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Censorship in Soviet Literature
1917-1991
Censorship in Soviet Literature
1917-1991
Herman Ermolaev
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England Copyright © 1997 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ermolaev, Herman. Censorship in Soviet literature : 1917-1991 / by Herman Ermolaev. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8476-8321-4 (alk. paper). ISBN 0-8476-8322-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Russian literature—20th century—Censorship. 2. Censorship—Soviet Union. 3. Communism and literature—Soviet Union. I. Title. PG3026.C45E76 1997 89L709'004—dc20 96-9474 CIP ISBN 0-8476-8321-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8476-8322-2 (pbk.; alk. paper) Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Or 2 C)a grab Sashka's breast; in Red Cavalry, her hand. In Krasnaia nov', the Cossacks put canopy poles under Sashka's skirt. A Cossack named Kurdiukov hits her on the nose with a censer. She responds with a blow to his head, causing it to bleed. Then, with her revolver aimed at the Cossacks, she starts for the door, "growling like an angered dog and dragging behind her a sack" filled with her booty. The censor of the 1926 edition of Red Cavalry dispensed with all of these details. Five years later the censors dropped a phrase in "Chesniki" about the staff members of the First Cavalry Army doing gymnastics and exchanging jokes behind Voroshilov's back. This kind of behavior must have been found disrespectful of Voroshilov, a member of the Army's Revolutionary Military Council.105 In Veselyi's "etude" entitled "Sud skoryi" ("Swift Justice," 1928), a squadron commander of Red partisans goes AWOL to his native town after one of his sons was killed in action. His subordinates understood his grief and did not mind his breach of discipline. But the censors were less indulgent. The partisans' reaction was deleted in 1929, retained in the Stories (1931), and banned again in the 1931 edition of The Great Leading Motif of the Song.106 In the earlier editions of Bruski a character says that the Red Army lost
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10,000 men in storming the isthmus of Perekop, the doorway to the Crimea that the Whites desperately tried to keep shut in the fall of 1920. The remark has been omitted beginning with the 8th-llth editions of Bruski published in 1931.107 Heavy Soviet casualties were equally unacceptable in a science-fiction type of war. Suppression of Mikhail Bulgakov's play Adam i Eva {Adam and Eve) may serve as an illustration. Completed on 22 August 1931, the play offers an apocalyptic vision of a world war waged with chemical weapons. In the early fall of 1931, Bulgakov read Adam and Eve to the directors of the Leningrad Red Theater. They turned it down, with regrets.108 At about the same time Bulgakov also read the play at the Vakhtangov Theater in the presence of lakov Alksnis, the commander of the Soviet Air Force. Alksnis pronounced the play unacceptable because it shows the destruction of Leningrad.109 It was only in 1987 that the play was printed in the Soviet Union.
Nationalities During the 1920s, corrections pertaining to nationalities were rather sporadic. Their purpose was to remove or replace words regarded as offensive to national minorities. We have already seen the elimination of "yid" in connection with Trotskii in Seifullina's Humus. This designation did not necessarily have a pejorative connotation in the nineteenth century. One of Turgenev's stories was entitled "The Yid" (1847) and the term is encountered in Chekhov's private correspondence. Early in the twentieth century, depending on its user, this word could have either a derogatory or a neutral meaning. In the 1920s the application of "yid" was perceived as predominantly anti-Semitic. Yet it was occasionally used without prejudice in the authorial narrative, as in Babel's story "At Saint Valentine's" and Veselyi's Russia Washed in Blood. The outspoken and unceremonious Veselyi also called other nationalities by names that have gradually come to be viewed as insulting. This provides a partial explanation for the following corrections regarding nationalities in his works. Only from the earliest publication of "Fiery Rivers" can one know that two anarchistic-minded sailors called the pilot of a Soviet warship "arkhierei zhidovskii" ("yiddish bishop"). The 1929-31 editions of My Native Land changed a peasant's phrase from "the yiddish Passover" to "the Judaic Passover." But the original adjective has reappeared beginning with the 1932 edition of Russia Washed in Blood, which absorbed My Native Land.110 In Russian Washed in Blood, "the yid Abrashka," a fitter from a railway repair shop, was transformed, in 1928, into a Russian, Egorych, and given an agitational role. Aside from the removal of a deprecatory term from the author's speech, the censors might have thought that a Russian worker was a more believable person to make a successful political appeal to unruly sailors, who might not have listened to a Jew.111 The 1929 censors of Russia Washed in Blood eliminated any possibility of arousing anti-Semitic feelings by transforming an unscrupulous Jewish quarter-
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master, Isaika Zuderman, into a Russian, Zudov, without a first name. The 1932 edition of the novel preferred the neutral name of Zudilovich, which has remained unaltered.112 Censorial opposition to anti-Semitism accounted for the removal of a pagelong dialogue from Veresaev's novel In the Blind Alley. In the edited text the lawyer Leonid Mirimanov argues that virtually all the Bolsheviks are Jewish. The Jews exploit the Revolution for achieving the supremacy of the chosen people through corruption of patriotic feelings and Christian religion and through economic enslavement of other nations. To bolster his assertions, Mirimanov refers to The Protocols of the Zion Elders. Katia rejects his views as reactionary delirium. Yet her spirited defense of Jews did not constitute in the censor's mind a sufficient reason for keeping the lawyer's Philippic in the novel. The dialogue, cut from the manuscript in 1923, appeared for the first time in the addendum to the 1990 edition of In the Blind Alley The old Ukrainian custom of leaving a tuft of hair (khokhol) on a shaved head was responsible for the wide use of this word as a synonym for a Ukrainian. Khokhol (plural khokhly) can be employed in either a neutral or a disparaging sense. Prerevolutionary and early Soviet writers used it in authorial narrative without any offensive connotations. Veselyi was one of them. To my knowledge, his works were the first to undergo a cleansing of khokhol and its derivatives. This happened in Carousing Spring, published in 1929 in the city of Khar'kov, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, where censorial objections to khokhol must have been at that time stronger than in other regions of the country. In My Native Land and Russia Washed in Blood, which are parts of Carousing Spring, khokhol was erased or replaced by "Ukrainian" both in the author's speech and in the dialogue.114 Subsequent editions have endorsed the revisions. This was not the fate of a khokhlushka (a female Ukrainian) in "Fiery Rivers." Carousing Spring, the separate 1930 publication of the story, and the 1931 Stories changed it to devakha (girl). However, the 1931 edition of The Great Leading Motif of the Song went back to its 1928 predecessor and restored khokhlushka}15 The word has remained in the story's later publications. An inconsistent censoring of demeaning appellations for the Chinese took place in an excerpt from Russia Washed in Blood published in the eleventh issue of Novyi mirfor 1928. Here and there the words khodia (chino) and kitaeza (chink), referring to a Chinese character, were excised or replaced in the authorial narrative. In other instances, on the same page, they were left untouched.116 The 1928 revisions have been honored in subsequent editions of the novel.
Peasants A few observations on Marxist ideas about peasants can be helpful in understanding the way they were portrayed by Communist writers and the way the censors treated these descriptions. The authors of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1948) believed that, in modern industrial society, the lower strata of the middle class—small manufacturers, shopkeepers, artisans, and peasants— cannot withstand competition with large capitalists and are doomed to extinction
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as fractions of the middle class. To save themselves from extinction, the peasants and other lower strata engage in a fight against the bourgeoisie, in which they represent a reactionary force that tries to turn back the wheel of history. Indeed, by imposing the rule of the town over the country, the bourgeoisie "rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life."117 The only genuine revolutionary class is the proletariat, the gravedigger and eventual conqueror of the bourgeoisie. The members of the lower middle class can become revolutionaries "in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat." They will accept the proletarian standpoint and start fighting not for their present but for their future interests.118 Lenin's statements on the Russian peasantry echoed Marx's and Engels's views on "the idiocy of rural life." To him, Russia was the country "with the most backward agriculture and the most savage village."119 The lower layer of the peasantry—the small peasants, as he called them—had two souls, "one is a proletarian and the other a 'proprietary' soul."120 It is the peasants' proletarian soul to which the industrial proletariat appeals by asking the peasants to follow the lead of the workers, since there is no other path to salvation. After the introduction of NEP, the Party's increasing emphasis on the union between the working class and the peasantry led to a more tolerant attitude toward the countryside and to economic concessions regarding credits, hired labor, the renting of land, and participation in cooperatives. An early reflection of a more benevolent treatment of the peasants can be seen in the concluding lines of Seifullina's Humus, following the description of the brutal killing of village Communists by the well-to-do peasants and the Cossacks. The sentence "The village has shown its terrifying face" was modified by the insertion of the word "old" before "village," thus implying a difference between the tsarist and the Soviet village. The interpolation was made in 1922, in the novel's earliest publication. It was retained in its 1923 Krug edition but is absent from all the other printings of the 1920s and 1930s which I examined.121 The entire sentence was omitted in 1941 and restored in 1968, without the word "old." The 1929-31 period of collectivization had no appreciable impact on the low level of censorial interference with the presentation of the peasantry in the works treated so far in this chapter. Although censorship grew in severity during this time, its watchful eye was set on writings dealing directly with collectivization. This is why the first two volumes of Bruski, which portray a village before collectivization, show merely two noteworthy deletions. Both of them involve the dark side of rural life. In 1930 the censors expunged Sergei Ognev's discourse on the harmfulness of the peasants' adherence to tradition and property. An official in the People Commissariat of Agriculture, Sergei spoke of the great difficulty in creating a new society out of people whose habitual attachment to private ownership killed in them the capacity for pity, goodness, and love, compelling them to tear the throats of their kin and neighbors. Another deletion concerns a page-long conversation between Zharkov, head of the Party Province Committee, and Fedunov, chairman of the village Soviet, Fedunov complains about the peasants' ignorance in the use of their kitchen gardens. When it turns out that Fedunov himself sticks to the same backward ways as his fellow villagers,
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Zharkov feels hostility toward him, thinking—in Marxist terms—that there is nothing but "the rural idiocy" in him. The passage was omitted in one of the 1931 editions of Bruski, retained in another, and excluded in 1933.122 The publication story of volume 1 of Virgin Soil Upturned illustrates the censorial treatment of works about collectivization and casts Sight on Stalin's role as the ultimate censor. Toward the end of 1931, Sholokhov submitted to Novyi mir a part of the manuscript of his new novel called S krov'iu i potom {With Sweat and Blood). As a condition for publication the journal demanded that the novel's title be changed and the descriptions of the expropriation of the kulaks be removed. After consulting his Communist friends in Veshenskaia stanitsa, where he lived, Sholokhov replaced the original title with Virgin Soil Upturned but refused to make other revisions and asked Stalin for help. According to Sholokhov, the leader read the novel's manuscript and said, "We were not afraid to dispossess the kulaks. Why should we be afraid to write about it now? The novel ought to be printed."123 Novyi mir began to serialize it in January 1932. Quite different was the fate of two of Platonov's short novels dealing with collectivization: Kotlovan {The Foundation Pit, wr. 1929-30) and Vprok {For Eventual Use, 1931). An ironic, at times surrealistic, antiutopia, The Foundation Pit shows the extreme brutality with which local believers in Communism carried out Stalin's policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class. The kulaks and those who refused to be collectivized were put on a raft and sent down the river into open sea. I could not find any evidence that Platonov had ever attempted to publish The Foundation Pit. If he had, the reply could have only been negative. The novel appeared in the Soviet Union in 1987. Although the account of collectivization in For Eventual Use is less depressing than in The Foundation Pit, the novel still displays a great deal of typical Platonovian irony and grotesque parody. The creators of new life are depicted as eccentrics prone to absurd actions and behavior. A chairman of a collective farm constructs an electric sun which does not work. His colleague discriminates against collective farmers over age twenty on the grounds that they had been corrupted by imperialism. An ultrarevolutionary zealot devotes all his energies to taking care of the poor masses while his family starves to death. In spite of the oddities, For Eventual Use does not seem to repudiate collectivization per se. Platonov merely rejects foolhardy or compulsory methods of accomplishing it. The novel ends with the narrator's hope that he will live to see the arrival of Communism. Perhaps it was Platonov's stated allegiance to the Party's goals that induced the editors and the censors to pass For Eventual Use, though the approval did not come easily. During a period of eight to ten months, several radical revisions of the novel's manuscript were made on the demands of a dozen editors.124 One wonders whether orthodox political statements at the end of the novel represented Platonov's concessions to censorship. Be that as it may, these statements proved to be insufficient for the guardians of ideological purity. Immediately after its publication in Krasnaia nov' (no. 3, 1931), For Eventual Use provoked a storm of vituperative political criticism. An extremely nasty
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invective emerged from the pen of Fadeev, then, chief editor of Krasnaia nov'. He claimed that Platonov's novel slandered rural Communist leaders. It was a counterrevolutionary work written by a kulak agent in literature. The editorial board of Krasnaia nov' concurred with Fadeev, calling the novel's publication "a gross error."125 These vilifications hurt Platonov emotionally and professionally. He was upset by being labeled "a class enemy." He confessed to Gor'kii that For Eventual Use turned out to be "deceptive" and "inimical from the class viewpoint," and he wanted to atone for it with his new writings. But during the three ensuing years all of his manuscripts were turned down without explanation.126 For Eventual Use was reprinted in 1987 {Don, no. 12).
Prerevolutionary Russia The picture of tsarist Russia painted by Soviet propaganda in the 1920s was exceptionally bleak. Russia was portrayed as an oppressive, backward, chauvinistic, brutal, and expansionistic autocracy. The tsar, the landlords, the capitalists, and the bureaucrats exploited the poverty-stricken people with the aid of the church which preached obedience to authority. Tsarist Russia subjugated other nationalities and was a "prison of the peoples." It was a sworn enemy of revolutionary movements, "the gendarme of Europe." Russia's last tsar was "Nicholas the Bloody." A pet propaganda topic was the Civil War in which the Whites were said to have fought for the restoration of the monarchy and re-enslavement of the people. No wonder the censors saw the need to cleanse literature from what appeared to them as inappropriate mentions or depictions of various aspects of tsarist Russia. The earliest established deletions indicate that the censors of the 1920s frowned upon certain historical parallels between the Soviet Communist Party and the ruling figures and classes of prerevolutionary Russia. Thus Voloshin's poem "Russia" appeared in Nedra without the line, "The Russian land's first Communist," referring to the General Aleksei Arakcheev (1769-1834), the founder of special settlements where peasants lived like soldiers under military regulations. In Voloshin's view, this setup anticipated the conditions under War Communism in the early years of the Soviet regime. Further cuts included the designation of the Russian nobility as "the first Russian Communist Party" and the likening Peter the Great's terroristic methods to those of the Bolsheviks; "Like we, he knew no other ways, / Save decree, execution, and the torture chamber, / To implement the truth on earth."127 On the other hand, no action was taken against the line, "The great Peter was the first Bolshevik," which opens the description of the tsar as a bold, radical reformer. In 1929 Russia Washed in Blood lost the words, "The patriotic enthusiasm of the entire country," uttered by a White officer recalling the national mood of 1915. The masses were not supposed to react in such a way to an "imperialist war." Nor should tsarist Russia be complemented for creating a technological wonder, the cement plant. In references to its past, Gleb Chumalov repeatedly called the plant "first-rate," "outstanding," "mighty," "a beauty," and "Hercules" {bogatyr'). Nearly all of these superlatives were censored in 1926 and 1928.128 In
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contrast, "Hercules" and "beauty" were intentionally retained in the last chapter where they describe the plant restored through the heroic efforts of the Soviet people.
Enemies The overall purpose of censorship concerning opponents of the Bolshevik regime was to degrade them. They had to be stripped of political, military, and personal qualities or accomplishments that could elicit understanding, sympathy, or admiration on the part of the reader. Concomitantly, the editors could ask the author for, or create on their own, insertions that would denigrate enemies. The freely elected Constituent Assembly, in which the Bolsheviks found themselves in the minority, was officially alleged to be a counterrevolutionary body and no effort was spared to justify its forcible dissolution. One way to disgrace the Constituent Assembly was to call it by the pejorative uchredilka instead of Uchreditel'noe sobranie. This is precisely what the censors did in 1926 by substituting uchredilka for the Assembly's normal name in an excerpt from Russia Washed in Blood. The original designation reappeared in 1929, but has given way to uchredilka since 1935.129 Three 1929 excisions in Russia Washed in Blood relate to the Volunteer Army, whose fighting ability and devotion to the cause were objectively reproduced by Veselyi. The censors removed the italicized words from a White officer's remark that "Russia can be saved either by a miracle or by a good whip, capable of restoring law and order." A foe should not stand for the rule of law even if he does not mind achieving it by drastic means. Another officer was prohibited from giving the following characterization of General Lavr Kornilov, the first commander of the Volunteer Army: "Men of the Kornilov Regiment are fond of him. He is always with them in battle, attentive to their needs, strict but fair, a man with a brilliant past." Also gone were the lines telling that a successful advance of the Volunteer Army prompted anti-Bolshevik uprisings in rich Cossack stanitsas and plunged their non-Cossack population, which generally sided with the Reds, into gloomy silence.130 The censors of the 1931 edition of The Tulip Steppe canceled in "The Foal" the order of a Cossack officer to cease fire at a time when the Red horseman Trofim was trying to rescue a foal from drowning in the Don River. The deletion obscured the main point of the story: during the Civil War, people managed to remain humane to animals but had no mercy for one another. The officer shot Trofim the moment he pulled the foal onto shore. The officer's order was part of the truncated ending in the Stories (1931) and it was excluded from a 1952 collection of Soviet stories. It was restored either in 1953 or 1956.131 Two of Bulgakov's plays depicting the Whites—Dni Turbinykh (Days of the Turbins, wr. 1925-26) and Beg (Flight, wr. 1928)—deserve special attention because the struggle for their staging reveals a great deal about the workings of theater censorship on several levels. An objective portrayal of White officers touched off a host of revisions in Days of the Turbins. Based on the author's novel Belaia gvardiia (The White Guard, 1925, 1929), the play features a group
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of White officers living in Kiev in the winter af 1918-19, first under the rule of the pro-German Hetman Pavel Skoropadskii and then under Simon Petliura, cortimander of the Ukrainian nationalist forces. In August 1925 the play under the title The White Guard was submitted to the Moscow Art Theater. Its subsequent textual evolution exemplifies the intensity and scope of censorship applied to a politically controversial drama, both by the Main Repertory Committee and stage directors. As a result, the play had at least seven different versions, all but three of which are missing.132 On 25 June 1926 the Main Repertory Committee met with MKhAT representatives to discuss The White Guard. The committee's editors and the chief of its theatrical and musical section, Vladimir Blium, branded the play "a sheer apology of White Guardism." They declared "absolutely unacceptable" the scene in the secondary school in which Colonel Aleksei Turbin refuses to send his young cadets into a suicidal engagement against Petliura's forces and sacrifices his life while covering the dispersal of his unit. At the same meeting the committee's member Aleksandr Orlinskii instructed the theater to effect the following revisions in the play. First, the scene in the secondary school was to be changed so that, instead of conveying the heroism of the Whites, it would discredit their entire movement. Second, the relationship of the Whites to other social groups, e.g., house servants and doormen had to be shown. Third, a nobleman or a bourgeois was to be placed in the Petliura camp to compromise the Whites through cooperation with that notorious figure. Fourth, Colonel Turbin's younger brother, Nikolka, was to be made a Bolshevik sympathizer.133 Bulgakov and MKhAT disregarded the second and third requests but complied, in substance, with the two others. On suggestion of the play's director, Il'ia Sudakov, Colonel Turbin's address to his troops in the secondary school was augmented by an assertion that the collapse of the Whites was inevitable because the people were against them.134 Sudakov, or the censors, made another addition to Turbin's address with the purpose of discrediting the Whites. The colonel warns those willing to leave Kiev to join General Denikin in the Don region. He predicts the defeat of Denikin and his escape abroad. Anatolii Smelianskii justly points out the unrealistic nature of such statements attributed as they were to a White combat officer at a time when the outcome of the Civil War hung in the balance.135 The original title of the play was first changed to The Family of the Turbins and then to Days of the Turbins. On 17 September 1926, immediately after the public dress rehearsal of Days of the Turbins, Blium told the MKhAT administrators that the play was unstageable unless completely redone. MKhAT appealed to Lunacharskii. Lunacharskii proposed that the rehearsal of Days of the Turbins be repeated so that he, the entire Collegium of the People's Commissariat of Education, and members of the Soviet Government could attend.136 The dress rehearsal of Days of the Turbins was a success. The same night Lunacharskii spoke in favor of staging the play. On 25 September Nasha gazeta (Our Gazette) printed official permission to perform Days of the Turbins, "with some changes." Despite Lunacharskii's benevolent position, the final decision to pass the play was, according to a trustworthy source, made not by his Commissariat of Education but by the Politburo.137 Days of the Turbins premiered on 5
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October 1926, and the critical castigation of it grew in volume and ferocity. A proletarian playwright, Vladimir Bill'-Belotserkovskii, sent a letter to Stalin requesting to suppress Bulgakov's plays. In his belated reply of 2 February 1929, Stalin called Days of the Turbins "not so bad," more useful than harmful, for it revealed "the all-crushing power of Bolshevism." If persons like the Turbins, the dictator reasoned, had to submit themselves to the will of the people and acknowledge the ultimate defeat of their cause, the viewer would gain the impression that the Bolsheviks were invincible. That was what Stalin must have felt, seeing the play no less than fifteen times.138 But early in 1929 Stalin's privately expressed opinion of a particular play evidently did not yet carry the force of an indisputable order. Combined efforts of the Main Repertory Committee censors, leaders of proletarian literature, Party propaganda officials, and individual writers attained their long-cherished goal. Since September 1929, the beginning of a new theatrical season, Days of the Turbins vanished from the MKhAT repertory.139 In December 1931 the Soviet Government decided to single out MKhAT as the country's leading theater. It became MKhAT USSR and the control over it passed from the People's Commissariat of Education of the Russian Republic to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. In the wake of the change, in January 1932, the Government instructed MKhAT to resume the production of Days of the Turbins. The favorable decision was reportedly taken on Stalin's instructions.140 From 1926 to 1941, at MKhAT alone, the play was staged a record 987 times, edging by 28 the dramatization of Anna Kareninaf41 The story of Flight had a different denouement. The play deals with the final retreat of the defeated White Army in southern Russia, the evacuation of White troops and civilians from the Crimea, and scenes from their emigre life in Constantinople and Paris. In March 1928 MKhAT received from Bulgakov two copies of the play. On 9 May the Main Repertory Committee prohibited its performance. Above all the committee took exception to the fact that the return of three emigres to Soviet Russia was not motivated by political considerations. In the committee's judgment, Bulgakov did not intend to demonstrate the historical justice of the October Revolution. Rather, he aimed at raising his emigres to "a still higher level of intellectual superiority." At the end of June, the Collegium of the People's Commissariat of Education confirmed the Main Repertory Committee's decision to ban Flight}^ MKhAT did not give up its efforts to obtain official approval of Flight. On 9 October 1928 a discussion of the drama took place at the theater. Among the participants were the MKhAT directors, the chairman of Glaviskusstvo Aleksei Sviderskii, the editor Viacheslav Polonskii, and Maksim Gor'kii. All the speakers were in favor of staging Flight. Particularly strong support came from Gor'kii.143 Influenced by the MKhAT discussion, the Main Repertory Committee declared Flight ideologically admissible and allowed the theater to start rehearsing the play under the condition that "certain changes would be made in it."144 But there were ill-wishers both inside and outside the committee who were determined to stop Flight. The question of the play's acceptability was put on the
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agenda of the meeting of the Artistic and Political Council, an organ of the Main Repertory Committee. The meeting was attended by numerous representatives of Soviet, Komsomol, and literary organizations. Also present were delegates from a number of factories. No doubt, this kind of gathering was arranged to lynch the play by the hands of the so-called peredovaia obshchestvennost' (politically progressive public). The Artistic and Political Council unanimously endorsed the Main Repertory Committee's decision to ban Flight in its uncorrected version.145 Early in 1929 the fate of Flight was sealed by the country's highest authority—the Politburo of the Party Central Committee. In its meeting on 14 January the Politburo created a three-man commission (Klimentii Voroshilov, Lazar' Kaganovich, A. P. Smirnov) to make the final decision on the play. On 29 January Voroshilov reported the commission's judgment to Stalin: a staging of Flight would be "politically inexpedient." The verdict was typed on Voroshilov's official stationary, its letterhead featuring his posts—the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs and Chairman of the USSR Revolutionary Military Council. The following day, 30 January, the Politburo accepted the commission's decision. Both of the Politburo documents pertaining to Flight are marked "strictly confidential."146 The Party oligarchy was not interested in revealing its hand in suppressing a play. In all probability, the members of the Politburo commission did not read Flight. They merely "familiarized themselves with its content," as Voroshilov put it in his report. For their conclusion the trio relied on the assessment of Flight signed by Platon Kerzhentsev, the deputy chief of the Department of Agitation, Propaganda, and the Press of the Party Central Committee. Kerzhentsev recommended banning the play because of Bulgakov's alleged idealization of the Whites, which was intended to evoke reconciliatory and compassionate feelings for them.147 Stalin's views on Flight were essentially the same as those of Kerzhentsev and the Main Repertory Committee. In his 2 February 1929 letter to Bill'-Belotserkovskii, Stalin called the play "a manifestation of an attempt to elicit pity, if not liking, for certain layers of the wretched anti-Soviet emigration, consequently, an attempt to justify or half-justify the White Guard cause." Although Stalin considered Flight anti-Soviet, he would not object to its production should Bulgakov make additions to demonstrate that even personally honest individuals lived off the common people and deserved to be kicked out of Russia.148 Here Stalin, who just three days earlier voted for an unconditional prohibition of the play, passes himself off as a fairly tolerant person. Stalin's letter became known in literary circles and meant an irreversible taboo on Flight, since Bulgakov persisted in refusing to rework it. MKhAT's endeavors to stage the play in the 1930s proved to be futile. Its premiere had to wait until 1957. Official Soviet history had always maintained that during the Civil War there was a close union between the so-called internal forces of the counterrevolution and the Allied intervention. This view enhances the prestige of the Bolshevik regime as the victor over the multiheaded imperialist hydra and condemns the Whites as collaborators with foreign aggressors.
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The earliest revisions concerning the cooperation between the Whites and the interventionists were found in Armored Train No. 14-69. The novel's 1922 Gosizdat edition contains several passages on this subject which are not found in the text printed in the January 1922 issue of Krasnaia nov'. One of them shows the arrival of trains with Japanese soldiers. Lieutenant Tanaka informs Captain Nezelasov, commander of the White armored train, that the Japanese troops were sent to assist the Whites. An American correspondent is standing by. The second passage consists of Nezelasov's report about the victory over Vershinin's partisans achieved by the Russian-Japanese detachment. In the third instance, an old peasant asserts that a joint action of the armored train, Japanese, and Americans will inflict certain defeat on Red partisans.149 It is unlikely that these passages were rejected by Krasnaia nov' not to offend the Japanese with whom the weak Soviets tried to avoid any conflict. The journal retained scenes portraying Japanese as murderers and rapists, but there was nothing in it about their joining the Whites. Insertions about this cooperation must have resulted from Ivanov's self-censorship or from editorial instructions. The interaction of the Whites and the interventionists escalated when Armored Train No. 14-69 was adapted for the stage. In the play, the armored train is sent into the taiga to crush peasant partisans on the orders of the Japanese command and a White Army general. Tanaka assures Nezelasov that the Japanese and the Americans will protect his family while he is away. Nezelasov says to his Russian lieutenant: "We are heroes. Japanese samurai and American officers, descendants of Columbus and Washington, place their hopes upon us." The play also adds Japanese atrocities. Its characters tell that the Japanese killed Vershinin's children and burned Sergei Lazo, a Bolshevik leader, in the firebox of a steam locomotive. The latter incident is anachronistic. The play is set in September 1919, but Lazo was burned in May 1920 and his executioners were either the Whites alone or both the Whites and the Japanese.150 Bruski offers examples of censorship connected with rural adversaries of the Soviet regime. From the scene of an argument between Il'ia Gur'ianov, a nonParty follower of Nikolai Bukharin, and Sergei Ognev, the censors ejected the words "Speak, Il'ia, speak!" with which the peasants encouraged Il'ia to go on with his criticism of local authorities for not letting people express their views. Since the kulaks had to be depicted as implacable foes, especially at the peak of their liquidation as a class in 1930, there should be no place in their heads for even fleeting conciliatory ideas. Therefore, the dispossessed Plakushchev no longer thinks that he should give up his hopeless struggle against the all-powerful regime, that he wants peace between him and other peasants, and that he ought to engage in cleansing people from a lot of filth.151 The censors can deprive a political antagonist of positive emotions. This happened in Bruski to lashka Chukhliav, who metamorphosed from a Communist into an anti-Soviet rebel. When he still was chairman of the village Soviet, lashka felt "excruciatingly sorry" for his wife Steshka after being unfaithful to her. This feeling was suppressed in 1930, then renewed and banned again in the following year. At the same time, lashka's choice of the endearing diminutive name Steshen'ka, used after a sexual act with her, was changed to the neutral Steshka.152
42
Censorship in Soviet Literature, 1917-1991 Puritanical Censorship
Curses and Obscenities The puritanical censorship of literary works began simultaneously with the political one and was carried out with an equal degree of vigilance. Close to 60 percent of all revisions effected in the 1920s in Veselyi's works and eleven out of twelve in The Rout are classified here as puritanical. There are more political than puritanical emendations in other works but the number of censorial interventions in each of them, with the exception of Cement, is rather small. I treated about fifty revisions concerning the coarse language of Gleb and Dasha as political. More than half of the puritanical corrections pertain to obscene swearing. Approximately two-thirds of the expressions in this group are the most common Russian profanities, the so-called matiuki (mother curses), featuring the word mat' (mother) in conjunction with the Russian equivalent of the familiar fourletter English verb. The word "mother" is either spelled out or clearly understood from the context. I have not seen the four-letter verb in print and encountered only two incidents where it was shortened to its first letter ("e . . . "). Both of these abbreviations vanished within a year.153 In authorial speech, the employment of mother curses is reported by means of derivatives from mat', such as the verbs materit'sia, matemo rugat'sia (to use mother curses), or the nouns mat and matershchina (mother curses). Especially offensive to a believer's ear are blasphemous matiuki in which the word "mother" is combined with the name of God and other words from the domain of the sacred or divine. The Revolution brought a steep increase in the use of sacrilegious curses, especially on the Red side. In My Native Land a blasphemy involving the cross, God, and mother had been printed with the author's footnote saying: "To the attention of champions of morality: in those times such swearing was considered revolutionary for the village."154 The blasphemy rang out at a farewell drinking bout of young peasants drafted into the Red Army. The length of the matiuki can be considerably extended by a string of words appearing as objects of the four-letter verb or as modifiers of mat'. Artem Veselyi's works were more densely filled with foul language than those of other writers examined here and they absorbed about two-thirds of the revisions concerning matiuki collected for this chapter. His seven-page story "Shrovetide in the Village" contained thirteen mother curses in its original 1921 text. Most of them were of the short type rendered as mat' peremat', implying vigorous swearing. All of them occurred in the lively dialogue of drunken peasants consuming enormous quantities of alcohol and food on the eve of Lent. Ten of the matiuki were liquidated in the story's final text, published in 1925 as a part of My Native Land. In one instance, however, the 1925 text has a mother curse missing from the earlier version.155 In "The Wild Heart" three matiuki mentioning God, commander, blood, and belly were replaced by an innocuous expression in the protestations of Red-Green partisans discontented with their superiors.156 All kinds of matiuki occur in "Fiery Rivers" where the main characters are sailors. Censorship of their curses was inconsistent not only in the story's dif-
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ferent printings but also within the same edition. The strictest purge was carried out in Bitter Blood, a 1926 collection of Veselyi's works. Its editors, or censors, did away with seven plain and blasphemous matiuki but left two others untouched. Of the seven excised profanities four are absent from Bitter Blood only.157 However, owing to a less severe treatment of mother curses in the story's later publications, by 1932 "Fiery Rivers" was missing only one of them. Since then the number of its matiuki has remained unchanged because the story was not reprinted between 1932 and 1959 and thus escaped the puritanical purge of 1935. Russia Washed in Blood contained some of the longest and most outrageously blasphemous matiuki coming from the mouths of its revolutionary sailors, soldiers, and tempestuous partisans, fighting on the Red side. Before its publication as a single whole in The Carousing Spring (1929), parts of the novel appeared in various periodicals and collections, sometimes under different titles. An excerpt printed in the 1927 edition of Veselyi's Stories underwent a harsher purification of foul language than any of its previous or subsequent publications. Three blasphemies are missing from this edition only, and one blasphemy and one regular mother curse are also absent from Bitter Blood}5* On the whole, thanks to restorations, Russia Washed in Blood had by the end of 1931 essentially the same number of matiuki as it had in its original text. Censorial treatment of matiuki in the works of other writers was strikingly uneven. Cement, in which their number was rather small, irretrievably lost at least six matiuki in 1928. Five of them had been used to express indignation at Soviet functionaries. Although these curses had a political tinge, the angry political statements containing them remained. Gladkov's priority was to cleanse his novel from coarse locutions. An apolitical curse uttered by a former White soldier was also gone.159 The dozen original matiuki in The Rout were decreased by five in the 192728 penod. The purge lacked consistency since similar or identical curses were left intact. The only uniformity lay in the fact that all of the rejects were plain matiuki whereas no action was taken against their four blasphemous variations. The censors did not object to an expression of brazen contempt for religion. The chief producer of matiuki was Morozka.160 Unlike The Rout, Cement, and Veselyi's novels and stories, works of other authors examined here experienced in the 1920s little or no censorship of mother curses. In 1928 the first two volumes of The Quiet Don had fifty-odd matiuki between them. Only two of them, those containing the first letter of the four-letter verb, were excised by 1932. The first two volumes of The Quiet Don also differed from other works in that merely two of their matiuki were blasphemous. An old Don Cossack colonel, Maksim Buguraev, told me that the Cossacks refrained from using the name of God in their curses. Indeed, the two blasphemies in volume 2 of The Quiet Don come from the Reds: from a revolutionary miner and from the leader of pro-Soviet Cossacks, Fedor Podtelkov. The censorial handling of other curses was as erratic as that of matiuki. The word bliad' (whore), used by characters in swearing and name-calling, serves as an example. In places where this word was originally spelled out, it was either dropped, or shortened to "b . . . ," or replaced. Thus the accusative plural of
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bhad' (bliadei), occurring in a sailor's remark about prostitutes, can be found only in the first two publications of "Fiery Rivers." It disappeared in the 1924 and 1925 publications of the story and has been abbreviated to "b . . . ei" in all subsequent printings from 1926 on. At the earliest opportunity bliadei was changed to bab (women, colloq.) in The Quiet Don where a Red Cossack leader, Mikhail Krivoshlykov, upbraids Podtelkov for taking his mistress along on a military expedition.161 In several instances the abbreviation "b . . . " permitted in the earliest versions was discarded or replaced. In The Rout "b . . . i" (whores) vanished in 1927 from Morozka's tongue-lashing of people like Mechik, while in My Native Land the same abbreviation was replaced in 1927 by kurvy (sluts, bastards) in the Bolshevik Grebenshchikov's threat to shoot Soviet employees should they refuse to help him in saving grain from insurgent peasants.162 In 1927 the previously absent word kurvy appeared in a soldier's reference to the enemy in Russia Washed in Blood, but its endearing diminutive kurvochki, with which a Cossack playfully approached the female defenders of the Winter Palace in The Quiet Don, has been missing since 1929.163 Another synonym for whore, lakhudra (harlot), has been judged unprintable in "Fiery Rivers" since 1924, even if said by a sailor to a prostitute. A year later the same sailor was prohibited from calling a young seaman zalupa (jerk; literally, head of penis).164 The earliest publisher of "The Wild Heart" refused to print the expression "ovech'ia zhopa" (sheep ass) applied by the female commissar of a Red-Green partisan band to its acting commander. It was reduced to "ovech'ia zh ..." in 1926.165 Like swearwords, most of the other obscenities discarded in the 1920s were associated with the parts and functions of the human body related to sex. The most common three-letter designation for penis and diverse derivatives from this designation were never spelled out and only seldom indicated by their first letter as "kh . . . ." In The Quiet Don this abbreviation was removed from a Cossack's remark almost simultaneously with its appearance. In the same novel the editors of Oktiabr' omitted a couple of lines in a bawdy Cossack song. The key phrase in these lines is "Ukhu ia varila" meaning "I made fish soup." The point is that the words "Ukhu ia" may be imagined as consisting of the preposition u (by, at) and the genitive singular of the three-letter taboo name for penis. Reflecting this division in his pronunciation, the singer gets the message across. The original text was restored without delay and has been retained to date, being probably, until 1991, the sole place in censored Soviet works where a strictly prohibited word is virtually spelled out and can hardly be missed, especially since the author alerts the reader by calling the song "obscene."166 On the other hand, an early excision of the last word in an innocent pun, "Chem dumaesh', golovoi ill golovkoi?" ("Do you think with your head or with the head of your penis?"), made in The Rout by the Red partisan leader, Levinson, has not been rescinded. Since the word chlen denotes both "penis" and "member," it is exploited in facetious wordplays. This kind of wit was not appreciated by the editors of "About Kolchak, Nettles, and Other Things." They dispensed with the oxymoron "zhenskii chlen" (woman's penis) created unwittingly by the story's uneducated narrator to designate a member of the Women's Executive Committee. The original wording reappeared in 1931 but has been edited since 1956.167
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Like its male analog, the basic vulgarism for the female sex organ was not written out. In Russia Washed in Blood it was represented by a nearly homonymous word uzda (bridle), which the censors threw out in 1927. It was reinstated in 1932 but eliminated again in 1935. A less offensive abbreviation tolstozh . . . (fat-assed), employed by a soldier to describe lovingly his and his comrades' wives, has been replaced since 1926 with words like "fat" or "bold." And the harmless tit'ki (tits), referring to cow's teats, fell victim to the puristic editors of "About Kolchak, Nettles, and Other Things." Later publications did not follow suit.168
Eroticism The censorship of erotic elements in the 1920s had much in common with the censorship of swearwords and other vulgarisms. A great deal depended on the judgments of individual editors, and the works of Vcselyi and Fadeev's Rout suffered proportionately more than did the works of other writers. Veselyi, in a way, asked for it. His sailors and soldiers expressed their carnal appetites in blunter terms than did the characters of other authors. Conversely, Fadeev's censors got rid of the kind of things that were accepted elsewhere. A model of proletarian literature, The Rout was not the place for the demonstration of sexuality. With some exceptions, the editing of details connected to sex was considerably more lenient in the 1920s than twenty-five years later. No corrections of a sexual nature were, for instance, made in Libedinskii's Commissars or in Seifullina's long stories. By the mid-fifties the picture was quite different. In the 1920s deletions pertaining to actual coitus were rare, chiefly because of the lack of sexually explicit scenes. Even in the immediate post-revolutionary period Soviet literature had been essentially prudish, particularly by today's standards. One of the relatively bold sexual situations is encountered in Seifullina's Humus. It is the rape of a schoolteacher by the jealous Bolshevik Sofron. Nothing was changed in this scene during the 1920s. In contrast to their disregard of Sofron's assault, the censors of the 1920s prevented a soldier from telling how Grigorii Rasputin made love to the tsarina. In the first two publications of Russia Washed in Blood, the deletion was indicated by a line of dots. The original text was put back in 1932. Only the editors of Krasnaia nov' proved to be so coy as to remove from Babel's "Evening" a depiction of a cook and a laundress lying in bed, though the reader sees nothing but their "four fat-heeled feet," her "loving calves," and his "big toe with its crooked black nail."169 By accident or design, the censors showed less patience with some authorial descriptions or comments not directly associated with the act of love. In 1926 they struck out Veselyi's remark, "She has something one can hold on to," referring to Alenka, a curvaceous and beautiful peasant girl of loose behavior. The words "in the struggle against her female weakness" vanished in 1928 from a phrase about Dasha's being torn between her lust for Gleb and her effort to suppress it. In 1931 Babel's story "Chesniki" was cleansed from the depiction of two young nurses in the process of making themselves comfortable on the grass.
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They were "knocking against each other with their young breasts," "laughing with languid womanish laughter," and winking at the narrator "the way barelegged village girls wink at a youngster parched by desire."170 In all three works mentioned in this paragraph the excisions turned out to be irrevocable. The characters' erotic statements are as a rule less inhibited than those of the authors, especially if the characters happen to be sailors from "Fiery Rivers" hunting for streetwalkers. They sexually harass passersby and liberally use profanities, frequently rhymed. Their inquiry, "Ei, Mashka, kak pozhivaesh', kogo prizhimaesh'?" ("Hi, Mashka, how are you doing and whom are you hugging?"), was tolerated only in the story's earliest publication. The same applies to the word khren (horseradish), a euphemism for the three-letter word for penis. It occurred in a sailor's rhymed offer to a girl to hold him by that organ.171 At the performance of a musical in Russia Washed in Blood, the sailors give frank evaluations of a singer's physical attributes, noting that it would be nice to "vyshibit' pistonku" (knock out the percussion cap), that is, to copulate with her. The metaphor survived only in the first publication of the scene. An equally indiscreet declaration was made in Cement by a worker who went into hysterical ecstasy after a victory over the anti-Bolshevik partisans: "Bring the whole Women's Section here to me—I'll lay them all out, I'll leak all over them, and I'll suck them dry." One wonders why this phrase was not expunged before 1928.172 All three deletions of erotic utterances in The Rout concerned the partisan nurse Varia, the kindhearted and promiscuous wife of Morozka. They occurred in 1928 and have remained unrestored. The censors crossed out a partisan's characterization of Varia as an "easy lay," Morozka's angry observation that she probably could not spread her legs fast enough to oblige all of her suitors, and a friend's question to Mechik as to whether she put him in,173 The word bardak (whorehouse) was treated like a sex-related obscenity. It was spelled out in the phrase of a warship captain in the first two publications of "Fiery Rivers" but has vanished completely in all later printings of the story. Conversely, a reproach leveled at Alenka for having "started a brothel," that is, for her wantonness, was cut only in 1932.174
Naturalistic Details The puritanical censorship of naturalistic descriptions was light. About half of the corrections which I encountered occur in only one edition of a given work. The first publishers of Babel's "Two Ivans" turned out to be supersensitive to inoffensive words denoting the satisfaction of natural needs. They removed from the characters' speech the colloquialism oblegchivshis' and the standard term opravit'sia, which in the context, respectively, mean "having taken a piss" and "to relieve oneself." No subsequent publication followed this route. Quite different was the fate of the italicized simile in the picture of the disorderly retreat of the Reds in "The Rabbi's Son": "And a monstrous Russia, improbable like a herd of clothes lice, tramped in bast shoes on both sides of the coaches." The simile was edited in Krasnaia nov' for aesthetic reasons, but reinstated everywhere from 1926 to 1936. The squeamish editors of the story "About Kolchak,
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Nettles, and Other Things" freed its first-person narrative from the words "he keeps putting his hernia back all the time." The deletion was rescinded in 1931.175 By contrast, the following naturalistic details were judged too repugnant to deserve restoration once they had been banned. In My Native Land the author originally tells that the resolution of a village meeting was glued to the report of a traveling instructor of the County Executive Committee either by chewed bread or by the instructor's snivel. This information disappeared in 1926. In the same novel the staircase in the garrison club, named "The Banner of Communism" and located in a former tavern, had been stinking of "sour cabbage soup and come" in at least five printings. Since 1929 the stench has been described as "sour, nauseating odors." A much graver situation provoked a feeling of nausea in Steshka, the heroine of Bruski, who decided not to have a child by her unworthy husband, lashka. This is how she remembered her abortion performed with the aid of a piece of rubber cut from the sole of a galosh: "The old woman squeezes in the piece of rubber very far, as if through the entire stomach, the cold rubber crawls toward the throat, causing nausea." We can read this only in the novel's first publication.176 At this point the discussion of disagreeable things will be concluded with the bright image of the rising sun, resembling the "pink rear end of a woman." This comparison lived about three months.177
Authors'
Reactions
Most of the writers whose works were discussed in this chapter objected to censorship. They were hurt, angered, and frustrated. They also perceived censorship as a deadly threat to the very existence of genuine literature, to its artistic and philosophical qualities. The writers' protests against censorship ranged from privately expressed opinions to letters to the Soviet Government. Non-Party writers condemned censorship more openly and daringly than their Communist counterparts constricted by the Party discipline and, possibly, by their own political convictions. Of the five writers whose views on censorship and creative freedom will be given below, only the uninhibited Veselyi belonged to the Communist Party. Zamiatin leads the way with his essay "la boius'" ("I Am Afraid," 1921). He argues that real literature cannot be created by politically subservient writers and officials. It is created by "madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics." In the ban of Gor'kii's Hard Worker Slovotekov, Zamiatin sees an example of treating "the Russian demos" as a silly little child who has to be protected from the temptation to taste the fruit of even a most innocent satire. As long as we do not cure ourselves from the fear of any heretical word, Zamiatin warns, no true literature can be created. And should the illness prove to be incurable, "Russian literature will have only one future—its past."178 Fortunately, Zamiatin's prediction did not come true completely despite long years of enforced conformity.
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In 1925 Veresaev defined the absence of artistic honesty as the gravest malady of Soviet literature. This affliction was caused by the impossible ideological demands of censorship. The censor, Veresaev stated, would tell the author to convert an unattractive Communist into a non-Party person, or to aggravate spiritual degeneration of a non-Party heroine, or to counterbalance dark sides of life with bright ones. Since publication of his work depended on censorship, the author saw no way other than injecting required falsehoods into his writings. Nearly all the writers, according to Veresaev, complained about the continuous violation of their artistic conscience and about the growing tendency to split their works into two kinds: those written for themselves and those written for publication. Prominent masters, such as Anna Akhmatova, Fedor Sologub, and Voloshin, fell silent because of their ideological alienation from the ruling Party. And Veresaev illustrated the ruinous capacity of censorship with a hypothetical situation; It is a terrible thing to say, but if Dostoevskii were to appear now, so alien as he is to the aspirations of our time, and yet so indispensable because of his allconsuming fire, he would have to put one after another of his novels' manuscripts, all bearing the prohibitive stamp of Glavlit, into his desk drawer.17^ It may be somewhat surprising that Lidiia Seifullina, a member of the first generation of purely Soviet writers, rejected censorship as emphatically as did Zamiatin and Veresaev, who had belonged to the liberal prerevolutionary intelligentsia. Seifullina's personal integrity and courage had much to do with it. She spoke openly against the forced ideological unification of literature, against what she called the demand to "cross yourself with the slogan 'Proletarians of all countries, unite!"' Otherwise the censors' sharp pencils would maim a book "worse than a steel knife."180 Seifullina characterized censorship as "an institution that by its very nature breeds defective thinking and bureaucratic timidity." This pusillanimity explains why Soviet censors receive almost every manuscript in "the permanent state of panic." Seifullina cites a case when the censors replaced the word krasnyi (usually, "red") with tsennyi ("valuable") in the common designation krasnyi zver' (fine game), in which krasnyi is synonymous with tsennyi. Seifullina was particularly alarmed by the emergence of numerous manuscript readers (retsenzenty) who acted as preliminary censors for publishing houses. These people tended to play it safer than Glavlit censors. Further, Seifullina gave an example of how subservience to authority made it possible for a high-ranking functionary to play the role of a censor. On suggestion of a Communist dignitary an academic theater removed from her and Valer'ian Pravdukhin's play Virineia an episode in which the heroine weeps after her beloved Bolshevik departed to fight the Whites. "Soviet women," the dignitary reportedly said, "do not cry; they fight and build," like Dasha in Cement. Seifullina infers that the fright of those who evaluate literary works—editors, critics, censors—gave rise to the situation in which "literature has become as wretched as a one-horse household."181 Without using the word "censorship," Veselyi complained about the editors who removed curses or frivolous jokes from his "Fiery Rivers" in the 1920s.
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"Fiery Rivers," he stated, was his best story and he would not change a single line in it. Concurrently, he made a spirited plea for creative freedom. The writer, he contended, ought to tread the path that he considers to be the only correct one. For a real artist truth had not one but many faces. The writer must be a dreamer, a visionary, infused with selfless and fanatical love of literature. Clearly, Veselyi's declaration of artistic independence challenged not only censorship but also the very foundation of the Party's literary policy. His pronouncements could not help triggering political condemnation. He was accused of following in the tracks of "reactionary intuitivists," of advocating ideological plurality, and of forgetting Lenin's motto, "Down with literary supermen!"182 Bulgakov's principal response to literary controls came in the form of a satirical play, Bagrovyi ostrov (The Crimson Island, 1927), which in many ways reflected the story of censorship of Days of the Turbins. The Crimson Island pokes fun at the censorship of revolutionary drama by the same name offered to a provincial theater by a young playwright, Dymogatskii. In tune with the political propaganda of the time, the central events of Dymogatskii's play are the overthrow of an oppressive ruler, Kiri-Kuki, by "red" aborigines of the exotic Crimson Island and their subsequent victory over an armed expedition of greedy Europeans, who wanted to reinstate Kiri-Kuki in order to resume buying the island's pearls at a giveaway price. The Crimson Island is a play within a play. Except for its prologue, epilogue, and occasional interpolations of the actors' "real" dialogue, the four-act play presents the dress rehearsal of Dymogatskii's drama. The impact of censorship is felt from the very beginning of the prologue. The director of the theater mentions the suppression of a play about Ivan the Terrible. Then he instructs Dymogatskii to revise his play thoroughly and threatens to cross out all remaining ideological defects during the dress rehearsal. He is a picture of servility in his telephone conversation with the censor Savva Lukich, when he implores him to come to the rehearsal on the same day. The director warns Dymogatskii that Savva Lukich dislikes allegory, seeing in it disguised propaganda of Menshevism. Toward the end of act 3 Savva arrives. The director tries to please him in every possible way. The stage is flooded with red light. Savva boards a ship going to the Crimson Island to pacify its rebellious aborigines. On the director's orders the ship's English crew sings a Russian revolutionary song instead of an apolitical song, which was in the original. The censor is delighted. Upon his arrival at the Crimson Island he makes himself comfortable on the throne of its former ruler—a satirical comment on the censor's status in the Soviet literary world. Although Dymogatskii's play ends with the aborigines celebrating their triumph over the European invaders, Savva refuses to pass it. He wants to see a world revolution and a display of solidarity between the aborigines and proletarians, represented by the English sailors. In a few minutes a new finale is improvised. Bathing in red light, the ship puts to the Crimson Island. The sailors are lined up on the deck, crimson banners in their hands. They have just thrown overboard the capitalists who were on the ship. They warmly greet the aborigines and take the island under their protection. The aborigines shout, "Long live the revolutionary English sailors! Hurrah!" Now Savva gives permission to stage the play,
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but only in one theater, just as Days of the Turbins was allowed to be produced by MKhAT alone. Bulgakov's contemporaries had no doubt that Savva was modeled on Blium, the chief of the theatrical and music section of the Main Repertory Committee. After forbidding The Crimson Island for a year and a half, the committee members changed their minds in September 1928.183 Blum might have passed the play out of mounting fear that forbidding it would be interpreted as an act of personal revenge. The Crimson Island had hardly premiered on 11 December 1928 in the Kamernyi Theater when the theater's Artistic Council adopted a resolution asserting that the cutting edge of Bulgakov's satire was directed not against the timeservers and bureaucrats but against the whole of Soviet society.184 Save one review, all other critical reactions were also negative. The play was attacked both as void of talent and as a pasquinade on the Revolution. In February 1929 Stalin called The Crimson Island "pulp literature." The Main Repertory Committee, he observed, had erred in allowing the "bourgeois" Kamernyi Theater to put the play on.185 Yet the production of the play went on uninterrupted until 1 June 1929, the closing date of the 1928-29 season at the theater.186 The theater's repertory for the next season did not contain The Crimson Island. On 28 March 1930, at a time when all his plays were banned and he faced poverty, Bulgakov wrote a letter to the Soviet Government. He asked that he either be given permission to emigrate or a position in the theater. In the same letter he repudiated the charge that The Crimson Island was a pasquinade on the Revolution. It is impossible, he argued, to write such a pasquinade in view of the Revolution's "extraordinary grandiosity." He admitted that the target of The Crimson Island was censorship, in particular, the Main Repertory Committee. This committee "begets Helots, panegyrists, and frightened lackeys." It was destroying and would continue to destroy Soviet drama. And Bulgakov makes no secret of his intent: "Fighting against censorship, no matter what kind it is and under what government it exists, is my duty as a writer, just like my appeals for freedom of the press."187 These words and the statements of other authors mirror the fact that the cancer of censorship, whose first victim was the press, inexorably spread to literature. Already in the relatively mild period of the 1920s, censorship seriously crippled creative writing. Unfortunately, the situation was to go from bad to worse in the next decade.
CHAPTER 2
CENSORSHIP IN 1932-1945 INTENSIFICATION
Political Background In comparison with the 1920s, Soviet censorship during the 1930s and early 1940s intensified and spread over some areas previously unaffected or only slightly touched by it. As before, the direction and scope of censorship was determined by the policy and ideology of the ruling Party. Among the events that influenced censorial activities in the 1932-45 period were collectivization, growing conservatism concerning morality and family life, the mass terror of 193638, the glorification of Stalin, and World War II. The earliest calamity of the 1932-45 period befell the countryside. To break the peasants' resistance to collective farming and to continue the export of grain abroad, the Government engaged in a nearly complete confiscation of foodstuffs from rural households. The ensuing famine of 1932-33 claimed millions of peasants' lives. Collectivized farming brought enslavement and impoverishment to the great majority of the peasants. On the other hand, their official status increased. Included in a socialist system of agriculture, they were no longer viewed as a backward petty-bourgeois force. They had become second only to industrial workers. By the end of 1936, Soviet society, according to Stalin, consisted of three components: the workers' class, the peasants' class, and the intelligentsia, a layer between the two classes.1 The 1930s saw a rapid spread of repression and terror. To stop the peasants' unauthorized appropriation of anything belonging to collective farms, the Government decree of 7 August 1932 prescribed the harshest punishments for the theft of "sacred and inviolable" socialist property. The execution of peasants became commonplace. On 1 December 1934 Sergei Kirov, the Party chief in Leningrad, was shot to death under circumstances suggesting that the murder had been masterminded by Stalin. The dictator used the assassination as a pretext for intensifying the persecution of his former leftist adversaries by blaming them for the crime. The trial and execution of Zinov'ev, Kamenev, and all other defendants in August 1936 signaled the beginning of a gargantuan purge lasting until the end of 1938 and engulfing every segment of the populace. On just one day, 12 December 1938, Stalin and Viacheslav Molotov sanctioned the shooting of 3,167 individuals.2 Aside from terror and fear, Stalin based his dictatorship on unbounded adulation of himself as the versatile genius, infallible leader, and loving father of the Soviet people. His praises were sung not only by his devoted cronies. Former
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opposition leaders, old Bolsheviks, seemed to be vying with each other in professing their admiration of and loyalty to the despot. In 1935 Nikolai Bukharin called him "the remarkable leader of the working people, the general of millions, whose name is the symbol of great Five-Year Plans, gigantic victories, and gigantic struggle."3 In the 1930s the Soviet Government took rigorous measures to strengthen the family. The goal was to increase the country's population. On 28 June 1936 Pravda printed a decree which made divorce more difficult and prohibited abortions. Women with many children were to be given financial rewards in proportion to the quantity of their offspring. An important development of the 1930s, which eventually had a strong impact on literature and censorship, was the revision of the official interpretation of history aimed at fostering traditional Russian patriotism. Confronted with the threat of war with Hitler's Germany, Stalin realized that his best and perhaps only chance for victory lay in the appeal to the deeply rooted love of the Russian people for their country. The dictator began with education. A Government resolution of 16 May 1934 denounced the study of history in terms of abstract socioeconomic schemes. Instead, it ordered schools to teach the subject as a chronological sequence of significant events along with the characterization of historical figures. Teams of scholars had to be formed to produce new history textbooks.4 The resolution of 16 May 1934 did not signify an instant or broad rehabilitation of the prerevolutionary Russian past. In their "Remarks on the Outline Textbook of The History of the USSR," dated 8 August 1934, Stalin, Kirov, and Andrei Zhdanov criticized the textbook's authors for failing to stress the annexationist and colonizing role of the Russian tsars, who, together with the bourgeoisie and landlords, turned Russia into a "prison for nationalities."5 However, with the passage of time, the Soviet rulers had to substantially modify this judgment in order to promote patriotism by establishing closer ties with Russia's past. The immediate aim of saving Communism in an impending war with Germany necessitated an intense cultivation of Russian patriotism, notably of the military variety. In the second half of the 1930s the focus of historical fiction shifted from social revolutions to heroic battles of the Russians against foreign invaders. The patriotic prewar fiction glorified the military exploits of the Russian people as well as the victories and activities of selected princes of old Russia, tsarist generals, and tsars. Simultaneously, the authors displayed no antagonism toward other nationalities per se and did not refrain from writing about the backwardness of prerevolutionary Russia. In these respects the prewar works favorably contrasted with World War II literature, in which the Germans received a less-than-fair treatment, and with literature of the last years of Stalin's life when patriotism degenerated into nationalism and xenophobia. In the field of belles-lettres, a highly consequential event occurred on 23 April 1932 when the Central Committee of the Communist Party passed a resolution abolishing all proletarian organizations in literature and other arts, ordering instead the formation of a single Union of Soviet Writers. The Party set out to achieve the tightest control over the entire literary profession by putting all loyal
Censorship in 1932-1945: Intensification
53
writers—proletarians and fellow travelers—in the one organization with a Communist faction at its core. Adopted on Stalin's suggestion, the resolution of 23 April heralded direct intervention of the dictator and his top associates into literary matters. A special five-man Commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee was created to deal with problems arising from the resolution. Stalin, a member of the commission, saw no need to perpetuate the abstract "dialectical-materialist creative method," hitherto promoted by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), and proposed to replace it with "Socialist Realism," a short and comprehensible term reflecting concrete political and literary goals of the time.6 In 1933-34 Stalin was linked to Socialist Realism both politically and artistically. The Politburo member Mikhail Kalinin called on the writers to learn from Stalin the "terseness, clarity, and the crystal purity of his language;" and a Literatumaia gazeta editorial cited excerpts from Stalin's speeches as "concrete examples of Socialist Realism."7 Further Stalinization of literature took place at the First Congress of Soviet Writers (17 August -1 September 1934). There, the dictator's spokesman Zhdanov called for the political tendentiousness of Soviet literature and linked the definition of Socialist Realism to Stalin's designation of writers as "engineers of human souls." Approved by Zhdanov and the Congress, the official formula of Socialist Realism described it as "the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism," which "demands from the artist a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development . . . combined with the task of ideologically remolding and educating the working people in the spirit of socialism."8 This definition identified the truth with the portrayal of life "in its revolutionary development," thus instructing the writers to concentrate on people and events advancing social, economic, and political aims of the ruling Party. The mandatory embellishment of Soviet heroes and conditions, coupled with the concealment of negative phenomena, provided unequivocal directions for censors in the 1932-45 period. During these years, Party and Government edicts concerning censorship in literature and other arts dealt primarily with the reorganization of the already existing organs of supervision. On 17 January 1932 the Party Central Committee decreed a restructuring of its Department of Culture and Propaganda (Kul'tprop) in order to bring its work in tune with Stalin's views and policy regarding propagation of Marxism-Leninism, ideological education, and interpretation of the Party history. Among the Kul'tprop's newly created "sectors" were those of imaginative literature and of other arts. In November 1933 the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution entitled "On the Plenipotentiary of the USSR Sovnarkom for the Guarding of Military Secrets in the Press and on Sections of Military Censorship." The Sovnarkom's plenipotentiary, who was also chief of Glavlit, had to protect all military secrets. In 1931-35 this post was held by Boris Volin, the former head of the Press Section of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. The November 1933 resolution weakened the Narkompros's jurisdiction over censorship and paved the way to complete subordination of Glavlit to the Sovnarkom in 1936—in reality to the Party Central Committee.9 Another act of reorganization affected the Main Repertory Committee that
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was transformed into a more powerful body within the People's Commissariat of Education under the name of Glavnoe upravlenie po kontroliu za zrelishchami i repertuarom (The Mam Administration for the Control of Spectacles and Repertory), abbreviated to GURK. The 26 February 1934 decree of the Sovnarkom of the Russian Federative Republic entrusted GURK with political, ideological, artistic, and military supervision over theaters, music, variety shows, cinema, circus, gramophone records, and artistic radio programs. The censorship was to be both preliminary and subsequent, that is before and after performances.10 GURK existed until 1953. Equally long-lived proved to be Komitet po delam iskusstv (The Committee on Arts Affairs), set up in 1936 and attached to the Council of People's Commissars. The committee exercised guidance over all kinds of arts (except cinema, since 1938). Incorporated in the committee were main administrations for theaters, music, circus, and other arts.11 The committee seemed to be preoccupied chiefly with the formulation of state policy toward the arts, while GURK played the part of the actual censor. A special insight into censorial aims and operations of the 1930s can be gained from pertinent documents forming a part of the Smolensk Archive. This collection consists of the Communist Party records in the Smolensk region, covering the period 1917-41. The archive was captured in 1941 by German troops and then fell into the hands of the U.S. Army in Germany in 1945. The bulk of the archive's original documents is currently in the United States and available on microfilm. Most of the documents concerning censorship date back to the mid-thirties, when Smolensk was the capital of the Western Province, a region three times the size of the present-day Smolensk Province. The authors of the documents range from the highest to the lowest officials of the censorial establishment, from Volin to chiefs of Railits, working on the raion (county) level. To enhance their status, they were also called plenipotentiaries of the Provincial Censorship Office (Obllit). Many documents represent instructions or orders issued by S. Vlasov, chief of Glavlit of the Western Province, to his subordinate censors. All the items dealing with censorship were marked "secret" or "top secret." Although most of them refer to control of the press, there can be no doubt that the same censorial prescriptions applied to literary works. A plenipotentiary of the Western Obllit had to check his material twice. First, he would make his remarks, corrections, and deletions (vycherki) in galley proofs and return them to the printing house. The second time, the censor would check the publisher's compliance with his instructions. If satisfied, he would issue permission for publication (vypusk v svet). All materials containing censorial revisions and remarks had to be sent immediately to the Department of Military Censorship. Under no circumstances were they allowed to remain in the printing press. The censor also had to make sure that the printing press mailed the so-called control copies of the printed matter to the Main Department of Military Censorship of the USSR, the Obllit, the State Central Book Chamber, the State Publishers' Special Distributor, the local security police office, and other institutions. A plenipotentiary of Obllit was obligated to inspect the texts of local radio broadcasts save those exempted from control by Obllit or the
Censorship in 1932-1945: Intensification
55
Provincial Broadcasting Committee. A preliminary censorial checking was required for all public presentations and lectures, except those organized by local Kul'tprops, Party committees, or executive committees. A plenipotentiary of Obllit had to report to the Department of Military Censorship all cases of violation of censorial demands; he was also authorized to take administrative measures or initiate court proceedings against the offenders. Conversely, the same forms of persecution awaited the censor who was remiss in performing his duty or failed to prevent publication of forbidden information or political distortions.12 The basic guide for every censor's work was Perechen' svedenii, sostavliaiushchikh gosudarstvennuiu tainu {The List of Information Comprising State Secrets). As in the 1920s, this book contained a detailed enumeration of military, economic, sociological, scientific, and political secrets that must not appear in print or in public media. The contents of Perechen' were continually updated. The censor could also make use of Systematized Instructions ofGlavlit, a collection of major censorial directives. The censors on the lowest level received additional help in the form of a booklet entitled Instructions to the Railit Worker. Further guidance to all censors was provided by bulletins published in Moscow by the Glavlit of the Russian Federative Republic. An issue of this secret publication (no. 8, 1934), intended specifically for Railit censors, can be found in the Smolensk Archive. In addition to all this literature, the censors were systematically receiving circular letters and orders coming from Glavlit, Obllit, or Party committees. Particular importance was attached to the safeguarding of military secrets. The stationing, movements, and numbers of military units were declared unprintable. Furthermore, the censors had to conceal any connection between the Red Army and Osoviakhim (the Society for the Promotion of Defense and Aero-Chemical Development). Osoviakhim had to be presented as a public organization of defensive significance, omitting the fact that it carried out compulsory training of Red Army commanders. Also excluded from printing was information about strategic roads, defense industry, bridges, and airfields. The overriding purpose of military censorship was to prevent the leaking of classified information to capitalist states that could mount an unexpected assault on the Soviet Union. Characteristic in this respect was an article by K. Batmanov, the deputy of the Sovnarkom's Plenipotentiary for the Guarding of Military Secrets in the Press, that is, Volin's right hand.13 Glavlit and Obllit instructions detail a wide range of unpublishable items. Here are a few samples taken from the spheres of economy, trade, and jurisprudence. Local newspapers were not allowed to print any data on crop yields unless such reports appeared in the central Party or Government press. Interdicted was the disclosure of exact figures on cattle affected by epizootic disease in a given area as well as the precise information on the decrease of horses in Belorussia, Southern Russia, North Caucasus, and Middle Asia, that is, the regions where collectivization inflicted heavy losses on livestock. Proscribed topics in the field of trade encompassed the sale of Soviet domestic bonds abroad, export losses covered by gold currency, and loans of money or goods to Turkey, Persia, Mongolia, and other Eastern countries. City and raion authorities were warned against
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reporting the number of individuals tried by their courts, the nature of their crimes, and the social composition of defendants.14 Certain directives given to Railits concerning the supervision of the press sounded like demands made by Socialist Realism on imaginative literature. Thus on 1 October 1934 Vlasov instructed raion censors to urge newspapers to spotlight the accomplishments of the Soviet regime and to taboo the publication of negative views on Soviet life. By no means should the censor sanction direct quotation of anti-Soviet utterances made by class enemies like the kulaks or devoted churchgoers. Likewise, Vlasov objected to generalizing accounts about the strength of the kulak resistance evinced in killing or beating of Soviet employees or activists or setting fire to their houses.15 Control of the provincial press formed the weakest link in the chain of Soviet censorship. At the grass-roots level, many censors were poorly qualified or even negligent. In the Western Province forty-one Railit chiefs were late in sending their monthly reports about deletions made in August 1934 to the Obllit.16 Often, Railit chiefs served only as part-time censors, chosen from among local Party functionaries and administrators in various institutions. One of Glavlif s principal jobs of the mid-thirties was to purge libraries of works whose authors were branded "enemies of the people." Long lists of proscribed writings included those of Trotskii, Zinov'ev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Aleksei Rykov, Mikhail Tomskii, and innumerable authors in every field of knowledge and art. The censors had to work in conjunction with the NKVD, and confiscated materials were to be sealed and taken to offices of that institution.17 A precious find in the Smolensk Archive is Volin's order of 26 November 1934 entitled "About the Struggle for Purity of the Russian Language" and intended for the whole of Glavlit apparatus. Two of the order's points, dealing with making literature more accessible to the general reader, are of secondary importance. They obligate the censor to watch against the use of hard-to-understand abbreviations and foreign words. The third point, however, was to have an immediate and telling effect on literary censorship. Volin commanded his subordinates "to fight resolutely against coarse expressions, swearwords, and the jargon of professional thieves {blatnoi iazyk), etc."18 This dictate reflected the Party's growing concern with the puritanical upbringing of the Soviet people. A sharp rise in the censorship of foul language followed in 1935 and the purge continued, with varying degrees of intensity, until Stalin's death. The Government's campaign against obscenities, conducted both in literature and in life, looked somewhat bizarre given the fact that swearing was rapidly spreading in the harsh conditions of everyday life, particularly during World War II. While the Smolensk Archive reveals the work of censorship primarily on provincial and raion levels, a number of Glavlit documents throw light on its personnel and operation on the all-Union scale. In 1935 Glavlit received a new chief, the journalist Sergei Ingulov. Born in 1893 and a Party member since 1918, he, unlike his two predecessors, did not belong to the old Bolshevik guard. In the mid-thirties Glavlit censors were divided into two basic groups: political editors and plenipotentiaries. In some publishing houses one plenipotentiary did the censorial job; in others, he headed a team of several political editors. It was a plenipotentiary who usually guided a book's manuscript through
Censorship in 1932-1945: Intensification
57
censorship. Judging from the Glavlit instructions to publishing and printing enterprises dated 31 July 1936, the plenipotentiary was involved in a three-stage censorship. First, he checked the corrections made by editors and a Glavlit censor. If satisfied, he forwarded the manuscript, or galley proofs, to the printing shop with the request to execute all of the suggested revisions. As his second step the plenipotentiary applied to the newly printed galley a stamp reading "Permitted for publication. Plenipotentiary ... No . . . date . . . signature ... ." Upon receiving permission, the printing shop was obligated to make twenty-eight "signal" copies of the book. One of them went to the plenipotentiary and thirteen to the publishing house. The remainder, depending on the location of the publishing house had to be dispatched to Glavlit of the Russian Federative Republic or its offices in provinces and autonomous republics and to the Press Section of the Party Central Committee or its analogs in provinces and autonomous republics. If no objections were raised by these bodies, the publishing house would return a signal copy of the book to the printing shop with permission to start its production. The first "obligatory" copies of this run were to be sent to the NKVD, the Central Book Chamber, and research libraries of the Russian Republic. Only after the delivery of all the signal and obligatory copies was the plenipotentiary authorized to issue the final approval by writing the words vypusk v svet razreshaetsia ("the distribution is permitted") on a ready-made copy of the book. Furthermore, Glavlit instructed that such documents as employee passes, workbooks, model workers' cards, school and college diplomas, membership cards, and student identifications had to be issued only by Glavlit agencies, not by individual plenipotentiaries.19 The dimensions of Glavlit's work in the 1932-45 period can be gauged from a report by its chief, Nikolai Sadchikov, the successor to Ingulov who perished in the Great Purge. Prepared probably in 1940, the report deals mainly with Glavlit accomplishments in the preceding year. Sadchikov states that in 1939 Glavlit "controlled" 7,194 newspapers (excluding those published by the Army and Navy), 1,762 magazines, 41,000 books, all materials of the Press Agency TASS, 1,492 broadcasting stations, 2,357,803 postal packages with foreign literature, 4,681 printing shops, and 70,000 libraries, from which Glavlit removed "politically harmful literature." The Glavlit apparatus of 1939 was comprised of 6,027 persons. Two hundred and three of them were executives, 4,279 censors (2,199 of whom combined censorship with other jobs), and 545 belonged to the service personnel. The quality of censorial work was measured by the number of deletions made after the editors had already approved materials for printing or broadcasting. In 1939 the total of such deletions for the whole country was 66,126. Statistics concerning removal and destruction of books were given for two years, 1938 and 1939. During this time, Glavlit issued 199 orders to destroy as politically harmful 7,809 books of 1,860 authors. In addition, 4,512 books of individual authors, 2,833 miscellanies, and 1,299 [unidentified] titles were sent to recycling as worthless. Altogether 16,453 titles and 24,138,799 copies of printed works were removed from libraries and the book trade network.20 Sadchikov did not give the number of literary works included in these figures; but considering the repression of numerous writers—Veselyi, Pil'niak, and Ba-
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bel' among them—it must have been quite high. Even higher, proportionately, must have been the number of censorial revisions executed in literary works throughout the 1932-45 period. The censors were more likely to outlaw political or historical writings and limit themselves to editing their literary counterparts, especially those penned by such stalwarts of Socialist Realism as Gladkov, Panferov, and Nikolai Ostrovskii. The price for the survival had to be paid in thousands of deleted lines.
Literary Works Nearly all of the core works sustained more censorial damages during the 1932-45 period than in the preceding years. Particularly hard-hit were wellknown works of Communist authors. The reasons for this treatment were twofold. First, works produced by Communists contained a greater number of political themes and positive characters than those of former fellow travelers. Second, the censors endeavored to turn works of Party writers into effective tools of political and ideological education of the reader. Two-thirds of all corrections ever made in Cement fell into the 1932-45 period: 186 were counted for the years 1933-35, 222 for 1941, and 5 for 1944. Eighty-one of these 413 corrections may be classified as puritanical. The original version of Cement has virtually ceased to exist since 1941. A similar operation was performed on Veselyi's works—only in a shorter span of time, from 1932 to 1936. Three hundred fifty-eight corrections (about 120 of them puritanical) were executed during these four years, comprising some 65 percent of the total number of corrections registered in Veselyi's core works. The heaviest political revisions occurred in 1932 while the most stringent puritanical cleansing took place in 1935. There is little doubt that Veselyi's works would have gone through further mutilation had their publication not been forbidden between 1937 and Stalin's death. About 200 censorial interventions can be found in The Commissars, all but 11 of them in a 1935 edition of the novel, and only 14 belong to the puritanical group. I counted one puritanical and 50 political corrections in A Week, the greater part of them coming from the 1935 edition issued by the Publishing House for Children's Literature (Detgiz). These Detgiz revisions will be discussed together with revisions carried out in regular adult editions. Being strictly of political nature, the 1935 Detgiz corrections in 4 Week sharply differ from political and puritanical corrections meant specifically for young readers in Detgiz publications of The Rout or Armored Train No. 14-69. In proportion to their total numbers, corrections made in The Commissars and A Week during the 1930s constitute close to 42 and 30 percent, respectively. The 1935 printings of both novels turned out to be the last before their 1955 reappearance in versions bowdlerized by self-censorship. By contrast. The Rout had been regularly printed in the thirties and early forties. Eight political and seven puritanical corrections are encountered in its 1932-42 editions. Furthermore, a total of forty-six emendations can be counted
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59
in the 1935, 1936, and 1941 Detgiz editions of the novel. In Bruski, The Quiet Don, and Red Cavalry the rate of revisions made between 1932 and 1945 amounts roughly to 30 percent. One hundred eighty-six political and 26 puritanical corrections were taken for my analysis from all four volumes of Bruski appearing from 1933 to 1937. Principal objects of censorial attention were the collectivization of agriculture, Stalin, the political and moral image of individual Communists, and the "enemies of the people." The 1934 edition of volume 3 yielded the highest number of revisions—98. A 1937 edition of volume 4 took second place, with 43 revisions. The next publication of Bruski had to wait until 1947, a sign that toward the end of the 1930s the Party was not eager to promote works dealing with collectivization. Volume 3 of The Quiet Don was the first of its four volumes to experience heavy-handed censorship. At the beginning of 1929, twelve chapters of the volume were published in the magazine Oktiabr'. Then the serialization was discontinued for almost three years, the chief reason being the refusal of the Oktiabr' editors to bring out a volume that, in their opinion, justified the 1919 uprising of the Upper Don Cossacks against Bolshevik rale. In all probability, it was Sholokhov's appeal to Stalin that led to the resumption of serialization in the January 1932 issue of Oktiabr'.21 But the magazine's editors took their pound of flesh. They printed volume 3 with at least 60 revisions, some of them consisting of lengthy omissions. They suppressed pieces of evidence showing that the Cossack rebellion had been provoked by the Red terror, and they induced Sholokhov to make insertions which put the blame on the victims. The first 1933 edition of volume 3 put back longer cuts but restored no more than onefifth of shorter political excisions and made two dozen new deletions. The greater part of corrections made by the Oktiabr' editors came to light through comparison of the magazine's text of The Quiet Don with excerpts from the novel published in 1930 in the journals Ogonek, Na pod"eme (On the Rise), 30 dnei (Thirty Days), Krasnaia niva (The Red Cornfield), and in a booklet Deviatnadtsataia godina (The Year 1919). Altogether these publications amounted to thirteen chapters of volume 3; namely, chapters 13-15, 18-20, 24-28, and 30-31. Though the excerpts published in 1930 are invaluable for the textual study of The Quiet Don, they make up merely one-fifth of volume 3. Nor can one vouch for their being free from political editing. Given the fact that only a small portion of the volume 3 manuscript has been found, the exact extent of the damage done to it in 1932 is impossible to determine. The purge of volume 3 was followed by the 1933 cleansing of The Quiet Don, involving some sixty revisions. Major cuts pertained to Bolshevik characters and to nationalities. Obscenities suffered heavy losses in 1935. In the subsequent decade, over forty political corrections were added, mirroring the impact of the purges, concern for the Red Army's reputation, and the rise of patriotism. Nine deletions, seven of them related to Trotskii, were made in Red Cavalry, whose contents appeared for the last time under Stalin in a collection entitled Rasskazy (Stories, 1936). Merely twenty-five revisions in Seifullina's "The Lawbreakers," Humus, and Virineia and six in Ivanov's Armored Train No. 1469 indicate that censors handled their works rather gently. On the other hand, the 1932 MG and the 1934 Detgiz editions of Armored Train 14-69 contain some
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forty identical revisions. Apart from the core works, two novels will be discussed with regard to censorship during the 1932-45 and later periods. The newcomers are volume 1 of Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned (1932), which was mentioned in the preceding chapter, and Kak zakalialas' stal' (How the Steel Was Tempered) by Nikolai Ostrovskii (1904-36). Part 1 of Ostrovskii's work appeared in 1932 and part 2 in 1934, Covering the period from January to May 1930, Virgin Soil Upturned describes collectivization in a small Don Cossack village called Gremiachii Log. The author does not conceal the Cossacks' resistance to collectivization, narrating such events as the slaughter of cattle and a women's rebellion. Two opposing forces try to win the average Cossack over to their cause. Principal pro-Soviet characters are the collective farm chairman Semen Davydov, an industrial worker sent from Leningrad, and two local Communists, Andrei Razmetnov and Makar Nagul'nov. Their enemies are headed by former White officers, Aleksandr Polovtsev and Vatslav Liat'evskii, who are preparing an armed Cossack uprising. The novel's political pinnacle, Stalin's article "Dizzy with Success" (1930), averts the uprising by misleading the Cossacks into believing that they have a free choice between private and collective farming. The censors had made regular inroads into Virgin Soil Upturned from the time of its appearance down to the early 1960s. Altogether I took into account 125 incidents of censorial intervention, two-thirds of them puritanical. The 1932-45 period yielded 30 puritanical and 5 political corrections. The drastically revised 1934 Detgiz version of the novel will be treated in a separate section, along with the Detgiz editions of Armored Train No. 14-69 and The Rout. Authored by a fanatical, bedridden, and blind Communist, How the Steel Was Tempered features a dedicated young Bolshevik, Pavel Korchagin, a heroic Red Army soldier on the battlefield and a spirited Komsomol functionary of the twenties. Since the work is largely autobiographical, Ostrovskii called it a book of reminiscences; but it was published as a novel. The author's message sounds loud and clear: life is not worth living unless it is devoted to the revolutionary liberation of mankind by the Communists. Artistically raw, the book received scant critical attention until 1935 when the Party began to promote it as a model for political education of Soviet youth. According to Ostrovskii, How the Steel Was Tempered went through thirty-six printings during the first nine months of 1936. In the early 1980s, the total number of published copies surpassed 40 million.22 In connection with the fiftieth anniversary of Ostrovskii's death, his name was given to a planet discovered by a Soviet astronomer.23 The censorial surgery of How the Steel Was Tempered was devastating. Reportedly, about one-third of its manuscript was left out from its earliest publication in the magazine Molodaia gvardiia (Young Guard) in 1932 and 1934.24 The explanation lies in the fact that Ostrovskii's frank descriptions of the Party's internal fightings had to be revised to conform with Stalin's falsification of history. Bits of amputated text were brought to light in the November-December 1956 issue of Molodaia gvardiia and sizable chunks appeared in the September 1964 issue of Oktiabr'. A number of deletions, including some large ones, were restored already in the early book-form editions of the novel. All these publica-
Censorship in 1932-1945: Intensification
61
tions, however, do not seem to reproduce the whole of the text originally banned from Molodaia gvardiia. It is possible that the magazine's 1932-34 editors played a greater role in mutilating Ostrovskii's manuscript than did the official censors. Certain cuts were likely to be motivated by considerations of space and artistic improvement. About one hundred of the new revisions were made in the novel's 1932-38 editions, most of them in 1934 and 1935. Of particular interest are the corrections pertaining to Trotskii and his followers and to the erotic situations involving Pavel Korchagin. The latter are treated as political rather than puritanical revisions.
