The revival of the persecution of writers. The same disgraced parsnip Persecution of writers in the USSR

Censorship exists all over the world and books, theatrical productions and films often fall under its yoke. In Soviet times, literature, like many other areas of culture, was under total control by the party leadership. Works that did not correspond to the ideology being propagated were banned, and they could be read only in Samizdat or by taking out a copy bought abroad and secretly brought to the Land of the Soviets.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In the Soviet Union, almost all major works written by a dissident writer were banned. Among them are the famous Gulag Archipelago, Novy Mir, Cancer Ward. The latter was even handed over to the printing house, but only a few chapters of the novel were typed there, after which an order was issued to scatter the set and prohibit printing. Novy Mir planned to publish a magazine of the same name, but, despite the agreement, the novel was never published.

But in Samizdat, the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were in demand. Small stories and sketches occasionally got into print.

Michael Bulgakov

For the first time the novel "The Master and Margarita" was published a quarter of a century after the death of the writer. However, censorship was not at all the reason. The novel was simply not known. Bulgakov's manuscript was read by the philologist Abram Vulis, and the whole capital started talking about the work. The first version of the cult novel was published in the Moscow magazine and consisted of scattered fragments in which the semantic line was hardly traced, because some of the key points and statements of the characters were simply cut out. Only in 1973 the novel was published in full.

Boris Pasternak

The novel, created by the writer for 10 years, was first published in Italy, later published in Holland in the original language. It was distributed free of charge to Soviet tourists in Brussels and Vienna. Only in 1988 Doctor Zhivago was published in Russia.

Until the publication of the novel in the Novy Mir magazine, its samizdat version was passed from hand to hand for reading for one night, and by hook or by crook, books brought from abroad were kept under lock and key, they were given to read only to the most reliable people who could not inform on the owner.

Vladimir Nabokov

His novel "Lolita" was banned not only in the Land of Soviets. The provocative and scandalous work was refused to be published in many countries, explaining this by the inadmissibility of promoting relations between an adult man and a young teenage girl. For the first time, Lolita was published in 1955 by the Parisian publishing house Olimpia Press, which specialized in very specific works that were in demand among lovers of strawberries.
In the West, the ban on the novel was removed quite quickly, but in the Soviet Union it was published only in 1989. At the same time, today "Lolita" is considered one of the outstanding books of the twentieth century, included in the list of the best novels in the world.

Evgenia Ginzburg

The novel "The Steep Route" actually became a chronicle of the author's exile. It describes everything that happened to the repressed Yevgenia Ginzburg, starting from the moment she was imprisoned in Butyrka. Naturally, the work is permeated with hatred for the regime that condemned the woman to life in prison.

It is understandable why the novel was banned from publication until 1988. However, through samizdat, the Steep Route spread quickly and was popular.

Ernest Hemingway

Foreign authors also fell under the ban of censorship in the Soviet state. In particular, Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls was recommended for internal use after its publication in Foreign Literature. And, although there was no official ban on the work, only representatives of the party elite included in a special list could get it.

Daniel Defoe

No matter how surprising it may seem, but innocent, at first glance, the novel "Robinson Crusoe" was also at one time banned in the USSR. More precisely, it was printed, but in a very loose interpretation. The revolutionary Zlata Lilina was able to consider the discrepancy between the ideology of the country in the adventure novel. Too much role was assigned to the hero and the influence of the working people on history was completely missed. Here is a cropped and combed version of "Robinson Crusoe" and read in the Soviet Union.

H. G. Wells

The author wrote his novel Russia in the Dark after visiting Russia during the Civil War. And the country made a very negative impression on him, repeatedly reinforced by the chaos and devastation that reigned at that time. Even meetings with the ideologically inspired Vladimir Lenin did not make the writer feel the importance of what is happening for history.

In 1922, the book was first published in the Soviet Union in Kharkov and was preceded by a lengthy commentary by Moses Efimovich Ravich-Cherkassky, who explained the fallacy of the position of the English publicist. The next time in the USSR the book was published only in 1958, this time with a foreword by Gleb Krzhizhanovsky.

George Orwell

After Animal Farm, in which the government of the Soviet Union saw an unacceptable and harmful allegorical comparison of the leaders of the proletariat with animals, all of Orwell's work was banned. The works of this author began to be published in the country only in the post-perestroika period.

Mikhail Zoshchenko

In the story "Before Sunrise", materials for which Mikhail Zoshchenko had been collecting for many years, the leaders of the propaganda department saw a politically harmful and anti-artistic work. After the publication of the first chapters in the October magazine in 1943, an order was issued to ban the story. Only after 44 years the work will be published in the USSR, in the USA it saw the light in 1973.

In Soviet times, almost all spheres of culture were censored. Even the most famous monuments embarrassed officials with their appearance. Sculptors were forced to remake them in accordance with the ideas of officials about Soviet realism. Surprisingly, one of the symbols of Moscow underwent a transformation already in the 21st century.

In the fall of 1958, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak received the Nobel Prize in Literature, largely thanks to Doctor Zhivago. In an instant, this novel in the Soviet Union was considered "slanderous" and discrediting the dignity of the October Revolution.

Pasternak was put under pressure on all fronts, because of which the writer was forced to refuse the award.

Fatal October

Boris Pasternak is often called the Hamlet of the 20th century because he lived an amazing life. The writer managed to see a lot in his lifetime: revolutions, world wars, and repressions. Pasternak repeatedly came into conflict with the literary and political circles of the USSR. For example, he rebelled against socialist realism, an artistic movement that was especially and widely spread in the Soviet Union. In addition, Pasternak was repeatedly and openly criticized for the excessive individuality and dullness of his work. However, little compares to what he had to do after October 23, 1958.
Pasternak received the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 23, 1958. It is known that he was awarded one of the most prestigious literary awards for his work Doctor Zhivago with the wording "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel." Prior to this, only Ivan Bunin was nominated for the Nobel Prize among Russian writers. And the candidacy of Boris Pasternak in 1958 was proposed by the French writer Albert Camus himself. By the way, Pasternak could win the award from 1946 to 1950: he was annually listed as a candidate at that time. Having received a telegram from Anders Esterling, secretary of the Nobel Committee, Pasternak replied to Stockholm with the following words: "Grateful, glad, proud, embarrassed." Many of the writer's friends and cultural figures have already begun to congratulate Pasternak. However, the entire writing team reacted extremely negatively to this award.


Chukovsky on the day when Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize

The beginning of bullying

As soon as news of the nomination reached the Soviet authorities, Pasternak immediately began to be pressured. Konstantin Fedin, one of the most active members of the Writers' Union, who came the next morning, demanded defiantly to renounce the prize. However, Boris Pasternak, having entered into a conversation in a raised voice, refused him. Then the writer was threatened with expulsion from the Writers' Union and other sanctions that could put an end to his future.
But in a letter to the Union, he wrote: “I know that under pressure from the public, the question of my expulsion from the Writers' Union will be raised. I don't expect justice from you. You can shoot me, send me out, do whatever you want. I forgive you in advance. But take your time. It will not add to your happiness or glory. And remember, anyway, in a few years you will have to rehabilitate me. This is not the first time in your practice.” From that moment on, public persecution of the writer began. All sorts of threats, insults and anathemas from the entire Soviet press rained down on him.

I haven't read it, but I

At the same time, the Western press actively supported Pasternak, when, like anyone else, he did not mind exercising insults against the poet. Many saw the award as a real betrayal. The fact is that Pasternak, after the unsuccessful publication of the novel in his country, decided to transfer his manuscript to Feltrinelli, a representative of the Italian publishing house. Soon Doctor Zhivago was translated into Italian and became, as they say now, a bestseller. The novel was considered anti-Soviet, as it exposed the achievements of the October Revolution of 1917, as its critics said. Already on the day the prize was awarded, October 23, 1958, on the initiative of M. A. Suslov, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution “On the slanderous novel of B. Pasternak”, recognizing the decision of the Nobel Committee as another attempt to be drawn into the Cold War.


