MR ANATOL’S MESSAGE LOT OF THE WRITER IS NOW INTOLERABLE IN RUSSIA

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32068, 16 August 1969, Page 12

MR ANATOL’S MESSAGE LOT OF THE WRITER IS NOW INTOLERABLE IN RUSSIA

(Reprinted from the "Ueonomiit” by arrangement) LONDON, August 9.—The tough working-class lad from Tula who came over to us on the same plane with the released lecturer, Gerald Brooke, has brought a message with him. It is that the lot of the writer has become intolerable in Russia. We should believe Mr Anatol (he was Mr Kuznetsov until last Sunday) because he has impeccable credentials. This shrewd and talented man had for years successfully operated within the Soviet literary world, often giving in to the censor and even more often censoring his own work before anybody else saw it. In return he had been allowed to practice his literary craft after a fashion, and even travel abroad. In the end, the compromises demanded from him became too painful even for a “dishonest, conformist, cowardly author,” as he calls himself with savage candour.

On the literary scene in Russia, which Mr Anatol has now left behind, the brief cultural renaissance which began after Stalin’s death in 1953 seems to have ended. The conservative literary establishment and the liberal writers face one another in an open and uneven confrontation. The liberal forces are weak and apparently without powerful supporters at the top of the party. By contrast, the conservatives enjoy the full backing of the powerful state and party bureaucracy. They control the mass media and virtually every literary magazine. And they have at their disposal hundreds of literary apparatchiks like the 11 writers who the other day signed a bitter attack on the liberal magazine “Novy Mir” in the conservative "Ogonyok.” Some of these littleknown writers are declared admirers of Stalin; all appear to be ready to attack their fellow writers who depart from the party line. Ominously, the latest attack on “Novy Mir” and ita editor, Mr Tvardovsky, reproaches him for “flirtation with the west.” Symptom Of Crisis Yet official warnings to fall into line still go unheeded. Russian writers are no longer the gentle and Impractical dreamers that most of them were before communism came to power. They are learning to fight. And they are not alone. Last year a distinguished scientist, Professor Sakharov, issued a manifesto demanding radical changes in foreign and domestic policies. Many scientists and engineers are among the dissidents.. The facade of ideological uniformity is disturbed in many sectors. What is happening in intellectual life now is a symptom of a deep crisis in the whole of the Russian society. After the relatively hopeful Khrushchev era Russia now seems to be entering a period of reaction resembling those which followed the unsuccessful December revolt in 1825 and the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Faced with a crisis in the Communist world, Mr Brezhnev and his colleagues have reacted as Nicholas I and Alexander HI did. Orthodoxy and repression are the order of the day. It is a case of troops against any challenge to Russia's domination of the “socialist commonwealth,” and police persecution of dissident elements at home. But unlike Stalin, the present rulers of the Soviet Union have shown a preference for more “conventional” forms of repression. Unlike Stalin and the Tsars, they have on the whole avoided using the undoubtedly powerful weapon of Russian nationalism for their political purposes. This Is almost cen tainly because a patriotic Russian campaign along the lines of the one conducted by Stalin with such success during the second world war would prove counter-produc-tive among the 100-odd nonRussian nationalities of the Soviet federation. Indeed, this problem of the future balance between the Russians and the other nationalities is one of the three major problems facing the leaders in the Kremlin today. They fear the rise of “bourgeois nationalism” among the non-Russian nationalities of the union, and see it as perhaps the

greatest threat to their rule. They give little publicity to it, but there is little doubt that it preoccupies them not only in traditionally difficult areas like the Ukraine and the Baltic republics but also in central Asia, where the Chinese are showing a readiness to exploit the Russians’ problems for their own purposes. To this problem is added the challenge to Russia’s leaders from their own intellectuals who demand greater artistic and intellectual freedom, and another from those people in eastern Europe who would like to see the Russian grip on their countries at least loosened, but preferably completely removed. Rulers’ Response Faced with these three formidable problems, the rulers of Russia appear to be at a loss. Action to preserve the status quo is their only response. One can understand why they find it so hard to see an alternative. If the Czechs and the Slovaks had won their internal freedom last year, this might well have had an effect on the Ukrainians and Byelorussians across the border. It might quite possibly have led also to a Czech-style demand for a democratic experiment in the Soviet Union as a whole. Any concession to permit Mr Anatol and his fellow writers to describe life in Russia as it really is would be of enormous political significance. What would happen if Ukrainian authors set down in print their feelings about the Soviet Union and their position in it? And what would be the reaction of nationalistic Russians to the rise of Ukrainian or some other nationalism?

The easy answer to these questions is obvious: a regime like the Soviet one is an inadequate anachronism. But it exists, and quite another and more difficult exercise is needed to see how it could be changed without creating a chaos which would be in nobody’s interest Just keeping the present system in Russia ticking over is a task that calls for great energy and no little talent The coalition ruling Russia now does not appear to be particularly talented or gifted, though It would be wrong to consider it incompetent But to embark on a reform of the present system, such as it urgently needs, seems to be

beyond these men’s abilities. Even when they are replaced by younger men, unburdened by the guilt of the Stalin years, the task wiU remain a formidable one.

It would be unhelpful and hyprocritical to ask Mr Brezhnev or his successors to introduce democracy overnight They would be swept from power, but would what might come after them necessarily be better? It might be a militantly nationalist Russian regime that would alienate the other peoples of the Soviet Union. It might be a straight generals' government. The present leaders naturally shy away from these possibilities. But they should in their own interest begin to think about the kind of reforms they might be prepared to see take place in their part of the world.

The Soviet Union cannot afford to try to stand still. For one thing, its development towards a more consumeroriented society, which seems to be an irreversible process, will not allow it. The people of Russia need some reason to believe that the process of emancipation—it need not be called liberalisation or democratisation if these words offend Russian ears—will continue. They were given some hope under Mr Khrushchev. This has now been disappointed. Dangerous pressures might develop out of the present discontents, as they indeed did during the long and seemingly endless years of Tsarist rule. But Tsarist Russia did blow up eventually, catching everybody. including the communists, unawares. History should not be allowed to repeat Itself so blatantly. World Weather The world’s weather on Thursday was: Rome, 61 degrees minimum, 90 degrees maximum, sunny; Paris, 63, 77, thunderstorms; London, 61, 72, sunny; Berlin, 57, 75, changeable; Amsterdam, 59, 77, sunny; Brussels, 62, 78, sunny; Madrid, 68, 91, sunny; Moscow, 61, 72, clear; Stockholm, 61, 82, sunny; New York, 68, 87, clear; San Francisco, 51, 61, clear; Los Angeles, 69,85, clear; Chicago, 68, 85, cloudy; Miami, 73, 88, cloudy; Tokyo, 76, 95, fair; Hong Kong, 78, 88, clear; Buenos Aires, 59, 69, clear; Montreal, 58, 81, cloudy; Johannesburg, 41, 62, fine; Singapore, 74, 87, fair.