Political Censorship Peasants From the early 1930s the Government tried to play down the peasants' hostility to the Soviet regime not only during collectivization but also during the years of War Communism. Indicative in this respect are revisions carried out in 1932 in Veselyi's My Native Land when it was incorporated into Russia Washed in Blood. In the 1932 edition of this epic, the text borrowed from My Native Land has 116 corrections. Forty-seven (36 percent) are connected with peasants: 35 additions, 8 deletions, and 4 changes. The great number of additions suggests that they were put in by the author on the censor's insistence. The main objective of the censorship was to demonstrate that the uprising of 1918, which is the central event of My Native Land, was not a spontaneous response by the peasants to the confiscation of grain, but an action organized and supported by the political enemies of the Bolsheviks. Several additions serve this purpose. A former White Army lieutenant and Socialist Revolutionary, Boris Pavlovich Kazantsev, is sent to the countryside by an anti-Soviet organization for subversive activities. He establishes liaisons with various enemies of the Bolshevik regime who remained in the territory held by the Soviets. Earlier editions of My Native Land knew a certain Boris Ivanovich, also a former officer and Socialist Revolutionary. Unlike Kazantsev, however, he was not dispatched for underground work. Nor did he, as chief of staff under Mit'ka Kol'tsov, commander of insurgent peasants, play such an important part in the rebellion as did Kazantsev in the same position.25 In anticipation of the uprising, a former tsarist officer undermines the strength of the Red troops. In his capacity as chief of a Red Army garrison, he persuades a Red commissar to issue an order exempting from military service those loyal to the Soviet regime and inducting those who would fight it, such as tsarist officers and noncommissioned officers. This order is printed by a Menshevik.26 To conceal the dimensions of the popular opposition to the Bolsheviks, the censors dropped a sentence which stated that, during one week, the insurgent command mobilized over 50,000 peasants. Likewise, the censors got rid of the statements made by Soviet soldiers who were captured by the rebels. The prisoners said that they had been forcibly mobilized to fight the peasants and expressed
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a readiness to fight the commissars instead.27 The elimination of passages showing popular support of the insurgents proceeded parallel to the insertions designed to demonstrate hostility to the rebellious peasants and allegiance to the Soviet regime. A long speech by a captive Red soldier condemning poverty under the tsars, praising the Revolution for giving land to peasants, and attacking the rebels for aiding the Whites was introduced into a scene of a village gathering 28 Some additions emphasize the destructive character of the peasant uprising. The insurgents set fire to villages, communes, Soviet agricultural collectives, and lumber storages; they also blew up a water pump and a bridge.29 The story of the rebellion ends with a telling interpolation of the italicized word in the sentence, "The city crushed the kulak village," suggesting that only well-to-do peasants were inimical to the Bolshevik regime.30 A correction of the same type occurred in The Commissars, set in 1921. "Kulak" replaced "peasant" in the phrase "a cruel peasant rebellion."31 A dozen deletions concerning the peasants and their 1921 uprising can be detected in the 1935 Detgiz edition of A Week. The following facts are missing from statements and thoughts of local Communists. The last bit of food has been requisitioned. Hunger compels the peasants to rebel in a senseless and cruel way. The peasants have killed many agitators and political workers for their preaching of Communism. They do not read Soviet books and use Soviet newspapers to roll up cigarettes. The Communists are walking on thin ice, beneath which is a restive and furious peasantry, an element ready to flood and ruin the work of the Communists.32 The next 1935 publication of A Week, (9th ed., Leningrad, KhL) endorsed only half of the Detgiz excisions pertaining to the peasantry, but the mutilated 1955 edition accepted all of them. In 1941 Humus lost an eight-page scene of a lynching in which the peasants evinced extreme atrocity and were perceived as potential enemies of the Soviets. Victims of the lynchers were mostly merchants. Some of them died; others were barely alive. The massacre was stopped by a military staff member. This is what ran through his mind: "The village beasts worked diligently. Y-yes . . . The force of nature! We're going to have trouble with them . . . Yes!' And as a force of habit he touched his revolver with his hand."33 Of particular significance are revisions undertaken in Bruski with regard to peasants and collectivization. First of all, the censors strove to downplay the peasants' ingrained adherence to private property. They did not stop at excising a Marxist concept of the peasants' duality offered by an old Bolshevik, Bogdanov, to Kirill Zhdarkin. Marxism, Bogdanov used to say before 1934, views the peasant's soul as an amalgam of toiler and small proprietor. According to Marx, ownership of small parcels of land creates "a class of barbarians." Hence the peasant brings "an enormous load of the small owner's prejudices" into collective farming. He is incapable of shedding them right away.34 There are numerous examples of censors' eliminating evidence of forced expropriation of gram and cattle. Deleted in 1934 was a passage in which Kirill aims his revolver at a group of peasants to extract grain from them.35 Furthermore, Bruski had to part with several peasants' statements about their being robbed by Soviet authorities. A former chairman of the village Soviet, Il'ia
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Gur'ianov, spoke of krasnye obozy—trains of horse-drawn wagons delivering grain to the state under red banners. "But on these banners," 11'ia declared at a village meeting, "there is the blood of muzhiks, the blood of children and old men, the blood that has flown for centuries . . . and may this blood haunt those who yell that the peasants deliver grain voluntarily." The whole of the cited phrase can be read only in the 1933 Sov. lit. edition of Bruski. It is missing completely from two other 1933 publications of volume 3 and its italicized words have not been restored to this day.36 Simultaneously, the censors purged the words "about three hundred," denoting the number of insurgent peasants taken prisoner and drowned in a river.37 Collectivized against their will, the peasants continued to resist within the system. The 1933 editions of volume 3 of Bruski gave frank presentation of peasants' attitudes and deeds that brought collective farms to the verge of collapse. But much of what was tolerated in 1933 became unprintable in 1934. This applies to all the examples mentioned in the next paragraph. In the area of Bruski, the people took away from collective farms everything they could lay their hands on: agricultural implements, horses, cows, vehicles, wheels. The collective farmers did not care a bit about chickens dying of plague. It was clear to Kirill that millions of collective farmers "offer passive resistance, the most frightening thing." Kirill knows that this resistance cannot be broken by agitation or by a bullet. A heretical assumption enters his mind: "Perhaps what the heroic Party is doing represents empty talk, fantasy, and madness of those who seized the power in battles, on the barricades?"38 Kirill, at that time director of the local machinery and tractor station, writes a memorandum to Stalin, illustrating with concrete examples how the peasants are wrecking collective farms. Salvation, Kirill avers, will come not from passing strict laws but from grafting love for socialist property on yesterday's small proprietors. While the 1934-35 editions of volume 3 printed the memorandum with changes and excisions, the author's evaluation of it has been absent since 1934. Little wonder, for it amounts to the assertion that the Party's collectivization policy was proven wrong by life. In Panferov's judgment, Kirill "refuted all the regulations inside collective farms, tore off the veil of idealization from the collective farmer, and smashed to pieces the established idea about the forms of socialist agriculture.39 The 1934 KhL edition of volume 3 of Bruski contains Panferov's address to the readers, stating that he "reworked this book." The statement suggests that all the revising was performed by the author. But why would he make at least a hundred substantial political corrections in the text he had considered publishable a year earlier? Most likely, Panferov, even if by his own hand, was executing the will of the censors who, in their turn, complied with the Party's increasingly stringent demands to weed out the facts obstructing the desired political education of the reader. Even swifter than in 1934 was the censors' reaction to passages found objectionable in volume 4 of Bruski (1937), Among deletions made within four months of its publication, two concerned the effects of famine caused by confiscation of foodstuffs: human corpses lying on the roads, a drastic reduction of the horse population.40
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Direct censorial involvement in the depiction of peasants during collectivization can be demonstrated by the publication complexities of Aleksandr Tvardovskii's narrative poem, Strana Muraviia (The Land of Muraviia, wr. 1935). The poem's plot is based on the story of Nikita Gur'ianov, a peasant character in Bruski, who traveled through southern Russia in a futile search for a region unaffected by collectivization. Tvardovskii's hero, Nikita Morgunok, sets out in his horse-drawn cart for the distant Muraviia in the hope of establishing his own farmstead. He fails to find the land of his dreams. Instead, he discovers a rich collective farm chaired by a vigorous local Bolshevik. Moreover, Nikita soon meets an old religious man who tells him that Muraviia no longer exists and that he will be better off joining a collective farm. Nikita agrees. In spite of its political orthodoxy, the poem included verses that moved Glavlit chief Volin to block its publication in Krasnaia nov'. A meeting between Tvardovskii and Volin was arranged, an exceptional event because the censors as a rule dealt not with authors but with members of editorial boards. At this encounter, Volin made no bones about the guiding criterion of Soviet censorship; "Your work is true to life. But this is not the truth we need." Fortunately, Tvardovskii had a good friend in the person of Kronid Malakhov, a wellconnected Communist and literary critic. Malakhov approached Aleksandr Shcherbakov, an influential Party figure and the first secretary of the Writers' Union, that is, the man delegated by the Party to control the literary establishment. Upon hearing Malakhov's praise of The Land of Muraviia as a remarkable achievement of young Soviet poetry, Shcherbakov picked up the telephone and instructed Glavlit, or Krasnaia nov', to lift the ban on the poem.41 It appeared in the April 1936 issue of that magazine. A party VIP prevailed over the chief of censorship. The victory, nevertheless, was not complete. Missing from the first published text of the poem were verses that must have raised Volin's strongest objections. Among them were the scene of the deportation of peasant families to northern Russia, the description of a dilapidated village, and a glimpse of the destitution of Morgunok's large family burdened with compulsory grain deliveries and living in fear of the authorities. These cuts were rescinded in later editions.42
The Family The conservative trend toward strengthening the family and morality became evident in literature before the publication of the Government decree prohibiting abortions. Already in 1933 the second volume of Bruski discarded a tirade against traditional family made by a young Communist woman, Masha Sivasheva. In her opinion, the family is a capitalist cell created by economic considerations. The husband and wife pretend to have a successful marriage. Actually, they hate one another and live together only because of the need to raise children. The woman is enslaved. In the new society the relationship between man and woman is based on friendship, on their common interests, mutual feeling, and healthy sexual desire. Such a situation is possible in a commune, where man and woman are economically independent and children are raised completely at communal ex-
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pense. At the same time, the censors dropped Kirill's thoughts about the breakup of the family which he observed in a commune. There, children are bom out of wedlock, unmarried young people sleep with each other, and divorce is frequent. Nor did the censors tolerate Kirill's preaching of free love. That is what he kept saying before 1933 to lashka Chukhliav, who accused him of taking away his wife Steshka: "You have joined the Party and you know that one cannot take a wife away. She is not your property or your slave ... In our country one can love anyone he pleases."43 Another model hero of Socialist Realism, Pavel Korchagin, was likewise found deficient in his attitude toward love and marriage. In 1935, phrases bespeaking his rather matter-of-fact approach to the conjugal bond were removed from his marriage proposal to Raia Kiutsam: "I'm not saying that my love for you is eternal until death, that you are dearer to me than anything in my life or any other lies ... I'm saying that I'm attracted to you as a woman."44 Soon after this confession, Pavel went at night into Raia's room and their union was consummated. The entire scene, with some very mild erotic details like "darkskinned breast" or "a mightiest instinct," disappeared in 1934.45 Pavel's married life did not run smoothly. Raia's parents, Porfirii and Al'bina, harbored strong anti-Soviet feelings and hated him. Al'bina did everything possible to take her daughter away from Pavel. Raia, a Party member, was torn between personal and political loyalty to her husband and pity for her mother. Ultimately, Pavel ordered Al'bina and other relatives to vacate his oneroom Moscow apartment in thirty minutes, threatening to shoot all who did not comply. Descriptions of the ugly family relations take about seven pages of Molodaia gvardiia. All this material has vanished, beginning with the first bookform edition of part 2 46 Following the ejection of Raia's relatives, Pavel had a conversation with her. He said that their breakup was imminent. Raia had failed the political test, since she did not gather enough strength to rebuff her mother. Raia and he separated, at least for the time being. "We, the Bolsheviks, can part without hurting each other unnecessarily," Pavel declared, not noticing the tears dropping from his wife's eyes. A page before the novel's ending, this was the last scene involving Pavel and Raia. It meant that a paragon of Communist virtues failed in his family life, a defect no longer compatible with the official image of a true Bolshevik. The whole of the scene was excluded from the first separate edition.47 In the 1930s the censors greatly increased their vigilance with respect to the sexual behavior of Communist characters. Some excisions pertained to the aggressiveness of young women. In 1933 the censors did away with Masha Sivasheva's successful attempt to lure Kirill deep into the woods, where he fell to her charms. Further details were omitted from the scene of Anna's nocturnal visit to Bunchuk in The Quiet Don, the scene that had already lost several lines in 1929. Some of the 1933 deletions, like those affecting Anna's feverishly trembling legs or her "drooping, virginally-taut, cool breasts," might have been motivated by puritanical considerations. But the removal of her plea, "I've come to you, only hush . . . quiet . . . mother's sleeping," which she whispered in Bunchuk's ear "with a burning rustle," is rather political. In a similar situation, the 1932 censors of How the Steel Was Tempered crossed out the words with
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which Rita, a Komsomol leader, offered herself to her comrade during the Civil War: "Now I'll be yours, because you are young, full of life . . . because the days ahead of us can take away our lives." The comrade consented.48 The deletion of Rita's words shows that what mattered to censors was not acceptance or refusal of a sexual offer but who made it. What was interdicted to a Communist woman was permitted to plain females. No "adult" printing of The Quiet Don has ever been purged of Dar'ia Melekhova's attempt to seduce her father-in-law or of other evidence of her promiscuity. While leaving Dar'ia alone, the censors worked hard to improve the morality of Dasha Chumalova. Beginning with 1933, no trace has been left to indicate that she spent a night in bed with Bad'in, experiencing "unforgettable woman's passion." When a hundred pages later Bad'in wants to resume the relationship, Dasha cold-shoulders him saying, "This will never happen again." The watchful censor blue-penciled the last word.49 The passage about Dasha's sexual activities with Red-Green partisans, which had been thoroughly revised in the twenties, was expunged from the 1933 edition of Cement in toto. The 1934 edition reintroduced it with radical changes. Subtracted were sentences about Dasha not regretting having been unfaithful to Gleb and having had moments when she succumbed to her desire. Added were phrases about Dasha's having yielded only twice and about her inability to overcome the resulting mental torments. Other insertions stressed the benefits of Dasha's copulation for the cause. Her partners, dressed in White Army uniforms, would contact the White soldiers and persuade them to desert to the Red-Greens with their weapons. With some marginal alterations, the 1934 version of the passage in question reappeared in the 1935-37 publications of Cement but were completely banned from the 1941 and subsequent editions.50 In 1933-34, and especially in 1941, the censors, or Gladkov on their instruction, continued to mend the familial relationship between Gleb and Dasha. The emendations weighed heavily in favor of Dasha as a new Communist woman gaining self-esteem through her political work. Among some thirty family related revisions in the 1941 edition of Cement there were eliminations of phrases describing Dasha as being cold, alien, or unfriendly to her husband. A number of cuts concern Gleb's outbursts of jealousy, his calling Dasha a "damned" or "dirty" woman, and his threatening to strangle her or to break her ribs. Concurrently, Dasha's language was freed of words like "pig" and "animal" addressed at Gleb,51 What distinguishes the story of Gleb and Dasha in the 1941 version is a marked increase in additions, one nearly two pages long. It shows the couple in their apartment at night. They hug and kiss, but Dasha allows no more. She claims to have developed self-respect and pride which no one can overcome, even Gleb. Failing to understand his wife, Gleb thinks she has a lover. But why, he wonders, does she get so excited when he embraces her? He is nonplused.52 Other insertions demonstrate the couple's mutual affection and Gleb's realization of having been wrong to Dasha. The 1933-34 and 1941 revisions appreciably changed the original relationship between the two Soviet heroes, stripping it of Dasha's marital misconduct, the main source of Gleb's wrath. What emerged was a figure of an idealized
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Communist woman, less true to life than to the prescribed standards for literary characters of her type.
Purges and Terror The discussion of the corrections related to the terror and purges of the 1930s may begin with Trotskii, Stalin's number-one enemy. In some instances, Trotskii's name had already vanished from literary works in the 1920s. But in the 1930s his name was left out everywhere, except in a few cases where it was used with clear disapproval. Most deletions concerning Trotskii occurred in 1932 and 1933. The main stimulus for this development must have been given by Stalin's letter entitled "Certain Questions about the History of Bolshevism" and sent in 1931 to the editorial board of the magazine Proletarskaia revoliutsiia {The Proletarian Revolution). In his letter, Stalin dubbed Trotskyism "the vanguard of counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie fighting against Communism, against Soviet power, and against the building of socialism in the USSR."53 The longest excision concerning Trotskii is to be found in How the Steel Was Tempered. It consists of several pages devoted to the Kiev Party Conference in 1924, which dealt at length with Trotskii's opposition. This material was not included in the earliest publication of the second part of the novel in Molodaia gvardiia and only bits of it appeared in the first book-form edition of this part in 1934. These were excerpts from an anti-Trotskyite speech delivered at the Conference by the metalworker Ignat Pankratov. Excluded from his speech were such things as the arrival in Kiev of some forty Trotskyite agitators, the Party's refusal to allow the existence of any factions within its ranks, the success of the opposition in attracting a considerable number of college students, Trotskii's contribution to the October Revolution, and his heroism at the time when he kept step with the Party.54 Any positive reference to Trotskii's revolutionary past was tabooed. The debunking of Trotskii extended to his followers. A special effort was made to denigrate politically and morally a young Trotskyite, Dmitrii Dubava. Excisions included a long passage attesting to his courage and independent thinking. The central event of the passage is the political strife between Dubava and his politically orthodox wife, Anna. She reports his Trotskyite activities to the Party Committee of the Khar'kov Province. Dubava condemns her act as lowly spying on her husband. He criticizes her blind obedience to the Party line, as well as the ideological narrow-mindedness of Pavel Korchagin, who, in his words, sees nothing but the red banner.55 In 1935 Dubava was deprived of such qualities as good looks, zest for life, energy, participation in the Civil War, superior political maturity, and close friendship with Korchagin. In several instances Dubava's first name and its informal variant, Mitiai, were replaced by his last name, to underscore his alienation. In added passages Korchagin calls him a "skunk" {gad), and a Komsomol leader brands him a politically "poisoned man."56 Most, if not all, corrections affecting Dubava were made by Ostrovskii and Ida Gorina, editor of the 1935 MG version of How the Steel Was Tempered. The purpose of the revision, according to the author, was to bring into sharper relief
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"hostile figures of the Trotskyites, for instance, Dubava."57 Naturally, this type of censorship was dictated by the political course of the day. Ostrovskii could not have changed his concept of a character so drastically within one year. The purge of Trotskii from The Quiet Don began in 1933 with the first separate publication of volume 3. A dozen lines relating to his arrival in the frontline area were crossed out, even though in this episode he had been depicted as a windbag and a coward. In the utterances of Pavel Kudinov, commander of the insurgent Cossacks, Trotskii's name was turned into "commander-in chief in one place and vanished in the other.58 At the height of the purges, in 1937, the censors deleted the information that the "Order to Expeditionary Forces" of 25 May 1919 was issued by the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, i.e., Trotskii. Yet the order remained, continuing to serve as an effective tool of propaganda among the troops fighting the insurgent Cossacks.59 From the censors' viewpoint, it was probably a lesser evil to retain the order than to excise it at the risk of attracting undesirable attention to its sudden disappearance. This reasoning might have been responsible for allowing Trotskii to continue his invisible presence at another point in volume 3 (chapter 58), where the commanders of rebellious Cossacks discuss the article "Uprising in the Rear" from the newspaper V puti {On the Road). Sholokhov, however, did not reveal, at least not in the printed text, that "Uprising in the Rear" belonged to Trotskii's pen and that V puti was a bulletin published on the train he used during the Civil War. Fike his order of 25 May, this article of Trotskii's has never been expunged from the novel. Thus we are confronted with a paradox. While Trotskii's writings had been taboo in the Soviet Union for a long time and their possession during Stalin's rule was the equivalent of a capital crime, millions of copies of The Quiet Don had been disseminating two of his documents with a patent approval of their political content. In 1938 Trotskii's name reappeared in The Quiet Don. This occurred in the earliest publication of volume 4 (part 7, chapter 23), where he was vilified as a traitor who had caused the failure of the Red offensive mounted in the summer of 1919 on the southern front. Revisions concerning Trotskii in other core works hush up his role during the 1918-21 period. Between 1932 and 1934 his portraits hanging in offices and public places were taken down in Humus, The Commissars, and A Week. In one instance, the censors of The Commissars replaced his image with that of Marx and dropped his name in other cases.60 Quite frequently Trotskii's name stood next to Lenin's, attesting to his being number two in the Bolshevik hierarchy. In such cases the censors invariably dropped his name, but treated Lenin depending on the context. The 1932 Fed. edition of A Week purged only Trotskii when a character ranked Lenin and him as topmost leaders. In Babel's story "Salt" both of them vanished in 1933 from a woman's reproach to Red soldiers that they "are saving two yids—Lenin and Trotskii." "The yids," however, remained. A soldier's reply to the woman in which he praises both leaders and asserts that Trotskii was definitely a Russian, the son of the governor of the Tambov Province, was censored from the beginning to the end. It was hard to separate Lenin from Trotskii in it. By contrast, the censors painlessly amputated the italicized words from a Red soldier's statement in "Treason" that "comrade Lenin together with comrade Trotskii" were
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guiding his "brutal" bayonet against the real enemy. Lenin could easily do this alone. Elsewhere in Red Cavalry the censors dissociated Trotskii's name from his order not to kill prisoners and withdrew his authorship of agitational leaflets.61 The political decline of Bukharin was evinced in the disappearance of his book The Economy of the Transitional Period from the 1932 Fed. edition of A Week and in the ban of his and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii's ABCs of Communism from How the Steel Was Tempered. Similarly, Zinov'ev's name and his Against the Current were expelled in 1935 from The Commissars, where the book received high praise from a venerable old Bolshevik.62 Of greater political significance were the revisions affecting Bukharin in volume 4 of Bruski. Published early in 1937, this volume contained a passage saying that Bukharin had sharply attacked Stalin's program because it would plunge the country into disaster. Since the reader could easily see that Bukharin was right, the censors marked for deletion the passage in the next edition of volume 4. Simultaneously, the name of Bukharin was substituted for that of Zinov'ev in the confession of an exposed "enemy of the people," thus involving Bukharin in a plot to kill Stalin.63 The substitution indicates that in 1937 the imprisoned Bukharin was officially regarded as a more wicked enemy than the executed Zinov'ev. The man who implicated Bukharin in his confession was Zharkov, the former head of the Party's Province Committee. A devoted Bolshevik in the first three volumes of Bruski, he was transformed by the author into a bitter foe of the Soviet regime, in response to the widespread campaign of unmasking all hidden "enemies of the people." Deletions and additions made by Panferov in volume 4 of Bruski immediately after its serialization in Oktiabr' demonstrate the most deplorable kind of selfcensorship when the author does his best to keep in step with the Party's latest policy and actions. That this adaptation entailed an endorsement of lies and terror in what was supposed to be a work of art did not apparently matter to Panferov. He did what the censor in chief, losif Stalin, expected from his Party writers. Bukharin was still alive when Panferov joined the chorus of his detractors. The author knew that the politician's fate was sealed. The purges of 1936-38 turned many of their victims into "unpersons," causing the removal of their names from printed works. This process can be illustrated by examples from The Quiet Don and How the Steel Was Tempered. The first to go from The Quiet Don was Sergei Syrtsov, a leading Bolshevik in the Don region from 1917 to 1920. Although his name was struck from the 1936 deluxe edition of volume 2, Syrtsov was permitted to stay in the novel as an anonymous "delegate of miners." In this capacity he continues to deliver his "burning, passionate" address to the Cossacks, winning their hearts over to the Bolshevik cause.64 The name of Dmitrii Zhloba, one of the best known Red commanders of humble origin, appeared in The Quiet Don only in an excerpt from volume 4 published in Izvestiia on 22 October 1936. Zhloba was left out at the earliest opportunity, in Novyi mir (no. 11, 1937, 58). A character's statement that "the officers' regiments were fleeing from him" was simply attached to the heroic exploits of Semen Budennyi. The censors were somewhat slow in dealing with Nikolai Krylenko, the first Red commander in chief who
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later held the highest posts in the judicial system, and Vladimir AntonovOvseenko, commander of the Red forces on the Don and in the Ukraine in 191718. Although both of these men were shot in 1938, their names still figured in the 1939 Rostov edition of volume 2 (approved for publication on 10 September 1939) and vanished only in 1941.65 Three names of important persons shot during the purges were edited from How the Steel Was Tempered in 1937 or 1938. The victims are lona lakir, commander of the Kiev Military District; Nikolai Chaplin, a former head of the Komsomol; and Dmitrii Zhloba.66 Another head of the Komsomol, Aleksandr Kosarev, arrested in November 1938 and shot in February 1939, was still present in the 1938 edition of the novel published as volume 1 of Ostrovskii's Collected Works. His name was probably dropped from the 1939 or 1940 editions published in the languages of several national minorities. A surprising reappearance of the names of lakir, Chaplin, and Zhloba occurred in the 1943 Detgiz edition of How the Steel Was Tempered. Clearly, it was a reprint of a 1935 or 1936 edition of the novel, which contains all of these names. It is amazing that both the editors of Detgiz and the official censors overlooked the three unprintable names, especially that of lakir, who was the defendant number two in the widely publicized trial of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskii. Wartime haste and confusion might have contributed to the oversight. But another reason seems to be more plausible. The three once important figures must have been so successfully consigned to oblivion that their names meant nothing to the possibly young and inexperienced persons who were responsible for the political purity of the Detgiz edition. They caught only Kosarev. However, the next 1943 publication of How the Steel Was Tempered was free of all four names.67 Revisions concerning the terror were not confined to the purges of the 1930s; they went back to the Civil War and the early years of the Soviet regime. Intensive censorship was carried out by the editors of Oktiabr' when they resumed serialization of volume 3 of The Quiet Don. Above all the editors concentrated on concealing the facts of the Red terror that compelled the Upper Don Cossacks to rise against the Bolsheviks in March 1919. Deletions included the whole of chapter 23, describing how Peter Melekhov retrieved the body of Miron Korshunov, who was executed by the Reds, as well as the two pages of an Old Believer's tale about the shooting of innocent people by Red commissar Malkin. In both cases the original text was printed in the first book-form publication of volume 3 (1933), but the extent of the restoration remains unknown. For example, from Sholokhov's letter to Gor'kii we learn about the existence of an associate of Malkin, an "authentic character who agitated for socialism in such an original way."68 Yet this character has never appeared in the novel. To destroy evidence about the mistreatment of Cossacks, the Oktiabr' editors censored the thoughts of Grigorii Melekhov when, burning with enthusiasm, he gallops off to fight the Bolsheviks at the outbreak of the Upper Don uprising. If in The Year 1919 Grigorii's militancy was chiefly motivated by the death and devastation brought upon his native land by the Bolshevik invasion, one finds nothing of the kind in Oktiabr', where the following italicized phrases were expunged: "The test is made. We allowed the regiments of stinking Russia onto
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the Cossack lands. They passed through it like the Germans through Poland, like the Cossacks through Prussia. Blood and devastation covered the steppe."^ This excision has not been rescinded. At the very beginning of the 1940s there appears a sharply increasing trend to delete the statements and descriptions concerning the executions of people by the Soviet side. This could have stemmed from a reluctance to evoke in the reader's mind any parallel with the 1936-38 purges. The three following cuts, all made in 1941, may serve as illustrations: (1) two pages of Seifullina's story "Lawbreakers," describing a group of homeless children living in a pit in a cemetery. At night they hear shots fired by the Cheka executioners. While the rest of the children talk about the execution, one of them, Grishka, keeps silent, wondering whether those condemned screw up their eyes when being shot. The following morning the children reenact the execution at their play, with Grishka joyfully ordering his victims to screw up their eyes; (2) a Red soldier's cheerful account in Cement of how he and his comrades shot about fifty captured White partisan officers and two nurses; (3) the remark of the Cheka chairman, Chibis, that the Colonel Dmitrii Ivagin was shot in the cellar.70 Also in 1941, the censors extracted from Cement statements by workers, Gleb, and Chibis about the necessity to send the engineers and officials suspected of sabotage to the Cheka, for trial and execution. Among the excisions is a conversation between Chibis and Gleb about the outward appearance of persons facing a firing squad, particularly about their eyes.71 While cutting the material about the early Bolshevik terror, the censor, or the author, injected into Gleb's mind a thought justifying the ongoing Stalinist repressions. "The future," Gleb muses in 1921, "is also going to be filled with events: enemies will be committing villainies in our country for a long time to come under the guise of friends of the working class and the Party. The struggle against them will be cruel and long."72 It sounds like a prediction of already known facts.
Stalin and Lenin To my knowledge, Stalin's name was not present in the major prose works of the 1920s, with the exception of his veiled appearance in Pil'niak's "Tale of the Unextinguished Moon." But his name comes up in Virgin Soil Upturned (1932), and he is a character in volume 4 of Bruski (1937). Naturally, the censors and editors must have been exceptionally alert about everything pertaining to the leader. In 1934 the censors dropped from Bruski an enemy's remark that, in the future Russia, Stalin would be remembered as an ancient tyrant. The same was done with an old Bolshevik's claim that he had joined the Party five years earlier than Stalin and with his discussion of a rather academic difference between the annihilation of classes, as Lenin wrote, and the liquidation of classes, as Stalin proclaimed.73 In volume 4 of Bruski the corrections concerning Stalin were executed at the earliest opportunity, in the first book-form edition of that volume. They consisted of eleven deletions and six additions. Removed were passages likely to de-
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tract from Stalin's image as a man and politician. One of them was the scene in which Kiril! describes how the insurgent peasants were drowned in the river, and Stalin laughs, admiring the ingenuity of their executioners. Elsewhere the censors extracted Stalin's view that, when going abroad, one does not need to know a foreign language. By contrast, the censors edited what a character thought while looking at Stalin: "That's how great he is. And he loves us. And we love him."74 The praise might have appeared too obtrusive. More subtle ways were chosen to demonstrate Stalin's humaneness, good manners, and wisdom. In an inserted conversation, Kirill speaks with Stalin freely and even argues with him. When Kirill accidentally drops his order of the Red Banner, Stalin picks it up from the floor. One added episode has Stalin telling Kirill about the invincibility of the Bolsheviks as long as they maintain contact with the people. Stalin illustrates his point with the myth of Antaeus, whose invincibility came from contact with the earth.75 The insertion of this episode testifies to the speed of Panferov's reaction to political events. Stalin drew the parallel between the Bolsheviks and Antaeus at the 5 March 1937 plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee. It was incorporated in the edition of Bruski that went to the printers on 2 April 1937. To wind up the discussion of Stalm and censorship, comments will be made on three following works: the play Lozh' {The Lie, wr. 1933) by Aleksandr Afinogenov, the play Batum (Batum, wr. 1939) by Mikhail Bulgakov, and the poem "Kogo baiukala Rossiia" ("To Whom Russia Sang Lullabies," 1943) by Il'ia Sel'vinskii. The Lie presents ideological confrontations within the Party, with the main collision revolving around the question of truth and falsehood. Most characters are associated with a factory—its director, his deputy, and the Party personnel. Aware of the political acuteness of The Lie, Afinogenov sent, in April 1933, its manuscript to Stalin for evaluation. Stalin's reaction to the play will be discussed in more detail in the next section; for the time being, we shall touch upon the dictator's censorship in a passage where he is solemnly eulogized by a deputy people's commissar named Riadovoi. Stalin struck the words "I am speaking of the leader" and substituted the designation "Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet land" for the word "man" in the phrase "I am speaking about the man." In the next phrase, he changed "the name" (his name) to "the banner." It may appear that Stalin objected to being glorified, but this notion is dispelled by his last revision—the replacement of "the" with the modifiers "this collective" in the sentence "And the leader is invincible." In this way, Stalin made himself the leader of all, "the father of the peoples," notwithstanding his hypocritical chiding of Afinogenov: "It serves no purpose to expatiate on 'the leader.' This is not good and, perhaps, improper. What matters is not 'the leader' but the collective leadership—the Party Central Committee."76 In Bulgakov's Batum Stalin is the protagonist. The play centers on his revolutionary activities in the Georgian city of Batum in 1902-3. Stalin—then losif Dzhugashvili—-forms underground groups of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (RSDRP), organizes strikes and political demonstrations, and prints propaganda leaflets. Arrested, he smuggles revolutionary materials out of the prison and inspires the inmates to protest against the abuses of their jailers. When Stalin is being transferred to another prison, the guards strike him with
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scabbards as he walks to the phaeton. Nicholas II, portrayed as a pious half-wit, confirms the decision of his minister of justice to exile Stalin to Siberia for three years. The play concludes with Stalin's return to Batum after his escape from exile. In July 1939 Batum was warmly received by the Committee on Arts Affairs and MKhAT planned to premiere it on 21 December, the sixtieth anniversary of Stalin's birth.77 Still, realizing the political sensitivity of Batum, the Committee on Arts Affairs sent the play to a higher Party institution, possibly to its Central Committee. The reaction came swiftly. In the rendition of Vasilii Sakhnovskii, a MKhAT director and administrator, the Party pronounced; "A person, such as I. V. Stalin, should not be made a literary character; he should not be placed in imaginary [vydumannye] situations and no imaginary words should be put into his mouth. The play should neither be staged nor published."78 In October 1939 Stalin reportedly said to Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko that Batum was "a very good play but it should not be performed."79 As of now, there exists no hard evidence as to why Batum was rejected. The reason cited by Sakhnovskii holds no water; by August 1939 Stalin had already been made a literary character. Moreover, his political work in Batum, in 19012, had already been glorified in the play lz iskry . . . {From the Spark. . . , 1937) by the Georgian writer Shalva Dadiani. In 1940 the play was translated from Georgian into Russian. A number of conjectures concerning the suppression of Batum are advanced by Anatolii Smelianskii. Their cogency varies. Smelianskii errs regarding the scene of prison guards beating Stalin with scabbards as a reason for the rejection of the play. In volume 3 of Bruski an old Bolshevik, Bogdanov, remembers a similar story about his old Georgian friend being beaten by soldiers with rifle butts for his escape from prison. The Georgian walks through the ordeal reading a book. The scene not only survived the censorship of the 1930s, but the word "Georgian," though it obviously denoted Stalin, was replaced in 1947 by the leader's name. The demonstration of Stalin's superhuman endurance proved to be more significant than his having been beaten. One may agree with Smelianskii that the basic motive for banning Batum lay in the fact that the whole of the play implicitly invited a comparison between Stalin's Soviet Union and tsarist Russia. However harsh the autocratic rule might have been, it appeared more law-abiding and temperate than Stalin's unconstrained dictatorship.80 Irrespective of the 1939 taboo on its performance and publication, Batum still poses the possibly unanswerable question of whether Bulgakov meant the play as a tribute or as a challenge to Stalin. The play appeared in the USSR under Gorbachev. A situation both anecdotal and deadly serious was created by Sel'vinskii's poem "To Whom Russia Sang Lullabies." A typically patriotic piece of wartime literature, it professed strong admiration for the Russian nature and people. Nevertheless, in November 1943, Sel'vinskii was summoned to Moscow and brought to a meeting of the Orgburo of the Party Central Committee. The chairman of the meeting, Georgii Malenkov, sternly demanded that the poet explain the meaning of the word urod (monster, an ugly person) in the lines stating that the Russian soul, like the Russian nature, would give shelter even to a monster. Sel'vinskii replied that he spoke of iurodivye (God's fools).
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When Malenkov continued to insist on a frank answer, it dawned on the poet that the Party bosses had in mind Stalin, a monster with a pockmarked face, sheltered by the Russian people. At this point Stalin entered the room. After making a thinly veiled threat to Sel'vinskii, he settled the case by instructing Malenkov to have a good talk with the poet and to spare him.81 The longest revisions affecting Lenin are associated with the fostering of patriotism. In the opening chapter of volume 2 of The Quiet Don the Bolshevik Il'ia Bunchuk propagates his antipatriotic ideas with the aid of a profuse quotation from Lenin's article "The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International" (1914). The time is October 1916; the place, an officers' dugout on the RussianGerman front. In 1933 the quoted excerpt was shortened by one page. The excision might have been warranted by the stylistic consideration of condensing lengthy material or by the desire to lessen the Bolshevik responsibility for inciting fratricidal carnage, since in the omitted passage Lenin argues in favor of transforming the world war into a civil war. What remained from Lenin's article in 1933 vanished in 1945. Its pervasive antipatriotic tone was no longer compatible with the promotion of traditional patriotism, especially during and after the war. The reader was not supposed to know that Lenin had berated the bourgeoisie for imbuing the masses with nationalism in order to arouse them for "the defense of the fatherland." Furthermore, in the deleted paragraphs Lenin expressed uncertainty as to whether civil war would occur during World War I or during the next world war. By 1945 the Soviet citizens must have known that Lenin and Stalin were endowed with the capability of foreseeing and shaping historical events. Nor was there any need to retain a page and a half of the dialogue that immediately preceded and followed the deleted Lenin excerpt. In this dialogue the monarchist Evgenii Listnitskii, speaking very much like a Soviet political officer of World War II, lectured Bunchuk on "the duty of each man who has been nourished by this land to defend his native country from enslavement." Every true Russian, Listnitskii asserted, would ignore Lenin's "hysterical outcries with contempt." The idea of unleashing a civil war was "despicable." Such a scathing criticism of Lenin would have been ejected in 1945 even if the excerpt from his article had been allowed to stay. Along with Listnitskii's patriotic professions, the censors disposed of Bunchuk's internationalist declaration, though it derived from the founding father: "Workers have no fatherland. These words of Marx express the most profound of truths. We have no fatherland and never had one! Breathe patriotism yourselves."82 This was the antithesis of the Soviet official designation of the war with Nazi Germany as the "Great Fatherland War." There were additions aimed at presenting Lenin as the supreme source of inspiration. In a passage inserted into the 1941 edition of Cement, Gleb says that seeing Lenin would be the greatest experience of his life. The Cheka chairman Chibis has a ready answer: if Gleb works the way the Party orders him to, Lenin will always be with him. The advice seems to be well taken. In his address at the cement plant opening, Gleb tells the crowds that they and he will do everything to create a proletarian economy: "we are called to do this by the Party and our Lenin." The italicized words were absent before 1941. For all his devotion to the leader, Gleb has been denied what Sergei Kosikhin, a young lecturer in The Commissars, was granted in 1935—seeing and hearing Lenin.83
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Whether Lenin-related additions were made by Gladkov and Libedinskii as part of political self-censorship or whether they were suggested or put in by Glavlit is of little importance. They mirror the spirit of the time, the ever increasing glorification of Stalin who persistently invoked Lenin in support of his policies and who came to be called the "Lenin of today." The last type of revision to be mentioned in connection with Lenin probably originated in the official censorship. These are deletions of passages in which Lenin's name appears in a context insufficiently dignified for him. In Cement a worker woman, Avdot'ia, angered by the Factory Trade Union Committee, struck the committee's table with her foot in such a manner that her skirt flew up, exposing her leg. A crowd of workers burst into laughter, asking Avdot'ia to pull up her skirt higher. But the committee demanded that Avdot'ia be kicked out of the room because "here is comrade Lenin's portrait on the wall, but she, a slut, bares herself up to her navel." The censors discarded these lines in 1935 but left Avdot'ia's action intact. The question of her disrespect for Lenin ceased to exist.84 The year 1941 saw the withdrawal from The Quiet Don of eight lines telling of the "sickly sweet" sensation that Bunchuk experienced while looking into the "June-like bluishness" of the white of Anna's eyes, going into an attack, admiring a sunset, or "listening to Lenin's slightly guttural voice, feeling how the mind of the leader and genius weighs upon him and bums him."85 This passage was excluded for drawing an inappropriate parallel between a character's erotic and aesthetic experiences and that sacred feeling which, in the orthodox Communist view, must possess one at the very sight of Lenin.
The Party and the Bolshevik Regime The mam purpose of censorship in this area was to eliminate no longer acceptable statements and situations pertaining to the nature of the Communist regime, its policies, and consequences of its rule. It did not matter whether criticisms came from friends or foes. There was a clear trend to reduce adverse reactions to NEP. One of the strongest critics of this policy was the commissar Zakhar Gromov, a genuine proletarian character in The Commissars. In 1933 the censors did away with Gromov's calling the NEP-oriented Party "a herd of liars and cowardly fools." Two years later a taboo was placed on his thinking that the cause for which he fought was being ruined and that a yoke would be put anew on obedient workers. On the other hand, a NEP supporter, Lobichev, was prohibited from saying that the failure of the War Communism policy compelled the regime to switch to NEP: "If we do not start right away to run our economy in a different manner, we shall have an ail-Russian Kronshtadt," i.e., a countrywide uprising. Until 1941 the censors tolerated Mekhova's cursing NEP and Gleb's inability to grasp NEP's meaning when he compared hungry and poor workers to successful and prosperous Nepmen.86 A shift in the Party policy during World War II accounted for the removal of two pages from the 1944 edition of Cement and of three words from Sho-
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lokhov's unfinished novel Oni srazhalis' za Rodinu {They Fought for Their Country, 1943-). In the deleted text Gleb strikes up a political conversation with a group of English sailors. The only words both sides understand are political shibboleths on the order of "Bolsheviks," "Lenin," "Communist," "proletarian," and "the Comintern." But they suffice for a class rapprochement between Gleb and his like-minded interlocutors. However, Gleb's aggressive propaganda of global Communism was out of place at a time when the Soviets were allied with Great Britain and America in the war against Nazi Germany. Moreover, the Comintern was dissolved in May 1943 to assuage the allies' uneasiness over its subversive activities in their countries. The passage in question reappeared in both of the 1947 editions of Cement, which were based on its 1941 version, but is missing from the 1948 and subsequent printings of the novel. The early publications of They Fought for Their Country omitted the comparison "like our allies" applied jokingly by a Red Army soldier to his buddy who allegedly preferred to supply ammunition rather than to fight.87 It was not the time to criticize the Western allies whose assistance was essential for Soviet survival. From several works the censors expunged some uncomplimentary references to the Party and the Bolsheviks. The epithet "bloody" was edited in 1935 in a teacher's description of the Bolshevik regime in A Week. In the 1945 edition of The Quiet Don, the word "Bolsheviks" was removed from the phrases "cleared of the Bolsheviks" and "liberated from the Bolsheviks" in authorial references to territories reconquered by the Cossacks.88 Like the Cossacks, the Ukrainian nationalists saw in the Bolsheviks a mortal danger to their liberty. In How the Steel Was Tempered Simon Petliura appealed to his troops "to fight the Bolsheviks to the very end, they are destroying a free Ukraine." In 1935 Ostrovskii decided to eliminate Petliura's appeal, saying that the enemy, "distorting its meaning, can turn it against us." 89 The publishers complied with the author's instruction, beginning with the 1935 Roman-gazeta edition of the novel. Strong expressions of contempt for the Party and its policy had to be censored in Armored Train No. 14-69 and Cement. In Ivanov's novel the wife of the Bolshevik leader Peklevanov tried to prevent him from leaving for a dangerous mission. No political body was, in her opinion, worthy of dying for; "The Party? The Revolutionary Committee? I don't give a damn about all of those idiots!" The word "Party" was omitted from the earlier 1932 edition of the novel, retained in the later, and deleted again in 1934. In Cement the turner Zhuk was outraged by the attitudes and lifestyles of the City Party Committee's members. The blood of comrades fallen in the Civil War had hardly dried, he said, when the Party functionaries turned into conceited bureaucrats indifferent to the oppressed working class. Zhuk calls them generals, self-seekers, posers, and swaggers. Zhuk's tirades were liquidated in 1935.90 The censors of the 1932 MG edition of A Week erased a dozen lines of Simkova's impressions about the Party's middle echelon in Moscow. Most of these people, she used to tell a fellow Communist, had become terrible Philistines. Their attitude toward their work, even Party work, was strictly formal. Freed from worrying about food or heating, they imagined that everything was not too bad in Russia. Moscow journals wrote grandiloquently about the
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proletariat and Communist revolution. "But how much of Communism and the proletariat do we really have in our country?" The 1932 Fed. and 1934 editions of A Week preserved these impressions but both of the 1935 editions banned them again.91 The 1932-41 period witnessed the softening of the Party's approach to the intelligentsia, the majority of which was regarded as having come to terms with the Soviet regime. This attitude accounted for the censorial removal of deprecating remarks about the intellectuals from literary works. In the 14th edition of The Commissars (1935), Lobichev stopped telling a daughter of an old revolutionary that he listened to her fabricated love stories only because she was a member of the intelligentsia and could, therefore, talk only about love. Sergei Kosikhin dropped his demand to expel the teacher Rekhovskii from the Party for his intelligenstvo, a pejorative term for qualities peculiar to the intelligentsia. In Rekhovskii's case, intelligentstvo evinced itself in his failure to report a drinking bout organized by a group of commissars on school premises.92 In A Week the words "nonetheless, he is an intellectual" were edited from a Communist's explanation as to why Sergei Surikov could no longer participate in executions and quit working in the Cheka. Also cut was the Cheka chairman Klimin's contention that "the workers accepted the Revolution in a somewhat different way than the intelligentsia did." Furthermore, the words "intellectual" and "intelligentsia" disappeared from Klimin's elaboration on his contention.93 All three excisions in Cement are connected with Sergei Ivagin, a young Communist from the intelligentsia. Gleb no longer thinks of Sergei as a delicate, soft-handed intellectual, as he did when the two shook hands for the first time. Chibis's antiintelligentsia tirade, prompted by Sergei's manner of speaking, was purged from its sinister conclusion: "It's a good thing that we ride roughshod over them and have our sights trained on them." In the next chapter the censors got rid of Gleb's mental comment, "Oh, these stupid intellectuals," made apropos of Sergei's magniloquent bookish speech before ordinary factory workers.94 Descriptions of catastrophic shortages of food and housing, as well as references to unemployment in Soviet Russia, could not go unnoticed by the censors in the years when propaganda credited Stalin and the Party with the creation of the happiest life on earth. Naturally, the hardships brought about by the Communist reign were portrayed chiefly in the works written in the 1920s or early 1930s. In pre-1935 editions of How the Steel Was Tempered, Raia's father delivers a bitter invective against the Soviet preoccupation with the future at the expense of the present. Soviet propaganda, he says to Pavel Korchagin, promises us an earthly paradise just like the priests used to promise a paradise in heaven. He does not want to suffer for the sake of the future and curses those who promise a bright future. It did not take a long time for Ostrovskii to start worrying about such outspoken strictures of his beloved regime. He consulted many "highranking comrades" and, following their advice, decided to cross out the old man's philippics, the anti-Soviet tone of which "grates upon one's ears."95 In 1934 the censors, or Ostrovskii, dispensed with the characters' references
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to unemployment and with the depiction of the abominable conditions in which Raia lived in Moscow while Pavel was hospitalized. For a month she lived in the closet of an institution until the superintendent threw her out into the street for rejecting his sexual advances. The following week she slept at a railway station and then moved to the recreation room of the factory where she worked. Finally, she and a Communist woman rented a room in a place forty miles away from Moscow. A round trip to their jobs in the capitol took them four hours.96 In My Native Land a provincial Bolshevik relates in telegraphic style what he saw in Moscow of 1918: "frozen rotten potatoes, dogs eaten by people, children dying out, hunger, fear, death." These words were left out in 1932 when My Native Land became a part of Russia Washed in Blood. In 1935 The Commissars lost the depiction of starvation in the school for political workers. In the deleted passage the commissars complain about increasingly meager meals, talk to each other in whispers, and dolefully sing old Russian songs. However, the censors did nothing with a more harrowing portrayal of starving peasants, some of whom resorted to cannibalism. A number of hunger-related excisions were made by the censors of the 1941 edition of Cement. They found unprintable Dasha's remark that there was neither tea nor sugar nor bread at her place. In the scene of Dasha's and Gleb's visit to a children's home the reader was spared some details about the hungry kids—greedily eating pieces of food dug out from the earth, wearing rags, and having wan faces with deeply sunken eyes. Above all, the censors cut the italicized words from Gleb's proud declaration to English sailors: "Although we're poverty-stricken and are eating people on account of hunger, all the same we have Lenin."97 Perhaps it is appropriate to conclude this section with a glance at how Stalin reacted to a depiction of the sociopolitical situation created by his regime. We have in mind his editing of Afinogenov's Lie. The dictator read the play's manuscript carefully, making numerous revisions and comments. He was primarily concerned with what the characters say about the Party policy and Soviet society. He must have been particularly displeased with what he heard from Nina, the wife of the factory deputy director, Viktor Ivanov. A young Communist idealist, Nina is disturbed by the duplicity, lies, and careerism in the new society. The whole of the country, she says, is swept by quicklime and cement dust blowing from construction sites. This dust obstructs our vision of life. We do not notice people becoming deformed, mute, and indifferent to everything. We console ourselves with the rationalization that this is the kind of life we need. We think we are new, good people. We praise ourselves with beautiful words. We paint portraits of heroes, give decorations, but it's all just for show. Our faith is shaky, she goes on. We are not sure what the Party general line will be the next day, for what it espouses today may become a deviation tomorrow. We lie, deceive, and hate each other as people did a century ago, if not more. Even stronger judgments about Party policy were pronounced by Nakatov, an old Bolshevik revolutionary demoted to the position of a factory director because of his disagreement with the Party leadership. We, he tells Nina, became Bolsheviks in the process of ideological struggle with mighty adversaries while your generation is growing up on ready-made slogans. You must either believe in prescribed truths or keep your mouths shut. But what if the truth is a lie at its very
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foundation? "The entire country is lying and deceiving because it itself was deceived." Stalin crossed out all of the above statements, adding comments like "Ha-ha!" or "Why this glum and tedious gibberish?" to Nina's utterances. He let the author know about his dissatisfaction: "For some reason all of your Party members came out as monsters—physical, moral, and political monsters [urody]." The verdict read, "The play should not be staged in its present form." An analogous assessment of The Lie arrived from Gor'kii. He wrote to Afinogenov that his Party members thought primitively and that the play was "bad [neudachna] and harmful."98 Upon receiving Stalin's analysis of The Lie, Afinogenov revised the play. He mitigated the sharpness of dialogue and transformed Nakatov into a more active enemy of the Party by making him an organizer of a clandestine group of oppositionists. On 9 November 1933 Afinogenov sent the play's new version to Stalin. The reply was curt: "I consider the play's second version deficient."99 With all its corrections, the revised play still raised questions about the origins of lies and other ills in Soviet life and about the discrepancy between Communist theory and reality. Stalin did not want any inquiries into the conditions for which he and his Party bore direct responsibility. Afinogenov instructed a Khar'kov theater, whose two public dress rehearsals of The Lie enjoyed great success, to take the play off the stage. Many other theaters, including MKhAT One and MKhAT Two, had to cancel their plans to produce it.100
Political and Personal Image of Individual Communists With the Party's demand that literature of Socialist Realism create exemplary Communist heroes, the censors were to make sure that the so-called positive characters were presented in the most advantageous light, Pavel Korchagin, the shiniest incarnation of the young Bolshevik's virtues, required a particularly close political scrutiny on his way to becoming a national role model. The 1935 edition of How the Steel Was Tempered suppressed all the evidence about Korchagin's having been, in 1921, a member of the Workers' Opposition, a group of Communists who insisted that the Soviet economy be run by the trade unions, not the Party. Concomitantly, no trace was left to indicate that he was expelled from the Komsomol and readmitted only after he had publicly repented his political waywardness.101 The exculpation of Korchagin resulted from Ostrovskii's keen sense of the political winds of the day. Without waiting for the inevitable censorial rehabilitation of his hero, he did what may be called preemptive self-censorship. He asked his publishers to omit everything bespeaking Korchagin's participation in the Workers' Opposition. "Heroes of our epoch are people who never stray from the Party general line," he wrote. He claimed to have made up the story of Korchagin's membership in the opposition in order to complicate the novel's plot. In the opinion of "Party comrades," this invention proved to be unjustified both artistically and politically.102
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In 1933 the whole of chapter 25 vanished from part 5 of The Quiet Don. It dealt primarily with the domestic life of the Bolshevik Bunchuk and his pregnant common-law wife, Anna. Bunchuk painted a bright picture of their family life after the Civil War for her: a healthy son, canaries, geraniums, and no political ambitions. It is hard to say whether Bunchuk really wanted this kind of life. But the point is that a true Communist should not even think in such philistine terms. Nor could censorship any longer tolerate Bunchuk's condition and behavior after Anna's death in battle. Blotted out were descriptions of his boundless grief and prostration which reduced him to an animal-like state, depriving him of reason and will. He surrendered himself irrationally to his anguish and "was dying like a tree gradually eaten away by wormholes."103 In the censor's view, Bunchuk's personal despair detracted from his political image as a rock-hard Bolshevik. The excisions involving Bunchuk ran against the grain of Sholokhov's philosophy, the belief in the prevalence of man's biological essence over his ideology. Struck by the loss of a beloved person, even the strongest of humans would sink into despair and indifference no matter how intense their ideological or political devotion might have been. The 1933 deletions concerning Bunchuk and Anna are among the largest ever made in The Quiet Don. Their origins remain unclear. Some light on this riddle is shed by the editor of that volume, lurii Lukin, who from 1933 to 1953 enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the editorship of The Quiet Don. In his letter to me of 4 March 1993 Lukin asserts that he received volume 2 already with authorial corrections. He cannot remember whether Sholokhov gave him an explanation for shortening the scenes with Bunchuk and Anna. While editing literary works, Lukin says, he had consistently followed the rule of never making any arbitrary changes regardless of who proposed them. He would merely put marks on the margins of a text to draw the author's attention to places where it was desirable or, in his opinion, necessary to make corrections. The last phrase indicates that certain revisions were mandatory at certain times and that the censor would not pass a work unless they were effected. Sholokhov must have found himself in such a situation when, in 1932-33, he was preparing a three-volume edition of The Quiet Don to be issued by the publishing house Artistic Literature. In September 1932 he asked the publisher to restore the deletions made in volume 3 by the Oktiabr' editors and to reprint the first two volumes from their 1929-31 Gosizdat editions. He declared categorically: "I will not make any corrections, excisions, or additions any more."104 So, it appears that sometime between September 1932 and December 1933, when volume 2 was approved for publication, the author must have received suggestions to bring Bunchuk and Anna in line with the desired representation of the Bolsheviks. The suggestions, coming from the censor or the Party, could not be refused. Cowardice, cruelty, lying, and stealing were among the vices that the censors regarded as unbecoming of true Bolsheviks. Extensive cutting, probably by the Oktiabr' editors, was done to straighten out the unheroic behavior of Mishka Koshevoi during his capture by the insurgent Cossacks in volume 3 of The Quiet Don. In the earliest version of this episode, Koshevoi was depicted as overcome by fear, passively awaiting his end. These details disappeared in Ok-
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tiabr' together with the information that Koshevoi showed no concern for his comrade who was with him. Also missing is the abject promise, "I'll be your slave for life," which Koshevoi made asking Stepan Astakhov to hide him from the insurgents.105 A year later Koshevoi's cruelty was mitigated by the excision of his words, "We'll dispose of you, you snakes, you enemies, without a single tear!" addressed to Petr Melekhov before his execution. In the 1941 edition of Humus Sofron Konyshev was not allowed to whip an evangelist or to spit in the face of a woman teacher after discovering, during a sex act, that she was not a virgin. Simultaneously, another village Bolshevik was cleared of horse stealing in the past and of outrageous blasphemy in the present. Since 1934 the reader of Bruski has been barred from knowing that Kirill Zhdarkin employed evasion and lies to cover up his responsibility for drowning captured peasant rebels in a river.106 As a model Communist woman, Dasha Chumalova had to have not only impeccable sexual credentials but also good housekeeping skills. Since her political commitments left no time to take care of her home, the censors had to do the job for her. In 1941 they took out a pile of rags from her apartment, got rid of all the mice and stinking wood lice, scrubbed a black layer of grease and dirt from an uncovered table, and interdicted Gleb from thinking of the place as "an empty hole full of spiders."107 A somewhat peculiar kind of deletion involves dreams about the splendid Communist tomorrow. In 1933 Sholokhov had to dispense with Anna's pagelong romantic vision of a socialist future. "I can sense," she told Bunchuk, "the life of the future like some sort of very distant, magically beautiful music .. . And won't life be beautiful under socialism? No wars, no poverty, no oppression or national barriers—nothing! ... Tell me, wouldn't it be sweet to die for that?" Anna's panegyric might have run afoul of the censorial code on two counts. First, the censors could have objected to her idea of self-sacrifice for the marvelous future, instead of expressing a determination to fight for it. Second, actual Soviet life in 1933 was so different from the one imagined by Anna that it was prudent to prevent the reader from comparing the Bolshevik promises with reality.108 In the 1930s the censors began to upgrade physical characteristics and names of Party members. In 1935 the commissar Lobichev bid farewell to his "nose looking like a short sparrow beak" and became Lobachev, possibly on the assumption that the recast name would eliminate any chance of associating it with lobik (small forehead) and would be likely to suggest a higher degree of intelligence, especially if the reader calls to mind Nikolai Lobachevskii. Another character in The Commissars, a representative of the Party Province Committee, "a short swarthy man" named Sementovich, metamorphosed into "a tall Grinev" whose suit puffed up on his sinewy muscles. The new, purely Russian name was probably not an expression of the censor's anti-Semitism but was deemed more fitting for a stalwart. A secretary of a local Komsomol committee, called in the earliest publications of Bruski by her first name Fen'ka (a somewhat pejorative form) or Fenia (a neutral form), has gained more respectability since 1934 when her last name, Panova, was added to Fenia. In Cement the uplifting of a heroic Bolshevik, Efim, was accomplished through the removal or replacement
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of his nickname Usatyi (Mustached), as Dasha called him.109 It is not clear what the censors found demeaning in this designation of a man who worked in the underground. Were they worried that some readers might gleefully imagine Stalin in the hands of the Whites who beat Usatyi to a pulp? "Usatyi" was one of the names people called the leader in private conversations. One simple way of elevating Bolshevik characters was to add favorable facts to their past or present. This method was more widely applied in the 1932-45 period than in the 1920s. The unimaginative, matter-of-fact style of such insertions suggests that they could have been easily made by editors or censors. In many cases the additions brought new, supposedly prestigious posts to selected characters. Thus it turns out that the sailor Galagan, from Russia Washed in Blood, headed a provincial Cheka, chased the bandits, and commanded a mounted regimental reconnaissance. Commissar Shalavin's record was updated in both political and personal respects. An insertion described him as "an elusive partisan, a terror of priests and kulaks . . . this plain and affectionate old man." The commissars' cultural level was raised to a point where they read Lenin, Pushkin, Turgenev, and Ethel Voynich. All of the above was added in 1935.110 The handling of some Bolsheviks was diametrically opposed to that of Galagan or Shalavin. A rough treatment was given to those who came to be considered unworthy of the name "Bolshevik" or those who had fallen into political and moral disrepute with the passage of time. The Oktiabr' editors of volume 3 of The Quiet Don might have been the first to drop the word "Bolshevik" in describing people who, in their judgment, were unqualified for this designation from the very beginning. The investigator Gromov lost his Bolshevik status as a former gendarme. The censors of Cement intensified the denigration of the lustful bureaucrat Bad'in. In 1934 they weakened him physically. He is no longer a "man of steel" with a "body hard as a rock." A 1941 insertion assures the reader that Gleb immediately felt an inexplicable hatred for him at their first meeting.111
The Red Army and Partisans In comparison with the 1920s, censorship in this area shows a sharp rise in quantity and scope. This development can be linked to the general tightening of the censorial screw and to the heightened concern for the image of the Red Army prompted by World War II. Principal deletions of the 1932-45 period regarding Red forces involve their combat performance, atrocities, and assaults on women. Red troops, particularly partisans, were frequently no match for the qualitatively superior Whites. A former Red Army soldier asked Kirill Zhdarkin whether he remembered how their unit had fled from the Whites. A White officer in Russia Washed in Blood wrote to his mother that the Bolsheviks were engaged in looting along the railroads but were afraid to go into the steppes to face the Whites. And Artem Veselyi in his own narrative admitted that the Red Guards and partisans, who "tore apart" bourgeois civilians, could not stand their ground against an armed enemy—White officers and Cossacks. All the above passages were removed in 1934-35.112
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Perhaps the censors of Veselyi's story "The Taking of Armavir" went too far by turning moonshine into water in the bottle carried by a partisan commander, a former monk. Nor did the censors of Russia Washed in Blood need to take out the words, "They were drunk to a man," in reference to the troops of the retreating Eleventh Army when there was nothing but wine to drink in a southern town.113 At the same time, a purge of more serious misdeeds was in progress. Serializing volume 3 of The Quiet Don, the Oktiabr' editors censored Petr Melekhov's testimony about the way the Reds treated the White Army officers; "They rage at the front. Should an officer fall into their hands, they torture him. I saw near Vorontsovka what they turned the captured officers into." Similarly, in 1935, the censors of Russia Washed in Blood shut the mouth of a White officer stating that Red sailors nailed shoulder straps on captive officers.114 Only in the journal version of How the Steel Was Tempered can one find a conversation of Red Army men about the execution of three Red soldiers for the rape of a Polish officer's wife. In all probability, the censors disagreed with a soldier who justified the violation on the grounds that the woman belonged to a hostile class. The fact of the rape, however, remained in the novel. This was not the case in The Quiet Don where the censors excised both a Cossack commander's story about the rape of a young Cossack woman by the Reds and the remark of a Red soldier pertaining to Grigorii Melekhov's wife, Nataliia: "Well, she's lucky! If she was healthy, we'd have laid her."115
Nationalities The censorial treatment of nationalities during the 1932-A5 period was determined by several factors depending on the publication time and the content of literary works. In the 1930s censorship was guided by official propaganda of respect for national minorities, the struggle against anti-Semitism, and the promotion of revolutionary class solidarity. The Party policies during World War 11 produced revisions bespeaking the emphasis on Russian patriotism and selective attitudes toward nationalities. The first large-scale action of the thirties was undertaken by the Communist editors of Oktiabr' in the serialized version of volume 3 of The Quiet Don. In 1932 they removed or replaced the word "yid" and its derivatives in every instance except one, which they either overlooked or preserved to show the antiSemitism of Suiarov, the acting commander of the insurgent Cossacks. In all likelihood, the Oktiabr' editors regarded themselves as fighters against antiSemitism. A year had not passed when the first book-form edition of volume 3 rescinded the Oktiabr' revisions in all cases, save the last two words in Grigorii Melekhov's remark, "I did some damage to the arm of a little yid."116 The reasons for this exception are not clear. Grigorii speaks here of fighting with a Red Army soldier who wanted to shoot him. The restoration of the word "yid" in 1933 was probably not a manifestation of an incipient official anti-Semitism, but rather a return to the realistic rendition of the characters' speech. It is difficult to gauge to what degree the censorial handling of Jews was influenced by Stalin's definition of anti-Semitism as "the extreme form of racial
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chauvinism" and his statements that the Communists are irreconcilable enemies of anti-Semitism and that active anti-Semites are punished with death in accordance with Soviet laws. These statements, made in January 1931, were published only in November 1936.117 I do not know what Stalin personally felt about Jews in 1931; lies and hypocrisy were his favorite weapons. In any event, throughout the thirties, the censors continued the elimination of the word "yid" and utterances hostile to Jews. But this purge was not wholesale. Offensive terms were more likely to be removed from the speech of Communist characters or the authorial narrative than from the utterances of enemies, whose Jew-baiting would enhance their wickedness. In the 1933 edition of The Commissars the censors expunged the italicized words from the comparison "stingy as a yid" applied by Koval' to a fellow commissar suspected of looting and profiteering. In 1941 "the yids" disappeared from a neutral statement by Sofron Konyshev, the principal Bolshevik character in Humus. Babel's words, "a curly little yid," referring to a figure of Jesus, were replaced by "a curly Jew" in "At Saint Valentine's" when this tale was included in the 1936 edition of his Stories.11^ Deletions of anti-Semitic statements made by various opponents of the Soviet regime are mainly found in cases where Communists are identified with Jews. For example, in How the Steel Was Tempered, a character, pointing to the portrait of Klara Zetkin, asks, "Why did you hang this yiddish woman, Lelia?" The leader of the insurgent peasants in My Native Land shouts to a crowd, "Down with yiddish decrees and filthy commissars!" According to a learned evangelical Christian, in Humus, "Russians comprise less than half of [Soviet] leaders. Jews were invited because they shout louder and possess more persistence." The above quotations were discarded in 1934, 1936, and 1941, respectively.119 Among the major revisions made in the 1933 edition of The Quiet Don were those related to the Ukrainians. In the early versions of the novel Sholokhov called them almost exclusively khokhly or tavrichane (people from the southern Ukraine). Being half-Ukrainian himself, he obviously did not mean to degrade them. It was simply the Don Cossack custom to refer to a Ukrainian as a khokhol. However, in 1933 the censors must have decided that the use of the term khokhol was no longer admissible at a time when the official propaganda pictured the Soviet Union as a heaven for national minorities. In the authorial narrative, khokhol and its derivatives were replaced with "Ukrainian" or—in one case—enclosed in quotation marks, but nothing was done to them in the dialogue. This protection of Ukrainian dignity took place in the year in which millions of Ukrainians were intentionally starved to death in their homeland. The removal of khokhol from literary works lacked consistency. It was, for instance, banned from a character's remark in the 1933 edition of Bruski but preserved in the authorial text in "Lawbreakers."120 The Quiet Don presented a special case. The novel had become very popular in the Soviet Union and it was expedient to cleanse it from a politically undesirable appellation, all the more since the author used it quite frequently. Chapter 6 of part 2 and chapter 28 of part 5 (chapter 27 since 1933) may serve as illustrations. Along with the elimination of the word khokhol and its derivatives, the censors of The Quiet Don carried out a thorough expurgation of any reference to the
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Cossacks as a nationality. Although the Cossacks, primarily the descendants of runaway serfs, constituted a distinct social stratum rather than a nationality, Sholokhov and his characters used the word "national" in speaking about the Cossack way of life and aspirations. All this might have smacked of the socalled bourgeois nationalism to the censors, a capital crime imputed under Stalin to innumerable members of national minorities. In The Quiet Don Sholokhov wrote of the deeply rooted "national strife" between the Cossacks and the Ukrainians in the Don region. Captain Evgenii Listnitskii wondered how an officer blended his "national Cossack" aspirations with Bolshevik ideals; the Bolshevik Shtokman called politically negative qualities of the Cossack Kotliarov "rotten national stuff." In all these and several other cases the word "national" was either replaced or removed.121 In How the Steel Was Tempered the name of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which fought the Bolsheviks, was enclosed in derogatory quotation marks in 1934 and replaced by "petliurovshchina" (Petliurism) a year later. At the same time, Ostrovskii expressed apprehension that the lack of pro-Soviet Polish characters in his novel might have created the impression that all the Poles were in the enemy's camp.122 To remedy the situation, the author put a page-long political speech into the mouth of a food commissar of Polish origin and added a loyal Russian Pole and a group of pro-Communist Polish soldiers serving in their country's army. The final goal of the soldiers and the food commissar was the creation of a Polish Soviet Socialist Republic. All these insertions saw the light in the 1934 Polish-language publication of the novel and appeared in Russian the following year.123 In the 1930s the censors continued their practice of liquidating or replacing the names considered offensive to national minorities. Most such revisions occurred in Russia Washed in Blood. They involved armiashki, a slighting diminutive for Armenians; the pejorative "Asian" designating a member of a nationality living in the Caucasus; "Chink" for Chinese; and a comparison of the tired faces of Red Latvian soldiers with dim mirrors. In The Quiet Don the word moskali (Muscovites), a somewhat disparaging appellation for Russians, was changed to "Russians."124 The ultrapatriotism generated by World War II provided grounds for excluding from The Quiet Don two comments on Russia and the Russians. One was the remark "stinking Russia" made by Grigorii's mother about the Red soldiers. Another was an implied comparison between England and Russia devised by a White Army officer; "I speak of England feeling the same envy which a street urchin, whose mother is a whore with a broken nose, feels when he speaks about a decent lady, the mother of his accidental friend of gentle birth." In 1945 even the enemy was not supposed to denigrate Russia.125 The Poles also benefited from the Soviet-German war, at least in The Quiet Don. In 1940, soon after a friendly partition of Poland between the Soviets and the Nazis, the censors had no scruples about printing the following appraisal of the Poles given by a Cossack who fought them in 1920: "They're not such hot soldiers, they're a spineless bunch. They're stuffed with pride like a well-fed pig with crap, but they run fast when you put the pressure on." The war with Germany and the formation of the Polish satellite state compelled the Cossack to re-
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tract his words in 1945.126 The Germans, of course, received the treatment prescribed for an enemy. The longest cut concerning them ensued from disillusionment with the German proletariat during World War II. This was the time when the Soviets stopped all talk about the international brotherhood of workers and issued a terse slogan: "Kill the German!" Anti-German feelings ran so high that the two-page description of a fraternization between a Russian and a German soldier in the Great War was censored from The Quiet Don in 1945, half a year after the capitulation of Germany. The scene was returned to the novel in 1953 when wartime passions had subsided and the time had come to resume paying lip service to the dogma of international class solidarity. In a less conspicuous instance, a grandfather of the Bolshevik Shtokman was converted from a German into a Latvian and he has still not regained his original nationality. No less ludicrous samples of de-Germanization are offered by the 1944 edition of Cement. The epithet "German" disappeared from a description of a house built in a solid German way, and was replaced by "foreign" in a character's reference to the origin of the books collected in the houses of the engineers who fled with the Whites. The revisions were honored in most subsequent publications of Cement, including the latest.127
Religion In the works discussed in this chapter, corrections involving religion come from the first half of the 1930s and attest to the basically negative policy toward faith and clergy although some of the crudest attacks on them were discarded. The censors of the 1934 book-form edition of How the Steel Was Tempered crossed out the authorial regret that the "filthy life" of Father Vasilii, a priest who took part in an anti-Bolshevik conspiracy, was ended not by a well-deserved bullet but by typhus contracted in prison. Another deletion of this type in Ostrovskii's novel relates to the thoughts of the rabbi Borukh when he learns from a signpost that the local Komsomol committee moved into the house belonging previously to a Russian priest. Things under the Bolsheviks, the rabbi reflects, start with a signpost and will end with his being pestered by that horrible song, "Down, down with monks, / Rabbis and priests. / We'll climb to heaven / And drive out all Gods." Both the rabbi's apprehensions and the song vanished in 1934. Similarly brazen posters reading "Down with religious dope" and "Not a single absentee during Easter holidays" were removed in Bruskid2^ A year later a different kind of editing accounted in Ostrovskii's novel for sporadic replacement of "Father Vasilii" with pop, a derogatory appellation for a priest. In 1933 the censors of The Quiet Don did away with the words, "My God . . . What a life!" from Grigorii Melekhov's inner monologue, when he, commander of an insurgent division, is tormented by the question of whether he is fighting on the right side.129 The censors apparently decided to dispel any doubt about Grigorii's atheism. He was too popular with the readers and there was a hope that he would eventually join the Reds. Clear evidence of antireligious bias was provided by the 1935 purge of obscenities in The Quiet Don and Russia Washed in Blood, where a disproportionately high number of blasphe-
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mous matiuki were retained. More about it will be said in the discussion of puritanical censorship.
Prerevolutioeary Russia Like in the twenties, the revilement of tsarist Russia in the first half of the 1930s was considered a sign of good political taste. Famine and miserable living conditions in the Soviet Union compelled the censors to do away with passages demonstrating higher standards of living before the Revolution, especially with respect to food. No longer did they want the reader of My Native Land to know that at a peasant wedding in 1918, before the countryside was ravaged by forced confiscations, the food on the tables was "plentiful" and "the prosperous village was having fun." Equally undesirable became "the trays full of various dishes" carried by dozens of waiters in a provincial railroad station restaurant in 1916, described in the opening chapter of How the Steel Was Tempered. Not surprisingly, Russia Washed in Blood had to part with the authorial observation that, in tsarist times, the Kuban' Cossacks "lived in affluence—they ate to the fill, they drank to their hearts' content."130 Phrases or even separate words revealing concern or advancement opportunities for ordinary men in the Russian Empire could be viewed as contravening the political indoctrination of the reader. Two words were thrown out of a sentence to conceal the fact that Gleb's and Dasha's prerevolutionary apartment had electricity. The dependent clause, "who during the war advanced to the rank of second lieutenant," was removed from Russia Washed in Blood because it referred to a man who started World War I as a private.131 The patriotic wave of the second half of the thirties had no immediate effect on hard-core Communists raised on internationalist concepts and on the contempt for tsarist Russia. This upbringing underpins the attitude that the majority of Oktiabr' editors took toward Sergei Sergeev-Tsenskii's novel Sevastopol'skaia strada {The Ordeal of Sevastopol'). This vast, three-volume epic depicts the Crimean War in a highly patriotic vein, but displays no antagonism toward other nations. Moreover, Sergeev-Tsenskii brings into relief Russia's inferiority to the West in terms of economy, military strength, government, and human rights. But Russian soldiers and a number of generals are portrayed as selfless and courageous defenders of their country. Reportedly, nearly all the editors of Oktiabr' spoke out against the publication of the novel, accusing its author of jingoism, disregard for popular masses, glorification of tsarist generals, and interpretation of history from the standpoint of the nobility. However, Panferov, who had become chief editor of Oktiabr' early in 1937, liked the novel and finally prevailed over its detractors by appealing to the Party Central Committee.132 With some brief intervals, The Ordeal of Sevastopol' was serialized in Oktiabr' from July 1937 to November 1939. The year 1945 saw the removal from The Quiet Don of a page-long episode involving oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible's special administrative and armed forces, notorious for their atrocious repressions. The deleted passage portrayed the indignation of Captain Listnitskii when, upon his arrival in Petrograd in July 1917,
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he discovered the oprichnina emblem (a dog's head and broom) scratched on the wall of the lodging assigned to his Cossacks.133 The deletion originated in the official policy of justifying the necessity of Stalin's terror by implicitly comparing it with the terror of Ivan the Terrible, which came to be regarded as an historical expediency. Ironically, the emblem noticed by the monarchist Listnitskii was the work of pro-Bolshevik proletarians, suggesting the Cossacks' role in the suppression of the revolutionary movement. The entire episode was restored in 1956.
Enemies Since we have already dealt with hostile peasants and Stalin-made "enemies of the people," this section will discuss Bolshevik adversaries from the Civil War period. The censorial recipe for enemies was just the opposite of that prescribed for friends: subtract good qualities and add bad ones. The downgrading of the Whites, which started in the twenties, was vigorously continued. In Russia Washed in Blood the censors discarded the authorial words describing the generals Lavr Komilov and Mikhail Alekseev as "deeply dedicated to their ideas." The same action was taken against the tribute to their idealism paid by Nikolai Kulagm, an officer in the Kornilov Regiment: "Both of the generals wish only happiness for Russia. Neither strives to gain power for himself personally." Simultaneously, "Kulagin" was substituted for "Nikolai" in almost every instance. The change of the name added a strain of coolness and formality to the portrait of a rather sympathetically drawn officer. Likewise, the censors were not interested in eliciting compassion or respect for the enemy who was prepared to suffer and die for his cause. They got rid of Veselyi's remarks that the Volunteer Army bled white and froze while fighting alone in the Don steppes and that it experienced shortages of doctors and nurses.134 In the 1933 edition of The Quiet Don the White officers who perished in battle or from typhus were deprived of the label "honorable," though the adjacent modifier "courageous" remained untouched. A curious 1945 correction concerned the word "partisans." It was made in places where this term, in accordance with its usage by the Whites, denoted detachments of anti-Bolshevik Cossacks formed in the winter of 1917-18. The censors evidently felt that only Red partisans should be called "partisans," the name under which they were glorified in the Soviet Union. Therefore, references to the White "partisans" in volume 2, irrespective of whether they were made by the author or the characters, were either excised or replaced by "volunteers." In two instances the word "partisan," modifying "detachments," was crossed from historical documents.135 Eliminations affecting commendable behavior of the Whites include a plea of a religious Cossack not to kill the captured Mishka Koshevoi: "Just because the Reds were shooting people, does that mean we should do it too?" Removed in 1932 from The Quiet Don, these words demonstrated the moral superiority of a believer and invited a contrast with the inhumanity of Koshevoi, who by the time of his capture had already shot prisoners. A 1935 deletion in Russia Washed in Blood involved an episode in which a White Cossack officer dispersed a group
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of soldiers waiting for their turn to copulate with an Armenian prostitute.136 Additions intended to compromise the Whites can be illustrated by examples from Russia Washed in Blood and Cement. In Veselyi's novel the Russian tricolor banner of the Whites became the banner of "the counterrevolution" while the label "Terek counterrevolution" and the comparison "roved like jackals" were affixed to the Cossacks and members of the national minorities who were fighting the Reds. In 1941 the censors of Cement turned the hitherto unnamed looters and destroyers of schools during the Civil War into Whites.137 Some authorial descriptions of the Whites were couched in the language which the censors judged too abusive or overly crude artistically to be used for the political indoctrination of the reader. The designation "White horde" vanished from Cement. The scurrilities—"the old, parasitic, and bald syphilitic with smashed teeth" and "the assemblage of White Guard bedbugs"—describing the "old world" and White troops were expunged in 1935 from How the Steel Was Tempered}^
Puritanical Censorship Curses and Obscenities Censorship of curses in the 1930s followed in the footsteps of the preceding period with one conspicuous difference—a mass purge of matiuki. The year 1932 did not portend any bad times for these obscenities. It was not unnatural for the watchful Oktiabr' editors of The Quiet Don to cross out two matiuki, one of them blasphemous, in the speech of the captured Red commander Likhachev. A third edited matiuk, with the barely disguised four-letter verb, represented a strong denunciation of the Soviet regime by a Cossack.139 In the 1932 edition of Russia Washed in Blood the deleted and the added matiuki canceled each other out. The latter were probably victims of earlier censorship. Veselyi might have resurrected them while compiling his first bookform edition of Russia Washed in Blood. Unlike the Oktiabr' editors, the censors of Veselyi's novel evinced no political bias in handling swearwords. A mother curse used by a Communist official vanished together with that uttered by a tsarist regimental commander.140 The year 1933 passed without excisions of matiuki either in The Quiet Don or Russia Washed in Blood and merely a couple of them were banned from volume 2 of Bruski. The situation changed somewhat in 1934 when several matiuki were removed from volume 3 of Bruski and from Armored Train No. 14-69 published in Partizanskie povesti {The Partisan Tales). Since both of these works had relatively small numbers of matiuki, these losses can be considered substantial. The same applies to the 1934 Sov. lit. editions of Virgin Soil Upturned, though here the absolute number of deleted matiuki was much higher: sixteen out of twenty-three. However, subsequent restorations maintained the number of matiuki in the 1935 KhL edition of the novel at fifteen, seven of them in abbreviated form, without the word "mother." Rather by design than by chance two of
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the survivors happened to be the Communist Razmetnov's blasphemies. No further changes affecting matiuki were effected in Virgin Soil Upturned from 1935 to 1945. It is unlikely that the above-mentioned deletions of matiuki in Bruski, Armored Train No. 14-69, and Virgin Soil Upturned were connected with Volin's order of 26 November 1934 calling on the censors to "fight" coarse expressions and swearwords. The 1934 editions of these works were approved for publication before the issuance of Volin's order. But there is no doubt that his order triggered the 1935 assault on matiuki in The Quiet Don and Russia Washed in Blood. By 1935 the first three volumes of The Quiet Don had some eighty matiuki between them. About 60 percent of them disappeared in that year, while the deletion of other indecorous words did not exceed one-fifth of their total number. The language of political foe and friend alike was cleansed from obscenities. Still, the censorial policy was to thin out matiuki rather than to eliminate them altogether. In several instances identical or nearly identical curses were either removed or retained without any apparent justification. On the other hand, the 1935 censors exhibited a remarkable consistency in preserving blasphemous matiuki. They had five blasphemies before them in The Quiet Dom, four were uttered by the Reds and one by a White Cossack, Grigorii Melekhov. He shouted it in a fit caused by his sabering of four Red sailors in combat. The censors got rid of merely one blasphemy, a curse used by a captive Communist in response to the cruel beating of prisoners by the Cossack escort.141 There is no obvious explanation why this case was handled differently. The retention of blasphemies must have been motivated by antireligious considerations. The presence of sacrilegious curses could be used as a testimony to the disrespectful attitude of the Russian people toward their faith. This inference can also be drawn from the 1935 purge of some thirty mother curses from Russia Washed in Blood. In three cases the censors cut from the blasphemies the word "mother" but kept the words "God," "Lord," and "apostles."142 Two blasphemous matiuki, both produced by the sailor Galagan, were nevertheless omitted; but the damage was offset by adding one blasphemy and two references to the use of mother curses containing the words "cross" and "God" by soldiers and Cossacks.143 On balance, of course, mother curses sustained heavy casualties. To add insult to injury, the censors expunged what amounted to Veselyi's linguistic credo: "The mother curses thundered like twelve-inch guns. There is no style in Russian conversation without strong language."144 The 1935 fight against matiuki affected a number of works other than those of Sholokhov and Veselyi with varying intensity. Three mother curses, one of them blasphemous, were dropped from the 1935 Sov. pis. edition of The Rout, but they were all left intact in the 1935 KhL and later editions until one of the regular matiuki vanished in 1940. The characters of The Commissars bade farewell to one-third of their matiuki while the expulsion of these curses from Bruski and Cement was negligible because of their scarcity. There were basic similarities between the twenties and the thirties regarding the removal of obscenities other than matiuki. As a rule, targets were the same and there were inconsistencies in different works, in different editions of the same
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book, and in one edition of the same work. Most revisions occurred in the first half of the thirties, peaking in 1935. As with matiuki, the censors aimed at reducing rather than liquidating obscenities. One word that the censors could not stand for any long period of time was bliad' (whore) and its derivatives when written out in full. Used only by characters in the works under discussion, bliad' can denote a "prostitute" or be used as a curse directed against other people. There were two full spellings of this obscenity in the earliest, serialized version of volume 3 of The Quiet Don: a derogatory diminutive bliadushki and the adjective bliadskie. Both were converted into "b . . . " in 1933 but in different editions.145 Two full spellings of bliad' were shortened to "b . . . " in the second 1932 Fed. edition of Virgin Soil Upturned and one in the 1933 Roman-gazeta edition. The puritanical-minded censors of the 1934 Sow. lit. editions threw out all three abbreviations, but merely one of these deletions was endorsed in subsequent publications. One more bliad' appeared as "b . . . " already in the earliest, serialized text of Virgin Soil Upturned, in the magazine Novyi mir. It was a key word in the saying, "Zhenu otdai diade, a sam idi k bliadi" ("Give your wife to another man and you yourself go to a whore"), used when one feels unjustly deprived of his possessions and forced to live in new, unfavorable circumstances. The censors of the 1934 Sov. lit. editions of the novel banned the whole saying, but it was preserved in the 1934 KhL edition. However, the 1935 censors transformed "k b . . . " into "k . . . " ("to . . . "), which remained in subsequent publications. A slightly more radical truncation of the same saying was executed in the 1935 edition of Russia Washed in Blood where the censors excised "k bl . . . "146 Likewise, there was no uniformity in the treatment of kurva (slut). The 1935 Sov. lit. edition of The Rout did not allow Morozka to apply this name to his wife, but the 1935 edition for children and all subsequent regular publications of the novel had nothing against it.147 The 1935 edition of Russia Washed in Blood uniformly expelled the word uzda used as a euphemism for the vulgarity denoting the female sex organ. However, the 1935 edition of The Quiet Don omitted uzda as part of a Cossack woman's matiuk in volume 1 but spared it in an identical curse produced by another Cossack woman in volume 2. Nor was there any harm done in volumes 2 and 3 to the saying "Kurochka v gnezde, a iaichko isho ..." ("The chicken's in the nest, but the egg's still . . . ") where the ellipsis stands for the preposition "in" and the obscenity in question, which rhymes perfectly with gnezde.1^ In general, the purge of such words as govno (shit), zad, zadnitsa (buttocks), "zh ..." (ass in abbreviation), and khren (a euphemism for the obscenity denoting penis) appears to have been less severe in The Quiet Don than in Bruski, Russia Washed in Blood, and Humus. Whether Sholokhov's official rise to the top of the Soviet literary profession elicited more censorial respect for the language of his characters is a matter of speculation. Political censorship of The Quiet Don was as stringent as that of other writers' works. A puritanical overreaction on the censors' part accounted for the sporadic elimination of such a mild curse as "go to hell" in Cement and Russia Washed in Blood. Almost equally trivial was the removal or replacement in some twenty instances of the word baba and its derivatives in the 1941 edition of Cement,
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both in dialogues and the authorial narrative. During and immediately after World War II the elimination of obscenities came virtually to a halt.