On the cover of one of the American magazines in 1958
The baton was picked up by Literaturnaya Gazeta, which took up the persecution of the writer with particular predilection. On October 25, 1958, it wrote: “Pasternak received“ thirty pieces of silver ”, for which the Nobel Prize was used. He was rewarded for agreeing to play the role of bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda ... An inglorious end awaits the resurrected Judas, Doctor Zhivago, and his author, whose lot will be popular contempt. The issue of the newspaper that came out that day was entirely "dedicated" to Pasternak and his novel. Also, one of the readers wrote in one revealing note: “What Pasternak did - he slandered the people among whom he himself lives, handed over his fake to our enemies - only an outright enemy could do. Pasternak and Zhivago have the same face. The face of a cynic, a traitor. Pasternak - Zhivago himself has incurred the wrath and contempt of the people.
Because of the Nobel Prize, Pasternak was dubbed the "resurrected Judas"
It was then that the well-known expression “I didn’t read, but I condemn!” appeared. The poet was threatened with criminal prosecution under the article “Treason to the Motherland.” Finally, Pasternak could not stand it and sent a telegram to Stockholm on October 29 with the following content: “Due to the importance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it, not take my voluntary refusal as an insult. But this did not alleviate his situation. Soviet writers turned to the government with a request to deprive the poet of citizenship and send him abroad, which Pasternak himself feared most of all. As a result, his novel Doctor Zhivago was banned, and the poet himself was expelled from the Writers' Union.


The writer was left almost alone

Unfinished story

Soon after the forced refusal, a flurry of criticism again fell upon the exhausted poet. And the reason was the poem "Nobel Prize", written as an autograph to the English correspondent of the Daily Mail. It hit the pages of the newspaper, which again did not please the Soviet authorities. However, the history of the Nobel Prize did not remain unfinished. Thirty years later, Pasternak's son Yevgeny "received" it as a sign of respect for the writer's talent. Then, and this was the time of glasnost and perestroika of the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was published, and Soviet citizens were able to familiarize themselves with the text of the banned work.

Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin loved to watch films - domestic and foreign, old and new. The new domestic, in addition to the natural interest of the audience, was a tireless subject of his concern: following Lenin, he considered cinema "the most important of the arts." At the beginning of 1946, another cinematic novelty was offered to his attention - the impatiently awaited second series of Sergei Eisenstein's film "Ivan the Terrible". The first series by this time had already received the Stalin Prize of the first degree.

The film was not only a government order of particular importance. The dictator connected with him hopes that had frankly personal overtones. As early as the early 1930s, he categorically denied his alleged resemblance to Russia's greatest reformer and crowned reformer, Peter the Great. “Historical parallels are always risky. This parallel is meaningless,” the dictator insisted. By the beginning of the 1940s, Stalin was already frankly hinting to Eisenstein at the "historical parallels" between his own deeds and the policies of Ivan the Terrible. The film about the most cruel Russian tyrant was supposed to explain to the Soviet people the meaning and price of their sacrifices. In the first series, it seemed that the director quite successfully began to fulfill the task assigned to him. The second scenario was also approved by the "supreme censor". Nothing foretold catastrophe.

The then head of Soviet cinema, Ivan Bolshakov, returned from watching the second series with an “upturned face,” as eyewitnesses recalled. Stalin led him off with a phrase that can be considered an epigraph to subsequent events that determined the post-war fate of Soviet culture for the next --- the next seven years - until the death of the tyrant: “During the war, our hands did not reach, and now we will take on all you properly."

What, actually, unexpected and categorically unacceptable could be seen on the Kremlin screen by the customer of the film, its main "consultant" and the most attentive reader of the script? The party leaders of Soviet art for many years sincerely believed that the main thing in cinema is the script. However, the direction of Sergei Eisenstein, the performance of his actors, the camera work of Eduard Tisse and Andrei Moskvin, the pictorial decisions of Joseph Spinel and the music of Sergei Prokofiev in counterpoint with clearly defined meanings of words were expressed by the playful, visual and sound means that fundamentally contradicted the intentions of the author of this project, Stalin. The ecstatic dance of the oprichniki, under the yernic tunes and wild whooping, exploding the black-and-white screen with a bloody flash of colors, doused with boundless horror. The source of inspiration for these scenes is hard not to recognize - it was the very reality of Stalin's time. “Axes walked around the battle-frames. / Speak and sentence, nail with axes.

Stalin reacted to this direct accusation, like his on-screen alter ego, who said: “Through you I create my will. Not to teach - to serve your business as a slave. Know your place ... "It was necessary to take up again the" close party leadership of art "- for the work that was interrupted for a while by the war. The new war - now cold - served as a sign for the start of a large-scale campaign to combat ideological "deviations" in literature, philosophy and art. Ten years ago, the campaign against formalism in 1936 did not eradicate ideological sedition - this campaign had to be renewed.

By the end of the summer of 1946, on August 14, the text of the resolution of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad” was finally edited. There, in particular, it was said:

“What is the meaning of the errors of the editors of Zvezda and Leningrad? The leading workers of the journals ... have forgotten the proposition of Leninism that our journals, whether they are scientific or artistic, cannot be apolitical. They forgot that our journals are a powerful tool of the Soviet state in educating the Soviet people, and especially the youth, and therefore must be guided by what constitutes the vital basis of the Soviet system - its policy.

It was the first salvo on dissidents. Less than two weeks later, the theater, or rather theatrical dramaturgy (that is, also literature), became the second target: on August 26, a resolution of the organizing bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the repertoire of drama theaters and measures to improve it” was issued. A week later, on September 4, in the resolution "On the film" Big Life "" the cinema was fired upon. On the pages of the decree, among the “unsuccessful and erroneous films”, the second series of “Ivan the Terrible” was also mentioned:

“Director S. Eisenstein in the second series of the film “Ivan the Terrible” revealed ignorance in the depiction of historical facts, presenting the progressive army of guardsmen of Ivan the Terrible in the form of a gang of degenerates, like the American Ku Klux Klan, and Ivan the Terrible , a man with a strong will and character - weak and weak-willed, something like Hamlet.

The experience of the campaign against formalism in 1936 suggested that no form of art would be left out of the events. Creative associations began hastily preparing for public repentance - this procedure was also already well mastered in the crucible of ideological "purges" of the 1920s and then 1930s. In October 1946, the Plenum of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Composers of the USSR meets, dedicated to the discussion of resolutions on literature, theater and cinema. Like Gogol's non-commissioned officer's widow, it was desirable to flog yourself on your own in the hope of the indulgence of future tormentors.

The process of struggle for "genuine Soviet art" and against formalism expanded, drawing in other spheres of ideology. Against the backdrop of encouraging news about the abolition of the death penalty in the USSR in 1947 (temporary, as it turned out soon - it was restored already in 1950), the Soviet press expands the list of disgraced names of cultural figures. If the paradoxical combination of Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova turned out to be at the center of the August resolution on literature, then in March 1947 Boris Pasternak was added to them. The newspaper "Culture and Life" published a sharply anti-Pasternak article by the poet Alexei Surkov, who accused his colleague of "direct slander of the new reality."

