The cancerous society

RUSSIA TIBOR SZAMUELY

Many years ago, at a Soviet Communist party conference, the party secretary of Tula Region,

reporting on the splendid cultural progress of

his satrapy, proudly announced that the num- ber of writers there had increased forty-two

times over since the revolution: now there were forty-two writers working in Tula Region whereas in backward tsarist days it had pos- sessed only one solitary representative of the literary profession—Leo Tolstoy.

This statement is fairly typical of the Soviet Union, where literary progress, like the pro- duction of steel ingots or petrol or shoes, is measured almost solely in terms of quantity. At last year's Writers' Congress speakers con- stantly repeated the proud boast : 'The Soviet Union has more writers than any other country in the world.' All perfectly true: there are even

probably more certified writers in the USSR

than in all the rest of the world together. Per- haps even more than in the whole previous

history of mankind. Think of it : in May 1967 there were 6,608 writers in Russia, all neatly classified into the appropriate categories of prose-writers, poets, playwrights and critics.

There is only one drawback to this creative paradise, namely that all 6,608 do not add up tc a single Tolstoy. In fact, in any other country no more than a dozen or so out of these serried masses of pen-pushers would be regarded as writers at all. For in their infinite solicitude for

theornoral well-being of the Soviet people the Communist party has, over the past fifty years,

gone to great lengths to weed out any author of

talent, integrity and independence. By a variety of means—execution, prison camp, suicide, or simply non-publication—the desired result, the murder of a great literary tradition, has been effected in full measure.

In recent years, however, what with the deplorable laxity of the security police, the watchdogs of literary orthodoxy have run into

difficulties. Some of these have now been happily eliminated, and the culprits put behind

bars. But Soviet literature has by no means been restored to its customary tranquillity of the graveyard. The main reason for this disturb- ing. state of affairs has been the appearance in Russia, after a lapse of twenty or thirty years, of a genuine novelist of the first rank: Alex- ander Solzhenitsyn.

What makes Solzhenitsyn different from the other 6,607 is not just his immense talent—that could be forgiven, however grudgingly- - but his adamant resolve to write the truth and nothing but the truth : to describe what life in the Land of Socialism is really like. One subject above all personally concerns every single Soviet citizen regardless of class, race, creed or social position, a subject that had never ever been hinted at in public: the purges and the slave-labour camps. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is the man who first told his people the truth about the communist inferno—and who has gone on telling it.

Solzhenitsyn erupted on the Soviet literary scene in November 1962 with the publication— authorised by a majority decision of Khrush- chev's Politburo—of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Never before has an author had such instantaneous success: Solzhenitsyn became world-famous overnight. The publica- tion of Ivan Denisovich was not only the greatest Soviet literary occasion in a generation, but also the most important political event since Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech. In one short novelette Solzhenitsyn laid bare the black hor- ror at the heart of Soviet society, the existence of a vast system of human slavery.

After having spent eight years in the camps, Solzhenitsyn knew all about them—as did countless millions of his fellow-countrymen. He described a typical camp day in 1951; it so hap- pens that at that precise time I was myself in a camp of the same type, situated in a similar locality. I am therefore in a position to vouch for the accuracy of every hideous detail in Solzhenitsyn's book. But, of course, it is only western readers, fed for years on the soothing pap of fellow-travelling lies, who need con- firmation of the truth: no Russian ever doubted it for a moment. They knew that this was what it was like—only they had never seen it men- tioned in print before.

For months people could talk of little else but Ivan Denisovich. The literary establishment, the party hacks and the police informers, had to grind their teeth impotently and hope for better times. Meanwhile Solzhenitsyn, a reserved and retiring man living quietly in the provincial town of Ryazan, became the idol of the new generation of 'unofficial' writers which sud- denly sprung up throughout the country. The monolithic unity of Soviet literature was at an end, and even some of the older writers began remembering words and concepts which they had known in their youth and had tried to for-

get for many years—like 'honesty,' couragc,' 'dignity,' decency.'

It did not take long for the party to realise the danger. With Khrushchev and his un-Bol- shevik fits of petty-bourgeois sentimentality safely out of the way, the new tough party leadership (quaintly known as 'liberal' in some western circles) decided to strike -hard. First Sinyaysky and Daniel. then other groups of underground writers. then their sympathisers: happy days were here again for the copper's narks of the Union of Soviet Writers. And now, the preliminary work being done. they arc ready to demolish the man whom they, and the party leadership, hate more than anyone else, the one great living writer of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The publication a fortnight ago in Literantrnaya Gazeta of a long and uncom- monly vicious unsigned attack upon Solzhenit- syn marks the beginning of the open campaign, the inception of the biggest Soviet literary row since the Pasternak affair ten years ago.