Eroticism Sex-related revision of the 1930s was spurned by a mounting puritanism in the official attitude toward the intimate side of life. The greater part of deletions in the works under consideration falls in the years 1934, 1935, and 1941. There were more longer cuts than in the twenties, but the scope of censorial intervention varied from work to work. Eroticisms in the works of Sholokhov and Seifullina were handled more gently than those in Cement or Bruski. During the years 1932-33, excisions were balanced by additions. In the 1932 edition of Russia Washed in Blood several cuts can be found in the love story about a young Communist woman, Gil'da, and a conceited poet and painter, Efim Grechikhin. The reader was prevented from learning that Gil'da lay all night with Efim without kissing him, that his hand sunk in the "milky warmth of her breasts," and that he would immediately fall asleep after having done what he wanted. On the other hand, the 1932 edition introduced a soldier's tale about Rasputin making love to the tsarina. Later in the novel the censors blue-penciled a song, sung by the Whites, about a high-school girl giving birth to a son. The deletion contrasted sharply with the preservation of sacrilegious ditties suggesting that the Holy Virgin went out to sell herself.149 Two deletions concerned the problem of impotence. Already in the first bookform edition of the second part of How the Steel Was Tempered, Korchagin stopped talking about his fear of becoming impotent and losing his wife. More than a page was taken out in 1935 from Bruski. The excised text covered Kirill's temporary impotence from overworking, his talk with his wife about the production of hormones, and his visit to a doctor who prescribed pills and abstention.150 In Cement erotic corrections focused on Bad'in's and Gleb's relationships with Dasha and Polia. The censors zeroed in on Bad'in, endowed with extraordinary sexual drive. Thus, when he was riding with Dasha in a carriage, "an aroused beast was raging in his eyes," the bestial throbbing of blood in his veins made his body quiver, and Dasha's nearness intoxicated him. He almost stifled her with his embraces and long-drawn kisses. His passion generated in Dasha a wave of "female weakness, vague delight, and fear." At the same time, she felt like fighting him with all her fury, breaking his hands, and strangling him so that she could "free herself from these iron, inhuman arms." The image of sexual brutality was also evoked in the episode of Bad'in's virtual rape of Polia. She "choked under his intolerably heavy body" and ended up broken by his "beastly power." Bad'in's carnality took on a somewhat mystical overtone, when Gleb thought of "something heavy, inhuman, that lived in [Bad'in's] blood." All of the above-mentioned aphrodisiac details gradually disappeared in 1933-35 and 1941.151 A paragraph dealing with Polia's libidinal craving for Gleb was eliminated from the 1935 edition of Cement. It contained such sensuous particulars as Po-
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lia's leaning her full breast against Gleb and her readiness to give herself to him. The 1941 censors removed a page showing Gleb carrying Dasha and Polia, each in one arm. In the deleted passage Polia trembled with desire, pressing her breast against Gleb, and the bosoms of both women were said to be soft and full152 Most of the erotic cuts in the 1935 edition of The Commissars concern the young Bolshevik Lobichev. The censors toned down his natural desire for the opposite sex by removing such manifestations of it as his feeling warmth in his flesh, his yearning for a woman's body, and a quicker pulsation of blood in his arteries. Lobichev's reflections about the first weeks of his married life with Shura Ivanova were purified of such particulars as "sensual colors," "aromas of love," and "those inevitable days when the body is satisfied after getting what it wanted." The phrases "sexual passion" and "sexual unions" lost their adjectives. And Georgii Aref ev, director of the school for the commissars, was deprived of his thoughts about nocturnal caressings and the hot body of his wife, with whom he had little in common outside the bed.153 Aside from purging erotic elements from the authorial narrative, the censors engaged in the expurgation of sex-related sayings, remarks, and requests from the characters' speech. A rhymed saying, "Kak legla, tak i dala" ("She put out the moment she lay down")—-a spicy reply to the question "Kak dela?" ("How are things?")—evaporated from The Quiet Don in 1932. The political-minded editors of Oktiabr' might have excluded the saying because it belongs to the Bolshevik Koshevoi. No subsequent edition reinstated it. The 1935 censors of Russia Washed in Blood withdrew the arguments presented by the Red Cossack Ivan Chernoiarov to a virgin who refused to have intercourse with him before marriage: "Why do you wear your youth under your skirt? It will dry out like a piece of bast." Symptomatic of the scope of the 1935 screening of eroticisms is the fact that it extended to animal sexuality. A character in The Commissars received a letter from the countryside in which the news that "in the spring we're going to take our heifer for mating" was censored.154
Naturalistic Details Beginning with 1932, the censorship of descriptions considered immodest, unsavory, or ghastly was gradually gathering strength until 1936; then, after a five-year hiatus, it was revived in 1941. Also, the purge in 1932-45 covered a wider ground than in the twenties. Baring breasts or legs above the knee was occasionally treated as indecent exposure, though the context had no sexual connotation. Gone from Cement was the information that a cooper's wife was not ashamed of her bare breasts, that her legs were bare up to the hips, that Polia "raised her skirt above her knees" when climbing a hill. In some cases the censors could no longer behold women's big bottoms. The means of removing the unpalatable sight varied. In How the Steel Was Tempered the censors simply dragged out of the novel an episodic character whose enormous rear end prevented her from crawling under a bench. In Armored Train No. 14-69 they reduced the size of fat buttocks by omitting a comparison of them with two sacks. In Cement the figure of a woman worker was streamlined by amputating her "broad
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behind."155 Gruesome details connected with war and torture figured prominently among naturalistic deletions. Bruski was freed of Kirill's recollections about soldiers running a few steps with their heads blown off and about piles of stirring bodies. In Russia Washed in Blood the censors took care of blood-stained rags, twisted corpses, and chunks of flesh flying in the air. In Cement they crossed out some dreadful details about the treatment of prisoners by the White counterintelligence: bodies slimy from blood and smelling of intestines, clots of gory jelly mixed with filthy slime on the floor of the cellar, the mustached Efim bathing in his own blood, a boy howling like a dog and falling down after being hit on his knees with a cleaning rod.156 It appears that the censors were more eager to deodorize Cement than other works, where the elimination of unpleasant scents was not on the day's agenda. The principal producer of odors was Bad'in in sexual situations. In his relations with Dasha and Polia the censors got rid of "befuddling," "intoxicating," and "nauseating" flavors of his perspiring body.157 Since 1934 the censors have forbidden the statement that "the air was oppressive and stuffy from breathing, dirty bodies, and clothes" of schoolteachers crowding in front of a local Department of People's Education. And since 1941 Polia has ceased to emit "the sharp smell of a woman's sweat" while Dasha has been spared from exposure to "the sharp sour odor of wet wool and foot cloths" emanating from the White partisans who captured her. The censors of the 1932 edition of Russia Washed in Blood also did away with "the sour smell" of foot cloths, and three years later their colleagues protected the reader from potentially unsavory sonic and olfactory associations by changing "perd ..." ("far . . . ") to "sneeze" in a Red soldier's phrase.158 A scatological remark addressed to the captive Dasha by a Cossack partisan vanished in 1941 from Cement. Thinking that she chattered with the partisans like a magpie, the Cossack said: "I'll hang her on a branch and she'll start chattering from another hole." Two excisions in Russia Washed in Blood involved lice. In the earlier case, the insects were part of a larger naturalistic cut pertaining to the conditions in hospitals during a typhus epidemic: "Stench, straw, blood. The crunch of lice under one's feet. The dead are as light as splinters." In the later example, a regimental tailor used his needle to string fat lice on a spool of thread, making a sort of chain.159 Naturalistic deletions were of unequal significance. Some were patently trivial. The reader did not lose much from the removal of the sentence about Polia's raising her skirt while walking up a hill. But the elimination of passages describing hospitals during the typhus epidemic or even the regimental tailor's stringing of lice precluded the reader from getting acquainted with graphic details and extravagances of human behavior. The eradication of such descriptions, as well as the desexualization of Lobichev or a taboo on some juicy locutions, detracted from the artistic expressiveness of literary works. The mam point, however, is that the excision of things found erotic, obscene, dirty, or gory was absurd in the country where young males experienced the same sensations as Lobichev, where people swore more than ever before, where lice were a part of life in the countryside and in the Gulag, and where the bloodshed carried out by the state reached a level never before seen in Russian history.
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Children's Editions From its very inception the Soviet regime attached a special importance to the political indoctrination of the young generation, with belles-lettres playing a major role in this process. In the 1920s and early 1930s, works considered most suitable for young readers were printed with the notice that the State Learned Council approved their use in school libraries for the upperclassmen of secondary schools. In some editions this approval was supplemented by the heading "Inexpensive Library of Contemporary Writers. School Series." Many of the 1926—32 editions of Cement, A Week, The Commissars, and The Rout may serve as examples of books recommended for schools. Their texts were intended for both children and adults. Perhaps the first work to deviate from this practice was the 1932 MG edition of Armored Train No. 14-69, whose title page stated that the novel was "reworked by the author for the youth." Publication of revised editions for young readers became common with the establishment of the State Publishing House for Children's Literature (Detgiz) in compliance with the Party Central Committee decree printed in Pravda on 15 September 1933. In 1934, Detgiz reproduced, virtually unchanged, the 1932 MG edition of Armored Train No. 14-69, retaining the author's note about his reworking of the novel. The volume of Detgiz censorship varied from work to work, depending on individual editors, political demands, and length of books. There also was no uniformity in the treatment of the Detgiz revisions by the censors of regular editions for adults. The greater part of corrections made in the 1935 Detgiz editions of Cement and A Week were accepted in subsequent publications, which shows that these Detgiz versions were viewed as regular texts for the general reader. Conversely, emendations carried out in Armored Train No. 14-69, Virgin Soil Upturned, and The Rout were not honored in the immediately following "adult" editions, having been perceived as tailored specifically to the needs of young readers. Therefore our discussion will be confined to Detgiz editions of these three novels. Out of some three dozen corrections in Armored Train No. 14-69 two-thirds constitute insertions whose main purpose was to strengthen the leadership of the city Bolshevik Peklevanov over the peasant partisans headed by Vershinin. Thus it is Peklevanov who issues an order to seize the White armored train, an operation that is suggested by another man in regular editions. Vershinin expresses full confidence in Peklevanov and his urban comrades. The White officer Nezelasov is labeled a Socialist Revolutionary; and a wavering worker, a Menshevik. A new ending tells about the captured armored train having taken a prominent part in liberating the Maritime Province and about its standing ready to defend the Soviet Union at any time. Political deletions include the bayoneting of a captive White officer and the objections of Peklevanov's wife to his going on a dangerous mission. Puritanical excisions concern obscenities, curses, and erotic details. The overall effect of the revision was increased politicization of the novel by standard devices of crude propaganda. If the size of Armored Train No. 14-69 was hardly affected by Ivanov's "reworking," the 1934 edition of Virgin Soil Upturned, issued by Detgiz in its "School Series," represented the result of a crippling amputation. It contained
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about 55 percent of the regular text. Six chapters were missing in their entirety. The elimination of many passages, such as chapters 16, 20, and 22, were probably dictated by considerations of space. Unfortunately, the measures of economy led, among other things, to deletions or drastic abridgments of some of the most impressive landscape scenes. The aesthetic education of the young generation was sacrificed to political brainwashing. The narrative in the Detgiz edition is focused on collectivization. Nearly everything pertaining to the private lives of the principal organizers of collective farming—Davydov, Nagul'nov, and Razmetnov—was left out. Their love lives were reduced to zero. Nothing was retained about Razmetnov's long-lasting cohabitation with Marina Poiarkova, Nagul'nov's relationship with his licentious wife Lushka, and her affair with Davydov. The secrecy surrounding the private lives of the three leading Communists accounted for the removal of chapters 5 and 39 and for lengthy excisions in chapters 13, 15, 26, 30, and 32. The privacy of their enemies was equally respected. Thus the schoolchildren were not allowed to read about a former White Army officer making love to his landlord's daughter-in-law. On several occasions the children were spared the sight of gore or offensive bodily processes. The biggest cut in this category consisted of three pages of an exceptionally vivid depiction of the murder of the Cossack Khoprov and his wife by Polovtsev. The young readers were not supposed to learn about the more brutal and ugly aspects of collectivization. This policy necessitated the removal of chapter 11, which showed the dispossession of a kulak household, and of the passage containing Razmetnov's refusal to take further part in expropriating those kulak families who had children. An omission in chapter 37 hid from the schoolchildren an argument between Davydov and Nagul'nov in which the latter revealed the compulsory nature of collectivization. The children were also prevented from hearing the same view on collectivization from an archenemy of the Soviet regime, former Cossack officer Polovtsev. He was denied the floor to tell that Stalin's article "Dizzy with Success" was "a despicable fraud" intended to fool the peasants about the true character of collectivization, and that he was burning with the desire to lay his hands on its author. No doubt Soviet authorities viewed the 1934 edition for schoolchildren as an important educational tool. Twenty thousand copies of it appeared the following year in a Ukrainian translation. Censorship of the 1935, 1936, and 1941 Detgiz editions of The Rout had its own peculiarities. Almost all censorial interventions were deletions of a puritanical nature. There were few changes and no insertions. Revisions made in an earlier edition were preserved in the later one. All fifteen corrections in the 1935 edition resulted from puritanical considerations. The majority of them concerned erotic remarks or actions involving the promiscuous Varia, her husband Morozka, and the author's observation about Mechik being a virgin and fearing that he would fail if a woman offered herself to him. Three matiuki, including two blasphemies, vanished; the greater part of matiuki, however, remained unharmed. The 1936 edition shows a notable rise in censorial activity within some twenty months separating it from the 1935 edition, which was approved for publication in December 1934. The change is all the more conspicuous since both
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publications had the same chief editor, S. Razumovskaia. Most of the eighteen new corrections pertained to sex and obscenities. Erotic deletions connected with Varia grew noticeably longer. Banned were more than two pages containing conversations about her loose behavior and scenes of failed or successful attempts to seduce her. Four swearwords, two of them matiuki and one a rather harmless "son of a bitch," were left out. The only two political corrections were remarkable in the sense that for the first time the word "yid" was censored in The Rout. In the novel's opening page the editor, or the censors, ejected the sentence "All yids are cheats" from Morozka's thoughts when he felt hurt by Levinson. And in chapter 5 the word "man" was substituted for the last two words in a peasant's characterization of Levinson as "a fair little yid." Regular editions discounted these corrections until 1951. Thirteen new corrections in the 1941 edition related only to swearing and sex. All the matiuki disappeared and the author's narrative lost such inoffensive phrases as "unnecessary swearwords" and "good-natured cursing." Only in one place did the authorial word matiuki manage to survive. Similar prudishness manifests itself in the area of sex, where the censors cut off a "hanging scrotum" and struck out a peasant boy's statement that the White Cossacks raped his mother. Thus, in 1941, the total number of corrections in the first three Detgiz editions of The Rout reached forty-six. Virtually all erotic and obscene elements were liquidated. On the other hand, the three Detgiz editions kept pace with their regular counterparts in regard to political censorship. Therefore, they proved to be more tolerant politically than "adult" editions published from 1947 on.
Authors'
Reactions
In the 1932^15 period the authors could not voice their opposition to censorship as openly as in the twenties. The writers' statements on the subject that I was able to find come from their correspondence or diaries. As we already know, Sholokhov voiced his opposition to censorship in his 26 September 1932 letter to the publishing house Artistic Literature by declaring that he would not make any revisions in the first three volumes of The Quiet Don. Nonetheless, the 1933 KhL edition of the novel underwent an extensive political pruning, particularly volume 2, where the whole of chapter 25 was cut. However, Sholokhov stuck to his decision concerning the political allegiance of Grigorii Melekhov. In 1930 the Oktiabr' editors, notably Fadeev and Panferov, demanded that Sholokhov make Grigorii a Bolshevik; otherwise, volume 3 would not see the light. Sholokhov chose the second alternative.160 Two years later volume 3 was published in Oktiabr' thanks to Stalin; but in 1938 it was the dictator himself who asked Sholokhov to convert Grigorii into a Red Cossack in volume 4. The author refused, since the requested transfiguration would ruin the artistic credibility of the novel's protagonist. At some point Stalin must have given up his demand, but the publication of the last part of volume 4 was delayed for two years.161
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Gladkov must have been tired of censorship when he wrote to a literary scholar that the text of the 1935 Detgiz edition of Cement "is definitive, there will be no more reworking."162 This turned out to be true of the provincial 1935-36 Saratov and 1937 Minsk editions, but not of the bowdlerized Moscowversion of 1941. This version opens with "The Author's Preface to the 1940 Edition" (dated 1940) which states that the novel was "rewritten anew." To the best of his ability, the author claims, he tried to eliminate "excessive use of metaphors and intentional stylization." No mention is made of 200-odd corrections, mostly of a political nature. According to a Soviet scholar, L. N. Smirnova, the revision must have been carried out in 1939 since the rough draft of the Preface is dated January 1940,163 In all likelihood, in the late thirties Gladkov knew, or was told, that the existing versions of Cement were no longer acceptable. To resume the novel's publication, the author had to adjust it to the expanded political and ideological requirements at the turn of the decade. One thing remains unclear: if Gladkov completed his "rewriting" by January 1940, why was the 1941 edition signed for publication only in May 1941? Unfortunately, this edition gives no date as to when the manuscript went to the printers. Perhaps the censors were not satisfied with what Gladkov offered early in 1940 and requested additional emendations. Be that as it may, the author who called the 1935 Detgiz edition definitive had to revise it radically in order to insure the novel's survival. Vsevolod Ivanov, although dismayed, did what the censors expected from him. He complained to Gor'kii about the "tyranny" of inexperienced, overworked editors who read manuscripts inattentively and forced the authors to revise their writings several times.164 In 1940 Ivanov wrote in his diary; "When I think of death, the greatest pleasure comes from the thought that there will be no more editors to vex you, no revisions will be necessary, and there will be no need to write down all sorts of nonsense that they tell you, and no need to make additions."165 The immediate cause of this entry was the fact that Ivanov's film script Parkhomenko, about a Red Army commander killed in 1921, was revised some fifteen times by alternating editors. When it was finally ready, the chief editor asked the author to confirm in writing that all the changes were made with his consent. Such a statement, the editor explained, would facilitate the passage of the script through censorship. Ivanov felt sorry for him and agreed.166
CHAPTER 3
CENSORSHIP IN 1946-1953 THE PEAK
Political Background The years 1946-53 belong to the worst period in the history of Soviet literature and censorship. This period was inaugurated by the publication of the 14 August 1946 resolution of the Party Central Committee concerning the literary magazines Zvezda (The Star) and Leningrad and lasted until after Stalin's death in March 1953. Both magazines were taken to task for publishing what was called ideologically empty, vulgar, and harmful works which slandered the Soviet way of life and poisoned the minds of Soviet youth. The satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko was chosen to serve as the principal practitioner of this pernicious literature while Anna Akhmatova was reviled for writing apolitical, pessimistic, and decadent poetry, expressing the bourgeois-aristocratic credo of "art for art's sake." The Central Committee also attacked works said to be cultivating the spirit of servility before contemporary Western culture.1 Andrei Zhdanov, a member of the Politburo and Stalin's mouthpiece in cultural affairs, was entrusted with the implementation of the Party resolution. He elaborated extensively on its points at the gatherings of the Leningrad Branch of the Writers' Union and the Leningrad Party Committee. With references to Lenin's article "Party Organization and Party Literature," Zhdanov insisted that Soviet literature be imbued with Party spirit and play a leading role on the ideological front. The task of Soviet literature was to attack boldly bourgeois culture, which found itself in a state of decay and corruption, Soviet literature, Zhdanov asserted, reflected a social system and culture vastly superior to any of their bourgeois-democratic counterparts.2 The anti-Western pitch of the Party resolution and Zhdanov's explications were intended to neutralize the favorable impression of life abroad gained by millions of Red Army troops after crossing the borders of their homeland. Furthermore, the Party set out to crush the aspirations of the intelligentsia for more political and creative freedom in postwar Russia. The moving spirit behind the Central Committee resolution was Stalin. On 9 August 1946 he had a long conversation with a group of writers and moviemakers. Much of what he said about Zvezda, Leningrad, Zoshchenko, Akhmatova, servility before the West, and political commitment of Soviet journals found its way into the resolution.3 The problem of kowtowing before the West took on a special significance for Stalin. In February 1947, while discussing the film Ivan the Terrible with Sergei Eizenshtein and the actor Nikolai Cherkasov, he praised the tsar for not letting
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foreigners into Russia and for protecting the country from foreign influence. By contrast, Stalin deplored Peter the Great's liberal policy toward foreigners, which led to the Germanization of Russia. Stalin reiterated his views on Peter the Great in his 13 May 1947 meeting with top administrators of the Writers' Union— Fadeev, Konstantin Simonov, and Boris Gorbatov. Only this time Stalin linked the problem to contemporary literary policy, stating that many intellectuals worshiped foreign culture and saw themselves as pupils of the West. This traditional spirit of self-disparagement must be crushed. The theme of Soviet patriotism, Stalin stressed, was very important. Soviet writers must get interested in it.4 The Central Committee's resolution gave rise to a widespread "patriotic" campaign against cosmopolitanism and servility before the bourgeois West. At the beginning of 1949 the campaign acquired a distinct anti-Semitic overtone. An unsigned article in Pravda accused a group of Jewish theater critics of maliciously slandering model Soviet characters in patriotic plays, especially in those awarded the Stalin Prize. Critics considered unpatriotic were branded bezrodnye kosmopolity (rootless cosmopolitans), a term that gained currency in subsequent beratings of "antipatriots" and became virtually synonymous with "Jews."5 The political and ideological climate of the 1946-53 period had a telling impact on censorship in Soviet literature. For seven years it had been totally subordinated to the political aims of the day. The writers had to extol feats of socialist labor, glorify the wisdom of the Party and Stalin, propagandize "peace-loving" intentions of their Government, give a falsely idealized picture of Soviet life and man, display a patriotic attitude toward the Russian past, and revile the decadent West. Editors and official censors heightened their vigilance to insure that literary production met the latest Party prescriptions. At the same time, works of earlier periods had to undergo revisions designed to bring them in line with new political, puritanical, and stylistic demands. Puritanical and stylistic cleansing reached unprecedented proportions after the publication of Stalin's articles on Marxism and linguistics. Stalin's aim was to demolish the theories of the late Soviet academician Nikolai Marr, which dominated the field of linguistics as the only correct application of Marxism to the study of languages. Marr proceeded from the assumption that language is an integral part of the superstructure, which is rooted in its economic basis. A transition from one socioeconomic formation to another brings about the emergence of a qualitatively new type of language bearing a distinct stamp of its social class. Stalin decided to strike at Marr during a linguistic discussion that he initiated in May 1950 in Pravda by acting behind the scenes. It was not until June 20 that Stalin joined the discussion with an article called "About Marxism and Linguistics." The leader's main point was that social and economic upheavals do not entail any drastic changes in the national language. The grammar and vocabulary of modern Russian differ little from those of Pushkin. Endeavors to create a new national language through a linguistic revolution would be anti-Marxist and disrupt communication among people. Dialects and jargons cannot be regarded as languages. They serve limited segments of the population and are unfit as means of communication for the whole of society. Stalin's views, containing nothing original, prompted the censors to engage in an all-out purge of jargon, dialecticisms, vulgarisms, curses, obscenities, coarse
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words, and neologisms. All these elements were believed to diminish the effectiveness of literary works in communicating political and ideological messages to the broad masses. Stalin supplemented his 20 June article with two shorter pieces printed in Pravda on 4 July and 2 August, respectively. The first two made up the contents of the brochure On Certain Questions of Linguistics (one million copies) and all three came in August 1950 under the title Marxism and Questions of Linguistics in runs of 500,000 copies. The speed and the size of printings indicate the significance Stalin attached to his linguistic pronouncements. Not surprisingly, they were received as incontestable judgments of a linguistic genius.6 No doubt, Stalin's insatiable megalomania was one of the reasons for obtaining a guaranteed glory in a field other than politics or economics. A second cause of Stalin's venture into linguistics might have been the irrelevance of Marr's class-oriented theories for a time when the Party was fanning the flame of extreme nationalism. A third reason, pointed out by the philologist Mikhail Gorbanevskii, was connected with Marr's idea that the Chinese language had remained on the lowest stage of its development due to China's economic backwardness while Semitic and Indo-European languages reached the highest evolutionary level. This view bothered the numerous Chinese students who were studying in the Soviet Union, and the question of linguistics was discussed in Stalin's meetings with Mao Tse-tung in December 1949. In addition to it, the high place Marr gave to the Hebrew and Yiddish on his evolutionary chart could hardly be a cause for rejoicing during the anticosmopolitan campaign.7 There were no significant changes in the structure or duties of censorship during the 1946-53 period. It is possible that, beginning in 1946, Glavlit lost some control of the printing industry due to the creation, on republican levels, of administrations for poligraphy and publishing houses.8 In March 1946 the reorganization of people's commissariats into ministries necessitated a change in the official designation of the Glavlit chief, which, with the addition of the words "and State," became "the Plenipotentiary of the USSR Council of Ministers for the Guarding of Military and State Secrets in the Press." For all, or nearly all, of the 1946-53 period this post was held by K. K. Omel'chenko. The earliest available document mentioning him in this capacity is a secret letter written to him in April 1947 by Ivan Serov, deputy minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MYD). Serov states that all documents and literature coming to the MYD as trophies from Germany and other countries must be kept in a special MYD archive. The materials are to be processed by a limited number of MYD specialists, used exclusively "for operative needs" of the MYD and the Ministry of State Security (MGB), and exempted from screening by the censorship agency. Glavlit, however, continued to supervise foreign publications which did not fall in MYD hands. A case in point is Omel'chenko's memorandum of 20 February 1950 sent to Mikhail Suslov, a secretary of the Party Central Committee. The memorandum addresses the failure of the Ail-Union State Library for Foreign Literature to comply with the directive of the Central Committee's Department of Propaganda and Agitation obligating all libraries to process during the year 1949 their holdings in foreign literature captured abroad in World War II.9
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As before, Glavlit was involved in purging libraries of domestic works rendered noncirculating by political vicissitudes. Thus in August 1949 Omel'chenko issued the order to ban from public libraries and the book trade network certain works by Konstantin Simonov, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Il'ia Erenburg which expressed friendly feelings for Communist Yugoslavia. The somewhat belated order was sparked by Stalin's break with Tito, resulting in the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Communist Information Bureau in June 1948. Omel'chenko stated that the procedure of removing the books had to be carried out in accordance with the "instructions to the censor."10 Omel'chenko's order attests to the continuing use of the word "censor" in secret correspondence.
Literary Works Revisions prompted by the rehabilitation of the Russian past and by antiWesternism constitute the hallmark of the 1946-53 period. One of the first targets of nationalistic censorship was Razin Stepan (Stepan Razin, 1925-27) by Aleksei Chapygin (1870-1937). A colorful historical novel, it centers on the seventeenth-century rebellion of the Cossacks and peasants led by the Don Cossack Stepan Razin, who became a ftvorite hero of Russian folklore. Chapygin's Razin cuts a strong-willed, courageous, and romantic figure resembling the rebel's folkloric image.11 The six-hundred-page novel covers a wide territory and presents a variety of social strata. Razin's itinerary takes the reader to Moscow, the Don and Volga regions, the Caspian Sea, and Persia. Social types encountered range from the tsar to prostitutes. Unseemly and brutal sides of the Russian past are portrayed in a starkly realistic manner. What sets Stepan Razin apart from all other works is that censorship of it occurred after Chapygin's death; namely in the 1948 and 1950 editions of the novel. Actually, the big purge commenced in 1947, for the 1948 edition was signed for publication on 30 December 1947.1 counted 18 political and 108 puritanical revisions in the 1948 edition, nearly all of them deletions. The greater part of puritanical cuts, however, have strong political coloration. They are intended to temper potentially negative impressions of old Russia. The censors of the 1950 edition did not use the 1948 edition as their basic text. Of the 171 revisions found in the 1950 edition 81 duplicate the 1948 deletions and 90 are new. These figures demonstrate the rapidly growing severity of censorship. Indeed, excisions became longer; twice as much material was removed from Stepan Razin in 1950 than in 1948. The share of political corrections also increased. Forty of the 90 new corrections were politically motivated. The 1950 edition reveals a marked rise in deletions concerning foreigners, Muscovite Russia, and the cruelty and misdeeds of the Razin rebels. On the other hand, the 1950 censors showed more leniency toward curses. A comparison of the two 1948 editions of Sergeev-Tsenskii's novel The Ordeal of Sevastopol' indicates a sharp increase in censorial activity regarding patriotism and foreigners in the second half of that year. The Sov. pis. edition, signed for publication in May 1948, reproduced the 1942 text of the novel; but
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the KhL edition, which was approved for publication in August, contained 223 revisions, all of them political. This number was augmented by 85 in the 1950 KhL edition. About two-thirds of the new corrections dealt with Westerners and with some national minorities living in Russia. The 1952-53 KhL edition went back to the revised 1948 version. The absence of puritanical corrections in The Ordeal of Sevastopol' does not attest to any tolerance on the part of censors. The novel's style is so pristine that even in the heyday of censorship nothing morally or aesthetically objectionable could be found in it. Two new novels to be treated in this chapter—Fadeev's Molodaia gvardiia (The Young Guard, 1945) and Valentin Kataev's Za vlast' Sovetov (For the Power of the Soviets, 1949)—deal with the Soviet underground during the German occupation. Blending fact and fiction, Fadeev relates a dramatic story of the Young Guard, a clandestine youth organization in the Ukrainian town of Krasnodon. After several successful operations against the Germans and local police, nearly all of the Young Guards were apprehended, brutally tortured, and executed. Fadeev's stern realism is mitigated by lyricism and the romantic idealization of the heroic Komsomol members. The novel was enthusiastically acclaimed by the critics and awarded the Stalin Prize, first class. But on 3 December 1947 an editorial article in Pravda entitled "The Young Guard in the Novel and on Stage" declared that Fadeev had left out the most important thing—the guiding and educative role played by the Party in organizing resistance in the German rear. Pravda also faulted the author for exaggerating the panic during the evacuation of Krasnodon population and for drawing a cartoonlike portrait of a Soviet general. The charges were unjustified. Fadeev paid tribute to the Party by implying that it had raised such a politically mature and devoted generation of young Communists that they were able to fight the enemy on their own after an early capture of local Party leaders. If anything, Fadeev toned down fear and disorder among those who fled from the advancing Germans in the summer of 1942, and the somewhat humorous representation of a Red Army general made him more lifelike. The novel that garnered the Stalin Prize in 1946 was found wanting a year and a half later. Fadeev knew that Stalin stood behind the Pravda criticisms. A disciplined Communist, the author saw it as his duty to rework his novel. A revised version of it appeared in 1951, one-fourth longer than previous editions. I registered 160 revisions, most conspicuous among them are extensive insertions stressing the Party leadership in underground activities and the might of the Red Army. Merely a few corrections could be called puritanical, a sign that the Young Guards spoke an artificially clean language and experienced no desires of the flesh. For the Power of the Soviets is set in the city of Odessa, where the catacombs offered a safe haven for underground groups fighting Rumanian and German occupiers. Several characters, notably an underground leader, Gavrik Chernoivanenko, and the jurist Petr Bachei, came from Kataev's earlier novel Beleet parus odinokii (The Lone White Sail, 1936), in which the action takes place in Odessa during the 1905 Revolution. For the Power of the Soviets was published serially in Novyi mir (nos. 6-8, 1949) and its book-form edition appeared in the same year, with three dozen miscellaneous revisions. The initial critical response
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to the novel was favorable on balance until the conservative writer Mikhail Bubennov attacked it in his article "About Valentin Kataev's New Novel For the Power of the Soviets." Printed in Pravda on 16 and 17 January 1950, the article spoke with the authoritative voice of the Party. Bubennov asserted that Kataev's Bolsheviks were poles apart from real Bolsheviks. Gavrik was portrayed as a poor underground organizer. He had an unattractive outward appearance and bad manners; moreover, he spoke a colloquial "Black Sea" language. While essential underground activities were described in passing, the novel abounded in secondary details, such as Petia Bachei Jr.'s nostalgic musings about his father's childhood in old Odessa. The survival of the novel, Bubennov concluded, was contingent on a fundamental and profound revision. Kataev readily concurred. In the inflated 1951 version of the novel, he bent over backwards to comply with every point of Bubennov's critique. I found at least 350 revisions, a hundred of them insertions ranging from a phrase to several chapters. There were hardly any puritanical corrections, given the fact that emendations in the characters' speech stemmed from political requirements. Few, but characteristic, revisions concerning nationalism and anti-Western bias were made in the 1951 edition of lurii Trifonov's novel Studenty {Students), a year after its first publication in Novyi mir (nos. 10-11, 1950). More examples of the censorial handling of these subjects will be culled from a 1953 and later editions of the novel, which presents everyday student life in postwar Moscow. For the greater part of our core works, censorship in the years 1946-53 proved to be much more damaging than in any other period. While the extent of censorial intervention motivated by the ultrapatriotic and anti-Western campaign varied depending on the subject of each individual work, all works were exposed to the whole gamut of political and puritanical censorship. Hardest hit were Bruski and works by Sholokhov and Seifullina. The 1947 edition of Bruski contains at least 371 revisions, compared to 237 in all previous publications of the novel. The revised Bruski shows a sharp upsurge in corrections intended to rehabilitate prerevolutionary Russia and the peasants, to play down failures of communes and collective farms, to elevate the Party leaders, and to humiliate their real and imagined enemies. Twenty-four puritanical revisions set a record for a single edition of the novel. According to Isai Lezhnev, a Soviet Sholokhov scholar, the number of all corrections in the revised 1952 text of Virgin Soil Upturned reaches 1,200, many of them stylistic. The author, Lezhnev said, "followed ... the policy of our Party" and "directly and in the closest possible way took into account the profound statements of I. V. Stalin made in his works on linguistics."12 Thus Sholokhov received accolades for what he did not do. Lezhnev probably was aware of this fact, but he could not mention censorship in print. It was common practice to ascribe its work to the author. Actually, the censor-editor of the novel's 1952 version was Kirill Potapov, a Prawfo journalist. He did a thorough job of improving the image of local Communists and freeing the text from foul language, eroticism, gore, and unsavory details. Potapov also bears responsibility for some 400 political and 300 puritanical corrections found in the mutilated 1953 version of The Quiet Don, which ap-
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peared after an unparalleled four-year interruption in the novel's publication. Roughly three-fourths of the political revisions occur in volume 2, where it was deemed necessary to update interpretations of crucial Revolutionary and Civil War events and to retouch the portraits of their participants. Political, puritanical, and hundreds of stylistic emendations virtually spelled the end of The Quiet Don as a historic and artistic work. Sholokhov scholars, Lezhnev and Lev lakimenko, congratulated the author on a job well done.13 The 1953 version, printed in an unprecedented quantity of 300,000 copies, was apparently meant to be a model for subsequent editions, at least for those to be published during Stalin's rule. As it turned out, all four volumes were approved for publication after his death. The fact that the novel was allowed to appear in so bowdlerized a condition attested to the firmness of the grip the dead dictator still held on Soviet cultural life. Two-thirds of all corrections found in "Lawbreakers" were made during the 1946-53 period, mainly in the story's 1953 edition. The 1948 KhL edition took care of the few erotic references so that only two of thirty-six revisions executed in 1953 could be called puritanical. The 1953 censors were primarily concerned with making the Bolshevik educator Martynov more respectable and with removing evidence of American assistance to famine-ridden Russia. Seventy-six corrections in Humus, about 60 percent of the number ever made in this novel, are evenly divided between its 1948 and 1953 editions. One-third of them belong to the puritanical category. Noteworthy are excisions of passages about the moral degeneration of the village during World War I and about human sexuality being an instinctive urge for procreation. The same subject figures prominently in the cuts encountered in the 1953 version of Virineia, where well-nigh 60 out of 160 revisions relate to sex. By contrast, merely 8 corrections were made in all previous editions of the novel. The difference illustrates the increase in censorial severity that occurred since 1936 when the publication of Virineia had been discontinued for seventeen years. An escalation of censorship in a much shorter span of time can be seen from the number of corrections in The Rout, one in 1948, one in 1949, and eleven in 1951. Three deletions whitewash peasants and Russia and five deal with eroticism and swearing. Altogether the total number of 1947-51 corrections equals that in all previous editions, save children's editions. Cement is the only work that suffered more in the preceding period, chiefly from its 1941 purge. Still, the 1951 censors interfered in some fifty instances, expanding political rhetoric and expunging things unbecoming of a Bolshevik. There were hardly any corrections pertaining to the relationship between Gleb and Dasha, thanks to the job performed on them by earlier censorship. While the 1948 Sov. pis. edition of Armored Train No. 14-69 passed censorship with a dozen revisions, the 1952 edition required fifty. Nearly half of them were puritanical and only a few had their origins in nationalism or anti-Western propaganda. This cannot be said about the dramatized version of Armored Train No, 14-69, whose 1952 editions evince a strong influx of anti-American and jingoistic insertions. One work that appears to have gone through the worst period of censorship without a scratch was How the Steel Was Tempered. I inspected twelve of its
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editions brought out between 1946 and 1953 and discovered nothing.
Political
Censorship
Russia and the West In 1946-53 the themes of Russia and the West were so closely interwoven that they will be treated in the same section. Rehabilitation of the Russian past and the praise of everything Soviet proceeded parallel with the denigration of the West by means varying from the removal of favorable information to outright vilification. Our discussion will begin with works dealing with prerevolutionary Russia—Stepan Razin and The Ordeal of Sevastopol'. The foremost task of the censors preparing the 1948 edition of Stepan Razin was to eliminate utterances and descriptions that presented seventeenth-century Russia as an uncivilized country. Coarse expressions and obscenities suffered heavy losses. Of some fifty matiuki and words indicating this type of swearing merely five remained. The censors appeared intent to shred any piece of evidence that mother curses constituted part of the daily vocabulary of virtually every segment of the population. Among their users were a street vendor, a priest, a clerk, Stepan Razin, Cossacks, soldiers, officers, and high military commanders, particularly Prince lurii Boriatinskii. There were no blasphemies, however. Cut were such distasteful details as offensive body odors, catching and killing bedbugs, flatulence, indecent exposure, and unabashed satisfaction of natural needs. Gone was the episode showing the outrages of a boyar's wife in her bathhouse. This woman, using vulgarisms for private parts, would relieve herself into a bucket in the presence of her servant, a former monk, who was compelled to help her steam herself. When the old man would fall down from heat and exhaustion, the boyar's wife, shouting insults and matiuki, would order her girl servants to pour the bucket's contents on him.14 Excisions of erotic character affected sexual acts, comments, and requests. A few phrases vanished from a tale about an adulteress and her lover getting inseparably joined during coitus. Two long deletions hushed up sexual laxity. One of the expunged passages described an abortive attempt of three men to copulate with a woman while paying her for just one customer. Another contained frank propositions that resulted in a soldier's making love to a drunk nursing mother. Violent and self-destructive acts of a mob during the Salt Riot of 1648 were mollified in a scene of rioters smashing vodka barrels in a boyar's wine cellar. The rioters stopped ladling out vodka with their boots and caps, falling asleep, or drowning in the spilled liquor. The description of the torture of Stepan Razin's brother Ivan was purged of its goriest particulars. Some cuts might have been puritanical, but others were intended to conceal the barbarity of the time. Such were instructions given by the boyar Kivrin to the head executioner regarding Ivan, who was accused of conspiring against the tsar: "Throw the pincers into the fire and, when they are white-hot, nip off his private parts and then break his
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ribs!" or "Heat up the sword, thrust it into his entrails."16 In the 1948 edition, censorship involving the West was restricted to the elimination of slighting judgments on Russia expressed by Germans living in it. The Germans were prohibited from calling Russians slaves, robbers, barbarians, and savages, who enjoyed killing people and who lived in dark dwellings reeking of hides and fish. The censors silenced a German officer who said that Russians were cowards. According to him, they would do anything to avoid going to war; flee into the woods, get dead drunk, or endure imprisonment and beating. Furthermore, Russians were "stupid, lazy, and cruel people."17 It did not matter for the censors that Chapygin had portrayed the criticizing Germans with a touch of humor, smiling at their arrogance, smugness, and self-confidence. The censors of the 1950 edition of Stepan Razin, however, did more than cross out leftovers of the Germans' complaints about the Russians. They refused to recognize the military and cultural contributions of foreigners to the Russian state. There was no more place for Razin's observation that the tsar strengthened the power of Moscow with the aid of learned Germans and other foreigners (344; 319).18 Particularly telling was the censoring of a clerk's report to the tsar about a thousand foreigners serving in the Russian army as commanders or manufacturers of cannons and grenades. Moreover, the foreigners turned out to be more reliable than the boyars and noblemen, half of whom failed to join the army during the Polish campaign (393-94; 363). The peak of absurdity was reached when the words of "the Italian Fioraventi" and "the creation of a Milan architect" (Aleviz the New) vanished from the description of the cathedrals build by these men in Moscow (230; 215). Another obvious concern of the 1950 censors was to enhance the political status of Moscow by discarding antagonistic or disrespectful references to it, especially on the part of the Don Cossacks. Left out were the Cossacks' statements that they did not like Muscovites (43; 40), considered them as bitter an enemy as the Poles and the Turks (42; 46), and would not drink to the health of the tsar (50; 46). To mitigate the violence of Razin and his rebels, the censors got rid of the ghastliest manifestations of cruelty and debauchery. The rebels were no longer permitted to sing a jolly song while throwing a sack loaded with rocks and the town major into the laik River (297; 278). Elsewhere the censors canceled Razin's order to hang two sons of Prince Prozorovsky, a youth and a boy, by their legs from the town wall of Astrakhan' (529-30; 490). A few paragraphs below, no trace was left of Razin's suggestion that his men cast lots to divide among themselves the wives and daughters of slain boyars, noblemen, and clerks (53031; 491). As an exception, the 1950 censors did nothing with Razin's instructions that, when caught, the wife of the boyar Khabarov be loaded through an unspecified opening with gunpowder and exploded. This verdict is missing from the 1948 edition (566; 514). Trafficking in people was an occupation that the censors found demeaning for the Russians. Expunged were three pages about the selling of two captive Turkish girls by a Ukrainian Cossack in an open market in a Don Cossack settlement (71_74; 55) and several passages concerning the trade in girls conducted by a fugitive Russian clerk in Persia (327-30; 305-6).
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Almost simultaneously with their work pn Stepan Razin, the censors engaged in purging The Ordeal of Sevastopol', which abounded in contrasts between Russia of the 1850s and the West. Unlike Chapygin, Sergeev-Tsenskii was alive at the time of the purge; but regardless of his attitude toward it, he was not in a position to protect his novel. It had to be cleansed of its tributes to Western civilization. Sergeev-Tsenskii saw the Crimean War in terms of a conflict between the progressive West and the backward East, attributing the rise of the West to effects of the 1789-99 Revolution. Yet the official viewpoint of the late 1940s could no longer accept this polarity. As a result, the censors eliminated such antithetical combinations as "the liberal West and the conservative East" and "while the West was moving to the left, the East bristled with the bayonets of the Russian army." The assertion that the Crimean War was fought on two fronts—"against the enlightened West and against the Eastern Russian darkness"—was transformed into "against foreign enemies and centuries-long backwardness generated by serfdom,"19 thus placing the blame on socioeconomic conditions. The overall superiority of the West was unequivocally stated in the censored inference that the first encounter between the British and the Russians "ended with the victory of those who had a parliament, freedom of the press, the best technology, and a much better military system" (1:128; 106).20 Numerous excisions pertain to the military power and prowess of the West. The censors silenced a Russian naval officer who declared that his country's fleet looked like a toy compared to "the enormous fleet of the allies" (1:55; 45). Not surprisingly, the censors also tabooed the author's opinion that the Allied landing in the Crimea had been an operation "completely unprecedented in the most recent history" (1:105; 87). The English artillery ceased to be the world's best and the infantry the world's most steadfast (1:42; 35) while the French Zouave troops lost their ranking as "Europe's best soldiers" (6:473; 77). Even the fact that French mines were wider and better finished became an unpublishable military secret (6:402; 20). Western economic and technological advances were toned down. A description of London was shortened by a paragraph detailing the stunning impression that a multitude of warehouses and ships in the city's docks made on foreign visitors, especially the Russians. In the same chapter, the English were deprived of their "inexhaustible energy" and the name of James Watt evaporated as that of the inventor of the steam engine (2:243^14; 199, 200). Revisions were made to soft-pedal the intellectual impact of the West. Thus a Russian officer switched his interest in the ideas of Fourier and Saint-Simon to those of Belinskii and Gertsen and changed the subject of his remarks from Saint-Simon's L'Industrie to "the famous letter of Belinskii to Gogol'" (8:280; 388, 389). In the scientific field the censors discarded the claim of a Prussian doctor that he was a disciple of Paracelsus, along with a footnote identifying the latter as "the founder of pharmaceutical chemistry and the experimental method of medical treatment" (5:323; 738). The cuts involving the sixteenth-century Swiss physician manifest the degree of pathological sensitivity that Soviet propaganda and censorship reached with respect to foreign scientific discoveries and accomplishments in the course of the anti-Western campaign.
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Much censorial attention was turned to straightening out the foreign policy of Nicholas I, particularly the problem of accountability for the Crimean War. There is no consensus among historians as to who bears responsibility for the conflict. Some fault Great Britain, others point fingers at the Russian autocrat, and still others speak of a collective guilt.21 Sergeev-Tsenskii shared the second viewpoint. The censors, while maintaining the traditional Soviet hostility toward Nicholas I as a ruler, had to soften or remove those authorial statements which presented the monarch as an aggressor and justified the military response of the West. Nothing was left of two paragraphs stating that the Russian invasion of Moldavia and Wallachia had caused the Allied naval force to enter the Dardanelles to protect Constantinople from the Russian fleet, which was said to have started the Eastern War by destroying a Turkish squadron off Sinope in the autumn of 1853 (2:254; 207). There was no question of the censors' tolerating Sergeev-Tsenskii's view that British politicians "had reason to suppose" that Nicholas I had planned to make Constantinople the capital of a special kingdom composed of adjacent Turkish provinces and headed by one of his younger sons. As a result of Turkey's dismemberment, Russia would possess the mouth of the Danube and control access to the Black and Mediterranean Seas (2:250; 205). Equally unacceptable proved a character's opinion that Nicholas I had brought about the Allied landing in the Crimea (1:81; 67) as well as the tsar's own thoughts on the origins of the war: "Who provoked it? Wasn't it he himself by his overly confident steps?" (5:327; 741). The censors of the 1950 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol' continued to whitewash Russia and increased their intransigence to everything Western, be it a political issue or the national traits of the British and the French. Even Nicholas I benefited from rabid anti-Westernism on a personal level. The censors found it demeaning for Russia that Lord Clarendon, the British foreign secretary, exhibited with regard to Turkey "a better knowledge of human psychology than did the Russian tsar, who was preoccupied exclusively with his own self."22 To remove any stain from the banners of the imperial Russian army, strict censorship was applied to descriptions of its defeats. A case in point is the conduct of the Uglitskii Regiment in the Battle of the Alma. The censors withheld information that this regiment had taken to panicky flight without engaging the enemy and that its soldiers had thrown away their rifles and knapsacks (1:106, 108; 140, 143). In their anti-Western zeal, the 1950 censors went so far as to eliminate authorial characterizations of Frenchmen as "a people of very lively imagination" (1:96; 126) and of Englishmen as "born tourists" (e. 683; 701). The concluding section of the epilogue was cleansed of any evidence of the chivalrous treatment of captive Russian officers by the French. On the way to France the prisoners were put in the officers' cabins and ate in the passengers' lounge. In France they were allowed to live anywhere except in Paris and received a hundred francs a month (e. 694; 715-16). Fortunately, the 1952-53 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol' did not incorporate the 1950 revisions, but adopted the text of the 1948-49 KhL editions. In all probability, this happened because all three editions were brought out by the same publisher. With some marginal changes, the 1952-53 edition of The Or-
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deal of Sevastopol' became the standard text for the novel's later printings. Although they played down some ugly aspects of tsarist Russia, the censors were not eager to offer the reader an attractive picture of the prerevolutionary past. Descriptions of life under the tsars, especially in the period close to the October Revolution, were not supposed to elicit undesirable comparisons with Soviet conditions. Thus the censors of Kataev's novel For the Power of the Soviets must have sensed this danger in its characters' reminiscences about Odessa at the beginning of the twentieth century. In these reminiscences, as well as in the imagination of the boy Petia Bachei, the colorful cosmopolitan Odessa appears under a highly romantic veneer. When Bachei Sr. and his friend reminisce about the city, using old, frequently foreign, names of its streets and sites, Petia fancies behind these "magic" words "indistinct outlines of a huge radiant world of Papa's childhood, a world inhabited with legendary people performing magnificent acts." In their childhood, Bachei Sr. and Gavrik Chernoivanenko were fascinated with Allan Pinkerton. Catacombs, mysterious attics, dark cellars, and vacant plots were the places to which they would go in the hope of uncovering traces of bloody crimes. All these and similar nostalgic memories vanished in 1951.23 Reflecting his own childhood moods and experiences, they must have been particularly dear to the author. Heavy censorship motivated by nationalism and anti-Westernism is found in the 1948-52 editions of Armored Train No. 14-69, in both the novel and the play. One of the 1948 corrections radically changed a key scene in which Red peasant partisans stop the White armored train in order to attack and capture it. To accomplish this task, one man has to lie down across the rails in the hope that the locomotive engineer would run him over and then stop the train to get details for the report required by law in such incidents. In the novel's original version, a partisan, Vas'ka Okorok, volunteers for the suicidal mission. As the train approaches, Vas'ka becomes jittery and his Chinese comrade, Sin-Bin-U, joins him to share his fate. At this point, the Russian loses his nerve completely and crawls down the embankment, leaving Sin-Bin-U alone. In the 1948 Sov. pis. edition, the Chinese lies down beside Vas'ka not out of pity for him but out of the lofty desire to demonstrate a profound respect of the Chinese people for the Russian people. And Vas'ka behaves in a way fully justifying this honor. He is ready to sacrifice his life; but, obeying an explicit order of the partisan commander, he gets off the rails with great reluctance.24 The eulogy of the Russian people escalated in the "new" 1952 editions of the play through multiple insertions. The following panegyric was put into the mouth of Peklevanov, chairman of the City Revolutionary Committee: The most wondrous wonder of wonders is the Russian people! It has created the greatest wonder, the Soviet Revolution. And how did the Revolution elevate man? Well, take Vershinin as an example. Has it been long since he was an ordinary fisherman, plowman, and hunter? . . . Just a month or two—not more—have passed and we see a giant who gathered and moved a whole army against the Americans and Japanese.25 The play's 1952 versions are rife with interpolations about the role played by French, British, Japanese, and, above all, Americans in the Far East. America had become enemy number one of the Soviet regime since it was the only coun-
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try capable of containing Communist expansion. Ivanov's characters speak of American troops taking part in combat, of their cooperation with the Whites, and of American plans to annex Siberia and China. The absurdity of such denunciations is capped with the allegation that the Americans established a concentration camp in a city fortress, where they killed, starved to death, and hanged people.26 It is possible that anti-Western philippics were inserted by the author as inevitable contributions to the spirit of the time. By contrast, deletions and changes were applied in Seifullina's "Lawbreakers" to eliminate any mention of American food aid to starving Russia in 1921.27 Discussion of revisions prompted by the anti-Western campaign will be concluded with samples taken from works written shortly before or during this campaign. Censorial intervention in these works mirrors the official attitude toward the contemporary West. Only the savage propaganda of hatred could account for the introduction of the following statement into the revised 1951 version of The Young Guard: "Fate has willed that our great Stalin had to sit at the same table with such a dog as Churchill." These words were uttered by Filipp Liutikov, the head of the Party's underground committee, when he was giving instructions to Oleg Koshevoi, a leader of the Young Guard organization. The characterization of Churchill was so stupidly outrageous that even the Soviet censors got rid of it in 1954, a year after Stalin's death.28 In Kataev's novel For the Power of the Soviets, the censors combated servility before the West by expunging foreign names of various objects. One "Douglas" was replaced by "airplane" already in 1949 and the other in 1951. The latter year also witnessed the disappearance of "Cadillac," as well as "Lowenbrau," "Singer," and "London," which designated, respectively, a tavern, a sewing machine, and an Odessa hotel.29 Two early revisions in Trifonov's Students throw a bright light on the propagation of Russian cultural superiority over the West. In the original text, a student, Andrei Syrykh, unfavorably compares Vasilii Vereshchagin's painting The Triumph (1872) with Il'ia Repin's The Boat Haulers (1873). In Syrykh's view, Vereshchagm placed pure art above society and was not concerned with Russia as a whole. He painted individuals of various nationalities, with a proclivity for scenes of gore, agony, and death. The novel's hero, Vadim Belov, who defended Vereshchagin, was impressed with Syrykh's arguments and gave up his polemic with him. Not a word about Vereshchagin is found in the next, 1951 edition of the novel. A patriotic Russian painter, who lost his life in the Russo-Japanese War, could no longer be degraded. Vereshchagin's place is taken by Genrikh Semiradskii (Henryk Siemiradzki), a Pole born in Russia, who lived in Rome for many years. It is now his painting Sword Dance (1881) that is contrasted by Belov (not Syrykh) with The Boat Haulers. Semiradskii is said to have been an artist of Western orientation. He stood for resurrecting academic painting and opposed Russian realistic art.30 Another 1951 revision represents an insertion in the form of Belov's thought about Russian literature provoked by his clash with a cosmopolitan-minded professor. Nothing surpasses Russian realism, he says to himself; there are so many great names in it. According to Belov, one cannot seriously compare Dead Souls
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with The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Russian realism also gave us Maksim Gor'kii, who has no equal in any country. All this boasting appears verbatim in the novel's 1953 MG edition, but is somewhat mitigated in the novel's English translation issued in the same year by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow. The assertion of Gor'kii's absolute superiority gave way to the question, "And who can compare with him?" while Dickens received a pat on the back via the addition, "Nobody denies the genius of Dickens."31 There were other emendations in the 1953 translation intended to lessen the effect of gross anti-Westernism on English-speaking readers. Dropped was the students' opinion that "Truman is nonetheless better than Dewey though both are rascals," expressed in the discussion of American elections. Radically changed was the assessment of American troops by a former Soviet officer. Americans, he contends in the Russian-language editions, are not soldiers but tourists and motorcyclists. They are not like Germans or Finns, real warriors. Should it come to war, the sirs would have a rough time. And the speaker shakes his lumpy fist. In the English translation, the brave officer is completely lost for an answer concerning the Americans' combat qualities. He justifies his inability to judge the GIs with a clumsy excuse that so far they did not fight "in their own interest, the people's interest." And, of course, he does not raise his fist.32
Nationalities The Stalinist brand of Russian chauvinism and the persecution of certain national minorities during and after the war brought about a new element in the censorial approach to nationalities. Good examples of this approach can be found in the 1948 KhL edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol'. An important task of the censors was to Russify the Crimea, to erase evidence that it once belonged to the Greeks and Tartars. This was done through the removal of the ethnic designations describing Crimean settlements founded or possessed by the two national minorities. The reader lost his right to know that Sevastopol' was built on the site of a Tartar village, that Balaklava was a Greek town, and that Kerch' passed to Russia from the Tartars.33 Such different people as the Turkish army commander Omer Pasha and the Slavophile Ivan Aksakov were no longer permitted to speak about the Tartars' being oppressed and robbed by the Russians and about their eagerness to greet or join the Turks as liberators. Similarly, the censors put an end to the rumor that, back in 1830, the Crimean Tartars and Greeks were ready to rebel in response to the arbitrary and cruel treatment they received from tsarist authorities.34 The anti-Tartar stance continued in the 1950 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol'. Indicative in this respect is an exchange between Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, commander of Russian forces in the Crimea, and the Admiral Vladimir Kornilov. To prevent a Tartar uprising, Menshikov declares, he will seek the tsar's permission to remove the Tartars from the western part of the Crimea. Kornilov calls this measure too extreme. "Everything will depend on our strength, of course," he says. Should the enemy take Sevastopol', the upris-
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ing will be inevitable. Kornilov's reply was censored (2:234; 311). Admired as a hero in the Soviet Union, the admiral was not supposed to show restraint toward a nationality with which the Soviets dealt more harshly than Menshikov had suggested almost a century earlier. In 1944 all of the Crimean Tartars, irrespective of age and sex, were accused of collaborating with the German occupiers and deported to Soviet Central Asia.35 A small but characteristic change in Bruski mirrors the official animosity against the Tartars. Before 1947 the anti-Bolshevik partisan who killed the father of the Communist Stepan Ognev had been an unnamed man "with a long red mustache." Since 1947 the killer has been a Tartar by the name of Akhmetka. An analogous display of antagonism was directed against an Ingush officer in The Quiet Don. In a scene set in 1917, he makes a passionate appeal to a Cossack squadron and threatens it with severe punishment should its members disobey Kornilov's order to march on Petrograd. The 1953 censors cut the address because it revealed courage and dedication in a man whose people were exiled from the Caucasus on the same charges and in the same year as the Crimean Tartars.36 Among nations that stood to gain from increasingly vituperative fulminations against the West were some World War II enemies whose countries wholly or partially came under Soviet control. They came to be regarded as friends and a negative portrayal of their soldiers in the World War II novels might have hurt their national feelings. Already in 1949, the first book-form publication of For the Power of the Soviets signaled a mellowing of censorial attitudes toward Rumanians. In a few incidents the words "Rumanians" or "Rumanian soldiers" were transformed into "fascists" or "enemies." The change suggested that it was not the whole nation but merely certain odious segments of its population who were hostile to the Soviets or behaved as war criminals. The Germans, however, were not yet ripe for preferential treatment. A case in point is a character's statements in which only the italicized words were blotted out: "He gives me advice ... to start selling all sorts of trash to that German and Rumanian vermin."37 The 1951 version of the novel put Germans and Rumanians on equal footing. On many occasions "Germans" or "German soldiers" became "fascists," "Hitlerites," and "SS men." More important, the censors covered up German war brutalities. They erased a character's condemnation of Germans as "barbarians" and "civilized bandits," as well as the author's account of their atrocities in Odessa in the spring of 1944. "The German troops," Kataev wrote in the deleted passage, "were a gang of robbers and murderers. . . . There was no crime they had not committed during their three-month sway over the city. They raped, burned, robbed, and killed."38 What the author said here had been a pat theme of Soviet war propaganda and Stalin's speeches. Other censorial favors bestowed upon the enemy soldiers included deodorization of their bodies and equipment. A German reconnaissance party, passing by Petia in the darkness, no longer exudes "the heavy, hot, and inimical smell of their perspiring, unwashed bodies." Moreover, the censors destroyed the "nauseating" odor of train oil coming from the Germans' boots and got rid of the epithet "stinking" describing their raincoats made of synthetic rubber (187; 134).
Censorship in Soviet Literature, 1917-1991 The hand of a Rumanian soldier, which Petia bit in fighting with him, ceased to be "stinking and hairy" and lost its "sickening, garliclike" smell (277; 155). The censors of the revised 1953 version of The Quiet Don were apparently concerned that the large number of foreigners serving in the Red forces during the Civil War might indicate less than enthusiastic support for the Bolshevik cause by a majority of Russians. This consideration accounts for the disappearance of the information that a Red Guard unit numbering 800 men was "diluted by onethird with Chinese, Latvians, and other foreigners" (2:629; 292), and that Red prisoners massacred by the Cossacks "were mostly Chinese" (2:653; 318). The whitewashing of the Russian past was probably the motive for banning from Stepan Razin two and a half pages of a conversation between Razin and an old Jew. The dialogue revealed that Razin's Cossacks raped the Jew's daughters and killed his two sons and that Ukrainian Cossacks abused, hanged, and drowned Jews. Concunently, the censors threw out hostile references to the Jew as "yid" made by Razin's men.39 Similar action was taken in The Quiet Don. During the preparation of its 1953 version, the pejorative "yid" and its derivatives were omitted or replaced (by "The Reds" or "commissars") in more than half of its twenty-odd appearances. It is hard to discern any strict consistency in the retention or elimination of this term. In volume 1, it vanished in neutral or unfriendly phrases uttered by ordinary Cossacks: "The other day they caught a yid at the frontier who carried smuggled goods" (208; 210); "Run, you yid, or I'll kill you!" (234; 236); and "There at the yid's" (255; 258). However, it was left to stand in an investigator's question put to the Bolshevik Shtokman, "Are you a yid?" (128; 129), to demonstrate the anti-Semitism of a tsarist official. In volume 3, there was a tendency to preserve the offensive word in the milder or more favorable remarks about Jews, such as "There is one yid with them. ... I love the yids!" (3:119; 122) and "He's a yid, but he's deft!" (3:120; 123). Conversely, the trend to discard it can be seen in cases where Jews were identified with the Bolsheviks as enemies of the Cossacks (3:31, 169; 30, 174). No identification of Bolsheviks with Jews was involved in two omissions of the pejorative term from the 1951 edition of The Rout. But a third deletion was intended to minimize the importance of Jews in the Revolution and, possibly, to prevent the emergence of sympathy for a Jew in the reader. The excised phrase described Levinson's feelings about the arrest of a leading Bolshevik: '"Eh! Things are bad without Moisei,' he thought, only now realizing with pain the consequences of Kraizef man's arrest."40 The frequent omission of the word "yid" and its derivatives from literary works may create the impression that it resulted from the official censorial policy of reducing the application of pejorative names to various nationalities. This impression is reinforced by the fact that deletions of "yid" occurred in Anton Chekhov's conespondence, published in the twenty-volume edition of his Complete Works and Letters (1944-51).41 This assumption can be only partially true, at best. Made at the height of Government-promoted anti-Semitism, revisions involving the word "yid" were first of all purported to camouflage the real attitude toward Jews and to pay lip service to Communist internationalism, rather than to counteract the hatred of Jews. The originator of this hypocrisy was
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Stalin. In February 1952, at a meeting of the Committee on Stalin Prizes, he attacked the divulging of the real names of Jewish writers and critics in parentheses after their pseudonyms, a practice widely used during the anticosmopolitan campaign. "Why do it? Why plant anti-Semitism? Who needs it?" the dictator is quoted as saying. Konstantin Simonov, who heard Stalin ask these questions, came to the conclusion that the leader simply put on a show before a group of confused intellectuals; that his position on the Jewish question was just the opposite of what he said.42 The censorial treatment of the Ukrainians was twofold. In The Quiet Don, where the word khokhol was banned from the authorial narrative in 1933, the censor of the novel's 1953 version removed it from an old Cossack's remark (3:299; 310) and replaced it with "Ukrainian" in the speech of Prokhor Zykov and Grigorii Melekhov (4:686, 697; 327, 338), though khokhol was the standard Cossack appellation for a Ukrainian. On the other hand, khokhol was preserved in the utterances of other Cossacks. Even Prokhor Zykov was permitted to use it when he talked about the outbreak of a large Ukrainian uprising against Bolsheviks in the fall of 1920 (4:699; 340). This was not the case with the characters' references to this event in the revised 1952 text of Virgin Soil Upturned, where the word khokhly metamorphosed into "insurgents" and "the khokhol uprising" became "the Civil War."43 In these instances the word khokhol vanished not because of its derogatory connotations, but because the image of the Soviet regime would be somewhat tarnished by revealing that the Ukrainian peasants were compelled to rebel against it. At the same time, the retention of khokhol in a reference to the rebellion in The Quiet Don attests to censorial inconsistency or oversight, though the editor-censor of both bowdlerized versions of Sholokhov's novels was the same person, Kirill Potapov. In the 1953 edition of The Quiet Don, Potapov made a special effort to remove the last vestige of Cossack nationalism and antagonism toward Russians. "Stinking Russia" in the speech of old Melekhov was transformed into "bastshoed Russia" (2:590; 250). The word "Muscovite" was dropped from the author's narrative and even from a fairy tale (1:161, 249; 163, 252). The Cossack "raids against Great Russian lands" were converted into "raids against Russian princes and boyars" (3:7; 5). Even an innate characteristic of Cossack women had to be played down in order not to offend their Russian counterparts. Hence, Sholokhov's tribute to the Cossack fair sex, "She . . . went to the cattle yard with that free, sweeping, smart gait peculiar only to Cossack women," was printed without the italicized word (2:626; 289).
Stalin and Lenin Of the two leaders, Stalin received much more censorial attention. With his cult reaching unprecedented heights, it was nearly impossible not to mention his name or activities in large novels on contemporary themes, such as The Young Guard or For the Power of the Soviets. In earlier works, like Bruski and Virgin Soil Upturned, Stalin's presence or references to his name had to be adjusted to his official image of the day. In The Quiet Don, additions were made to enhance
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his role in the Civil War. On balance, more insertions than deletions concerning Stalin were found in the works treated in this chapter. Moreover, the amount of added material greatly exceeded the losses caused by cuts, an indication that the major censorial endeavor was to laud Stalin's wisdom and leadership. In some cases the names of Lenin and Stalin would be put in or taken out together, but it was clear that the latter eclipsed the former as the object of adulation. One type of excision was purported to spare the leaders from sharp criticisms by their adversaries. In volume 2 of Bruski the words "a degenerate" and "an adventurist" vanished from hostile opinions of Lenin and in volume 3 the censors discarded Il'ia Gur'ianov's condemnations of the mendacious and homicidal policies of both leaders directed primarily against peasants. Lenin, Il'ia maintained, annihilated the people like the Huns did. Stalin continued Lenin's course of action by destroying millions of peasants with the help of the village poor, whom he bribed into becoming executioners.44 To avoid a linkage of Stalin with negative phenomena, the revised 1952 edition of Virgin Soil Upturned dropped the words "named after Stalin" from the name of the Gremiachii collective farm in those cases where the people or the actions associated with this collective farm were deemed opprobrious. Such were the instances involving lakov Ostrovnov, a hidden enemy in the management of the collective farm (107; 102), and the faulty decision of the local Party group to collectivize all stock belonging to collective farmers (127; 122). Furthermore, it became discourteous for the characters to speak of Stalin as "a crackerjack" in Virgin Soil Upturned (101; 96), and to call Lenin's head a bashka (bean) with little hair in Humus. To elicit due respect for Stalin, the censor of the revised 1952 edition Virgin Soil Upturned inserted "comrade" before the leader's name in the speech of both the author and characters (101, 216, 218; 96, 208, 210). The 1951 version of For the Power of the Soviets contains the same addition in the note written by a mortally wounded sailor (117; 79). In volume 4 of Bruski the esteem for Stalin was boosted by eliminating the familiarity that the collective farmer Nikita Gur'ianov ventured in a conversation with him at the conference of distinguished people (znatnykh liudei) in Moscow. Nikita was prohibited from using casual locutions on the order of "you're the boss of our whole country" and "that's what you are."46 These excisions, however, were amply compensated by additions designed to present Stalin as a picture of friendliness and benevolence toward the common folk. In inserted passages he smiles at and praises Nikita (337; 907), puts his hand on the peasant's shoulder, and tells him that people should care for one another and share their feme (338; 908-9). Personal contact with Stalin had to be uplifting. Therefore the censors inserted the lines describing the sensation of greatness that filled Nikita when Stalin sat down next to him (337; 907). The same censors, however, struck out an example of Stalin's concern for Soviet women. Removed was the assertion of a local Party boss that Stalin envisioned passing a law which would authorize payments to mothers with many children: 3,000 rubles for a third child and 5,000 for a fourth (244; 848). The reason for the cut could have been the discrepancy between Stalin's generosity in the novel and the actual amounts stipulated by the Government's decree published in Pravda on 28 June 1936; 2,000 rubles for a seventh child and 5,000 for an
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eleventh. In revised versions of The Young Guard and For the Power of the Soviets, Stalin's military leadership was aggrandized by eulogistic insertions. A Red Army general in Fadeev's novel credits Stalin's genius with having developed and put into practice the Soviet military theory. The general himself is said to belong to Stalin's disciples "who tried to emulate their great teacher in everything" (22; 37). The victory at Stalingrad is seen by the author as "a great fruit of the genius whose name was given to this city" (404; 559). Three new chapters (63-65) in Kataev's novel are devoted to Stalin's statements on the war and to his 1 September 1942 meeting with Soviet partisan commanders in the Kremlin. Stalin makes all the important decisions concerning partisan operations, including the direction of their raids through the enemy's rear (554; 492-94). Another insertion reveals that the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement was created on Stalin's initiative in May 1942 (456; 333). Actually, until this time, Stalin ignored all suggestions to conduct centrally organized partisan warfare. As a result of his flawed directives, nearly all of the partisan and sabotage groups sent to the occupied territory were annihilated by the Germans.47 Given the influx of adulation for Lenin and Stalin, one is surprised to see that in some twenty instances their names were removed from Kataev's novel in politically impeccable contexts. Most deletions occurred in places where the leaders' names were used in solemn, elevated, or bombastic phrases. The pioneer Petia Bachei stopped giving his "Stalinist word of honor" (chestnoe stalinskoe), and an underground leader no longer calls upon the boy to be prepared to fight for the cause of Lenin and Stalin (308, 515; 245, 444). Furthermore, the censors edited a description of sailors going into battle with the cry, "For Motherland! For Stalin!" ready to die gloriously with Stalin's name on their lips (108; 73). In the above excisions the names of the leaders sounded like incantational cliches, ill-suited for making much of an impression on the reader. Of course, insertions heaping praise on Stalin were also rife with platitudes about his greatness and genius, but they were buttressed by his specific pronouncements and actions, whose validity no one dared to question. In a way, these interpolations replaced Stalin's prewar statements which lost their topicality and elicited less interest in the reading public. A case in point is Stalin's booklet Foundations of Leninism (1924). The censors cut a long quotation from the booklet and tempered laudation of it by Gavrik Chernoivanenko, leader of an underground group. They dropped his claim that the booklet told people how they should work to "build the bright, radiant temple of Communism" (379; 296). This kind of rhetoric was also expelled from the mind of an ordinary Soviet man who fancied himself to be a citizen of "the state of Truth, Goodness, and Justice created by the greatest geniuses of all times and nations, Lenin and Stalin" (520; 448). The censors might have felt that the author went too far; his dithyrambs smacked of parody. No doubt, Kataev knew that the Soviet Union was just the opposite of what he said about it in his novel. A striking feature of the 1953 revision of The Quiet Don was the infusion of propaganda in the form of quotations from Lenin and Stalin. Their judgments on the Moscow State Conference (August 1917) were invoked to condemn it as a counterrevolutionary imperialist conspiracy supported by foreign capital (2:460,
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465; 115, 119). Several insertions were intended to bring to light the role played by the Bolshevik leaders in the revolutionary events in the Don region. They included Lenin's announcement concerning the activities of the Congress of the Front-Line Cossacks in Kamenskaia, his reception of the Cossack delegation in Petrograd, and his order to take Rostov (2:608; 271). The largest revisions affecting Stalin are encountered in chapter 23 of part 7, the only place in the novel where he was mentioned before 1953. Stalin was said to have effected a drastic change on the Southern front when the plan proposed in his "historic memorandum" of 15 October 1919 was carried out. In point of fact, the plan attributed to Stalin—to strike the main blow across the territory of the Donets Basin—had already been presented early in July by loakim Vatsetis, then commander in chief of the Red Army. However, Lenin, Stalin, and all other members of the Politburo, except Trotskii, approved another plan, which led to the failure of the Red offensive.48 In 1953 the cited portion of Stalin's memorandum was expanded, converted into a "historic letter," and transferred from a footnote into the text. The content of the memorandum became Stalin's "strategic plan," this time "approved by Lenin" (4:565-566; 200-201).
The Party, Its Members, and Supporters For the Power of the Soviets and The Young Guard were the novels in which the presentation of the Party's role in the underground constituted the prime objective of self-censorship occasioned, as we have seen, by Pravda criticisms. The rapidly progressing glorification of things Soviet required that the Stahn-led Party be portrayed as the architect of every real and imagined accomplishment, especially of the victory over Germany. To fulfill these obligations, the authors of both novels had to employ additions, ranging from a few words to a series of chapters. The non-Communist Kataev proved to be a more efficient self-censor than Fadeev, a Party member since the age of seventeen. The revised 1951 edition of For the Power of the Soviets highlights the Party's tutelage over the Soviet underground from its very inception. A secretary of the Odessa Provincial Party Committee, who is scarcely mentioned in the original, appears as the organizer of the underground resistance. In an inserted chapter the secretary is said to have "personally guided the transfer of raion Party committees and sabotage groups into the underground and was well informed about all of Chernoivanenko's intentions and actions" (122; 87). A new character in the revised version is Captain Maksimov, a representative of the Ukrainian Partisan Staff, who is sent to the Odessa underground to collect information about its situation and to transmit the staffs orders. Chernoivanenko is pleasantly surprised when Maksimov tells him that Nikita Khrushchev and, possibly, Stalin know about the sabotage and propaganda actions carried out by his underground Party committee (456; 334). Along with Khrushchev, who headed the Ukrainian Partisan Staff, Maksimov mentions Panteleimon Ponomarenko, chief of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, which indicates that key posts in the partisan command were occupied not by professional military men but Party functionaries. Three new chapters are devoted to another rep-
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resentative of the Ukrainian staff, a certain Vasilii, who parachuted into the deep rear of the German army. Vasilii explains to the Odessa partisans the meaning of Stalin's order of 7 November 1942 and describes the leader's meeting with partisan commanders in the Kremlin (554; 484-95). The Party was supposed to be not only a brilliant planner of partisan military and subversive operations but also an effective provider of arms and victuals. This was not exactly the case in the original version of Kataev's novel. Before going underground, Gavrik Chernoivanenko obtained all the necessary documents for receiving considerable quantities of weapons, foodstuffs, and ammunition. Supply services, however, drastically reduced his food requests, suspected him of being a profiteer, and threatened to arrest him. Gavrik, who for reasons of secrecy could not reveal the destination of the requested items, had no choice but to accept his desperate situation. His predicament irritated Bubennov. He stated in Pravda that the refusal to supply Gavrik with foodstuffs "sounds like a slander of Odessa Party leaders who organized the underground before the abandonment of the city."49 In the revised version, Gavrik has no problems with getting food or ammunition. He simply supervises their reception and loading (125-29; 114). It was beyond Bubennov's comprehension that Gavrik, an old revolutionary with previous underground experience, could have forgotten to take along some vital equipment and medicines. The author corrected this oversight by making a character mention a box of medicines and by cutting a paragraph stating that Gavrik's group had forgotten many important things (274-75; 153). A close bond between the Party and the people had been a pat theme of Soviet propaganda epitomized in the slogan "The Party and the People Are One." At least two reviewers of his novel asserted that Kataev failed to give due attention to this unity as well as to the principal function of Gavrik's Party committee—the organization of popular resistance to the Germans.50 The author filled the gap in the 1951 edition. Two new chapters deal with Gavrik's visit to an old Bolshevik, Sinichkin-Zheleznyi, who is about to form a network of small underground groups (297; 227-36). In four other inserted chapters, the author describes Gavrik's getting acquainted with two peasant women and then staying in their country home. The mother and the daughter, whose husband serves in the Red Army, are model Soviet citizens. They receive Gavrik and Bachei Sr. with the warmest hospitality (297, 554; 223-27; 473-84). In the revised version of The Young Guard, the Party leadership is personified in the figure of Filipp Liutikov, the foreman of the machine shop of the Krasnodon Coal Trust. In the original text Liutikov was just an average Communist selected for underground work. Moreover, he had stayed away from public life and joined the Party fairly recently. He knew but one person in the Communist underground, his immediate superior. In September 1942, German gendarmes buried him alive in the town park, along with other adult members of the Krasnodon underground. The revised 1951 version presents a vastly different Liutikov. Numerous insertions and five newly written chapters (22-24, 51, 58) depict Liutikov as "the head and soul of the Krasnodon underground" (399; 540). A Party member since 1924, he is said to embody the widespread type of Party educator capable of the all-around upbringing of people in every occupation, be it economy, culture,
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administration, or the military (189; 235, 237). Intelligent and well-organized, he manages to divide his time between public activities, physical labor, reading, and recreation (189; 238). As the appointed leader of the clandestine Party committee in Krasnodon, he knows all the names, hideouts, and secret addresses of underground members. His vigorous, resolute, and at the same time judicious actions "have brought world fame to the little coal-minmg town of Krasnodon" (189; 249). The 1951 edition of Fadeev's novel features Liutikov as the founder and mentor of the Young Guard organization. It is he who instructs a Komsomol member to create a youth group to be attached to the Party underground organization. Liutikov emphasizes that the Party stands behind everything that the youth groups are doing (190; 250-55). A particularly close relationship develops between Liutikov and Oleg Koshevoi, a teenage leader of the Young Guard.51 Liutikov teaches Oleg the rules of underground resistance (236; 319) and exerts the strongest influence on the formation of the boy's character (372, 505). In January 1943 Liutikov and other Communists shared the fate of the majority of the Young Guards; either shot to death or thrown alive down the shaft of a coal mine in Krasnodon (467; 682). In all likelihood, this is the actual time and place of Liutikov's death. His early execution in the novel's original was based on incorrect information given to Fadeev in 1943 by Koshevoi's mother and another woman.52 But the author greatly exaggerated Liutikov's guidance over the Young Guard. Significantly, an eight-page story of this organization, written in July 1943 by its commander, Ivan Turkenich, contains no mention of Liutikov.53 The determined censorial effort to improve the political image of the Party and individual Bolsheviks extended well beyond works dealing with World War II. The 1953 censors of Seifullina's Virineia strengthened the ties between the Party and the peasantry by putting two paragraphs of political propaganda into the mouth of Pavel Suslov, the Bolshevik organizer in a remote Ural village. The Bolshevik Party, he tells his fellow villagers in the fall of 1917, stands for peace and the transfer of land to the peasants. It is the only party that leads the toilers of the soil into a bright future. All other parties are unable to make a clean break with the past and end up supporting the old regime.54 The 1947 version of Bruski retained well-nigh nothing of a four-page description of Kirill Zhdarkin's visit to the dairy farm belonging to the Bruski commune. The expunged material contravened the official myth of the unity between the Party and the people, for Kirill behaved like a conceited bully. He bawled out the farm manager, reminded a commune official that "we know how to shoot people," and aroused bitter resentment among the milkmaids.55 A tremendous amount of censorial energy was spent during the 1946-53 period on cleansing individual Bolsheviks of a wide array of personal vices pertaining, among other things, to sex, marriage, foul language, drinking, and brutality. The 1948 censors of Humus blotted out the portrayal of the rape of a female teacher by the village Bolshevik Sofron Konyshev, along with lines about his physical and verbal abuse of the victim after learning that she was not a virgin.56 A number of 1948 and 1953 excisions dealt with Sofron's heavy drinking, unruly behavior, and wild cursing.57
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In 1947 a whole page was taken from volume 1 of Bruski because it told how the chairman of a village Soviet kept his blind centenarian mother in the bathhouse, ordering her to make moonshine and giving her no water to drink. Simultaneously, the readers were not allowed to see Kirill sending a boy to get two gallons of moonshine or to hear his singing the Internationale to muffle the angry shouting of the jealous Zinka, his first wife.58 The revised 1952 version of Virgin Soil Upturned omitted the information that Razmetnov used to beat his mistress (43; 41). A complete metamorphosis of Gavrik Chernoivanenko's marital status occurred in the 1951 version of For the Power of the Soviets. A confirmed old bachelor, with a soul impervious to familial tenderness, he was converted into a widower still in love with his late wife (211; 115). As he leaves for the catacombs, Gavrik kisses a photograph of her and takes it along (211; 116, 117). So acts the man who in the novel's earlier editions was said to be unsentimental and scornful of any display of emotion, something he dismissed as "lyrics" (137, 146-47; 107, 112). Other cuts designed to boost Gavrik's respectability affected his mistrust of his underground comrades (273; 153), occasional inability to control his anger (321; 254), and his pride in being stubborn (529; 451).59 Non-Party members who sided with the Soviets were subject to almost equally as severe scrutiny as the Bolsheviks. The artless peasant beauty Virineia, the eponymous heroine of Seifullina's novel, and the Red Cossack Fedor Podtelkov, from The Quiet Don, may serve as examples. Virineia had to be purified of sins considered incompatible with her ultimate role as a political associate of the Bolshevik Pavel Suslov, her new common-law husband. Large cuts were made in the scene of her encounter with a young engineer in the steppe. She no longer speaks of her being shameless and intoxicated by the smells of spring. Nor does she make suggestive remarks to the equally aroused companion or sit down with him on the grass (95-96; 43). The cuts were made despite the fact that no coitus followed, because of the sudden emergence of her first commonlaw husband, Vas'ka. Numerous excisions concerned Virineia's behavior after leaving Vas'ka—her carousing with rakish muzhiks and workers (103, 108; 50, 55) and, particularly, her affair with a blacksmith (118, 121; 64, 67). Furthermore, her speech was carefully purged of offensive and coarse expressions. The case of Podtelkov was a special one since it involved Stalin. Until 1953 Podtelkov's appearance, ideas, and actions were presented in accordance with what Sholokhov had read about him in the 1920s in Soviet and White sources and what he had heard from personal acquaintances. On the basis of this information Sholokhov's Podtelkov displayed the traditional Cossack disrespect for and mistrust of the local non-Cossack population. Stalin, however, viewed Podtelkov in a different light. "The prominent writer of our time, Comrade Sholokhov, has made in his The Quiet Don a number of blunders and outright erroneous assertions concerning Syrtsov, Podtelkov, Knvoshlykov, and others," Stalin stated in his letter to Feliks Kon, dated 9 July 1929.60 The letter saw the light in 1949 and Sholokhov immediately wrote to the dictator, asking him to elaborate on the alleged "errors." There was no reply. Stalin's silence could have been prompted by his feeling that his remarks were still valid and that Sholokhov and the censors would know what to do without any
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written suggestions. With Syrtsov's name excised in 1936, the censor-editor Potapov had to deal with Podtelkov and his closest associate, Mikhail Krivoshlykov. Potapov did not find anything objectionable about Krivoshlykov personally and concentrated on Podtelkov, making about forty revisions. As a result, Podtelkov no longer refuses to share the Cossack land with "the muzhiks" (2:525; 181) or to supply arms to Red non-Cossack workers (2:570; 230). To propagate the myth of a politically orthodox leader of Cossack stock, Podtelkov was made to address a meeting in Kamenskaia the day after he had been elected chairman of the Don Cossack Military Revolutionary Committee. In this inserted speech, he stresses the complete solidarity with the Bolshevik aims, although, he says, he does not formally belong to the Bolshevik Party (2:554; 212-13).61 A dozen revisions concerning Podtelkov were made in the description of negotiations between representatives of the Cossack Revolutionary Committee and the Don Government headed by Ataman Aleksei Kaledin (2:557-63; 216-23). Words and phrases indicating Podtelkov's lack of confidence, hesitation, simplemindedness, stammering, as well as some politically awkward or undesirable expressions, were either emended or eliminated. Conspicuous cuts affected Podtelkov's morality in his private life. In the novel's earlier versions, Podtelkov, setting out on an expedition to the northern Don country, took along his mistress Zinka, "a fair-skmned buxom girl." Krivoshlykov and Zinka could not tolerate each other, and he categorically demanded that Podtelkov get rid of her. The request was granted in 1953. Some thirty lines connected with Zinka disappeared, and since that time Podtelkov has traveled with the expedition without any sign of moral turpitude (2:660; 325). His manners also changed for the better. He stopped being rude to his associates and gave up smelling his "putrid foot cloths" (2:680; 346). His eyes lost "the corpselike stare" (2:523; 179) and he ceased to sigh like "a sick animal" (2:669; 334). Similes likening the Bolsheviks and their supporters to animals were among the favorite censorial targets in 1946-53. The head of Sin-Bin-U lost its resemblance to that of a cobra in Armored Train No. 14-69. The censors of "Lawbreakers" found that the long hands and facial expressions of the educator Martynov should not justify his being compared to a monkey.62 Among animallike characteristics judged unbecoming of the Bolsheviks in the 1953 version of The Quiet Don were Shtokman's "polecatlike eyes" (1:128; 129), Valet's "hedgehog snout" (2:635; 299), and the behavior of the chairman of a village revolutionary committee who "fidgeted in his chair like a wolf caught in a trap" (2:642; 306). Many other examples from The Quiet Don attest to the increased censorial concern for the outward appearance or personal hygiene of individual Bolsheviks and their associates. Shtokman's beard ceased to be "unclean" (3:226; 223) and Valet's ears were no longer "unwashed and green inside" (2:633; 296). The censors also objected to a pro-Bolshevik Cossack being "lop-eared" (2:472; 127) and dropped the words "bumpy like a winter melon" from the description of the head of another revolutionary Cossack (2:492; 147). The depiction of Bunchuk's appearance was purged of phrases emphasizing that he did not possess "a single
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striking feature" and that everything about him looked "gray and commonplace" (1:305; 307). The appearance of the Bolsheviks' spouses and relatives was also not overlooked. Take Shtokman's wife, for instance. Unless one reads a pre-1953 edition of The Quiet Don, there is no way of knowing that "her gray face was worn smooth by tears like an old, much-handled coin, and dull and pitiable, it had turned yellow" when her arrested husband was driven away in a carriage (1:216; 217). In 1951 the censors dropped the epithet "plain" describing the face of the sister of Sergei Tiulenin, a heroic Young Guard leader (108; 137). One of the censorial methods used to elicit greater respect for Bolshevik characters was to replace casual or somewhat disparaging diminutives of their first names with more dignified variants of these names or with last names. An earlier example of this procedure can be found in volume 3 of Bruski, where a Komsomol activist named Fen'ka was transformed into Fenia in 1933 and into Fenia Panova in 1934. In 1947 the novel's heroine Steshka was irregularly changed to Stesha, while the hero's name Kir'ka became Kirill or Zhdarkin nearly everywhere. Even more consistent was the treatment of Mishka Koshevoi in the 1953 version of The Quiet Don. The diminutive Mishka was replaced throughout the novel by Mikhail or Koshevoi, and, occasionally, omitted altogether. In a few isolated cases, the possessive diminutive form, Mishkin, was preserved, perhaps by oversight. A full-length book can be written about the censorship of the Bolsheviks and their supporters during the 1946-53 period. As for this study, I can only hope that it gives enough examples to convey an idea of the intensity and diversity of censorial activity involving Bolshevik characters.