June 1947 was marked by a public discussion about a new textbook on the history of Western philosophy: its author was the head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee of the Party, Academician Georgy Alexandrov. However, this controversy took place in several stages. It began with a critical speech by Stalin in December 1946 and gradually absorbed more and more participants, gaining more and more representative curation in the highest political spheres. When, by the summer of 1947, the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Andrei Zhdanov, was nominated to the role of its organizer, it became clear that science in all its directions would fall into the funnel of the growing ideological campaign.

The philosophical discussion of 1947 became indicative in several respects at once: firstly, a work that had recently been awarded the Stalin Prize came under fire from criticism; secondly, the real reason for the “fundamental differences” that arose was by no means philosophy, but the most severe party struggle: Aleksandrov, who replaced Zhdanov at his post in the Central Committee, belonged to a different grouping in the party leadership. The fight between these groups was deadly in the full sense of the word: in the summer of 1948, Zhdanov, who represented the "Leningrad clan", would die of heart disease. His associates will later be brought to justice in the so-called "Leningrad case", for the sake of which, apparently, the death penalty will be restored again. But the most obvious similarity of all the ideological processes of 1946-1947 is that it was Zhdanov who became their “conductor”, endowed with this “honorable mission” by Stalin personally, which is why the decrees on art issues went down in history as “Zhdanov’s”, and short-lived the period of his activity was called "Zhdanovshchina".

After literature, theatre, cinema and philosophy, other arts and other fields of science were next in line. The list of invectives addressed to them gradually grew and became more diverse, and the official lexicon of the accusation was honed. Thus, already in the resolution on the theatrical repertoire, one significant point arose, which was destined in the coming years to take a prominent place in various documents on questions of art. He said:

“The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks considers that the Committee for the Arts is pursuing the wrong line by introducing plays by bourgeois foreign playwrights into the theater repertoire.<…>These plays are an example of base and vulgar foreign dramaturgy, openly preaching bourgeois views and morality.<…>Some of these plays were staged in drama theaters. The staging of plays by bourgeois foreign authors by theaters was, in essence, providing the Soviet stage for the propaganda of reactionary bourgeois ideology and morality, an attempt to poison the consciousness of Soviet people with a worldview hostile to Soviet society, to revive the remnants of capitalism in the minds and life. The widespread dissemination of such plays by the Arts Committee among theater workers and the staging of these plays on the stage was the most flagrant political mistake of the Arts Committee.

The struggle against "rootless cosmopolitanism" was ahead, and the authors of the texts of the resolutions were still choosing the necessary and most accurate words that could become a motto in the unfolding ideological struggle.

The final point of the resolution on the repertoire is "the absence of fundamental Bolshevik theatrical criticism." It was here that the accusations were first formulated that, due to “friendly relations” with theater directors and actors, critics refuse to evaluate new productions on principle, and so “private interests” win over “public interests”, and in "companionship" is established in art. These ideas and the concepts used to formulate them will become in the coming years the strongest weapon of party propaganda in attacking various areas of science and art. It remains only to draw a direct connection between "complaining to the West" and the presence of "companionship" and collegial support in order to substantiate on this foundation the main postulates of the following ideological campaigns. And as early as the following year, the policy of anti-Semitism was at the center of the ideological struggle, gaining momentum on the direct initiative of Stalin until his death, under the slogans of "the fight against cosmopolitanism."

Anti-Semitism, labeled as "the fight against cosmopolitanism", was not a random choice of the authorities. Behind these political measures, a line clearly drawn from the first half of the 1930s towards the formation of a great-power ideology was visible, which by the end of the 1940s had taken frankly nationalistic and chauvinistic forms. Sometimes they got a completely anecdotal incarnation. So, in 1948, the Odessa violinist Mikhail Goldstein informed the musical community about a sensational discovery - the manuscript of the 21st symphony by the hitherto unknown composer Nikolai Ovsyaniko-Kulikovskiy, dated 1809. The news was greeted by the musical community with great enthusiasm, because until now it was believed that the symphony did not exist in Russia at that time. The publication of the work was followed by an edition, numerous performances and recordings, analytical and historical essays. Work began on a monograph about the composer.

The Soviet science of music at that time was in a persistent search for grounds for equalizing the historical role of Russian music and Western national schools. Similar processes took place everywhere: the priority of Russia in all areas of culture, science and art, without exception, became perhaps the main topic of research by Soviet scientists in the humanities. The monograph “Glinka” by Boris Asafiev, the only Soviet musicologist who was awarded the title of academician, just for this book, was devoted to proving this proud thesis. From today's standpoint, the demagogic methods used by him to assign the "birthright" to the music of a brilliant Russian composer do not withstand critical analysis. The so-called Ovsyaniko-Kulikovskiy symphony, composed, as it turned out by the end of the 1950s, by Mikhail Goldstein himself, possibly in collaboration with other mystifiers, was in some way the same attempt to transform the history of Russian music. Or a successful ro-zy-grysh, which came in handy for this historical moment.

This and similar cases testified to the fact that in the course of the escalation of the process of "Zhdanovshchina" it came to musical art. And indeed, the beginning of 1948 was marked by a three-day meeting of Soviet music figures in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. More than 70 leading Soviet composers, musicologists and musical figures took part in it. Among them were the undoubted classics recognized by the world community - Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, who almost every year created compositions that retain the status of a masterpiece to this day. However, the reason for discussing the state of modern Soviet musical culture was Vano Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship, one of the ordinary opuses of the Soviet "historical opera" on a revolutionary theme, which regularly replenished the repertoire of the then opera houses. Stalin, accompanied by his retinue, had visited her performance at the Bolshoi a few days earlier. The "Father of the Peoples" left the theater in a rage, as once, in 1936, - the performance of Shostakovi-chev's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". True, now he had much more personal grounds for anger: the opera dealt with the companion of his fighting youth, Sergo Ordzhonikidze (who died under unclear circumstances in 1937), the formation of Soviet power in the Caucasus , and therefore, about the degree of Stalin's own participation in this "glorious" epic.

The surviving versions of the draft resolution, prepared in the shortest possible time by the apparatchiks of the Central Committee on this occasion, fix a curious situation: the text deals almost exclusively with inconsistencies in the plot, historical inconsistencies in the interpretation of events, insufficient disclosure of the role of the party in them, about "that the leading revolutionary force is not the Russian people, but the highlanders (Lezgins, Ossetians)". In conclusion of a rather lengthy message, it comes to music, which is mentioned in just one phrase:

“It should also be noted that if the music that characterizes the commissar and the highlanders makes extensive use of national melodies and is generally successful, then the musical characteristic of Russians is devoid of national color, pale, often oriental intonations alien to it sound in it.”

As you can see, the musical part causes criticism precisely in the same part as the plot, and the assessment of aesthetic shortcomings is entirely subordinated to ideology here.

The finalization of the document led to the fact that the resolution "On the opera" Great Friendship "" begins in its final form precisely with a description of music, and it is nominally dedicated to it. The accusatory part in this final version of the official verdict is based precisely on the characterization of the musical side of the opera, while this time only two sentences are devoted to the libretto. Here, in a revealing way, “positive” Georgians and “negative” Ingush and Chechens, who had not previously appeared in the text, appear (the meaning of this amendment in the late 1940s, when these peoples were subjected to large-scale repressions, is absolutely transparent). The production of "Great Friendship" at that very time, according to the draft note, was being prepared by "about 20 opera houses of the country", in addition, it was already on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, but the responsibility for its failure was assigned entirely to the composer -tor, who embarked on a "false and destructive formalistic path". The fight against "formalism" (one of the worst accusations in the campaign of 1936, which began with the persecution of Shostakovich) entered the next round.

