Alexander Tvardovsky, a great editor

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 12

Alexander Tvardovsky, a great editor

Alexander Tvardovsky, the Soviet poet and editor who died last week, may be remembered best for publishing Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “ One Day in the “ Life of Ivan Denisovich By itself this would be no small feat to be remembered by; for not only was it a novel by a man who may come to be considered the greatest novelist of this century, but its subject is Stalinist prison camps, and the Soviet Union is a place fraught with danger for those who write or publish political material unacceptable to the regime. It was a mark of Tvardovsky’s stature as a poet and editor that he managed to persuade the then Soviet Pr»me Minister, Mr Khrushchev, that this novel should be published.

His achievements were remarkable in other ways. As a liberal editor of the Soviet Writers’ Union monthly, “Novy Mir”, Tvardovsky used the journal to signal to literary liberals the way the political winds were blowing. Sometimes he sought support from the Writers’ Union; often this predominantly conservative body did not give it. Later the union expelled Solzhenitsyn; and Tvardovsky wrote a scathing letter of protest to the union at great personal risk to himself.

Another significant feature of his editorship was his quietly persistent use of constitutional means to liberalise publishing. His support of appeals by dissenters to the Soviet Constitution was often an embarrassment to the authorities; in the end, early in 1970, Tvardovsky was reipoved from his post and replaced by a conservative. Tvardovsky was a foremost representative of one school of thought about publishing in the Soviet Union: he believed in constant behind-the-scenes pressure on authorities emphasised by only an occasional open challenge. Some other liberals will have none of this; their works have either to be published abroad or to be circulated, possibly in manuscript form, underground. These different approaches to the same problem may each help to bring the Soviet Union to a point where political considerations no longer override literary. Tvardovsky’s courage and skill have surely brought that outcome significantly nearer.