The Red Army, Partisans, and Underground Fighters Self-censorship of The Young Guard and For the Power of the Soviets offers a good illustration of what had to be done in these areas to comply with the Party instructions formulated in the Pravda editorial of 3 December 1947 regarding Fadeev's novel and in Bubennov's critique of Kataev printed in the same newspaper on 16 and 17 January 1950. Taken to task for his stark descriptions of the panic caused by the hasty retreat of the Red Army, Fadeev crossed out passages attesting to the fear and confusion during the evacuation of Krasnodon. Throngs of refugees and vehicles flooded the streets of the town. "All this," Fadeev originally wrote, "shouted, cursed, cried, rattled, and jangled. With roaring motors and heart-rending sounds of their horns, trucks loaded with military or civilian goods squeezed their way through the jumble of people and carts. The people tried to climb onto the trucks but were pushed off." In the revised version, this picture was replaced by columns of grim-faced people, walking in silence and noticing nothing of what was going on around them. Only leaders of the columns ran back and forth, helping militiamen to maintain order among refugees (16; 21-22). Other references to panic, fear, and disorder vanished without a trace. The same happened in Kataev's novel to multitudes of people who fled from Odessa and wandered aimlessly in the steppe, mixing with supply units
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of the retreating Red Army (104; 70). Defeats of the Red Army became unacceptable, irrespective of their significance. The boy Petia Bachei no longer reads in the eyes of a dying Russian sailor the words "we are crushed" (115; 77). In like manner, the 1951 version of The Young Guard preferred not to mention that the attack of an infantry battalion on a small village was repulsed (453; 666). Fadeev's principal device for upgrading the Red Army was insertion. The new chapter 3 included a long paragraph dealing with its immense superiority over the enemy. Soviet officers and soldiers were said to have surpassed the Germans in terms of morality, political maturity, and fighting qualities. The retreat of the Red Army was awkwardly explained by the foe's extraordinary cruelty, desperate exertion of the last ounce of strength, and numerical superiority (22; 37). Chapter 57 opens with a two-page glorification of the Stalingrad victory, attributed to the new socialist system. Red Army men of 1943 "seemed, in the spiritual sense, to have advanced to the new and highest stage in the history of mankind" (404; 591). Not surprisingly, such people had to be free from defects of ordinary mortals. Hence Fadeev was obliged to redraw the portrait of a Soviet general, especially since the Pravda editorial of 3 December 1947 maintained that this warrior projected a caricatured image of a Red Army commander. The general, nicknamed Kolobok ("small round loaf), originally had a large belly. His head—big, round, and shaved—"firmly rested on his shoulders, experiencing no need for a neck." In 1951 all these characteristics were exchanged for "a round, strong, and very Russian face" (444; 655). In earlier versions, Kolobok's orderly would wake his master up by dragging him from the bunk across the room and putting him on a stool. Only then would the general open his eyes. The refurbished Kolobok wakes up as soon as his orderly starts raising his body from the bunk. He thanks the orderly, jumps from his bed, and proceeds to the stool with "unexpected nimbleness" under his own power (445; 657). Furthermore, Fadeev made the general refrain from using strong language and forced him to give up his daily ritual of gulping down in one breath a full glass of vodka (446, 447; 658). Three new chapters of The Young Guard serve the purpose of expanding the activities of Soviet partisans. Attention is focused on a partisan leader, Ivan Protsenko, and his wife Katia. The central event is Katia's crossing the front line with important information about the enemy which Protsenko asked her to deliver to the political department of a tank corps. Her mission accomplished, Katia is dispatched back to the German-occupied territory to do intelligence work in Voroshilovgrad (404; 560-98). Extensive self-censorship carried out by Kataev with regard to the Odessa underground was triggered by Bubennov's contention that the author gave too much space to secondary events and virtually neglected the heroic struggle of the underground fighters.63 To increase the operational capabilities of Gavrik's group, Kataev reinforced it with several local Communists. These men paste leaflets and destroy a long stretch of railroad track (544; 463-66). Clusters of inserted chapters center on subversive activities in the Odessa harbor. Climatic events in the harbor occur in chapters 21-24 of part 2. Gavrik's men blow up railroad cars filled with dynamite, burn gasoline tanks, and organize the loading of a Rumanian ship with grain in such a way that it will turn over in the open sea (474;
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369-414). As the advancing Red Army troops converge on Odessa, the Gavrik group receives, in the novel's revised version, an order from Moscow to prevent the enemy from demolishing buildings in Odessa and, above all, installations in the harbor (587; 538-39). And, according to one of Gavrik's lieutenants, "Our people saved the harbor! . . . All major installations have remained intact. . . . The elevator! The refrigerator! . . . The mechanized workshop!" (627; 573-74). Soviet memoirs, however, tell a different story: "The partisans and underground fighters were unable to save the harbor from destruction. . . . The fascist invaders blew up the refrigerator, the elevator, the mechanized workshop. . . . "64 Along with additions magnifying the accomplishments of Gavrik's group, Kataev made multiple excisions to mitigate its deprivations. The author heeded Bubennov's assertions that the authorities should have supplied Gavrik with sufficient amounts of victuals and that the invasion of mice, which ate well-nigh all of Gavrik's food reserves in the catacombs, was a trivial episode.65 The original version of For the Power of the Soviets treated the invasion and the ingenious methods of combating it in great detail; but in 1951 Kataev crossed out all scenes of fighting the mice (360-62; 278), as well as the description of the damage they did. He retained only the initial stage of the incursion, transforming it into Petia's dream (346-48; 527-28). Then the author eliminated passages showing the inability of Gavrik's men to obtain food from the local population, frightened by the Rumanian order to shoot anyone suspected of contact with the partisans (350, 362; 271, 285). Gavrik had to slash the daily food ration to 100 grams of millet and he expressed concern about the ability of his fellow Bolsheviks to withstand the mental stress caused by starvation. These details vanished in 1951, though what Kataev wrote about the famine coincides with factual accounts of it given by former members of the Odessa underground.66 A forced concealment of the bitter truth is also manifested in the radical truncation of a song composed by Gavrik for a New Year's celebration. In his Pravda article, Bubennov objected to the song's lines describing the partisans' anxiety, hunger, feeling of hopelessness, premonition of death, as well as their sacrificial determination to die for the happiness of the people. Kataev reacted by censoring seven out of nine original quatrains of the song (396-97; 307). A deplorable concession, especially since the real author of the song is Semen Lazarev, a leader of the Odessa underground. Kataev knew him and printed his song in "The Catacombs."67 As could be expected, concern about the reputation of Soviet warriors extended beyond works dealing with World War II. The heavy hand of censorship went over the partisans in the 1951 edition of The Rout and over the Red troops in the 1953 editions of Humus and The Quiet Don. Fadeev's novel was purged of the passage comparing defeated partisans' detachments with ant hills scattered by a "boot shod with death." The "frenzied ants either threw themselves in desperation under the boot or crawled into the unknown in disorderly crowds to rot to death in their own acid."68 Seifullina's remark that the Red Guards participated "in collecting levies in villages," that is, in robbing the peasants, was replaced by the wooden officialese, "in protecting the revolutionary restructuring of the
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village." A dozen other revisions took care of the Red Guards' shabby appearance, drinking, and swearing, as well as of the jeers shouted at them by the townsfolk.69 The censors of The Quiet Don hushed up episodes of murder, rape, and robbery committed by soldiers of the Second Socialist Army. This designation was also deleted as too lofty for the formation demoralized "under the influence of criminal elements" (2:628-29; 291-93).
Religion Censorial revisions affecting religion were more evident during the 1946-53 period than in any other time. Reasons for this development lie in the changed official attitude toward the church in the course of the war. Stalin realized that a revived state-controlled church could effectively support and propagandize his policies. The dictator must also have taken into consideration the general upsurge in religious feelings and the reopening of churches in German-occupied territories, an act welcomed by the majority of their populations. In 1943 Stalin restored the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, and antireligious propaganda was tempered for the remainder of his life. In literary works this process was reflected in the removal of passages judged to be critical, ironic, or hostile with respect to religion. The censors of the 1948 edition of Stepan Razin excluded a whole page from an old man's denunciation of the Russian Orthodox faith and of its ignoble manipulation by the powers that be. In the excised text the old man accuses the fathers of the Russian church of hypocrisy. They adopted the Jewish Bible but persecute the Jews. The Christian tenets of mercy and meekness, the old man claims, are antithetical to human nature with its burning passions and urge to indulge in earthly pleasures and joys. Patriarchs and priests preach obedience by representing the tsar as God on Earth, as lord over the lives of his subjects. The tsar and his cohorts—courtiers, boyars, princes—live at the expense of the people and jump on anyone who dares to speak against their faith.70 Another noteworthy excision involved the invective that the drunk Razin shouted in an empty church against Saint Vladimir of Kiev and other Orthodox saints. Thinking of Vladimir's pre-Christian life, Razin called him a fornicator and a polygamist. Furthermore, Razin derided the prince's compulsory baptism of the Russians and blasted the saints for telling the peasants to believe in God and to feed the tsar and the boyars.71 The censors tended to get rid of blatantly antireligious acts committed by individual Communists or by the authorities. Starting with the 1947 edition of Bruski, Kirill Zhdarkin no longer draws a pig's mug with chalk on the icon belonging to his first wife or makes fun of her religiosity. Nor is he permitted to get the village priest drunk and to have him taken in a camel-drawn cart to church to serve vespers.72 Since no trace was left of Kirill's practical joke, it is not quite clear why the priest behaves in an odd way in the church and falls down before starting the service. In volume 4 of the same novel, the censors expunged a phrase about the fate of monastic dwellings during the victorious march of socialist construction: '"Holy places'—abodes, quiet hermitages, monasteries—
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were being occupied to the accompaniment of noise, din, and cursing. . . . " (103; 737). The removal of antireligious passages from Stepan Razin and Bruski did not signify any serious weakening of the atheistic foundations of the Communist state. Chapygin's novel was purged of tirades likely to offend true believers or to suggest similarities between the subservient status of the church in tsarist Russia and under Stalin; paragraphs banned from Bruski pictured the Party as a ruthless enemy of religion, an image that Stalin was not eager to cultivate after the war. On the other hand, the censors were frequently suppressing any display of real or pretended religiosity in supporters of the Soviet regime. In Virineia a peasant named Magara had a period of ardent faith in God followed by a phase of blasphemous and dissolute life, culminating in a murder. Finally, he resolves to expiate his sins by joining the Reds to fight for peasants. "Now again I want to stand up for truth for His sake. ... I'll go to kill for the right cause," he tells the Bolshevik Pavel. In the 1953 edition Magara joins the Reds for the opposite reason: "I don't believe in God, I can't and never will be able to be his servant. I'm looking for another truth" (139; 85). In the revised version of For the Power of the Soviets the censors forbade Gavrik from swearing by the Holy Cross, though he, a confirmed Communist, could use this symbol only ironically (510; 441). Elsewhere the censors preferred not to mention that an old teacher had made a sign of the cross over Bachei, Sr., thus blessing his former pupil for the struggle against the Rumanians (486; 422). In like fashion The Quiet Don lost the italicized part of the phrase "having filled himself with food, Grigorii rose heavily and crossed himself with a drunken motion" (2:593; 254). What was wrong with this habitual gesture after taking a meal is hard to say. At this point in the novel Grigorii sided with the Soviets and the censor might have considered it inappropriate for him to cross himself. Or, in more general terms, an attractive character like Grigorii should be as far as possible free from any display of religiosity. One type of atheistic censorship affected the figurative use of religious imagery in lofty or aesthetically pleasing contexts. In For the Power of the Soviets the censors, or Kataev, dispensed with the metaphor "angelic plumage of the June morning," which described "manes of gray fog" (44; 25). A few pages later, the following sentence was discarded: "Amid this celestial graveyard with its boulders of unfinished marble monuments to the angels, the senior jurist Petr Vasil'evich Bachei felt immortal like God" (49; 27). The religious metaphor applies here to the sunlit clouds seen by Bachei from an airborne plane. Needless to say, the soul of this perfect Soviet man was not supposed to enter into an intimate union with the Divine Father. In the 1953 edition of Virineia the italicized component vanished from the simile likening the cheerful and fresh heroine to "a birch tree on Trinity Sunday" (95; 43) and the voices of a crowd stopped sounding "like a joyous prayer of life" (86; 35).
Peasants The work of polishing up the profile of the Russian peasantry was continued
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with redoubled energy in the postwar period. A contributing factor to this process was the rise of official nationalism. Unflattering descriptions of peasants, who comprised the greater part of the population, could impair the reputation of the Russian people. Thus the censors of the 1947 version of Bruski blotted out Kirill's and Bogdanov's references to peasants as "savages," along with the latter's Marxist condemnation of private ownership as the root of rural backwardness, cruelty, and greed.73 Throughout the novel the censors tabooed the ugliest displays of peasants' brutality. The following incidents may serve as illustrations. Feuding peasants burn one another's homes. To punish his cat for eating up a chicken, a peasant tosses the animal to a wolfhound that tears it to pieces. To get rid of his newborn quadruplets, the father keeps the doors open so that the infants catch cold; the mother selects the strongest baby for breast feeding, abandoning the rest to death by starvation.74 Consistent revisions were made in Bruski to soft-pedal the peasants' opposition to the Soviet regime and its agrarian policy. Deleted was information that in the early 1920s the peasants greeted anti-Bolshevik partisans as liberators and joined their ranks in great numbers. Nothing remained of the scene of a village meeting at which the peasants protested against taxation. Further excisions concerned reluctance of even the poorest peasants to join collectives and communes, as well as inefficiency of these organizations plagued by drinking, nepotism, lack of discipline, poverty, hunger, and mass desertion.75 The relationship between the village and the city was an area into which the censors of 1946-53 made more inroads than their predecessors. The 1948 edition of Humus lost a page describing the moral degeneration of the countryside during World War I. In the expunged text the promiscuity of peasant women and girls was attributed to their having broken away from the soil, from its fundamental law that everything living must bear fruit. Like city dwellers, village women indulged in sex for pleasure, had abortions, and contracted venereal diseases. They also started to use cosmetics, wear city-cut clothes, and comb their hair in city style.76 Very similar passages blaming the city for the moral corruption of the village disappeared in 1953 from Virineia (93; 41). A different but equally sharp denunciation of the city could be found before 1947 in volume 3 of Bruski. In it Panferov stressed the parasitic nature of the city, which from its very beginning had lived off the countryside. The city mocked the village for its backwardness, "forgetting its own idiotism—the idiotism of its higher spheres, its stinking clubs, and its ladies who had turned the dance into a fox trot." Concurrently, the novel's preceding volume omitted Bogdanov's favorable comparison of the city to the village. The city, this Marxist claimed, was culturally superior to the village because it created technology and rebuilt industry while the conservative countryside clung to the ways born thousands of years ago. The revolutionaries had the task of destroying the rural conservatism, to bring the city into the village.77 Clearly, the censors trod the middle path. They objected to showing the dark sides of the city and the village since both of them were inhabited by the same nationality. In 1947 and 1951 the censors of The Rout sacrificed the proletarian pride of Morozka and Dubov to clean Red peasant partisans from the labels of "cowards" and "deserter upon deserter" affixed to them by the two coal miners.78
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Enemies In the 1946-53 period a full-scale censorial attack was launched against the White camp for the first time. Its purpose was to defame the White movement and its leaders, especially General Kornilov. The 1953 version of The Quiet Don abounds in this type of revision. The most primitive political rhetoric was introduced to portray Kornilov's movement as directed against revolutionary working masses and supported by the most reactionary elements in Russia and by foreign imperialists (2:460, 464; 114, 119). A typical passage, with insertions in italics, said that "Kornilov was the banner of the restoration of the old, bourgeoislandowners' Russia. And to this black banner thronged from everywhere the brazen counterrevolutionaries, obsessed by the desire to grip in an iron vise the revolutionary working class led by Lenin and Stalin, and to decapitate and strangle the forces of the Revolution" (2:460; 114). Passages bespeaking Kornilov's idealism and honesty were expunged, including his own statements about his being concerned solely with saving Russia and not wanting to take part in what he considered a dishonorable game played by the Provisional Government (2:459; 113, 114). Disregard for historical truth is also evident in the omission of the author's observations that, in his memorandum to the Provisional Government, Kornilov advocated the use of capital punishment solely for "a number of the most serious crimes, primarily military," which were to be tried by "revolutionary" courts-martial, and that he demanded the committees in military units to "be made responsible before the law" (2:439; 93). The words in quotation marks were copied by Sholokhov from the highly reliable memoirs of General Anton Denikin and the historical accuracy of these words is borne out in Soviet studies of the 1920s.79 With respect to Kornilov as a person, the censors did their best to deprive him of basic human characteristics. They cut a paragraph describing how he chased a butterfly, and prohibited him from telling the story of his dream to General Ivan Romanovskii (2:478-79; 133). Furthermore, some twenty-five concluding lines were removed from chapters 13 and 16 of part 4 because they presented a human and rather attractive portrait of Kornilov set off against a lyrical landscape (2:460, 478-79; 115, 133). Aleksei Kaledin and Petr Krasnov, atamans of the Don Cossacks, underwent a similar editorial screening as did Kornilov. Kaledin's statements about his Don Government being elected by the people, about his indifference to staying in power, and about his desire to avoid unnecessary bloodshed were eliminated (2:561, 599; 220, 260). Again, as they did with Kornilov, the censors deleted material based on trustworthy historical accounts.80 They also prevented the reader from knowing that Krasnov was "superbly educated" or that he was greeted with enthusiastic applause at a session of the Don Parliament and made "a brilliant" speech there (3:13, 14; 11, 12). Even the name and the patronymic of Kaledin's wife and the patronymic of his assistant, Mitrofan Bogaevskii, vanished (2:599, 601; 260, 262). The touch of respect and politeness associated with the use of a patronymic was evidently deemed inappropriate in relation to these hostile individuals. As marks of political disapprobation, the words "White Guard" (2:526; 183),
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"White Cossack" (3:7; 5), "Demkin's" (3:315; 326), and "White" (3:205; 211) were added before the designations of units fighting against the Bolsheviks. Once the epithet "White" was attached to "the Poles" in the speech of Prokhor Zykov, something that this simple Cossack would not have done on his own (4:638, 277). The 1953 censors of The Quiet Don did not overlook the previously untouched names of Filipp Mironov, lurii Sablin, and Aleksei Brusilov, prominent Red Army figures who, at various times, were put into the category of Soviet enemies. Mironov, a Red cavalry commander in the Don region, was shot in 1921 on false charges of treason. All references to him, except a negative one, were dropped from The Quiet Don. Erasures of Sablin's name, who fought the White Don Cossacks in 1918, reflected his liquidation during the purges of the 1930s. General Brusilov, a former commander in chief of the Russian armed forces, joined the Red Army in 1920. The reason for banning his name goes back to the Soviet postwar seizure in Germany of the manuscript of the second part of the general's book My Reminiscences. The second part was distinctly anti-Bolshevik in its character, and Stalin considered Brusilov to be its author.81 Revisions pertaining to enemies in the 1947 edition of Bruski were as abundant as in The Quiet Don and affected a wide range of characters. A four-page extraction greatly reduced the reader's knowledge about Karasiuk, a leader of antiBolshevik partisans in the early 1920s. Part of the excised section showed him as a human being enjoying the freshness of an early morning. Equally objectionable was the disclosure that Karasiuk had once been a Communist and had commanded a Red partisan detachment. He turned against the Soviets when his unit was placed under command of a former tsarist colonel. Nor could the censors appreciate the enthusiastic support he had received from the peasants as an anti-Soviet fighter before his partisans started looting and raping.82 A mixture of additions and deletions was applied to other rural enemies. The censors suppressed IPia Gur'ianov's arguments against forced collectivization, along with the statement that they had a strong impact on fellow villagers. Conversely, insertions were made to expand sabotage activities of the well-to-do peasant Plakushchev. In the new passages he asks a peasant to throw an open can of beetles into a collective-farm barn so that the insects would eat up seeds stored inside. To avoid being exposed, Plakushchev and his accomplices drown a talkative peasant in an ice hole. Finally, it turns out that it was Plakushchev, not Mother Nature, who infected the poultry yard of the Bruski commune with plague, causing the death of 3,000 chickens.83 Alone, or in cooperation with the censors, the author of Bruski did his best to compromise the former Party leaders who had been branded and punished as enemies of the people during the 1936-38 purges. Nikolai Bukharin became the prime censorial target. The gravest accusation against him was added in volume 4. Its original text already contained Bogdanov's assertion that Bukharin fought Lenin and wanted to arrest him. In 1947 Bogdanov goes a step further: "And what does it mean to arrest Lenin? We know how German bandits 'arrested' Karl Liebknecht in their time" (28; 682). The insertion implies that Bukharin intended to kill Lenin, just what the Germans did with Liebknecht. The insinuation grew out of the fact that in 1918 Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who, like
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Bukharin, opposed the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany, approached him with the idea of removing Lenin from power and of organizing a new government consisting of Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Left Communists. Bukharin rejected the proposal, and he denied the charge of having plotted to kill Lenin during the 1938 show trial in Moscow at which he was the principal defendant, Panferov, or the censors, took the earliest opportunity to publicize the spurious indictment. To hush up Bukharin's popularity in the Party, the 1947 censors of Bruski discarded a sentence saying that Communists used to call him Bukharchik, an endearing diminutive of his name (31; 685). Elsewhere, Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinov'ev, and Rykov ceased to be "great leaders" in the eyes of some Communists (28; 682). Dissatisfied with the appearance of Bukharin and Zinov'ev, the censors got rid of the former's "quite youthful looks" (30; 684), omitted the comparison of the latter's shaggy head to that of a lion, and transformed his clear, "almost girlish voice" into one "of a castrate" (31; 684). While Zinov'ev lost his resemblance to a lion, Stalin acquired it. An interpolation tells us that Stalin's smooth and powerful gestures reminded Kirill of a lion's movements (35; 67778). An innocent archaeology professor, Tomskii, became Omskii, just because his earlier name happened to be identical to that of a top Bolshevik leader who shot himself in 1936 to escape arrest and humiliation.84 Censorial mistreatment of all kinds of enemies reveals a vigorous continuation of the campaign of hatred and calumny against the people who had long been dead. Nothing was forgiven or forgotten in the final years of Stalin's life.
Puritanical Censorship Curses and Obscenities Censorship of swearwords and indecorous expressions in the 1946-53 period was inconsistent. Not a single oath disappeared from numerous editions of How the Steel Was Tempered. The censors were lenient with The Rout but strict with Virineia and The Quiet Don. Hardest hit were Bruski and Virgin Soil Upturned. It is difficult to pinpoint the peak in the removal of foul language. Bruski went through the purge in 1947 while Virgin Soil Upturned had to wait until 1952. Some censors might have been more purist than others. Well-nigh all of some fifteen mother curses, including two blasphemies, were expunged from the revised edition of Virgin Soil Upturned. Bruski, where the censors faced relatively few obscenities, also parted with its matiuki, one of them blasphemous. One blasphemous and one regular matiuki vanished from the 1951 edition of The Rout; but two blasphemies survived, as did all words like matershchina and maternaia bran', which refer to the characters' use of mother curses. Such words and actual matiuki were carefully eliminated in the 1953 version of Virineia, except for Magara's violent profanity sending God and the Holy Virgin to hell. The censor-editor Potapov cut about half of some forty matiuki from The Quiet Don. Strangely, he displayed less aggressiveness against out-
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right mother curses than against words reporting their usage. On the other hand, he showed little mercy for sacrilegious profanities, discarding three uttered by Red characters and retaining one produced by Grigorii Melekhov. Proportionately, the number of excised matiuki is smaller in the novel's last two volumes than in the first two. Perhaps this signaled the incipient relaxation of censorship after Stalin's death. Abbreviations for "whore" ("b . . . ") and ass ("zh . . . ") also fared better in volumes 3 and 4. But a truly surprising leniency was given in 1950 to the "whore" in Vladimir Maiakovskii's poem "Yam!" ("To You!" 1915), where this word was spelled in full: bliadiam, the dative plural. This preservation is especially remarkable since the poem's 1935 edition has the usual "b . . . " in this place.85 I have not encountered a retention of bliad' in any other printed work of the 1946-53 period. One wonders whether the censor treated Maiakovskii's text with particular reverence, mindful of Stalin's having called him "the best and most talented writer of our Soviet epoch" in 1935. On the other hand, the word bliad' had never been spelled out in Soviet publications of Maiakovskii's poem "Vo ves' golos" ("At the Top of My Voice"), beginning with its earliest appearance in the February 1930 issue of Oktiabr' in which we find the usual "b" followed by dots. As a proclamation of the poet's allegiance to Communism, this poem was printed much more frequently than the prerevolutionary "To You!" and the full spelling of bliad' in it would not, from the censor's angle, serve as a good example to millions of readers. The revised version of Virgin Soil Upturned bears witness to a harsher treatment of bliad'. Here Potapov had dropped both of the remaining "b . . . " and engaged in a large-scale expurgation of other improprieties. At times he exhibited more prudishness than those who were in charge of the 1934 edition for schoolchildren. Potapov removed, for example, two curses from Liubishkin's speech (168; 161) and a colloquialism for "masturbate" from Semen Ostrovnov's remarks (180; 172) which had been left intact in the 1934 edition. The variety of coarse expressions expunged from the characters' speech can be exemplified by such phrases as "made as if for a guardsman" (about a tall girl, 97; 93), "let them sweat till they're wet between their legs," (157; 150), "your urine goes to your head" (322; 310), and even "Shut up!" (155; 148). Volume 4 of Bruski lost "shut up" and "son of a bitch" (153; 773) while Virineia parted with "crap" (108; 54) and kobeli, that is, "male dogs," denoting "lascivious men" in the context (88; 37). By contrast, the last three designations remained untouched in The Rout. Yet, in spite of a milder treatment of certain works, the censorship of the 1946-53 period reached its overall goal of substantially reducing the presence of obscenities in Soviet literature.
Eroticism The 1946-53 revisions pertaining to the physiological side of love were not only abundant; but, because of their length, they stood out more conspicuously than the corrections associated with obscenities. The scope of antisexual censorship varied from work to work. As in their dealings with foul language, the censors showed no interest in How the Steel Was Tempered, acted with restraint in
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The Rout, and rode roughshod over Sholokhov's novels and Virineia. The unevenness stems partly from the fact that The Rout and Ostrovskii's masterpiece of Socialist Realism had been cleansed of major erotic episodes in earlier periods while Virgin Soil Upturned and The Quiet Don had been allowed to retain much of their carnality until the early 1950s and Virineia had not been reprinted since 1936, when puritanical requirements were less stringent. Our discussion of sexoriented censorship will concentrate on Sholokhov's novels, which offer the widest array of samples. Subjected to censorship in the revised version of The Quiet Don were depictions of intercourse, suggestive remarks, popular jokes and sayings, movements and postures of the body likely to evoke erotic associations, scenes of rape and seduction, accounts of carnal desires, and characters' statements about their sexual experiences. The longest cuts included the dialogue between Mit'ka Korshunov and Elizaveta Mokhova about a stain of blood left on her skirt after her deflowering (1:110-11; 111), a page-long description of Mit'ka's sexual harassment of his sister (1:166-67; 168), and Dar'ia's account of how a youth tried to seduce her (1:317; 321). Several phrases were omitted from the scene of Frania's rape by the Cossacks (1:222, 223; 224, 225), and a student's diary was purged of his observations about Elizaveta's sexual voracity and experience (1:276, 276; 279, 280). Elsewhere the overzealous Potapov withheld information that a Cossack, on leave from the army, "slept four nights with his wife" (1:179; 180), and sporadically the censor-editor did away with equally harmless remarks about the movement, firmness, color, and shape of women's breasts and nipples (1:47, 64, 69; 46, 64, 69). Potapov's concern for this part of the body extended to nature, resulting in the deletion of a simile likening a cloud to "a sumptuous foamwhite breast" (1:179; 180). The censor of the 1952 edition of Armored Train No. 14-69 must have felt the same way when he edited the words "resembling breasts" which describe big, dark-green hills,86 Given these kinds of corrections, it is hardly surprising that Potapov invaded the intimate sphere of the animal kingdom. He did it by excluding the scenes of mating between a rooster and a hen (1:159; 161) and between a bull and a cow (2:666; 331). Moreover, this censor-editor banned the authorial phrase about a merchant's dogs being let loose from the chain for mating (1:114; 114). Erotic elements in the revised 1952 edition of Virgin Soil Upturned received an even harsher treatment than those in The Quiet Don. Potapov resurrected the revisions that were made in the prudish 1934 Sov. lit. edition of Virgin Soil Upturned and added his own. He dropped, for example, Nagul'nov's revelations about his sexual capabilities (118; 113), Davydov's comment, "They mount your woman," pertaining to Nagul'nov's wife, Lushka (104; 99), and a few fairly frank expressions occurring in the conversation between Nagul'nov and Razmetnov about the sexual conduct befitting a Communist (252, 253; 242). Considerable abridgments were made in chapter 39 dealing primarily with Lushka's behavior during the time she worked in the fields with a collective-farm team and after her return home. Deleted were eighteen lines portraying the Cossacks' vying and fighting for Lushka's favors (332-33; 320) and nine lines about Davydov's lust for her (335; 321). A brief new paragraph appeared to permit Davydov to put some blame for his "fall" on the mating strains of nightingales
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(340; 327). As he did in The Quiet Don, Potapov kept a watchful eye on the female bosom. He removed "the pliantly soft breasts" of Khoprov's wife (94; 90) as well as comparisons of an old woman's and Lushka's breasts with those of a bitch and a goat, respectively (39, 102; 37, 98). Nature was also not neglected as Potapov dispensed with a parallel drawn by Nagul'nov between the soil that calls for sowing in the spring and a mare in heat that calls for mating (290; 279). The instinctive sexual drive enhanced in people and animals by the vernal awakening of nature underlay the copiousness of the erotic element in Virineia. The censors of the novel's 1953 edition did much to reduce its manifestations in human beings. Cut was the phrase saying that the scent inherited by man from beast enabled a young engineer to sense that Virineia, like himself, was longing for carnal passion at a time when the soil pined with the desire to be impregnated (66; 16). Furthermore, the censors no longer permitted the engineer to say "I love you, I want you" to Virineia (94; 42) or to allow these potential lovers to have erotic dreams about each other (65, 94; 15, 42). Along with passages about robust earthly coveting, the censors got rid of Virineia's remarks about the sexual inadequacy of her first husband and about her aversion to his pawing her at night with his slimy hands (68, 69, 98; 18, 45). Many more examples of censorial suppression of Eros could be cited from Virineia and other works. But what was already said should suffice to see that the censors of the 1946-53 period effected a veritable sexual counterrevolution.
Naturalistic Details In most works examined in this study, the purge of naturalistic details ranged from nonexistent to moderate. Some novels, like For the Power of the Soviets, The Rout, and The Young Guard, simply had very little of what was treated as objectionable naturalistic descriptions in the 1946-53 period. This was not the case with The Quiet Don and Virgin Soil Upturned. A down-to-earth realist, Sholokhov described exactly what he or his characters saw, smelled, touched, and heard. The outcome was a wealth of "naturalistic" details. This situation could no longer be condoned in the last years of Stalin's rule, especially since Sholokhov continued to hold the highest place in the official rating of writers; thus, his works had to serve as models of Socialist Realism. Compliance with the exceptionally prudish standards of the time triggered a massive removal of the naturalistic element from both of Sholokhov's novels. By far the greatest number of revisions is found in volume 1 of The Quiet Don, written at a time when its young author displayed particularly strong proclivity for "naturalism." There are merely a handful of corrections in volume 4. The spectrum of naturalistic corrections in the novel's 1953 version is very broad. It covers all sorts of repugnant odors, filthy bodies and objects, slimy tongues and dribbling mouths, the noisy blowing of noses and smearing their contents on one's clothing, the discharge of natural wastes, the comparison of people to animals, as well as gore, lice, and bodily hair. In deleted passages one encounters an old Cossack relieving himself in a public place (1:16; 15) and a
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servant salvaging food which his master, with a sick stomach, spat out (1:160; 162). Further excisions claimed the following italicized words and phrases; "stinking sweat" (1:36; 35), "sleeves, rotten and faded under armpits from the pungently sweet woman's sweat that hits one like mustard" (1:209; 210), "he listened, pulling from his nostrils with his middle and index fingers the little tufts of black hair that grew wild in the eternal darkness" (1:64; 64), "'the lice were eating me up'" (1:188; 188), "the bullet came out near the anus" (2:384; 35), "'I'm bleeding internally. . . . My pleura swelled with blood" (2:656; 322). Also ejected were the epithets "red and slimy" describing a newborn baby (1:9; 8), as well as the words "between her legs ... in the red and white mash" indicating where another newborn child was lying (1:191; 192). Unwanted comparisons of humans to animals include Aksin'ia's request that old Melekhov stop "foaming" at her "like a boar" (1:47; 46) and the author's observation that Aksin'ia "shifted from one foot to the other like a horse overfed with barley" (1:155; 157). Similarities between man and animal disturbed Potapov and other censors not only in figures of speech but also in remarks implying their genealogical kinship. One wonders what happened to the censors' belief in natural evolution, when one sees that they performed a nearly perfect job of removing hair from hands, legs, chests, fingers, and ears of the Red and White characters alike. Thus the hands of Bunchuk, the most hirsute character in the novel, lost their "black horse hair" (1:306; 311) and "fleecy black fur" (2:355; 3). In other instances just "hair" or "thick hair" was removed from his chest, fingers, and hands. The same was done with the hair growing on the hands of a White Army officer (3:43; 43), on the chest of Grigorii Melekhov (1:52; 52. 3:98; 100), and in the ears of Miron Korshunov (1:172, 173). A somewhat different treatment of bodily hair is to be found in the 1951 text of The Young Guard and in Cement. Fadeev, or the censors, preserved all of the thick hair on the bodies of three Germans—a soldier, an official, and an SS torturer of prisoners. Their hirsuteness was supposed to symbolize the primitive and bestial character of the fascists. The censors of Cement acted in the same way with respect to a completely different person. Neither in the early 1950s nor later did they remove the "thick fleece" from Gleb Chumalov's chest. Of various naturalistic deletions made in the revised version of Virgin Soil Upturned, those pertaining to gore and stench were particularly regrettable. They took away from the reader some of the most graphic manifestations of Sholokhov's unsparing realism. Thus, from the scene of the murder of the Khoprov couple, Potapov excluded the torn, bleeding mouth of the wife, the husband's whiskers dropping into a pool of blood, and the grating sound of his frontal bone (94; 90), Cut throats, blue bellies, and exposed tendons and muscles disappeared from the description of the flaying of sheep slaughtered by Polovtsev (107, 108; 103). The stench of sheep's fat coming from Polovtsev's fingers and the smell of sweat, dung, and urine in a collective-farm stable also vanished (108, 123-24; 103, 118). So did the cadaverous odor that Nagul'nov thought he smelled in Shchukar's hut (129; 123). Twenty-odd revisions in the 1952 edition of Armored Train No. 14-69 can be roughly divided into two groups. One involved similes whose vehicles were deemed unsavory or affected: "the station packed with people was sweating like a
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can of worms" "Nezelasov's figure was transparent like bad cigarette paper." The other kind concerned plain language: "beside the rails, excrements smelled of ammonia."87 True to the spirit of the time, the 1952 censors of Ivanov's novel crossed out a number of naturalistic details which their colleagues had left untouched in the 1934 edition for children. A memorable revision of scatological nature is encountered in Bruski. Its volume 4 contained the story of the bizarre way in which the collective farmers saved crops from a drought. They collected feces, diluted them with water, and poured the mixture into vats, basins, buckets, and troughs. Tractors, animals, and humans delivered it to the fields. Everything reeked to high heaven; people got dizzy and vomited. The 1947 censors could not stand it. They, or Panferov, found a clean solution. The peasants were made to dig the way to a subterranean lake and irrigate the thirsty fields with its pristine waters (305-6; 884).
Children's Editions Of the works covered in this study, only Virgin Soil Upturned, The Rout, The Young Guard, and For the Power of the Soviets, had children's editions during the 1946-53 period. The sole Detgiz edition of The Rout appeared in 1949 with two innocuous puritanical revisions. The low number can be explained by the fact that the purges of the 1935, 1936, and 1941 Detgiz editions of the novel left virtually no offensive material for later censorship. The texts of the 1946 and 1952 Detgiz editions of the Young Guard corresponded, respectively, to the novel's original and revised versions. The 1951 Detgiz version of For the Power of the Soviets has already been discussed since, in fact, it was intended for both juveniles and adults. There was no other publication of the novel in 1951-53, and the critics treated the 1951 version as a regular edition. Moreover, Kataev used it as the point of departure for later editions. Therefore our discussion will be centered on children's versions of Virgin Soil Upturned, which, like the Detgiz edition of Kataev's novel, experienced the full weight of the censorial press. The first postwar edition of Virgin Soil Upturned for young readers came out in 1948 in Omsk. Its text, according to an editorial note, was prepared for children of secondary-school age by M. M. Gimpelevich in conformity with the author's instructions. The instructions, however, must have been very general, since Gimpelevich's version is virtually a replica of the 1934 edition for schoolchildren. Differences between the two editions are marginal; none of them, except for one deletion of Trotskii's name in the 1948 text, are politically motivated. In isolated cases, Gimpelevich restored one or several paragraphs omitted in 1934, as, for example, a page-long description of the winter night in chapter 19. He also retained a few more coarse words than did his 1934 predecessors. The next edition of Virgin Soil Upturned for secondary-school students appeared in 1950 in Moscow. It was prepared by Kirill Potapov. The types of revisions made in the 1950 edition of Virgin Soil Upturned differed very little from those encountered in the 1934 edition for schoolchildren. On the other hand, Potapov refrained from omitting entire chapters and as a rule made shorter cuts than his 1934 counterparts. He also showed somewhat more concern for the athe-
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istic upbringing of students. He removed, for example, an imaginative folk story about God making mist out of tears shed by the poor and hungry. He replaced the word Filippovki, designating the fast of Advent, and the word Troitsa, meaning Whitsuntide.88 The folk story and Filippovki are also missing from the 1934 edition as parts of larger cuts, but Troitsa is left intact. The 1950 Detgiz edition of Virgin Soil Upturned foreshadowed the emergence of the revised 1952 version of the novel. This is hardly surprising since the editor of both editions was Kirili Potapov. A considerable number of his 1950 corrections migrated to the 1952 text. Nonetheless, the 1950 Detgiz edition underwent a heavier censorship and its deletions tended to be longer. Excised were, for instance, the whole passage about an anti-Soviet peasant uprising, three pages detailing the murder of the Khoprov couple, and Nagul'nov's ideas about his wife, women, and sex. In 1952 Potapov printed these passages with occasional cuts.89 Conversely, certain words, phrases, and passages were retained in the Detgiz text but removed from the 1952 version. Thus patriotic pride transformed "the stone-bound Moscow" into "our great native Moscow" (136; 130). Some twenty lines, expunged in 1952, can be read in the Detgiz edition in the description of the pandemonium generated among men by Lushka's appearance in the fields of a collective farm (341-42; 320). At the same time, Potapov cleansed Lushka's impact on men of any sexually suggestive phrases. Also, throughout the novel, he proved to be a much stricter censor of erotic elements in its Detgiz edition than in its 1952 version. The text of the 1950 Detgiz edition was reproduced in the 1951 Leningrad publication of the novel intended for high-school students. More editions of this type were to be published in the next decade.
Authors'
Reactions
The authors' chances to protect their works from the savage censorship of the postwar years were practically nil. This state of hopelessness is manifested in the way three leading writers—Sholokhov, Kataev, and Fadeev—responded to the bowdlerization of their novels. Documentary evidence available to us shows that only Sholokhov had the nerve to lodge a mild protest by complaining in September 1951 to Anatolii Kotov, director of the publishing house Artistic Literature. Sholokhov objected to wasting his time restoring the majority of Potapov's "castrating excisions" in The Quiet Don. The author called the censor a "very mediocre journalist" lacking artistic taste.90 Sholokhov appeared to speak here only of stylistic and, possibly, puritanical deletions. He could hardly be in a position to argue against political revisions, knowing that Potapov's red pencil was guided by the highest authorities. Only a critic with the Party's mandate in his hands would dare to speak of Sholokhov's "substantial shortcomings" in the portrayal of Kornilov, Podtelkov, and Krivoshlykov, as Potapov did in his article appended to the last volume of his version of The Quiet Don.91 As we know, it was Stalin who had pointed to Sholokhov's errors concerning Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov. It is hard to say what success, if any, Sholokhov had in rescinding Potapov's
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corrections. An exceptionally high number of absurd revisions in the 1953 version of The Quiet Don suggests that Potapov might have disregarded most of Sholokhov's restorations. Yet the author managed to score a few points. He foiled Potapov's attempt to present him as the butcher of Virgin Soil Upturned. Potapov marked the page proof of the novel's 1952 version as "printed from the text newly examined and revised by the author." Sholokhov changed this phrase to "newly examined and revised edition."92 He obviously wanted to dissociate himself from the censorship in which he took little or no part. The 1952 version came out as "revised edition." The same words were printed on every volume of the 1953 edition of The Quiet Don. Thus Sholokhov managed to signal his noninvolvement in the ruination of his own works. He won the battle, but the censor won the war. No Soviet writer could disregard Pravda's criticism of his work, particularly in the 1946-53 period. Yet one could hope that a self-respecting author would not accept Pravda's pronouncements with such speed and obsequiousness as Kataev did. On 24 January 1950, exactly a week after the appearance of Bubennov's article on For the Power of the Soviets, Pravda printed Kataev's letter to its editors. In it the author voiced his complete acceptance of Bubennov's "just and principled critique" and promised to rework radically his novel as "a matter of my honor as a writer." Kataev kept his word. The revised text went to the printers in April 1951. We can only speculate as to the reasons for Kataev's reaction. It might have been fear or cynicism, or both. In any event, Kataev's behavior demonstrates the total submissiveness of a writer to political dictatorship. Ten years later, Kataev explained why he had introduced new historical material into the revised text of For the Power of the Soviets. He linked it to "the demand of the time" and "certain editors." To comply with the request to show the partisans' action "above the ground," he added long descriptions of their exploits in the Odessa harbor. "Now," he said, "I realize that these insertions should not have been made."93 This is hard to believe. Already in 1950 Kataev must have known that his additions about the partisans' saving the harbor from destruction were at odds with the facts, Pravda's criticisms of The Young Guard had a dramatic effect on Fadeev: he could not sleep for three nights. Though he admitted to having underrated the Communists' role in the underground, Fadeev felt that he wrote a true-to-life novel. His compulsory work on its new version was extremely painful and detrimental to his health and morale.94 With a touch of bitter irony, he wrote to lurii Libedinskii that he was still "transforming the young guard into the old one," meaning that the figures of adult Communists were becoming increasingly prominent in the revised version of his novel.95 Fadeev welcomed Party guidance over literature, but he disapproved of arbitrary, irrevocable verdicts such as those pronounced by Pravda on The Young Guard and For the Power of the Soviets. He made his views known to the Presidium of the Party Central Committee. He did it, however, only after Stalin's death.96 Thus three eminent Soviet writers were powerless to prevent the bowdlerization of their works, which in Sholokhov's case involved almost the whole of his literary output. On the other hand, Sholokhov had some moral consolation in that he was not compelled to mutilate his novels with his own hand. Besides,
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scattered censorial interpolations in his novels looked trivial in comparison with the protracted additions made by Fadeev and Kataev. Since insertions do more harm than deletions, the ideological and artistic damage to the inflated versions of The Young Guard and For the Power of the Soviets proved to be greater than to the pruned editions of The Quiet Don and Virgin Soil Upturned. The first years after Stalin's death gave a limited chance to minimize this damage. We shall see how each of these writers reacted to it.
CHAPTER 4
CENSORSHIP IN 1953-1964 THE UNSTABLE THAW
Political Background Stalin's demise on 5 March 1953 paved the way for significant changes in every sphere of Soviet life. For the first time since the introduction of the New Economic Policy one could speak of a limited relaxation of political controls over literature and art. The process of de-Stalinization began shortly after the dictator's death. The Pravda editorial of 16 April 1953 took exception to one-man rule and advocated collectivity as the sole correct form of Party leadership. The debunking of Stalin escalated with the ascendancy of Nikita Khrushchev. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress (February 1956), he blamed the dead leader for sweeping repressions of honest Communists, for promoting a cult of his own personality, and for many other misdeeds and blunders. Khrushchev's attack was probably motivated by the memories of his fear and humiliation experienced as a member of Stalin's entourage and by his belief that the dictator's arbitrary reign impeded the progress toward Communism. The Hungarian revolt in the fall of 1956 made Khrushchev wary about the liberalization in his homeland, and de-Stalinization was slowed down. A return to a strong anti-Stalin stance occurred in October 1961 at the Twenty-second Party Congress where Khrushchev and other speakers denounced his terror against the Party and the Red Army. Nonetheless, the rejection of Stalin was not wholesale. On 8 March 1963, at a meeting of Party leaders with writers and representatives of other arts, Khrushchev stressed Stalin's contributions to the building of socialism and to the fight against Trotskii, Zinov'ev, Bukharin, and their adherents.1 De-Stalinization encouraged writers to tackle previously forbidden themes and to treat familiar subjects with greater frankness. However, when the Party felt that the writers overstepped the limits of the permissible, it would initiate a critical campaign against faulty works and lay down its demands for the literary profession. Thus in 1958 a savage persecution was unleashed against Boris Pasternak in connection with his being awarded the Nobel Prize. The Party's chief spokesman on literary matters was Khrushchev. Between 1957 and 1963 he organized more conferences and talked more extensively on literature than any other head of the Soviet state. His view of writers can be reduced to his characterization of them as "faithful assistants of our Party in the building of Communism."2 In the fall of 1962 he permitted the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha {One Day in the Life of Ivan
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Denisovich) and Evgenii Evtushenko's poem "Nasledniki Stalina" ("Stalin's Heirs"). He apparently believed that the appearance of these works would serve his political aims of debunking Stalin, undercutting the position of the dictator's admirers, and promoting the Communist cause. Glavlit would not have passed them. At this time, according to Evtushenko, Khrushchev instructed Leonid Il'ichev, the Central Committee's Secretary for Ideological Questions, to prepare a draft of a resolution abolishing censorship. Evtushenko's assertion is indirectly supported by information that on 20 October 1962 Khrushchev reacted with understanding to Aleksandr Tvardovskii's suggestion to do away with censorship.3 The frightened Il'ichev devised a scheme to compel Khrushchev to change his mind. He arranged an exhibition of modernistic art in the hope that Khrushchev would be enraged at the sight of abstract paintings and give up the idea of dismantling censorship. Khrushchev swallowed this bait during his visit to the exhibition on 1 December 1962.4His reaction was quick and resolute. On 16 December and 7-8 March, he met with numerous writers and other cultural figures. At both meetings he railed against abstractionists and imitators of Western art and rejected a peaceful coexistence of different ideologies.5 Some softening of Khrushchev's position can be noticed in August 1963 when he gave permission to publish Tvardovskii's poem "Terkin na torn svete" ("Terkin in the Other World") and a new installment of Il'ia Erenburg's memoirs Liudi, gody, zM'zn' {People, Years, and Life), which had been held up by censors and turned down by the Party Central Committee. Khrushchev told Erenburg that he could publish anything he wanted. There was no censorship for him any longer (7:91).6 Time proved Khrushchev wrong. A year later fresh portions of Erenburg's memoirs ran into serious trouble with the Party's top ideological watchdogs. The author's letter to Khrushchev vexed Vladimir Lebedev, his assistant in cultural matters, who believed he had found anti-Soviet passages in the memoirs (7:133, 134). In the end, in September 1964, the Presidium of the Party Central Committee resolved to resume the serialization of the memoirs contingent on Erenburg's consent to play down his preoccupation with the "Jewish question" and his critique of the Party's guidance in art (7:136). We have no information on Khrushchev's role in this decision. Beginning with the spring of 1964, his authority was declining. Vladimir Lakshin, then an editor of Novyi mir, said that the Party apparatus ignored Khrushchev's liberal statements and effectively exploited his relapses into Stalinism (7:13). In October 1964 Khrushchev was ousted from his top posts in the Party and Government. The 1953-64 period saw some changes in the system and practices of censorship. Soon after Stalin's death, Glavlit was subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the official designation of its head became nachal'nik II Glavnogo Upravleniia MVD SSSR (Chief of the Second Directorate of the MVD of the USSR). The transfer of Glavlit under direct MVD control was part of the measures taken by the "collective leadership" to prevent any unrest in the wake of Stalin's death. The new designation of the Glavlit chief appears, for instance, on K. K. Omel'chenko's letters of 16 and 27 July 1953 addressed to republican and provincial offices of the MVD. The letters urge the removal from
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libraries and other places of all publications of Lavrentii Beriia, as well as representations of him on portraits, paintings, and slides.7 The purge of these items was occasioned by the arrest on 26 June of Beriia, who up to that time controlled the formidable security apparatus as a First Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. Between July and December 1953 the official definition of the Glavlit head was changed to nachal'nik Glavnogo Upravleniia po okhrane voennykh i gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR (Chief of the Mam Administration for the Guarding of Military and State Secrets in the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers). The new appellation accompanies Omel'chenko's signature on his circular instruction of 11 December 1953 regarding press censorship. This instruction gives a revised version of two points in the secret Perechen' which pertain to accidents and natural catastrophes. The points prohibit the publication of information about: (a) serious accidents and fires occurring in industry, transportation, and state institutions, or natural disasters affecting agriculture and forestry; and (b) the sum of total losses or number of deaths on Soviet territory caused by earthquakes or other natural disasters. Reports on the consequences of these adversities (e.g., destruction of buildings or flooding) were also outlawed.8 The reattachment of Glavlit to the USSR Council of Ministers represented a step in the direction of curtailing the functions of the security police, whose status in 1954 would be reduced from the Ministry to the State Committee (KGB). On 3 April 1957 the Party Central Committee adopted a resolution entitled "On the Work of Glavlit of the USSR." The resolution criticized Glavlit for being too slow in adjusting its work to the tasks set by the Central Committee and in changing its outdated statutes. Glavlit was also faulted for serious errors in selecting and educating its personnel, which led to the weakening of its efficiency. The Central Committee obliged Glavlit to improve its work radically, to prepare a new Perechen', and to inform regularly the editorial boards of periodicals and publishing houses about the demands of censorship, so that the editors could increase their involvement in the censorial process.9 The Central Committee's resolution reflected the intentions of its First Secretary, Khrushchev, to fill Glavlit's leading positions with his men and to strengthen censorship in order to stop the publication of politically unacceptable writings. It was hardly accidental that in May and July of the same year, at his meetings with writers and other cultural figures, Khrushchev repeatedly attacked what he termed "ideologically defective" or "essentially slanderous" works, singling out Vladimir Dudintsev's novel Ne khlebom edinym (Not by Bread Alone, 1956) and volume 2 of the collection Literary Moscow (1956).10 The changes in Glavlit leadership brought in a new chief, Pavel Romanov, a graduate of the Leningrad Institute of Railway Transportation Engineering, who had previously headed the Department of Heavy Industry of the Party Central Committee.11 In 1958 Glavlit compiled a new Perechen'—"The List of Information Prohibited from Publishing in the Open Press and from Broadcasting over the Radio or Television." The previous Perechen' had not been revised since 1949. On 24 February 1958 the USSR Council of Ministers confirmed the Statute of Glavlit worked out jointly by Glavlit and the Department of Propa-
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ganda and Agitation of the Party Central Committee. From that time on, Glavlit began to regularly update its secret publications and documents concerning the content and methods of its activities. Systematic courses, conferences, and lectures were conducted to raise the censors' qualifications and ensure a uniform interpretation of the Perechen' and other directives. In August 1958 Glavlit sent a memorandum to the Party Central Committee suggesting a tightening of control over secret materials, particularly in the fields of science, technology, and economy.12 Technological and scientific advances in the time of Khrushchev led to the creation of space and atomic censorships, to which Glavlit sent materials touching upon or dealing with their respective fields. Other special censorships represented radio electronics, chemistry, the KGB, and the military.13 Additional bodies with which Glavlit had to share its authority were the USSR Ministry of Culture and analogous administrations established under the same name in the union and autonomous republics. Formed in March 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, the Ministry of Culture assumed a general guidance over every kind of art as well as cultural and educational institutions, cinematography, broadcasting, television, and publishing. Thus, in 1953, the ministry took charge of the Main Administration for Poligraphy, Publishing Houses, and Book Trade. The ministry controlled many of the best known publishing houses specializing in fields which ranged from belles-lettres to sports. Furthermore, the Ministry of Culture directed the activities of the unions of Soviet writers, composers, artists, and architects.14 Glavlit's shrinking authority was modestly compensated by the addition of a new duty. On 7 March 1961 the Party Central Committee instructed Glavlit to monitor dispatches of foreign reporters. The agency's "special service" was linked up with the reporters' lines of communication.15 In 1963 Glavlit became a part of the State Committee for the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers. The words "military" and "state" in Glavlit's full name were transposed, turning it mto the Main Administration for the Guarding of State and Military Secrets in the Press. The censorial process in the 1953-64 period followed the previously established patterns. However, more responsibility was shifted from official censorship to editorial boards of publishers, and senior editors had greater opportunity to communicate with high-ranking Party figures charged with ideological supervision of publishing. A textbook for prospective editors states that preparation of a manuscript for publication is an important domain of ideological work. The editor must know Marxism-Leninism and put into practice the cardinal principle of Soviet literature—fidelity to Party policy. The textbook emphasizes the scope of editorial duties. They begin with the first reading of the manuscript and terminate with the collection of information on how the book was received by the public. The editor evaluates the manuscript with the aid of outside readers and other members of his publishing enterprise. Then he submits a written report to the chief editor or the director of the publishing house. If the manuscript is accepted, the editor works with the author to bring it into publishable form both artistically and ideologically. This work completed, the editor sends the manuscript to typesetters, reads its galley and page proofs, and signs the final
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text for publication.16 The textbook makes no mention of Glavlit or its censor, a person who approves materials for the preliminary printing of a limited number of "signal" copies, checks one of them for the execution of suggested corrections, and only then authorizes regular publication.17 Valuable information on censorship above the editorial level can be obtained from the part of Lakshin's diary covering his association with Novyi mir from the end of 1961 to the fall of Khrushchev. The diary is particularly interesting because Lakshin interlaces his entries with excerpts from the diary of Viktor Golovanov, the Glavlit official entrusted with the censorship of Novyi mir. Among other censors mentioned in the diary are Golovanov's immediate superior Galina Semenova, the chief of Glavlit Romanov, and his deputies. Semenova was in charge of Glavlit's Fourth Department which controlled literature. Censorial functions of the Party Central Committee were primarily vested in its Department of Culture, headed by Dmitrii Polikarpov. His right hand was Igor' Chernoutsan, chief of the department's Literary Section. On a still higher plane, the problems of censorship were handled by Khrushchev, his assistant Lebedev, and the Presidium of the Party Central Committee. In dealing with censorship, as in many other matters, the Party bosses preferred to convey their instructions orally, resorting to the so-called telefonnoe pravo (the telephone right). Being the most liberal of literary magazines, Novyi mir was subject to particularly captious censorship. On the other hand, its chief editor Tvardovskii, a popular poet and candidate member of the Party Central Committee, had access to the Party hierarchy and could afford to make a stronger challenge to censorship than the average editor. Nevertheless, the censors succeeded in causing considerable damage. Thus for the year 1963 the amount of material held up or removed from the proofs of Novyi mir would have sufficed to fill up three issues of this monthly (7:104). Due to censorial intervention, the issues of Novyi mir came out with considerable delays. To mislead those who watched this irregularity, the censors were instructed to move back the date on which a delayed issue was approved for publication (7:107). A few examples may illustrate the type of censorship Novyi mir encountered in the Party's upper echelon. In April 1963 Golovanov wrote in his diary that the page proofs of the fourth issue of the magazine were forwarded to the Party Central Committee. The proofs contained the translation of Albert Camus's novel The Plague. Lakshin reports that the Central Committee's Department of Culture banned the novel after consulting Boris Riurikov, chief editor of the magazine Inostrannaia literatura (Foreign Literature), and Louis Aragon. The former called The Plague a dubious work and the latter advised against publishing it because Camus had always opposed the French Communist Party (6:108). An interesting telephone conversation about the fourth issue of Novyi mir took place between Golovanov and Aleksandr Dement'ev, one of Tvardovskii's deputies. According to Golovanov, Dement'ev complained about the censors' failure to give any specific instructions concerning the contents of the fourth issue. Instead, the censors sent it to the Party Central Committee, making Glavlit look like a needless intermediary. Golovanov retorted that all political and ideological questions were referred to the Party Central Committee and that Glavlit made no decisions regarding the most important problems of literature (7:110).
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The fourth issue of Novyi mir came out in May after forbidden works were replaced by other materials and its editorial was revised in compliance with instructions given by Chernoutsan and Glavlit. Tvardovskii's attempt to convince Il'ichev of the desirability of publishing The Plague proved futile (7:112). A protracted struggle evolved around the publication of Mikhail Bulgakov's Zapiski pokoinika {Notes of a Dead Man, wr. 1937). To make it more palatable for censorship, Lakshin renamed it Teatral'nyi roman {The Theatrical Novel), which turned out to be Bulgakov's alternate title (6:116). In August 1963 Glavlit branded the novel a lampoon degrading MKhAT and Stanislavskii's method and dispatched the page proofs to Chernoutsan. Several days later Tvardovskii failed to persuade Stepan Avetisian, a deputy of Romanov, that Bulgakov's novel was not a pasquinade on MKhAT but a humorous well-meant caricature (7:92, 93). On 19 August Tvardovskii and Lakshin visited Chernoutsan to argue their case for Bulgakov. Although Chernoutsan objected to the publication of The Theatrical Novel on the same grounds as did the censors, he appeared to realize the foolishness of his refusal. Tvardovskii's impression was that Polikarpov had told him not to give in (7:94-95). Novyi mir managed to publish the novel a year later when Khrushchev was no longer in power. Two cases involving Solzhenitsyn demonstrate the censorial authority of Khrushchev and Lebedev. As soon as Khrushchev and the Presidium of the Party Central Committee resolved to have One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich printed, the Glavlit chief Romanov sent the following message to Golovanov: "Approve the material for publication without any remarks or impediments on the part of censorship" (6:84). In August 1964, in a personal conversation with Tvardovskii, Lebedev spoke in anger against the publication of V kruge pervom {The First Circle, wr. 1955-64). He claimed Solzhenitsyn knew nothing about Stalin. He disliked Nerzhin's words that people were imprisoned for the way they thought and that the victims would decide whether they should forgive their oppressors. To Lebedev such statements bordered on anti-Sovietism. He advised Tvardovskii not to show the novel's manuscript to anyone (7:134).
Literary Works The strongest impact of de-Stalinization manifested itself in the wholesale ejection of passages concerned with the late leader. Another conspicuous development was the softening of the censorial attitude toward the West. As a result, much of what was done to extol Stalin and disparage the West during the preceding period was nullified under Khrushchev. A third area of heightened censorial intervention was Stalinist repression. Here the censors engaged in partial rehabilitation of the victims and tended, at the same time, to mitigate what they considered excessively gloomy descriptions of the terrorized population. Relaxation of censorship seemed to increase the role of editors and, at least sporadically, of the authors who were allowed a measure of independence in correcting their own works. Sholokhov and Kataev took advantage of the relative liberalization to get rid of a large part of revisions that ruined their novels in the
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early 1950s. In 1956-60 the Young Guard issued the first edition of Sholokhov's Collected Works, as a supplement to the magazine Molodoi kolkhoznik (The Young Collective Farmer). The title page of each volume said "the texts were revised by the author." Actually, the revision was carried out by lurii Lukin in cooperation with M. I. Marfin, a staff member of Molodoi kolkhoznik. According to Lukin, Sholokhov asked him to go over The Quiet Don and Virgin Soil Upturned, retaining "useful" insertions and restoring unnecessary deletions that had been made during the preceding eight years when Lukin was no longer the editor of his works. When important questions came up, Sholokhov was consulted.18 As a result of the revision, the text of The Quiet Don published in the Collected Works in 1956 was purged of approximately three-fourths of political and nine-tenths of puritanical revisions made in 1953. Virgin Soil Upturned, which appeared in 1957, was even luckier. It inherited no political and only a few puritanical corrections from its revised 1952 version. A limited number of new corrections was added under Khrushchev to both of Sholokhov's novels, most of them involving Stalin in Virgin Soil Upturned. In 1955, 1956, and 1961, Kataev cut large chunks of political material from For the Power of the Soviets. The 1961 edition alone lost thirty chapters, twenty-two of which were inserted in 1951. Compared to the 1951 version, the size of the 1961 edition was reduced by some 40 percent. The largest excisions aimed at Stalin and the partisans' activities. Coming out after her death, the 1957 and 1958 editions of Seifullina's works reveal striking textual difference due to the lack of uniformity in editorial approaches. The story "Lawbreakers," included in the 1957 Novosibirsk edition of her Short Novels, Stories, and Articles, retained only one-fourth of the thirty-odd revisions found in the story's 1953 text. However, the Siberian editors faithfully reproduced the castrated 1953 version of Virineia. The Moscow editors of volume 1 of Selected Works (1958) did the same thing with "Lawbreakers." They also reprinted the 1948 version of Humus, which is the second most heavily censored version, but chose the 1936 Sov. pis. edition of Virineia, which is very close to the novel's original. The 1958 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol' is identical with its 1952-53 counterpart, thus preserving 200 revisions effected in 1948. Sergeev-Tsenskii, who died in December 1958, was either unwilling or unable to restore the novel's original text. Even worse, the texts of The Rout (1954) and Cement (1958) show no evidence that their authors made any effort to void previous revisions. The combined total of corrections counted in Bruski amounts to 130. Over half of them deal with Stalin and a dozen with the "enemies of the people." Some names of these enemies were restored in the 1954-57 editions of How the Steel Was Tempered. In the 1954-56 editions of The Young Guard all but three of some thirty corrections relate to Stalin. Forty-odd revisions in the 1956 and 1960 editions of Students attest to the dethronement of the leader and, predominantly, to the abatement of anti-Western animus. On the other hand, nothing was done to reduce or rescind deletions of nationalistic and xenophobic nature made in the 1948 and 1950 versions of Stepan Razin. Liberal trends of the 1953-64 period helped to lift the taboo on certain works that had not been issued since the 1930s. Among them were Red Cavalry, Rus-
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sia Washed in Blood, and the majority of Sholokhov's early stories. The first two books reappeared in their 1936 editions, sprinkled with new revisions. A moderate number of such corrections was made in Sholokhov's early stories included in the 1956-59 and 1962 editions of his Collected Works. The main job of their editors consisted of choosing one of several versions in which some of the stories had been published in the 1923-31 period. The editors steered a middle course. They avoided heavily distorted versions but did preserve smaller censorial revisions. In 1956 "Aleshka's Heart" was reprinted from its 1925 bookform edition which ends on a relatively happy note: Aleshka recovers from his wounds. In this way the 1956 editors, Lukin and Marfin, rejected the overly happy endings found in The Journal of the Peasant Youth (31 March 1925) and The Tulip Steppe (1931); at the same time, they stayed away from the fatal outcome contained in the 1926 edition of The Don Stories. The 1955 editions of A Week and The Commissars and the 1957 Detgiz edition of Armored Train No. 14-69 reveal such devastating self-censorship that they will be discussed in a separate section. Among the new works to be treated in this chapter are The First Circle, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and "Matrenin dvor" ("Matrena's Home," 1963) by Solzhenitsyn, Utolenie zhazhdy {The Quenching of the Thirst, 1963) by Tnfonov, and the play Mezhdu livniami {Between the Downpours, 1964) by Aleksandr Shtein. The title of Trifonov's novel symbolizes the thirst for justice aroused by the disclosures of Stalin's misdeeds. The novel deals with the construction of the Kara Kum irrigation canal in 1957-58. References to the purges of the 1930s, the cult of Stalin's personality, and the Twentieth Party Congress drew censorial attention to the novel in the 1960s as well as in the 1970s. Between the Downpours tackles the sensitive subject of the Kronshtadt rebellion. On 12 July 1964 an unsigned article in Pravda entitled "The Responsibility of an Artist" criticized Shtein for the failure to attain ideological and artistic standards commeasurable with "the grandeur of a heroic historico-revolutionary theme." In Pravda's opinion, a leading character, the commissar Pozdnyshev, came across as a weak, shallow individual, unworthy of representing the Party. Lenin was shown in complete isolation from the working people while references to Trotskii were ambiguous. In tune with the thaw, Pravda did not demand directly that the play be rewritten; nevertheless, the message was clear. A meeting of playwrights, critics, and theater administrators was organized by the Writers' Union to discuss the Pravda article. Shtein stated that he deeply appreciated Pravda's remarks and was working on a new version of the play. Staged in 1965, the play was said to have brought "great civic satisfaction".19
Political
Censorship
The Extremes of Self-Censorship It would seem logical to start the discussion of political censorship under Khrushchev with its salient characteristic—the eradication of Stalin's name.
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However, two instances of self-censorship at the beginning of liberalization were so astounding that I have decided to treat them first. I mean the revised 1955 editions of A Week and The Commissars and the 1957 version of Armored Train No. 14—69. The bowdlerization of these works occurred precisely at a time when some other writers, like Sholokhov and Kataev, strove to minimize the damage inflicted by previous revisions. The self-censorial acts of Libedinskii and Ivanov demonstrate how deeply ingrained was the sense of ideological conformity in these and, possibly, many other writers, and how fragile must have been their faith in the incipient relaxation of political controls. Libedinskii's preface to the 1955 versions of his novels sheds some light on the causes of his self-censorship; "In the present edition I have removed certain things, added others, and corrected all that which, in my view, ought to be corrected after the passage of more than thirty years."20 Translated into figures, this amounts to at least 125 revisions in A Week and 265 in The Commissars, some of them involving cuts of several consecutive pages. No doubt, Libedinskii could not have avoided reworking his politically sensitive novels, which had not been published since 1935. Nonetheless, he could have gotten away with a less severe mutilation of them. His self-censorial zeal could have been inspired by his Communist sense of duty to update his works politically as well as by his desire to see the resumption of their publication. Political revisions predominate in both novels. Their main function in A Week appears to be the improvement of the relationship between the Bolshevik regime and the Russian people, especially the peasants. Libedinskii threw out things attesting to the peasants', workers', and townsfolk's enmity to the new regime. At the same time, he inserted words and phrases blaming "White Guards," "White bandits," and even "hirelings of the Entente" for the peasant uprising.21 Pernicious effects of the Bolsheviks' agrarian policy were hushed up by eliminating the complaints of the Red Army soldiers about starvation in villages ravished by the requisition of food and about the corruption of Soviet authorities (5-6; 9). In The Commissars Libedinskii deleted the scene in the city square where an old peasant told the crowd that his hungry family had eaten his grandson, Hearing the story, a commissar thinks that the Party turned away from the peasantry.22 In A Week the alienation of the Bolsheviks from the common people figured prominently in Simkova's narration about her journey to Moscow. A Communist educator, she spoke of railway stations packed with famished, lice-ridden, and filthy peasants. And a foppish commissar wearing patent leather shoes would squeamishly walk through the piles of bodies on his way to the station buffet to have some pastry in the company of black marketeers. Simkova's story vanished in 1955 (61-62; 47). In both of his novels Libedinskii crossed out well-nigh all references to the shooting of people by the Cheka, commissars, and Red Army commanders. In A Week he extracted a five-page letter of the young chekist Sergei Surikov to his superior. Surikov detailed how the execution of five naked men on a frosty, moonlit night aroused such a strong upsurge of pity and compassion in him that he could no longer destroy lives in the name of Communism (51-56; 44). The removal of passages concerning executions was probably aimed at preventing the
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reader from pondering about the kinship between the Stalinist terror and earlier methods of repression. Not surprisingly, most of the 1955 revisions in The Commissars relate to the Party's image. Its elite—political commissars—could no longer think, behave, and look the way they did twenty years earlier. The pre-55 editions devoted four pages to an oral examination given to a group of commissars who wanted to leave the school, alleging knowledge of the subjects to be taught. The examination revealed their political ignorance, a fact that became unmentionable in the revised version (61-65; 128). After failing the examination, the commissars Smirnov and Koval' organize a drinking bout, an outrageous breach of discipline. The 1955 edition omitted every mention of alcohol, retaining only parts of the characters' dialogue. As a result, sober commissars carry on a boastful conversation in a manner typical of inebriated persons (113-22; 159-64). There was no question of reprinting the story of the commissar Zelenin. Tormented by hunger, he appropriated a ration card of a fellow commissar, and was punished with expulsion from the Party (157-59, 161-62; 185, 186). Reworking his novel, Libedinskii dispensed with compromising details from the commissars' past. Thus he suppressed Aref'ev's pre-Revolutionary membership in the Menshevik Party (10, 104, 106, 255-56; 84, 150, 151, 249) and his friendship with the Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats (106; 151). Concurrently, drastic changes were made to save Aref'ev's reputation toward the end of the novel. Before 1955, in the description of the Party purge, Aref ev demanded that Smirnov and Koval' be expelled from the Party for drinking and lack of discipline. On the other hand, he tried to prevent the expulsion of his protege, a "socially alien" individual. The commissars' attitude toward Arefev changed from friendly to antagonistic. He asked to be relieved from his post as director of the courses for commissars and left for Moscow to enter the Academy of the General Staff. Except for his going to Moscow, all of the above information about Arefev is missing from the 1955 text of The Commissars (255-58; 249). Moreover, almost the whole of the purge description was excluded, since it did not convey the optimal impression of the unity and morality of the Party collective. For the same reason the number of commissars expelled from the Party was reduced from eighteen to sixteen in 1935 and to eight in 1955 (266; 255). Concern about the Party's respectability required the excision of unsavory details from the commissars' private lives. Libedinskii refrained from mentioning that Koval' was once a vagabond (357; 250), that, at the age of sixteen, Lobachev caught gonorrhea from a prostitute (44; 110), and that the venerable commissar Shalavin was married officially four times and had lost count of the women he slept with (148-49; 179). In both novels the cultural level of the Communists was raised by expurgating matiuki and other obscenities from their speech. Deletions of unwanted material alternated with laudatory insertions. Many positive characters, particularly in The Commissars, benefited from additions about their revolutionary heroics, dedication to the cause, morality, or talents. Shalavin, for instance, became "a man of exceptional moral force" (53; 120); the peasant commissar Gladkikh started to demonstrate such mathematical ability that he was promised to be sent to the Artillery Academy (72, 178; 134, 199).
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A loud upbeat note replaced Mindlov's deep pessimism in his letter to Lobachev. In 1955 Libedinskii rewrote the letter, shortening it by two-thirds. In so doing, he threw out its gist—Mindlov's confession that his Communist soul had died, that he had turned into a philistine, devoid of the revolutionary flame which burned in him all his life. Instead, in his new letter, Mindlov speaks of his regeneration brought about by his love for his deceased wife and by his friendship with Lobachev and other comrades. "The march continues," he declares, and his life "belongs forever to you and our cause" (259; 251). Mindlov's rewritten letter preserved nothing of his contentions about the superiority of the working-class Communists over their colleagues from the intelligentsia. Similarly, a character in A Week stopped attributing Surikov's nervous breakdown to his being an intelligentsia member (50, 57; 44). The characters' critique of NEP, which the censors began to soft-pedal as early as the 1920s, was virtually banned from the 1955 version of The Commissars (186, 212-14; 204, 228). The author, or the censor, resolved to keep quiet about any politically unpalatable aspect of NEP. Even Mindlov's optimistic speech about it was removed almost to a word because he spoke of the fear and misconceptions which the new policy would generate among the Communists (185-86; 204). Following the censorial practice of the preceding period, Libedinskii politicized the outward appearance of his characters. In A Week a Communist administrator ceased to be "small and pitiful" (6; 8), "resembling a uncomplicated and boring number eight in an accountant's book" (11; 13). In The Commissars Libedinskii erased the characterization of a veteran Party member as "a small, withered old man, resembling a spool without its thread" (67; 129). By contrast, the commander of the insurgent peasants in A Week was stripped of his physical attractiveness. "Blue" eyes of this former tsarist officer turned into "light and cold;" his "beautiful sensual mouth" metamorphosed into "impertinent lips" (20; 20). Then he lost his "clever gray [sic] eyes" (32; 29), his "eaglelike nose," and his clean shave (74; 55). Another adversary, General Andrei Vlasov, who commanded the Russian Liberation Army in World War II, was punished indirectly. The general's namesake, the commander of a military district in A Week, was converted into Gordeev (Mr. Proud), though his original surname was typically Russian (5; 81). Libedinskii's self-censorship ruined both of his best-known novels. Artistically undistinguished, they had indisputable documentary value. They presented objectively a cross section of the Russian Communist Party at a historical turning point. Both of them, especially The Commissars, drew upon Libedinskii's personal experience. "I decided to base The Commissars," he stated, "on what I have really seen; never before and never after have I come so close to the description of reality as in The Commissars. . . . "23 The novel's revised version has little in common with what the author saw or heard. The 1955 texts of both novels were reproduced in subsequent editions during the Khrushchev period. If Libedinskii's self-censorship was virtually a precondition for renewed publication of his novels, Ivanov's rewriting of Armored Train No. 14-69 in 1957 was not dictated by any external pressure. The novel continued to appear regularly. Its heavily censored 1952 edition was reprinted in 1954 and 1956. Ivanov
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apparently did not attempt to publish a less-edited text of the novel. Instead, he produced a new version, imbued with the spirit of the early 1950s. In a letter to a literary scholar, Ivanov stated that he "reworked" Armored Train No. 14-69 to give "the young reader, who knows little about the history of the Civil War, a clear idea of the situation. I also wanted to make the novel more readable, more entertaining. No one noticed this well-intentioned try, no one said a nice word . . . except you."24 The lack of praise was understandable. Stuffed with political insertions, shapeless and insipid, the 1957 Detgiz version of The Armored Train No. 14-69 was inferior to any previous edition of the novel. The young reader was offered more misinformation and propaganda. The novel nearly doubled in size. Newly written passages were interlaced with borrowings from the dramatized versions of the novel. Most of some 160 revisions elevate the Reds or disgrace the Whites. In the 1957 edition the Red camp is shown to be stronger and more frightening to the Japanese. The Party's role is expanded. Peklevanov, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee, gives more advice and instructions to Vershinin. He tells the partisan leader that peace and socialism can be achieved only through "great battles." Later, he discloses the Revolutionary Committee's decision to include Vershinin in the delegation to be sent to Moscow for a meeting with Lenin, Both of these examples were taken from the play.25 Vershinin's trip to Moscow was well earned, especially since in 1957 his services to the Bolshevik cause were augmented by a dozen brand-new pages about his successful fighting against the Whites.26 A number of the 1957 insertions involved the political activities of the Bolsheviks' wives. Vershinin sends his wife Nastia to Peklevanov to ask for a postponement of the workers' uprising (54; 91-92). In the city she meets Masha, Peklevanov's wife (50; 136). Then she gets arrested (50; 139), interrogated by the Whites (68; 159-60), and apparently liberated by the partisans. In the meantime, Masha shoots a Japanese spy who had killed her husband (73; 174-75). Observing censorial traditions, Ivanov prettied his virtuous characters. He removed the description of Nastia as "fat and soft like a burbot" (14; 68) and made Vershinin imagine "the gentle oval of her face, her white neck, her bold eyebrows, and her eyes half-curtained with such lashes which one is unlikely to find even in paradise" (68-69; 166). Masha's sharp teeth turned into "beautiful" (49; 135); her husband ceased to be "a small freckled man" (25; 32), with "short and sparse" hair (50; 136). Examples of insertions upgrading the Reds could easily be multiplied, but they would add only details to familiar types of revisions. It would, therefore, be more appropriate to turn to the influx of material intended to depict the Whites in the blackest colors. New White officers were put into the novel to demonstrate the enemy's wickedness. The central figure among them is Colonel Katin, commandant of the city fortress. It is he who orders prisoners in the fortress to be burned alive because his troops lack ammunition to shoot them (75; 181). Another act of cruelty attributed to the Whites is the burning down of Vershinin's home and the killing of his children (14; 17, 19). In all previous editions of the novel and the play the arsonists and killers were either Japanese, or "interventionists," or Japanese and Americans.
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Other insertions present the Whites as schemers and scoundrels. General Spasskii promises to promote Captain Nezelasov to a colonel if he would spy on General Sakharov (14; 27). Captured by the partisans, Sakharov's aide-decamp asks Vershinin for permission to hang the general with his own hands (14; 54). The reader, however, should not feel any compassion for Sakharov, a villain and eager hangman. Additions pertaining to Nezelasov emphasize his boundless ambitions. He compares himself favorably to Napoleon (14; 27-28) and proclaims, "I am a dictator. I am saving Russia!" (36; 110). He is willing to sell Russia to "Americans, Japanese, to those who'll pay more!"(67; 157).27 The only interpolation that could elicit some respect for the Whites is the scene of the suicide of Katin and five other officers who prefer death to surrender (75; 181-82). The 1957 version of Armored Train No. 14-69 contains more references to the Allied, particularly American, participation in the Far Eastern intervention than any other edition of the novel. Nevertheless, Ivanov abstained from borrowing from the play the words about Americans setting up a death camp in Vladivostok. Another commendable aspect of the 1957 version was that it retained about half of the naturalistic details purged from the novel in 1952. Although written for the young reader, the 1957 version became the standard text for "adult" editions issued between 1958 and 1964. This is why it will not be discussed in the section devoted to children's editions.
Stalin and Lenin The purge of Stalin-related material from literary works began slowly and timidly. The earliest two revisions I noticed came from the 1954 edition of Konstantin Fedin's Neobyknovennoe leto (No Ordinary Summer, 1948), a Civil War novel set in 1919. Both corrections toned down Stalin's role as a military strategist. In one instance, his name vanished from the phrase about his crucial contributions to a strategic plan whose implementation led to a decisive triumph over the Whites. In another case, the credit for masterminding and carrying out the victorious plan passed from Stalin to the Party.28 Both of these corrections might have been effected in 1953, since the 1954 edition of No Ordinary Summer was approved for publication on 9 December 1953. The next four revisions concerning Stalin were encountered in the 1954 edition of The Young Guard, which was sent to printers a year after his death. All four involve insertions made in 1951 and all but one deal with the dictator's military exploits. First, the censors compelled Stalin to share his accomplishments with Lenin. The modifier "Leninist" was injected before "Stalinist" in the characterization of the school to which the middle generation of the Red Army generals was said to belong. Second, the censors eliminated the author's assertion that the disciples of the Stalinist school tried to emulate their great teacher. Third, "the genius of the people" was substituted for "the genius of the man" in the claim that Stalin formulated and put into practice the Soviet military doctrine. The last revision signaled the incipient softening of the rabid anti-Westernism. The censors did away with Liutikov's statement that "our great Stalin" had to sit at the
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same table "with such a dog as Churchill."29 Merely two deletions of Stalin's name could be found in the 1955 publications of Fadeev's novel and two in the 1955 Detgiz edition of The Quiet Don, one of them in a footnote. Both cases involve 1953 insertions.30 A somewhat less gentle treatment of Stalin is observed in the 1955 editions of Emmanuil Kazakevich's Vesna na Ode re {Spring on the Oder, 1949) and Kataev's For the Power of the Soviets, though both novels were signed for publication earlier than the 1955 editions of The Young Guard and The Quiet Don. Spring on the Oder portrays the Red Army's advance through Germany in the waning months of World War II. The novel's original version had about sixty places in which Stalin was extolled as a military leader, statesman, or human being. The censors crossed out about 40 percent of this material. In doing so, they targeted consistently the adjective stalinskii (Stalin's) when it signified the leader's achievements or superb qualities attributed to people who were allegedly brought up by him. This practice explains the disappearance of modifiers in phrases like "Stalin's army," "Stalin's generation," and "Stalin's plan."31 Most of some fifteen anti-Stalin revisions in Kataev's novel occur in places emphasizing the leader's individual achievements at the expense of other persons or the entire nation. Gone, for instance, were statements that the Central Partisan Staff was created on Stalin's initiative and that he led the Soviet people to victory.32 On the nonmilitary level, Stalm suffered a setback through the removal of the sentence depicting him at his desk in the Kremlin: "The shadow of an enormous, all-embracing thought lies on his strong concentrated face" (12; 13). The censors, however, were disturbed less by allegations of Stalin's universal greatness than by the facts of his single-handed leadership. Thus only italicized words were edited in a character's contention that "never before was the Soviet people so closely united around its great leader comrade Stalin and around the Bolshevik Party" (487; 523). Clearly, the Party claimed to have had a larger share of power and popular support than it actually had under Stalin's one-man rule. Stalin-related excisions in the 1954-55 publications of No Ordinary Summer, The Young Guard, Spring on the Oder, and For the Power of the Soviets formed only the tip of the iceberg. In all of the four novels louder and longer paeans to Stalin's genius, grandeur, and achievements were left intact. The de-Stalinization of literature accelerated markedly after Khrushchev's secret speech on 24-25 February 1956. There are indications, however, that the process had begun somewhat earlier. The 1956 Sov. pis. edition of The Young Guard, approved for publication on 17 January of that year, was already cleansed of nearly all references to Stalin. The censors, for instance, suppressed an episode in which a brave girl pinned up a portrait of Stalin to the wall of her bedroom in front of two Wehrmacht officers. Ironically, no censorial action was taken against a postcard with the picture of Hitler pinned by the Germans in the same room.33 Several abbreviations were made in the description of the Young Guards' listening to Stalin's radio address on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution. The censors objected to Stalin's having an "eaglelike gaze into the future" and to his being "the most humane of all the humans." The listeners' admiration of him was soft-pedaled (363-64; 492-93). On the other hand, the censors preserved all the quotations from Stalin's address and one men-
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tion of his name, making clear the identity of the speaker. Stalin's name was also retained in the designation of him as the commander in chief and in the reference to his escapes from tsarist exile (25, 95; 34, 129). Yet the retention of such factual information could not balance the loss of accolades to the leader's humaneness or military genius. Of some forty revisions effected in the 1956 edition of For the Power of the Soviets thirty-five dealt with Stalin. Largest deletions took place in chapters 4345, which were added in 1951 to the second part of the novel. All references to Stalin's name were banned from chapter 43, where "comrade" Vasilii, who was sent to the partisans from Moscow, spoke of the leader's order of 7 November 1942 and praised his greatness. Yet the censors permitted Vasilii to quote, without attribution, a few lines from Stalin's order. The next two chapters featuring Vasilii's story about the reception of the partisan commanders by Stalin were censored in toto.34 Only two factual references to the dead leader survived in the 1956 edition. Both were discarded in 1961. Trifonov, or the censors, moved even faster, expunging every mention of Stalin from the 1956 edition of Students.35 Occasionally, the censors of the 1956 edition of For the Power of the Soviets replaced Stalin's name and its derivatives with words like "the Party" (95; 107), "the Bolsheviks" (345; 374), "the Supreme Commander" (571; 613), and "Leninist" (591; 635). The usual way of handling passages combining Lenin's and Stalin's names was to delete only Stalin's. But in two places, both involving their portraits, Lenin was removed together with Stalin. The first dislodgment might have been motivated by the difficulty of separating the two leaders. Their images were described in identical terms, stressing their spiritual oneness. Their eyes were said to be lively and glittering with profound and passionate thoughts, while their "dear" faces were emitting "bright, searching light" (28485; 312). In another case the portraits of both leaders were taken down in Gavrik's underground office without any apparent reason (477; 517). In rare instances the 1961 version of Kataev's novel dropped (307; 335) or replaced Lenin's name with "Motherland" (569; 610). Very likely, the author took advantage of the political relaxation to display a modicum of independence and Russian patriotism in order to countervail his reputation as a top opportunist among Soviet writers. At the same time, a chapter originally entitled "For the Power of the Soviets!" became "For the Motherland!"36 A complete elimination of Stalin's name in For the Power of the Soviets contravened the historical truth. It is hard to imagine that the leader would not be mentioned in the novel depicting the Communist underground during World War II. Kataev helped the censors to show Stalin the door with the same zeal with which he had welcomed him to his novel a decade earlier. Unlike Kataev, Sholokhov and Lukin dealt with Stalin discriminately, taking into account the historical context of Sholokov's novels. Seeing ho place for Stalin in The Quiet Don, the author removed from his Collected Works the passage introduced in 1938 to glorify Stalin's military genius, as well as all censorial insertions made in 1953 about Lenin and Stalin.37 Sholokhov's determination to clear The Quiet Don from this type of insertions was demonstrated in the following episode. When Lukin and Marfin were preparing The Quiet Don for the first edition of Collected Works, Kirill Potapov found out that they excluded
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a lengthy passage he had inserted into the 1953 version of the novel. The central event of the insertion was a warm welcome extended by Lenin to the Don Cossacks' delegation at the Third Ail-Russian Congress of the Soviets in January 1918. Potapov complained about the removal of his insertion to high authorities, and Marfin received a telephone call "from above" inquiring why passages about Lenin were being crossed out. On Lukin's suggestion, Marfin telephoned Sholokhov, The author told him to send "them" to an unprintable location. The insertion disappeared without official authorization (2:212; 236).38 The situation was different in Virgin Soil Upturned, where references to Stalin went back to the original text. Therefore, Stalin-related revisions in this novel must have been dictated by the demands of de-Stalinization rather than by the author's will. The first deletions were probably made in the 1957 edition for tenth graders approved for publication on 14 February 1957, three and a half months before the same type of approval was given to the novel's next printing, in volume 6 of Collected Works issued by the publishing house Young Guard. All pruning occurred in the scene of the collective farmers' meeting, which accepted Razmetnov's proposal to name the Gremiachii collective farm after Stalin. It was necessary to blot out Razmetnov's statement attesting to the Party's belief in Stalin's infallibility and to its unquestioning acceptance of his leadership; We all know about him that from the very beginning of time he has taken a straight road, not swaying to the right or left. And, charging in the Cossack fashion, we are following him toward that same dear socialism for which we fought, abandoning our wives and small children, forgetting about our young lives, and mercilessly spilling our own blood and the blood of others.39 Since it was no longer appropriate to express adulation for Stalin or to advertise the unity between him and the Party, Razmetnov had to part with the statement: "I would call all collective farms after him. Our Communist Party stands so closely and so solidly around Comrade Stalin and loves him so much that one could not think of a better name." For the same reasons Razmetnov's request that the audience rise and bare their heads in honor of Stalin was crossed out.40 The 1957 MG edition endorsed all these cuts and went a step further. It stripped Stalin of military valor by withdrawing Razmetnov's testimony that he had seen Stalin in "the front-line of fire" at Tsaritsyn.41 In spite of the abridgments, the scene of the collective farmers' meeting still retained a great deal of admiration for Stalin, a feeling that could not be condoned after the Twenty-second Party Congress. The page-long scene somehow passed censorship in the 1962 MG edition of the novel, but was purged in its entirety from Sholokhov's Collected Works brought out in the same year by the Pravda Publishing House.42 The exclusion of the scene necessitated the removal of the phrase "named after Stalin" every time it appeared in the full name of the Gremiachii collective farm in both volumes of the novel. Volume 2, first published in 1960, also lost Davydov's phrase, "You're no Stalin and you'd make mistakes like any other guy" (2:100; 101). Nevertheless, Stalin's name was kept in less laudatory, factual, or hostile (by an enemy) references to him. Ironically, the censor-editor who degraded Stalin in the 1962 Collected Works was none other than Kirill Potapov who did his best to build up the leader in Sholokhov's nov-
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els ten years earlier. The same Potapov did away with Stalin in They Fought for Their Country, when previously published excerpts of this unfinished novel were included in the 1962 edition of Sholokhov's Collected Works. A collective farm's name, "Stalinets" (Stalinist), was replaced by "The Dawn." Solemn, laudatory references to "the great Stalin" disappeared from a colonel's address to survivors of a heroic regiment. It is somewhat surprising that this panegyric had not been eliminated or toned down in the 1959 publications of the novel.43 With some seventy revisions pertaining to him, Stalin was the principal censorial target in the 1957 edition of Bruski. The censors concentrated on passages extolling his singularities—his superior mind and creativity, unchallenged authority, and infallible leadership. Discarded were the author's designation of the dictator as "the leader of the peoples" and the characters' tributes to him on the order of "the great genius of an artist and creator."44 The censors of Bruski made a special effort to elevate the Party at the expense of Stalin. Apart from the customary replacements of his name with "the Party," they effected revisions to demonstrate that the real policy maker was the Party, not Stalin. The phrase "in defense of the Stalin line, the Party line" was transformed into "in defense of the general Party line whose exponent at that time was Stalin" (4:288; 289). Furthermore, an insertion was made to stress that the thunderous applause greeting Stalin's appearance at the conference of distinguished collective farmers was nothing other than an expression of gratitude to "the whole of the Bolshevik Party" represented by Stalin (4:538; 533). In some instances the censors replaced Stalin with other top Party figures—Mikhail Kalinin (4:491; 486) and Sergo Ordzhonikidze (4:562; 558). On the philosophical level, Stalin's authority was reduced by discarding his name in the phrase "the teaching of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin" (4:389; 389). By contrast, Lenin's status was enhanced by adding an episode in which collective farmers reverently think of him in front of his mausoleum (4:537; 532). Despite heavy blows to Stalin's prestige, the 1957 version of Bruski preserved enough material showing Stalin's political significance and personal attractiveness, particularly in the pages devoted to the conference of distinguished collective farmers. What is more, Stalin's name cropped up in an interpolated dialogue touching upon the identity of his and Lenin's views on combining enthusiasm with material incentive (2:417; 424). Only a few corrections affected Stalin in the 1958 edition of Bruski, an indication that Panferov might have been reluctant to engage in further debunking of the leader, the central ideological character in his novel. Since the progressing deStalinization rendered the 1958 text unacceptable, the novel was no longer reprinted under Khrushchev either before or after Panferov's death in 1960. No Ordinary Summer, which rivaled Bruski in its worship of Stalin, could be reprinted in 1961 only after all of its original accounts of his military accomplishments were thrown out. However, the censors left intact Stalin's informal and friendly conversation with military commanders at the end of the novel. Five references to his orders and telephone conversations with Soviet generals were all that survived the purge of Stalin in the 1959 and 1963 editions of Kazakevich's Spring on the Oder.
