Soviet culture on a longer leash

Press, 27 December 1986, Page 17

Soviet culture on a longer leash

New developments on the Russian cultural scene, which was one of three areas — the other being the economy and foreign relations —

which Mikhail Gorbachov needed to revitalise.

There is a joke in Moscow that when Stalin died he left three letters, to be opened by his successor in the event of a crisis. They were opened by Khrushchev.

From ANDREW WILSON in Moscow

The first said: “Blame everything on me. If this fails, open the next letter.” Khrushchev failed and opened the second.

The second said: “Announce sweeping reforms. If this fails, open the third letter,” Khrushchev failed again and opened the third letter. It contained one sentence: “Write three letters for your successor.” Mikhail Gorbacev is nowhere near reaching for his pen yet, but he. will need it ready if he fails to secure what is clearly the high ground in the battle for the Soviet future. When the sterile neo-Stalinist order collapsed with the death of Konstantin Chernenko in February, 1985, there were three areas in which a successor had to revitalise Soviet policy: economy, foreign relations, and culture. The last, in the Soviet Union, is not the exotic plant that decorates the pages of Sunday newspapers in the West. Books and plays are more than afterdinner talks; poetry is more than a suitable Christmas present. People wait months and go frozen miles for such things — and some go further still merely for writing them. By the time of the 27th Communist Party Congress in February this year there was a whole pile of economic blueprints waiting for approval. Also, the direction of foreign policy — detente and denuclearisation — had been clearly indicated by Gorbachev’s speech of January 15.

But about culture there remained a depressing vagueness. It was not, in fact, until the filmmakers’ congress at the end of May that the first hint came that something might be happening of even greater importance than the promised exchange of the computer for the abacus in industrial management. At the congress, the filmmakers kicked out their chief, a party hack called Lev Kulidzhanov, and elected the talented director, Elim Klimov, best known abroad for his “Agony,” which has still not been shown in the Soviet Union. A month later came the congress of writers, at which members threw out the reactionary Georgi Markov and chose as their head Vladimir Karpov, a graduate of Stalin’s concentration camps and a wartime penal battalion.

At the same congress, the poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko (not always the most steadfast rebel), presented a letter from 40 writers demanding, in effect, the

rehabiliatation of Boris Pasternak, author of “Dr Zhivago.” Another poet, Andrei Voznesensky, called for the publication in the U.S.S.R. of the complete works not only of Pasternak and the great poet Anna Akhmatova, but also of two postrevolutionary emigre writers, Evgeny Zamyatin and Vladislav Khodasevich.

Deeper back-stage, more things were happening. A commission was set up to promote publication of the great poet and essayist, Osip Mandelshtam, who died in one of Stalin’s camps in 1938, and another to promote that of the hugely popular, but virtually suppressed, poet and musican, Vladimir Vysotsky, who died in 1980.

A few months ago, a Soviet publishing house, freed from the deadly embrace of the Glavlit censorship office, put out a centenary volume of the poet Nikolai Gumilev, who was executed in 1921 for involvement in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. Another breakthrough was the granting of permission for a group of non-union Leningrad writers to put out an album of their works, entitled “Krug.” Finally, in October, party officials gave a green light for the showing to special audiences of Tengiz Abuladze’s stupendous anti-Stalinist film, “Repentance.” Nor is this all. This month, another State publishing house .is bringing out the long-suppressed novel "Children of the Arbat,” set in the period of the 1930 s purges.

The part played by Gorbachev himself (and perhaps — what is even more discussed — that of lively and sophisticated wife.

Raisa) in all this must be cautiously assessed. For a start, the general secretary, from the moment of his accession, has been almost totally preoccupied with foreign and economic issues. Up to now, he had no need to act to promote reform in the cultural field, even if he had wished to. The head of steam generated within the unions by reforming intellectuals was quite sufficient, from the party’s point of view. All the new leadership needed to do was to let it rise — or contain and control it.

The party’s more enlightened members are clearly aware that its economic and foreign policy goals are inseparable from cultural reform. Without progress in one there cannot be progress towards the others.

More specificially, there can be no improvement in the management of the economy or the quality of work without the support of a new generation untainted by the time-serving cynicism of the Brezhnev era. And to this generation, caught up in the same spirit of rebellion that affects its counterpart in the West, the old rules of thoughtcontrol no longer apply. That the Communist Party knows this is shown by the efforts now being made, with the aid of such figures as the old 1960 s rebel, Voznesensky, to engage the young in dialogue. The ageing Voznesensky could be seen recently arguing with a circle of exotically-attired groupies at a youth and rock evening at the Moscow Manege. Next day, he was part of the platform at a function to launch the so-called “Cultural Fund,” one of whose aims is the restoration of objects from the past — a. frequently unrecorded past for whose history the young, often with a distinctly “Green” tendency, show a quite devouring interest. Just possibly these efforts to win the support of youth will

achieve something, but they cannot be a substitute for the opening, for new generations, of the floodgates of truth (above all about the Stalinist past) in books, poetry, cinema, and the theatre. Without such an opening, youth will simply continue to slide into a largely non-political rejection of all that concerns the country’s future. It will not be a hotbed of dissent — just another embodiment of the inertia that has held back the country for decades. Whether acknowledged publicly or not, this is the crucial issue facing Gorbachev after his return from the recent junket in Delhi — and at the forthcoming plenum of the Central Committee.

Copyright — London Observer Sendee.