The music of the recent Stalin Prize laureate Muradeli, in truth, had a “immaculate and innocent appearance”: it fully met all the requirements that art officials made to the Soviet opera. Melodic, uncomplicated in its forms and work with them, relying on genres and folklore pseudo-quoting, stereotyped in its intonation and rhythmic formulas, it in no way deserved the characteristics that were given to it by furious accusers. . In the resolution, it was said about her:

“The main shortcomings of the opera are rooted primarily in the music of the opera. The music of the opera is inexpressive, poor. There is not a single memorable melody or aria in it. It is chaotic and disharmonious, built on solid dissonances, on sound combinations that cut the ear. Separate lines and scenes that claim to be melodious are suddenly interrupted by a discordant noise, completely alien to normal human hearing and depressing to the listeners.

However, it is precisely on this absurd substitution of real and imagined shortcomings in music that the main conclusions of the February resolution are built. In their meaning, they certainly "finish" the accusations that were made in 1936 against Shostakovich and his second opera. But now the list of complaints was already clearly formulated - as well as the list of names of composers who deserved blame. This last one turned out to be especially remarkable: the really best composers of the country — Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, Vissarion Shebalin, Gavriil Popov and Nikolai Myaskovsky — were branded as “formalists” (the fact that Vano Muradeli topped the list looks like just a historical anecdote). ).

The fruits of this decision did not fail to take advantage of dubious nominees in the field of musical art, semi-literate in their craft and not possessing the necessary professional outlook. Their motto was the priority of the "song genre" with its reliance on a text that can be censored over the academic genres that are complex in structure and language. The first All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers in April 1948 ended with the victory of the so-called songwriters.

But the new favorites of the authorities were categorically incapable of fulfilling Stalin's highest order to create a "Soviet classical opera", as well as a Soviet classical symphony, although such attempts were tirelessly made - they lacked skills and talents. As a result, the Glavrepertkom's ban on the performance of the works of the disgraced authors mentioned in the resolution lasted a little over a year and in March 1949 was canceled by Stalin himself.

However, the ruling did its job. Composers involuntarily changed their stylistic and genre priorities: instead of a symphony - an oratorio, instead of a quartet - a song. What was written in disgraced genres often rested in "creative portfolios" so as not to put the author at risk. So, for example, Shostakovich acted with his Fourth and Fifth Quartets, the Festive Overture and the First Violin Concerto.

Muradeli also had to deal with the opera with caution after the “demonstrative flogging”. Shostakovich, in fact, never returned to the musical theater, having made only an edition of his disgraced Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in the 1960s; the indefatigable Prokofiev, having completed his last opus in this genre, The Tale of a Real Man, in 1948, did not see him on stage: they did not let him in. The internal ideological censor of each of the creators spoke much more clearly and more demandingly than before. Composer Gavriil Popov, one of the most promising talents of his generation, left an entry in his diary on a November night in 1951, summarizing the entire lexicon and conceptual apparatus of the “pogromist” reviews and critical speeches of that time:

“The quartet has finished… Tomorrow they will cut off my head (at the secretariat with the Bureau of the Chamber Symphony Section) for this very Quartet… They will find: ‘poly-tonalism’, ‘excessive tension’ and ‘over-complexity of musical-psychological images’,” excessive scale”, “insurmountable performance difficulties”, “refinement”, “world art”, “Westernism”, “aestheticism”, “lack (absence) of nationality”, “harmonic sophistication”, “ formalism”, “features of decadence”, “inaccessibility for perception by the mass listener” (hence, anti-nationality) ... "

The paradox was that colleagues from the secretariat and bureau of the Union of Composers the next day found in this quartet just “popularity” and “realism”, as well as “accessibility for perception by the mass listener”. But this did not change the situation: in the absence of real professional criteria, both the work itself and its author could easily be assigned to one camp or another, depending on the alignment of forces. They inevitably became hostages of intra-shop intrigues, the struggle for spheres of influence, the bizarre conflicts of which could at any moment be formalized in the corresponding directive.

The flywheel of the ideological campaign continued to unwind. The accusations and formulations that sounded from the pages of the newspapers became more and more absurd and monstrous. The beginning of 1949 was marked by the appearance in the Pravda newspaper of an editorial "On an anti-patriotic group of theater critics", which marked the beginning of a targeted struggle against "rootless cosmopolitanism". The very term "rootless cosmopolitan" was already mentioned in Zhdanov's speech at a meeting of figures of Soviet music in January 1948. But he received a detailed explanation and a distinct anti-Semitic coloring in an article on theater criticism.

The critics listed by name, caught from the pages of the central press in an attempt to "create a kind of literary underground", were accused of "vile slander on the Russian Soviet man." "Rootless cosmopolitanism" turned out to be just a euphemism for the "Zionist conspiracy." The article about the critics appeared at the height of the anti-Jewish repressions: a few months before its appearance, the "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" was dispersed, and its members were arrested; during 1949, museums of Jewish culture, newspapers and magazines in Yiddish were closed throughout the country, and in December, the last Jewish theater in the country.

The article on theater criticism, in part, said:

“The critic is the first propagandist of that new, important, positive thing that is being created in literature and art.<…>Unfortunately, criticism, and especially theater criticism, is the most backward sector in our literature. Little of. It is precisely in theater criticism that nests of bourgeois aestheticism have been preserved until recently, covering up an anti-patriotic, cosmopolitan, rotten attitude towards Soviet art.<…>These critics have lost their responsibility to the people; they are bearers of a rootless cosmopolitanism that is deeply disgusting for the Soviet person, hostile to him; they impede the development of Soviet literature, hinder its progress. The feeling of national Soviet pride is alien to them.<…>Critics of this kind are trying to discredit the progressive phenomena of our literature and art, violently attacking precisely patriotic, politically purposeful works under the pretext of their supposedly artistic imperfection.

The ideological campaigns of the late 1940s and early 1950s affected all spheres of Soviet life. In science, entire areas were tabooed, scientific schools were exterminated, in art, artistic styles and themes were banned. Outstanding creative personalities, professionals in their field, lost their jobs, freedom, and sometimes life itself. Even those who seemed lucky to escape punishment could not withstand the terrible pressure of time. Among them was Sergei Eisenstein, who died suddenly during the re-making of the banned second series of Ivan the Terrible. The losses suffered by Russian culture in these years cannot be counted.

The end of this demonstrative story was put to an abrupt end by the death of the leader, but its echoes were heard for a long time in the expanses of Soviet culture. She also deserved her "monument" - it was Shostakovich's cantata "Anti-formalistic paradise", which appeared from oblivion in 1989 as a secret, uncensored composition, waiting for several decades to be performed in the composer's archives. This satire on the meeting of Soviet music figures in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1948 captured an absurd image of one of the most terrible periods of Soviet history. And yet, until its very end, the postulates of the adopted ideological resolutions retained their legitimacy, symbolizing the inviolability of the party leadership in science and art.

(pictured Sergei Yesenin)

In the year of literature, we decided to celebrate our celebration in the former Gorky Writers' Rest House in Repino. In Soviet times, I did not have a chance to rest there. But in September 1998, while walking in the village of Repino, I plucked up the courage to go into the dilapidated building of the writers' rest home. The first person I met was Maxim Gorky. "Man - that sounds proud!" - I remembered. The dilapidated monument stood mournfully at the entrance - it was the only one guarding the ruins of the once created on the initiative of the proletarian writer. "Is that all that's left of your initiatives?" I involuntarily asked the monument.

The Gorky Rest House was created in the 1950s. After the collapse of the USSR and the Union of Soviet Writers, the rest house fell into disrepair. Throughout the 90s of the last century, the house was ruthlessly destroyed until the building and the surrounding area were bought. The monument to Gorky was demolished by the new owners. After the restoration, the former writers' rest house became the Residence Spa Hotel.