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Now we shall take a look at Stalin-related revisions in two works whose author hated the dictator. Stalin was conspicuously absent from the manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Solzhenitsyn did not want to single him out as the architect of the repressive system that was set up under Lenin. Since the Party leadership promoted a different version of events, Khrushchev's adviser Lebedev asked Solzhenitsyn to make an insertion which would blame Stalin for the calamities that befell Russia. The author met the request less than halfway. He made a prisoner mention Stalin, as "the father with the mustache," in connection with his pitilessness and mistrust; but he added nothing about Stalin's responsibility for Russia's misfortunes.45 Unlike One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the original version of The First Circle contained five full chapters on Stalin, and his name was mentioned frequently throughout the novel. In 1964 Solzhenitsyn carried out an extensive political self-censorship of the novel in the hope of publishing it in Novyi mir. The number of chapters shrank from ninety-six to eighty-seven. After its rejection by the higher authorities, the abridged version was slightly revised by Solzhenitsyn and smuggled to the West, where its Russian-language editions and translations appeared in 1968. It was not until 1978 that the novel's original text saw the light in the first two volumes of Solzhenitsyn's Collected Works published in Paris.46 A comparison of the two versions of The First Circle reveals that the portrayal of Stalin underwent a thorough editing. Thus Solzhenitsyn took out Stalin's idea of establishing global Communism after the victory in World War III 47 Since such a way of achieving their ultimate goal was not ruled out by Soviet leaders, Solzhenitsyn had every reason to believe that censorship would suppress any hint at the aggressive nature of the Communist regime. Nor could he count on the censorial approval of Stalin's vision of the future Communist society as based on strict discipline and unconditional subordination to the leaders (103; 1:165). On Tvardovskii's suggestion,48 Solzhenitsyn got rid of chapter 20 that contained an unflattering survey of Stalin's life and his detractive thoughts of Lenin. It must be kept in mind that criticism of Stalin under Khrushchev centered on the last twenty years of the dictator's rule, while his early revolutionary activities, his struggle against Trotskii and Bukharin, and his socialization of economy were seen in a positive light. Contrary to this view, Solzhenitsyn represented Stalin as a political opportunist, as a revolutionary and an informer of the tsarist security police. In the 1920s Stalin insidiously exploited intra-Party dissentions to realize his dictatorial ambitions. In Stalin's opinion, Lenin was a softy, incapable of fierce political infighting. A bookish theorist, he did not understand people and spent the whole of the Civil War in the Kremlin, without risking his neck. On the other hand, Stalin admired Lenin's ability to hold power in his own hands regardless of changes in his policy. He also acclaimed Lenin's practice of shooting people without trial and his equation of dictatorship with a rule unrestricted by any laws. In Solzhenitsyn's judgment, Stalin considered Leninism infallible and never deviated from it. In June 1964, under the pressure of Tvardovskii, the editors of Novyi mir accepted the self-censored version of The First Circle. Since there was no chance of
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Glavlit passing it, Tvardovskii sent a part of the manuscript to Lebedev to secure the consent of the higher authority. As we know, Lebedev found the novel antiSoviet. First and foremost, he objected to Solzhenitsyn's depiction of Stalin.49 Solzhenitsyn's self-censorship of The First Circle virtually coincided with Aieksandr Shtein's reworking of his play Between the Downpours after Pravda, among other things, chided the playwright for showing Lenin in isolation from his close associates and the working people. Shtein, however, did not go out of his way to comply with the Pravda critique. To supply Lenin's contact with the people, he merely added a dialogue between the leader and the commissar Pozdnyshev. After discussing the situation in Kronshtadt, Lenin dispatches the commissar to the fortress to free the Communists imprisoned by the rebels.50 Symptomatic of the time at which it was written, Shtein's historical play had not a single mention of Stalin, something that would have been out of the question a dozen years earlier. In summing up the content of this section, one arrives at the conclusion that by the end of the Khrushchev period Stalin's name was either completely or extensively purged from literary works. The principal beneficiaries from his eclipse were the Party and Lenin.
The Party, Its Members, and Supporters While the Party's authority grew at the expense of Stalin, no special endeavor was undertaken to boost the Party's reputation in places unrelated to the late leader. Above all, this preservation of the status quo applies to works written before 1954 in which the Communists and their supporters were so thoroughly purified and ennobled by previous censorship that it was virtually impossible to make further ameliorations without relapsing into Stalinist type of censorship. Party-related censorship in such works amounted chiefly to deciding which of the earlier revisions should be honored in the new editions. Consequently, the Party's prestige was bound to decline, the degree of its shrinkage varying from novel to novel. Already in the 1954 edition of The Young Guard Fadeev, or the censors, left out the characterization of Liutikov as "the head and soul" of the Krasnodon underground, as well as his denunciation of Fascism during his and Koshevoi's interrogation by the Feldkommandant Kler (Klehr).51 The first omission toned down the exaggerated role of Liutikov in the underground resistance, and the second one bailed him out of the awkward situation in which he was giving a political lecture to a man who couldn't care less for his ideas. However, no further corrections concerning the Party were effected in The Young Guard in 1954; and until the 1990 publication of the novel's earliest text, the Party's leadership over the Young Guards continued to remain on the same level to which the author was compelled to raise it in the revised 1951 version. This cannot be said of For the Power of the Soviets. The 1956 and 1961 revisions of this novel markedly decreased the Party's guidance, especially that of its upper echelon. The total removal of chapters 44 and 45, which described the Kremlin meeting with the partisan commanders, undermined not only Stalin's
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role in the partisan movement but also that of the Party hierarchy, represented at the meeting by Molotov, Voroshilov, and Ponomarenko. The Party's central leadership over the partisans was also weakened by the expulsion from the novel of comrade Vasilii, the Moscow emissary to the partisans. On the other hand, Kataev preserved parts of the 1951 insertion about the contact between the Gavrik troop and the Ukrainian Partisan Staff represented by Captain Maksimov. It is interesting to note that some of the characters' references to Khrushchev, chief of the Ukrainian Staff, were excised in 1956 and the rest in 1961.52 Perhaps Kataev decided to take no part in creating a new personality cult at a time when he could get away with it. By contrast, the 1959 edition of Vershigora's People with a Clear Conscience retained nearly all references to Khrushchev, as well as chapter 16 (part 1) showing him as a leader sensitive to the partisans' needs.53 In 1961 Kataev greatly reduced the significance of the Party Province Committee by editing its instructions to Gavrik and its appeal to the population of the Odessa Province. At the same time, Kataev left intact most of the 1951 revisions concerning the lower ranks of the Party leaders. Thus Gavrik of 1961 is essentially Gavrik of 1951, a person carefully cleansed of his original defects, both individual and political. The Bolsheviks and their allies in The Quiet Don had little reason to complain about their treatment under Khrushchev. The greater part of the 1953 political revisions which were accepted in the novel's 1956 edition pertained to the Red camp. The number and types of endorsed corrections attest to the continuity of censorial policy whose main concern had always been the image projected by the Bolshevik side. For this reason the editors, or censors, did not restore the 1953 deletions concerning Shtokman's unpleasant outward appearance or the stiffness of his propaganda methods. They also kept out of the novel Bunchuk's favorable statements on the Provisional Government, as well as his advocacy of a civil war with no prisoners taken. Mishka Koshevoi fared much better than either Shtokman or Bunchuk. The 1956 edition of The Quiet Don reinstated all cuts involving his weakness for the fair sex. His love affairs were apparently written off as "the sins of youth," especially since he later married the girl he really loved and remained faithful to her. The author was also allowed to resume calling him Mishka. A similar treatment was given to the Bolshevik Valet, Mishka's close friend. Sholokhov was able to restore nearly all of his negative traits and actions, such as his "small porcupine-like mug" and his leaving his Red Guard unit without permission (2:296-99; 327-31). The censors of the 1953 and 1956 editions of The Quiet Don evinced a great deal of unanimity in the handling of episodic Bolshevik and pro-Bolshevik characters. The 1956 edition absorbed the bulk of revisions concerning the manners, outward appearance, and behavior of such characters. Thus, as in 1953, the reader was not supposed to know that the Red Guard Krutogorov "resembled an unfrocked priest" and called his Party comrades "beastlike" (2:192; 215). Sholokhov seems to have done what he could to rescind the majority of some forty corrections made in 1953 regarding an important Red figure, Fedor Podtelkov. He even succeeded in nullifying a 1953 insertion in the scene in which Podtelkov kills of the captive Colonel Vasilii Chernetsov, commander of the White Cossack partisans. In the original text the incident occurs when Cher-
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netsov strides toward Podtelkov, loudly cursing him as a traitor to the Cossacks. The 1953 version had Podtelkov cut the colonel down with his saber when the latter drew out a concealed revolver which misfired. Sholokhov voided this insertion (2:239; 265) though the episode with Chernetsov taking out a revolver or attacking Podtelkov physically can be found in both the Soviet and White emigre publications.54 Sholokhov might have relied on different information or wanted to stress the brutality of the Civil War by making Podtelkov kill Chernetsov in a way that looks more like a murder of an unarmed prisoner than an act of self-defense. Fifteen earlier revisions concerning Podtelkov were honored in the 1956 edition of The Quiet Don. The censors must have considered them vital for preserving his political and moral integrity. The unrestored text included deletions involving Podtelkov's antagonism toward peasants and workers, his having a mistress, and his being called a traitor by Bunchuk for surrendering his detachment to the White Cossacks (2:335; 371). In contrast to The Quiet Don, the 1957 MG edition of Virgin Soil Upturned nullified all political revisions concerning Communists which were effected in 1952 and retained in the regular 1955 edition of the novel. This turnabout can be explained by the accelerating tempo of de-Stalinization and by the trivial nature of excisions made in 1952 by the captious censor-editor Kirill Potapov. The progress of de-Stalinization notwithstanding, the Party continued to keep a watchful eye on its portrayal in literature. Thus the unsigned Pravda article of 12 June 1964 reproached Aleksandr Shtein for failing to present the commissar Pozdnyshev as a true Communist in his play Between the Downpours. In the revised version of the play Pozdnyshev's functions are expanded and his actions are more resolute. He meets with Lenin and carries out his order to liberate the Communists imprisoned by rebel sailors (188; 272-73). He gives a political lecture to his son, who is critical of the Bolshevik regime, and then disarms him (171; 238). Simultaneously, Shtein crossed out the story of how the commissar avoided being shot when captured by the Whites: he showed them his old tattoo reading "God save the tsar" (169-70; 234). A different kind of self-censorship was performed by Solzhenitsyn in The First Circle whose original version presents a comprehensive indictment of the ruling Communist Party. In many cases it is the characters who denounce the philosophy and actions of the Communist regime. In chapter 1, Volodin telephones the American Embassy in Moscow to tell that a Soviet spy in the United States is about to obtain the secrets of making the atom bomb. In Volodin's opinion, the atom bomb in the hands of Communists will threaten the entire world with a nuclear destruction (301, 434; 2:161, 272). Volodin's uncle rejects the Communist ideology, particularly its tenet about the class superiority of the industrial proletariat (309; 2:81); and the entire chapter 88 ridicules dialectical materialism. Communist rule is perceived by Sologdin as an endless chain of bloody crimes claiming countless victims. He also asserts that the Communists corrupted Russia's young generation and started corrupting the youth of East European satellites (358; 2:153, 154). Nerzhin is determined to record the misdeeds of the Soviet regime for posterity and to crucify its lies by hammering four nails "into their palms and shins—and let them hang and stink until the Sun extin-
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guishes, until life freezes on the planet Earth" (385; 2:195). The characters do not limit themselves to castigation of the hated regime. In chapter 90, Nerzhin and Gerasimovich discuss ways of getting rid of it. All of the above and many other similar dialogues and descriptions were edited by Solzhenitsyn before submitting the manuscript of The First Circle to Novyi mir.55 Of course, Solzhenitsyn's clearing his novel of blatantly anti-Party material was an extreme case. More typical for the time was the retention of many earlier Party-favoring revisions in the novels of Fadeev, Kataev, and Sholokhov, as well as fresh corrections in Between the Downpours. This situation indicates that no substantive divergence from the Stalin era regarding the portrayal of the Party and its supporters in literary works took place.
The Red Army, Partisans, and Underground Fighters The Red Army had been so thoroughly cleansed of its defects by earlier censorship that merely a few revisions affecting it were made under Khrushchev in the works treated in this study. One of them occurred in the 1957 edition of Babel's Selected Works, where, in the story "Chesniki," the fleshy face of a divisional commander ceased to be "repulsive."56 The following year the censors of Bruski threw out Kirill Zhdarkin's observation that in 1920, near Rostov, the Red Army men refused to fight until they were issued boots.57 The remark was intended to demonstrate the importance of material incentive. The 1956 edition of The Quiet Don inherited all previous deletions involving the Red Army, but annulled a number of the 1953 revisions concerning the Red Guards. One could read again about the Red Guards retreating "in panic" (2:225; 250) or about their raping, robbing, and murdering the peaceful population (2:287, 292; 317, 323). On the other hand, the censors refused to restore information about the Red Guards having large numbers of foreigners in their ranks (2:292; 323). There was no consistency in dealing with the 1953 replacements of the word "Bolsheviks" with "the Red Guards," "the Reds," or "the Red Army." As a rule, these substitutions were accepted in volume 2 but rejected in volume 3, an indication of a rapid relaxation of censorship in a matter of two months. Like The Quiet Don, The Young Guard shows no restorations of revisions connected with the Red Army. Every interpolation made in 1951 to glorify the army and its generals was left intact. The same applies to insertions concerning the partisans and, with the exception of two cases, to dozens of pages devoted to Liutikov and the underground activities under his leadership. The Party saw in the novel a powerful means for imbuing the readers, especially the young ones, with a determination to emulate the heroism, self-denial, and fealty to the Communist cause exhibited by Soviet men and women in trying circumstances. The 1951 revisions served this purpose and had to be preserved. Kataev's novel For the Power of the Soviets was in a different category. In the eyes of the Party, it did not have the same political efficacy as The Young Guard, written by a true Communist believer. Moreover, some of the conspicuous 1951 additions concerning the Odessa underground did not tally with published accounts of its accomplishments, whereas Fadeev's insertions were pre-
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sented in the press as being based on new evidence. Therefore, in the 1961 version of his novel, Kataev was allowed to liquidate or sharply reduce all of the 1951 additions detailing the deeds of his underground fighters. He took out nine full chapters and several passages dealing with the planning and execution of various acts of sabotage in the Odessa harbor, and with the successful operation of saving its installations during the German retreat. He removed the description of how Gavrik's men blew up a German train and destroyed railway tracks. A large chunk of this description belonged to the original text.58 Likewise, the 1961 edition left out twenty pages of the original text devoted to such activities as listening to the Moscow radio, posting leaflets, and fighting Germans.59 At the same time, Kataev severed the ties between Gavrik and a model Soviet family of collective farmers. He did it by dropping chapters 61 (part 1) and 41-42 (part 2), all of which had been added in 1951.
Terror and Enemies A distinctive goal of the Khrushchev period was to vindicate selectively the victims of Stalin's ideological and physical terror. Literature joined the process, though it showed a lesser degree of consistency than the official policy of exoneration. A case in point is the restoration of previously banned names in How the Steel Was Tempered. The novel's 1954 Detgiz edition reinstated the name of the disgraced historian Mikhail Pokrovskii and the 1957 MG edition returned Chaplin and Kosarev, two Komsomol leaders shot in the late 1930s. However, all three names are missing from the 1961 Petrozavodsk edition.60 During the next twenty-five years the editors kept Pokrovskii but tended to overlook Chaplin and Kosarev. Two other purge victims—the Red Army commanders, lakir and Zhloba—reappeared only in the time of Brezhnev, though both had been officially rehabilitated under Khrushchev. It is equally puzzling why Sholokhov did not reintroduce Zhloba and other purge victims in The Quiet Don, with the exception of Red Guard commander lurii Sablin (2:225; 250). On the other hand, Sholokhov used the thaw to dispense with the misinformation about Trotskii's being the deviser of the "defeatist plan" that caused the failure of the Red Army offensive through the Don Region (4:177, 179; 199, 201). By contrast, Panferov's Bruski continued to malign Trotskii's adherents in truly Stalinist fashion. In 1958, in the confession of an apprehended conspirator, the names of Ukrainian parties belonging to an anti-Soviet "Military Organization of the Ukraine" were replaced with "Trotskyites, Bukharinites, and other opportunists" or with "inveterate Trotskyites" (4:380; 418). Moreover, the 1958 edition eradicated every reference to the Ukrainian makeup of the hostile organization and moved its center from Kiev to Moscow. The censors must have been worried about the Ukrainian aspirations for independence. "Trotskyites and Zinov'evites" were still listed among the enemies of the Soviet regime in the 1956 edition of For the Power of the Soviets, but disappeared in 1961 (669; 646). In the same year Kataev dropped a character's assertion that Maksim Gor'kii was killed by "scoundrels," that is, by the henchmen of Trotskii and Bukharin (123; 345).
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The handling of Bukharin reflected his ambivalent status. Though he was not exculpated from his "anit-Soviet" oppositional activities, he was absolved of the most preposterous crimes imputed to him at his 1938 trial, and his vindication was gaining momentum. While the cautious 1956 censors of Sholokhov's story "The Shepherd" objected to the mere mention of Bukharin's book The ABCs of Communism,61 the 1958 censors of Bruski cut Bogdanov's insinuation that Bukharin had plotted to murder Lenin in 1918 (4:285-86; 316), as well as Zharkov's allegation that Bukharin, Trotskii, and Zinov'ev had striven to assassinate Stalin (4:366-67; 405). As for lesser adversaries, the 1958 edition of Bruski was purged of a typical propaganda story about the well-disguised enemy: a highly respected engineer turns out to be a member of an anti-Soviet conspiracy and his wife is exposed as a Japanese spy (4:377-78; 416). A number of corrections in Trifonov's novel The Quenching of the Thirst bespeak the censors' sensitivity to the specifics and consequences of the reign of terror. In the novel's original text the narrator says that the meaning of life during the purges amounted to finally reaching, after a long wait in line, the small window in a prison office where the relatives of prisoners could get information about them. A character states that the people of the early sixties possess a "rabbitlike psychology" deeply rooted in the fear generated by the terror of the thirties. And the narrator thinks of the multitudes who either perished in 1937 or returned from labor camps as invalids seventeen years later. All these passages were printed in the 1963 Sov. pis. edition of the novel but banned from two other 1963 publications: the monthly Znamia (The Banner) and Roman-gazeta 62 Their editors, or censors, must have feared that the stark descriptions of the terror might detract from the Soviet regime as such. Similar censorial considerations and/or Solzhenitsyn's own editing accounted for the absence of the following facts from the 1962-63 publications of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Shukhov was severely beaten by the Soviet counterintelligence interrogator upon his return from German captivity; a former Soviet POW received twenty-five years in prison camps for having lived two days among Americans who had liberated him; an old man had been in camps from the very emergence of the Soviet regime.63 After the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Solzhenitsyn read a self-censored version of his camp play Olen' i shalashovka (The Love Girl and the Innocent, wr. 1954) to the artistic council of the Moscow theater Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and gave a copy of it to Tvardovskii. In February 1963 Tvardovskii refused to publish the play in Novyi mir, and, in March, Vladimir Lebedev found it unfit for staging. He wrote to Solzhenitsyn that its production would attract a great deal of undesirable attention on the part of foreign reporters and domestic philistines.64 Actually, Lebedev suppressed the play because it offered a gloomier picture of prison camps than the authorities were inclined to tolerate. Among the works judged unprintable because of their depiction of the Stalinist repression were lurii Nagibin's Povest' ob ottse (The Tale of My Father, wr. 1957) and losif Gerasimov's "Stuk v dver'" ("A Knock on the Door," wr. 1960). Nagibin's short novel relates the exile and camp experiences of his father, an amateur stockbroker, first arrested in 1928. An editor who rejected the novel in
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1958 advised the author to burn its manuscript.65 The subject of Gerasimov's story is the deportation of "unreliable elements" from Moldavia in the summer of 1949. The story saw the light in 1987 (Oktiabr', no, 2). Not every literary work treating the Stalinist terror was automatically denied publication. Novyi mir managed to print lurii Bondarev's Tishina {Silence, 1962) and Anatolii Rybakov's Leto v Sosniakakh {Summer in Sosniaki, 1964). Both novels passed censorship because they do not deal with camp horrors and their victims are dedicated old Bolsheviks, the type of people whose persecution, in Khrushchev's view, constituted the worst of Stalin's crimes. Except for the 1957 edition of Armored Train No. 14-69, merely two works treated in this study—For the Power of the Soviets and The Quiet Don—contain corrections related to the Civil War enemies and virtually all of them were made in the early 1950s. In 1955 Kataev removed nine foreign countries, including America, from Gavrik's boastful enumeration of adversaries allegedly defeated by the Reds. The White Russians and the Ukrainian Petliura nationalists remained (580; 623). Another of Gavrik's braggadocios about the victory over foreign interventionists, Vrange!', and Denikin was left intact (583; 625). Both of Gavrik's statements were inserted in 1951, at the apex of anti-Westemism. In the 1956 edition of The Quiet Don Sholokhov rescinded at least four-fifths of the 1953 revisions designed to malign the Whites. He threw out all the rhetoric about Kornilov being supported by Russian reactionaries and foreign imperialists (2:114; 129). He restored the rather attractive personal portrait of the general and took off the labels "executioner," "counterrevolutionary," and "monarchist" affixed to anti-Bolshevik leaders. But the author apparently was not in a position to restore the historical truth that Kornilov in his memorandum to the Provisional Government advocated restricted application of capital punishment and demanded that committees in military units obey the law (2:93; 106). An archenemy should not champion justice. The censors also kept the inserted adjective kulak modifying the Cossacks who fought against food-collecting detachments (4:355; 392). Injecting politics into intimacy, the censors agreed with the 1953 excision of the phrase stating that the relationship between Aksin'ia and Evgenii Listnitskii "grew with years into a lasting union" (3:49; 57). The need was probably felt to weaken the attachment of the novel's heroine to an implacable foe of Bolshevism. In conclusion, a few words should be said about the Whites in the film version of Armored Train No. 14-69 published in 1963. While General Spasskii continues to remain the scoundrel he was in the novel, the majority of the White Army officers speak and act as true Russian patriots. Though he cooperates with the Allies, the White Captain Nezelasov hates them. He thinks of them as wolves tearing Russia to pieces. He has no desire to sell his country to foreigners as he does in the novel. Nezelasov's fellow officers refuse to flee abroad with the Allies, and one of them kills Spasskii who wants to leave Russia on a Japanese ship.66 It seems that in his film script Ivanov wanted to make up for his besmirching of the Whites in the 1957 Detgiz version of his novel. But, paradoxically, the novel's 1964 edition represented a replica of that self-censored version. However, Ivanov cannot be held responsible for it. He died in 1963.
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Russia and the West In the time of Khrushchev the censors stopped making fresh anti-Western revisions, but they did little to restore the texts that underwent such revisions during the preceding period. The 1959 and 1961 Archangel and the 1961 Moscow editions of Stepan Razin reprinted the text of the novel's 1950 version, the version that has the greatest number of deletions concerning the role of Westerners in Russia and the grimness of Russian life.67 The 1955 and 1958 publications of The Ordeal of Sevastopol' reproduced the 1952-53 text of the novel. This means that they did not include eighty-odd corrections made in 1950, but accepted over 200 of the 1948 cuts hushing up both Russia's backwardness and Western advancements in technology, economics, the art of war, and freedom of expression. An honest effort to curb anti-Westernism is manifest in Trifonov's Students. It commenced on a modest scale in 1956, partly duplicating the revisions made three years earlier in the novel's English translation. Truman and Dewey ceased to be called rascals. Americans in Europe stopped courting fascist survivors, Titoists, and all sorts of scum and traitors, with the purpose of using them against the Soviets. A former Soviet officer no longer shakes his fist, prophesying the defeat of the future American aggressor. Yet he continues to ridicule American soldiers, contrasting them with Germans and Finns. The 1960 edition silenced this scoffing.68 In the same edition the censors, or the author, toned down or eliminated characters' utterances regarding the preeminence of Russian and Soviet literature over its Western counterpart. Banned were the assertions about Gor'kii having no equals in any country and about the superiority of The Dead Souls over The Pickwick Papers (219; 236). Gone was the claim that Soviet literature outclassed that of the bourgeois West (265-66; 287). In the 1956 edition a group of students passionately discuss the "strong and weak" points of Soviet novels. In 1960 the students engage in a "real verbal fight," "Furious and contradictory opinions," are voiced about every book ranging from "the honest truth" to "rubbish" and "fake" (73; 78). Very likely, we have here an editorial or an author's restoration of the text expunged a decade ago for irreverent assessments of Soviet literary works. Similar restorations might have occurred in the dialogue between Miron Sizov, the Dean of the Literature Department, and Professor Boris KozeTskii, accused of cosmopolitanism and adherence to the Formalist method of literary analysis. The phrases that surfaced in the 1960 edition of the novel attest to Kozel'skii's courage and his devotion to literature. In previous editions the professor parried the charge of nizkopoklonstvos&rvilily before the West—with the caustic pun nizkopoklepstvo—meaning slander. In 1960 he follows his pun with a telling elaboration: "This is a fashionable disease now. Something like the flu. I do not want to be a victim! I demand that we talk to the point!" A few lines later KozeTskii names three professors of Western literature who, like himself, were discharged for cosmopolitanism (265; 286). Although Sizov goes on with blasting KozeTskii for personal, social, and academic vices, he gives the professor some credit: "No, no, I don't blame you. You obviously love genuine scholarship more than I do" (268; 289).
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In the noncultural area, the 1960 edition omitted Vadim's bravado, "And our Metro, as you know, is the world's best" (302; 324); but it preserved, with minor alterations, a phrase about American soldiers beating up a Negro driver near Pilsen. Two U.S. officers watch the incident—"laughing" in 1956 and "with interest" in 1960 (23; 25). The maltreatment of Blacks by White Americans had long been a pet subject of the Soviet propaganda and remained such under Khrushchev. While Trifonov, or the editors of Students, combated anti-American bias, no action of this kind was taken by those who supervised the 1955, 1959, and 1963 publications of Kazakevich's novel Spring on the Oder. In all of the three editions the characters say that Americans lynched Negroes, greatly helped Hitler by investing in German industry, and met hardly any resistance from the Germans, who surrendered by divisions. In occupied Germany, Americans protect former SS men and capitalists. There are episodes demonstrating cowardice, racism, bigotry, and selfishness on the part of Americans and Englishmen. Kazakevich cannot be blamed for the preservation of all these derogations in the 1963 edition of his novel, because he died in 1962. But the fact remains that under Khrushchev the censors did not consider the vindication of the West their top priority.
Nationalities The censors of the 1953-64 period exhibited a distinct tendency to weed out what they judged to be pejorative or unjust appellations for various nationalities. Good examples of this endeavor can be culled from the works that had not been reprinted for decades. In the 1956 edition of Sholokhov's early stories the author's narrative was purged of the word khokhol, except for one case in "Prodkomissar" ("The Food Commissar," 1925) where it was probably overlooked. It was replaced by "the Ukrainian" in the 1962 edition of Collected Works. The same or similar changes were made there in "Kaloshi" ("Galoshes," 1926) and in the hitherto unpublished story "Obida" ("The Offense," wr. 1925 or 1926). The term khokhol might have been used a dozen times in the original text of "The Offense," for it occurs twice in a short published excerpt from its manuscript.69 The handling of deprecatory names for the Chinese was even more radical. In the 1958 publication of Russia Washed in Blood, khodia (chino) and kitaeza (chink) vanished from the speech of both the author and the characters. Moreover, the censors pruned the characters' utterances deemed offensive to the Chinese. It was proscribed to call them "turtle eggs," and "long teeth," or to compare the sound of their voices to the cackling of turkey cocks. There was no more place for a character's story of how some Red soldiers, pursued by the Whites, played a trick on their Chinese comrade by asking him to guard a latrine while they ran away. When the Whites came, the Chinese killed six of them and kept on shooting as he was being bayoneted. The listeners broke into laughter. An old Cossack had to stop saying that "Chinese guzzle mice, frogs, and all sorts of foul things, and the Kalmucks aren't squeamish about eating cadaver."70
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Two unflattering authorial comments on Russians are missing from the 1957 edition of Babel's Selected Works. In "Berestechko" the censors expunged the observation that Russians who lived next to Jews and Ukrainians developed "stubborn love for hard work, which occasionally happens in a Russian before he becomes lice-ridden, desperate, and a drunkard" (71; 80). The second omission, in "The Rabbi's Son," involved a metaphoric image of retreating Red soldiers: "The monstrous unreal Russia stomped in its bast shoes along both sides of the railroad cars like a herd of body lice" (134; 137). The elimination of disparaging remarks about nationalities could also be observed in the works that were being reprinted regularly. In 1957 the censors of Bruski cut Bogdanov's words about the impudence of a low-rank Japanese diplomat as well as a character's story about an insolent iaposhka (Jap) trying to get a look at a Soviet defense plant (3:172; 173). The following year, derogatory diminutives for Japanese and Germans {iaposhki and nemchushki) were replaced by "bourgeois" (4:511; 565). Both of these corrections illustrate the softening of the attitude toward former enemies. The same is true of For the Power of the Soviets. The novel preserved its earlier transformations of Rumanians and Germans into "enemies," "fascists," or "SS men," and even added one correction of this kind in 1955 (71; 75). Somewhat surprising revisions were carried out in the 1958 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol' to play down Turkish brutality. Removed were the authorial observations that, to the prosperous Crimean Greeks and Armenians, the invading Turks appeared to be much worse than the French and the Englishmen and that "in the minds of the Greeks and Armenians the concepts, 'Turks' and 'mass slaughter,' merged into one."71 Soviet publications of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich lack the sentence "The Hungarians don't like the Rumanians."72 The editors of Novyi mir might not have wanted to irritate the authorities by printing a statement suggesting the existence of national hatred among the members of the socialist camp. The propaganda of friendship between the Soviet Union and its satellites can also be illustrated by an example from the 1956 edition of The Quiet Don. One of its two new corrections concerning nationalities was the conversion of "the Poles" into "the White Poles," which occurred in Prokhor Zykov's mention of the 1920 war with Poland (4:325; 359). The censors also preserved all previous substitutions of this type, but missed "the Poles" in Grigorii Melekhov's reference to the same war (4:333; 368). The second new revision dispensed with the word "Latvian" in the description of a Red speaker addressing a Cossack crowd (2:212; 236). The deletion might have been intended to minimize the role of foreigners on the Soviet side. In dealing with the 1953 revisions, the 1956 editors of The Quiet Don rejected all the changes of khokhol to "the Ukranian" in the characters' speech, but accepted some deletions pertaining to Russians. They endorsed the removal of the words "this is the kind of people the Russians are" from a remark of a medical orderly who drew an unfavorable comparison of his countrymen with the Germans in regard to sanitary habits (301; 337). Also approved was the exclusion of the phrase "before the enslavement of the Cossacks by Great Russia" uttered by a Cossack autonomist (2:175; 196). On the other hand, the 1956 editors
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can be credited with the restoration of "stinking Russia," as old Melekhov put it (2:250; 278). All but three of the 1953 excisions of the word "yid" were invalidated in the 1956 edition of The Quiet Don. The fact that all three exceptions are found in volume 1 may be taken as an indication that, while the 1956 edition was being prepared, the official attitude toward the use of the word "yid" in literature underwent a change that brought about its reinstatement in the other three volumes. As in the case with khokhol, the editors took advantage of the opportunity to reproduce the Cossack idiom more realistically than it was possible in the early 1950s. Simultaneously, the Party was dead-set against the appearance of the term "yid" outside the belles-lettres. An extravagant step in this direction was taken in 1955 when the censors threw out the entry for "yid" from the reprint of the 1880-82 edition of Vladimir Dai's Explanatory Dictionary of the Living GreatRussian Language.1^ Concealed from the reader were concrete examples how "yid" and its derivatives were employed in both a neutral and a negative sense. Needless to say, there was no editorial note about this political manipulation with one of the most revered dictionaries of spoken Russian. The censors and editors did their Job in strict secrecy. The entries pertaining to khokhol and the Muscovite remained intact, though all of the examples illustrating the use of the latter word were unflattering for the Russians. On the other hand, the elimination of the yid entry from Dai's Dictionary represented no more than a part of the smoke screen concealing the anti-Jewish sentiment smoldering in the upper echelon of the ruling Party. It was this antagonistic feeling that decided the fate of Aleksandr Galich's play Matrosskaia tishina {The Sailor's Stillness, wr. 1956-57). The play was unassailable from the viewpoint of Communist internationalism. Its leading Jewish characters embodied true Soviet patriotism and the author stood for their assimilation. Although Glavlit passed the play, all attempts to produce it in the winter of 1957-58 encountered the resistance of the Central Committee's Department of Culture. A. Sokolova, an instructor from the department, told Galich that his play expounded the idea of the Soviet Jews having won World War II. The play would supply ammunition to both the Zionists and antiSemites. Sokolova said she could not forbid the staging of the play, but she would not recommend it. In reality, this judgment tabooed the performance of the play. According to Galich, Sokolova did not reveal to him the principal motive for the prohibition: the denial to Jews of the right to feel themselves an integral part of Russia.74 The overall treatment of nationalities during the 1953-64 period offers a mixed picture. The works whose publication was resumed after long delays lost some of their references to nationalities, while the editors were able to restore the majority of nationalities-related revisions made in 1953 in The Quiet Don and all of such revisions effected in the 1952 edition of Virgin Soil Upturned. An important factor here was that Sholokhov's novels concerned nationalities living in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the censors were less likely to preserve the terms and statements considered disparaging for nationalities from other socialist countries, including China. As for the Jews, they were handled with overt benevolence and covert animosity.
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Religion With respect to religion Khrushchev displayed more intolerance than did Stalin in the last decade of his dictatorship. Khrushchev set his sights on the obliteration of religion in every stratum of the Soviet population. Atheistic propaganda intensified. Over 10,000 churches were shut down.75 The censorship of religious terms and passages became harsher. This could be seen in earlier as well as in contemporary works. The censors of the 1957 edition of Seifullina's "Lawbreakers" erased the simile "like an icon" referring to the way a boy in a children's colony carried a basin filled with slops. The censors found the simile educationally unfit and replaced it by "carefully."76 In 1956 the censors of The Quiet Don got rid of the words "he quickly put his fingers together intending to make the sign of the cross," which describe the motion made by Petr Melekhov seconds before his execution by Koshevoi (3:194; 218). Elsewhere the italicized words, deleted in 1955, are still missing from the phrase "the ringing of the church bell announcing the service of "The Twelve Gospels."11 Perhaps we have here a correction of a factual error. In the Russian Orthodox Church the service of "The Twelve Gospels"—the reading of twelve excerpts from the Gospels relating the passions of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and His death—takes place on Thursday of the Holy Week. In the novel, however, the service of "The Twelve Gospels" was mentioned as taking place just before the Easter Midnight Service. In some cases the 1956 edition went in the opposite direction. It restored, for instance, the respectful designation "Father" for a priest in places where the 1953 edition had changed it to the irreverent pop. Religious issues counted among the prime reasons why the author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and "Matrena's Home" ran into difficulties with the Novyi mir editors as soon as they read the manuscripts of these works. Boris Zaks, the executive secretary of the editorial board, doubted that Ivan Denisovich was so ignorant as to believe that God breaks up the old moon to make stars. Aleksandr Dement'ev, Tvardovskii's deputy, demanded that the conversation about God between Ivan Denisovich and the Baptist Aleshka be removed as artistically weak and ideologically incorrect. Solzhenitsyn rejected Dement'ev's suggestions and asked for the return of his manuscript. Tvardovskii reconciled the conflict by declaring that Solzhenitsyn was not obliged to accept emendations proposed by the editors.78 And he did not. The hardest test came in November 1962, when One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was ready for publication. Vladimir Lebedev requested the deletion of Andrei Tiurin's words "I crossed myself and said to God: 'You do exist, Creator, after all, in heaven. You are very patient, but when You hit, it hurts.'" Here the camp inmate Tiurin has in mind an act of divine retribution—the execution in 1937 of his former regimental commander and the commissar who seven years earlier kicked him out of the Red Army as the son of a kulak. According to Solzhenitsyn, Tiurin's words constituted the novel's key passage. They challenged the official Khrushchevian view that Stalin's gravest crime was the depletion of the Communist Party during the 1936-38 purges. To Solzhenitsyn, Stalin's cardinal atrocity was the destruction of millions of peasants in the course of
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collectivization, a genocide that was applauded or carried out by thousands of ranking Communists who were to perish in later purges. The author turned down Lebedev's request. He did not rule out compromises on what he considered personal or literary points. "But here," he said, "it was suggested that I make a concession at the expense of God and at the expense of the muzhik, and this I promised never to do."79 Since the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had already been sanctioned by Khrushchev, the Novyi mir editors summoned enough courage to ignore the request of his adviser. Still, the novel appeared with two deletions of religious nature. Erased was the observation that former West Ukranian partisans gave up crossing themselves before meals after spending several years in Soviet prison camps. A religious reader could have taken this apostasy as a mark of moral degradation in camp conditions. The second omission concealed the fact of savage persecution of the Baptists: twentyfive years in camps for no crime other than adherence to their religious doctrine.80 In December 1961 Solzhenitsyn brought to Novyi mir a story entitled "Ne stoit selo bez pravednika" ("No Village Can Stand without a Righteous Person"). The author had already cleansed from it all the phrases that he regarded as unacceptable to censorship. On 2 January 1962 the editorial board of Novyi mir met to discuss the story. Tvardovskii was torn between his literary appreciation of the story and his political duty to reject it. Solzhenitsyn's attitude toward life appeared "excessively Christian" to him. Ultimately, the meeting concluded that the story could not be printed. However, at the end of 1962, encouraged by the success of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Tvardovskii decided to publish the story. On his suggestion, its original title was changed to "Matrena's Home," thus lowering the visibility of the story's Christian message.81 In addition, the published text of the story reveals the absence of two details bespeaking Matrena's religiosity—her having holy water and icons in her home.82 It is likely that these excisions were made by official censors. The clearest insight into the ferocity of antireligious censorship under Khrushchev is offered not by works of Soviet literature but by the 1959 reprint of Dmitrii Sadovnikov's Riddles of the Russian People: A Collection of Riddles, Questions, Parables, and Puzzles (1875). Professor Vladimir Markov discovered that the reprint, issued by the Moscow State University, omitted over 550 riddles, more than 300 of which dealt with religious subjects. The editor of the volume, the folklore scholar Vladimir Anikin, dismissed religious and other expunged riddles as either obsolete or lacking genuine popular spirit. Among the religious riddles only those demonstrating a critical attitude toward religion were retained.83
Peasants During Stalin's rule peasant-related revisions had been executed with such thoroughness that the censorship of the Khrushchev period could make practically no new corrections of this type in the works published before 1953. This applies even to the works set in rural Russia and portraying the peasants in the
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context of momentous historical events. Yet the Party and its censors were far from indifferent to the treatment of peasant issues in the works published under Khrushchev; their concerns were essentially the same as those in Stalin's time. Between the Downpours, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and "Matrena's Home" provide pertinent illustrations. Lenin's soliloquy in the original text of Between the Downpours contained his musings on the forcible requisition of grain from peasants. Things did not look rosy. In the vicinity of Voronezh the Bolsheviks could collect merely 2 percent of the assigned quota. In the Livny area the peasants rebelled. Later, Lenin's emissary Miliutin managed to procure 80 percent of the quota by resorting to the most effective way of persuasion: cursing the peasants in the foulest language. Preferring this method to the use of military force, Lenin decides to send Miliutin to Voronezh. The entire passage was not printed in the play's revised version (163; 222). It spoke not only of the peasants' resistance to the Bolsheviks but also presented Lenin in a somewhat farcical light. Revisions in Solzhenitsyn's works centered on passages dealing with the compulsory character of collectivization and its lamentable repercussions. The 1962-63 editions of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich do not mention that, in 1930, women and horses were "driven" into collective farms (15, 33; 17, 39), and that the farms would "croak" when this generation of women would become worn out (33; 39). Significant cuts occur in Tiurin's reminiscences about the late fall of 1930 when peasants fled their villages in droves to avoid being deported or shot. The following bits of Tiurin's story did not see the light until 1973: "All the squares near the railroad stations were covered with peasant sheepskin coats. The people starved to death right there, without getting on the train. You know to whom the tickets were issued—the GPU and the anny." There was an order to shoot peasants traveling in freight trains, and the GPU men searched passenger trains.84 Since One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich passed censorship without changes, it follows that all or part of the above pruning was performed either by the author or the Novyi mir editors. In "Matrena's Home," on demand of these editors, the action was moved back from 1956 to 1953, to dissociate Khrushchev from the bleak picture of the countryside painted by Solzhenitsyn. Although the author states that there were no other changes in the story,83 its 1973 edition includes lines absent from its Soviet publication. Most of them refer to dismal aspects of Soviet rural life. The Novyi mir text does not mention the presence of thieves in the village or Matrena's poverty that precluded her buying a radio. Nor is there the phrase about the collective farm compelling Matrena to work for a tiny plot of land that the collective farm gave to her for temporary use. Also missing are contrasts between prerevolutionary and Soviet villages. Unlike collective farmers, the peasants of old time did not stand idly or gossip at the work site because they toiled for themselves. And their beautiful songs had been long forgotten by their descendants.86 It is hard to imagine that Solzhenitsyn, a great admirer of folk art and idiom, would have voluntarily excised his opinion of Russian peasant songs.
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Puritanical Censorship Curses and Obscenities With some exceptions, the censors of the Khrushchev time handled swearwords with nearly the same measure of relative permissiveness as their colleagues of the 1920s. A case in point is the treatment of matiuki and other improprieties in Sholokhov's early stories. There were about thirty matiuki in the 1924-31 publications of the stories. Most of them were put into the mouths of enemies of the Soviet regime to underscore their propensity for verbal and physical violence. However, all three profanities involving the name of God came from the Red characters. Since 1956, all Collected Works and other regular editions of early stories retained over 80 percent of the original matiuki, including the three blasphemies. Derivatives from the word "mother," with which the author indicated the use of matiuki by his characters, were treated even more gently. They were preserved in all editions for adult readers. Apart from matiuki, there were not many curses in the early stories. Some of the relatively innocuous obscenities were purged more consistently than matiuki. For example, the letters "zh ..." (zhopa) and "z . . . " (zasratyi, colloq.) designating two mildly indecorous words for "buttocks" and "shitty," respectively, were dropped from the stories "Dry Rot" and "The Tulip Steppe." Two other illustrations can be taken from the stories "The Farm Laborers" and "About Kolchak, Nettles, and Other Things" in which pro-Soviet characters made frivolous remarks owing to the misuse of the double entendre chlen that means both "member" and "penis" in Russian.87 In a similar case the censors of the 1958 edition of Russia Washed in Blood objected to the use of the colloquialism iaitsa (balls, testes), which led to the removal of the following exchange between a Red and a White soldier: "Do you cut the prisoners' balls off?" "That's a lie, man. Why do we need yours if each of us has a pair of his own"(321; 421). Another cut involved the abbreviation "g . . . " (govno, shit) in a character's speech (220; 350). On the other hand, coarse appellations "b . . . " (whore) and der'mo (crap) reappeared in the 1958 edition of Virineia,^ while the original "zh ..." (ass) made its debut in the 1957 publication of Bruski (2:348; 349). But the editors of Bruski showed inconsistency by getting rid of the less offensive der'mo (2:312, 4:549; 313, 543). Nor was there unanimity among the censors of Maiakovskii's poem "To You!" In the 1955 edition of his Poems (Leningrad, Sov. pis.) the word bliadiam (to whores) was shortened to "b "; but it was spelled out in full in volume 1 of his Complete Works (Moscow; KhL, 1955) and in volume 1 of his Selected Works (Moscow: KhL, 1960). The editorial review of foul language in The Quiet Don did not go beyond the 1953 revisions. In 1956 three blasphemies and twenty other matiuki were reinstated while two matiuki uttered by the Cossack Khristonia remained unrestored. The first was probably overlooked, but the second might have been left out intentionally. It referred to Karl Marx, though in a humorous context,89 The restoration rate was lower among the non-matiuki. Thus an abbreviation for
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"ass," zas-ts (shitass), and govnoedy (shiteaters) are still missing since 1953. Moreover, the 1956 editors crossed out one "zh ..." on their own initiative (2:77; 88). A puzzling fluctuation occurred in the handling of the designation "b . . . " Since 1953 it has been gone from the monarchist Evgenii Listnitskii's comparison of the Provisional Government to a whore,90 but it reemerged in 1956 in several utterances, including a parallel drawn by Listnitskii's friend Kalmykov between the Bolshevik Party and a whore (2:150; 169). Since all obscenities purged in 1953 from volumes 3 and 4 were restored in 1956, the total sum of them in later editions of The Quiet Don amounts to slightly less than half of their original number. The 1957 MG edition of Virgin Soil Upturned nullified well-nigh all puritanical corrections made in the revised 1952 version of the novel. Among the few exceptions are eliminations or replacements of substandard words for testicles and for the verb "masturbate." Yet matiuki, blasphemies, and all other curses were reinstated. Thus, with respect to obscenities, the 1957 text came very close to that of the 1945 edition. No puritanical revisions could be found in They Fought for Their Country, though coarse words and curses were consistently used by Red Army soldiers in excerpts published for the first time in 1943, 1944, and 1949. In 1951 the critic Anatolii Tarasenkov, deputy editor in chief of Novyi mir, stated that the soldiers' speech was "interspersed with long and elaborate swearwords." The novel would greatly benefit from a reworking.91 Nothing happened, however. The next edition of the incomplete novel appeared only in 1959 when the purification campaign prompted by Stalin's brochure on Marxism and linguistics had long since run its course. Therefore we encounter in the novel's 1959 publications the word kurva (slut), its abbreviated synonym "b . . . " and a number of clearly implied matiuki f2 Nonetheless, these vulgarisms give only a vague idea of the language spoken by Soviet front-line troops. Life under Soviet conditions, the bitterness of fighting, and the flexibility of word formation in Russian combined to produce in the Red Army the kind of language whose diversity, profanity, effectiveness, and status were probably unmatched in any other army fighting in World War II. The realist Sholokhov could not ignore this development: "Lopakhin let himself go and went on cursing without pausing for breath at such length and with such astonishing and picturesque figures of speech that before it was over Nekrasov suddenly smiled blissfully and cocked his head on one side, as though listening to the sweetest of music" (200-201).93 Inspired by Lopahkin's swearing, Nekrasov tells a story about a junior political officer named Astakhov. Shouting the choicest of obscenities, this virtuoso of cursing was able to make his soldiers get off the ground for an attack in situations when no commands or slogans could compel them to move into heavy enemy fire (201-2). Constraints of censorship would not have allowed Sholokhov to reproduce verbatim this brand of swearing even if he wanted to. Yet, thanks to his topmost standing in the literary establishment, he was able to say more about the unprintable idiom of the country's defenders than any other Soviet author. And he clearly enjoyed writing about their verbal magic.
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Eroticism Hardly any erotic revisions could be found in the works treated in this chapter. The 1958 edition of Russia Washed in Blood had merely one excision of sexual nature. Cut was the phrase about a fat Armenian woman who, lying in a yard on a sheaf of reed, "offered herself to both footsoldiers and horsemen" (62; 239). In 1956 an early story of Sholokhov lost its narrator's colloquial remark about sexual advances of a woman,94 while The Quiet Don left out the italicized word in the scene portraying Bunchuk and Anna in bed: "I want to love you with all of my strength!"—and she shuddered terribly at her own resolve, "Hurry!" (2:288; 318). In this case, however, the omission might have been prompted by aesthetic considerations. The word "terribly" (zhutko) overdramatizes the situation. The changing attitude toward erotic elements distinctly revealed itself in the fact that all sex-related revisions made in the early 1950s in The Quiet Don and Virgin Soil Upturned were rescinded in the 1956 and 1957 publications of these novels. Later, only the superpurist Kirill Potapov, editor of the 1962 edition of Sholokhov's Collected Works, expunged from volume 1 of Virgin Soil Upturned the line comparing the shape of Lushka's breast to that of a she-goat's udder (100; 99)—exactly what he did a decade earlier in the novel's bowdlerized version. There were, however, dozens of deletions involving erotic riddles in Sadovnikov's Riddles of the Russian People. The riddles of this kind did not contain any strong language and the answers to them were quite innocuous, on the order of "stove," "ring," or "eye." But they presented people and objects (especially a hole or something hanging) in a way suggesting sexual organs and intercourse.95
Naturalistic Details In contrast to their laxity regarding eroticisms in fiction, censorship of the Khrushchev period revealed a moderate concern for naturalistic elements. This circumspection found its expression in both a greater number of new revisions and a lower proportion of restorations of previous deletions than was the case with erotic corrections. In the 1956 publication of Sholokhov's early stories, the editors changed "driveling September" to "dark September" and "stink" to "smoke" in "The Way and the Road" and discarded the italicized modifiers in the phrase "sweet, cornflower smell of decaying bodies," which occurs in "Alien Blood."96 And beginning with the first publication of "The Offense," the tongue of a frightened man was not allowed to "stick out of the black slit of his gap-toothed mouth."97 A few corrections might have been prompted by both political and puritanical considerations. They represent cases where unsavory details appeared in connection with politically virtuous characters. This is true, for example, of a "lice-ridden" shirt belonging to a heroic Komsomol leader in "The Way and the Road" or of "horse dung" that a proud Red Guard put into his mouth in "The Tulip Steppe"
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so that he would not cry out from pain in front of his tormentors. The epithet "lice-ridden" vanished and "horse dung" became "dirt." A combination of political and puritanical factors might have motivated the removal of a passage involving a Red Chinese man from the 1958 edition of Russia Washed in Blood. The eliminated lines referred to his drinking heavily on an empty stomach and then vomiting everything he drank and ate, including unchewed slices of smoked sausages (203; 337). The editors, or censors, of the 1957 edition of Bruski went much farther in their prudishness. They removed hair from Kirill Zhdarkin's calves and from lashka Chukhliav's chest, that is, from friend and foe alike (1:75, 170; 72, 168). On the other hand, the editors of The Quiet Don did not mind restoring body hair in most instances where it was removed in 1953, except for a few descriptions of Bunchuk's hands. No longer are they covered with "black horse hair" or "fleecy black fur." The special treatment of Bunchuk had probably less to do with prettying up a Bolshevik than with avoiding redundancy. Bunchuk's hirsuteness was sufficiently indicated by the restorations of similar cuts elsewhere. While showing considerable divergence in the treatment of body hair, the editors of the 1953 and 1956 versions of The Quiet Don exhibited more solidarity in handling offensive odors, gory or disagreeable details, and bad manners. Wellnigh all of the 1953 excisions of such items listed in the preceding chapter were accepted. Still, there were many more naturalistic details of every variety that the 1956 editors of The Quiet Don did not endorse. And the 1957 edition of Virgin Soil Upturned voided practically all of the 1952 naturalistic revisions, with a possible exception of "spewing up" in the author's speech.98 As could he expected, the removal of naturalistic elements from Sadovnikov's collection of riddles did not lag behind the analogous process in fiction. Gone, for instance, were numerous riddles concerned with lice, stench, drivel, snivel, urination, and pregnant women.99 The mass elimination of earthy, erotic, and religious riddles prevented Soviet readers, primarily college students, from gaining a broad acquaintance with a unique part of the Russian folkloric heritage. The knowledge of the mentality and creativity of one's ancestors was sacrificed to crude atheism and to the hypocritical priggishness of the transient authority.
Children's Editions Editions intended for secondary-school students present a motley picture in relation to their regular counterparts. The texts of the 1954 Detgiz edition of How the Steel Was Tempered and the 1956, 1957, and 1959 Uchpedgiz editions of The Young Guard for tenth graders are nearly identical with the texts of their regular editions. The same applies to the 1959 Detgiz edition of The Young Guard. Thus children's editions of the Fadeev novel, which are based on its 1956 Sov. pis. version, retain merely a few references to Stalin. The 1957 Detgiz publication of Armored Train No. 14-69 offers a new, bowdlerized text that became standard for the novel's regular editions during the Khrushchev period. On the other hand, children's editions of Sholokhov's works evince varying degrees of
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divergence from their "adult" publications. The text of the 1952 revised edition of Virgin Soil Upturned served as a model for the 1954 edition for secondary-school students and, beginning with 1956, for five annual Uchpedgiz editions for tenth-grade students. The 1954 edition has a larger number of cuts than its 1952 model, but still shows more similarities with it than do the heavily edited 1950 and 1951 versions for secondaryschool students. As we know, the 1957 Uchpedgiz edition for tenth graders contains several deletions involving Stalin. In 1958, 1959, and 1960, the Uchpedgiz reprinted the text of its 1957 edition without further changes. Consequently, all these editions continued to be almost identical with the revised 1952 version of the novel. By contrast, regular publications of Virgin Soil Upturned adopted the text of the 1957 MG edition, which, except for cuts concerning Stalin and a few other corrections, reproduced the 1945 text of the novel. The bureaucrats in charge of the Uchpedgiz (the Publishing House of the Russian Republic's Ministry of Education) must have felt that the progenies of the mutilated 1952 version of Virgin Soil Upturned possessed higher educational value than the restored text of the regular editions. The 1955 Detgiz edition of The Quiet Don remains the novel's only publication produced explicitly for educational purposes—for tenth-grade students of secondary schools. The text of this unique publication is based on the bowdlerized 1953 version of the novel. Yet there are some conspicuous differences. The 1955 editors went much further in eliminating erotically tinged phrases and passages, notably those related to sexual acts. They omitted, for instance, three pages pertaining to the rape of Frania (1:222-25; 110), an almost equally long portrayal of Dar'ia's attempt to seduce her father-in-law (2:56-58; 203), and a somewhat shorter description of Grigorii Melekhov's fleeting affair with a Cossack woman (3:22-24; 361). Besides, the Detgiz editors banned more than twice the number of obscenities purged in 1953. All blasphemies and well-nigh all matiuki were gone. But untypical of a book for teenagers were the political revisions which made the Detgiz edition of The Quiet Don a lesser piece of propaganda than the revised 1953 version of the novel. The Detgiz editors were the ones who initiated the removal of Stalin's name from Sholokhov's works. They also toned down or abbreviated some of the 1953 defamatory interpolations concerning General Kornilov, his adherents, and the Moscow State Conference (2:114-15; 230). Simultaneously, they reinstated passages portraying Kornilov as a person: his trying to catch a butterfly, his detailing a dream to General Romanovskii, and the lyrical depiction of his departure for the Moscow State Conference (2:115; 230). Needless to say, such a reversal was made possible by the accelerating pace of de-Stalinization. The 1956 edition of The Quiet Don accepted these restorations, as well as a new political correction made in 1955. In the sentence "He was an ardent Bolshevik" the italicized verb was replaced by "had a reputation for being" (2:356; 347). The man in question was a priest's son, who thanked the White Cossacks for flogging, instead of shooting, him at a time when his type of Bolshevik activity was punished with death. The Khrushchev period saw at least two publications of Sholokhov's early stones aimed at young readers. The first collection entitled The Way and the
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Road (1962) was brought out by the Young Guard publishers in a special series called "Soviet Writers to Children." Included in this collection were three early stories: "The Shame Child," "The Way and the Road," and "The Shepherd." The stories feature young pro-Bolshevik characters and belong to the crudest propaganda creations of the early Sholokhov. Their selection could hardly be accidental, for the compiler of the 1962 collection was Kirill Potapov. These and nine other early stories comprise the content of the second collection, The Don Stories (1964), published in Moscow by Detgiz for secondary-school students. The basic textual difference between the stories printed in the two collections and their contemporary regular editions lies in the area of puritanical censorship. The moralist Potapov threw out not only all the matiuki but also less offensive appellations on the order of "Communist cur," "fool's lover," "pig's trotter," and "blockhead." He also held as inadmissible a character's observation that the anarchist Nestor Makhno traveled in the company of his mistresses.100 The editors of The Don Stories left all these items intact, but manifested a lack of consistency in the treatment of matiuki. They dispensed with them in "The Way and the Road" but spared them in "Aleshka's Heart." And, unlike Potapov, they preserved the author's words indicating the characters' use of these curses. Official Glavlit censors showed apparently little interest for matiuki, leaving it to individual editors to decide their fate, even in the works chosen specifically for the young generation.
Authors'
Reactions
The gamut of authorial responses to censorship of the Khrushchev period ran a wide and contradictory course, reflecting both limited relaxation and continued constraints of the Party's literary policy. Such different writers as Libedinskii and Solzhenitsyn, as the author of The First Circle, embarked upon extensive revision of their works to render them passable through the close-woven nets of censorship. The bona-fide Communist Libedinskii purported to adjust his novels to political demands of the day, whereas the ardent anti-Communist Solzhenitsyn attempted to conceal his ideological position. On the other hand, the author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and "Matrena's Home" made only what he considered marginal concessions to censorship and refused to compromise his integrity in the case involving his views on God and the destruction of the peasantry during collectivization. Fadeev and Panferov were not destined to live through the entire thaw period. Nonetheless, judging from the editions of their works which came out in the first half of that period, both authors made no visible effort to cleanse them of spurious political material. Nor did Vsevolod Ivanov display any concern about reprinting the self-censored 1957 version of Armored Train No. 14-69. On the contrary, Sholokhov and Kataev did what they could to get rid of revisions made in the bowdlerized versions of their novels. A long and exhausting battle with censorship was fought by Tvardovskii as the editor of Novyi mir. At times, to circumvent Glavlit, he turned to Lebedev
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and Khrushchev. He even tried to persuade the Party leader to abolish censorship. He did not succeed, but at least once Khrushchev made it possible for him to experience a sweet personal revenge on his tormentors. This happened in August 1963 after Khrushchev gave permission to print his poem "Terkin in the Other World" which had been under a taboo since 1954. Before issuing a formal approval for the poem's publication, Stepan Avetisian, deputy chief of Glavlit, telephoned Tvardovskii twice. The censor pleaded with the poet to remove the lines saying that, in the other world, some stupid officials were routinely transferred to higher paying jobs as censors. Tvardovskii rejected the entreaty. "Maybe, this is cruel. . . . Never mind. They deserve it," he said to Lakshin the moment he hung up.101 This episode is symptomatic of the modicum of independence that the writers gained during Khrushchev's rule. Of course, censorship was still strong, but its iron Stalinist grip had loosened. The newly acquired taste of freedom, no matter how weak, helped the writers to get through darker times lying ahead of them.
CHAPTER 5
CENSORSHIP IN 1965-1984 THE FREEZE
Political Background The official cultural policy during the 1965-84 period proceeded from the thesis that thanks to the inspirational leadership of the Party, the adverse effects of the cult of Stalin did not deter the Soviet people from attaining their socialist goals. The thesis goes back to the time of Khrushchev but it received added emphasis in the Brezhnev era. A conspicuous landmark in this development was a 1965 article by Sergei Trapeznikov, head of the Department of Science and Educational Institutions of the Party Central Committee. The cult of personality, he wrote in Pravda, caused substantial damage in certain areas of socialist construction. Yet neither the cult nor its repercussions could change the essence of the socialist system. Therefore, scholars and writers who present life solely in terms of the personality cult commit theoretical and factual errors by "relegating to the background the heroic struggle of the Soviet people who built socialism."1 The ink had hardly dried from Trapeznikov's pen when three Soviet historians pronounced the term "period of the personality cult" erroneous and non-Marxist. The use of the term, they argued, overemphasized the significance of one individual and minimized "the heroic efforts of the Party and the people in the struggle for socialism."2 A similar but more authoritarian statement appeared three years later in the Central Committee's theses issued on the occasion of the centennial of Lenin's birth. The Party rejected any attempts to use criticism of the personality cult as a means "to blacken the history of socialist construction, to discredit revolutionary conquests, and to revise the principles of Marxism-Leninism."3 The purpose of such declarations was twofold: to stop exposure of the seamy side of Soviet life and to promote the glorification of the Party's accomplishments. In achieving its first objective, the Party enlisted the help of the judicial branch of the Government. In September 1966 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic added article number 190/1 to the republic's Criminal Code. It stipulated a fine, forced labor, or imprisonment for oral, written, or printed dissemination of "deliberate fabrications slandering the Soviet social and state system."4 But all these repressive measures failed to produce the results desired by the Party, and, in March 1968, Brezhnev personally intervened in cultural matters. Speaking at a Moscow Party Conference, he echoed Khrushchev's motto that there could not be peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and the West
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in the realm of ideology. The imperialist enemy, he asserted, took advantage of "any manifestation of ideological immaturity and vacillations" on the part of certain members of the intelligentsia. Renegades who carried favor with the ideological adversaries would not go unpunished.^ The invasion of Czechoslovakia, in August 1968, brought further hardening of the anti-Western stance and the tightening of the controls over literature and other arts. The grip loosened somewhat during the last years of Brezhnev's rule, due less to softening of the Party policy than to the progressive inefficiency of the bureaucratic apparatus. Brezhnev's successors, lurii Andropov (1982-84) and Konstantin Chernenko (1984-85), tried to restore the order in every sphere of life, including literature. In June 1983, speaking as the Party's chief ideologist, Chemenko called on editorial boards of periodicals and publishing houses to get tougher with the ideological screening of literary works, and urged the Department of Culture of the Central Committee to become more active in assisting literary organizations to conduct their business in accordance with the Party's high standards.6 In September 1984, Chernenko, in the capacity of the Secretary General of the Party Central Committee, addressed a large audience of political and cultural figures gathered in the Kremlin to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Soviet Writers' Union. The gist of his speech amounted to a rehashing of old Party attitudes toward literature. The Party and the people, he said, expected from the creative intelligentsia "ideological profundity, civic spirit, and a high level of artistic mastery."7 However, such incantational cliches were overshadowed by Chernenko's uneasiness about those writers who disregarded the Party's political requirements. By the end of the 1965-84 period, the Party had still not succeeded in putting all of Soviet literature in the service of its utilitarian goals. The 1965-84 period saw some changes in names and administrative structure of censorship organs. In August 1966, Glavlif s official designation—the Main Administration for the Guarding of State and Military Secrets in the Press—lost the words "and Military," suggesting that the job of preserving military secrets was delegated primarily to the military censorship. At the same time, Glavlit was separated from the Committee for the Press and attached directly to the Council of Ministers. Its new official name became Glavnoe upravlenie po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR (The Main Administration for the Guarding of State Secrets in the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers).8 It appears that the Government decided to draw a sharper line between the censorial functions of Glavlit and the Committee for the Press, which was also attached to the USSR Council of Ministers. The actual process of censorship would be concentrated in Glavlit under its own leadership, while the Committee for the Press would make sure that no politically defective books were issued by the publishing houses. In a way, this meant a double-checking of the work performed by Glavlit. However, censorship was only a part of the committee's duties. Its principal task was the management of the publishing industry, polygraphy, and the distribution of books. The process of censorship during the 1965-84 period shows a growing role of the Party Central Committee and the editorial boards of periodicals and publishing houses. Indicative in this respect were some of the statements made at the
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meeting of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union held on 29 May 1967. The poet Nikolai Gribachev, chief editor of the magazine Sovetskii Soiuz {The Soviet Union), contended that Glavlit was concerned exclusively with the safeguarding of state interests. Decisions on literary and ideological problems were made by the Party Central Committee to which Glavlit merely reported its views. The writer Vadim Kozhevnikov claimed that, during his nineteen-year tenure as chief editor of Znamia, not a single manuscript was held up by Glavlit. It was his editorial board that resorted to this course of action when it deemed it necessary.9 Both Gribachev and Kozhevnikov spoke of extreme situations. Glavlit continued to exercise ideological control and to hold up manuscripts on its own initiative. Nevertheless, there was a grain of truth in the writers' assertions concerning the dwindling importance of the official censorship. Furthermore, in January 1969, the Party Central Committee passed a resolution aimed at curbing Glavlit's power. The resolution called for increasing the responsibility of editorial boards and organizations involved in publishing books and periodicals. In the literary field, an example of such an organization was the Writers' Union. However, Aleksei Kondratovich, deputy chief editor of Novyi mir, noted that the Writers' Union was not vested with much authority and that the Party simply could not do without an official censorship agency. The Central Committee resolution had little effect and Kondratovich dubbed it "a strange and incomprehensible zigzag" in the Party's policy. Indeed, the Party's attitude toward Glavlit underwent no fundamental changes. In Moscow, on 5 June 1972, the Party organized a meeting of leading cultural administrators to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Glavlit. The event's main speaker was Pavel Romanov, the Glavlit chief.10 Be that as it may, an erosion of Glavlit authority vis-a-vis editorial boards could be observed at the beginning as well as at the close of the 1965-84 period. For example, volume 2 of Boris Mozhaev's novel Muzhiki i baby {Peasant Men and Peasant Women, wr. 1978-80), approved for publication by Glavlit in 1983, was subsequently turned down by the editors of Novyi mir, Nash sovremennik {Our Contemporary), and Druzhba narodov {Friendship of the Peoples).n Glavlit's permission to publish carried even less weight with the Department of Culture and the Department of Propaganda of the Party Central Committee. Both departments stepped up their censorial intervention in literature and could stop publication of materials already passed by Glavlit. The effects of the combined censorship of Glavlit and the Central Committee departments can be illustrated by lengthy delays in the publication of Novyi mir. The May 1968 issue of this magazine was in the hands of these agencies for three and a half months. It came out in August, its regular size reduced by one-third due to censorial excisions. Kondratovich had been in constant personal or telephone contact with ranking officials in the departments of culture and propaganda, fighting for the retraction of taboos placed on the Novyi mir materials by the departments or Glavlit.12 In some cases the final judgment was pronounced by the chief of Glavlit or the Party. For instance, in July 1969, the Glavlit chief Romanov forbade the publication of Tvardovskii's poem "Po pravu pamiati" ("By Rights of Memory"), refusing to give any explanation for his interdiction. According to Kondratovich, this was a new form of prohibition, and the reason for banning
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the poem must have been its anti-Stalinist tenor.13 In the early 1970s, the film Belorusskii vokzal {The Belorussian Station) had been blocked by censorship until the word came that Brezhnev liked it.14 As a rule, Brezhnev was much less involved with literary and art matters than the impulsive Khrushchev. Brezhnev, for example, was noncommittal in a telephone conversation with Tvardovskii about censorship and he ignored the poet's request for a personal meeting. Cautious and reluctant to make decisions, he worked in unison with the Party apparatus.15 In spite of its increased severity, censorship of the 1965-84 period lacked strict consistency. The probable cause of this phenomenon was the growing inertia of the bureaucratic system. As early as May 1967, Sergei Mikhalkov, an influential official of the Writers' Union, bemoaned the situation when works proscribed in one city were published in another. Previously, he said, a Glavlit verdict was binding for all. Examples of different censorial treatment of certain plays and films were cited by the writer Grigorii Svirskii in January 1968 at a Party meeting of Moscow writers. What is more, on 7, 8, and 12 November 1967, Shatrov's play Tridtsatoe avgusta {The Thirtieth of August, wr. 1966) was performed, under the title of Bolsheviks, by the Moscow theater Sovremennik (The Contemporary) without Glavlit's permission. The Glavlit chief Romanov complained about this "absolutely inadmissible and unprecedented" violation to the Party Central Committee.16 Later plays by Shatrov appeared without the approval of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. This practice violated an earlier instruction of the Party Central Committee requiring the institute's endorsement of any literary work dealing with Lenin.17 On the other hand, the institute used its censorial prerogative as the publisher of Lenin's Complete Works (1958-65). The institute's editors shortened or excluded Lenin's letters containing faulty political judgments or suggesting his more than friendly relationship with Inessa Armand. The same edition of Complete Works was periodically reprinted under Brezhnev.18 Censorship of Lenin's texts continued into the first half of the 1980s, affecting, for instance, passages attacking the bureaucratic methods of government or the lack of culture in the Party's upper echelon. A vigilant censor called some of Lenin's thoughts "great but untimely."19 It was feared that Lenin's criticisms of the early Bolshevik regime would be applied to contemporary Soviet conditions. Similarly, censorship suppressed some manuscripts giving graphic descriptions of Hitler's Germany lest they give rise to "uncontrollable associations" of Nazism with Soviet Communism. Censorial constraints in 1965-84 resulted in the rejection of a greater number of manuscripts than during the preceding period. At the same time, the tightening of the screw prompted many writers to turn to samizdat or tamizdat or both. The first term, translated as self-publishing, denotes all sorts of officially unauthorized texts produced in one's home country in the form of manuscripts, typescripts, or photocopies. The second term means "publishing there," that is, abroad. Both ways of avoiding censorship had been used in the West and Russia for centuries. However, it was only in the Soviet Union that these practices received their specific names, displaying an ironic morphological analogy to Gosizdat, the state publishing house. Both samizdat and tamizdat reached their apex
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under Brezhnev, involving such authors as Solzhenitsyn, losif Brodskii, Vladimir Voinovich, Georgii Vladimov, and Venedikt Erofeev. A beneficial side effect of samizdat was, as Andrei Siniavskii observed, that some of the official, publishable authors were compelled to write more daringly "for the sake of their own self-respect."20 It was in samizdat that a little-known study of Soviet censorship by A. Antonov appeared in 1978 in Moscow under the title U mysli stoia na chasakh {Standing on Guard over Thought). One copy of it, which I received in 1992, was in the form of a bound typescript. Another noteworthy piece of samizdat was a typed literary collection MetrdpoT, whose twelve copies, illustrated and bound, came out in 1979. Its initiators, Vasilii Aksenov and Viktor Erofeev, attracted over twenty contributors. Much of the collection's material had been previously rejected by censorship. Uncensored and freely circulating in Moscow, MetrdpoT could not but provoke the ire of the Party. With its blessings, the Moscow Writers' Union unleashed a vitriolic campaign against the collection's editors and contributors. Some were expelled from the Writers' Union or forced to emigrate.21 A facsimile edition of MetrdpoT was produced in 1979 in the United States by Ardis Publishers. Ruthless punishment was inflicted on the books whose authors found themselves abroad owing to deportation, emigration, or defection. On the orders of Glavlit, their books had to be removed from public libraries and shipped to Glavlit, where they were shredded. The orders were transmitted to libraries through the Mass Culture Department of the Ail-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. A copy of the document entitled "Orders" and signed by the head of the Mass Culture Department was obtained through unofficial channels by the emigre writer Anatolii Gladilin. The document refers to the Glavlit orders dated 12 August 1969, 13 August 1976, and 13 October 1979, which called for the removal of all books authored by Solzhenitsyn, Viktor Nekrasov, Vladimir Maksimov, Anatolii Kuznetsov, and other expatriates. Furthermore, in 1974, the Glavlit chief Romanov gave an order to ban from public libraries and the book trade network all Soviet and foreign publications of Solzhenitsyn's works, along with the issues of periodicals in which they appeared. Romanov's order was based on the instructions of the Party Central Committee issued on 28 January 1974, shortly before Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from the Soviet Union.22 On the other hand, the censors of Brezhnev's time passed Selected Works (1965) by Marina Tsvetaeva, an emigre poet who returned to her homeland in 1939 and committed suicide two years later. The 1965 volume of her works was considerably larger than its 1961 counterpart. Almost simultaneously, there appeared a nine-volume edition of Ivan Bunin's Collected Works (1965-67). The censors ignored the fact that this emigre writer died abroad unreconciled with the Soviet regime. Naturally, Soviet publications of both authors did not include their politically unacceptable pieces nor a pair of Bunin's stories judged overly erotic. A positive step was the first publication of Mikhail Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel in the August 1965 issue of Novyi mir and of his masterpiece Master and Margarita {The Master and Margarita, wr. 1940) in the magazine Moskva {Moscow, no. 11, 1966 and no. 1, 1967). The latter novel came out in a heavily edited version.
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The relatively benign treatment of some of emigre and earlier Soviet works constituted an exception rather than the rule in the practices of the multifaced monster of Brezhnev censorship.
Literary Works Most of the works covered in earlier chapters underwent little or no censorship in the 1965-84 period. No changes were made in A Week, The Commissars, The Rout, or Cement. Scanty or erratic restorations of previous deletions crop up in Red Cavalry, Russia Washed in Blood, How the Steel Was Tempered, The Ordeal of Sevastopol', The Quiet Don, and Virgin Soil Upturned. Exceptions are the 1966 Saratov edition of Bruski which has a sizable number of restorations concerning Stalin and "enemies of the people," and a new excerpt from They Fought for Their Country which underwent a terror-related cleansing in 1969. Occasional new revisions are registered in The Catacombs (formerly For the Power of the Soviets) and No Ordinary Summer. The reader could only welcome the appearance of several works in their early versions. Thus, beginning with its 1968 KhL publication in Ivanov's Collected Works, the novel Armored Train No. 14-69 was regularly printed in the version contained in the 1934 collection of the author's works entitled Partizanskie povesti (The Partisan Tales). Here the novel's text shows only half a dozen censorial departures from its 1922 book-form edition. By contrast, the 1966 and 1979 dramatic versions of Armored Train No. 14-69 are replicas of the play's 1964 edition, which, with a few discrepancies, represents a copy of the heavily censored text of its 1952 version. So, the play's readers and viewers continued to be exposed to some of the worst samples of anti-Western propaganda, including allegations about the existence of an American death camp in Vladivostok. Since 1968, Seifullina's "Lawbreakers," Humus, and Virineia have been published in their late 1920s versions, except for a couple of political deletions in the first two works. The 1936 Sov. pis. text of Stepan Razin found its way into vol. 3 (1968) of Chapygin's Collected Works (Leningrad, KhL); but the 1978 Moscow (Sovremennik), the 1982 Krasnoiarsk and Barnaul, and the 1984 Archangel editions of the novel reproduced the 1950 text. Why the editors and publishers of the mutilated Stepan Razin failed to make use of the original or less censored versions of the novel is not easy to answer. Perhaps, like in the case of reprinting the substandard text of the play Armored Train No. 14-69, it was a combination of ignorance and indifference characteristic of the so-called mature socialism achieved under Brezhnev. As for the works published shortly before or during the 1965-84 period, we shall focus on Anatolii Kuznetsov's documentary novel Babii /ar (1966) and on Trifonov's The Quenching of the Thirst and Vremia i mesto (Time and Place, 1981). Set in Kiev, Babii lar portrays two years of life under the German occupation in World War II. Its title is derived from the name of a ravine, the site of the massacre of Jews by the Nazis in September 1941. The editors of the magazine lunost' (Youth) made over 300 political revisions in the manuscript of Babii lar.
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Kuznetsov, who left a detailed account of his struggle with the lunost' editorial board, states that permission to publish the novel came from Mikhail Suslov, the Party's leading ideologist. He and his ranking comrades bought the clever argument of the lunost' editors that Kuznetsov's novel represented a refutation of Evtushenko's poem "Babii far." The editors pointed out that the poet dealt exclusively with the murder of the Jews, whereas Kuznetsov wrote about the execution of people of other nationalities as well.23 Babii lar exists in three versions. The first appeared in lunost' (nos. 8-10, 1966) with an editorial note reading "the journal version." This euphemism covered up the devastating editorial purge of the novel. It also meant that Kuznetsov was deceived by the chief editor of lunost', Boris Polevoi, who had promised the author that the note would read "printed in abridged form." The censors of the second version of Babii lar (Moscow: MG, 1967) put back a modest portion of passages eliminated by lunost'. They did this to appease and mislead foreign translators who were asking for the complete text of the novel. The third version appeared in Germany (Possev, 1970) after Kuznetsov had defected to the West in 1969 and changed his name to A. Anatolii. In this version he reinstated in italics the text removed by the lunost' editors.24 Time and Place covers some forty years in the life of Aleksandr Antipov, a Moscow writer. Trifonov's objective was to represent man's inner world as a mixture of layers deposited in it at different historical intervals. As in The Quenching of the Thirst and several others of his works, the author explores in Time and Place the impact of Stalin's terror on human behavior during and after the dictator's reign. To a considerable degree, Trifonov's unceasing preoccupation with terror was rooted in the fact that his father, an old Bolshevik, was shot in 1938 as an enemy of the people. The same fate befell Antipov's father. More than half of a hundred-odd censorial revisions in Time and Place involve terror and repression. Closely linked to them are corrections pertaining to Stalin. My examination of the censorial intervention in Time and Place was done by comparing the novel's text in Druzhba narodov (nos. 9-10, 1981) with the fuller, probably unedited text of its German translation published in 1983 in Berlin.25 In addition to Babii lar and Time and Place, works by other contemporary authors will be used to illustrate censorial activities of the 1965-84 period.
