, but next year, a different writer saying more or less the same thing could get into serious trouble. Indeed the singly best indicator the liberalism of the moment was current state of the so-called "Stalin problem." When writers wer allowed to publish works about their past sufferings in the camps, that implied openness, reform , and liveralism' by contrast when Stalin was at least partially rehabilitated and his "historic achievements" stressted, that suffested a turn to conservatism and increased repression (K, 190-191)."
"Immediately after Stalin's death Soviet intellectual life experienced a period that came to be called, after a novella published by Ilia Ehrenburg in earl 1954, the "thaw." By the mid-1950 many of the old restrictions were lifted and every component of Soviet culture benefited. Works produced by writers and film directors reasserted the significance of the individual, the reality of emotional life, and thereby extended the private sphere. (K,191)"
192-changes in Pravda
"The character of the Soviet system as it developed under Stalin demanded a single ruler...In any case, they wanted to prevent the rise of another dictator because they feared for their personal security: they had every reason to fear and distrust one another. They had a great deal of practice in internal struggle, backstabbing and hypocrisy. (K, 186)
"From the very outset the leaders of the new regime faced insoluble dilemas: on the one hand, they neither could nor wanted to rule by Stalinist methods; on the other. the could not repudiate the past. These peole after all, had not been innocent bystanders but were heavily implicated in the crimes of the previous era. (K, 190)
"The writing of history was strictly supervised. The problems were delicate: ot was not easy to find a reasonably consistent and authoritative interpretation and stick to it. Books written by historians on some aspects of the Soviet past--such as the revolution, collectivization, the nature of terror, and foreign policy were so misleading and written in such a stilted languages as to be almost unreadable. Although several hundred such books were published each year, the vast majority of them remained unopened. (K, 190)"
"History writing was the voice of the Soviet regime and was therefore heavily controlled. By contrast, the work of artists could be left open to interpretation, coulf be regarded as something contingent. As aresult, writers and filmmakers could get much closer to telling the truth. From the point of view of creative artists, the difficulty was that the line between what was permissible and what was not constantly changed. In one year a writer could achieve success for discussing an issue openly, but next year, a different writer saying more or less the same thing could get into serious trouble. Indeed the singly best indicator the liberalism of the moment was current state of the so-called "Stalin problem." When writers wer allowed to publish works about their past sufferings in the camps, that implied openness, reform , and liveralism' by contrast when Stalin was at least partially rehabilitated and his "historic achievements" stressted, that suffested a turn to conservatism and increased repression (K, 190-191)."
"Immediately after Stalin's death Soviet intellectual life experienced a period that came to be called, after a novella published by Ilia Ehrenburg in earl 1954, the "thaw." By the mid-1950 many of the old restrictions were lifted and every component of Soviet culture benefited. Works produced by writers and film directors reasserted the significance of the individual, the reality of emotional life, and thereby extended the private sphere. (K,191)"
192-changes in Pravda
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