If the members of the Writers' Union had a rest in such comfort, they would probably produce a masterpiece of the scale "War and Peace" or "The Brothers Karamazov" every year.

I didn't sleep well at night. I dreamed that I was wandering around the empty dilapidated premises where writers once lived and worked, and it seems that I hear their voices.

I woke up often. The shadows of the authors who worked here woke me up and demanded that I write about the tragedy of Russian writers.
And there really was a lot to write about.

V.N. Eremin tells about the mystery of the death of some Russian writers in his book. And how many we do not know, who perished, died, drank themselves ...

The fate of Russian writers cannot be called otherwise than a tragedy.
KF Ryleev was hanged on July 13 (25), 1826 in the Peter and Paul Fortress, among the five leaders of the Decembrist uprising.
AS Griboyedov died on January 30 (February 11), 1829, when a crowd of religious Islamic fanatics defeated the Russian diplomatic mission in Tehran.
A.S. Pushkin was mortally wounded by Baron Georges de Gekkern (Dantes) in a duel on January 27 (February 8), 1837. The poet died two days later.
M.Yu. Lermontov was killed in a duel on July 27, 1841 in Pyatigorsk by Nikolai Martynov. However, it is still suspected that Lermontov was killed by another shooter.

Every worthy writer who tried to tell the truth was destroyed by the authorities in every way. There are versions that A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontov were killed on the orders of the tsar under the guise of a duel, and A.S. Griboedov was deliberately sent by the tsar to dangerous Tehran.
P.Ya. Chaadaev was officially declared insane for his "Philosophical Letters", his works were banned for publication in imperial Russia.

AI Herzen in 1834 was arrested and exiled to Perm. His friend N.P. Ogaryov was also arrested. Later they were forced to emigrate from Russia, and already abroad they published their works and the famous Bell. In Russia, they would have been sentenced to death.

F. M. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for participating in an anti-government conspiracy. The execution was replaced by hard labor, where the writer spent many years. The reasons for the sudden death of Fyodor Mikhailovich, as well as his father, are still a mystery. Gorky called Dostoevsky "an insatiable avenger for his personal hardships and sufferings."

In Russia, for some reason, writers could not do anything else and therefore begged. In the journal Education in 1900, Panov wrote: “Pomyalovsky had to live like the last proletarian. Kurochkin lived for two years on a salary of 14 rubles a month, constantly needed the bare necessities, fell ill and died of exhaustion. NOT. Chernyshev died of want... Nadson, even at the height of his literary activity, was so financially insecure that he was unable to get himself a fur coat...”

The tragedy of Russian writers is that they did not want to limit themselves to the role of cheap fiction writers, to write for the sake of earning money and for the needs of the public. They served Melpomene and became her victims.

“Dobrolyubov literally sacrificed himself to the insatiable Moloch - literature, and at the age of three he burned to the ground ... Ostrovsky suffered from unconscious fearfulness and was constantly in some kind of anxious state. Vs. Garshin suffered from melancholy and acute insanity. Batyushkov went mad. GI Uspensky is rumored to be hopelessly ill with insanity. Pomyalovsky died of delirium tremens. N. Uspensky cut his own throat. V. Garshin threw himself into the flight of stairs of the house and hurt himself to death.

N.V. Gogol suffered from a mental disorder (taphephobia - the fear of being buried alive). Doctors at the time could not recognize his mental illness. The writer repeatedly gave written instructions to bury him only when there are clear signs of cadaveric decomposition. However, when the coffin was opened for reburial, the corpse was turned over. Gogol's skull was stolen.

The sudden death of Leo Tolstoy, who was forced to flee from his home due to the fact that his wife and children fought for the writer's inheritance, can also be called tragic, although Tolstoy had previously renounced copyright to his works. In fact, his relatives "killed" him.

In terrible agony, the author of the famous work "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" A.N. Radishchev died. He committed suicide by drinking poison.
The writer A.K. Tolstoy injected himself with an overdose of morphine (with which he was treated according to the doctor's prescription), which led to the death of the writer.

According to the wife of Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vlady, her husband was killed by drugs that he used on prescription to recover from alcoholism. If you believe the latest film "Vysotsky", then the state security agencies (KGB) were involved in the death of the poet.

The special services (according to one of the versions), allegedly on behalf of Stalin himself, also poisoned Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, who entered our literature under the pseudonym Maxim Gorky. On the eve of Gorky's death, all the medical staff and the nurse who gave him medicine were replaced. At the time of his death, only his last mistress, Maria Budberg, who was an agent of the NKVD, was at the writer's bedside. Having no medical education, it was she who gave Gorky some last medicine in his life, which he tried to spit out.

According to the version of Pavel Basinsky, which he outlined in his book about Gorky, Maria Zakrevskaya-Benckendorff-Budberg (she was also called "red Mata Hari") allegedly poisoned her former lover Maxim Gorky out of personal motives, motivated by love revenge, and not by task of the chief of the NKVD Yagoda.

Gorky wanted to be treated abroad, but did not receive Stalin's permission.
The poet Alexander Blok, who suffered from a mental disorder, died without receiving permission for treatment abroad.

The suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1930, according to one version, was organized by the secret services of the Kremlin. Mayakovsky shot himself with a revolver given to him by the GPU. Viktor Shklovsky, speaking of Mayakovsky, said that the poet's fault was not "that he shot himself, but that he shot at the wrong time."

The suicide of Sergei Yesenin also made a lot of noise. Some still believe that the hanging of Sergei Yesenin in the Angleterre Hotel was staged by the NKVD at the direction of Stalin.

For his epigram “Kremlin Highlander” (“We live without smelling the country under us ...”), Osip Mandelstam was arrested and died in a transit prison.
In prison, the Chekists will also kill the peasant poet Klyuev, and shoot the writer Pilnyak.

On August 3, 1921, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested on suspicion of participating in the conspiracy of the "Petrograd military organization of V.N. Tagantsev" and shot.

In 1933, Nikolai Erdman (screenwriter of the film "Merry Fellows") was arrested for writing political poems and sentenced to three years of exile in the city of Yeniseisk. His play The Suicide was banned.

Olga Berggolts was arrested on December 13, 1938 on charges of "in connection with the enemies of the people" and as a participant in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against Voroshilov and Zhdanov. Her first husband, Boris Kornilov, was shot on February 21, 1938 in Leningrad.

In October 1937, Benedikt Lifshitz was arrested on the Leningrad "writer's case", and on September 21, 1938 he was shot.

Mikhail Koltsov was recalled from Spain in 1938 and on the night of December 12-13 of the same year he was arrested in the editorial office of the Pravda newspaper. February 1, 1940 was sentenced to death on charges of espionage and shot.

Isaak Babel was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on January 27, 1940 on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activities" and espionage.

Arkady Averchenko wrote very poetically about the tragedy of the Russian writer. “For the rest of your life you will crash into my brain - my funny, ridiculous and infinitely beloved Russia.”

The author of "Cursed Days" Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was forced to flee Russia, and never returned to his homeland, although he was repeatedly invited.
Marina Tsvetaeva, who returned to the USSR in 1939, committed suicide on August 31, 1941 (hanged herself).

Reading all this, one cannot help but recall the famous aphorism of Voltaire: “If I had a son with a penchant for literature, then, due to paternal tenderness, I would break his neck.”

Stalin read all the significant books of Soviet writers. Stalin watched the play "Days of the Turbins" by Mikhail Bulgakov at the Moscow Art Theater more than 14 times. As a result, he delivered a verdict: “Days of the Turbins” is an anti-Soviet thing, and Bulgakov is not ours.”