Political
Censorship
Khrushchev, Stalin, and Lenin The initial censorial reaction to Khrushchev's downfall was quick but moderate. The two earliest revisions recorded by me occurred in the 1965 edition of The Quenching of the Thirst, signed for publication on 20 October 1964, five days after the leader's ouster. The censors objected to the characters' talking about "Khrushchev's courage" in denouncing Stalin and to the determination of the chief of the canal construction to "go to Khrushchev."26 Both cuts must have been motivated by direct references to Khrushchev's name, since no other politi-
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cal revisions were made in the 1965 edition. Its text was reprinted without changes in the 1967 KhL publication of the novel. It was the 1970 Sov. pis. edition of The Quenching of the Thirst that experienced the full impact of progressing re-Stalinization. Regarding Khrushchev, this trend manifested itself in the total removal of references to the Twentieth Party Congress, whose denunciation of Stalin was applauded by the novel's characters. The purpose of the excisions was to prevent the reader from recalling Khrushchev's role at the congress and the positive changes effected by his policy. This hushing up accounts for the elimination of the following words spoken by the journalist Koryshev at an important Party meeting: "The result of the Twentieth Congress is not only the condemnation of the personality cult, the condemnation of lawlessness and arbitrariness, which caused the death of many honest individuals. The congress also had a salubrious effect on the people, on all of us; it is the liberation of thought, initiative, and creativity!"27 In another instance, the censors crossed out a character's remark about an ongoing restoration of the norms that guided Party life in Lenin's time (194; 185). Such a process was no longer allowed to be credited to Khrushchev. Khrushchev was not welcomed in Fazil' Iskander's epic novel Sandro iz Chegema (Sandro of Chegem, 1973) depicting the life of the people of Abkhazia, a small autonomous republic situated in the Caucasus. An innocuous phrase about the protagonist Sandro petitioning Khrushchev and Klimentii Voroshilov for a pension is missing from the novel's installment published in the August 1972 issue of Novyi mir.2^ A short colloquial remark about Khrushchev's removal from power was thrown out of Fedor Abramov's Dom (The House), the concluding volume of the tetralogy Brat'ia i sestry (Brothers and Sisters, 195878) which presents a realistic picture of a northern Russian village from the Second World War to the early 1970s.29 Most revisions aimed at Khrushchev as a politician, particularly as the initiator of de-Stalimzation. On the other hand, his wartime activities in the capacity of a Ukrainian partisan leader and a member of the Military Council of the First Ukrainian Front were handled rather gingerly. Respectful references to him were left intact in all editions of The Young Guard. The treatment of Khrushchev in Vershigora's People with a Clear Conscience lacks consistency, but is, on balance, quite favorable. I checked six editions of this book published between 1966 and 1985. Four of them are nearly identical with the 1959 Sov. pis. version that retained many good things about Khrushchev the man and the leader. Notable exceptions come up in the 1974 and 1982 editions brought out in Kiev by the Ukrainian Politizdat. The 1974 edition, in the Ukrainian language, discarded every mention of Khrushchev's name in chapter 16 of part I. Only twice is he called "a member of the Military Council," and much of what he said in a talk with a partisan is attributed to a general. Khrushchev's name and his high posts are mentioned in chapter 18 of part 4, but his dialogue with Vershigora is severely truncated. Two pages of the next chapter are filled with quotations from two of his 1944 speeches, but his name is not even mentioned. It is replaced by "it was said" and "the words sounded." The 1982 Kiev edition adopted, with some variations, the 1974 version of the last two chapters30 but preserved almost verbatim the 1959 Sov. pis. text in
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chapter 16 of part 1. Whether a harsh treatment of Khrushchev in the Kiev publications of Vershigora's book had anything to do with his ten-year rule of the Ukraine as Stalin's Gauleiter remains an open question. Rehabilitation of Stalin began almost as quickly as the downgrading of Khrushchev. Already in 1966 the censors purged Andrei Voznesenskii's poem "Oza" ("Oza," 1964) of twenty-six lines featuring a satirical depiction of Stalin who is represented metonymically by his mustache. Among other things, the censors disapproved of the transparent allusions to the dictator's bloody terror and to his calling average Soviet citizens "the cogs in the great state mechanism." Nor could they be enthusiastic about Voznesenskii's prediction that Soviet people would no longer serve as cogs or become asphyxiated by the fumes of Stalin's grey mustache.31 Another distinct signal of Stalin's comeback was given by the 1966 Saratov edition of Bruski. The second book of this edition, containing volumes 3 and 4 of the novel, has a note saying that the text of these volumes was reprinted from volume 2 (1958) of the Moscow KhL edition of Panferov's Collected Works. Actually, the Saratov text is a unique hybrid of the 1950 and 1958 versions of Bruski. And nowhere is this peculiarity more conspicuous than in the approach to Stalin. The Saratov version restored about three dozen Stalin-related deletions made in the novel's 1957 edition and accepted in 1958 by the publishers of Collected Works. The Saratov editors must have known that their claim about the identity of their and the 1958 versions of Bruski was spurious. Perhaps, at the beginning of the Brezhnev era, they were not sure what course the Party policy toward Stalin would take, and used their note as a smoke screen behind which they reinstated nearly half of all previous revisions affecting Stalin. Be that as it may, the censors condoned the influx of material resurrecting the cult of Stalin. These restorations include characters' references to Stalin as "a great man in Moscow" and "our beloved Stalin." His name reemerges in the phrase "One must know the teaching of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin." An orphan resumes her assertion that the Party and Stalin had taken the place of her father.32 Nonetheless, the most outrageous glorifications of the leader remained unrestored. Here belong, for instance, characters' panegyrics to Stalin's military and creative genius. None of the subsequent publications of Bruski which I examined adopted the text of the Saratov version. With minor alterations, they followed in the footsteps of either the 1957 or the 1958 editions of the novel, thus preserving an essentially positive image of Stalin as a person and statesman. In 1966 the editors of lunost' expunged from the manuscript of Kuznetsov's Babii lar all negative references to Stalin. The author was given to understand that the Party leadership did not consider it appropriate to criticize Stalin at that time.33 Discarded were parallels between him and Hitler as well as outright denunciations of him by Kuznetsov's grandfather. The old man branded Stalin "damned shoemaker" and "mustached murderer." And, naturally, the editors took away a German caricature representing Stalin as a gorilla with a blood-stained ax. The beast was shown trampling corpses of children, women, and old people.34 In the years that followed, the whitewashing of Stalin spread to hitherto untouched passages. Thus an examination of the 1970 Sov. pis. edition of The Quenching of the Thirst reveals numerous deletions of material that was left in-
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tact in the novel's 1967 KhL publication. First of all, one is struck by the elimination of the term "personality cult" in references to the period or consequences of Stalin's rale (44, 165, 194; 31, 155, 185). The Party, as we know, frowned upon the expression "the period of the personality cult," for, in its view, it exaggerated the role of the individual at the Party's expense. However, the terms "personality cult" and "consequences of the personality cult" repeatedly occur in Pravda editorials occasioned by the ninetieth and hundredth anniversaries of Stalin's birth.35 It was the characters' emphasis on the detrimental nature of Stalin's rule and its repercussions that caused the expulsion of these terms from The Quenching of the Thirst. The same measure was taken against such cliches as "the leader and teacher" (45; 32), "the father and friend of all peoples in the world" (285; 278), "the great Stalin construction! The great Stalin idea!" (96, 83), all of which acquired parodical coloration in the language of Trifonov's characters. Along with these adulatory platitudes, the censors erased phrases blaming Stalin for wasting billions of rubles on the senseless construction of the Main Turkmenian Canal (113; 101). Thanks to the censorial removal of references to his "errors," the despot was also exonerated from responsibility for the reign of terror (285; 278, 279). As a result, Stalin's name virtually disappeared from the 1970 text of The Quenching of the Thirst. The 1979 Profizdat edition went even further by dispensing with the sentence "Stalin died."36 The 1985 edition of the novel, in volume 1 of Trifonov's Collected Works, copied the 1979 text. The attention of editors and censors of Virgin Soil Upturned was directed exclusively to the question of restoring previous deletions concerning Stalin. The central item turned out to be the scene of the collective farmers' meeting which named the Gremiachii farm after him. Located in chapter 13 of volume 1, this scene was abridged in 1957 and excised in 1962. A check of twenty-nine editions of Virgin Soil Upturned, issued between 1965 and 1985, reveals that the scene of the meeting reappeared in the 1971 and 1975 Mosk. rab., the 1976 Sovremennik (The Contemporary), and the 1983 Russkii iazyk (The Russian Language) publications of the novel. The first three editions reprinted the scene in its abridged 1957 MG version; but the 1983 edition, whose volume 1 was based on the novel's 1953 KhL version, reproduced it in the nearly original form. Even more erratic treatment was given to the words "named after Stalin" throughout the novel and to Davydov's mention of the leader's name in chapter 8 of volume 2. Some editions restored all of these references, others none, and still others only part of them. It is hard to imagine that such a discordance involving a political figure of Stalin's stature would have occurred in his time. Restoration of the positive Stalin-related material in Virgin Soil Upturned proceeded simultaneously with the exclusion of negative references to him from manuscripts of contemporary works. Puti i pereput'ia {Roads and Crossroads, 1973), the third volume of Abramov's tetralogy Brothers and Sisters, lost the sentence "The leader liked to work at night and the whole country—from capitol to county—stayed awake."37 Indicative of the time, the censor did nothing with the life's dream of a local Party chief to see Stalin, "the man who holds the whole world in his hands" (2:40; 234). Large chunks of the text pertaining to Stalin were cut from the manuscript of
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Iskander's Sandro of Chegem by the editors of Novyi mir who rejected the novel's chapters dealing with collectivization and Stalin. The longest excision claimed a forty-page chapter entitled "Belshazzar's Feasts" (10:100; 187-229). Its focal point is a grandiose banquet given in the mid-thirties at an Abkhazian resort in honor of the vacationing Stalin. The leader and his entourage—Mikhail Kalinin, Voroshilov, and Lavrentii Beriia—are depicted in a mildly satirical manner. Iskander unveils Stalin's cunning and cruelty. When his pipe goes out, Stalin does not move, expecting someone to give him a light. After a while, Kalinin lights a match and holds it to Stalin's pipe. The dictator ignores the courtesy, waiting for the flame to burn Kalinin's fingers. Twelve pages narrating the story of a fishing trip arranged for Stalin in Abkhazia vanished from the chapter "Uncle Sandro and his Pet" (10:73; 294-307). The fishing, which took place after World War II, was done by throwing explosives into a mountain stream. After each explosion Sandro walked into the icecold water and threw the stunned trout up on the bank. Every time he emerged from the water, Stalin treated him to a wineglass of cognac. At one point when a large salmon floated up, Stalin went into the water himself, getting wet up to the pockets of his riding breeches. Once the fishing was over, he rewarded Sandro with a pair of fine woolen drawers. These and similar humorous episodes might be one of the reasons for the editorial deletion of the fishing story. The former leader of the Party and the country was not supposed to appear in a comic or degrading context. Another likely motivation for the cut might well be the characters' talking about the time of the Stalin terror. On 17 July 1992, in our conversation at Middlebury College, Iskander said that both the feast in honor of Stalin and the fishing story were based on facts. Almost all revisions concerning Stalin in Time and Place were executed in descriptions of huge crowds surging to the center of Moscow in the hope of viewing him lying in state at the House of Trade Unions. In the resulting jam, hundreds were crushed, smothered, or trampled to death, particularly on Trubnaia Square. Censorial deletions were intended to dedramatize Trifonov's portrayal of the event. In the novel's original text, the protagonist Antipov hears a muffled, dim rumble of the crowds, which appears to be coming not from people but from a flow of subterranean waters or lava. This flood drowns all individual voices except a woman's shrill cry for help. Antipov opens a window and an inhuman howl fills his room. Suddenly it dawns on him that what he sees and hears is not thousands of people, not a street, not the cries of those being squashed, not an evening twilight, but the elapsing time which lets out an inhuman howl. At this point jammed and screaming throngs take on a symbolic significance of the fading epoch of Stalin's terror and oppression, "the end of the winter." All these passages are missing from the Soviet edition of Time and Placed There were works whose negative depiction of Stalin precluded their publication. The novels Deti Arbata {Children of the Arbat, wr. late 1950s-82) by Anatolii Rybakov and Na drugoi den' (The Next Day, wr. 1967-69) by Aleksandr Bek may serve as examples. The first part of Rybakov's novel dealt with Moscow of 1933-34 and devoted two and a half chapters to Stalin. In 1966 Ry-
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bakov submitted it to Novyi mir. Tvardovskii liked the novel and in the same year the journal announced its forthcoming publication in 1967. To strengthen his hand in the inevitable difficulties with censorship, Tvardovskii tried to enlist the support of the leadership of the Writers' Union, but ran into the resistance of its influential executives. Realizing that the censors would not pass the chapters about Stalin, he gave up. Undaunted by the rejection, Rybakov produced a second part of Children of the Arbat, allotting more space to Stalin than in the first part. This time it was the magazine Oktiabr' that informed its readers of the imminent publication of the novel in 1979 (nos. 8-9, 1978). Anatolii Anan'ev, chief editor of Oktiabr', turned to the Party Central Committee. Instead of help, he received an order to deliver the novel's manuscript to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism for safekeeping. Since compliance would entail a virtual disappearance of the manuscript, Anan'ev asked Rybakov to take it home. The setback notwithstanding, Rybakov embarked upon writing a third part of the novel, substantially increasing Stalin's presence in it.39 Much of The Next Day treated the revolutionary activities of the young Stalin, focusing on the moral aspects of the political struggle. Bek wrote it "for the desk drawer," having no illusions about publishing it under Brezhnev.40 The novel appeared in 1989, seventeen years after its author's death. Rybakov and Bek probed deeply into Stalin's psyche, searching for clues to his personality. The authorities did not need this type of analysis. It was fraught with unpleasant revelations about the leader and the Party. By contrast, the censors would approve what could be construed by the reader as patently biased and hence refutable attacks on Stalin. Thus in Vitalii Zakrutkin's novel Sotvorenie mira (Creation of the World, 1955-78) the orthodox Stalinist Dolotov resolutely defends Stalin against the charges made in 1927 by a Trotskyite to the effect that Trotskii and his associates were repressed. Dolotov retorts that in fighting this "band," Stalin faithfully adhered to Lenin's political line.41 In the 1965-84 period, Lenin seemed to enjoy an even more preferential treatment than under Khrushchev. If 1956-64 publications of The Quiet Don excluded all of the 1953 insertions concerning Lenin, then the novel's 1965 editions put part of them back. The Rostov edition led the way by resurrecting the phrase about Lenin's order to take Rostov on 23 February 1918. Then the editors of Sholokhov's Collected Works reinstated information about Lenin's welcoming the anti-White stance taken by the Congress of the Front-Line Cossacks in Kamenskaia and about his receiving their delegation at the Third Ail-Russian Congress of the Soviets in Petrograd.42 As mentioned in the preceding chapter, Sholokhov refused to reintroduce this text in 1956. Of twenty subsequent publications of The Quiet Don that I examined, all accepted Lenin's order to take Rostov and only the 1980 Voenizdat edition did not restore the passage about his approval of the Kamenskaia congress and his reception of the Cossacks' delegation. The readmission of Lenin to The Quiet Don contrasted with the cleansing of contemporary works of what amounted to casting aspersions on the great leader in the censor's eyes. In the original text of Babii lar, Kuznetsov's grandfather did not want to hear Lenin's name. To him Lenin was the cause of all the misfortunes that befell Russia (8:12; 40). When a woman noted that the German propaganda talked about sacrifices for the sake of a radiant future in the same vein as
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did Lenin and Stalin, the grandfather concuned but added that Hitler should not be equated with Lenin or Stalin. Hitler was a smart German but the other two were "our bums" (9:22; 243). The lunost' editors censored these and other similar judgments. One wonders how Kuznetsov dared to submit such opinions to a prospective publisher, even if they did come from people critical of the Soviet regime. In 1973 even inoffensive references to Lenin disappeared from Sandro of Chegem. This occurred in the scene where a Menshevik orator, in 1918, calls on Abkhazian peasants to join anti-Bolshevik forces. The censors omitted Lenin's name from the orator's phrase, "To gain a complete victory over Lenin, we must also fight Russia!" And not a word was left from a peasant's rejoinder, "The Russians themselves couldn't beat Lenin, and you, could you do it?" (9:92; 98). Apparently, the censors disliked the implication that many Russians opposed Lenin.
Terror and Enemies The official emphasis on the positive sides of Soviet history led to the hushing up of nearly everything that could cast a shadow on the rosy picture of a nation marching toward Communism under the leadership of the Leninist Party. And since nothing could undermine this deception more than repressive practices of the Soviet regime, the theme of terror was to become a major object of censorial intervention during the long years of the Brezhnev reign. It was still possible to describe Stalinist purges with a certain degree of frankness, provided they were not treated as an outgrowth of the state system and principal characters were fully supportive of the Soviet regime. This was, for instance, the case with Grigorii Baklanov's novel liul' 41 goda {July 1941) serialized in the first two issues of Znamia for 1965. Baklanov alternated depictions of war with flashbacks into the purges of the 1930s to demonstrate their crippling impact on the fighting ability of the Red Army. Although he alludes to the brutality of the NKVD interrogation methods, Baklanov still finds room for justice. A group of Red Army officers, whom their comrade had slandered under duress, was acquitted by a military tribunal—an exception rather than the rule. The situation was different in the manuscript of Babii lar. In it Soviet terror was presented in ugly detail without downplaying its scope or ferocity. The editors of lunost' had their hands full weeding out unwanted information. They dispensed with the whole of the chapter entitled "Fragments of Empire" which gave an account of a factory owner's family decimated by the Bolsheviks (9:39; 31824). The 1967 edition of the novel restored the chapter, but eliminated or changed almost everything related to the terror. The phrases "shot in 1937" and "died in a camp in 1940" were struck out. Also edited were the circumstances that caused the insanity of the family's youngest offspring. When he was a little boy, the Bolsheviks put him up against the wall for being "a bourgeois progeny." Only the plea of his mother, who went down on her knees, saved his life.43 A three-page section called "Books Were Burning" (from "A Chapter of Rem-
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iniscences") is absent from both the lunost' and the 1967 edition. The section recreates the sinister atmosphere of the late 1930s. The author's mother, a schoolteacher, burns all her books written by foreigners or published in tsarist Russia. Even Maksim Gor'kii's works are committed to the flames because of rumors that he was poisoned by the Soviet authorities. "Enemies of the people" are cut out from family and group photographs. Fear of being arrested deprives Kuznetsov's mother of her sleep. Her colleagues disappear one after another (8:28; 126-29). In the original text of the section "Who Brought Us the Fir Tree," which also belongs to "A Chapter of Reminiscences," Kuznetsov ironically notes that he started school "in the historic year of 1937," and goes on recounting some memorable episodes from his school years. Pavel Postyshev, a Party leader who had been credited with the introduction of a fir tree at New Year's celebrations, was shot as an "enemy of the people," and his portrait was torn out from textbooks. School administrators collected and burned exercise books that had a printed bouquet of flowers on their covers. Supposedly, a sketch of a tsarist crown was hidden among the flowers. The author heard that many people were arrested in connection with the picture and vanished without leaving a trace. lunost' rejected the offensive section (8:28; 122-26) and only tiny bits of it appeared in the novel's 1967 edition. None of those pieces have anything about repressions (66-67; 122, 125-26). Both Soviet publishers of Babii lar eliminated direct references to the NKVD. They omitted the description of the NKVD headquarters in Kiev featuring "beautifully equipped interrogators' offices, torture chambers, stone cells in the basement, and a multistoried prison in the courtyard, hidden from curious eyes." Sometimes, passers-by could hear screams coming from the basement. Very few prisoners who entered the NKVD building came out of it (9:36; 301). The NKVD was cleared of any responsibility for blowing up the Kreshchatik, Kiev's main street, a few days after the Germans set up their offices and billeted their soldiers in it. Gone were reminiscences of the city's residents who, before the arrival of the Germans, saw men in the NKVD uniform putting something into the basements of the buildings (8:19; 83). Removed was the mention that, along with the Germans, uncounted numbers of Kiev inhabitants perished from explosions and resultant fires. Finally, a taboo was placed on Kuznetsov's opinion of the NKVD operation as something defying his imagination, as a new page in the history of wars (8:20; 84-85).44 It was becoming increasingly difficult to publish works dealing with Stalin's repressions. "There is, I think, no need for me to explain to you that the publication of your memoir is out of the question," wrote Tvardovskii in March 1967 to Suren Gazarian upon reading the manuscript of his Eto ne dolzhno povtorit'sia {This Should Not Be Repeated). This autobiographical narrative is remarkable in the sense that it was written by a veteran member of the Soviet security police. Arrested and tortured by his colleagues in 1937, Gazarian served the whole of his ten-year sentence in prisons, half of it in solitary confinement. Tvardovskii highly praised the memoir, expressing full confidence in its eventual publication.45 His prediction came true in 1988. It was precisely one year after Tvardovskii had written his letter to the un-
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known Gazarian that the doyen of the Soviet literary establishment, Mikhail Sholokhov, received a humiliating censorial blow from the Party's leadership. Mikhail Zimianin, chief editor of Pravda, solicited from Sholokhov a contribution to the newspaper's holiday issues to be published on 7 and 8 November 1968. The author obliged with a new excerpt from They Fought for Their Country. Upon reading it, Zimianin sought, without success, to persuade Sholokhov to make a number of political cuts and modifications. To break the deadlock, Zimianin sent the forty-page typescript to Brezhnev. The Secretary General found no time to read it and canceled an appointment with Sholokhov scheduled for 7 October 1968. On 30 October, while attending a plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee in Moscow, Sholokhov wrote Brezhnev a letter, expressing his barely restrained impatience with the leader's keeping the typescript for more than three weeks. The author urged him to reply by 2 November, the day Sholokhov would fly home to Veshenskaia. A noteworthy peculiarity of the letter was that Sholokhov addressed Brezhnev informally as ty (thou), that is, in a manner common among close friends, peasants, and Communists of the 1920s and early 1930s. Since Brezhnev continued to procrastinate, Sholokhov sent him a telegram from Veshenskaia requesting the return of the typescript. Then, unexpectedly for Sholokhov, a heavily censored excerpt appeared serially in Pravda of 12-15 March 1969. The angry author contacted Pravda only to learn that the time had not yet come to print everything in a newspaper but that he would be able to restore all deletions in book-form editions of his novel. There were, however, no restorations in such editions.46 Well-nigh all excisions in the Pravda publication of Sholokhov's excerpt concern the Great Purge and occur in the reminiscences of two purge victims— Ivan Stepanovich D'iachenko, director of a machine tractor station, and Aleksandr Mikhailovich, a Red Army general. Both are devout Communists, both fought with the Reds in the Civil War, both were arrested in 1937, and both narrate their ordeals in June 1941 to Nikolai Strel'tsov, the general's half brother. Pravda suppressed all evidence of the director's imprisonment, omitting some three pages of what he told about it. Ivan, then the head of a raion land department, was incarcerated for defending three innocent fellow Communists arrested as enemies of the people. His first NKVD interrogator branded Ivan a Petliura man, an arrant Ukrainian nationalist, and a counterrevolutionary. When Ivan joked about the absurdity of the charges, the interrogator called in two husky individuals. They belabored Ivan with their fists for two hours, pausing only to revive him with water. During ensuing interrogations, Ivan was also charged with Trotskyism, Bukharinism, and agricultural sabotage. Brutal beatings were administered to extract from him false confessions against himself and other innocent persons. After eight months of interrogations, Ivan was released; but most of the arrested Communists from his raion were either shot or dispatched to prison camps. In a conversation with Strel'tsov, Ivan said that tens of thousands of innocent Communists and loyal non-Party people still languished in camps and thousands were shot. Hundreds of thousands of their relatives and friends did not believe the victims to be guilty. As a result, they lost faith in the Soviet regime and developed a grudge against it. This was a terrible situation.47 Ivan's statistics are rather on the low side; yet, his revelations and inferences said more than the
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Party oligarchy could stomach. The Party censorship was somewhat easier on Aleksandr Mikhailovich. At least he was permitted to spend four-odd years in prisons and camps. But he was forbidden to detail the extent of the damage inflicted upon the Red Army by the Great Terror. In the original text he speaks about the execution of its finest generals and decimation of its officer corps. The Red Army was decapitated and bled white before going to war. As for his prison and camp experiences, the general was not allowed to say that the prison guards in Rostov opened fire at the windows of the cells where Communist inmates were singing the Internationale on 1 May 1938. Also expunged was his assertion that true Communists shouted "Long live our Party!" and "Long live comrade Stalin!" before being shot by the NKVD executioners. Although Pravda let the general say some very nice things about Stalin, the above statement went too far. It suggested that true Communists had blind faith in Stalin, absolving him from any responsibility for the Great Purge. This was not the Party's official view in the late 1960s. To downplay the cruelty of the repressive apparatus, the Party censorship eliminated a lengthy passage about the general's camp experiences. In it the general maintained that both the investigating judges and camp administrators pursued "one goal; to strip us prisoners of human dignity and turn us into animals." Conditions in camps were such that only his mental reciting of classical Russian poetry saved the general from sinking into a "spiritual torpor."48 The 1970 edition of The Quenching of the Thirst furnishes telling evidence of the rapidly growing opposition to the theme of terror. What censorship tolerated in the novel's 1967 edition had to go in 1970. To begin with, the censors of 1970 expunged several passages which were removed from the novel's earliest publication in Znamia (1963) but printed in its subsequent editions between 1963 and 1967. The most important of these deletions were discussed in the preceding chapter. They pertained to long lines of people waiting for information about their imprisoned relatives (89; 77), to the "rabbitlike psychology" induced by fear (102; 89), and to the numberless victims of 1937 (365; 359). In the first and third instances the 1970 censors spread their terror-related excisions to adjacent lines. Elsewhere they discarded Koryshev's remarks that he hated people on whose foreheads he read the date 1937. Shaped by their time, these people were incapable of changing. They could only disappear, taking along their memories of the year 1937 and its flavor (343^44; 337-38). It looks like Koryshev spoke of individuals involved in persecution of their fellow citizens. In 1970 the censors eradicated every reference to the year 1937 as well as to Beriia (285; 278).49 The 1979 and 1985 publications of The Quenching of the Thirst accepted all deletions made in the 1970 edition. Corrections intended to tone down the cruel realities of the prewar terror were made in Abramov's The House published in the last 1978 issue of Novyi mir. Censorial attention was centered on events connected with the purge victim Kalina Dunaev, an enthusiastic old Bolshevik. The phrase "he ... has done eighteen years in labor camps" was transformed into "he . . . has done so many years in not so distant places" (43; 326). Kalina's wife Evdokiia was prohibited from saying that she and her son were virtually excluded from life for being the family of an enemy of the people (140; 477). Evdokiia's story of how she tried
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to find her imprisoned husband lost a dozen lines detailing that, for six years, she went from camp to camp, covering the territory from the Urals to Vladivostok. In addition, half of a page was extracted from the scene in which Evdokiia asks a camp storage keeper for rice to make some broth for the dying Kalina. In the manuscript, the storage keeper demands sexual favors in exchange for the rice, and Evdokiia is ready to oblige in order to save her husband's life. Both of these passages are absent not only from Novyi mir but also from the novel's 1991 text in volume 2 of Abramov's Collected Works (141, 142; 479, 480). However, the same volume has them in Krutikova-Abramova's notes to The House (604-5). According to her, the passages were expunged on request of the Novyi mir editors. It must be said that both these editors and official censors allowed some depressing details in Evdokiia's story to pass, including her observation that labor-camp inmates were dying like flies. The great majority of revisions effected in the 1981 publication of Trifonov's Time and Place pertained to Stalin's repressions from the mid-thirties to the last days of his life. First of all, the censors interdicted direct or oblique references to the year 1937. Thus a conversation about a political event of 1920 lost the words "seventeen years later," which indicated the time of the disappearance of Antipov's father (9:118; 88). Also omitted were phrases about people "who disappeared before the war ... or who disappeared from life now [in 1950], ... or were left without a roof over their heads, and defamed" (10:41; 180). From a passage about February 1953 the censors banned the sentence, "what nonsense about the murderers in white gowns," referring to the doctors spuriously charged with conspiring to kill top Party and military leaders. Two lines below, the manuscript tells of the people jumping out of windows to their deaths to avoid being arrested. They die of a heart attack in the printed text (10:50; 197). Fear generated by the terror is the pervasive theme of Time and Place. In 1957 the writer Kiianov has a black-and-white nightmare. He sees a crowd of blindfolded people in white gowns running through a concrete cellar in which he hides behind a column. He remembers having a similar dream twenty years earlier. When he records his dream in a notebook, Kiianov is afraid to put down that the blindfolded people were armed with knives. The censors altered "twenty years" to "many years," removed the phrase about Kiianov's being frightened at the sight of the knives in the runners' hands, and erased his disturbing question as to why the dream, which was "understandable then" had returned at a time when the country was moving away from the terror (10:53; 205). The answer lies in the fear implanted in Kiianov by the arrests of his fellow writers in 1937. The fear is so deep-seated that Kiianov censors his own dreams while recording them. Not a word about this self-censorship was printed in Druzhba narodov (10:52, 53; 204-5). On the day the crowds surged to view Stalin's body, Antipov's wife Tania was to have an abortion. The journal version of the novel is rather vague about reasons for it, but the manuscript spells them out. The couple dreaded that, at some point in his life, their offspring would have to fill out a questionnaire. In doing so, he would agonize over the dilemma of whether to reveal that his paternal grandparents were "enemies of the people" and that his maternal grandfather
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was in German captivity. Like his mother, he would hear "the words forged of steel, 'No we cannot hire you. And no one in our system will'" (10:49; 196). A category of revisions purported to soft-pedal the misdeeds of informers and people who exploited terror for their personal ends. One of them was Saianov, chief editor of a publishing house, for whom Tania worked as secretary before meeting Antipov. The censors deleted an important explanation of why Saianov succeeded in forcing Tania to have sex with him: he threatened to notify the board of directors that her father was a POW and she feared losing her job as a consequence (10:42; 182). Other withdrawals affected the lines about the informer Varganova watching the behavior of her neighbors (10:46; 189) and about her intention to report to the police the name of the doctor who was going to perform the abortion on Tania (10:51; 200). Nor did the censors tolerate scornful remarks about informers. A taboo was placed on Antipov's referring to Varganova as a "miscreant" (10:47; 191) and on his friend's calling a prewar informer, Roman Roitek, a Judas (10:82; 260). Given the thoroughness of the purge of terror-related elements in The Quenching of the Thirst and Time and Place, there was no question of Trifonov submitting for publication parts of his unfinished novel Ischeznovenie {Disappearance) focused on the year 1937. Trifonov called it his magnum opus.50 The 1965-84 period saw no regularity in censorship of material pertaining to real and imagined adversaries of the Soviet regime. A case in point is Trotskii. Rather unexpectedly, his name surfaced in 1965 in Sholokhov's "feuilleton" "Tri" ("The Three," 1923). Restored was the phrase that a Red Army commander "was saying something in defense of Trotskii."51 However, the next eight publications of "The Three" (1970-88) examined by me retained this phrase only in two instances, the last in 1975. The majority of censors appeared unwilling to link a Red commander to Trotskii. The restoration of Trotskii in The Quiet Don published in the 1980 edition of Sholokhov's Collected Works was intended to demonstrate his cowardice and unjustifiable terror against the Cossacks. According to Konstantin Priima, in 1979 Sholokhov requested that the editor of the forthcoming publication of his Collected Works reinstate the episode of Trotskii's flight from Chertkovo (vol. 3, ch. 57), which was deleted in 1933.52 The subsequent handling of this episode proved erratic. It is absent from the 1980 Voenizdat, the 1980 MG, and the 1981 Lenizdat publications of the novel, but appears in its 1985, 1987, and 1991 editions. The same applies to the restored designation "The Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic" which before its removal in 1937 identified Trotskii as the author of the order of 25 May 1919 given to the Red forces engaged in the suppression of the Upper Don Uprising (vol. 3, ch. 64). The order demands the annihilation of all the insurgents except those surrendering voluntarily with their weapons. Nevertheless, it sounds no harsher than Lenin's telegrams calling for merciless reprisals against rebellious Cossacks. A negative but inconsistent attitude toward Trotskii can be seen in the 1968 publication of Seifullina's "Lawbreakers" and Humus. Although the texts of these works were reprinted from their late 1920s editions, Trotskii's name was omitted in "Lawbreakers" and his and Lenin's portraits were taken down in Hu-
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mus.53 The latter deletion made no sense because the characters talk about the portraits a page later. The treatment of Trotksii, Bukharin, and their followers in the post-65 publications of Bruski shows not only a lack of uniformity but also a certain degree of censorial indifference to the former Party leaders who, especially Trotskii, were not officially rehabilitated. As a rule, political charges leveled against them remained in those editions which reproduced the 1957 text of the novel but vanished from those based on its 1958 version. The first group includes the 1969 Izvestiia and the 1972 Gor'kii editions; the second encompasses the 1979 KhL, the 1984 Sov. Rossiia, and the 1986 Pravda editions. The unique 1966 Saratov publication of Bruski stuck in most cases to the 1950 text, which, in respect to Trotskii and Bukharin, was identical to the 1957 edition. Thus Bogdanov's assertion that Bukharin planned to arrest and liquidate Lenin was preserved in the 1966, 1969, and 1972 editions.54 Conversely, only the 1969 and 1972 editions kept Zharkov's confession that Bukharin and other oppositionists joined the ranks to kill Stalin.55 The fate of officially rehabilitated victims also varied considerably in different publications of the same work and even within the same edition, as happened to Filipp Mironov, a Red Army commander, executed in 1921 on false charges of plotting an anti-Soviet rebellion. In 1979 Sholokhov asked the editor of the 1980 edition of his Collected Works to restore Mironov's name in volume 3 of The Quiet Don. The name reappeared in eight places, including the first two paragraphs of volume 3, but was not put back in eight other instances. The 1980 Voenizdat, the 1980 MG, and the 1981 Lenizdat editions of The Quiet Don made no restorations, while the novel's 1985, 1987, and 1991 publications borrowed the text from the 1980 edition of Collected Works. The 1971 edition of Fedin's No Ordinary Sammer dropped the authorial assertion that, in 1919, Mironov intended to go over to Denikin with his troops. Nevertheless, Fedin continued to call Mironov's troops "a treasonous division." A note to the 1979 edition of No Ordinary Summer indicates that Fedin's death in 1977 prevented him from vindicating Mironov fully.56 As for the victims of the Great Purge, the names of lona lakir and Dmitrii Zhloba—-two Red Army commanders—reappeared in the 1967 and 1974 editions of How the Steel Was Tempered, respectively.57 However, only half of the novel's later editions honored these restorations, a consequence of editorial neglect rather than politics. The same is true of the Komsomol leaders, Nikolai Chaplin and Aleksandr Kosarev, whose names were reinstated in the 1957 MG edition of the novel. There were hardly any changes in the portrayal of those who opposed the Bolsheviks in 1917 or during the Civil War. A few exceptions could be discerned in The Quiet Don. No doubt it was Kirill Potapov, the editor of the 1965 Rostov publication of the novel, who introduced several revisions in the description of General Kornilov's headquarters in August 1917. As he did in 1953, Potapov discarded the author's observation that some people joined Kornilov out of an honest desire to help him restore Russia to its prerevolutionary status. Also eliminated was the phrase about the general's excessive trustfulness. On the other hand, additions were made to compromise Kornilov's supporters as being
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rich people, monarchists, or Kadets. With some minor modifications these revisions were accepted by the 1965 KhL edition of The Quiet Don printed in Sholokhov's Collected Works. Later publications of the novel copied the 1965 KhL version, except the 1980 Voenizdat edition that went back to the 1956-64 text.58 A different revision, favoring the White Cossacks, is encountered in The Quiet Don published in the 1980 edition of Sholokhov's Collected Works. In the opening paragraph of volume 3, the authorial words "through battles liberating every inch of their native land" reappeared in the reference to the Cossacks who were driving the Reds out of the Don region in the spring of 1918. The phrase, which had been missing since 1945, must have been reinstated on Sholokhov's instructions. It reflected a more conciliatory stance toward the White Cossacks viewed as fighters against Trotskii's repressive policy. But, like the revisions concerning Trotskii and Mironov, the phrase in question was not restored in the other 1980 and 1981 publications of The Quiet Don. Kuznetsov's Babii lar offers an example of censorship affecting a new type of enemy—the "Vlasovites," that is, members of the Russian Liberation Army commanded by General Andrei Vlasov. The novel's manuscript contained a chapter entitled "Profession—Arsonists," half of which was devoted to the Vlasovites whom Germans ordered to carry out the scorched earth policy. Boris Polevoi, the chief editor of lunost', crossed out everything about the Vlasovites but failed to change the chapter's title, thus rendering it irrelevant (10:37; 422-25).59 The 1967 MG edition retained passages about the Vlasovites burning houses, drinking, plundering, and stealing a cow from the Germans, but left out references to their sharp military appearance, to their intent to fight for Russia's freedom, to their smashing a gramophone record with a speech of Lenin, and to the fact that their platoon leader was a former Red Army officer. The depiction of General Vlasov and his troops had to be monochromic—black. This rigidity explains why Glavlit banned Pavel Nilin's "Moskovskii doktor" ("A Moscow Doctor") from the proofs of the June 1974 issue of Novyi mir. A leading character in the story is a former Vlasovite who found himself in Africa after World War II and did not return to his homeland for fear of being imprisoned. According to Vladimir Solodin, a member of the Glavlit Collegium, the story was barred from publishing because it raised the question of reconsidering the stereotyped view of the Vlasovites as traitors.60
The Party, Soviet Regime, and People As in the case with tenor, censorship of material involving the Party and its policies was carried out through the entire 1965-84 period with unabated stringency. About one hundred revisions of this kind can be counted in Babii lar whose manuscript featured a sweeping bill of indictment of the Communist rule. In the novel's original version, Kuznetsov's grandfather intensely hates the Soviet regime as the worst possible government on earth. The Bolsheviks, he says, brought only famine and fear (8:11; 39, 41). Lenin destroyed more people than all the tsars, and no tsar or bloodthirsty despot could even dream of what Stalin
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did. The country is teeming with NKVD informers. Elections are a sham. Loudmouths eulogize Stalin as the great leader of genius. The Soviet regime breeds legions of affluent parasites who live better than the deposed bourgeoisie (8:15; 61-62). The emergence of a privileged new class is also indicated by the authorial remark that Kiev's best street, the Kreshchatik, was settled exclusively by "Party officials, Chekists, and favored actors" (8:18; 77). All these details were excluded from both the lunost' and the 1967 MG editions of Babii lar. Also omitted were ironic or critical passages dealing with Soviet education, foreign policy, and preparedness for war. In the manuscript, the training of the pioneers, members of the children's Communist organization, is called "ferocious bureaucratic idiocy." The pioneers have to emulate adults in holding conferences, in speaking official language, and in using military phraseology in reports to their superiors. The role model for the pioneers is Pavlik Morozov, a peasant boy who in 1932 informed against his father as a political enemy and was killed by his relatives in retaliation (8:28; 131). The author speaks scornfully about the Nazi-Soviet friendship, Molotov's meeting with Hitler, "the most wonderful war" against Poland, the annexation of the Baltic states and Bessarabia. "It was good to be strong," he remarks (8:28; 132-33). He goes on ridiculing the incessant prewar propaganda of Soviet invincibility epitomized in the song "If It's War Tomorrow," which predicts a crushing defeat of the enemy on his own territory (8:28; 134). Doomed to censorial rejection were direct or implied parallels between Communism and Nazism. The editors of lunost' objected, for instance, to Kuznetsov's observation about a striking similarity between the red flags of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (8:16; 69). Nor did the editors retain the remark that the occupation authorities imprisoned people for keeping Soviet flags and pictures of Stalin, or for telling political jokes (8:32; 157). The remark suggested an analogy with Soviet life. Naturally, the editors did not pass the author's pessimistic discourse on "one big Babii lar" created by two forces fiercely pounding each other (8:41; 205). Behavior of the Soviet people under the German occupation figured prominently in the list of censorial priorities. The editors and censors carefully screened passages which, in their opinion, could tarnish the image of the Soviet citizen. Thus two Soviet girls in Babii lar had to stop sleeping with a German general and making cynical comments about their situation (10:37; 421). German soldiers began to appear in the company of Kievan "girls," not "prostitutes" (9:42; 340). The chapter "Cannibals" vanished in its entirety. It contained two gruesome stories. The first told of a man who would kill people to make sausages out of them and arrange the sale of the product on the open market. The Germans hanged the man publicly. In the second story, a group of people would exhume corpses from their graves, feed them to pigs, and turn the animals into sausages. The Germans shot the entrepreneurs (9:45; 352-53). In the last chapter of Kuznetsov's novel, the editors hushed up the actions of the Party authorities designed to obliterate any memory of Babii lar. Nothing remained of the information that the ravine was flooded with dirty water pumped from the quarries of a brick factory. The mud was supposed to settle down and the water flow away through channels in the dam. In 1961 the dam collapsed.
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Torrents of water and mud devastated the densely populated area near the ravine. Two years later, a tremendous quantity of machinery did the job of filling Babii lar with soil (10:51; 479-82). In Abramov's Roads and Crossroads the censors eliminated in 1973 a passage in which Podrezov, a raion Party secretary, wonders why utter fools like Brykin (the Party boss of another raion) are allowed to hold their posts. Then it dawns upon him that timid yes-men of Brykin's type are used as punching bags at conferences when the need arises to mete out exemplary punishment for inefficiency (2:184; 8). In 1978 The House lost a character's observation that everywhere, just like in Moscow, people mutter their official speeches from a piece of paper (72; 373). The censor could have seen here a transparent hint at Brezhnev's incoherent way of reading his speeches from a prepared text, a way that gave rise to a host of jokes and amusing imitations. Two excisions in Valentin Rasputin's Proshchanie s Materoi {Farewell to Matera, 1976) concern the Party's proclivity for industrialization, with no regard for nature or people. In Rasputin's novel, the construction of a dam for a power station will cause the waters of the Angara River to rise and flood the Matera island and the village of the same name, founded on the island three hundred years earlier. The inhabitants are moved to a newly built settlement. Already the first book-form edition of the novel omitted a mention that many houses in this settlement had cellars full of water, which made them unsuitable for storing potatoes. A larger cut involved the triumph of nature, no matter how short-lived, over the proponents of reckless industrialization, represented by the chairman of the village council. In a big hurry, he goes on a motorboat to the Matera island to clear it from its last residents before the arrival of a state commission. The boat loses its way in the fog. The remaining islanders hear an anguished farewell howl of the Master, the island's mystic ruler symbolizing the forces of nature. The next lines underwent radical revision. The words "resembling a hopeless wailing," which describe the noise of the boat's motor, were removed and the novel's ending—"Then its knocking grew clearer and, again, moved away and subsided, and then once more, even sharper and closer, rose the voice of the Master"—was truncated.61 Subsequent editions of the novel accepted both revisions. Activities of top Party leaders belonged to closely guarded state secrets. A case in point is an interview given in 1978 to Daniil Granin by Aleksei Kosygin, then Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. The interview was supposed to form a chapter in the second part of Ales' Adamovich's and Granin's Blokadnaia kniga {The Blockade Book, 1977, 1981). During the war Stalin dispatched Kosygin to Leningrad to organize the supply of food and fuel to the besieged city and to evacuate its population and valuables. While Kosygin provided a wealth of information on his own work, he said little about the infighting among the Party's oligarchy and refused to discuss Stalin's terror. The interview took place in Stalin's former office in the Kremlin. Granin imagined how decisions were made there on the annihilation of thousands linked to the concocted "Leningrad case" in 1949-50, on the deportation of national minorities, and on the launching of campaigns against the West and cosmopolitanism. These reflections were probably no less responsible than Kosygin's reminiscences for the censoring of the entire chapter.
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At that time, Kosygin, who died in 1980, was seriously ill. But had he been well, he would not have helped Granin to publish the interview. He would not have placed his personal tastes and opinions above the Party's literary policy. This is how he behaved ten years earlier when Evgenii Evtushenko sent him his poem "Russkoe chudo" ("The Russian Miracle," wr. 1968), realizing that it would not pass normal censorship. The poem deplores crass social inequality. Its protagonist, an ordinary woman, inadvertently walks into a Moscow store stacked with choicest spirits and foods. The woman believes she has entered the dream world of Communism; but soon she has a rude awakening. The store guard shows her the door, because she has no special certificates to purchase the products. Over the telephone, Kosygin told Evtushenko he was moved to tears by his poem and read it to his family; but he could not help with its publication.62 All the revisions shown in this section come from works of the 1965-84 period because hardly any new corrections related to the Party and its regime were made in earlier works.
Peasants Revisions in this category were inextricably entwined with the Party's treatment of the peasantry. Above all, the censors had to suppress accounts of the forced character of collectivization and its catastrophic consequences. The editors of Babii lar removed the lines telling of Kuznetsov's grandfather having been utterly horrified by collectivization and the ensuing famine (8:12; 41). Naturally, they also kept away from the reader the story told by Kuznetsov's father who took a direct part in collectivization. Ukrainian peasants, he said, were driven into collective farms at gunpoint. The cattle died; the fields lay untilled. The peasants preferred death to collective farming. They ate frogs, mice, and cats, and then turned to grass, straw, and pine bark. There was cannibalism everywhere. Those found guilty of it were led out of the village and shot. Their bodies were left for the wolves. The author calls the famine of 1933 the worst in the history of the Ukraine (8:28; 120-22). Further cuts involved references to collective farmers being perennially in rags and dirty (8:20; 89) as well as to a "lucky" village ignored by the German occupiers. With collective farms gone and no German authorities moving in, the peasants of this village attained an unprecedented level of prosperity (8:41; 192-93). The story of collectivization in Sandro of Chegem has no chilling details of the kind encountered in Babii lar. Seen chiefly through the eyes of Sandro's father, old Khabug, collective farming is doomed to failure due less to its economic structure than to the peasants' psyche. Thousands of years of mysterious love bound the peasant to his own field, orchard, cattle, beehives, and "his own bunches of grapes crushed with his own feet in his own trough." The loss of private ownership would profane the mystery of this love and render the peasant unwilling to till or even to live on the soil. There is no doubt in Khabug's mind that the responsibility for collectivization rests with Stalin. The editors of Novyi mir dispensed with these and other passages associated with collectivization
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(9:104; 141-47). Iskander's condemnation of it was too obvious. The fact that the author's political position counted a great deal in censorial decisions can be illustrated by the preservation of famine scenes in Mikhail Alekseev's novel Drachuny {Pugnacious Boys, 1981). The 1933 famine in the Volga region is shown to be nearly as severe as in the Ukraine. There is no mention of cannibalism; yet, in the author's native village, people ate grass, birds, rats, and mussels, and died by the hundreds. Of 600 houses only 150 remained. Most were destroyed for fire wood in the winter of 1933 when the villagers were too weak to fetch it from the forest. The picture of the misery was bleak enough to be blotted out, but it was saved by the author's political correctness. Without mentioning Stalin or the Party, he put the blame on local officials. They, he writes, suddenly raised delivery quotas and seized all the grain they could find. Moreover, Alekseev tells us that the dying peasants neither lost their faith in Soviet power nor cursed it. On the contrary, they "bequeathed this sacred faith to all those who were destined to live, fight, conquer, and fulfill their duties on the sharp turns of history."63 It looks like the moribund peasants were almost thankful to the Soviet regime for giving them an opportunity to prove the depth of their devotion to it. Alekseev's solemn mendacity may appall the reader but, in the censors' judgment, it presented an effective counterweight to the fragments of bitter truth they permitted to be printed. The censors of Roads and Crossroads intervened in the descriptions of punitive measures taken against collective farmers. They eliminated every mention of the Supreme Soviet's decree of 1948 which stipulated deportation for failing to do the required minimum of work or for undermining discipline. Concurrently, they crossed out all evidence of the well-nigh universal implementation of this decree, which resulted in exiling people to Siberia (1:23, 46, 100; 38, 74, 157). In 1978 the censors of The House excluded a paragraph dealing with questions heatedly debated by a group of Pekashino inhabitants: the reversal of the policy toward China, the Americans beating the Soviets in the race to the moon, the purchase of foreign grain. But the first and foremost question was: Why in earlier times did collective farmers work hard, from dawn to dusk, and gratis, when now they fool around and are being paid? (42; 326). Part of the answer to the above questions lies in an episode described in part 2 (chapter 9) of The House. By order of his superiors, a tractor driver plows deep on a hot day, knowing that the clay turned up by his machine will become hard as rock and sprouts of rye will not get through it. The director of the state farm is also aware of it, but does nothing. His inaction makes a character conclude: "What is being done in our Pekashino is being done in the whole of Russia. Maybe, this is why we have been importing grain from America for many years." The censors had to get rid of this generalization about irresponsibility and indifference (90; 400). While Abramov's novels were permitted to appear in a purified form, Boris Mozhaev's play Zhivoi {The Live One, 1968) and volume 2 of his novel Peasant Men and Peasant Women were rejected in toto. The Live One represents the author's dramatization of his short novel Iz zhizm Fedora Kuz'kina {From the Life of Fedor Kuz'kin) published in the July 1966 issue of Novyi mir. Its action unfolds in the Riazan' countryside shortly after Stalin's death. Kuz'kin's nickname
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Zhivoi can mean either "lively" or "living" (alive). In the novel it is more readily associated with the latter connotation. The resourceful, witty, and courageous Kuz'kin manages to survive in the clash with local bosses who try to rain him economically and to put him in prison. At first, Ekaterina Furtseva, then USSR minister of culture, permitted rehearsal of the play at lurii Liubimov's Taganka Theater. However, when the play was ready, the ministry of culture prohibited its production. Moreover, Liubimov was accused of preparing a "slanderous" performance and was expelled from the Party. He was reinstated after writing to Brezhnev, but a new attempt to stage The Live One failed. All of a sudden, Furtseva arrived at the theater and, after seeing the first act, banned the play as antiSoviet. Attempts to perform it in the 1970s proved futile.64 Volume 2 of Peasant Men and Peasant Women treats the age-old notion of compulsory happiness as a principal cause of collectivization. Mozhaev details how the Party leadership resolved to apply this notion to the Russian peasantry. Those who order or carry out collectivization in the novel are fanatics, career seekers, or the dregs of society. Volume 2 ends with a peasant rebellion against the cruel ways of achieving complete collectivization. For three years the manuscript of volume 2 of Mozhaev's novel traveled from one literary magazine to another until lurii Seleznev, the acting chief editor of Nash sovremennik, sent it to Glavlit. In 1983 Glavlit put its seal of approval on the manuscript. Nonetheless, three of the leading magazines—Novyi mir, Nash sovremennik, and Druzhba narodov—turned it down while the chief editor of Moskva, Mikhail Alekseev (the author of Pugnacious Boys), refused to read it altogether. Sergei Vikulov, chief editor of Nash sovremennik, called the ideological aspect of Mozhaev's novel dubious. In his view, the author attributed the excesses of collectivization not only to the Party's leftists but also to the doctrine of socialism. To Vladimir Karpov, chief editor of Novyi mir, the novel appeared politically complex. He saw no point in raising "today" the question of excesses and cruelties committed in "those days."65 Only perestroika paved the way for the publication of volume 2 of Peasant Men and Peasant Women. The difference in the ways Mozhaev's novel was judged by Glavlit and its prospective publishers represented an exception rather than a rule. More often a work would be passed by the publisher and rejected by Glavlit. Two short stories by Vladimir Soloukhin and a sketch by Viktor Astaf ev may serve as examples of the works dealing with the peasantry. Soloukhin's "Kolokol" ("The Bell," wr. 1965) details vicissitudes of a small church bell: its happy and useful life in tsarist Russia, its removal and abandonment in the Soviet state, and its lastminute rescue from the smelting furnace by a bells collector. Not without reason, Glavlit concluded that the silenced bell symbolized the spiritual death of the Russian village. The second of Soloukhin's stories, "Pervoe poruchenie" ("The First Mission," wr. 1967), focused on the dispossession of an alleged kulak family by a young Komsomol member at the beginning of collectivization. Glavlit objected to Soloukhin favoring Arkadii Stolypin's reforms over collectivization and to showing that the authorities and the security police had to invent kulaks in villages where there were none. Glavlit's "remarks," as Solodin called its objections, were conveyed to the publishing house Contemporary, and both of Soloukhin's stories were purged from the proofs of his literary collection entitled
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Olepinskie prudy (The Olepino Ponds, 1973).^ The title of Astafev's "Parania" is a diminutive of the feminine name Paraskov'ia. Its bearer in the sketch is a hard-working and kindhearted peasant woman, resembling Solzhenitsyn's Matrena. Glavlit disapproved of Astafev's contrasting the food-producing village with the city where the so-called cream of society—idlers, drunkards, and eloquent talkers—consume the products of the peasants' toil. The sketch was extracted from the proofs of the January 1975 issue of the magazine Moskva (Moscow).^1
The Red Army, Partisans, and Underground Fighters The writer Viacheslav Kondrat'ev, a veteran of World War II, named in an interview a number of topics which Soviet war literature had either to soft-pedal or be silent about. The authors mitigated the cruelty of the war, particularly the atrocities committed by the Red Army. No word of truth was said about the penal units. Kondrat'ev described an attack of a penal battalion in his short novel Vstrechi na Sretenke (Encounters in the Sretenka Street, 1983), but the censors replaced the penal unit with regular troops. In works about Soviet POWs, Kondrat'ev continued, it was prohibited to tell that Stalin considered them traitors and rejected any aid to them by the International Red Cross, thus condemning them to death from starvation. Little was revealed about the incompetence of Soviet generals in modern warfare, about the staggering losses resulting from orders to win victories at any price or to take cities by 1 May or 7 November. The authors bypassed the misconduct of some Soviet soldiers in East Prussia, such as raping women, burning down farms, and shooting civilians. The authors knew that the censors would excise such scenes. Descriptions of commanders forcing army girls to cohabitation or of outrages and drinking bouts in the rear were also off-limits.68 Censorship of Babii lar provides additional samples of forbidden items concerning the Red Army. Most of them pertain to its defeat in the 1941 battle for Kiev. Kuznetsov's accounts of Soviet soldiers' disorderly retreat, their sinking morale, their surrendering to the enemy, and their conduct in German POW camps had to be cleansed of what the lunost' editors considered incompatible with the propaganda image of the Red Army. Editorial deletions included the following facts. Some of the retreating soldiers threw away their rifles; others asked people for civilian clothes. The women would give them old rags and drown their uniforms and weapons in cesspools (8:8; 23). The troops retreated without any semblance of order, like a herd of cattle (8:30; 146). Many soldiers saw no point in fighting for collective farming, prison camps, and poverty. Ukrainians headed for their homes. Russians roamed without knowing where they were going or tried to find Gennans in order to surrender to them (8:20; 90). A huge army defending the central Ukraine ceased to exist (8:38; 178). The editors of Babii lar revised downward Kuznetsov's figures on Soviet soldiers taken prisoner (8:38; 178) and omitted the grimmest details about their behavior in captivity, regarding them as demeaning for Soviet men irrespective of circumstances. A case in point is the description of the last days of the Red
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Army commanders, political officers, and Jews placed in a special enclosure within the POW camp in the town of Darnitsa, near Kiev. These men were given no food at all. The lunost' editors discarded the sentences telling that, by the twelfth day of starvation, those who were still alive appeared insane, chewed on their nails, and devoured lice picked from their shirts (8:39; 179-80). A similar excision involved ordinary prisoners snatching bread out of the teeth of their comrades shot by the German guards for fun (8:39; 181). A concern for the Red Army's reputation must have caused the deletion of the fact that in the Darnitsa camp Germans organized a police force out of the prisoners themselves. Its chief, a former Red Army senior lieutenant, turned out to be more frightening than the Germans. He beat many prisoners to death with sticks or forced them to crawl or squat up and down until they lost consciousness (8:39; 182). Judging from an excision in Astaf ev's short novel Pastukh i pastushka {The Shepherd and the Shepherdess, 1971), the censors objected to the Red Army's personnel having venereal diseases. In this novel a sergeant major commits a heroic suicide by throwing himself under the treads of a German tank with a mine in his knapsack. The censors demanded that the real reason for the soldier's action—his preference to die in combat rather than of syphilis—be removed.69 Some works about the Red Army were banned in their entirety. One of the rejects was a short novel by lakov Lipkovich, I grianul boi {And the Fighting Broke Out), portraying panic and pessimism in a Soviet unit surrounded by the Germans in the spring of 1945. Eventually, the unit was wiped out. By mutual agreement, Glavlit and the Party Committee of the Leningrad Province barred the novel from being published in the February and March 1974 issues of the Leningrad magazine Avrora {Aurora). A few months later, Glavlit suppressed Il'ia Vergasov's novel Komandir polka {The Regiment Commander) scheduled to appear in the July 1974 issue of Novyi mir. According to Solodin, the novel, which had already been turned down by Druzhba narodov and Nash sovremennik, centered on the life in a reserve regiment during World War II. The officers were shown in a state of moral degradation. They drank, scoffed at their subordinates, and neglected training soldiers for combat. One intoxicated officer killed a young soldier, without arousing any indignation on the part of his peers.70 Works discussed in this chapter show only sporadic revisions related to the Civil War times or to partisans' activities against the Germans. For instance, Sandro of Chegem lost a couple of lines about the Mensheviks defeating the Reds in the battle of the Kodor and overrunning all Abkhazia. The Revolutionary Military Council of Abkhazia was compelled to send Lenin a telegram requesting assistance (9:104; 116). Two 1966 editions of Babel's Selected Works gave a different treatment to "the fleshy repulsive face" of a Red divisional commander in the story "Chesniki." The italicized epithet, which was discarded in 1957, is missing from the Kemerovo edition but reappears in the Moscow KhL edition.71 A lengthy restoration concerning underground fighters can be found in the 1984 publication of The Catacombs {For the Power of the Soviets) within Kataev's Collected Works. The author created a new chapter 27 out of the initial paragraphs of chapter 70 and the somewhat shortened text of chapter 71 taken from the novel's first printing in the August 1949 issue of Novyi mir. The inserted chapter describes a sortie of Gavrik's underground group: his impersonat-
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ing a policeman in a conversation with Rumanian soldiers, a victorious encounter with the Germans, and the execution of a German prisoner. These events were eliminated by Kataev in 1961 and are absent from the 1970 publication of the novel.72 The author might have reinstated them to compensate for an extensive reduction of the underground operations in the novel's 1961 version or to add some action and suspense. On the other hand, phrases about partisans' brutality and the necessity of mercilessness were dropped from Time and Place. In the original text, the partisans, with no ammunition left, execute captured Russian policemen with bayonets. The revised version speaks merely of "the execution of traitors"( 10:33; 165). It goes without saying that the censors of 1965-84, particularly the military ones, would not pass anything depicting the Soviet Army in less than bright colors. There was no chance of telling the truth about the war in Afghanistan or about the widespread abuse of first-year soldiers by their elder comrades.
Nationalities The question of nationalities did not stand very high on the list of censorial priorities in 1965-84. No fresh revisions concerning nationalities were made, for instance, in Stepan Razin, The Ordeal of Sevastopol', and The Quiet Don—novels where previous censorship markedly affected the portrayal of Russians, national minorities, and foreigners. The very fact that Chapygin's novel was reprinted in both its early and its "emasculated" versions bespeaks the absence of heightened alertness in the matter of nationalities. Nevertheless, the censors were not indifferent to representation of nationalities in newly published works. The censorship of Babii lar gives us an idea of what an author was not supposed to say about Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, and Germans. As a rule, in literary works the Party wanted to see Jews as saved by the Bolshevik Revolution from destitution and anti-Semitism and given every opportunity to utilize their creativity and energies in a new world of equal nationalities. Many Soviet writers stuck to this model.73 But not Kuznetsov. He wrote, for example, that those Jews who worked on collective vegetable farms were "poverty-stricken, uneducated, and looking quite pitiful." A middle-aged Jewess saw no reason for fleeing from Germans. She did not trust Soviet propaganda about them and, anyway, she did not have enough money to get on the trains departing from Kiev. She believed that ordinary people would be no worse off under the Germans than they were under the Soviets. Both of these passages vanished, the second being part of a larger cut (8:21, 29; 91, 141-42). One can only speculate why the editors of lunost' objected to a Jewish boy being "good-looking, with beautiful eyes" (8:27; 112). The novel's 1967 edition printed these words, but did away with the characterization of a pioneer leader as "a likable Jew who was fond of children" (67). This phrase is also missing from lunost', together with the entire section to which it belongs (8:28; 131). Perhaps the censors felt that Kuznetsov exceeded the quota of good qualities to be apportioned to his Jewish characters. Similarly, the official policy interdicted singling out the Jews among the victims of the Babii lar executions. Therefore the censors of the
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1967 edition of Kuznetsov's novel dropped the italicized word in the phrase "the deepest layers—the Jews—were naked," which occurs in a passage detailing the work of prisoners forced by the Germans to remove the clothing and footwear from the exhumed bodies of the people shot in Babii lar (219). lunost' banned the entire passage (10:27; 380). Since the existence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union was officially denied, the censors of Babii lar played down the hostility shown against Jews by Soviet citizens. One of them was Kuznetsov's grandfather. When the Germans ordered the Kievan Jews to gather at an appointed place with their documents, valuables, and clothing, the old man thought they would be evacuated for having set fire to the Kreshchatik. The Jews, he declared, got fat sucking "our blood." Now the Germans would take care of them by sending them to Palestine. The editors of lunost' suppressed the grandfather's tongue-lashing of the Jews and changed the word "yid" to "Jew" in his speech (8:20; 90). But in virtually every other case the offensive appellation was retained in the speech of anti-Semites. A number of episodes and phrases were erased to conceal the fact that a part of the local population applauded the mass murder of the Jews and some helped the Germans to carry it out. The editors of lunost' were not prepared to inform the reader that, on their way to Babii Jar, the Jews were jeered, cursed, and robbed by some of the Kievans (8:21; 94). Nor did the editors let Kuznetsov mention a group of women arguing about the massacre of the Jews. Some were outraged; others welcomed it as retribution for the Kreshchatik. The latter praised a Russian woman for reporting to the police a Jewish boy who miraculously escaped from Babii lar (8:22; 98). A similar excision involved a Ukrainian woman. She turned in to the Germans a Jewish woman, who had crawled out of a blooddrenched ditch in Babii lar, and two Jewish girls (8:27, 28; 114, 115). The Six-Day War (1967) and the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel triggered an intensification of the anti-Zionist campaign. In 1970, censorship approved the publication of two anti-Jewish novels by Ivan Shevtsov. The first—Vo imia ottsa i syna {In the Name of the Father, and of the Son)—equated Zionism with Fascism. The second—Liubov' i nenavist' (Love and Hatred)—focused on an accomplished villain, supposedly representative of a typical Jew. The year 1979 saw the appearance of Valentin Pikul's novel U poslednei cherty (At the Last Frontier) in which Zionists are shown as striving for political power in the waning years of the Romanov dynasty. Publication of works sympathetic to the Jews became increasingly difficult, but not impossible. A case in point is Anatolii Rybakov's Tiazhelyi pesok (Heavy Sand, 1978). Set in a small Ukrainian town, this novel relates the story of a large Jewish family from the beginning of the century to 1942. According to Rybakov, the manuscript of Heavy Sand was rejected by several journals, including Novyi mir and Druzhba narodov. Their editors were afraid to print a work dealing with Jews. Rybakov turned to Oktiabr', which under the editorship of Vsevolod Kochetov had acquired the reputation of an ultraconservative journal. After Kochetov's death (1973) the editorial direction passed to Anatolii Anan'ev who wanted to raise the journal's respectability by publishing a daring, sensational work. Rybakov took this into account, as well as the way the censors handled writings selected by the Oktiabr' editorial board. If a work was intended
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for serialization in the liberal Novyi mir, the censors were likely to read it from the beginning to the end before sanctioning the printing of its first installment. In the case of Oktiabr', they would restrict themselves to screening each installment separately. Thus the first, relatively harmless portion of Heavy Sand passed through censorship. But the next installment described Soviet repressions of the 1930s and the Nazi's "final solution of the Jewish question" that resulted in the death of six million Jews. In a conversation with me, Rybakov claimed to be the first to have this figure printed in the Soviet Union. The censors were dumbfounded, but deemed it too awkward to interrupt the novel's serialization. They also permitted the publication of the third and last installment portraying a ghetto uprising. However, Rybakov did not get away without revisions requested by the editors. For instance, the birthplace of the narrator's father was changed from Zurich to Basel lest the reader might call to mind Solzhenitsyn's Lenin in Zurich (1975). But later, when Heavy Sand was to be published separately, the Department of Culture of the Party Central Committee raised the question about the suitability of Basel. The committee had just learned that Basel was the site of the World Zionist Congress in 1897. Rybakov stuck to his guns, saying there was no third large city in the German part of Switzerland. Basel was retained in the 1983 Sov. pis. edition of Heavy Sand. Elsewhere Rybakov had to strike out a reference to a German leaflet containing an anti-Jewish excerpt from Dostoevskii's Diary of a Writer. In the revised text, the leaflet is said to have quoted some Fascist rubbish of Knut Hamsun. Concurrently, the subject of an argument between two girls was changed from Dostoevski! to Hamsun, who had not been mentioned in the original.74 In the 1970s there arose the problem of the Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. Censorship had to watch that it would receive as little attention as possible in the media and literature. This is why in 1974 the editors of Novyi mir withdrew from Sandro of Chegem three paragraphs about a Georgian Jew who, before leaving for Israel, officially transferred his house to his nonexistent nephew. Actually, he sold it to an underground business and took all his nephews along to Israel (10:132; 319). To judge from Babii lar, the cutting edge of censorship involving Ukrainians was used primarily to prune their nationalism. A description of the Ukrainian two-colored flag was purged of its key phrases; "The yellow stands for wheat, and the light blue for the sky. A nice, peaceful flag" (8:16; 69). The words "a Fascist newspaper" were added to the characterization of Ukrainian Word published in Ukrainian by the occupation authorities (8:11; 38) but having a native editorial staff. Later the lunost' editors dispensed with the explanation why Ukrainian Word was shut down in December 1941. The German authorities found hannful its slogan, "In the Ukraine Use Ukrainian," which the newspaper prominently displayed in its every issue (9:17; 218). However, the novel's 1967 edition left these phrases intact (115). In an insertion made in 1967-69, Kuznetsov tells that Ivan Rogach, chief editor of Ukrainian Word, and several members of his editorial board were shot by the Germans in Babii lar (218-19). The censors of the 1965-84 period did not seem to worry about the use of the word khokhol. Sholokhov's stories "The Food Commissar" and "Galoshes," where khokhol was replaced by "the Ukrainian" in 1962, may serve as examples.
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In the case of "The Food Commissar," the word "Ukrainian" was retained in the 1965—85 editions of Sholokhov's Collected Works, The Don Stories (1980), and Stories (1983); but khokhol was reinstated in the 1964, 1967, and 1975 editions of The Don Stories, The Early Stories (1967), and Stories (1984). All of the six post-1962 publications of "Galoshes" that I checked have khokhol in them. The authorial use of khokhol was also preserved in a later work, Evgenii Nosov's short novel Usviatskie shlemonostsy {The Helmet Wearers from Usviaty, 1977).75 There is one place where khokhol vanished in 1969 as part of a large excision. I have in mind the scene of Ivan D'iachenko's interrogation in They Fought for Their Country. Because of his Ukrainian last name, the NKVD interrogator not only charged Ivan with Ukrainian nationalism but also contemptuously called him khokhol. Ivan angrily accused the interrogator of displaying great-power chauvinism, calling him katsap, a name for a Russian which, like khokhol, can be endowed with either a neutral or abusive meaning.76 This unusual episode, with two Communists hurling national slurs at one another, would probably have been eliminated regardless of the context. No revisions concerning Germans were noticed in any work covered in this chapter with the exception of Babii lar. Yet the high frequency of such revisions in Kuznetsov's novel allows us to see clearly the censorial approach to former enemies, at least in the early years of Brezhnev's rule. We can speak of the continuing effort to protect the reputation of the German people by mitigating the atrocities committed by its soldiers. The principal censorial tool to achieve this end was the removal of compromising material. Dropped, for instance, were passages telling about seven German soldiers raping and stabbing to death two young women (8:27; 111), about a German officer killing an old Jewess because she was urinating (8:28; 117), and about two soldiers violating a Jewish girl (8:32; 154). Not a word, however, is missing from the account of how these rapists pushed the girl down into a hole, kept hitting her on the head with a spade when she tried to get out, and then buried her half alive (8:32; 154). In the editors' view, a brutal murder constituted a lesser crime than sexual molestation. The Soviet propaganda about the necessity of exterminating enemies made the editors see little value in human life, while rape was to them a felony punishable by law. An enemy should not be too human, especially when his humaneness might invite unwanted parallels with Soviet barbarity. Hence a taboo was put on the German effort to save Kievans from the flames of the burning Kreshchatik. Special teams went from house to house, persuading their inhabitants to get out and evacuating children and the sick (8:19; 82). Several rather ludicrous deletions were intended to prevent the reader from comparing the shabby and demoralized defenders of Kiev with neat and spirited Germans entering the city. Crossed out were a woman's words "good looking," referring to a young German soldier (8:9; 27). The epithets "sharp looking" and "manly" disappeared from the description of German artillery men and motorcyclists, respectively (8:9, 10; 28, 29). To downplay German efficiency, the censors purged a simile likening the billeting of German troops in Kiev with "a house warming party, sprightly and businesslike, attended by noisy guests who
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have come not to carouse but to get things done" (8:18; 78). On a smaller scale, Ku/.netsov's grandfather was prohibited from remembering that a German landowner had a cow that yielded three pails of milk a day (8:12; 41).
Religion In spite of all its educational and punitive measures, the Soviet state failed to suppress religion completely. Since the existence of millions of believers, particularly among older people, was undeniable, the task of censorship lay not in concealing the survival of the creed. Rather it lay in reducing the degree of religious devotion of the faithful and in minimizing their influence on the younger generation. The editors of Babii lar did not hide the religiosity of Kuznetsov's grandparents, but they did not want the reader to see his grandpa kneeling for a long time in front of the icons, passionately whispering something in the firm belief that God would listen to him (8:13; 44). The editors preserved a mention of the grandmother's impressive iconostasis in the corner of a room. However, they blotted out a page-long description of individual icons, which also included the author's admission that in his childhood he was infatuated with the image of a gentle fair-haired Madonna (8:13; 48). The censors of the novel's 1967 edition reinstated the excerpt with a few revisions, the major one being the excision of the author's remark that, when he grew up, the first thing he did was fall in love with a girl resembling the fair-haired Madonna (27). On the same page the author, as a boy, was barred from taking communion, and his phrase about his having been a religious person until the age of six was expanded to read: "I had been an ignorant person oppressed by religion" (27). There were revisions concerning the author's use of religious terms and his comments about Easter. In a chapter's title, "A Beautiful, Spacious, Blessed Land," the italicized word was changed to "Beloved" (8:40; 187). The description of Easter as "the year's most joyous holiday" was dropped (9:21; 238) together with the comment that, although the Soviet regime did not forbid the celebration of Easter, the people were not given any days off (9:21; 239). Militancy and violence characteristic of the Communist treatment of religion during the first twenty-five years of Soviet rule were not among the subjects welcomed by censorship. There was no point in casting a shadow on the supposedly bright picture of the heroic past. In the original, Kuznetsov remembers the reaction of his father upon noticing that his son was being raised by the grandmother in a religious spirit. The father, a convinced Communist, "became terrified and told my mother to snatch me immediately from the claws of 'religion— the opium of the people'" (8:13; 49-50). The editors snatched this sentence out of the manuscript and did the same with the grandmother's distress over the destruction of the Kievan churches and monasteries (8:42; 196). The first of these victims was the Desiatinnaia church razed by the Bolsheviks in 1917 and the last was the Kievo-Pecherskii monastery blown up by the Soviet underground in November 1941. Of course, the editors obliterated the author's observation that in the ground where the Desiatinnaia church stood there still might lie the remains of Princess Ol'ga (d. 969) and Prince Vladimir (9:18; 223), who baptized
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Russia in 988 and built this church. Violent actions against places of worship must have been an important reason for the removal of a whole chapter, "The Story of the Prayer Tree," from Sandro of Che gem in 1973. The tree, a huge walnut, had been worshipped by the Abkhazians from time immemorial. To make an offering to the deity, the shepherds would slaughter a goat or a ram, cook and eat the meat, and hang the animal's head on an iron hook driven into the tree trunk. During the antireligious crusade accompanying collectivization, the chairman of the Chegem collective farm decided to burn the Prayer Tree down. However, the enthusiastic Komsomol members managed to destroy only a part of it. The local people rejoiced at their failure (9:104; 157). In the same deleted chapter the authorities did a better job with a church, though it took a workman several days to knock down its massive copper cross with a heavy hammer. At first the church was converted into a student dormitory and then into a storage for the NKVD archives. It was reopened during World War II, but its new cross was too small and thin, probably taken from a preRevolutionary grave in a cemetery (9:104; 155-56). Although no corrections related to religion were discerned in other works, the above examples indicate that the censors' handling of this subject under Brezhnev did not differ much from the preceding periods.
Russia, the West, and the Soviet Union This topic was not a burning issue with censorship of the 1965-84 period. No restorations or new corrections occurred in Stepan Razin or The Ordeal of Sevastopol', two novels where the theme of Russia and the West underwent a devastating editing in 1948-50. The sole exception was the 1968 publication of Stepan Razin that reproduced the text of the 1936 Sov. pis. edition of the novel. Otherwise, the persistent reprinting of heavily censored versions of both novels suggests that censorship did not intend to revive the subject of the Western superiority over tsarist Russia. Moreover, the capitalist West had still been viewed as hostile to the Soviet state and a peaceful ideological coexistence was ruled out. Revealing evidence about the censorial attitude toward Russia and the West can be obtained from Babii lar. Thus the phrase, "This is not your savage Russia; this is Europe, with European decency," was expunged from the remarks of old people about the Germans (8:23; 103). Another deletion involved the opinion of Kuznetsov's mother that a good tsar could be "in Madagascar, America, or Australia, but not in Russia" (8:15; 59-60). The words, "I'm going to the West," were taken out from the explanation of a sausage maker who left Kiev before the arrival of the Red Army in search of a place where he could be his own boss (10:34; 405). A page-long excision concealed from the reader the description of appalling conditions in a Russian POW camp set up during World War I in Darnitsa. Information about the camp came from Jaroslav Has'ek's book The Good Soldier S"vejk, from its concluding portion written by the author's friend, Karel Vanek. The Darnitsa camp was packed with German and Austrian prisoners. They were beaten and starved. Some crawled on all fours,
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picking and eating scarce grass. Eighty to a hundred prisoners died daily of hunger and exhaustion (8:38; 177-78). What is worse, Kuznetsov compared this situation with the one existing in the German POW camp organized in the same place in 1941. The difference was quantitative rather than qualitative. There was no grass left in the German camp and prisoners died not in hundreds, but thousands. Naturally, this parallel could not be tolerated (8:38; 178). Comparisons favoring tsarist Russia were not eliminated entirely but filtered. For instance, the editors of Babii lar had nothing against Kuznetsov's grandfather saying that in old times a working husband could support a family of seven, while under the Bolsheviks the work of the whole family did not bring enough food. Yet in the same paragraph they prohibited the old man from telling that he, a farm hand, and his wife, a washerwoman, managed to build a house for themselves in tsarist Russia (8:15; 61). Elsewhere the editors erased the grandpa's assertion that under the tsar nobody even cared to look at vobla, the inexpensive Caspian roach, a standard food item under Stalin. Edited on the same page was also the author's observation that, already in 1937, tsarist Russia appeared to his grandfather as a lost paradise where justice prevailed (8:13; 44). Twelve years later, the censors expunged from Abramov's House a character's statement that, in connection with the Russo-Japanese War, the tsarist government started to exile its political adversaries to northern Russia, instead of to Siberia as it had done earlier (43; 327). The deleted words could have made the reader think of the mildness of the tsarist justice compared to its Soviet counterpart. Regarding the economic and technological superiority of the West, the censors of The House consistently excised conversations about buying grain abroad, mostly from the United States (36, 42, 90, 95; 315, 326, 400, 407). Equally unprintable turned out to be a mention of an American walking on the moon (42; 326).
Puritanical Censorship Curses and Obscenities The censors of the 1965-84 period did not bother with the foul language in reprints of the earlier works treated in this study with the exception of the 1977 and 1979 editions of Veselyi's Russia Washed in Blood. We find in this novel restorations of the abbreviations "zh ..." {zhopa, ass) and "g . . . " {govno, shit) and of the words iaitsa (balls) and govennye (shitty). All of these improprieties were censored in 1958. The novel's 1970 edition reinstated only "g . . . " while the 1983 edition shows no restorations. The censors of Maiakovskii's poem "To You" continued to tolerate the full spelling of bliadiam (to whores). On the other hand, volume 1 of Virgin Soil Upturned, issued in 1983 for foreign readers by the publishing house Russian Language, omitted not only the abbreviation "b . . . " (whore) but also nearly all matiuki and a number of milder obscenities and coarse expressions. This happened because the novel's first volume was copied from the bowdlerized text of the 1953 KhL edition. Those in
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charge of the 1983 edition must have worried that the Russian-reading foreigners might get a less than favorable impression of the Russian cultural and moral standards. Along with the foul language, the 1983 edition, like its 1953 model, heavily reduced naturalistic and erotic details. Censorial activity in contemporary works appears to have steered a steady middle course. The censors seem to condone moderate employment of matiuki, including their blasphemous variant used, respectively, by a drunken Red Army soldier and a Russian policeman on the German-occupied territory.77 In Mozhaev's Peasant Men and Peasant Women we encounter "zh ..." along with matiuki, and Nosov's The Helmet Wearers from Usviaty retained kurva (slut) and b . . . d'iu (whore).78 On the other hand, kurva was replaced by a less offensive paskuda (skunk) in Trifonov's Time and Place (10:98; 289). The editors of lunost' were perhaps a little stricter with Babii lar because their magazine catered primarily to the young reader. They dispensed with mother curses used by the author and the characters (8:16, 9:20, 24; 63, 232, 253). In the last case the phrase with a matiuk was recast into one featuring "zh ..." Elsewhere the same abbreviation replaced a fully spelled zhopa, but bliadstvo (whoring) and bardak (whorehouse) vanished completely (9:42; 340).
Eroticism Both earlier and later works discussed previously in this study offer all but marginal evidence of the censorial intervention in the physiological side of love during the 1965-84 period. An exception cropped up in volume 1 of The Quiet Don in 1965, but it amounted merely to the restoration of a 1953 revision which was replaced by the original text in 1956. Grigorii's style of courting Aksin'ia— "He wooed her stubbornly with the persistence of a bull"—yielded to "He stubbornly pursued her with a passionate and expectant love."79 Most of the novel's publications between 1965 and 1991 adopted the later wording. By contrast, those in charge of the 1977 and 1979 editions of Russia Washed in Blood reinstated two idioms with explicit sexual connotations. One was korolek (little king), a word signifying a woman's sexual organ supposedly of the highest quality, judged by the shape of her body. This compliment appears in the form of a remark made by the Red-Green partisans about their female commissar. In another instance the editors restored the expression postavit' rakom, meaning to put a human body in a position needed for a "dog style" intercourse. In this way Pavel Grebenshchikov, chairman of a County Party Committee, would like to line up throughout Europe and Asia all of the socially alien personnel—former tsarist officials, high-school girls, and officers' wives^—who held secondary jobs in Soviet institutions. Pavel resented the fact that the working class was short of trained people to fill these positions.80 The overall lack of erotic corrections in earlier works indicates that the pre1965 censors thoroughly desexualized them and that their post-1965 colleagues did not raise the standards of sexual purity. Nevertheless, the standards were still there and the literary controllers watched that they would not be violated. Two examples demonstrate a fairly heightened degree of sensitivity to erotic matters.
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The first comes from Babii lar where the italicized words "big-bosomed, sitting with her butt in a tub" were removed from the description of a picture of a bathing Russian beauty printed in a German magazine (9:16; 213). The second example sheds light on manifold obstacles encountered by Andrei Bitov's story "Obraz" ("The Image," wr. 1966) on its long road to publication. The story is about an accidental meeting of two relatively young people, Monakhov and Asia, who had broken off their relationship ten years earlier. He is now married and on the verge of becoming the father of his first child. She is in the process of divorcing her husband and already has a fiance. The greater part of the story narrates how Asia and Monakhov, on her initiative, look in vain for a place suitable for sexual intimacy. The search is accompanied by the author's probings into Monakhov's mental states. The editors of Novyi mir, Moskva, and lunost' praised Bitov's story but rejected it as inappropriate for their respective magazines. In 1968 "The Image" was removed from the page proofs of the author's collection Aptekarskii ostrov (The Aptekarskii Island) compiled in Leningrad by the publishing house Sovetskii pisatef (The Soviet Writer). The editor of the collection, K. Uspenskaia, went to the director of the publishing house to ask for the restoration of the story. The director, a former head of the Party City Committee, categorically turned down the request on the grounds that the whole plot of the story consisted of two people searching for a place to sleep together. Bitov's next step was to submit the manuscript to several journals at once. The replies were all negative. Thus, in his letter to the author, dated 22 September 1969, an editor of Avrora said that he had nothing against the content or the form of "The Image." Yet the story was "NOT FOR AVRORA" which should promote works with more meaningful messages. A similar but harsher letter was written on 13 January 1970 by a woman editor of Avrora. Seeing nothing new or significant in "The Image," she wondered whether Bitov would be interested in writing about more profound, more active, and more courageous people than those in his story. Clearly, both editors were dissatisfied with the story's private, unheroic characters, particularly its weak-willed protagonist, whom they described with the same word "amorphous." Renewed attempts to publish "The Image" in literary journals failed. In the summer of 1971, the story was about to come out in the Voronezh magazine Pod"em, but the chief of the Culture Department of the Party Province Committee, who censored every issue of the magazine, ordered its removal. When several editors of Pod"em went to the committee to seek the reversal of the order, they were told that the story was "sexual and immoral." It was not until December 1973 that the story, which had already come out in the Slovak, Estonian, and Armenian languages, saw the light in Zvezda*1 It appears that the censors in the Estonian and the Armenian republics were more open-minded than those in the Russian Republic.
Naturalistic Details Censorship of material considered "naturalistic" continued under Brezhnev
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with, possibly, a higher degree of stringency than in the time of Khrushchev. Occasionally, we encounter censorial intervention in places that had been left untouched in the preceding period. Thus the 1965 Rostov edition of The Quiet Don eliminated the italicized words in the sentence, "Blood and white matter ran from his torn ear onto the pillow." All later editions that I checked endorsed the omission. In the 1969 edition of Bruski the description of the body of a man killed by a thrashing machine did not mention his torn-out arms or the fact that the front part of his skull was ripped off and tilted backwards.82 Subsequent publications of Bruski restored the text of the novel's 1957 and 1958 editions. Similar gory and ghastly particulars were kept out of the reader's view in Babii lar bright red chunks of flesh and a piece of a head with protruding white teeth—remnants of German soldiers after a Soviet air raid (10:45; 447); a knife slicing a horse's throat tube, cartilage, and vertebrae (9:43; 346); or excrement and urine on the bodies of people asphyxiated in the Nazi gas vans (10:28; 384). Furthermore, the reader was spared from hearing the story of how Kuznetsov's grandfather drowned kittens in a bucket of water and how the author himself, intending to shorten the suffering of a defective newborn kitten, crushed it with a brick (9:39; 325-26). Nor was the reader supposed to know that a dog of a German camp commandant was trained to rip sexual organs (9:37; 308). The narrative of a man forced to exhume the bodies in Babii lar was cleansed of the terrible smell that nearly caused him to faint until he grew accustomed to it (10:28; 382). Then the editors turned to the Germans and got rid of the stench oozing from the piles of their soldiers killed in the battle for Kiev (10:47; 456). Some deletions in Babii lar involved indecent exposures. The editors disapproved of a woman pushing her large bare bosom under the nose of a policeman to prove she was a nursing mother and, consequently, exempt from deportation to Germany as a laborer (9:41; 336). Likewise, the editors did not want the reader to see the buttocks of German soldiers loudly relieving themselves in a makeshift latrine (8:33; 159). As the time went on, the censors did not seem to relax their opposition to "naturalistic" transgressions. Thus, in 1981, Trifonov's Time and Place was cleaned out of passages which only a rigidly austere individual would have deemed unpalatable. The censors did not want to upset the reader with the fact that once, after eating fish in a restaurant, a young woman became so sick that an ambulance had to be called (10:63; 225). The scene of Antipov lying in bed with a film producer, Irina, retained its mild sexual particulars, but lost the phrase about his bathing in sweat, though the cause of the perspiration was rather mental than physical (10:71; 239). Elsewhere the censors cut a remark made by a woman prosector to her male interlocutor. She said that she would love to make a mask from his face featuring such a nice little nose and pink cheeks (10:100; 292).
