WRITERS AND COMMUNISM

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28491, 22 January 1958, Page 11

WRITERS AND COMMUNISM

Move In Bulgaria And Poland (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, January 20. Both Bulgaria and Poland had decided to take sterner measures against their writers, the "New York Times” reported today. The newspaper, in two stories—one from Sofia and the other from Warsaw—reported that the Communist authorities had moved towards tighter control over the writers in both countries. In Bulgaria, pressed by the ruling Communist Party, the country’s leading novelists, poets, and playwrights must recant their heretical ideas. In Poland the government had decided to use stronger measures “to re-enlist the country’s writers for the cause of communism.” The “New York Times” said that in Bulgaria the root heresy ■appeared to have been the writers” belief that with the shattering of the “Stalin Myth” in 1956, and the downgrading a few months ago of Bulgaria’s “Little Stalin,” Mr Vulke Chervenkov, they could write pretty much as they pleased. “A surprising number slipped the halter of party control, to judge from the list of offenders published in the Communist press here in Sofia,” the “New York Times” said.

“Some went so far as to condemn Soviet Union for crushing the Hungarian revolt and to demand complete freedom of the press. Others rejected the party’s authority in the arts and refused to obey its decision.”

The “New York Times” said Mr Chervenkov, still third-rank-ing Deputy Premier and Minister of Culture as well, now seemed to be “settling accounts” with the unruly writers. The Communist regime held all the cards. No book could be published or no play produced without its approval. The newspaper said that in Poland the Communist Party had given creative artists, and particularly writers, a stark choice. Either to conform—or see their works go unpublished. Mail Robbery (Rec. 7 p.m.) ADELAIDE, Jan. 21. The former Adelaide mail officer, Meryyn Willis Gray, aged 25. was sentenced to five years’ gaol in the Criminal Court today for two postal thefts involving £49.300. Gray, who admitted stealing articles addressed to two banks, was said by the Judge to have spent £2050 on a car immediately after the theft of a mailbag containing £48,000.