In 1931, after reading Andrey Platonov's story "For the future" published in the Krasnaya Nov magazine, Stalin wrote: "A talented writer, but a bastard." Stalin sent a letter to the editorial office of the magazine, in which he described the work as “a story of an agent of our enemies, written with the aim of debunking the collective farm movement,” demanding that the author and publishers be punished.

After the “successes” of collectivization, which led to famine in many regions, Mikhail Sholokhov wrote a letter to Stalin on April 4, 1933, in which he spoke about the tragic situation of the peasantry. “I decided that it was better to write to you than to create the last book of Virgin Soil Upturned on such material.”

However, Mikhail Sholokhov, for all his apparent success, could not avoid accusations of plagiarism - as if he were not the author of the novel Quiet Flows the Don. Many asked the question: how could a very young man (22 years old) create such a grandiose work in such a short time - the first two volumes in 2.5 years. Sholokhov graduated from only four classes of the gymnasium, lived little on the Don, and was still a child during the events of the First World War and the Civil War he describes. Stalin instructed N.K. Krupskaya to sort out this issue.

Literary critic Natalya Gromova spoke in detail about the relationship between writers and rulers at the Word Order book club in St. Petersburg.

The rulers often act as customers for artists, thereby bribing them and forcing them to serve themselves. Some artists themselves are ready to serve the powers that be, and do whatever they order, as long as they are paid. Such, so to speak, "prostitution" has a detrimental effect on talent. For the worst thing for an artist is the loss of freedom.
If for an artist art is self-sacrifice, then for rulers it is just a beautiful wrapper that hides their vices.

It is known what characterization was given to Boris Pasternak at home after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Vladimir Semichastny (at the direction of Khrushchev) said the following: “... as the Russian proverb says, even in a good herd there is a black sheep. We have such a black sheep in our socialist society and in the face of Pasternak, who came out with his slanderous so-called “work” ... ”(meaning the novel Doctor Zhivago” - N.K.).

On all corners they began to repeat: "I have not read Pasternak's novel, but I condemn it."
The novel Doctor Zhivago was published in Italy without the permission of the author. Pasternak was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The persecution forced the writer to refuse the Nobel Prize. But Pasternak was nevertheless expelled from the Union of Writers.

Because of the poem “Nobel Prize” published in the West, Pasternak was summoned in February 1959 to the Prosecutor General of the USSR R.A. Rudenko, where he was threatened with charges under Article 64 “Treason to the Motherland”.
They even suggested depriving Pasternak of Soviet citizenship and deporting him from the country. Pasternak wrote in a letter addressed to Khrushchev: “Leaving my homeland is tantamount to death for me. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, work.”

In March 1963, at a meeting with the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev shouted to the applause of most of the audience, addressing the poet Andrei Voznesensky: “You can say that now it’s not a thaw or frost - but frost ... Look what a Pasternak you found! We suggested to Pasternak that he leave. Do you want to get your passport tomorrow? Want to?! And go, go to the damn grandmother. Get out, Mr. Voznesensky, to your masters!”

The relationship between the artist and the authorities can be regarded as a litmus test of the processes taking place in society. The artist must be in opposition to the authorities (in the good sense of the word). He must criticize the government, show its shortcomings and call for their elimination, be the conscience of the nation.

GRASS BREAKING ASPHALT - this is a metaphorical expression of the collision "artist and power."

The writer must say what the reader is afraid to admit. Ultimately, not even the work itself is of interest, but the feat of its creator, the personality of the creator himself.

In order to find justice for unruly writers, Stalin decided to create a Writers' Union. Since 1925, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) has been operating in the country. Its main activists and ideologists were A.A. Fadeev, D.A. Furmanov, V.P. Stavsky and others. The RAPP consisted of more than 4 thousand members.
In 1932, the RAPP was dissolved, and the "Union of Writers of the USSR" was created to replace it. A.A. Fadeev and V.P. Stavsky retained their posts, while other leaders of the RAPP were shot.

Yevgeny Zamyatin in the dystopian novel "WE" anticipated the situation of control over literature with the help of the Institute of State Poets and Writers.
Mikhail Prishvin, who visited the plenum of the organizing committee in November 1932, wrote in his diary that the future writers' organization "is nothing but a collective farm."

The Writers' Union of the USSR was formed at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Pioneers entered the hall with instructions: “There are many books marked “good,” / But the reader requires excellent books.”

The delegate from the Tula province boasted of the number of writers in his organization. To which Gorky remarked that earlier there was only one writer in Tula, but what a writer - Leo Tolstoy!
“Let me remind you that the number of people does not affect the quality of talents,” Maxim Gorky said in his speech. He cited the words of L.S. Sobolev: "The party and the government gave the writer everything, taking away from him only one thing - the right to write badly."
"During 1928-1931, we gave 75 percent of the books not entitled to second editions, that is, very bad books." Gorky advised young writing proletarians not to rush to "make them writers." “About two years ago, Joseph Stalin, anxious to improve the quality of literature, said to communist writers: “Learn to write from non-Party people.”

As a result of the congress, Gorky became the main writer of the country; the leading children's poet - Marshak; for the role of the main poet, "Pasternak was predicted." There was an unspoken table of ranks. The reason was Gorky's phrase that it was necessary to "identify 5 brilliant and 45 very talented" writers.
Someone has already begun to carefully ask: “how and where to book a place, if not in the top five, then at least among forty-five.”

It would seem that after the congress, golden times began for writers. But everything was not so smooth. Mikhail Bulgakov in the novel "The Master and Margarita" angrily ridiculed the morals of the writers of that time.

"Engineers of human souls", - this is what Yuri Olesha called the writers. He once remarked: “all the vices and all the virtues live in the artist.” The author of the lines “not a day without a line”, a few days after his speech at the congress, in a private conversation, told Ehrenburg that he would no longer be able to write - “it was an illusion, a dream at a holiday.”

Once, in a fit of hungover pessimism, Leonid Andreev said: “A confectioner is happier than a writer, he knows that children and young ladies love cake. And a writer is a bad person who does a good thing, not knowing for whom and doubting that this business is generally necessary. therefore, most writers have no desire to please anyone, and want to offend everyone.

Alexander Grin suffered from alcoholism and died in poverty, forgotten by everyone. “An era is passing by. She doesn't need me just the way I am. And I can't be different. And I don't want to."
The Writers' Union denied him a pension with the wording: “Greene is our ideological enemy. The Union should not help such writers! Not a single penny in principle!”

It is significant that a third of the participants in the First Congress of Writers (182 people) died over the next few years in prisons and the Gulag.

The tragic fate of Alexander Fadeev is symbolic. For many years he headed the Writers' Union of the USSR. However, in 1956, from the rostrum of the XX Congress of the CPSU, M.A. Sholokhov was severely criticized. Fadeev was directly called one of the perpetrators of repression among Soviet writers. In recent years, he became addicted to alcohol and fell into long drinking bouts. Fadeev confessed to his old friend Yuri Libedinsky: “Conscience torments me. It's hard to live, Yura, with bloody hands."

May 13, 1956 Alexander Fadeev shot himself with a revolver. In his suicide letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU, he wrote: “I see no way to continue to live, since the art to which I gave my life has been ruined by the self-confidently ignorant leadership of the party and now can no longer be corrected.<…>My life, as a writer, loses all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving life ... "

The beginning of the tragedy for many writers was the Decree of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks published on August 14, 1946 On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad. In particular, it said: “The blunder of Zvezda is to provide a literary platform for the writer Zoshchenko, whose works are alien to Soviet literature .... Akhmatova is a typical representative of empty, unprincipled poetry, alien to our people ... "

Since many works of art were not printed in the USSR, writers sent them to the West. Since 1958, the writers A.D. Sinyavsky (under the pseudonym Abram Terts) and Yu.M. Daniel (Nikolay Arzhak) published novels and stories abroad with a critical mood towards the Soviet regime.
When the KGB found out who was hiding under pseudonyms, the writers were accused of writing and transferring for publication abroad works that “discredited the Soviet state and social system.”
The trial against A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel lasted from autumn 1965 to February 1966. Daniel was sentenced to 5 years in camps under Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” presented to him. Sinyavsky was sentenced to 7 years in prison in a strict regime corrective labor colony.