Children's Editions During the 1965-84 period, the texts of special editions intended for the
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young reader became either closer to or identical with those of regular editions. This point can be illustrated by comparing Sholokhov's collection titled Don Stories, The Fate of a Man (Moscow: Detgiz, 1967) with Stories published in 1975 by Lenizdat in its school series. Seven matiuki missing from the stories "The Birth Mark," "The Way and the Road," and "The Shame Child" in the 1967 collection were preserved in the Stories, just like in regular publications. A mother curse banned in 1967 from "The Shame Child" was retained in Aleshka's Heart, The Shame Child, The Fate of a Man, a triple-titled volume brought out in 1984 by the publishing house Contemporary in its series for adolescents. There was no difference between the children's and "adult" editions of Sholokhov's stories with respect to political revisions. This is also true of the 1972 Detgiz edition of The Rout. Based on a regular post-1951 publication of the novel, it absorbed a dozen political deletions made in 1951. On the other hand, the 1972 version preserved some fifteen coarse words and curses that were kept out of the 1949 Detgiz edition. The retentions ranged from the innocuous zadnitsa (rear end) to blasphemous matiuki. Both editions, however, expunged the word kurva (slut), which has a sexual rather than abusive connotation here.83 Indeed, it was in the domain of carnality that the 1972 editors nearly matched the prudishness of their 1949 colleagues. In some fifteen cases the 1972 version veered away from its contemporary "adult" publications of the novel by cutting out erotic elements. Two-thirds of the excisions concerned the amenable nurse Varia, the object of sexual comments and advances.84 Subsequent editions of The Rout for young readers came out in the school series of Artistic Literature (Moscow, 1973, 1975) and the West Siberian Publishing House (Novosibirsk, 1976). All three faithfully reproduced the text of their regular counterparts. Thus The Rout joined The Young Guard which since 1946 had known no distinction between its Detgiz, Uchpedgiz, and regular editions. The 1976 Detgiz publication of The Young Guard continued this tradition, except for one little thing. To my knowledge, it is the sole edition where a character refers to Stalin as "comrade Stalin, commander in chief himself." There exist three more variations: "comrade Stalin himself (1951-55), "comrade commander in chief himself (1956-59, Uchpedgiz and Detgiz), and "commander in chief comrade Stalin" (1956 Sov. pis.-1985).85 The editors must have experienced some difficulties in deciding how to call the leader after his debunking. Minor divergences in the treatment of Stalin are also encountered among the children's editions of Virgin Soil Upturned, which in the Brezhnev period adopted the texts of the novel's regular publications. For example, the 1968 and 1974 Detgiz editions purged Stalin from the name of the Gremiachii collective farm in volume 1 of the novel but saved it in volume 2, both in the name of the farm and in one of Davydov's phrases. By contrast, the 1977 Detgiz edition preserved Stalin in the name of the farm almost everywhere, but removed it from Davydov's phrase in volume 2.86 The 1969 and 1973 editions of Virgin Soil Upturned brought out by the Publishing House Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment) for tenth-grade students left no place for Stalin in all of the above-mentioned cases. Regarding obscenities, naturalistic details, and eroticism, the Detgiz and Enlightenment editions show no departures from their regular counterparts. As a
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result, both in political and puritanical respects children's editions of Virgin Soil Upturned made a great step forward in comparison with those of any preceding period. On the whole, the years 1965-84 turned out to be more propitious to children's and school editions than the time of Khrushchev's rule. The authorities must have realized that the adoption of carefully scrutinized texts of "adult" editions could not do much harm to the political or puritanical education of young readers.
Authors'
Reactions
The 1965-84 period witnessed a sharp rise in the authors' condemnation of censorship. Having enjoyed a modicum of creative freedom under Khrushchev, the independent-minded writers abhorred the tightening of the censorial screw. For the first time in Soviet history, the opposition to censorship took the form of an open and broad protest. The rallying point of the protest was Solzhenitsyn's letter dated 16 May 1967 and addressed to the presidium and the delegates of the Fourth Congress of Soviet Writers, to members of the Soviet Writers' Union, and to the editorial boards of literary newspapers and magazines. Shortly before the opening of the congress, 250 typewritten copies of Solzhenitsyn's letter were sent to carefully chosen literary and public figures. To deceive the vigilance of the postal censorship, the letters were mailed from different parts of Moscow. In the first half of the letter, Solzhenitsyn lashes out at the censorial oppression of literature. Censorship, he declares, is illegal. There is no provision for it in the Soviet Constitution. Publicly unmentionable, censorship subjects writers to the whims of individuals ignorant of literary art. The censors proscribe or distort works that could have a salubrious influence on the spiritual and social development of the nation. Due to censorship, Russian literature has lost the leading position it occupied at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. It also has lost its experimental brilliance of the 1920s. Solzhenitsyn proposes that the Congress "demand and achieve the abolition of all censorship—overt or covert—of literary works. In the second half of his letter, Solzhenitsyn suggests that the Writers' Union formulate a clear-cut policy in defending its members from slander or persecution. To buttress his point, he cites instances of calumny, persecution, and prohibitions which he went through during the three preceding years. Five magazines, he said, refused to publish Cancer Ward by chapters, while Novyi mir, Zvezda, and Prostor (Expanse) rejected the novel in its entirety. Solzhenitsyn's letter became immediately the hottest topic of discussion in the writers' community and gained considerable support from its liberal sector. Eighty members of the Writers' Union dispatched a collective letter to the presidium of the Fourth Congress, requesting an open discussion of the issues raised by Solzhenitsyn. Similar letters and telegrams were sent to the presidium by individual authors.88 All these messages proved to be of no avail. The congress, which was held from 22 to 27 May, simply ignored Solzhenitsyn's letter. It could not have been
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otherwise. Most of the seventy-nine members of the presidium of the congress belonged to the conservative or administrative wing of the Writers' Union. Moreover, the presidium included a number of the Party's top ideological watchdogs, such as Vladimir Stepakov, head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Party Central Committee; Ekaterina Furtseva, the USSR minister of culture; and Vasilii Shauro, chief of the Central Committee's Department of Culture.89 Merely two members of the presidium requested an open discussion of Solzhenitsyn's letter: Konstantin Paustovskii, by signing the letter of the eighty writers; and Valentin Kataev, in a personal telegram. It did not help. The program of the congress was worked out in advance and—more importantly—the Party would not tolerate any criticism of its literary policy in the year when it was preparing the country for the jubilant celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Solzhenitsyn lost the battle but won the war. His letter provided inspiration for future resistance to censorship. The fact that he was not arrested bespoke the magnitude of his moral authority at home and abroad, as well as the weakness of the Brezhnev regime. The Party did not expect that Solzhenitsyn's assault on censorship would be wholeheartedly joined by so many writers and by so many well-known names, among whom were Vasilii Aksenov, Sergei Antonov, Grigorij Baklanov, Vasil' Bykov, Veniamin Kaverin, Boris Mozhaev, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Tendriakov, Georgii Vladimov, and Vladimir Voinovich. Other writers denounced or resisted censorship unrelated to Solzhenitsyn's letter. A strong attack on Glavlit was mounted by Grigorii Svirskii in his speech at the Party meeting of the Moscow writers on 16 January 1968. Svirskii began with the statement that two years earlier the Moscow writers informed Petr Demichev, a secretary of the Party Central Committee, about the hypertrophic power of censorship that was turning down or distorting literary works. Demichev promised to rectify things, but nothing happened. The writers continued to be humiliated and deprived of their inalienable right to communicate their innermost feelings and thoughts.90 However, Svirskii castigated Glavlit from the standpoint of a Communist. He was concerned that the stupidity and arbitrariness of censorship damaged the cause of the Party. It was a mistake, in his opinion, not to publish Evgeniia Ginzburg's Krutoi marshrut {Journey into the Whirlwind, 1967). This memoir, he pointed out, was praised by the Communists in the West as an effective weapon against Svetlana Allilueva's book Dvadtsat' pisem k drugu {Twenty Letters to a Friend, 1967). To western comrades, Ginzburg was a Bolshevik woman who preserved her faith in the Party and Lenin even in prison camps, whereas Allilueva blamed the Soviet Communist system for repressions.91 In 1988 the reader was given the opportunity to get acquainted with Fedor Abramov's characterization of censorship: "Atrocities of censorship, this curse of our literature, the bloodless murderer of Russian thought, the cross and the Golgotha, the gravedigger of the best. ..." Written in 1978, this phrase belongs to Abramov's reminiscences of Tvardovskii. It was banned from their first publication in the magazine Sever {North) in 1987.92 In other cases the authors expressed their protests in actions. Anatolii Kuznetsov, who remained in the West in 1969, claimed he could no longer live
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in the Soviet Union because creative work there was made impossible by censorship and, especially, self-censorship.93 Sholokhov, as we have seen, refused to make any revisions in the excerpt from They Fought for Their Country and asked Brezhnev to return its manuscript. A group of writers brought out an uncensored collection, MetropoT. Resistance to censorship in the 1965-84 period encompassed a broad spectrum of writers. At one end was Solzhenitsyn, the worst literary enemy in the eyes of the regime, a traitor justly deported from his homeland. On the other end stood Sholokhov, the number-one author on the official scale, a Hero of Socialist Labor, and a member of the Party Central Committee. It is likely that the majority of the Writers' Union membership, which had swollen from 6,608 in May 1967 to 9,584 in June 1986, sheepishly submitted themselves to censorship to see their works published. But a significant number of prestigious and independent-minded authors denounced it and paved the way for its eventual abolition.
CHAPTER 6
CENSORSHIP IN 1985-1991 MELTING Political Background The year 1985 ushered in a singular period in the history of Soviet literature and censorship. Its emergence can be traced back to the April 1985 plenary session of the Party Central Committee. At this meeting the committee's new Secretary General, Mikhail Gorbachev, called for a further democratization of society, and for glasnost (openness) that would enable the Soviet public to express its opinions and criticisms regarding matters of national importance.1 Gorbachev's speech of 2 November 1987, marking the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution, signaled a partial reexamination of Soviet history. For the first time he openly declared that the guilt of Stalin and his entourage for engaging in mass repressions and lawlessness was "enormous and inexcusable." At the same time, Gorbachev scaled down the number of victims of the Stalin terror from millions to "many thousands." Moderate as it was, Gorbachev's address provided a strong stimulus for an exploration of the Soviet past in the media, press, and literature.2 It must be said that the goals of the proclaimed "revolutionary perestroika" (restructuring) were rather limited. An admirer of Lenin, Gorbachev had no intention of demolishing the edifice of socialism. He merely wanted to make it more inhabitable through economic and administrative reforms. His glasnost did not mean freedom of speech. He made this clear at a meeting with leaders of the mass media, ideological institutions, and creative unions on 8 January 1988. "The Soviet press," he stated, "is not a private shop." He recalled Lenin's words about literature being "part of the common cause of the Party" and assured his audience that the Central Committee would be guided by this principle.3 The liberal wing of the intelligentsia was probably the only segment of the Soviet population that gave strong initial support to perestroika and immediately profited from it. Many literary works previously rejected by censorship or written "for the desk drawer" could now be published. A similar situation prevailed in other arts. Still, the purveyors of culture wanted more freedom of expression than the Party was willing to grant. In the second half of 1988 a noticeable tension developed between the Government and the writers, with Solzhenitsyn as its focal point. Positive references to his name began to appear in the official publications, after he had been ignored or vilified for two decades. Meanwhile, Sergei Zalygin, chief editor of Novyi mir, obtained from Solzhenitsyn permission to publish his works under the condition that The Gu-
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lag Archipelago should come out first.4 An announcement about the forthcoming appearance of Solzhenitsyn's writings was printed on the back cover of the October 1988 issue of Novyi mir. But at the last moment, a telephone call "from above" ordered that the cover be replaced by one having no mention of Solzhenitsyn. An unidentified Soviet intellectual told Professor John B. Dunlop that the decision to block the publication of Solzhenitsyn was made by Gorbachev, after a Party official had called his attention to the anti-Lenin passages in The Gulag Archipelago? In response to the taboo on Solzhenitsyn's works, a large number of Soviet cultural figures sent collective letters to Gorbachev, who on 1 October 1988 was elected chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet. The signers of the letters voiced their deep concern about the suppression of Solzhenitsyn's oeuvre, especially The Gulag Archipelago. They argued that this monument to the victims of repressions must be known to the Soviet people irrespective of the political views of its author. Some of the signers differed sharply in their ideological orientation, but they were united in the cause of making Solzhenitsyn's writings available to the broad reader.6 The letters scored no immediate success. The Party reiterated its stance publicly through Vadim Medvedev, a Politburo member and chairman of the Centra! Committee's Ideological Commission. On 29 November 1988, at a news conference in Moscow, he stated that Solzhenitsyn's opposition to Communism ruled out publication of his works.7 A verdict of the Party's ideological chief would have been final under Khrushchev or Brezhnev; but in the fourth year of perestroika, Medvedev failed to convince or intimidate the defenders of Solzhenitsyn. In December 1988, Moscow intellectuals celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the writer's birth by holding large meetings at the House of Cinema, the House of Architects, and the House of Doctors. The Party leadership did not forbid these gatherings.8 Nor could the periodicals be prevented from sporadic publishing of Solzhenitsyn's writings. Already on 18 October 1988 his essay "Zhit' ne po Izhi!" ("Live Not by Lies!" wr. 1973) appeared in the Kievan newspaper Rabochee slovo {The Workers' Word), the organ of the local Union of railroad workers. In the essay Solzhenitsyn appeals to the Soviet citizens to abstain from taking part in official lies. The same essay came out in the February 1989 issue of the Moscow magazine Vek XX i mir (Twentieth Century and Peace), the monthly publication of the Soviet Peace Committee. Considered a reliable propaganda instrument, the magazine had been exempted from Glavlit censorship two years earlier.9 On the other hand, there were cases where the Party or the censors intervened in the process of rehabilitating Solzhenitsyn. Examples of this kind can be found in a curious document: the report of the chief of the Moscow Obllit, I. V. Minushov, to the chief of the USSR Glavlit, Vladimir Boldyrev. The report dated 3 April 1989 reveals that Evgenii Averin, the chief editor of the newspaper Knizhnoe obozrenie (The Book Review), was summoned to the Party Central Committee because the 12 August 1988 issue of his newspaper published a number of readers' letters supporting a call for the rehabilitation of Solzhenitsyn. Furthermore, in December 1988, the Central Committee and the Goskomizdat (The State Committee for Publishing Houses, Polygraphy, and the Book Trade)
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turned down the request of Averin's deputy, S. I. Spiridonova, to publish "Matrena's Home" as a tribute to the seventieth anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's birth. Nonetheless, in February 1989, Knizhnoe obozrenie set the story with the permission of Vladimir Solodin, a member of the Glavlit Collegium. But someone reported this fact to Glavlit. As a result, Glavlit instructed Knizhnoe obozrenie to scatter the composition of the story.10 The censors' victories proved to be short-lived. After several conversations with Zalygin, Gorbachev relinquished his opposition to the publishing of The Gulag Archipelago. "We will without doubt publish 'Gulag' in 1989," Zalygin said in an interview on 20 April.11 There could be several reasons for Gorbachev's change of mind. He did not want to alienate the liberal intelligentsia; a continuing refusal to print The Gulag Archipelago could not but tarnish his image in the West as champion of glasnost; or he could have realized the absurdity of banning a book read by millions abroad but unavailable to the people about whom it was written. However, it was not Novyi mir but an Estonian-language journal Looming (Creation) that was the first to publish a piece of The Gulag Archipelago in the Soviet Union. With the author's permission, the journal printed the opening chapter of the book in its June 1989 issue.12 In the same month, without Solzhenitsyn's authorization, the Moscow journal Ogonek published "Matrena's Home." The Ogonek chief editor, Vitalii Korotich, was obviously in a hurry to jump on the bandwagon. Two years earlier he expressed no wish to publish Solzhenitsyn's works, calling the author "a fool—he is not a writer, but a political opponent."13 The July 1989 issue of Novyi mir carried the full text of "The Nobel Lecture," and selected chapters from all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago saw the light in the August-November 1989 issues of that magazine. Then, in 1989-90, the publishing house Sovetskii pisatel' brought out the whole book. The gate for the flood of Solzhenitsyn's works was opened. At the beginning of perestroika the erosion of censorship moved on slowly. The break did not come easily. A confidential manual, issued probably in the second half of 1985 by the Soviet News Agency (TASS) for newspaper editors, did not show any significant departure from previous censorial policies. The manual stated that the purpose of the press was to propagandize the Soviet socialist mode of life by concentrating on its sunny sides. Articles about problems and difficulties must indicate the ways of overcoming them. Reporting on murder, robbery, and other crimes should be strictly limited and no criticism of the government was permissible. Plane and train crashes were not to be reported unless they happened abroad. The same restriction applied to AIDS, which must be presented as a disease of the West.14 A year after the inauguration of glasnost, people were still sent to prison for disseminating works judged to contain deliberate slander of the Soviet social and state system. Thus, in April 1986, the Supreme Court of the Chuvash Autonomous Republic sentenced the journalist lu. V. Galochkin to a two-year prison term for circulating among his friends ten titles, including Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog" and Platonov's Foundation Pit. In June 1987 both these works were officially published in the Soviet Union. Although Galochkin was released in March of that year, he could not get his confiscated books back. They had
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been destroyed as "ideologically deficient" (ideino-ushcherbny).15 In the early years of perestroika any discussion of censorship was not welcomed. A case in point is the article by the legal scholar Mikhail Fedotov, "B of she svobody—vyshe otvetstvennosf " ("More Freedom, Greater Responsibility"), which questioned the need for preliminary censorship in the time of glasnost. The article was removed from galley proofs five times before it saw the light on 23 October 1988 in Moskovskie novosti, a year after it had been written.16 Yet the very appearance of Fedotov's article attested to a substantial loosening of the censorial screws in the second half of 1988. Another, even more remarkable sign of the progressing thaw, was the publication of an interview with the Glavlit chief, Vladimir Boldyrev, in Izvestiia for 3 November 1988, the first interview ever given by a head of the Soviet censorship agency. Whether by design or coincidence, the interview, granted to the Izvestiia reporter E. Parkhomovskii, came out under the heading "Bol'she demokratii-—men'she tain" ("More Democracy, Fewer Secrets") bearing a structural and semantic resemblance to the title of Fedotov's article. Boldyrev ventured some critical remarks about his institution, though primarily in reference to its past. Censorship, he said, was "part of the breaking mechanism in the command-bureaucratic system." Glavlit was widely used for restricting information on uncriticizable subjects like Moscow, Aeroflot, Soviet police, or sore points of "our development." Now, he claimed, the list of proscribed themes was cut by one-third. The new guiding principle was "What is not prohibited is permitted." It was forbidden, Boldyrev stated, to use the press with the intention "to undermine or abolish the socialist system established in the USSR, to propagandize war, to preach racial or national exclusiveness, enmity, and violence on national, religious, or any other basis." Also banned from publication were items divulging state secrets or incompatible with requirements of public morality and health care. Essentially, Boldyrev restated prohibitions contained in the 6 June 1922 decree on the establishment of Glavlit. These were broad enough to allow Glavlit to carry out full-fledged political or puritanical censorship. A great deal depended on the interpretation of what constituted a state secret or was detrimental to the country's interests at a given time. A case in point is the change in approach to prohibited publications assigned to special closed collections {spetsfondy) and housed in special storages (spetskhrany). The return of banned books to the open-access areas of libraries was fueled by the Party Central Commitee's decision of 13 January 1987 to reconsider the lists of publications excluded from public libraries.17 According to Boldyrev, in the years 1987-88, over 7,500 titles were transferred from the special fund to the libraries' general collections available to all readers. The special storages, he said, still housed some 400 publications, most of which stirred up national hatred or were pornographic.18 Boldyrev also said that steps were taken to facilitate the readers' access to foreign writings. Large numbers of them would be removed from special storages, and the custom regulations concerning the import of foreign literature would be liberalized. However, around the time he spoke these encouraging words, Boldyrev notified the Party Central Committee about difficulties encountered by Glavlit in car-
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rying out the committee's resolution of 7 March 1961, which obligated Glavlit to monitor dispatches of foreign reporters. What worried Boldyrev in 1988 was the fact that modern communication technology used by Western news agencies greatly complicated the job of the Glavlit "special service" which was equipped with obsolete teletypes. Boldyrev's request to upgrade his monitoring system did not fall on deaf ears. A. Kapto, head of the Central Committee's Ideological Department, instructed the Ministry of Communication, KGB, and Glavlit to study jointly the question of modernizing Glavlit's technology.19 As time progressed, the shroud of secrecy enveloping Glavlit activities was being gradually raised. There were more interviews given by Boldyrev and Solodin. Contents of their interviews did not differ in substance from what Boldyrev had already said in his conversation with Parkhomovskii, but they added a few details. For instance, late in 1988 Solodin disclosed that the total number of censors in the Soviet Union was "less than 2,000," the exact figure still remaining a state secret.20 In our conversation in Moscow on 25 May 1993, Solodin explained that this figure included 1,450 or 1,500 actual censors, plus other employees of Glavlit. Thus we may assume that since 1922 the number of Glavlit censors had grown sixfold; but decreased in comparison to the year 1939 when, according to Nikolai Sadchikov, the Glavlit chief at that time, there were 2,080 full-time and 2,199 part-time censors. However, the total number of censors operating in the late 1980s exceeded Solodin's data if one adds to it those who worked in censorship offices of various ministries and administrations. Throughout the interviews of both Boldyrev and Solodin ran the theme of the need for preliminary censorship, at least for the time being. This stand contrasted with the endeavors of the liberal intelligentsia who were crusading for the adoption of the law that would put an end to censorship. An important landmark in the striving for this goal was a draft of the law on the press written by three Moscow lawyers on their own initiative.21 The principal point of the draft, read; "Censorship of mass information is not allowed." It is not by chance that the draft law was printed in Vek XX i mir, a journal whose editorial staff embarked upon a determined campaign against censorship. The immediate stimulus for the effort came from the publication of the Final Document of the Vienna meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The document, dated 15 January 1989, was signed by thirty-two European countries, plus the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union. Parts of the document devoted to human rights and freedom of information were taken up by the editors of Vek XX i mir as tools to combat censorship. In February 1989 the staff of Vek XX i mir and its contributors created a public council named Vienna. Its purpose was to monitor the Government's compliance with the Vienna agreements, particularly in the domain of human rights, information, and culture.22 In 1989 it became apparent that the press law would be adopted sooner or later. Therefore, the clash between the liberals and conservatives centered not on the need of the law but on the question of what role, if any, should the law give to the traditional political censorship practiced by Glavlit, the Party, and Government agencies. The liberals, who included many card-carrying Communists, stood for an elimination of all types of preliminary political control. Responsi-
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bility for printed materials should rest with the editorial staff. The conservatives wanted the law written in a way that would justify political interference under some seemingly noble pretext. The final decision on the law of the press had to be made by the Supreme Soviet. It was its "working group" that prepared the draft of the law during August and September of 1989. As its point of departure, the working group chose the draft law written previously by the lawyers Fedotov, Baturin, and Entin. On 27 November 1989 the Supreme Soviet voted overwhelmingly for the adoption of the draft law and ordered its publication in the press for discussion. The dispute between the proponents and opponents of censorship flared up again in June 1990 at the third session of the Supreme Soviet. The liberals won. On 12 June the Law on the Press and Other Mass News Media was adopted by the Supreme Soviet and signed by Gorbachev as president of the USSR. The law was to go into effect on 1 August 1990.23 The Law on the Press and Other Media offered a mix of provisions. On the positive side, it declared censorship of news inadmissible. It granted the right to establish media outlets to state agencies, political parties, public and religious organizations, creative unions, and even to individual citizens. Journalists were entitled to obtain information from state agencies, public organizations, and government employees. Coercion of journalists by the officials of these bodies to disseminate or suppress information would entail criminal liability and a fine. These liberal points were counterbalanced by restrictive stipulations. Media outlets had to register with agencies of state administration. The registration would be denied if the aims of a media outlet ran counter to the provisions of the first part of Article 5 of the Law on the Press. Likewise, violation of these provisions would result in closing of a media outlet by the registration agency or by a court. According to the first part of Article 5, which contained the gist of censorial taboos, it was forbidden to divulge state secrets, to call for a forcible overthrow or change of the state system, to disseminate pornography, to propagate war, violence, cruelty, and national or religious intolerance. It is noteworthy that these "don't do its" closely resemble those found in Parkhomovskii's interview with Boldyrev (Izvestiia, 3 November 1988) and in Article 8 of the draft law on the press prepared by Fedotov, Baturin, and Entin (XX Century and Peace, no. 4, 1989). The chief of Glavlit and the leading fighters against censorship seem to be of one mind regarding the need to protect the state interests. It appears that Glavlit lost much of its power after the passage of the Law on the Press. But even before the law went into effect, Boldyrev told Izvestiia that 1 August 1990 could be officially considered the day of Glavlif s demise as the censorship agency. At the same time, he stated that the Main Administration for the Guarding of State Secrets in the Press would continue to function under the Government's jurisdiction. This seemingly contradictory statement shows that Boldyrev was opposed to the traditional acronym Glavlit because it suggested a comprehensive control of literature, and that he stood for retaining the full name of the censorship agency because it implied a concern with state secrets only. The new relationship between editorial boards and the Main Administration for the Guarding of State Secrets in the Press would, in Boldyrev's words, be one of "mutually acceptable cooperation." By an agreement with the editors, an admin-
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istxation official would serve as a consultant, checking materials for state secrets. It would be up to the editorial board to accept or reject the consultant's recommendations. Boldyrev also said that his agency submitted a draft of the statute of the new administration to the Government.24 Indeed, in July or August 1990, the USSR Council of Ministers invalidated the Statute on Glavlit and created an all-Union body named Glavnoe upravlenie po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati i drugikh sredstvakh massvoi informatsii pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR (The Main Administration for the Guarding of State Secrets in the Press and Other News Media under the USSR Council of Ministers), which received an awkward acronym GUOT. Twenty-two days after the Law on the Press and Other Media went into effect, GUOT issued 20,000 copies of a two-page secret document entitled "On Changing the List of Information Prohibited for Publication, the 1990 Edition" and intended for publishers and GUOT officials. From the contents of this document, revealed by Izvestiia, it follows that GUOT was strongly concerned with the state of Soviet animal husbandry. It forbade printing figures and facts on domestic animals stricken with foot-and-mouth disease, rinderpest, African plague, Venezuelan encephalomyelitis, Rift Valley fever, and some other diseases. Other unreportable items belonged to the military sphere: the sizes of underground storage facilities for helium, the number and condition of railroad locomotives, the unsatisfactory state of discipline in the Soviet Army. Also to be suppressed were instances of murder, suicide, maiming, desertion, theft of weapons or military hardware, and the expression of group discontent by servicemen.25 The detailed enumeration of what should not be revealed about the brutalized army demonstrates that the Ministry of Defense had no intention to wash its dirty linen in public. The very fact that Izvestiia editors, risking a three-to-five year prison term, dared to publicize and ridicule a secret state document bespeaks not only their determination to oppose censorship of GUOT but also the weakness of the state that created this agency. In conversation with me on 25 May 1993 Vladimir Solodin called GUOT "still-born." I did not come across any evidence that GUOT subjected literary works to strict political or puritanical censorship until its liquidation in November 1991 by the Government of the Russian Federative Republic. GUOT's place was taken by a new agency—Gosudarstvennaia inspektsiia po zashchite svobody pecati i massovoi informatsii pri Ministerstve pechati i massovoi informatsii RSFSR (The State Inspection for Protection of Freedom of the Press and Mass Information under the RSFSR Ministry for the Press and Mass Information). The task of the State Inspection was to monitor the compliance with the Law on the Press and Other Mass News Media. The chief, his deputy, and the heads of local offices of the State Inspection had to be appointed or dismissed by the RSFSR Ministry for the Press and Mass Information. The abolition of GUOT attested to the growing independence of the Russian Republic following the failed coup d'etat of the Communist right-wingers in August 1991.26 In the last months of the Gorbachev rule, the press and other media experienced more difficulties than did literature. Dealing with sensitive political issues of the day, they continued to operate under the watchful eye of the Party. Although, since February 1990, the Party had lost its exclusive prerogative to lead-
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ership and a multiparty system had been accepted, the ruling Communists had little intention of relinquishing their habitual supervision of the spoken and printed word. Gorbachev himself may serve as an example. On 23 January 1991, angered by the newspapers' criticism of Soviet brutalities in Vilnius, he proposed that the Supreme Soviet assume control of all newspapers, television, and radio. The proposal, made at the fourth session of the Supreme Soviet, ran into resistance from its liberal delegates and Gorbachev withdrew it.27 This retreat, however, did not prevent Gorbachev's protege Leonid Kravchenko from taking repressive measures as chairman of Gosteleradio (The State Television and Radio Board). Kravchenko shut down some of the media's most daring and popular programs. His act provoked indignant and numerous protests of liberal intellectuals.28 As late as July 1991, liberal publications continued to condemn the widespread practice of Party and Government institutions of closing down, censoring, or refusing to register newspapers considered guilty of political and ideological transgressions.29 But the days of Gorbachev's regime were numbered. The defeat of the August 1991 coup led to a quick disintegration of the Soviet Union and the formation of a Commonwealth of Independent States on 8 December 1991. The history of the Soviet Union, as well as of its censorship, came to an end.
Literary Works The hallmark of the 1985-91 period was an explosion in publication of the hitherto unprintable writings of both Soviet and emigre authors. The process started on a rather modest scale in 1985-86, accelerated rapidly in 1987-88, and reached its peak in 1989-91. Before 1988, the publication policy seemed to favor the previously rejected works of Soviet writers and selected works of the "firstwave" emigrants, such as Vladislav Khodasevich and Vladimir Nabokov. Passages concerned with the Soviet regime, the terror, Lenin, and the Soviet Army constituted prime targets of censorship. Most of the literary works discussed in the preceding chapters continued to appear in versions inherited from the 1965-84 period. Counter to this trend ran the restorations of original texts of Trifonov's Time and Place (Sovremennik, 1989), Fadeev's Young Guard (Khl, 1990), and excerpts from Sholokhov's They Fought for Their Country {Molodaia gvardiia, no. 7, 1992). Given the scarcity of fresh revisions in familiar works, our discussion will be centered on previously unmentioned titles that underwent substantial political pruning in the time of glasnost. Three works stand out in this respect: Pogruzhenie vo t'mu: Iz perezhitogo (Sinking into Darkness: From My Past, wr. 1977-79) by Oleg Volkov, Chernye kamni: Avtobiograficheskaia povest' (The Black Rocks: An Autobiographical Tale, 1988) by Anatolii Zhigulin, and Spriatannaia voina (The Hidden War, 1989) by Artem Borovik. The prose writer Volkov's book of some 450 pages covers twenty-seven years of his life in Soviet prisons, camps, and exile. The book was first published in Paris in 1987. Two Soviet editions of it came out in 1989. The first
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was issued by Sov. pis. and the second by MG and the Association of Russian Artists. A comparison of the Paris and the first Soviet edition shows that the latter suffers from some 130 revisions, nearly all of them deletions affecting authorial condemnation of the Bolshevik regime and its leaders. In Volkov's estimation, a total of sixteen pages had been removed.30 The second Soviet edition restored the bulk of the excised text, but made a dozen new cuts. The poet Zhigulin wrote The Black Rocks in 1987 for the desk drawer. There was no chance of publishing it at that time. The book details the story of an anti-Stalin youth organization and the fate of its members after their arrest. The underground organization named Kommunisticheskaia partiia molodezhi (KPM)—the Young Communist Party—was founded in 1947 in the city of Voronezh by a group of high-school students. The KPM program called for propagating Marxism-Leninism and for combating the deification of Stalin. A secret point of the program envisioned the possibility of overthrowing the tyrant and his entourage by force. The KPM's ultimate goal was the achievement of Communism in the whole world. About sixty persons belonged to the organization. Zhigulin joined it in October 1948 and was a ranking member of its Central Committee. As a result of a betrayal, twenty-odd KPM members were arrested, brutally beaten during interrogations in the Voronezh office of the Ministry of State Security (MGB), and tried in 1950 in absentia by the Special Board under the MGB Minister of the USSR. Zhigulin was sentenced to ten years of prison camps and served a part of his term in the dreadful Kolyma region. Four large black rocks on the top of a hill visible from a Kolyma camp account for the names of both the camp and the book. In 1954 Zhigulin was released thanks to the reduction of his sentence in the post-Stalin thaw. The manuscript of The Black Rocks went to Znamia in 1987. The first act of the magazine's editors was to expunge virtually all curses, much of the slang, and a number of politically colored episodes and ideas. In addition, two chapters were left out. The chapter entitled "It Would Have Been Better to Die" provoked objections to its portrayal of cruelty peculiar to the criminal contingent of prison camps. In it, Zhigulin tells of vicious wars between the blatnye (the bona-fide professional thieves) and their former buddies who broke the ethical code of the "honest" thieves by cooperating with the camp administration. These turncoats were called suki (bitches). The central scene of the omitted chapter shows a forced conversion of a badly beaten thief into a bitch. The man had to kiss the penis of a suki leader and to swear to kill a thief. The chapter also contains a dictionary of the thieves' cant and a part of one of their songs. The second rejected chapter, called "A Small Debt," concerns Zhigulin's intention to shoot, in 1975, a man who had brutally mistreated him in a camp. Zhigulin's wife talked him out of avenging himself. A Znamia editor told Zhigulin that a feeling of revenge was inappropriate for a poet. After making all these cuts, Znamia sent the page proofs of The Black Rocks to the censors. The Glavlit chief Boldyrev summoned the chief editor of Znamia, Grigorii Baklanov, and pointed out two unusual subjects in the tale: the resistance to Stalin's regime and a detailed description of the MGB investigation of a large group of people. The censor suggested that Baklanov either take full responsibility for the publication of The Black Rocks or dispatch its proofs to the
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Press Bureau of the KGB of the USSR for fact-checking. Baklanov elected the latter alternative, but decided to carry out a preliminary purge of the proofs in order to eliminate everything that might be unacceptable to the KGB. The editors found about sixty such places, two-thirds of them dealing with various manifestations of terror. Upset by the deletions, Zhigulin wrote the words beznadezhno obeskrovlena kupiurami ("bled white by cuts beyond recovery") on a copy of the proofs. In January 1988 the new page proofs went to the KGB of the USSR and to its Voronezh office. Meanwhile the workers of the printing press sold, without authorization, several copies of the initial page proofs of The Black Rocks. Selected fragments from one such copy appeared in the March-April and May-June issues of the Munich emigre magazine Strana i mir {The Country and the World). This publication might have accelerated the KGB review of the page proofs. The KGB censor added only a handful of new revisions, a fact that bespeaks the efficiency of the Znamia editors. The censored text of The Black Rocks appeared in the seventh and eighth issues of Znamia, five months behind the original publication schedule. All of the above information pertaining to the publication ordeal of The Black Rocks came to me directly from Zhigulin.31 Baklanov's printed account of the difficulties in publishing The Black Rocks does not mention his meeting with Toldyrev or the censoring of the tale by the Znamia editors. Baklanov states that ^he proofs of The Black Rocks were sent to the KGB by Glavlit. Months later, a KGB general and another person, both in civilian clothes, came to his office. The visitors urged Baklanov either to turn down Zhigulin's tale or to accept their proposed corrections. The Znamia editors, Baklanov said, did not give in and printed The Black Rocks?12 Book-form editions of The Black Rocks began to appear in 1989. Except for a few instances, they restored the text of the first page proofs prepared by Znamia. I found hardly any textual differences between the three book-form editions that I examined. Two of them came out in 1989 and one in 1990. Revisions in The Hidden War, a journalistic account of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, demonstrate the work of military censorship. Submitted to Ogonek in 1989, the manuscript of the book wound up in the hands of a colonel who made "more than two hundred serious deletions, distortions, additions, and corrections."33 Borovik's refusal to accept the colonel's revisions sparked a battle between Ogonek and the censor that lasted over three months. In the circumstances of glasnost, the conflict gained publicity. People began to voice their support for publication and "the military retreated".34 Nonetheless, the censor succeeded in preserving at least thirty of his cuts related mainly to atrocities, low morale, and military secrets of Soviet troops. The excisions can be detected by comparing the English translation of The Hidden War with excerpts from it published in Ogonek (nos. 46, 49-52, 1989) and with its book-form editions (Moscow, 1990). Conspicuous deletions cropped up in 1988 in the first Soviet publications of Nabokov's autobiography Drugie berega {Other Shores, 1954) and Vasilii Grossman's novel Zhizn' i sud'ba {Life and Fate, wr. 1960), a sequel to Za pravoe delo {For the Right Cause, 1952). Unwanted passages in Other Shores re-
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late primarily to Lenin and the Bolshevik terror. Centered on the battle of Stalingrad, Life and Fate has a wide array of themes. Among them are tyranny, repression, anti-Semitism, the Red Army, collectivization of agriculture, and individual freedom. In December 1960, the editors of Znamia refused to print the novel as anti-Soviet. In February 1961, KGB officers seized all of the novel's drafts and manuscripts they could lay their hands on. Two manuscripts remained undetected. A photocopy of one of them was smuggled out to the West and published in 1980 in Lausanne.35 In the Soviet Union, an excerpt from Life and Fate appeared in an October 1987 issue of Ogonek, and at the beginning of 1988 Oktiabr' serialized the novel, with some political omissions. The greater part of the lost text was restored in the first Soviet book-form edition of the novel signed for publication in November 1988. The complete text came out in 1989. The slackening of censorship in the time of glasnost makes it necessary to treat previously unpublishable works more often than it was done in the preceding chapters. Some sections, such as those devoted to peasants and enemies, will be short due to the lack of censorial intervention. On the other hand, the continuing censorial preoccupation with the Soviet regime, terror, and leaders calls for a more detailed discussion of these topics.
Political
Censorship
The Party, Its Regime, and Soviet People Already in the early years of perestroika there appeared officially sanctioned works that emphasized the dark sides of Soviet life or treated previously prohibited subjects. The first starkly realistic depiction of Soviet conditions and the first significant work of the new period was Valentin Rasputin's short novel Pozhar (The Fire, Nash sovremennik, no. 7, 1985). Its action takes place in a new and ugly Siberian settlement populated by peasants whose native villages were flooded in the process of building a power station. Before long, a different breed of people—the migratory workers—have begun to move in and out of the settlement, lliey drink, defile cemeteries, and fight and kill one another. They intimidate the locals and virtually control the settlement. During a fire that consumes storages filled with foodstuffs and clothing, many newcomers engage in looting and one of them kills a watchman. Moral degeneration is also the subject of Viktor Astaf'ev's novel Pechal'nyi detektiv (The Sad Detective Story, Oktiabr', no. 1, 1986). Here crime and savagery are presented through the experiences of a provincial militia man, Soshnin. We learn about a gang rape of an elderly woman, a drunk driver killing several people, three alcoholics trying to murder Soshnin, and a technical school graduate methodically beating a pregnant woman to death with a rock. According to Anatolii Anan'ev, chief editor of Oktiabr', the Glavlit chief Pavel Romanov demanded a number of deletions and changes in the proofs of The Sad Detective Story. Anan'ev demurred, assuring the censor that he would take full responsibility for publishing Astaf'ev's novel.36
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Soon after the appearance of The Sad Detective Story, Chingiz Aitmatov's novel Plakha (The Executioner's Block, Novyi mir, nos. 6, 8-9, 1986) broke the silence about the hitherto forbidden subject of drug use in the Soviet Union. The author describes a group of teenagers traveling to southeastern Kazakhstan, a region with large areas of uncultivated hemp from which narcotics are made. The youngsters enjoy smoking the product and earn good money from selling it. Sergei Kaledin's short novel Smirennoe kladbishche (A Humble Cemetery, Novyi mir, no. 5, 1987) features characters as unusual as drug users—gravediggers. Kaledin graphically portrays their daily work and the ways they have to get more money from their customers. Many of the gravediggers are heavy drinkers and some are former convicts. Not a single individual in A Humble Cemetery bears even a remote resemblance to a hero of Socialist Realism. The novel's characters must have been the reason why Novyi mir could not publish it for nearly ten years.37 Another type of characters unacceptable to Socialist Realism were prostitutes. From the Marxist viewpoint, there was no raison d'etre for them in a socialist society. Yet the progressive relaxation of censorship allowed the dramatist Aleksandr Galin to throw light on their existence. In his play Zvezdy na utrennem nebe (Stars in the Morning Sky, Teatr, no. 8, 1988), the central stage is taken by ladies of pleasure deported from Moscow for the duration of the 1980 Olympics to avoid their being seen by foreign visitors. Although the aforementioned works unveiled many sores of Soviet life, they contained no explicit denunciations of the Communist regime. The censors therefore handled them with greater forbearance than they did the works whose authors or characters made critical pronouncements on the essence and methods of the Bolshevik rule. In 1988 the editors, or censors, of the monthly Druzhba narodov eliminated from chapter 12 of Other Shores some twenty lines expressing Nabokov's view on a naive perception of the Soviet regime by a British intellectual, with a fictitious name of Bomston. In the extracted passage Nabokov calls the rules of both Lenin and Stalin "ghastly." The same chapter of Other Shores was also purged of Nabokov's observation that the Soviet regime produces a distinctive type of people after thirty-odd years of selective breeding: pallid and chubby automatons with fat faces and wide, square shoulders.38 The uncensored text of Other Shores appeared in 1990 in volume 4 of Nabokov's Collected Works issued by the publishing house Pravda. Unlike Nabokov, the young Zhigulin believed in Lenin and Communism; but as an adverary of Stalin's rule, he said in The Black Rocks a number of things which, in the eyes of Znamia editors, degraded the Soviet regime and people. The editors tossed out the words about the nation "being totally fooled" by the prewar propaganda of the omnipotence of the Red Army. In the author's remark that a prison built under Catherine the Great came in handy for the Soviet regime, the italicized part was replaced by "us." Gone was a paragraph about some poets regarded as front-line soldiers, though they never saw action. One of the few corrections made by the KGB censor was intended to protect the reputation of the people holding the highest Soviet title—a Hero of the Soviet Union. The censor stripped a prison camp inmate of this title, though the latter had earned it by dint of heroism in World War II.39
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In 1989 The Hidden War lost three consecutive pages filled with sharp criticism of the Soviet Government by former Soviet POWs at a press conference in New York on 14 July 1988. The ex-soldiers spoke of having been deceived by Soviet authorities telling them that they would go to Afghanistan to fight Americans. They mentioned orders to bomb their own deserters and to murder Afghan children. The three pages are missing from the parts of Borovik's book printed in Ogonek as well as from its separate 1990 and 1992 editions.40 Of the books discussed in this chapter the heaviest censorship involving the Bolsheviks fell on Volkov's Sinking into Darkness. In his introduction to the memoir, Volkov states that in the 1930s principles of Christian morality were replaced by the laws of class struggle. The turnabout paved the way for misanthropic theories, fascism, visceral nationalism, and racist slogans. Russia was transformed into "a spiritual desert." These statements were removed from the first 1989 edition of the memoir but reinstated in the second.41 The first edition was signed for publication on 13 June and the second on 11 December 1989. In chapter 7, Volkov argues that the Bolshevik Party was modeled on "the most ferocious oligarchies and dictatorships." The fallaciousness and viciousness of its course and goals came to light already at the birth of the Party. This assessment is absent from both of the 1989 editions of the memoir (264; 257). Throughout his book Volkov speaks of mendacity and intimidation as permanent fixtures of the Bolshevik rule. In the early days of the Revolution, he says, the Bolsheviks lured the peasants by promising them land and prosperity and made the proletariat believe that it possessed real power. Then they embarked upon the elimination of their potential rivals. Having instilled fear and obedience in the masses, they felt free to conduct their political experimentation. The censors of the first Soviet edition of Volkov's book got rid of this passage (38; 36) as well as of the author's contention that all sorts of official lies accompany the Soviet man "from kindergarten to the crematorium" (171; 169). In the thirties, Volkov wrote, when the countryside lay ravished by famine, the propaganda kept reiterating Stalin's words about life having become better and more joyful. The same pattern of lying, only somewhat refurbished, had been retained "till now" (171-72; 169). The second Soviet edition of the memoir cut only the last two words (177); but it turned out to be more touchy than the first edition in places exposing false pretensions of the Soviet regime to the victory in World War II. Where the first edition dropped a phrase expressing Volkov's objection to the idea of equating "the people's victory with the triumph of Lenin's commandments translated into life by Stalin" (373; 363), the second edition expunged two paragraphs (373-74). The censors of the first Soviet edition of Sinking into Darkness showed little patience with Volkov's parallels between Bolshevism and Fascism. They chopped out his pronouncement that both of these ideologies are "equally inhuman" (297; 290) and they did away with the bulk of his discourse on the desirability of a mutual destruction of Communism and Nazism in World War II. Volkov minced no words in the censored lines: "Let vermin devour vermin! Be our Motherland, along with the crushed Europe and the whole world, delivered from the rule of oppressors and demagogues, Bolsheviks and Fascists, Communists and National Socialists, and all the bloody liberators of mankind" (311;
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302). The second edition of Volkov's book excluded only the italicized words, for they put the Bolsheviks and the Nazis on the same level in the bluntest way. Similarly, the editors of the early publications of Life and Fate dispensed with Grossman's direct comparisons of the Soviet and Nazi regimes but left intact analogies between them implied by the author or stated by the characters. Both the monthly Oktiabr' and the first separate edition of the novel eliminated in 1988 a paragraph accentuating man's indestructible striving for freedom. In the deleted text, the uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto, Treblinka, and Sobibor were put side by side with the uprisings in Berlin, Hungary, and Soviet prison camps which occurred after Stalin's death.42 In another instance, Ogonek and Oktiabr' banned Grossman's statement that, on the tenth anniversary of the Stalingrad victory, Stalin raised over Jews "the sword of destruction snatched out of Hitler's hands."43 A third excision involving a correlation between Stalin's and Hitler's regimes was a part of a tirade delivered by a Menshevik character against the Soviet suppression of freedom and democracy. By agreement with Hitler, the Menshevik said, the Soviet Union seized part of Poland. Then the Soviets occupied the Baltic states and invaded Finland. All these denunciations are missing from both of the 1988 editions of Life and Fate. They were reinstated in the 1989 edition issued by Knizhnaia palata (The Book Chamber). This edition printed the complete text of the novel and became the model for its subsequent publications.44 There was a big difference between the two 1989 Soviet editions of Sinking into Darkness in the way they reacted to Volkov's descriptions of the Soviet elite, particularly in the 1970s. The first 1989 edition left no vestige of a long paragraph castigating the hypocrisy of contemporary leaders who spoke of morality and justice without renouncing the decades of the preceding terror. They remained "the heirs of Lenins and Dzerzhinskiis" and were prepared to revert to killing and repression should there arise a threat, however vague, to their dictatorship (239-40; 235). The second edition threw out only one word—"Lenins" (247). Elsewhere the first edition left out two pages criticizing the nomenklatura, the upper stratum of administrators appointed by the Party (257-58; 252). The second 1989 edition retained the original text (266-67). On the other hand, this edition drastically reduced Volkov's one-page analysis of the drinking in Russia. Removed were passages about the widespread drinking in Moscow and about the Soviet regime promoting the sale of alcoholic beverages while shutting its eyes to alcohol-related crimes and violations of labor discipline. Of twelve undeleted lines, eight deal with restrictions of drunkenness in tsarist Russia (455). The first 1989 edition made only a couple of minor cuts to protect the reputation of the Soviet regime, but this loss was offset by the preservation of the statement that the Soviet Government was not interested in frank public discussion of drinking or in a campaign against it because the state collected huge revenues from vodka sales. This passage is missing from the 1987 Paris edition of the memoir (442; 430), possibly because an all-out antialcohol drive was launched by the Party and Government in May 1985. Before publishing Andrei Bitov's "Chelovek v peizazhe" ("Man in a Landscape," 1987), the editors of Novyi mir told the author that there was too much drinking in his story, a fact at odds with the antialcohol campaign. Bitov found
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the way out by adding to the story's beginning a page-long introduction about the harmful effects of drinking. Novyi mir passed the story, making no cuts in the descriptions of drinking. Bitov withdrew his introduction in the next printing of the story.45 The Znamia editors contributed to the sobriety crusade by removing from The Black Rocks Zhigulin's remark that his friend and he drank plenty of wine at their happy reunion (7:71; 125). It should be noted that censorial restriction on the portrayal of drinking, especially among the Communists, had existed long before Gorbachev's antialcohol campaign. The authors were permitted to deal only with individual incidents of drinking, without making any generalizations about its origins or dimensions. The increased censorial vigilance toward drunkenness did not go beyond the first three years of perestroika. The antialcohol drive ended in a fiasco. Home-brewing and prices of spirits skyrocketed; consumption of poisonous alcohol substitutes took 11,000 lives in 1987, and the state treasury suffered enormous losses in revenues.46 The petering out of the antialcohol drive and the progressive weakening of censorship opened the way for printing literary works portraying a large-scale abuse of alcohol. The clearest sign of the change was the first Soviet publication in 1989 of Venedikt Erofeev's novel Moskva—Petushki (The Journey from Moscow to Petushki, wr. 1969) replete with scenes of epidemic drinking. However, one should keep in mind that, judging by the second 1989 edition of Sinking into Darkness, there were still cases when the censors continued to suppress the evidence of the rampant consumption of alcohol if the blame for it was laid squarely on the Soviet regime.
Terror and Enemies A distinct characteristic of the 1985-91 period was that during this time writers were given the opportunity to revive and expand the theme of Stalinist terror, the theme which was selectively welcomed by Khrushchev but which was virtually banned under Brezhnev. One of the early signs of this revival was a couple of pages about Beriia and the Kolyma region in Evtushenko's poem "Fuku!" ("Fuku!" Novyi mir, no. 9, 1985). The years 1986 and 1987 saw the publication of a considerable number of predominantly earlier works portraying Stalinist terror in varying degrees. The October 1986 issue of Prostor carried Anna Nikol'skaia's autobiographical story "Peredai dal'she!" ("Pass On!" wr. 1956-65) detailing the author's participation in plays staged by inmates of a Soviet prison camp. The performances ended during World War II because the actors were dying of starvation. To my knowledge, this was the first description of mass extermination of life in Soviet camps to be published in the Soviet Union. In 1987 Druzhba narodov (no. 3) opened its pages to a selection of Varlam Shalamov's camp stories under the heading "Iz kolymskikh tetradei" ("From the Kolyma Notebooks"). The terror of the 1930s is a leading theme of Trifonov's unfinished novel Disappearance and Anatolii Rybakov's Children of the Arbat. Both works appeared for the first time in 1987, in January and April-June issues of Druzhba
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narodov, respectively. Already in the early years of glasnost the censors began to pass neutral or even sympathetic depictions of characters who had to be treated previously as despicable enemies of the Soviet regime and Soviet people. A case in point is an impartial portrayal of exiled Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and anarchists in Children of the Arbat. The same applies to the presentation of Trotskii, Zinov'ev, Bukharin, Menshevik leaders, and White Army generals in Mikhail Shatrov's plays Brestskii mir (The Peace of Brest, Novyi mir, no. 4, 1987) and Dal'she . . . dal'she . . . dal'she! {Onward . . . Onward . . . Onward! Znamia, no. 1, 1988). Before long, Trotskii's name was restored in Babel's Red Cavalry—in the story "Salt" published by Ogonek in January 1989 and in the stories "Salt," "Squadron Commander Trunov," "Treason," and "The Rabbi's Son" included in volume 2 of Babel's Works (1990).47 The editors of this volume, or its compiler Antonina Pirozhkova (Babel's widow), must have made a special effort to reinstate Trotskii, since his name, which was expunged from Red Cavalry in 1933, is missing from the 1936 edition of Babel's Stories, the collection from which Works, as stated in the Commentary to its second volume, reprinted the text of Red CavalryTrotskii's name, however, remained unrestored in "A Letter," probably due to an oversight. In contrast to the restoration of Trotskii in Red Cavalry, a conversation about him vanished from the 1988 edition of Ivan Shevtsov's novel In the Name of the Father, and the Son. The conversation, which occurred in or about 1961, was triggered by the news that three parts of Isaac Deutscher's "novel" about Trotskii had just come out in the United States. The 1988 edition omitted the words "about Trotskii," the titles of Deutscher's trilogy volumes—The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast—and a Jewish character's emotional reaction: "The tragedy of the prophet! Is it not a Shakespearean theme?"49 The adoration sounds farcical and betrays Shevtsov's anti-Jewish sentiments. But it is unlikely that these feelings accounted for the deletion of the characters' conversation. Conservative military publishers of Voenizdat would not have reissued Shevtsov's novel had they been opposed to its vibrant nationalism. Perhaps the military censor became concerned that the conversation about Deutscher's book might stimulate the reader's interest in Trotskii's personality and his role in the Revolution and the Civil War. This supposition is corroborated by the fact that the censor did nothing with the characters' blasting Trotskii as a Zionist and a foe of Communism. The hardcore detractors of Trotskii—mainly Stalinists and nationalists—constituted a minority. The open-minded approach to him and other "enemies of the people" was becoming prevalent. A noteworthy manifestation of the new trend was the treatment of Gor'kii's phrase "If the enemy does not surrender, he should be destroyed." The phrase formed the title of his article printed in Pravda of 15 November 1930. The article dealt with the engineers accused of sabotage at the Industrial Party trial and with the kulaks who kill the village activists. During Stalin's rule, Gor'kii's dictum was widely propagated as the recipe for handling people charged with political crimes. But in the years of glasnost the censors allowed the writers to construe it in the opposite way. As if by an agreement,
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Aitmatov, Daniil Granin, Anatolii Pristavkin, and Rybakov put Gor'kii's motto into the mouths or minds of their villains who used it to justify their brutality or unscrupulousness.50 In Rybakov's Tridtsat' piatyi i drugie gody (The Year 1935 and Others, 1988) it is Stalin who welcomes Gor'kii's maxim. Although the Gorbachev thaw brought a significant relaxation of censorship in the area of Soviet repression, there continued to exist, especially before the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, certain boundaries that the authors were not permitted to transgress. First of all, the censors did not tolerate the view of terror as an inherent feature of the Bolshevik regime rather than an abnormality rooted in Stalin's personality, that is, the view held by Nabokov and Volkov. Nor were the censors likely to endorse descriptions of extreme brutality, particularly when it directly or implicitly reflected the Soviet state's policy of repression. Deletions of this type can be found in Other Shores and The Black Rocks. Both Druzhba narodov and the 1988 KM collection of Nabokov's works eliminated from Other Shores an account of regular executions carried out by the Bolsheviks on the lalta pier in 1918. The executioners would attach weights to the feet of their victims, line them up with their backs to the sea, and shoot them. "A year later a diver reported that he had found himself in a dense crowd of dead people standing at attention at the bottom of the sea."51 Simultaneously the censors put taboo on the statements that "the era of bloodshed, concentration camps, and hostages began immediately after Lenin and his lieutenants had seized power" and that Lenin established "contemptible and loathsome terror, tortures, and shootings."52 In Sinking into Darkness, revisions concerning the Soviet terror were effected even in 1989, mainly in the book's first edition. Its censors, for instance, suppressed Volkov's opinion that Lenin introduced the terror characterized by total lack of justice and by mass executions of innocent people (173; 170). The second 1989 edition preserved this passage except for the words "he [Lenin] introduced" (178). However, half of the next paragraph disappeared from both of the 1989 editions. In it Volkov ridiculed the pat propaganda designation of Lenin as "the most human of humans" and went on to list his misdeeds (173; 170). Repressive practices of the all-powerful security police, Volkov maintained, continued into the 1970s. Its dominance could end only with a change of the state system which assigned to the security police "the functions of an investigator, judge, prosecutor, and executioner." The first 1989 edition of Volkov's memoir omitted this judgment (328; 318). In addition to cuts involving Volkov's general pronouncements on Soviet terror, the reading of the first 1989 edition of his book reveals shorter revisions pertaining to the word Chekist and to the name of Feliks Dzerzhinskii when used as a component of a derisive synonym for Chekists. Although the security police lost its original name in 1922, the term Chekists continued to be applied as a mark of honor to the personnel of GPU, NKVD, MGB, and KGB. But throughout Volkov's memoir it appears with predominantly pejorative connotations. Therefore, in most cases, the censors of the first Soviet edition of the memoir removed or replaced "Chekist" both in its nominal and adjectival usages. "Investigators" (225; 220), and "camp guards" (330; 321) were substituted for "Chekists"; while "the Chekist ax" and "Chekist claws" were turned into "the
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camp ax" (165; 162) and "punitive claws" (437; 425), respectively. Definitions of the security police as "Dzerzhinskii's worthy disciples" (88; 86) and "the heirs of Lenin and Dzerzhinskii" (310; 302) were dropped altogether. Terror-related revisions in The Black Rocks were made with extra caution because the editors of Znamia knew that the fruit of their labor would be sent to the KGB for further censorship. Glasnost notwithstanding, KGB had a vested interest in preserving secrecy about the terror pursued by NKYD and MGB. One set of editorial deletions was intended to tone down the cruelty of Stalin's prewar repressions. In The Black Rocks this terror was shown chiefly through flashbacks into the career of a former security police officer, Ivan Chizhov (a fictitious name), whose son betrayed the Young Communist Party (KPM). The Znamia editors suppressed, for instance, the information that in the 1930s the elder Chizhov's job was to carry out death sentences, that he personally shot 476 people, and that at times he fired into the heads of virtual children (7:34; 53). In the magazine version he merely arrests them. On the other hand, the editors of Znamia retained in page proofs a passage describing how NKVD reacted to an accidental explosion at the Voronezh synthetic-rubber plant in 1937. NKVD turned the mishap into an act of sabotage. Nearly all of the plant administrators were shot. Altogether about 1,200 employees were subjected to repression. Merely two of them returned later to Voronezh. The Znamia editors might have preserved the passage because it conveyed a rather general idea of the Great Purge's dimensions as compared to the more detailed account of an executioner's job, the account which was likely to elicit a stronger emotional response from the reader. The KGB censors, however, saw no need in publicizing the magnitude of the NKVD terror and, according to Zhigulin, expunged the passage. It can be found only in the emigre magazine Strana i mi>.53 Revisions pertaining to the postwar period of Stalin's terror aimed in most cases at specific acts of barbarity committed by the Voronezh Office of MGB. The editors of Znamia discarded the lines telling that the interrogators broke the scull of the KPM member Ivan Podmolodin, causing permanent insanity (7:70; 122). In the book's epilogue the editors concealed from the reader the fact that, in spite of his condition, the investigators continued to torture Ivan. His delirious testimonies were used against his KMP associates (8:115; 264-65). The Znamia editors also left no trace of the interrogation methods applied to Igor Strukov, a KPM member whose legs were amputated in his childhood. An MGB lieutenant colonel bashed his head against a cement wall. When Igor' was in his cell, the officer ordered his artificial limbs to be taken away so that he would be confined to sitting on a stool (7:74; 132). As for the atrocities committed in camps, the Znamia editors did not want the reader to know that an escort chief "loved to torture and kill people" (8:60; 160) or that a guard kicked in the head a half-dead prisoner riddled with bullets during a failed attempt to escape from the camp (8:96; 229). The Znamia editors did away with those displays of MGB violence which appeared particularly savage to them. Thanks to this selectivity, one still could get an idea of MGB inhumanity by reading, for instance, about severe beatings administered to Zhigulin and to the KMP leader Boris Batuev.
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Cuts involving terror formed the bulk of revisions effected in The Black Rocks. Ironically, all the time and effort invested in the editorial censorship of the book proved to be useless two months later. The 1989 Mosk. rab. edition of The Black Rocks, which restored the Znamia deletions, went to the printers on 12 October 1988. This was a telling example of the rapidly progressing glasnost. But we should not overlook the fact that Zhigulin dealt with the terror under Stalin, not under Lenin.
Lenin and Stalin Censorship of Lenin was already touched upon in two preceding sections because his name was inseparably bound with the creation of the Soviet state and its repressive apparatus. This section will discuss censorial treatment of Lenin not only as a politician but also as an individual. From Khrushchev to Gorbachev, Lenin had continuously enjoyed a unique status of a humane and infallible leader. Editors and censors made sure that no criticism of Lenin would appear in print. Their job was facilitated by the fact that most Soviet authors believed in Lenin's greatness and would not write anything adverse about him. Therefore a proportionately high number of Lenin-related revisions to be discussed in this section falls on two works of the emigre writers—Nabokov's Other Shores and Ivan Bunin's Okaiannye dni {Accursed Days, 1925), a diary written in 1918-19 during the author's life in Moscow and Odessa under the Bolshevik rule. As we have already seen, several passages condemning Lenin for creating a police state were eliminated in 1988 from Other Shores during the serialization of the book in Druzhba narodov. In addition to these patently political cuts, the magazine got rid of Nabokov's evaluation of Lenin's aesthetic taste. In the original text, Nabokov argued that "in his attitude toward art, Lenin was an absolute philistine." He knew Pushkin from Chaikovskii's librettos and Belinskii's articles. Lenin disapproved of modernists who, to him, were Lunacharskii and "some noisy Italians."54 Soviet publications of Accursed Days began in 1989 when the whole of the book was serialized in Literaturnoe obozrenie {The Literary Review) and fragments of its second part appeared in the magazine Slovo. V mire knig {The Word. In the World of Books). Although Bunin presented the Bolshevik Revolution as a violent display of the darkest urges of human nature, the only revisions made in both magazines pertained to Lenin. Literaturnoe obozrenie refrained from printing Bunin's assessment of a Lenin's article as "worthless and fraudulent" and discarded Bunin's exclamation "Oh! What an animal he is!" provoked by Lenin's speech at the Third All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. A political characterization of Lenin and Trotskii by the Social-Democrat Aleksandr Tikhonov also proved to be unacceptable. As Tikhonov saw it, the two Bolsheviks imagined conspiracies being hatched against them everywhere. They trembled at the thought of losing their power and lives. In the entry of 11 May 1919 Bunin named French and Bolshevik revolutionists—Saint-Just, Robespierre, Couthon, Lenin, Trotskii, Dzerzhinskii—and then asked and answered the question: "Who of them are the most ignoble, bloodthirsty and repugnant? Still the
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Muscovites, of course. But the Parisians were pretty bad too."55 These phrases are absent from Literaturnoe obozrenie, as is a paragraph comparing Lenin and Maiakovskii with Polyphemus. Both Russians were voracious and drew strength from their one-eyedness. For some time both of them appeared to be no more than vulgar jesters. But "the Polyphemic future of Russia," as Bunin put it, belonged to Lemns and Maiakovskiis, for they knew how to shut people up. Lenin did it through political speeches, and Maiakovskii through shouting at social gatherings.56 The censors of Slovo. V mire knig discarded this passage along with two paragraphs that immediately preceded it. In them Bumn caustically described the ceremonial reception given to Lenin on his arrival to Russia in April 1917 and his political ambitions. The censors also did away with the question, "How could one, after all these things, fail to recall Lenin and thousands of others?" because it was prompted by an enumeration of facial features typical of a "born criminal." Surprisingly, this query was preserved five months earlier in Literaturnoe obozrenie?1 In the middle of 1990 the publishing house Soviet Writer put out the full text of Accursed Days as a reprint from volume 10 of Bunin's Collected Works issued in 1935 in Berlin. Volkov's views on Lenin were close to Nabokov's and Bunin's. The original text of Sinking into Darkness is interspersed with condemnations of the Bolshevik leader. The censors of both the 1989 editions of the memoir were determined to blunt the edge of Volkov's attacks, but each edition did it in its own way. The first edition made more and larger cuts than the second. Moreover, the censors of the second edition tended to preserve as much as possible of the original text, and to limit themselves to removing or replacing Lenin's name. Revisions of this kind offer good examples of censorial trickery intended to eliminate or obscure the meaning of the original text. As a result, Lenin was whitewashed from any blame for his misdeeds. Responsibility for them was shifted to unidentified persons or to individuals whose names stood in the text next to Lenin's. The following samples may serve as illustrations. The first 1989 edition of Sinking into Darkness threw out the entire paragraph accusing contemporary Soviet leaders of mendacity, hypocrisy, and inability to make any constructive changes. Behind their inertia Volkov saw a total disregard for the people's interests, a "principle inherited directly from Lenin" (172; 170). The second 1989 edition crossed out only the last three words in this phrase, leaving the reader to guess from whom the ignominious principle was inherited (178). Two pages later, Volkov drew an extended analogy between Lenin and Emel'ian Pugachev. The author wondered whether "the name of Lenin, 'the intellectual Pugachev' of the twentieth century" would be as frightening to future generations as was the name of Pugachev in the middle of the nineteenth century, eighty years after his execution. Or Lenin's true face "will remain hidden in the trumpery of legends and his disciples and successors will go down in history as bloody tyrants?" No trace of the analogy was left in the first 1989 edition of Volkov's memoir (174; 170); but all that the second edition did was to drop Lenin's name and convert him, "the intellectual Pugachev," into "the names of Pugachevs." Accordingly, in references to Lenin, the pronouns "he" and "his" were replaced by "they" and "their" (179).
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The censorial approach to Lenin in Life and Fate was more liberal than in Sinking into Darkness, though both Oktiabr' and the separate 1988 edition of Grossman's novel did away with a Menshevik's comment, "Your Lenin did not inherit the Russian freedom, he mined it," and with a Soviet historian's observation that "From Avvakum to Lenin our humaneness and freedom have been party-oriented and fanatical; they pitilessly sacrifice man to an abstract idea of humaneness." By contrast, the Menshevik's contention that "Stalin's monstrous inhumanity made him the successor of Lenin" is absent only from Oktiabr'.5* The first two excisions were restored in the novel's 1989 edition. In the same year the sixth issue of Oktiabr' came out with Grossman's short novel Vse techet {Everything Flows), written in 1955-63 and first printed in 1970 by the Possev publishing house. The book is remarkable in that it features an unorthodox analysis of Lenin penned by a former Gulag prisoner, Ivan Grigor'evich, who speaks for the author. Ivan Grigor'evich stresses a duality in Lenin's character. In his private life the leader was a model of moderation. He abstained from drinking, smoking, and using profanities. In the company of his friends he was helpful, gentle, and polite. At the same time, Lenin the politician exhibited a fanatical belief in Marxism, extreme intolerance of differing opinions, loud demagoguery, lack of concern for human suffering, cruelty to his enemies, and contempt for freedom. These characteristics were rooted in the thousand-year old history of the Russian slavery, in the tradition of suppressing personal freedom and subordinating the individual to the interests of the sovereign and the state. Stalin's dictatorship, terror, and suppression of freedom represented a further development of Lenin's heritage. Why did the censorship leave intact Grossman's interpretation of Lenin and ejected negative pronouncements on him from the books of Nabokov, Bunin, and Volkov? Because these authors treated Lenin with contempt and abhorrence while Grossman found attractive traits in Lenin's personality and diminished his responsibility for ruthlessness by presenting him as a product of Russian history. Nevertheless, Anatolii Anan'ev, chief editor of Oktiabr', intimated that it was not easy to obtain permission to issue both of Grossman's novels.59 To cushion a potentially hostile response to the publishing of Everything Flows, Anan'ev printed a foreword entitled "Lenin and Stalin" written by G. Vodolazov, a professor at the Party Central Committee's Academy of Social Sciences. Vodolazov disagrees with Grossman's idea of Stalinism being a slight modification of Leninism, but he acknowledges the author's right to express his views under the aegis of "socialist pluralism." Similar forewords accompanied the appearance of other controversial works, including Other Shores and Accursed Days. Two deletions in Vladimir Voinovich's Moskva 2042 {Moscow 2042, 1986), a satirical novel about the Communist future, demonstrate that, as late as 1990, making fun of Lenin in a sexual or scatological context was inadmissible. In the following two examples, Voinovich ridicules the Soviet custom to name practically everything after Lenin and decorate people, institutions, factories, newspapers, army units, and other entities with the Order of Lenin. The appellation "THE N. K. KRUPSKAIA STATE EXPERIMENTAL ORDER-OF-LENIN BROTHEL" was reduced to "STATE EXPERIMENTAL BROTHEL" while the
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phrase, "as a joke the communites now call the former gas pipeline the State Order-of-Lenin shit pipeline named after Lenin," vanished altogether.60 The period of glasnost brought a heyday of uncensored samizdat, the radical segment of which denounced and derided the Soviet regime and its leaders in a manner that was still unacceptable in officially sanctioned writings. A noteworthy piece of samizdat literature was Venedikt Erofeev's "Moia malen'kaia leniniana" ("My Little Leniniana"), a short collection of various kinds of Lenin's statements compiled in February 1988. Thanks to the carefully selected material, Lenin emerges not only as a sinister political figure but also as a mediocrity prone to make absurd or ludicrous pronouncements. It was not until 1991 that Erofeev's "Leniniana" could be officially published in the Soviet Union, in the Moscow magazine Evropa + Amerika {Europe + America, no. 1). Concurrently, the January issue of Novyi mir carried an article by the emigre Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov entitled "Lenin in the Destinies of Russia: Chapter from a Book." The crux of the article is that it was Lenin, not Stalin, who embarked upon the creation of a repressive totalitarian state. The prime responsibility for the enormous misfortunes that befell Russia rests with Lenin. The appearance of the Avtorkhanov article and of Erofeev's "Leniniana" indicates that around 1991, a year before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the censorship was no longer in the position to protect the once sacred image of Lenin. The censorial defense of Stalin collapsed earlier than that of Lenin, though at the initial stage of perestroika an all-out debunking of him appeared unlikely. A case in point is Rybakov's novel Children of the Arbat that encountered seemingly insurmountable obstacles on its road to publication. In July 1985 the novel's manuscript was sent to Aleksandr lakovlev, the newly appointed chief of the Central Committee's Propaganda Department and a close associate of Gorbachev, lakovlev read the manuscript with engrossing interest but showed no enthusiasm for publishing it. His objections were threefold: too much sex, Stalin's involvement in Kirov's murder had not yet been proven, and it was too early to probe into Stalin's psychology even by methods of art.61 Chances for publishing Children of the Arbat rose in 1986 after its manuscript had been read in the Party Central Committee and approved by Gorbachev and others. lakovlev communicated their stand to Druzhba narodov, where the novel was under consideration. The Central Committee's attitude notwithstanding, the editorial board of the magazine asked Rybakov to cut half of his novel and eliminate everything about Stalin.62 In the opinion of the editorial board, Rybakov portrayed Stalin as a cowardly, cynical, and capricious scoundrel. Stalin keeps arguing with Lenin internally, speaks disrespectfully of Jews and Russians, and carries on political intrigues. How, the editors wondered, could we, under the leadership of such a "villain," transform a poverty-stricken Russia into a developed industrial country, vanquish fascism, and rebuild the country devastated by the Germans? The editorial board determined "to remove from Children of the Arbat the one-sided, utterly subjective depiction of Stalin and his entourage."63 Rybakov was flabbergasted. For him, Stalin was the reason for writing Children of the Arbat. Rybakov spent six months reworking his novel—"the black-
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est time in my life," as he put it—but he "saved the Stalin line." The editors of Druzhba narodov succeeded in cutting only one-ninth of the novel's original size.64 The publication of Children of the Arbat, in the first half of 1987, attested to a sharp turn in the treatment of Stalin by the glasnost-minded wing of the Party headed by Gorbachev. The degree of surprise brought by the appearance of Children of the Arbat can be measured by what Evtushenko had said about the prospects of its publication during a conversation with a group of Princeton University faculty on 20 February 1986. There existed, he confided, a manuscript of an excellent novel about Stalin by Anatolii Rybakov, But the chances of publishing it were one in a hundred. The decisive factor in making the publication of Children of the Arbat possible was that Rybakov did not consider Stalin the continuer of Lenin's dictatorship and terror. This is also true of a place in Stalin's interior monologue where he justifies his single-handed leadership by the following quotation from Lenin: "Soviet socialist centralism in no way contradicts one-man rule and dictatorship . . . the will of a class is sometimes carried out by a dictator, who sometimes can do more alone and frequently is more needed."65 But Rybakov was quick to dissociate Stalin from Lenin. He put into Stalin's mind the idea that Lenin "thought of ruling Russia by European methods and saw in HIM, Stalin, an Asiatic."66 Nevertheless, the censors asked Rybakov to provide the source for the quotation from Lenin, which he did.67 It was logical to expect that, after the appearance of Children of the Arbat, editors and Glavlit censors would pass practically everything negative about Stalin. But this was not the case. Thus, before sending the proofs of The Black Rocks to the KGB, the cautious Znamia editors crossed out at least two manifestations of intense hatred for Stalin felt by some youngsters. The first victim was a quatrain the teenaged Zhigulin wrote about Stalin's living in luxury and drinking to the health of the starving people at banquets (7:28; 39). In the second instance, the Znamia editors banned the italicized words from Batuev's remark prompted by Zhigulin's shooting at a portrait of Stalin: "What a pity it was only a portrait of the tyrant. Never mind, perhaps we'll get a chance to use this very revolver on him ..." (7:59; 102). Some revisions affecting Stalin in Sinking into Darkness have already been mentioned in connection with censorship of the Soviet regime. Here we shall deal with a few typical examples which will also demonstrate a difference in political tolerance between the two 1989 editions of the memoir. The censors of the earlier edition could not stomach direct parallels between Stalin and Hitler which put Communism and Nazism in the same bracket. They erased, for example, a passage in which Volkov voiced his regret that World War II did not bring an end to both scoundrels—Hitler and Stalin (374; 364). Also removed was the sentence "And who, in arranging the portraits of tyrants in a gallery, would not place Adolf Hitler and losif Stalin side by side!" (435; 423). The second edition of Volkov's book let both of the passages stand, but excluded the scene of a victory celebration in the Azerbaidzhan city of Kirovobad in May 1945. During the festivities the Party bosses called on street crowds to glorify their Greatest Leader, and the faculty of the Scientific Research Institute proposed loud toasts to the Teacher and Coryphaeus at their banquet (399). The censors
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might have considered such a slavish adoration of Stalin to be beneath the dignity of the Soviet people. The earlier edition of Volkov's memoir retained the entire passage (375). In contrast to the 1989 editions of Sinking into Darkness, Grossman's Everything Flows shows no censorial intervention in descriptions of Stalin, though he was presented in the blackest colors possible. At the same time, the progressing glasnost allowed a sharply different portrayal of Stalin. A strong apology of him as a man and politician could be found in Vladimir Uspenskii's novel Tainyi sovetnik vozhdia (The Leader's Secret Advisor) published serially in 1988-91 in Prostor.
The Soviet Army Before perestroika the censors of the military establishment blocked from publication anything that in their judgment represented a slur on the glorious name of the Red Army. In the atmosphere of glasnost, however, there began to appear works which could not have been printed earlier because of their unembellished depiction of the Soviet armed forces. Among them were Vladimir Tendriakov's short story "Donna Anna" (Novyi mir, no. 3, 1988) and book 1 of Voinovich's Zhizn' i neobychainye prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina (The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, lunost', no. 12, 1988, nos. 1-2, 1989). Dated 1969-71, "Donna Anna" tells about the unjustifiably heavy losses and a panicky retreat of the Russian troops across the Don in the summer of 1942. Book 1 of Voinovich's novel, written in 1963-70 and published abroad in 1975, humorously satirizes the Red Army at the outbreak of the war with Germany. While "Donna Anna" and Voinovich's satirical novel appeared without censorial revisions, some other works were purged of phrases and passages deemed incompatible with the officially cultivated image of the Red Army. Thus the Znamia editors eliminated Zhigulin's observations that German bombers obliterated Voronezh "with complete impunity" and that the city was defended by merely several hundreds of yesterday's boys with obsolete rifles. Nearly all of them were killed (7; 14; 11). A taboo was placed on a dozen lines in the Oktiabr' text of Life and Fate to protect the reputation of the Red Army officers, particularly of General Vasilii Chuikov, a hero of the Stalingrad battle. The offending passage detailed how the envious Chuikov tried to strangle the division commander Aleksandr Rodimtsev because Nikita Khrushchev kissed Rodimtsev and ignored Chuikov at an open meeting apropos of the Stalingrad victory. Furthermore, Chuikov and his comrades in arms, all dead drunk, fell into an unfrozen pool in the icebound Volga River and were rescued from drowning by their soldiers.68 The whole passage was restored in the separate 1988 edition of Life and Fate. Military censors were particularly concerned with suppressing works describing the real situation in the contemporary Soviet Army. And they had good reason for doing so. Since the late 1960s, there developed an unofficially condoned system in which soldiers with eighteen months of service, the so-called stariki (old-timers), wielded dictatorial power over their first-year comrades. The recruits
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were regularly humiliated, beaten, forced to do dirty work, and, at times, maimed or killed. The abuse of the first-year soldiers was the subject of lurii Poliakov's short novel Sto dnei do prikaza {One Hundred Days Before the Order, wr. 1980— 87). The novel saw the light in lunost' (no. 11, 1987) but only after the Minister of Defense, the Main Political Administration of the Army, and a department of the Party Central Committee withdrew their objections to its publication.69 It took half a year of struggling with military censors to obtain their approval to publish Sergei Kaledin's Stroibat {The Construction Battalion) in the April 1989 issue of Novyi mir.70 This short novel depicts the service in the lowest grade troops of the Soviet Army—its construction battalions. The reader sees their soldiers engage in drug abuse, heavy drinking, and savage fights. Compared to Pohakov and Kaledin, Artem Borovik presented a much broader picture of the Soviet Army, especially since he described it in conditions of the war about which the Government had kept a virtual silence for almost a decade. Consequently, the military censorship of The Hidden War was carried out with redoubled severity. One of the censor's priorities was to soft-pedal atrocities committed by Soviet troops against Afghan civilians. We do not find in the 1990 edition of The Hidden War the testimony of a former Soviet POW, Taras Derevlianyi, that he saw children murdered in Afghanistan. Nor are we permitted to read about Soviet troops shooting point-blank at peaceful villagers to avenge the combat death of a Soviet major. Also banned are the statements that Colonel Sergei Antonenko, the deputy division commander, ordered his troops to kill all civilians during a forthcoming operation and that he personally shot numerous women and children.71 Moreover, the censors shortened Antonenko's name to An—nenko in Ogonek and to A ... ko in the 1990 and 1992 editions of The Hidden War. Obsession with military secrecy accounted for absurd postwar removal of the numbers of Soviet units (120, 221; 124, 202) as well as of the name of the place where the Fortieth Army's reserve command post was located in Afghanistan (199; 183).72 Naturally, the military censor spared nothing of Borovik's statement that censors would cross out as top secret the information about the Soviet Army which had already been published in America. Why, Borovik wondered, should the Soviet people be denied the right to know something about their army that was known to Americans? (125-26; 128). The censor classified as secret some defects related to training and fighting of Soviet troops. Suppressed was a Soviet general's enumeration of the following shortcomings of his country's armed forces: the army was not adapted well for fighting abroad; the troops needed better training on the lower level; commanders of battalions and smaller subdivisions were not given sufficient independence to make their own decisions; and every operation, regardless of the size, should have been mapped out to the smallest detail (229; 209). Not everything was permitted to be said about suicides among Soviet troops in Afghanistan. An account of this phenomenon lost the key statement that dozens of Soviet soldiers and officers took their own lives. One of the three incidents illustrating various causes of suicide was also dropped (121; 125). Another touchy problem facing the Soviet Army in Afghanistan concerned prisoners and deserters. We have already mentioned that the censors threw out
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three consecutive pages of their statements made at the press conference in New York and containing their critique of the Soviet regime and its army. A page later, the censors concealed from the reader the fact that the deserter Taras Derevlianyi issued in 1988 an "Appeal to Soviet Occupation Troops in Afghanistan" calling on them to refuse to serve there (131; 130). The appeal shows that Derevlianyi was a political opponent of the Soviet aggression, a status which the censors were not willing to grant to the man who in their eyes was merely a traitor.
Nationalities The appearance of Andrei Voznesenskii's poem "Rov: Dukhovnyi protsess" ("The Ditch: A Spiritual Process") in the July 1986 issue of lunosf sent an early message of the slackening of censorship regarding the description of nationalities. The poem tackled two delicate problems; the massacre of Jews by the Nazis and the moral degradation of some Russians and Ukrainians. Set in the Crimea, the poem relates the story of the local people digging out and looting the remains of 12,000 Jews shot by the Nazis and buried in an antitank ditch in 1941. There was no chance of publishing "The Ditch" a year earlier, said Voznesenskii.73 In 1987 there began to come out previously unprintable works about the deportation of national minorities accused of cooperation with the Germans during World War II. losif Gerasimov's story "A Knock on the Door," dealing with the selective expatriation of the Moldavians, saw the light in the February issue of Oktiabr', after lying for twenty-seven years in its author's desk drawer. Anatolii Pristavkin's short novel Nochevala tuchka zolotaia {The Golden Cloud Slept There, wr. 1981) furnished some details about the deportation of the Chechens in 1944. Before its serialization in Znamia (nos. 3-4), the novel had been rejected by several literary magazines.74 Despite the publication of works like "The Ditch" or "A Knock on the Door," the censorial restrictions concerning the literary treatment of nationalities continued to exist, particularly in the early stage of perestroika. A practical application of these constraints may be illustrated by examples taken from A Humble Cemetery and Life and Fate. In the text of A Humble Cemetery published in Novyi mir, the censors did not object to a war veteran telling how his buddy, Senia Malyshev, gave away stray cows to dingy German boys at the end of the war. However, they cut off the last words of the veteran's story; "But look he was a Jew. And all his family were Jews." The excision left the reader with the impression that Senia was a Russian because of his typical Russian surname. Elsewhere the censors scratched the italicized words from a character's remark, "I've never met nicer people than these Jews," though it was clear that the character spoke of the Bukhara Jews. The two deletions are incredibly petty. Yet their very triviality demonstrates the hypersensitivity of Soviet authorities to representations of the Jews, especially when they were shown as decent people. The authorities persistently denied the existence of anti-Semitism in their country and preferred that the press, media,
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and literature say as little as possible about the Jews in the USSR. The spread of glasnost brought changes to this situation. A sign of the incoming fresh air was the restoration of the two excisions in the next publication of A Humble Cemetery, a couple of months after the novel had appeared in Novyi mir.75 Deletions involving nationalities were by far more extensive in Life and Fate than in A Humble Cemetery. A paragraph comprised of Grossman's statements on the repression of national minorities and Jews was crossed out in an excerpt from the novel published in Ogonek, and two-thirds of the same paragraph were missing from Oktiabr'. In the passages omitted from both magazines Grossman wrote that the victory at Stalingrad decided the fate "of the Kalmucks, Crimean Tartars, Balkars, and Chechens whom Stalin transported to Siberia and Khazakhstan," as well as the fate of the Jews over whom Stalin raised the sword taken from Hitler.76 The whole of chapter 32 was removed from part 2 of the novel. The chapter consisted exclusively of Grossman's analysis of anti-Semitism.77 The censors saw that much of what the author said about the origins and manifestations of anti-Semitism was applicable to the Soviet Union, above ail the idea that in totalitarian countries anti-Semitism could be generated only by the state. The disappearance of the chapter was noticed by some of those who had read the foreign edition of the novel. The editors of Oktiabr' found themselves in an awkward predicament and printed the complete text of the chapter in the September 1988 issue of their magazine with a less-than-candid explanation.78 The separate 1988 edition of Life and Fate reinstated all of the aforementioned cuts pertaining to Jews and deported minorities. In 1989 the mitigation of censorship made it possible for Kaledin to have an attractive Jewish soldier among the principal characters of The Construction Battalion. At the same time, the April issue of Teatr carried Venedikt Erofeev's tragedy Val'purgieva nochHi "Shagi komandora" (Walpurgis Night, or "The Commendatore's Footsteps", wr. 1985) in which the protagonist is half-Jewish and the Jewish theme plays a major role. However, not every work treating the Jewish theme could be published in 1989 or 1990. A case in point is D'ia Shtemler's novel Arkhiv (The Archive, wr. 1987-89) whose protagonist is H'ia Gal'perin, a deputy director of a Leningrad archive and a decorated war veteran. Set in 1982, the novel details Gal'perin's persecution because his forty-year old son wants to emigrate to Israel. According to Shtemler, "the novel was rejected by all publishing houses" to which he submitted it.79 The chief cause for turning down the novel must have been its strong suggestion that secret instructions for job discrimination against those whose relatives intended to emigrate to Israel came from the higher Party authorities. The Archive was finally published in the middle of 1991 by Soviet Writer. The period of glasnost put no curbs on the use of the word "yid," in any case not on the works selected for this study. The offensive term is encountered in the speech of the authors and the characters alike. A curious exception turned up in the title of the comedy "Zhidy goroda Pitera," Hi neveselye besedy pri svechakh ("The Yids of the City of Peter," or Joyless Conversations by Candlelight, Neva, no, 9, 1990) by the brothers Arkadii and Boris Strugatskii. When the play
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was performed in the city of Tula, the Culture Department of the Tula Province Executive Committee allowed only the words "Joyless Conversations" on the posters.80 I was able to find only two corrections related to Germans and Russians. In The Black Rocks, the Znamia editors toned down Nazi atrocities by revising downward the number of people shot by them in the southern outskirts of Voronezh. Zhigulin's estimate of "20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, or maybe even more" was reduced to "many inhabitants." The charitable substitution has survived in all subsequent editions of the book which I have checked.81 In the second incident, those in charge of the 1990 edition of Babel's Works refused to restore the following phrase from "The Rabbi's Son": "The monstrous unreal Russia stomped in its bast shoes along both sides of the railroad cars like a herd of body lice." The phrase is present in the 1936 collection of Babel's stories whose text is said to have been reproduced in their 1990 edition.82 To avoid hurting the feelings of Russians, the phrase, as stated earlier, was banned in 1957.