The systematic harassment of Solzhenitsyn has actually been going on for more than three years. First they stopped publishing him; then his writings were removed from the libraries and all mention of his name prohibited; then his home was searched by the police and his manu- scripts and archives confiscated. Foul rumours were put about by the authorities: that he had been a traitor in the war, that he had attempted to establish a terroristic organisation, that he was mad, and so on. Finally, goaded beyond all endurance, Solzhenitsyn sent an open letter to the delegates of the Fourth Writers' Congress (which, needless to say, he had not been invited to attend). Solzhenitsyn did not limit himself to protesting against his own persecution: he boldly called for the complete abolition of censorship, 'of the oppression, insupportable in the long' run, to which our literature has for decades and decades been subjected on the part of the cen- sorship.'

Officially no cognizance was taken of Solz. henitsyn's letter. But in the changed political climate of the Soviet Union many delegates, sick to the heart for having remained silent too long, registered their shock and indignation. The distinguished poet Antokolsky wrote to Demichev, Secretary of the Central Commit- tee : 'If Solzhenitsyn cannot say what he wants to say to the readers in our country then I, an old writer, have no right to face the readers either.' He was not alone : seventy-nine signed a petition calling for an open discussion of Solzhenitsyn's letter. They were told that this was out of the question.

As the months passed Solzhenitsyn continued to press for the publication of his works—and warned that otherwise some of them would inevitably appear abroad. The authorities were clearly at a loss: on the one hand they nego- tiated with Solzhenitsyn regarding possible emendations—while at the same time the editor of Pravda, Zimyanin, issued a violent verbal attack against the novelist at a meeting of journalists, calling him a schizophrenic who 'finds only sores and cancerous tumours' in Soviet society, and concluding that 'obviously we cannot publish his works.'

Having now read the manuscripts of two of Solzhenitsyn's novels, shortly to be published in English—Part One of The Cancer Ward. and In the First Circle-1 can well understand why the Soviet government could never permit their publication in Russia. These are not only great works of literature: they reveal com- munist society from the inside, in all its cruelty and corruption, its inhumanity and injustice. Here is a terrifying picture—but it also contains

hope: hope and faith in the indomitable nature of man, capable of preserving his humanity through physical and moral hells undreamed-of by writers or theologians of past ages.

The action of The Cancer Ward takes place in February 1955 in (obviously) the cancer ward of a hospital in Central Asia. (Solzhenit- syn himself spent many months after his re- lease in a Tashkent hospital undergoing treat- ment for a malignant tumour.) At first we learn all about the patients' medical symptoms and diagnoses—then gradually, as we get to know them one by one, we begin to discover that the malignant cancer of Soviet society, which had warped their souls and ruined their lives, trans- formed them into heartless informers and de- humanised ex-convicts, into careerists and drudges, is a far more terrible disease than the tumours rotting their bodies and gradually killing them off. The Cancer Ward is the Soviet Union.

In the First Circle is too vast a novel—over 200,000 words, with a cast of characters ranging from Stalin to semi-literate convicts— even to attempt to describe in brief. The title is taken from Dante: the first, comparatively most lenient circle of Inferno—in this case one of those peculiar Soviet institutions, a scientific institute run by the MOB and staffed by convict scientists engaged in inventing and producing technical devices for trapping and convicting other people. They lead a relatively privileged existence—but they are still convicts; they re- ceive white bread while their bosses and over- seers get Stalin Prizes for their inventions. This, in fact, is how much of the 'great Soviet achievement' that we hear about so often was really brought about—by slaves. Cheops+ cybernetics=Soviet power, if one may para- phrase a famous slogan of Lenin's.

No wonder the communist establishment is baying for Solzhenitsyn's blood. Literaturnaya Gazeta calls him an anti-Soviet renegade, com- pares him with Svetlana Alliluyeva, accuses him of cooperating with 'reactionary Western propaganda.' As for In the First Circle: 'rabid slander of our social system.'

In the Soviet Union such accusations usually lead to grave consequences, to put it mildly. But what can they do to Solzhenitsyn? He has already been through 'it all, and hell Bath no terrors for him any more. In the First Circle contains his reply, in the form of a convict- engineer's brusque retort to Abakumov, the dreaded Minister of State Security (in 1949): have nothing left, do you understand— nothing! You can't get at my wife and child— a bomb got them. My parents are dead. All my worldly property is a handkerchief, my boiler suit and my buttonless linen belong to the state. You've taken away my freedom a long time ago, and you can't return it because you haven't got any yourself. I'm forty-two, you sentenced me to twenty-five years; I've been on hard labour, and done time in the punishment cells, and worn handcuffs, and been guarded by dogs, and been in a punitive brigade—what else can you threaten me with? You're only strong while you haven't taken everything away. But a man from whom you've taken everything is no longer compliant to your will. He is free again.'

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been through many circles of the communist Hell, and as a result he is today a free citizen of a cancerous society. This makes him such a difficult custo- mer to handle. And there are very many more in the same position. This, I believe, is known as the law of diminishing returns.