The fate of the poet Joseph Brodsky is indicative. In the USSR, Joseph Brodsky was considered mediocre and a parasite. After the publication in the newspaper "Vecherny Leningrad" of the article "Near-Literary Drone", a selection of letters from readers was published who demanded that the parasite Brodsky be held accountable. The poet was arrested. In prison, Brodsky had his first heart attack. He was forced to be examined in a psychiatric hospital. From February to March 1964, two trials took place. As a result, the poet was sentenced to five years of forced labor in a remote area.

A close friend of Joseph Brodsky, Yakov Gordin (chief editor of the Zvezda magazine), told me why Brodsky was not a parasite either in life or by law.

After returning to Leningrad, on May 12, 1972, the poet was summoned to the OVIR and informed of the need to leave the Soviet Union. Deprived of Soviet citizenship, on June 4, 1972, Brodsky left for Vienna.
Abroad, Brodsky was considered a genius. In 1987, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature - at 47, Brodsky became the youngest laureate.
Brodsky died a mysterious death in 1996.

The tragedy of Russian writers is that many authors not recognized in their homeland were forced to emigrate abroad. This is Herzen, and Ogaryov, and Bunin, and Brodsky, and Solzhenitsyn, and Dovlatov. Recently, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky ranked Dovlatov among the outstanding writers of the 19th century. And this is also the tragedy of Russian writers: when during the life of the author, the authorities who hold him spread rot, and after death they praise him.

Those writers who remained in their homeland lived like "in a golden cage." Members of the Writers' Union were provided with material support (according to their "rank") in the form of housing, construction and maintenance of "writers'" summer cottages, medical and sanatorium-and-spa services, the provision of vouchers to writers' creative houses, and the supply of scarce goods and foodstuffs.
At the same time, adherence to socialist realism was a prerequisite for membership in the Writers' Union.
If in 1934 the union had 1500 members, then in 1989 it already had 9920 members.

Previously, writers were fighters on the ideological front, wishful thinking. The authors were simply bribed to write what the authorities needed. Not being a member of the Writers' Union, a writing writer could not proudly call himself a writer.

I remember how in the late 90s they campaigned for me to join the writers' union. They promised the publication of a book, and good pay, and rest in a sanatorium. It was a sinecure for idlers. Joining the union guaranteed that your opus will be published, you will receive a decent fee, and your book will be distributed through the collector to all libraries in the country.

Now all this is gone, and membership in the union has become a formality. Now every self-respecting writer strives to be outside the union in order to emphasize his originality and uniqueness.

In my opinion, the tragedy of Russian writers lies in the fact that they claimed to be the rulers of thoughts, they wanted to remake the world, to create a new person. They thought of their mission as serving a lofty idea. It was believed that a person, if he considers himself a person, must sacrifice himself for the sake of what is more important than his life.

The words of Maxim Gorky carved on a stone in Yalta are symbolic: “My joy and pride is the new Russian man, the builder of a new state. Comrade! Know and believe that you are the most needed person on earth. By doing your little deed, you have begun to create a truly new world.”

Alexander Tvardovsky, who for a long time headed the Novy Mir magazine, turned out to be objectionable to the new government after Khrushchev's resignation. The KGB sent a note “Materials about the moods of the poet A. Tvardovsky” to the Central Committee of the CPSU. As a result of persecution organized by the KGB, Alexander Trifonovich was forced to resign his editorial powers. After that, he was soon diagnosed with lung cancer, from which he died a year later.

When in 1968 the novels In the First Circle and Cancer Ward were published in the United States and Western Europe without the permission of the author, the Soviet press began a propaganda campaign against Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In the essays “A calf butted with an oak”, A.I. Solzhenitsyn characterizes the Union of Writers of the USSR as one of the main instruments of total party-state control over literary activity in the USSR.

“It was the writers, it was the writers, the big Moscow bosses who were always the initiators of the persecution of Solzhenitsyn in the 60s, and in the 70s and in the 90s,” says Lyudmila Saraskina. “In 1976, Sholokhov demanded that the Union of Writers forbid Solzhenitsyn to write, forbid him to touch the pen.”

In 1970, AI Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording "for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature."
A powerful propaganda campaign against Solzhenitsyn was organized in Soviet newspapers. The Soviet authorities offered Solzhenitsyn to leave the country, but he refused. Under the Soviet regime, Alexander Isaevich was called nothing more than a traitor.

“The brothers writers cannot forgive Solzhenitsyn, that at his word their silence became audible,” says the wife of the writer Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna. She told me what was Alexander Solzhenitsyn's biggest mistake.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR. Also, for political reasons, A. Sinyavsky, Y. Daniel, N. Korzhavin, L. Chukovskaya, V. Maksimov, V. Nekrasov, A. Galich, E. Etkind, V. Voinovich, Viktor Erofeev, E. Popov and others.

A good illustration of the corruption of Soviet writers is given in the film Theme by Gleb Panfilov, where Mikhail Ulyanov played the main role. Having spent the advance payment received, the unlucky writer tried by all means to find a worthy topic for writing a book.

After the collapse of the Union of Writers of the USSR in 1991, the Union of Writers of Russia (patriotic) and the Union of Russian Writers (democratic) were formed. There is also the Moscow Writers' Union, the Moscow City Writers' Organization, the Russian PEN Club, the Russian Book Union, the Foundation for the Support of Russian Literature, and many other unions and literary associations.

The reason for the collapse (as elsewhere) is the division of property. When the Russian Book Chamber was liquidated in 2014, the same reason was given. It turns out that the issuance of international standard book numbers (ISBN) was carried out on a reimbursable basis (about 1,200 rubles for one such number). About a million publications are printed annually in Russia.

On January 21, 2015, the Literary Chamber of Russia was formed. It includes many different organizations, unions and associations.
Writers' unions compete with each other for new members. An unsuspecting writer receives a message that "the prose council has proposed your candidacy for consideration by the Organizing Committee of the RSP." You need to pay an entrance fee of 5000 rubles. Membership fees are 200 rubles per month. Having paid more than seven thousand rubles, the author has the right to four free pages in the almanac per year. Books are printed by the authors at their own expense.

On one of the sites I read the following announcement: “To the attention of young writers - members of the Writers' Union of Moscow” under 35 years old. “For registration of entry, you must provide the documents indicated in the list. Not only recommendations and books are needed ... "

The presentation of literary awards and prizes for money has become notorious. In December 2011, a funny story was shown on television. The correspondent of the TV channel "Russia" with the help of a computer program compiled a brochure of meaningless poems "Thing is not in itself", and published it under the name of B. Sivko (bullshit); hired an actor from the Mosfilm card index and held a presentation at the Central House of Writers. The leadership of the Moscow organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, admired the talent of Boris Sivko, he was predicted to be world famous. The poet Boris Sivko was unanimously admitted to the Writers' Union and he was awarded the Yesenin Prize.

It is no longer a secret to anyone how, to whom and why literary awards are given. This is the work of Pierre Bourdieu "Field of Literature". To receive a literary award, you need to: a\ give out annually a literary product, no matter what size and quality, but always annually, and preferably not one; b\ you need to have a high mode of intra-group participation (in other words, participate in literary parties and be "in the cage"); в\ demonstrate loyalty to certain topics and political conditions.

Among writers, as elsewhere, there is terrible competition, sometimes unscrupulous. Everyone strives to receive at least some kind of award, because one cannot live by literary work. In Soviet times, the literary prize was a kind of bribe to the writer from the authorities.

The first Russian prize awarded for literary activity was the Pushkin Prize, established in 1881 by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences "for original works of belles-lettres printed in Russian in prose and poetry."
The first literary prize of the USSR was the Stalin Prize for Literature.
The first non-state award in Russia after the collapse of the USSR was the Russian Booker, established in 1992 at the initiative of the British Council in Russia.
In 1994, the first nominal literary award in Russia appeared - named after V.P. Astafiev. Then the Andrey Bely Literary Prize, the Triumph Prize, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Literary Prize, the Debut Literary Prize, the National Bestseller Prize, the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize, the Bunin Prize, the All-Russian Wanderer Prize. In 2005, the Big Book Prize was established.
There is even an FSB award and an award from the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.

In conditions of unemployment, the authorities recruit "engineers of human souls", creating from them a "legion" of their "rulers of thoughts". There were writers born in the offices of power (the so-called "writer's project"). Such "singers" are awarded prizes, numerous books are published, they are invited to appear on television, their websites are promoted by bots in order to give social weight and significance.

Mass fame, especially today, is the result of a deal with power - with one or another. Power uses writers, writers use power.

Today, everyone, or almost everyone, has become a writer. Books are written by football players, stylists, singers, politicians, journalists, deputies, lawyers - in general, all and sundry. Only the lazy cannot write and publish a book. A writer is no longer a profession, and not a vocation, but just a hobby.

Once upon a time, writers were really "rulers of thoughts." Politicians listened to them, their opinion was taken into account by the rulers, writers were the center of the formation of public opinion. Nowadays, almost no one listens to writers - their number has affected the quality. Writers' unions, instead of problems of inspiration, sort things out in court, dealing with the division of property.

When writers were still invited to the head of state, almost all of their requests concerned the division of the property of the writers' union; as if the writers had no other problems. Now writers are not invited to the president.

Few people today view writing as a self-sacrifice; for most, it's just a sinecure. Many writers are still convinced that the main thing is to become a member of the union and take a leadership position that will allow them to take laurels and receive grants.

Dmitry Bykov in the article “Literature as a scam” admitted: “Of all types of scam ... literature turned out to be the most reliable, that is, such a way to breed suckers, for which they themselves pay with the greatest pleasure ...”

Boris Okudzhava once said to Mikhail Zadornov. “If you don’t quit this business right now, you will never get out of the stage! All your life you will write only for money and become a slave to this business.

For Zakhar Prilepin, “writing is precisely work. I never have a single line, forgive me my commercialism, I will not write if I do not know what I will use it for.

Personally, I do not consider myself a writer, although I have written two novels. I'd rather be called a researcher.
I don't understand how you can be just a writer. It's like being a music lover. The writer is not a profession, but a vocation and ministry. Perhaps even debt.
In my understanding, a writer is a contactee, an intermediary between Heaven and people.
The task of writers is to awaken the conscience of the people who read.
A real writer is a Prophet, because God judges what is happening with his conscience.

The tragedy of Russian writers is that no one needs them: neither those in power, nor society, nor even their neighbors.

The Strugatsky brothers very well expressed the tragedy of the writer in the modern world in the film "Stalker":
“If you invest your soul, you invest your heart, they will devour both the soul and the heart! If you take the abomination out of your soul, they eat the abomination! They are all extremely literate. They all have sensory starvation. And they all swirl around: journalists, editors, critics, some kind of continuous women ... And everyone demands: "come on, come on." What the hell am I a writer if I hate to write; if for me it is torture, a painful, shameful occupation, something like squeezing out hemorrhoids. After all, I used to think that from my books someone becomes better. No one needs me! I will die, and in two days they will forget me and start eating someone else. After all, I thought to remake them, but they remade me, in their own image and likeness ... "

“Writing is not entertainment, it is a search for truth, self-forgetfulness and a thirst for compassion! Creativity is a means to comprehend your soul, to make it better. You can not write - do not write! And if you write, then with your heart!
A real writer is not a writer; it only reflects life, because it is impossible to compose the truth, you can only reflect it.
It is not enough to write the truth, you still need to discern the Truth in the truth, to understand its meaning.
My task is not to teach the reader, but to encourage him to unravel the Mystery together. And for me happiness if the reader discovers more meanings in the text than I discovered.
I want to help a person to think, I create space for reflection, without imposing my opinion, because everyone must comprehend himself and the mystery of the universe. It is necessary to learn not only to look, but also to see, not only to hear, but also to distinguish.
The main result of a life lived is not the number of books written, but the state of the soul on the verge of death. It doesn’t matter how you ate and drank, what matters is what you have accumulated in your soul. And for this you need to love, love no matter what! There is nothing more beautiful than love. And even creativity is just a replenishment of love. LOVE TO CREATE NEED!”
(from my true-life novel "The Wanderer" (mystery) on the site New Russian Literature

And in your opinion, what is the TRAGEDY of RUSSIAN WRITERS?

© Nikolay Kofirin – New Russian Literature –

On August 6, 1790, the famous Russian writer Alexander Radishchev was sentenced to death for his book Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Subsequently, the execution for "harmful thinking" was replaced by Radishchev with exile in Siberia. We remembered five Russian writers who suffered from the arbitrariness of the authorities.

5) "Dissidents" were disposed of without the use of physical force. So, Pyotr Chaadaev was declared insane for his Philosophical Letters, the first of which was published in the Telescope magazine in 1836. Due to obvious dissatisfaction with the development of imperial Russia, the government closed the magazine, and the publisher was exiled. Chaadaev himself was declared insane by the authorities for his criticism of Russian life.

4) Exile for more than a dozen years remained a convenient way to destroy freethinking writers. Fyodor Dostoevsky experienced first hand all the horrors of the "dead house" when in 1849 the writer was sentenced to hard labor. Earlier, Dostoevsky was arrested and sentenced to death in connection with the "Petrashevsky case". The condemned were pardoned at the last moment - one of them, Nikolai Grigoriev, went crazy from the shock he experienced. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, conveyed his feelings before the execution, and later his emotions during hard labor, in Notes from the Dead House and episodes of the novel The Idiot.

3) From 1946 to 1950, the writer Boris Pasternak was annually nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Instead of pride in the Soviet writer, the authorities sensed danger: they smelled of ideological sabotage. Contemporaries writers excelled in insulting the author of the novel "Doctor Zhivago" on the pages of Soviet newspapers, Pasternak's forced refusal of the prize was followed by expulsion from the Writers' Union of the USSR. Boris Pasternak died due to an illness that is believed to have developed on a nervous basis during the persecution.

2) For epigrams and seditious poems, the poet Osip Mandelstam was arrested in 1933 and subsequently exiled. Persecution by the authorities forces Mandelstam to commit suicide attempts, but it is not possible to achieve an easing of the regime: even after permission to return from exile in 1937, surveillance does not stop. A year later, Mandelstam was arrested again and sent to a camp in the Far East. At the transit point, one of the most extraordinary poets of Russia of the twentieth century died of typhus, the exact place of his burial is still unknown.

1) The famous poet of the Silver Age, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921. He was suspected of participating in the activities of the “Petrograd military organization of V.N. Tagantseva. His close friends tried to vouch for the poet, but the sentence was carried out. The exact date and place of the execution, as well as the place of Gumilyov's burial, remain unknown. Gumilyov was rehabilitated only 70 years later; according to some historians, his case was completely fabricated, since the real goal was to get rid of the poet at any cost.