Prerevolutionary Russia Increasingly sharper critique of the Soviet regime encouraged people to look back to tsarist Russia as a kind of paradise lost. Already in the early years of perestroika, censorship evinced tolerance toward favorable comparisons of the prerevolutionary state with its Soviet counterpart. Thus in Children of the Arbat, the censors let stand a daring assertion made by the mother of the young protagonist Sasha Pankratov, who was exiled to Siberia on false political charges. When her brother, an eminent builder of Soviet industry, attempted to rationalize the punishment, the mother retorted; "Had the tsar tried you [the Bolsheviks] in accordance with your laws, he would have lasted a thousand years longer."83 On 20 October 1987, in a conversation with a group of Princeton University professors, Rybakov said he had been surprised that the censors did not delete this sentence. The only corrections affecting old Russia were found in the first 1989 edition of Sinking into Darkness. The censors discarded Volkov's characterization of Alexander II as one who "wisely and fearlessly steered Russia onto the right path of justice, prosperity, and dignified life" (44; 43). In the second instance, the censors pruned the words "Up to the year 1917" which opened a paragraph describing the impressive progress in human rights achieved by tsarist Russia. The degree of freedom and personal and public safety on the eve of the Revolution, Volkov said in conclusion, must be the point of departure "for evaluating the entire following period of the development of the Bolshevik system" (247; 242). The censors cut the italicized words. The two last deletions signify that the censors did not worry about the democratic accomplishments in prerevolutionary Russia but about contrasting them with the totalitarian rule in the Soviet state. However, the censors of the second 1989 publication of Volkov's memoir did not mind this juxtaposition.
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Russia and the West The advent of glasnost allowed both condemnation and admiration of the West. Vasiiii Belov's novel Vse vperedi {Everything Is Still Ahead, Nash sovremennik, nos. 7-8, 1986) pictures the West as ruled by the diabolic power of money and transmitting immorality to Russian urbanites. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Grossman's Everything Flows stresses the contrast between the freedom-loving, revolutionary West and the slavish, repressive Russia. It was only in The Black Rocks that I came across a deletion concerning the West. The rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the West might well have been the reason for the prudent Znamia editors to expunge Zhigulin's remarks about the duplicity of Western powers in dealing with the Soviets after World War II. According to Zhigulin, "The 'allies' knew what they were doing when they gladly handed over to Stalin the card catalog containing the names of Russian POWs which they seized from the Germans." As a result, hundreds of thousands of innocent young men landed in prison camps as "traitors." Both assertions are missing only from Znamia (8:94; 225). Things were different with the adjacent contention that the Americans deliberately did not provide the Soviets with the card catalogs of those serving in the German Military Intelligence, SS, and Gestapo, as well as with the names of the Lithuanians who participated in the German punitive actions. This assertion can be read only in the emigre magazine Strana i mir. Soviet publishers kept them out of the book, probably thanks to the greatly improved relationship with the United States.84
Peasants No revisions were uncovered in this category. The repression of the peasantry was the first major crime of the Soviet regime exposed by glasnost. The crime was harder to conceal than, say, the Cheka terror, Katyn', or atrocities in Afghanistan because millions knew about it from personal experience and because the responsibility for the ruinous collectivization could be put on Stalin, who, supposedly, acted contrary to the wise agrarian policy conducted by Lenin. In a sharp contrast with the Brezhnev years, the censors of the glasnost period did not intervene into representation of the peasant sufferings, at any rate not since 1987 when there began to come out works which could not have been printed earlier owing to their true-to-life description of collectivization and its consequences. In 1987 the reader was given access to volume 2 of Mozhaev's Peasant Men and Peasant Women {Don, nos. 1-3) and to part 3 of Vasiiii Belov's Kanuny {On the Eve, wr. 1984) published in the August issue of Novyi mir. Both novels condemn collectivization as the destruction of the people's religion, family structure, and traditions. The fate of the peasants deported as kulaks to northern Russia is graphically depicted in Tendriakov's short story "Khleb dlxa sobaki" ("Bread for a Dog," Novyi mir, no. 3, 1988). Dated 196971, the story portrays a fenced square overcrowded with filthy, lice-ridden, emaciated, and dying people. A strikingly similar scene is encountered in Sinking into Darkness, while The Black Rocks reports about the 1946-47 famine in the
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Voronezh countryside where many died of starvation. The absence of peasant-related revisions in such heavily edited works as The Black Rocks and Sinking into Darkness is highly indicative of the censorial permissiveness regarding the accounts of the ordeals undergone by rural Russia.
Religion In May 1986 Nash sovremennik printed Viktor Astaf ev's short story "Slepoi rybak" ("The Blind Fisherman") in which the author, distressed by the spiritual deterioration of his contemporaries, looks back to the celebration of Easter in his childhood when the holy spirit of the festival generated joy, happiness, kindness, and compassion. The implication is that the Soviet regime deprived people of spiritual, Christian values and offered no moral equivalent to replace them. On the heels of Astaf ev's story, Novyi mir serialized an equally strong defense of Christian morality—The Executioner's Block by Chingiz Aitmatov. The most striking feature of the novel is the prominence of the religious theme embodied in the Christ-like figure of a young man, Avdii Kallistratov. Avdii sees the purpose of his life in saving souls by preaching good and truth. But his appeals bear no fruits. The drug addicts throw him out of a speeding train, and a group of drunk thugs torture him, demanding that he deny God. When he refuses, they crucify him on a tree, using ropes for lack of nails. The treatment of Christianity in Aitmatov's novel came as a great surprise. The author was a Hero of Socialist Labor and a member of the Central Committee of the Kirgiz Communist Party. How could censorship pass his novel and Astaf ev's story? One reason appears to be purely practical. The leaders of perestroika could utilize religious ethics to combat such ills as drinking, stealing, and idleness that plagued the Soviet economy. More important, the greater part of intellectuals—Gorbachev's staunchest supporters—saw in the history of Russian Christianity a rich repository of moral and cultural treasures. Lastly, Gorbachev and his allies were aware of the erosion of faith in Communism among the Soviet people, coupled with an increasingly active search for spiritual and ethical guidance in religion. Gorbachev and his right-hand man, Aleksandr lakovlev, did not welcome a religious revival, but their opposition to it did not go beyond hackneyed appeals to intensify the atheistic upbringing of the masses.85 Meanwhile, the church's status was greatly enhanced in 1988 thanks to the broadly organized celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the Christianization of the Kievan Rus'. This event rendered pointless the state-sponsored propaganda of "scientific atheism."
Puritanical Censorship Curses and Obscenities Although Gorbachev's glasnost tempered the censorial supervision of obscene
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language, the lifting of taboos did not proceed uniformly. A great deal hinged on editorial discretion of individual journals and publishing houses, and in the early years of the thaw the opposition to expletives was quite strong. In 1987 a deputy editor of Novyi mir, Feodosii Vidrashku, persuaded Bitov to cut on the use of as mild an obscenity as govno (shit) in his novel Pushkinskii dom {The Pushkin House), which first appeared abroad in 1978.86 The following year the editors of Ogonek replaced govno with der'mo (crap) in Viktor Erofeev's "Popugaichik" ("The Little Parrot"), but the original word was retained in the 1989 collection of Erofeev's short stories entitled Telo Anny, Hi konets russkogo avangarda {Anna's Body, or the End of the Russian Vanguard).^ The same collection substituted three dots for the title of the story "Govnososka," though this colloquial designation of a sewage pumping truck was left intact in the characters' speech.88 Simultaneously, the censors of the collection eliminated, shortened, or changed nearly all of the derivatives of the verb "shit." On the other hand, the words zasranka, sranyi (shitty), and sran' (shitasses) were spelled out in Erofeev's novel Russkaja krasavitsa {The Russian Beauty, wr. 1980-82) published in 1990, but merely the beginning syllables of obosrat'sia (shit in one's pants) and nasrat' na (not to give a shit about) were allowed to appear in it.89 Zhopa (ass) was removed from Anna's Body, or the End of the Russian Vanguard but was welcomed in The Russian Beauty, while in Belov's novel God velikogo pereloma {The Year of the Great Change, 1991) both the abbreviation "zh . .and the full spelling are encountered. A widely varying treatment was accorded to kurva and bliad', the two most common designations of a whore, applied by the characters to women and men alike. There were no objections to kurva either in Pristavkin's The Golden Cloud Slept There {Znamia, no. 3, 1987) or in The Russian Beauty, but the handling of bliad' evinced great fluctuations. As we remember, the full spelling of bliad' vanished from literary works in the early 1930s, with a possibly single exception of Maiakovskii's poem "To You!" But in 1987 a derivative of bliad' was spelled in full in the text of a song printed in The Golden Cloud Slept There and the basic word surfaced unabridged in a character's speech in Children of the Arbat.90 A year later the Znamia editors permitted only the abbreviation "b . . . d'" in The Black Rocks, as did the editors of Oktiabr' in Life and Fate. Subsequent publications of The Black Rocks retained the Znamia variation, but all book-form editions of Grossman's novel put bliad' back, possibly because the timidity with which the word was treated in Oktiabr' was brought to light by Professor Efim Etkind.91 In its 1989 publication of Everything Flows, Oktiabr' continued sticking to "b . . . " or "b . . . ei" (gen. pi.) and changed "vybliadki" (bastards) into vyrodki (degenerates), thus distorting the meaning of the original word.92 This traditional puritanism looks especially silly considering the fact that in the same work Oktiabr' retained sharply negative statements on the Soviet regime. The word bliad' did not fare much better in the works published in 1989-91 which I checked. It was excised in Anna's Body, or the End of the Russian Vanguard, reduced to "blia ..." or turned into dots in The Russian Beauty, dropped or—more often—cut to "b . . . " in every published text of The Hidden War, and abridged to "bl ..." in The Year of the Great Change. The full
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spelling of bliad' occurs in Shalamov's short story "Lesha Chekanov, ili odnodelets na Kolyroe" ("Lesha Chekanov, or a Codefendant in the Kolyma Region" (Novyi mir, no. 12, 1989) and in Andrei Vo/.ncsenskii's poem "Sonet (regtaim)" ("Sonet [ragtime]") published in the 7 November 1990 issue of Literatumaia gazeta. I did not observe any censorial constraint on the employment of matiuki, except for the traditional omission of their four-letter verb. Nor did I encounter a full spelling of this verb outside matiuki. The closest representation of it was found in The Russian Beauty in the form of "e . . . " or "E . . . s'." Only once, in the transliteration of a couplet sung in English, the verb in question appears unabridged as "fak," rhyming with "dak" (duck).93 The censor might have overlooked it. A full spelling of the two common vulgarisms for genitals remained taboo regardless of glasnost. Only dots stand for the popular name of penis in The Black Rocks and The Russian Beauty, and only once the abbreviation "p . . . !" was substituted in Erofeev's novel for a word which means "the end" and is a derivative of the vulgar designation of the female sex organ.94 In Erofeev's case we have a direct editorial and censorial intervention since in his manuscripts he deliberately spelled out profanities as part of his modernistic challenge to the themes and language of Soviet literature. The majority of Russian authors would consider it bad taste to spell in full the strongest terms pertaining to sex and genitals, though the same authors would not mind using the terms in their private conversations. There existed a wide gap between what one would say and what one would write.
Eroticism While the treatment of profanities retained much of its traditional rigor until the breakup of the Soviet Union, the censorial approach to sex changed conspicuously. The magnitude of the reversal became apparent in 1990 when in The Russian Beauty Glavlit sanctioned carnalities which would have been censored a year earlier. Erofeev's novel has heavy doses of sex, involving chiefly its beautiful and sensual heroine, Irina Tarakonova. Having come to Moscow from an obscure provincial town, she fell in love with a famous middle-aged writer, whom she affectionately called Leonardik, in honor of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardik's potency was on the wane and it took some tricks on Irina's part to get him aroused. During love-making, when both of them achieved a simultaneous orgasm for the first time, Leonardik suffered a fatal heart attack. But their intimacy went on in Irina's imagination, bringing her both horror and ecstasy. After failing to find solace in religion, Irina committed suicide, pregnant with Leonardik's child. What distinguishes Erofeev's sex scenes from those found in the works read for this study is an elaborate description of coitus and private parts. Irina, the novel's narrator, tells us about Leonardik licking her body, her sucking his penis, her sensations from its moving inside her, and the intensity of their or-
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gasms. Irina also remembers her copulations with other men. One encounter lasted six days, with the lovers watching their performance in a large mirror for hours. Toward the end of this marathon, Irina's partner could no longer stand on his feet and ejaculated blood. Furthermore, Erofeev puts the icing on the cake by making Irina enter into a tender lesbian relationship with her best girlfriend. The Soviet general reader was not prepared for works like The Russian Beauty. The novel's erotic passages shocked the print shop workers to such an extent that they refused to set them to type. Erofeev arranged a meeting with two typesetters and succeeded in changing their minds.95 The appearance of The Russian Beauty did not elicit much response among the writers' community. The novel's exhibitionism transgressed their moral and aesthetic boundaries. Most Soviet writers probably agreed at least with the first sentence of Rybakov's assessment of the novel: "Too much vulgarity [poshlost']. Too little talent."96 And Rybakov can hardly be called a puritan. There is no lack of sexuality in his Children of the Arbat. The Russian Beauty was all but a drop in the sea of erotica that flooded the Russian book market in 1990. The wares ranged from textbooks on sexual techniques to poems of the Russian classics. Much of this literature was printed and distributed without official permission.97 A total liberation from puritanism became possible after the failure of the August 1991 coup d'etat when Gorbachev's Government was rapidly losing power and the Soviet Union entered the stage of disintegration. A telling example of unprecedented permissiveness was the appearance of the November 1991 issue of Literaturnoe obozrenie devoted entirely to the erotic traditions in Russian literature. The issue consists of scholarly articles on that subject and of selected samples of erotic poetry, notably the poems from the eighteen-century collection Devich'ia igrushka (The Maiden's Toy), the poem "Ten' Barkova" ("The Shadow of Barkov"), which is attributed to Aleksandr Pushkin, and the heart of the Russian erotica—the poem Luka Mudishchev (Luka Balls) named after its protagonist, a man with an enormous, deadly penis.98 All the poems were uncensored. Left intact were not only their earthy descriptions of intercourse but also full spellings of every hitherto unprintable term for love-making and sexual organs. Soon after the appearance of the erotic poems in Literaturnoe obozrenie, the Irkutsk publishing house IKSES issued a book under the title of Russkaia eroticheskaia literatura XVI—XIX v. v.; Iz.brarmye stranitsy (Russian Erotic Literature from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Selected Pages, 1991). A combination of prose and poetry, this collection faithfully reproduces sexual situations and full spellings of the corresponding vocabulary.
Naturalistic Details Censorship of naturalistic items was carried out with a moderate degree of strictness in the early years of perestroika and became visibly relaxed from 1989 on. In The Black Rocks, the Znamia editors spared the reader a few gory particulars pertaining to a prisoner gravely wounded during an abortive attempt to es-
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cape from a Kolyma camp. Dropped were the phrases "It seemed he was larded with lead . . . The hole [in the stomach] where a bullet went out was the size of a small jam dish, five to six centimeters in diameter. One could see the intestines through it" (8:97, 230). Late in 1988 the editors of Ogonek blotted out several gruesome details in Viktor Erofeev's story "The Little Parrot." It is a story about a brutal torture of a boy whose innocent attempt to revive a dead parrot was willfully misinterpreted as an intention to demonstrate the superiority of foreign birds over Russian sparrows and thus humiliate his own country. The Ogonek editors did not shun from printing that at one point the boy was impaled on a stake, but they chose not to reveal that in this case the word "stake" denoted the penis of a husky torturer. A few lines later the chief torturer was prevented from saying, "We inflated him like a frog through the asshole with the aid of the English pump." Furthermore, a taboo was placed on the chief torturer's account of how the cruel tormenting of a victim would arouse him and make him ejaculate into his pants. He was also not permitted to think that this outburst of passion was a "mystery greater than tinkering with a finger in the mossy hole." All the aforementioned cuts were restored in Anna's Body, or the End of the Russian Vanguard." The Russian Beauty demonstrated further tolerance of naturalistic details, which in this novel frequently have an erotic tinge and are associated with genitalia. Already in the opening chapter the reader is introduced to odors of female sex organs. Some of them smell like dried mushrooms, dill, or elder. Irina's organ used to emit an exceptionally pleasant aroma comparable to that of "a blossoming bergamot tree." But in the final stage of her life, Irina "became foul and stank as if her entrails were stuffed with rotten rags." Shortly before her suicide, Irina wills her sexual organ to the poor, the invalids, and other people of lowly standing. She lovingly recommends it as "magnificent in all of its dimensions, narrow and muscular, wise and enigmatic, romantic and fragrant—full of love in every respect, but extremely delicate. . . . "100 Irina showed less generosity in characterizing the genitals of her Armenian lover. She found his penis too short and typical for "an uninteresting, semiliterate man." The fact that Irina nicknamed the Armenian Hamlet prompted her to wonder what kind of penis Shakespeare's Hamlet had. At this point the censors might have crossed out Irina's more direct query, "How many inches long and thick?" The question appears in the English translation of the novel but is absent from its Russian edition.101 The publication of works like The Russian Beauty indicates that at the close of perestroika the censors were not eager to invoke that point of the Law on the Press which forbade the dissemination of pornography.
Authors'
Reactions
It would be safe to assume that most writers welcomed the slackening and abolition of censorship. In any case, this was the feeling of the authors with whom I had personal contacts. On the other hand, the conservatives, particularly
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the leaders of the Writers' Union, had little reason to rejoice about the demise of censorship. Accustomed to their privileged status that enabled them to publish their hack writings in large runs, the Union administrators now had to compete with the rest of the literary profession. There were writers who stood for political censorship to prevent the appearance of works considered anti-Soviet. Thus journalist lurii Zhukov recommended that the Law on the Press include clear-cut provisions against printing materials purported to undermine the Soviet system, and Vitalii Korotich, as we know, said in 1987 that he would not publish Solzhenitsyn, "a political opponent."102 Elder, established writers were not pleased with the upswing of the erotica. We cited Rybakov's opinion of The Russian Beauty and we may add Valentin Rasputin's observation made in December 1990 at the Seventh Congress of the RSFSR Writers. A considerable part of the press, he stated with bitter irony, had suffered so much under censorship that "it, poor thing, fell ill with 'nymphomania.'"103 However, like other authors unhappy with the literary sex revolution, neither Rybakov nor Rasputin advocated the restoration of puritanical scrutiny. Freedom of expression, with all the ensuing advantages and disadvantages, was preferred to censorship.
CONCLUSION
Censorship was a permanent fixture of the Soviet regime during the seventyfive years of its existence. In the early stage of the Bolshevik rule the function of censorship was predominantly prohibitive. It manifested itself in suppression of newspapers considered hostile to the new government. In the 1920s the prohibitive role of censorship was supplemented by an educative one. The censor not only banned the offensive text but also made, or suggested, additions in order to further political, ideological, or moral upbringing of the reader in tune with the immediate goals of the ruling Communist Party. In contrast to the "critical" Russian realism of the nineteenth century, Socialist Realism had to praise the contemporary way of life and the powers that be. The emphasis on the "positive" characters and actions gained a powerful momentum during the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32) when the Party urged the writers to depict the heroes of socialist construction. The 1934 bylaws of the Soviet Writers' Union officially reaffirmed the instructive mission of literature by obligating the writers to educate the masses in the spirit of socialism. The role models for this type of education were Communists, and Glavlit had to insure that they were presented in the most favorable light. As a result, Communist characters suffered more from censorship than did their enemies. The heaviest censorial and self-censorial damage was done to the works featuring Communist heroes, such as The Commissars, Cement, Bruski, How the Steel Was Tempered, and The Young Guard. Xenophobia and chauvinism during the final stage of Stalin's reign prompted extensive censorial revisions of historical fiction dealing with prerevolutionary Russia. Victims of this process included Stepan Razin and The Ordeal of Sevastopol'. The only consolation was that censorship of these novels did not go beyond deletions, which, as a rule, caused less harm than insertions did. Khrushchev's thaw proved too mild to bring any substantial changes in censorial practices, and Brezhnev turned the clock back. The first appreciable relaxation of censorship in literature occurred during Gorbachev's perestroika. Its dominant feature was the publication of previously rejected works, notably Doctor Zhivago and Life and Fate. On the other hand, nearly all the works severely censored in the preceding decades continued to be printed in their crippled versions. The same situation prevails in Russia now, in the mid-1990s. Hence several generations of Russians have never read the earliest editions of The Quiet Don, The Rout, Russia Washed in Blood, A Week, Red Cavalry, and many other important works. A tool of the self-serving and mendacious policy of the Communist Party, Glavlit removed the undesirable truth from manuscripts and books and compelled the writers to engage in a humiliating self-censorship to secure publication or reprinting of their works. Even before putting down a single word, the author had to weigh what would be passed or tabooed by his editors or Glavlit. Suppression of ideologically unacceptable subjects led to an unprecedented philosophical impoverishment of Russian literature. The public emergence of a Tol-
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stoi or Dostoevskii was nipped in the bud. Because of censorship the authors wrote "for the desk drawer," waited long years for the publication of their works, and experienced mental anguish and financial hardship. Puritanical censorship purged earthy popular idiom and lifelike descriptions of sex, gore, filth, and other naturalistic elements. Subjected to this kind of treatment, literary works lost much of their original flavor, characteristic of the times when they were written. The enormous damage inflicted by censorship upon Soviet literature cannot be repaired completely. Many unpublishable manuscripts vanished and many works conceived in the authors' minds were never committed to paper. Still, the losses can be substantially reduced. A special commission of literary scholars could be created to restore the original or earliest texts of censored works and to search for confiscated manuscripts in archives of the security police. The successful work of the commission would return to Soviet literature its authenticity and enrich it.
NOTES
Chapter 1 1. "Predpisanie No. 1432 Petrogradskogo Voenno-revoliutsionnogo komiteta komissaru tipografii 'Russkaia volia' S. G. Kisliakovu-Uralovu," in Izdatel'skoe delo v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917-1922): Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow: Kniga, 1972), 145. 2. A. Z. Okorokov, Oktiabr' i krakh russkoi burzhuaznoi pressy (Moscow; MysT, 1970), 172. 3. "Dekret o pechati," in Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 1 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1957), 24-25. 4. Okorokov, Oktiabr', 168-70. 5. "Postanovlenie o Revoliutsionnom tribunale pechati," Dekrety, 432-34. 6. For details see Okorokov, Oktiabr', 181-82, 185-86. 7. See Okorokov, Oktiabr', 312, 355-56, 373-75. 8. "Polozhenie Vserossiiskogo Tsentral'nogo Ispolnitel'nogo Komiteta o Gosudarstvennom izdatel'stve," Izdatel'skoe delo, 53. 9. "Obiazatel'noe postanovlenie chrezvychainogo upolnomochennogo Sovnarkoma po delam bumazhnoi promyshlennosti i pechati," Izdatel'skoe delo, 87. This document is dated 25 November 1920. Censorship was carried out by Gosizdat's political departments and directed primarily against the production of private publishing houses, whose existence was permitted since November 1921. From midNovember 1921 to 26 May 1922, the Moscow Political Department of Gosizdat examined 813 manuscripts of private publishers and rejected 31. The corresponding figures for the Petersburg Political Department (from 31 January to 29 May 1922) were 190 and 10. See N. L. Meshcheriakov, "O chastnykh izdatel'stvakh," Pechat' i revoliutsiia, no. 6 (July-August 1922): 130-31. 10. For details see "Prikaz Revoliutsionnogo Voennogo Soveta Respubliki ob uchrezhdenii Literaturno-izdatel'skogo otdela" and "Polozhenie ob otdele voennoi literatury pri Revoliutsionnom Voennom Sovete Respubliki," Izadatel'skoe delo, 63-64, 93. The first document is dated 25 October 1919; the second, 31 December 1920. 11. "Polozhenie o Glavnom Upravlenii po delam literatury i izdatel'stva (Glavlit)," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik, comp. L. G. Fogelevich, (Moscow: luridicheskoe izdat. NKIu RSFSR, 1927), 31-32; "Prava i funktsii Glavlita i ego mestnykh organov," Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 33. This document is a 1922 instruction of Glavlit to its local offices. In the full name of Glavlit the word izdatel'stva (gen. sing) was soon changed to izdatel'stv (gen. pi.) and appeared in this form on Glavlit's official stamp. 12. For details on Glavlit's structure see "Rasporiazhenie po Narkomprosu No. [not given]," TsGA RSFSR, fond A-2306, opis' 3, delo 131, lists (pages), 8-9. This document is dated 1 August 1922 and signed by the head of the Administration and Organization Department of the People's Commissariat of Education. See also "Shtaty Glavlit-a" [an unsigned and undated document], TsGA RSFSR, fond A-2306, opis'3, delo 131, lists 10-10 ob. For these and other materials from the Central State Archive (TsGA) of RSFSR, I am indebted to Steven Richmond, a Ph.D. candidate. Subsequent references to the documents from this archive will be given in numbers separated by slashes.
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13. See "Kharakteristiki politredaktorov Russkogo Otdela Glavlita," A2306/1/3396/344, 346, 348, 350, 352, 354. These documents are unsigned and undated, except for evaluations in "Kharakteristiki" marked 26 January, 4 and 12 February 1924. 14. "Spravka o poluchennom zhalovanii Politredaktorami Glavlita v lanvare i Fevrale mesiatsakh 1924 g.," A-2306/1/3396/249, 249 ob. This document is signed by the head of the Administrative and Organizational Board and dated 7 February 1924. 15. "Spravka o kolichestve rukopisei, proshedshikh cherez Russkii otdel Glavlita, a takzhe vypushchennykh gosudarstvennymi i partiinymi izdatel'stvami g. Moskvy za oktiabr' i noiabr' 1922 g.," A-2306/1/3367/75-77. See also Glavlit's lists of forbidden and functioning publishing houses as of 1 December 1922, in A2306/1/3367/58-73. The lists of functioning publishers (private and governmental) contain brief remarks on their specialization and—often—on their political loyalty. 16. "Otzyvy o knigakh zarubezhnykh izdatel'stv," A-2306/1/3367/102. 17. For details see "Otchet o deiatel'nosti Administrativno-Kontrol'nogo Otdela Glavlita za iiul', avgust i sentiabr' 1924 goda," A-2306/1/3396/157-58 ob. This report is signed by K. Revel'skii, the head of the Administration Department. 18. This information comes from Arlen Blium, "Drugikh potretov t. Stalina k pechati ne razreshat' (Sekretnye tsenzurnye tsirkuliary 1920-kh godov)," Peterburgskii literator, no. 6 (1993); 5. 19. See Lebedev-Polianskii's note to Lunacharskii, A-2306/1/3367/56; untitled and unsigned list of persons to whom the Bulletin was sent, A-2306/1/3367/57. 20. "Vsem Zav. Gub. i Uono, Gub. i Upolitprosvetam, Oblitam, Gublitam i Otdelam GPU," Krasnyi bibliotekar', no. 1 (1924): 136. 21. See "O Komitete po kontroliu za repertuarom pri Glavnom Upravlenii po delam literatury i izdatel'stva," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 43-45; "Dekret SNK RSFSR ot 25 marta 1925 g.," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 44, n. 1. The same committee was also called Glavnyi komitet po kontroliu za repertuarom (The Main Committee for the Control of Repertory or Main Repertory Committee). Its acronyms were Glavrepertkom or, less formally, Repertkom, 22. Puti razvitiia teatra (Stenograficheskii otchet i resheniia partiinogo soveshchaniia po voprosam teatra pri Agitprope TsK VKP(b) v mae 1927 g.), ed. S. M. Krylov (Moscow-Leningrad: Kinopechat', 1927), 35. 23. "Proekt postanovleniia," A-2306/69/514/4-5. This unsigned and undated document was sent by Ushkova, head of the Glavlit secretariat, to V. N. lakovleva, deputy chief of Narkompros. Ushakova's accompanying note of 1 June 1926 states that the draft of the Orgburo resolution was made in response to a report by the Glavlit chief Lebedev-Polianskii, without specifying what kind of a report it was (A2306/69/514/2). The note reveals that at some point between 5 October 1925 and 1 June 1926 the name of Lebedev-Polianskii's post was changed from zaveduiushchii (head, director) to a more authoritative nachal'nik (chief). A decree of VTsIK and Sovnarkom RSFSR dated 5 October 1925 still referred to the head of Glavlit as zaveduiushchii. See Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sborrik, 3d ed., comp. L. G. Fogelevich (Moscow: Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1931), 60, 24. See extractions from the minutes of the meetings on 8 and 20 July 1926, A2306/69/514/6-7, 10. 25. For details see "Tezisy doklada t. Lebedeva-Polianskogo o deiatel'nosti Glavlita za 1925 g.," A-2306/69/514/12-15. 26. For details see A. Chaianov, "V Kollegiiu Narkomprosa," an undated letter probably written in March 1927, A-2306/69/1584/l-l ob.; Lebedev-Polianskii and
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Ushakova, "V Kollegiiu Narkomprosa," 7 April 1927, A-2306/69/1584/2-2 ob.; "Vypiska iz protokola zakrytogo zasedaniia Pres. Kollegii NKProsa ot 5-go iiulia 1927 goda," A-2306/69/1584/8. 27. See Nikolai Khorikov, "V Kollegiiu Narkomprosa. Zaiavlenie," August 1929, A-2306/69/2093/19; Samokhvalov and Grishin, "V Kollegiiu Narkomprosa" [about 20 August 1929], A-2306/69/2093/24. The signers of the letter are, respectively, deputy chief of Glavlit and head of its Russian Department. For some reason Samokhvalov's post is typed on the document as deputy head (not deputy chief) of Glavlit. 28. "Ob organizatsii v sostave narodnogo Komissariata Prosveshcheniia RSFSR osobogo organa dlia osushchestvleniia ideologicheskogo i organizatsionnogo rukovodstva v oblasti razvitiia literatury i iskusstva," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik, 2d ed., comp. L. G. Fogelevich (Moscow: Izdat. narkomtorgov SSSR i RSFSR, 1929), 76. 29. On functions of Glaviskusstvo see "Postanovlenie VTsIK i SNK RSFSR ot 17 sentiabria 1928 g.," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 2d ed., 77-78; "Glaviskusstvo," Teatral'naia entsiklopediia, vol. 1, (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1961), 1183-84. 30. "O preobrazovanii Glavnogo upravleniia po delam khudozhestvennoi literatury i iskusstva Narodnogo komissariata prosveshcheniia RSFSR v Sovet po delam khudozhestvennoi literatury i iskusstva," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 3d ed., 71, 31. See "Reorganizatsiia Glavnogo upravleniia po delam literatury i izdatel'stv (Glavlita). (Post. SNK RSFSR ot 5 oktiabria 1930 g.)," in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 3d ed., 60-61. 32. See "Ob utverzhdenii polozheniia o Glavnom Upravlenii po delam literatury i izdatel'stva i ego mestnykh organakh." (Post. SNK ot 6 iiunia 1931 g.), in Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo, 3d ed., 230-31. 33. "O poriadke vypuska proizvedenii pechati. Post. SNK RSFSR ot 10 avgusta 1931 g.," in Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik, 5th ed., comp. L. G. Fogelevich (Moscow; Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1935), 112. 34. "Glavlit," Literaturnaia entsiklopediia, vol. 2 (Moscow; Kommunisticheskaia akademiia, 1929), 545. 35. Il'ia Shkapa, "Gotov ruchat'sia za nego golovoi . . . ," interview by Libia Beliaeva, Literaturnaia gazeta, 23 November 1988. 36. Zaiara Veselaia, comp., '"Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia' Artema Veselogo; Po materialam lichnogo arkhiva pisatelia," Novyi mir, no. 5 (1988); 142. 37. Arkadii Vaksberg, "Protsessy," Literaturnaia gazeta, 4 May 1988. Correct information about the time of death of Babel' and Veselyi was made public only during the glasnost' period. 38. lurii Libedinskii, "Nedelia," Nashi dni, no. 2 (1922): 100; (Orel: Gosizdat, 1923), 62; (Petrograd-Moscow: MG, 1923), 50; 3d ed. (Moscow: TIK, 1926), 47; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad; ZIF, 1927), 55-56; 9th ed. (MoscowLeningrad: ZIF, 1927), 55-56; 11th ed. (Moscow-Leningrad; ZIF [1929?]), 58; 13th ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIF, 1930), 54-55; Sochineniia, vol. 1 (LeningradMoscow: KhL, 1931), 47. The numbering of editions is sometimes confusing. The 1926 TIK edition designated as 3d ed. was at least the 5th edition of the novel, while the 1928 TIK edition, marked as the 5th ed., came out between the 9th and the 10th editions published by ZIF. 39. Cf. Nedelia (Gosizdat, 1923), 103; (MG, 1923), 75; Sochineniia, vol. 1 (1931), 93; 9th ed. (Leningrad; KhL, 1935), 79; Povesti (Moscow; KhL, 1955), 60.
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40. Cf. Fedor Gladkov, Tsement, 10th ed., examined by the author, Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad; ZIF, 1927), 26, 69, 101; Tsement, 11th ed., newly examined by the author, Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIF, 1928), 32, 83, 121. 41. For some reason, Katia's condemnations of terror and its practitioners are absent not only from all Soviet publications of the novel before 1990, but also from its Berlin edition. Cf. Vikentii Veresaev, V tupike (Berlin; Lutze und Vogt, 1923), 22; V tupike. Sestry (Moscow: Knizhnaia palata, 1990), 150-51. In two other instances the Berlin text (pp. 216, 245) contains a few lines that are missing from Nedra (no. 3 [1924], 39, 66), from all subsequent editions between 1925 and 1931, and from the 1989 Lenizdat edition (pp. 181, 206). All information about how In the Blind Alley was published in the Soviet Union comes from V. V. Veresaev, '"V tupike,"' Ogonek, no. 30 (23-30 July 1988): 30. 42. Cf. Maksimilian Voloshin, "Rossiia: Fragmenty neokonchennoi poemy," Nedra, no. 6 (1925): 76, 78; Maksimilian Voloshin, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy v dvukh tomakh, ed. B. A. Filippov, G. P. Struve, and N. A. Struve, vol. 1 (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1982), 344, 349. 43. V. Shaposhnikov, "Predosterezhenie," Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 September 1989. The story was first published in Sibirskie ogni, no. 2 (1989). 44. Lidiia Seifullina, "O kritikakh," Sibirskie ogni, no. 9 (1988): 144. 45. Cf. L. Seifullina, "Peregnoi," Sibirskie ogni, no. 5 (November-December 1922): 37-42; Peregnoi: Povesti (Moscow-Petersburg: Krug, 1923), 121; Molodniak: Rasskazy, 2d ed. (Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1925), 165. 46. Cf. Artem, Veselyi, "Zhar-ptitsa: Iz romana 'Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia,'" Novyi mir, no. 10 (1928): 22; Piruiushchaia vesna (Khar'kov; Proletarii, 1929), 414. "The Black Shoulder Strap" was originally published in Novyi mir in two parts entitled, respectively, "Zhar-ptitsa" ("The Firebird") and "V pokhode" ("On the March," no. 12 [1928]). 47. Platonov to Gor'kii, 19 August 1929, in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1963), 313-14, n. 1; Natal'ia Ivanova, "Tret'e rozhdenie," Druzhba narodov, no. 4 (1988): 157; E. Shubina, "Prikliuchenie idei: K istorii sozdaniia romana 'Chevengur,'" Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 9 (1989): 27. 48. B. Leont'ev to Bulgakov, 11 September 1925, quoted in M. Chudakova, Zhizneopisanie Mikhaila Bulgakova (Moscow: Kniga, 1988), 252. See also pp. 246-47. A Glavlifs report to Narkompros (1925) praises the censor Sarychev as a revolutionary since 1917 who has "the correct approach to the works he reviews [censors]." See "Kharakteristiki politredaktorov Russkogo Otdela Glavlita," A-2306/1/3396/ 340. 49. M. O. Chudakova, "Arkhiv M. A. Bulgakova: Materialy dlia tvorcheskoi biografii pisatelia," in Gosudarstvennaia ordena Lenina biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapisi otdela rukopisei, vol. 37 (Moscow; Kniga, 1976), 45. 50. Cf. Komissary, 2d ed. (Leningrad: Priboi, 1926), 167; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (1927), 473. 51. Cf. Komissary, 3d ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIF, 1930), 167; Sochineniia, vol. 2 (Leningrad-Moscow: KhL, 1931), 139. Fedor Gladkov, "Tsement," Krasnaia nov', no. 5 (1925); 94; Tsement, 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIF, 1926), 24. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 193; 11 ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 228. 52. Cf. "Strana rodnaia: Iz romana," Nedra, no. 7 (1925): 159; Strana rodnaia (Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1926), 100-113; Bol'shoi zapev, 3d ed., enl. (Moscow: Nedra, 1931), 203-14; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Roman v dva kryla. Fragmenty (Moscow: Fed., 1932), 477.
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53. Viach. Polonskii, "Reportazh dolzen byt' chestnym (Pis'mo v redaktsiiu)," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1929): 226; letters of Pil'niak (28 August 1929) and Raskol'nikov (n.d.) to the editor of Literaturnaia gazeta, 1 September 1929. 54. Five months later the authorities used this event to start an onslaught on relatively independent writers. For details see Vera T. Reck, Boris Pil'niak: A Soviet Writer in Conflict with the State (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975), 111-64. 55. Cf. Boris Pil'niak, Krasnoe derevo (Berlin: Petropolis, 1929), 16; Volga vpadaet v Kaspiiskoe more (Moscow; Nedra, 1930), 38. 56. Cf. Volga (1930), 241; Boris Pil'niak, Volga vpadaet v Kaspiiskoe more, Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow: Lada M, 1994), 219. Glavlit's deletions are established by comparing the novel's 1930 edition with its post-Soviet publications in Russia or with its English translation: Boris Pilnyak, The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea, tr, Charles Malamuth (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1931). Malamuth's translation was made not from the Soviet edition of the novel but from a manuscript. See Robert Louis Jackson, Dostoevsky's Underground Man in Russian Literature (Hague; Mouton, 1958), 171. For a statistical account of corrections made in the Soviet edition, see Kenneth N. Brostrom, "The Enigma of Pil'njak's The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea," Slavic and East European Journal 18, no. 3 (fall 1974): 272, 295-96, n. 7. 57. Cf. Volga (1930), 9-10, 40-45; Sochineniia, 10, 11, 38, 42. 58. Komissary, 2d ed. (1926), 169. 59. Cf. Komissary, 2d ed. (1926), 168-69; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (1927), 473. "Prilozhenie," Komissary, 3d ed. (1930), 278; Sochineniia, vol. 2 (1931), 219. 60. Cf. "Tsement," Krasnaia nov', no. 2 (1925); 81; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 71. 61. Cf. "Tsement," Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (1925): 80, no. 6 (1925); 58, 70; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 154, 294, 310. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 293; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 346. 62. Cf. "Tsement", Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1925): 72; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 13. Krasnaia nov', no. 5 (1925): 77, 78; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 207. 63. Cf. Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (1925): 63; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 132. "Zhar-ptitsa," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1928): 18; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 409. 64. Quoted in K. Rudnitskii, Rezhisser Meierkhol'd (Moscow; Nauka, 1969), 420; O. Litovskii, Tak i bylo: Ocherki, vospominaniia, vstrechi (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1957), 129, 130; "Iz protokola zasedaniia Glavnogo repertuarnogo komiteta. Protokol No. 23. Zasedanie GRK ot 25/IX-30," in Nikolai Erdman, P'esy. Intermidii. Pis'ma. Dokumenty. Vospominaniia sovremennikov, ed. A. Svobodin (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990), 282-83; Liubov' Rudneva, "Komediia Nikolaia Erdmana, ee triumf i zabvenie," Teatr, no. 10 (1987): 32. 65. Litovskii, Tak i bylo, 130. Litovskii mistakenly attributes this phrase to another character and misquotes it by using the modifier "red" instead of the original "white." 66. I. Vinogradskaia, Zhizn' i tvorchestvo K. S. Stanislavskogo: Letopis', vol. 4 (Moscow: Vserossiiskoe teatral'noe obshchestvo, 1976), 255. Stanislavskii to Stalin, 29 October 1931, in Rudneva, "Komediia Nikolaia Erdmana," 33. 67. Quoted from Stalin's letter to Stanislavskii, 9 November 1931, in Carl R. Proffer, "Erdman's The Suicide: An Unpublished Letter from Stalin to Stanislavsky," Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 7 (fall 1973): 425. 68. Information about the preview of The Suicide was culled by bits from several sources; N. A, Gorchakov, Istoriia sovetskogo teatra (New York; Chekhov Publish-
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ing House, 1956), 170; Litovskii, Tak i bylo, 130; Rudnitskii, Rezhisser Meierkhol'd, 420; Aleksandr Svobodin, "Legendarnaia p'esa," Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, no. 2 (1987): 184. 69. Cf. Artem Veselyi "Reki ognennye," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (1923): 21; Reki ognennye: Zyb' (Moscow-Leningrad: MG, 1924), 43. Volga, (1930), 157, 199; Sochineniia, 143. 144, 180. Krasnoe derevo, 32; Sochineniia, 111. 70. Cf. L. Seifullina, Peregnoi: Chetyre povesti i rasskaz (Novonikoiaevsk: Sibirskie ogni, 1923), 159-60; Peregnoi, Krug (1923), 84, 71. Cf. M. Sholokhov, O Kolchake, krapive i prochem: Rasskaz (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat [1927]), 56, 57; Donskie rasskazy, Roman-gazeta, no. 16 (Moscow; Mosk. rab., 1929), 5. Mikhail Sholokhov, Rasskazy (Moscow; Nikitinskie subbotniki, 1931), 71, 72; Lazorevaia step': Donskie rasskazy, 1923-1925 (Moscow: MTP, 1931), 54, 56. It is possible that the earliest deletion of Trotskii's name resulting from his feud with Stalin and other leaders was made in 1926 in Mikhail Bulgakov's manuscript of the play Days of the Turbins when it was edited by the personnel of the Moscow Art Theater. See Ellendea Proffer, Bulgakov: Life and Work (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1984), 192. 72. Cf. Sochineniia, vol. 1 (1931), 66; Nedelia (Leningrad-Moscow: KhL, 1931), 81; Nedelia Moscow-Leningrad: MG, 1932), 69; Nedelia (Moscow; Fed., 1932), 80. 73. S. Budennyi, "Babizm Babelia iz 'Krasnoi novi,"' Oktiabr', no. 3 (September-October 1924): 196-97. Isaak Babel' to the Editors, Oktiabr', no. 4 (November-December 1924): 223. Budennyi assailed Babel's stories published in Krasnaia nov', nos. 1 and 3 (1924). 74. Cf. Isaak Babel', "Pis'mo," Lef, no. 4 (August-December 1923); 63; Konarmiia (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1926), 11. "Kolesnikov" ["Kombrig 2"], Lef, no. 4 (1923); 72; "Kombrig 2," Konarmiia (1926), 61. "Chesniki," Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (April-May 1924); 23; Konarmiia (1926), 152. Babel' must have replaced Apanasenko with Pavlichenko in the story which appeared under the title "Zhizneopisanie Pavlichenki Matvei Rodionycha" ("The Life of Pavlichenko Matvei Rodionych") in the Odessa journal Shkval, no. 8 (December 1924), that is, after Budennyi's attack. In its drafts the story was called "The Life of Apanasenko" ('"Nenavizhu voinu'; Iz dnevnika 1920 goda Isaaka Babelia," Druzhba narodov, no. 5 [1989], 254, no. 2). The Shkval text of the story was kindly sent to me by the late Stepan Petrovich Il'ev, who taught at the University of Odessa. 75. Cf. "Kolesnikov," Lef, no. 4 (1923): 71; "Kombrig 2," Konarmiia (1926), 60. "Chesniki," Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (1924); 23; Konarmiia (1926), 152. 76. Cf, Boris Pil'niak, "Povest' nepogashennoi luny," Novyi mir, no. 5 (1926): 8, 10; losif Gamburg, Tak eto bylo: Vospominaniia (Moscow: Politizdat, 1965), 182. See also pp. 179-81. 77. Cf. "Povesf," 13; Gamburg, 182. For a detailed and perceptive account of the connection of The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon with Frunze and Stalin, see Reck, Boris Pil'niak, 13-51. 78. Gladkov to Gor'kii, 5 May 1926, in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 (1963), 79. Gladkov does not make clear whether Skvortsov-Stepanov praised the story before or after its publication. 79. "Ot redaktsii," Novyi mir, no. 6 (1926): 184. 80. V. Chadaev, "Iz-za derev'ev lesa ne vidiashchie," Krasnaia gazeta, evening issue, 20 June 1920, quoted in "Rabotiaga Slovotekov," Maksim Gor'kii, Polnoe sobr. soch., vol. 19 (Moscow; Nauka, 1973), 535. 81. Gor'kii, Polnoe sobr. soch., 534. 82. Valentina Khodasevich, "Takim ia znala Gor'kogo," Novyi mir, no. 3 (1968): 24. The author was a neice of the poet Vladislav Khodasevich.
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83. Cf. F. Panferov, "Bruski," Oktiabr', no. 10 (1929): 38-39; Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 2 (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1930), 146, 147. 84. Cf. Komissary, 2d ed. (1926), 168; Sobr. sock, vol. 1 (1927), 473-74. 85. Cf. Nedelia (Gosizdat, 1923), 53; (MG, 1923), 44; 13th ed. (ZIF, 1930), 48; Sochineniia, vol. 1 (1931), 42. Nedelia (KhL, 1931), 50; (MG, 1932), 40; (Fed., 1932), 50. 86. Cf. Mikh. Sholokhov, "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 8 (1928): 116; Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad; Mosk. rab., 1929), 381. 87. Cf. "Tsement" Krasnaia nov', no. 4 (1925): 71; Tsement, 2d ed., Sobr. sock, vol. 2 (1926), 175; 10th ed., Sobr. sock, vol. 2 (1927), 78, 175; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 93, 208. Censorship of the relationship between Gleb and Dasha as well as of some other aspects of Cement, is discussed in Robert L. Bush, "Gladkov's Cement: The Making of a Soviet Classic" (Slavic and East European Journal 22, no. 3 [fall 1978], 348-61). My research was conducted independently of this article, which uses a limited number of Cement editions. 88. Cf. "Tsement," Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1925): 89; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 34. Tsement 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 78; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 93. 89. Cf. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 36, 49, 313; 11th ed., Sobr. sock, vol. 2 (1928), 45, 60, 370. 90. See V. I. Lenin, "Rech' na III Vserossiiskom s"ezde R.K.S.M. 2 oktiabria 1920 g.," Sochineniia, 2d ed., rev. and enl., vol. 25 (Moscow-Leningrad; Gosizdat, 1928), 390-94 passim. 91. Cf. Volga (1930), 158, 229-30; Sochineniia, 14^45, 208-9. 92. Cf. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 21, 31, 70, 152; 11th ed., Sobr. sock, vol. 2 (1928), 26, 38, 84, 180. 93. Cf. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 74, 77, 213, 270, 272; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 89, 92, 252, 318, 319, 320. The reduction of jargon in Tsement was to a considerable extent prompted by Gor'kii's criticism of Gladkov for excessive use of local expressions. See Gladkov's letters to Gor'kii of 22 October and 20 November 1926, in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 (1963), 81, 84. 94. Cf. Vsevolod Ivanov, "Bronepoezd No. 14—69," Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1922): 115; Bronepoezd No. 14-69 (Moscow; Gosizdat, 1922), 65; "Bronepoezd No. 1469," Sopki: Partizanskie povesti (Moscow-Petrograd: Gosizdat, 1923), 84. The 1922 Gosizdat edition tells only of Peklevanov's arrival, without mentioning the leaflets. The 1923 edition has everything. The abbreviation "No." was later omitted from the title of Ivanov's novel and was never used in the title of its dramatized version. 95. Quoted in I. la. Sudakov, "O pervoi postanovke 'Bronepoezda' v Khudozhestvennom teatre," in Vsevolod Ivanov—pisatel' i c he love k: Vospominaniia so v re me nnikov (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1975), 156. 96. Cf. "Bronepoezd No. 14—69," Sopki (1923), 40-41; "Bronepoezd 14-69, Blokada; P'esy," Sobr. sock, vol. 6 (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1931), 50. 97. Sobr. sock, vol. 6 (1931), 19, 27-28, 33-34, 69. 98. Cf. "Tsement" Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (1925): 53; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 118. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 93; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 111. 99. Cf. F. Panferov, Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: Mosk. rab., 1929), 162-64; Bruski, 7th-10th eds., vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad; KhL, 1931), 160-61. The next 1931 edition (Moscow-Leningrad, KhL) [ rinted the 1929 text, but Kataev has been restored as the speaker in all editions since 1933. 100. Cf. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 304; 11th ed., Sobr. sock, vol. 2 (1928), 360.
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101. Cf. Artcm Veselyi, Strana rodnaia, 2d ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Nedra, 1927 [1926]), 198; Bol'shoi zapev: Reki ognennye, Dikoe serdtse, Strana rodnaia (Moscow-Leningrad; Gosizdat, 1927), 287; Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: MTP, 1932), 320; Rossiia (1932), 606 102. All factual information about the text published in Zhurnal krest'ianskoi molodezhi is taken from Viktor Gura, "Vechnozhivoe slovo: Novye materialy o M. Sholokhove," Voprosy literatury, no. 4 (1965): 7-10, and A. 1. Matsai, "Na puti bor'by za realizm i samobytnost': O rabote M. Sholokhova nad rasskazami 'Smertnyi vrag' i 'Aleshkino serdtse,'" Voprosy russkoi literatury , publ. University of L'vov, no. 2 (20) (1972): 63-65, 103. Cf, Aleshkino serdtse (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1925), 17-18; Donskie rasskazy (Moscow; Novaia Moskva, 1926), 82. 104. Cf. "Ivany: Iz knigi 'Konarmiia,'" Russkii sovremennik, no. 1 (1924): 152; Konarmiia (1926), 126. 105. Cf. Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (1924): 14; Konarmiia (1926), 110-11. Konarmiia, 4th ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930), 110; Konarmiia, 5th-6th eds., rev. (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1931), 113. 106. Cf. "Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia (Etiudy k romanu): 1. Gordost'. 2. Sud skoryi," Nedra, no. 13 (1928): 156; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 520; Rasskazy (Moscow: MTP, 1931), 61; Bol'shoi zapev, 3d ed. (1931), 12. 107. Cf. Bruski, vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1931), 336; 8th-llth eds., vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1931), 385. 108. See Chudakova, Zhizneopisanie, 355. 109. L. E. Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, O, med vospominanii (Ann Arbor, MI; Ardis, 1979), 121. 110. Cf. "Reki ognennye," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (1923), 13; Reki ognennye (1924), 26. Bol'shoi zapev, 2d ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1928), 235; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 26; Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 265; Rossiia (1932), 538. 111. Cf. Artem, Veselyi "Vol'nitsa. Bui. Krylo iz stokryl'ia. Prazdnichek," Lef, no. 1(5) (1924); 46; Rasskazy (Moscow: Ogonek, 1927), 17; "Partizany: Iz romana 'Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia,"' Novyi mir, no. 11 (1928): 35. 112. Cf. "Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Roman na dva kryla. Krylo pervoe. Zalp pervyi," Nedra, no. 10 (1927): 24; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 345; Rossiia (1932), 37. 113. Cf. V tupike (Berlin, 1923), 193; V iupike. Sestry (1990), 392-93. It could be that Veresaev did not want to see the sensitive dialogue published abroad, thus providing poitical ammunition for Russian emigres. The same may be true of a lengthy passage containing a character's sharp criticism of the Bolshevik rudeness in trying to dominate trade unions. The passage had remained unknown before its publication in the addendum to the novel's 1990 edition (393-95). 114. Cf. "Strana rodnaia." Bol'shoi zapev, 2d ed. (1928), 101, 257; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 136, 281. "Zhar-ptitsa," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1928): 27; "Partizany," Novyi mir, no. 11 (1928); 29; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 422, 466. 115. Cf. "Reki ognennye." Bol'shoi zapev, 2d ed. (1928), 26; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 50; Reki ognennye (Moscow: Nedra, 1930), 21; Rasskazy (1931), 93; Bol'shoi zapev, 3d ed. (1931), 57. 116. Cf, Rasskazy (Ogonek, 1927), 13, 14; "Partizany," Novyi mir, no. 11 (1928): 31-32. 117. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), 11. 118. Marx and Engels, Basic Writings, 17, 18, 20,
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119. V. I. Lenin, "Politicheskie zaxnetki" [1908], Polnoe sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 16 (Moscow; Politizdat, 1961), 417. 120. "Prikrashivanie burzhuazii levonarodnikami" [1914], Polnoe sobr. soch., vol. 25, 63. 121. Cf. "Peregnoi," Sibirskie ogni, no. 5 (1922): 49; Peregnoi: Chetyre povesti (1923), 198; Peregnoi: Povesti (Krug, 1923), 134. 122. Cf. "Bruski," Oktiabr', no. 8, (1929); 20; Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 2 (Moscow; Mosk. rab., 1930), 59. F. Panferov, Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: Mosk. rab., 1929), 114-15; 7th-10th eds. (Moscow-Leningrad; KhL, 1931), 114; (Moscow-Leningrad; KhL, 1931), 103-4; 20th ed. (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1933), 106. 123. Quoted in Konstantin Priima, "Sholokhov v Veshkakh," Sovetskii Kazakhstan, no. 5 (1955); 82. Sholokhov hated the title "Virgin Soil Upturned," calling it "horrible." See his letter to Evgeniia Levitskaia of 29 June 1932 in Lev Kolodnyi, "Istoriia odnogo posviashcheniia; Neizvestnaia perepiska M. Sholokhova," Znamia, no. 10 (1987); 191. 124. Platonov to Gor'kii, 24 July 1931, in A. Platonov, "Mne eto nuzhno ne dlia 'slavy'. . . (Pis'ma M. Gor'komu)," Voprosy literatury, no. 9 (1988): 177, 178. 125. For details see A. Fadeev, "Ob odnoi kulatskoi khronike," Krasnaia nov', no. 5-6 (1931): 206, 207, 209; "Ot redaktsii," Krasnaia nov', no. 5-6 (1931): 209. 126. See Platonov to Gor'kii, 24 July 1931, 23 September 1933, n. 2 to the letter of 13 July 1933, in Voprosy literatury, no. 9 (1988): 178, 181. 127. Cf. Nedra, no. 6 (1925): 74, 76; Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 294-95. 128. "Zhar-ptitsa," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1928): 10; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 398. "Tsement," Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1925): 85; 2d ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1926), 28. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 17, 19, 27, 53; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 22, 24, 34, 64. 129. See "Gor'kaia krov': Bui. Zalp pervyi," Ogonek, no. 11 (14 March 1926): unpaged; Gor'kaia krov': Rasslazy (Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar: Sevkavkniga, 1926), 18; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 332; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia, 3d ed., enl. (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1935), 36. 130. Cf. "Zhar-ptitsa," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1928): 8, 13; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 397, 403. "Otvagi zarevo," Krasnaia niva, no. 25, (17 June 1928); 3; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 533. 131. Cf. Donskie rasskazy, Roman-gazeta, no. 16 (1929), 7; Rasskazy,{192)1), 77; Lazorevaia step' (1931), 60; Rasskazy sovetskikh pisatelei, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1952), 641; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1956), 230. "The Foal" was included in volume 1 of the collection Sovetskii voennyi rasskaz (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1953), which is not available. 132. See A. Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov v Khudozhestvennom teatre (Moscow; Iskusstvo, 1986), 70. 133. "Vypiska iz protokola soveshchaniia Glavnogo repertuarnogo komiteta c predstaviteliami MKhAT 1-go ot 25 iiunia 1926 goda," in Neizdannyi Bulgakov: Teksty i materialy, ed. Ellendea Proffer (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1977), 81-82. 134. See Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 98; la. Lur'e and I. Serkin, "Ot 'Beloi gvardii' k 'Dniam Turbinykh,"' Russkaia literatura, no. 2 (1965): 200. In Smelianskii's book the text of the insertion is taken from Sudakov's unpublished memoir and it differs slightly from the text found in the printed version of the play. See Mikhail Bulgakov, P'esy (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1962), 89. See also Dni Turbinykh, in M. A. Bulgakov, P'esy 1920-kh godov, comp. and ed. A, A. Ninov (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1989), 143. This last source contains detailed information on the textual evolution and staging of The White Guard and Days of the Turbins (314—35). However, much of what it says about censorship of the plays has already been known.
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135. Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 99. Bulgakov, P'esy (1962), 89. 136. See Lunacharskii to V. V. Luzhskii, 12 October 1925, in Neizdannyi Bulgakov, 76; A. V. Lunacharskii, Sobr. soch. v vos'mi tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1964), 326, 331. 137. Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 143-44. The source is Olga Bokshanskaia, secretary to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a founder and director of MKhAT. 138. I. V. Stalin, "Otvet Bill'-Belotserkovskomu," Sochineniia, vol. 11 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1949), 328; Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 145. 139. See MKhAT's daily announcements in Pravda for September 1929 under the heading "Otdel zrelishch." Ellendea Proffer gives January 1929 and Smelianskii, March 1929 as the time Days of the Turbins was banned (The Early Plays of Mikhail Bulgakov, ed. Ellendea Proffer, tr. Carl R. Proffer and Ellendea Proffer [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1972], 6; Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1945). MKhAT annoucements in Pravda show that the play was regularly performed in January-June 1929, until the very end of the 1928-29 season. 140. A. Karaganov, "Posleslovie k publikatsii," Druzhba narodov, no. 8 (1987): 190. This is an afterword to the publication of Bulgakov's play Bagrovyi ostrov (The Crimson Island). 141. Ellendea Proffer, Bulgakov: Life and Work, 199-200. 142. "Glavrepertkom—direktsii MKhAT, 18 maia 1928," in Neizdannyi Bulgakov, 84; "O sniatii p'es s repertuara moskovskikh teatrov," Izvestiia, 30 June 1928. 143. "Protokol obsuzhdeniia p'esy M. A. Bulgakova 'Beg,' MKhAT, 9 oktiabria 1928 g.," in Neizdannyi Bulgakov, 86. 144. "MKhAT prinial k postanovke 'Beg' Bulgakova," Pravda, 11 October 1928. 145. "Sovet GRK o 'Bege' Bulgakova," Pravda, 24 October 1928. 146. See photocopies of these documents, along with Aleksandr Borshchagovskii's untitled article, under the heading "Iskusstvovedy iz PB," Literaturnaia gazeta, 29 July 1992. 147. P. Kerzhentsev, "P'esa 'Beg' Bulgakova," in "Iskusstvovedy iz PB," Literaturnaia gazeta, 29 July 1992. 148. "Otvet Bill'-Belotserkovskomu," 327. 149. Cf. Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1922); 79, 80, 83; Bronepoezd No. 14-69 (1922), 9-10, 11, 17. 150. Bronepoezd 14-69, Blokada: P'esy, Sobr. soch., vol. 6 (1931), 18-20, 21, 26, 33. Lazo and two other Bolshevik leaders were captured by the Japanese and handed over to the Whites in sacks. According to some Soviet sources, he was burned alive by the Whites; according to others, by the Japanese and the Whites. A detailed biography of Lazo states that the Japanese and the Whites took him out of the sack and tried to push him into the firebox of a locomotive. In view of this resistance, they hit him in the head and threw him into the firebox unconscious. The two other Bolsheviks were shot dead in the sacks and then burned (1. 1. Nemirov, Zhizn'—podvig [Kishinev; Kartia moldoveniaske, 1967], 367). 151. Cf. "Bruski," Oktiabr', no, 8 (1929): 23; Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1930), 61. Oktiabr', no. 10 (1929): 9-10; Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1930), 116. 152. Cf. Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1930), 20; Bruski, vol. 2 (KhL, 1931), 25; Bruski, 8th-1 1th eds., vol. 2 (KhL, 1931), 28. Bruski, vol. 2 (KhL, 1931), 291; 8th-llth eds., vol. 2 (1931), 334. 153. Cf. "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 5 (1928): 130, 134; Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Mosk. rab., 1929), 41, 46. 154. Strana rodnaia (1926), 78.
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155. Cf. "V derevne na maslenitse," Krasnaia nov', no. 4 (1921); 70, 71, 72, 74; "Strana rodnaia (Krylo romana)," Lef, no. 3(7) (1925): 64, 65, 66, 68. 156. Cf. Artem Veselyi, "Dikoe serdtse," Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1924); 52; Dikoe serdtse (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIP, 1926), 25. 157. Cf. Reki ognennye (Moscow: Ogonek, 1925), 6, 49, 53, 55; Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 143, 179, 183, 184. 158. Cf. "Gor'kaia krov'," Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 57, 58; "Vol'nitsa: Bui," Rasskazy (Ogonek, 1927), 16, 17. "Vol'nitsa: Bui," Pereval, no. 3 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1925), 190, 191; Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 48, 49; Rasskazy (Ogonek, 1927), 5, 7. 159. Cf. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 97, 232, 270, 273, 290; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 115, 275, 318, 322, 343. 160. Cf. Al. Fadeev, "Dvoe: Pervye glavy iz povesti 'Razgrom,'" Oktiabr', no. 7 (1925): 13; Razgrom (Leningrad; Priboi, 1927), 12. Razgrom (1927), 72, 125, 194; Razgrom. Protiv techeniia. Razliv, 3d ed., examined and revised by the author (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIP, 1928), 77, 130, 198. 161. Cf. "Reki ognennye," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (1923): 21; Reki ognennye (1924), 33; "Reki ognennye: Zyb'," Pereval, no. 1 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924), 162; Reki ognennye (1925), 48; Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 179. "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 9-10 (1928), 158; Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Mosk. rab., 1929), 435. 162. Cf. Razgrom (1927), 63; Razgrom, 3d ed. (1928), 69; Strana rodnaia, 2d ed. (1927 [1926]), 194; Bol'shoi zapev, 2d ed. (1928), 291. 163. Cf. Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 26; "Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia," Nedra, no. 10 (1927): 35. Mikh. Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, part 4 [vol. 2], "Pered Oktiabrem," i?c»man-gazeta, no. 17 (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1928), 43; Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Mosk. rab., 1929), 207. 164. Cf. "Reki ognennye," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (1923): 16; Reki ognennye (1924), 33. "Reki ognennye; Zyb'," Pereval, no. 1 (1924), 133; Reki ognennye (1925), 12. 165. Cf. "Dikoe serdtse. Vetroboi," Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1924): 52; Dikoe serdtse (Moscow-Leningrad: ZIP, 1926), 27. 166. Cf. "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 6 (1928): 120; Tikhii Don, Roman-gazeta, no. 17 (1928), 36. "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 3 (1928); 189; Tikhii Don, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: Mosk. rab., 1928), 332. 167. Cf. Razgrom (1927), 51; Razgrom, 3d ed, (1928), 57. O Kolchake, krapive i prochem ([1927]), 2; Lazorevaia step' (1931), 86; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (KhL, 1956), 307. 168. Cf. Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 15; "Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia," Nedra, no. 10 (1927): 10, Rossiia (1932), 15; Rossiia, 3d ed. (1935), 32. "Gor'kaia krov'," Ogonek, no. 11(14 March 1926), unpaged; Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 22. O Kolchake, krapive i prochem ([1927]), 6; Lazorevaia step' (1931), 88. 169. Cf. "Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia," Nedra, no. 10 (1927): 32; Artem Veselyi, Moi luchshie stranitsy (Khar'kov: Proletarii [1927]), 29; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 355; Rossiia (1932), 48. "Galin" ["Vecher"], Krasnaia nov', no. 3 (1925): 128; Konarmiia (1926), 99. 170. Cf. "Strana rodnaia," Lef, no. 3(7) (1925): 68; Strana rodnaia (1926), 171. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 8; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 11. Konarmiia, 4th ed. (1930), 112; Konarmiia, 5th-6th eds. (1931), 114. 171. Cf. "Reki ognennye," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (1923): 15; Reki ognennye (1924), 30. 172. Cf. "Vol'nitsa," Lef, no. 1(5) (1924): 43; "Vol'nitsa," Pereval, no. 3 (1925), 197. Tsement, 10th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1927), 154; 11th ed., Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1928), 183.
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173. Cf. Razgrom, (1927), 19, 62, 119; Razgrom, 3d ed. (1928), 23, 68, 123. 174. Cf. "Reki ognennye," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (1923): 18; Reki ognennye (1924), 35; Pereval, no. 1 (1924), 154. Bol'shoi zapev, 3d ed. (1931), 226; Rossiia (1932), 513. 175. Cf. "Ivany," Russkii sovremennik, no. 1 (1924): 153, 155; Konarmiia (1926), 127, 131. "Iz knigi 'Konarmiia': 'Syn Rabbi,"' Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (January-February 1924): 70; Konarmiia (1926), 167. O Kolchake, krapive i prochem ([1927]), 8; Lazorevaia step' (1931), 89. 176. Cf. "Strana rodnaia," Gor'kaia krov' (1926), 123; Strana rodnaia (1926), 37; Bol'shoi zapev, 2d ed. (1928), 159; Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 190. "Bruski," Oktiabr', no. 10 (1929); 34; Bruski, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1930), 142, 177. Sholokhov, "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 3 (1928): 191; Tikhii Don, vol. 1 (1928), 334. 178. Evgenii Zamiatin, Litsa (New York: Mezhdunarodnoe literaturnoe sodruzhestvo, 1967), 189. 179. Veresaev's statement in "Chto govoriat pisateli o postanovlenii TsK RKP," Zhurnalist, no. 8-9 (August-September 1925): 30. 180. L. Seifullina, "Loskutki myslei o literature," Sobr. sock, ed. Valer'ian Pravdukhin, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1926), 282. 181. "O kritikakh," Sibirskie ogni, no. 9 (1988): 144. According to an editorial footnote, this article was written in 1926. In 1958 Seifullina's sister submitted it to Sibirskie ogni. The article was rejected "because it touched upon the sensitive question of literary censorship" (143). 182. The play Virineia was based on Seifullina's novel of the same name. The theater, referred to only as Akdram, could be the Leningrad Academic Drama Theater, which staged Virineia in 1926. "Academic" is an honorary title conferred upon leading theaters since 1919. 183. Artem Veselyi, "Potokov rozhdenie," Literaturnaia gazeta, 26 December 1934; V. Semenov, "Doloi literatorov-sverkhchelovekov," Literaturnaia gazeta, 26 January 1935. Lenin's phrase comes from his article "Party Organization and Party Literature" (1905). It is debatable whether Lenin in this controversial article spoke of proletarian belles-lettres or, which is more likely, of the political literature of the Social-Democratic Party. 183. "Teatr—Muzyka—Kino," Izvestiia, 26 September 1928. 184. Chudakova, Zhizneopisanie, 295. 185. "Otvet Bill'-Belotserkovskomu," 329, 186. "Otdel zrelishch," Pravda, 1 June 1929. Assertions that the play was banned in March 1929 (Proffer, Mikhail Bulgakov, 91; B. V. Sokolov's commentary on "The Crimson Island," Druzhba narodov, no. 8 [1987]: 189) contradicts information printed in the Kamernyi Theater announcements. 187. "Pis'mo M. Bulgakova sovetskomu pravitel'stvu," Grani, no. 66 (1967): 158.
Chapter 2 1. I. V. Stalin "O proekte Konstitutsii Soiuza SSR: Doklad na Chrezvychainom VIII Vsesoiuznom s"ezde sovetov, 25 noiabria 1936 g.," Sochineniia, ed. Robert H. McNeal, vol. 1 [XIV] (Stanford, Calif.; The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1967), 142.
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2. Dmitrii Volkogonov, "Triumf i tragediia; Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina," Oktiabr', no. 12 (1988): 162. 3. See "Kolkhoznye zemli i kolkhoznye liudi: Rech' tov. N. Bukharina," Pravda, 16 February 1935. 4. See "V Sovnarkome Soiuza SSR i TsK VKP(b)," Pravda, 27 January 1936. 5. "Zamechaniia po povodu konspekta uchebnika po 'Istorii SSSR,'" Pravda, 27 January 1936. 6. Information about the Politburo Commission comes from Ivan Gronskii's letter to Aleksandr Ovcharenko dated 22 October 1972 in "K istorii partiinoi politiki v oblasti literatury (Perepiska I. Gronskogo i A. Ovcharenko)," Voprosy literatury, no. 2 (1989); 146-49. 7. "PisateP dolzhen byt' masterom svoego dela. Rech' M. I. Kalinina," Literaturnaia gazeta, 18 May 1934; "Programma raboty," Literaturnaia gazeta, 2 February 1934. More examples of this kind can be found in Herman Ermolaev, Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), 162, 163. 8. "Ustav Soiuza sovetskikh pisatelei," Pravda, 6 May 1934. 9. "Ob usilenii Kul'tpropa TsK rabotnikami i o perestroike Kul'tpropa v dukhe sistematicheskoi propagandy marksizma-leninizma," in Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: K piatnadtsatiletiiu OGlZa, 1919-1934, 4th ed., comp. L. G. Fogelevich ( Moscow: Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1934), 37; T. M. Goriaeva, "Zhurnalistika i tsenzura (Po materialam sovetskogo radioveshchaniia 20-30-kh godov. Istochnikovedcheskii aspekt),"Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (July-August 1990): 118. Goriaeva does not give the day on which the November 1933 resolution ("Ob Upolnomochennom SNK SSSR po okhrane voennoi tsenzury") was adopted. On Glavlit's transfer from the Narkompros to the Sovnarkom, see A. Blium, publ. and intro., "Protesty Vserossiiskogo Soiuza pisateley protiv tsenzurnogo terrora (19201921 gg.)," Voprosy literatury, no. 4 (1994): 279. 10. "Polozhenie o Glavnom upravlenii po kontroliu za zrelishchami i repertuarom pri NKProse RSFSR," in Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik, 5th ed., comp. L. G. Fogelevich (Moscow: Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1935), 121. 11. See "Komitet po delam iskusstv," TeatraTnaia entsiklopediia, vol. 3 (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1964), 166. 12. The source for the entire paragraph is Podpiska, a statement describing obligations of a plenipotentiary of the Western Obllit which he had to sign in 1934. In the microfilm of the Smolensk Archive, Podpiska is an item listed as T 87, Roll 28, WKP 230, p. 9. T 87 stands for one of the three large microfilm publications (rolls I through 69); the prefix WKP is an abbreviation of the German transliteration of Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia partiia (Ail-Union Communist Party), and 230 is the file number. 13. K. Batmanov, "Okhrana voennykh tain v pechati—vazhneishaia zadacha," Biulleten' Glavlita RSFSR i OVTs (dlia raionov), no. 8 (Moscow: Glavlit, 1934), 45; T 84, Roll 28, WKP 530, p. 189. OVTs stands for Department of Military Censorship. 14. More examples of censorship targets can be found in Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 364-71. 15. S. Vlasov, "Instruktivnoe pis'mo," T 87, Roll 28, WKP 230, pp. 58-59. 16. S. Vlasov, "Vsem nachal'nikam gorrailitov ZapoblaCi," T 87, Roll 28, WKP 230, p. 44. 17. Volin, "Vsem nach. Krai-Obllitov, Glavlitov A.S.S.R. Prikaz NO. 1323," T 87, Roll 29, WKP 237, p. 170,
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18. "Prikaz [number unclear on the xerox copy]. Po Glavnomu Upravleniiu po Delam Literatury i Izdatel'stv," T 87, Roll 28, WKP 230, p. 53. 19. "O poriadke proizvodstva i vypuska v svet proizvedenii pechati (Dlia predpriiatii poligraphicheskoi promyshlennosti). Pravila Glavlita ot 31 iiulia 1936 g.," in Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik, 6th ed., comp. L. G. Fogelevich (Moscow: Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1937), 139, 14143. 20. Excerpt from Sadchikov's report, n.d., in Tat'iana Goriaeva, publ., "Iz"iat' vsiakie upominaniia'; Uroki tsenzury," Moskovskie novosti, 9 August 1992. The addressee of the report is not given. Sadchikov served as Glavlit chief from 1938 to 1946. See "Literaturnyi front": Istoriia politicheskoi tsenzury 1932-1946 gg. Sbornik dokumentov, comp. D. L. Babichenko (Moscow: Entsiklopediia rossiiskikh dereven', 1994), 265. 21. For details see Herman Ermolaev, Mikhail Sholokhov and His Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 27-31. 22. Nikolai Ostrovskii, "Slovo k zarubezhnym druz'iam," Sochineniia (Kiev: Molod', 1954), 484; L. Anninskii, "'Smert' ne mozhet menia peresilit' . . . in Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas' stal' (Moscow: Kniga, 1984), 443. 23. V. Kashirskaia i T. Shubina, "Ego geroicheskii zhrebii: Sud'ba knigi v sud'bakh pokolenii," Literturnaia ucheba, no. 4 (July-August 1987): 12. 24. [T. Latysheva], "Neizvestnyi izvestnyi pisatel'," Knizhnoe obozrenie, 2 March 1990. 25. Cf. Artem Veselyi, "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: MTP, 1932), 141, 284-85, 302; Artem Veselyi, Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Roman v dva kryla. Fragmenty (Moscow: Fed., 1932), 411, 531, 562-64. 26. Cf. Povesti i rasskazy, 216; Rossiia, 465-67. 27. Cf. Povesti i rasskazy, 298, 302, 320; Rossiia, 559, 606. 28. Cf. Povesti i rasskazy, 306; Rossiia, 571-75. 29. Cf. Povesti i rasskazy, 299, 301; Rossia 557, 565. 30. Cf. Artem Veselyi, Bol'shoi zapev, 3d ed., enl. (Moscow: Nedra, 1931), 293; Rossiia, 607. 31. Cf. lu. Libedinskii, Komissary (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1933), 9; Komissary, 14th ed., rev. (Leningrad; KhL, 1935), 11. 32. Cf. lu. Libedinskii, Nedelia (Moscow: KhL, 1934), 5, 58, 96; Nedelia (Moscow: Detgiz, 1935), 5, 77, 126. 33. Cf. L. Seifullina, "Peregnoi," Rasskazy (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1936), 251. "Peregnoi," Izbrannoe (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1941), 176. 34. Cf. F. Panferov, Bruski, vol. 3 (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1933), 329; Bruski (Moscow: KhL, 1934), 336. 35. Cf. Bruski, 20th ed., vol. 2 (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1933), 187-88; Bruski (Moscow; KhL, 1934), 174. 36. Cf "Bruski," Oktiabr', no. 2 (1933); 8; Bruski, vol. 3, Roman-gazeta, no. 6 (Moscow; KhL, 1933), 25; (Sov. lit., 1933), 117; (1934), 110. 37. Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (Sov. lit., 1933), 231; (1934), 213, 38. Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (Sov. lit., 1933), 315, 319-20, 337-338, 340; (1934), 326, 332, 342, 343. 39 Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (Sov. lit., 1933), 343-44; (1934), 347. 40. Cf. "Bruski," Oktiabr', no. 3 (1937): 28, 85; Bruski, vol. 4 (Moscow: KhL, 1937), 134, 239. Oktiabr' no. 3 was signed for publication on 11 March 1937, and the above (earliest) separate edition of volume 4, on 22 July 1937.
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41. Vladimir Lakshin, "Ne priacha glaz," lunost', no. 2 (1989); 90. Lakshin bases his account of the poem's publication story on the notes he took in the sixties during his private conversations with Tvardovskii. 42. For details see lu. Burtin and R. Romanova, "Primechaniia," in A. T. Tvardovskii, Sobr. soch. v shesti tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1976), 415. 43. Cf. Bruski, 8th-llth eds., vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1931), 352, 39092; 20th ed. (1933), 318, 351. 44. Cf. Nikolai Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas' stal', part 2 (Moscow: MG, 1934), 145; Kak zakalialas' stal' [3d ed.] (Moscow: MG, 1935), 146. Since 1935, both parts of the novel have been published under one cover and Raia has become Taia to avoid her identification with Ostrovskii's wife, Raisa (Raia). The 1935 MG edition of How the Steel Was Tempered is designated here as the third because this is Ostrovskii's label, meaning the third Russian language printing of the novel. Since the novel went through many publications in different places, numbers indicating editions, which appeared on some title pages, were not always correct. 45. Cf. "Kak zakalialas' stal'," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 5 (1934): 24-25; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 146. 46. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 5 (1934): 32, 33-39, 40-48; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 153, 154, 155, 156. 47. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia, no, 5 (1934): 42-43; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 156. 48. Cf. Bruski, 8th-llth eds., vol. 2 (1931), 293; 20th ed. (1933), 351. M. Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, 3d ed., vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1931), 332; Tikhii Don (Moscow: KhL, 1933), 337. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 8-9 (1932); 85; Kak [part 1] (Moscow: MG, 1932), 138. 49. Fedor Gladkov, Tsement (Moscow: KhL, 1932), 274, 393; Tsement (MoscowLeningrad: KhL, 1933), 191, 274. 50. Cf. Tsement (1932), 274; (1933), 191; Tsement, newly reworked ed. (Moscow: KhL, 1934), 189; Tsement, newly rev. ed. (Moscow: Detgiz, 1935), 154-55; Tsement, newly rev. ed. (Saratov: Saratovskoe kraevoe izdat., 1935, 1936), 159; Tsement, newly rev. ed. (Minsk; Gosizdat Belorussii KhL, 1937), 166; Tsement (Moscow: KhL, 1941), 137. With a few exceptions, the Saratov and Minsk editions follow the text of the 1935 Detgiz edition. 51. Cf. Tsement (1937), 9, 32, 33-35, 40, 76, 301; (1941), 9, 27, 28, 29, 34, 63, 251. 52. Cf. Tsement (1937), 29; (1941), 24-25. 53. "O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii bol'shevizma: Pis'mo v redaktsiiu zhurnala 'Proletarskaia revoliutsiia,"' Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 6 (1931); 11. 54. Cf. Nikolai Ostrovskii, "Kak zakalialas' stal'; Neizvestnye stranitsy," Oktiabr', no. 9 (1964): 26-29; Molodaia gvardiia, no. 4 (1934): 67; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 102, 105. 55. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 9 (1964): 29-31; Molodaia gvardiia, no. 5 (1934); 4. 56. Cf. Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 5, 8, 12, 119, 120, 127; [3d ed.] (1935), 185, 186, 334, 335, 345. 57. Ostrovskii to K. D. Trofimov, 2 July 1935, Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow; MG, 1968), 316. Konstantin Trofimov was chief editor of the Ukrainian publishing house Young Bolshevik, which brought out the Ukrainian translation of How the Steel Was Tempered. 58. Cf. Mikh. Sholokhov, "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 7 (1932): 12, 15, 20; Tikhii Don, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1933), 328, 334, 376. 59. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 420; Tikhii Don [deluxe ed.], vol. 3 (Moscow; KhL, 1937), 409.
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60. Cf. L. Seifullina, Pravonarushiteli. Peregnoi, 2d ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930), 72; Peregnoi (Moscow: Fed., 1932), 45. lurii Libedinskii, Sochineniia, vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1931), 113, 171; Komissary (1933), 136, 207. lurii Libedinskii, Nedelia (Moscow; Fed., 1932), 50; (1934), 41. 61. Cf. Artem Veselyi, Piruiushchaia vesna (Khar'kov: Proletarii, 1929), 406-7; Rossiia (1932), 163; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Roman na dva kryla. Fragmenty (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1933), 119; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia, 3d ed., enl. (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1935), 174. lurii Libedinskii, Nedelia (Moscow-Leningrad: MG, 1932), 22; (Fed., 1932), 27. I. Babel', Konarmiia, 5th-6th eds., rev. (Moscow-Leningrad; KhL, 1931), 10, 70, 108, 123; Konarmiia, 7th-8th eds., enl. (Moscow: KhL, 1933), 13, 74, 114, 130. 62. Cf. Nedelia (MG, 1932), 69; (Fed., 1932), 80. Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 8; [3d ed.] (1935), 185. Komissary (1933), 79; 14th ed. (1935), 79. The deletion of The ABCs of Communism in How the Steel Was Tempered is part of a larger deletion encompassing the description of the 1921 Party and Komsomol conference in Kiev. 63. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 2 (1937): 19-20; Bruski (1937), 38. The second issue of Oktiabr' was approved for publication on 22 February 1937, a few days before Bukharin's arrest. 64. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 239; Tikhii Don [deluxe ed.] (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 232. 65. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 1 and 2 (Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat, 1939), 146, 230, 231; Tikhii Don (Moscow: KhL, 1941), 238, 282. 66. Cf. Kak, 36th ed. (Moscow; KhL, 1937), 186, 372, 421; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1938), 170, 339, 385. 67. Cf. Kak (Moscow-Leningrad: Detgiz, 1943), 139, 165, 278, 316; Kak (Moscow: MG, 1943), 180, 216, 361, 410. In one place the Detgiz edition removed Chaplin's name, probably because it immediately preceded Kosarev's. Cf. Kak, 36th ed. (1937), 372; (Detgiz, 1943), 277. 68. Cf. "Tikhii Don," vol. 3, Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 31, no. 2 (1932): 23; Tikhii Don (Moscow: KhL, 1933), 154-57, 226-28. Sholokhov to Gor'kii, 6 June 1931, in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1963), 696. 69. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, Deviatnadtsataia godina: Neopublikovannyi otryvok iz "Tikhogo Dona" (Moscow: Ogonek, 1930), 22; Oktiabr', no. 2 (1932): 5. 70. Cf. Seifullina, Rasskazy (1936), 177-78; Izbrannoe (1941), 112. Tsement (1937), 188-89, 210; (1941), 155, 174. In the 1948 Novosibirsk edition of Seifullina's Povesti i rasskazy, "Lawbreakers" lost only part of the story about the children listening to the shots fired by the Chekists. However, all of the pre-1968 editions of "Lawbreakers" endorsed the 1941 excision. 71. Cf. Tsement (1937), 68, 105, 210, 249-50; (1941), 56, 87, 174, 208. 72. Cf. Tsement (1937), 185; (1941), 153. 73. Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (Sov. lit., 1933), 150, 331; (1934), 143, 337. 74. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 2 (1937): 14-15, 16, no. 3 (1937): 123; (1937), 20, 23, 308. 75. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 2 (1937): 14. 16; (1937), 20, 23, 24. 76. Quoted from Stalin's note to Afinogenov, in A. Karaganov, Zhizn' dramaturga: Tvorcheskii put' Aleksandra Afinogenova (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1964), 306. See also V. A. Kumanev, "Korifei 'sovershenstvuet . . . '; Stalin v roli literaturnogo redaktora i kritika," Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 September 1989. 77. There is strong evidence, including the church records of his birth and baptism, that Stalin was born not on 21 December 1879, but on 18 December (6 December, Old Style) 1878. See I. Kitaev, L. Moshkov, and A. Chernov, "Kogda rodilsia I. V. Stalin," Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1990); 132-34.
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78. Quoted in A. Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov v Khudozhestvennom teatre, 2d ed., rev. and enl. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989), 370-71. 79. Quoted from the diary of Elena Bulgakova, in Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 2d ed., 377. 80. See Smelianskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, 2d ed. 375, 377. Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 252; Bruski (Moscow; KhL, 1947), 599. 81. For details see Lev Ozerov, "Vozvrashchenie," Knizhnoe obozrenie, 23 September 1988. The poem in question appeared untitled in Znamia (no. 7-8 [1943]: 111) and was later named after its first line. Ozerov erroneously refers to it as "Rossii" (To Russia," 1942), another patriotic poem by Sel'vinskii. 82. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat, 1941), 362; Tikhii Don (Leningrad: KhL, 1945), 171. 83. Cf. Tsement (1937), 106, 305; (1941), 88, 254, Komissary (1933), 114; 14th ed. (1935), 86. 84. Cf. Tsement (1934), 29; (Detgiz, 1935), 24. 85. Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Rostizdat, 1939), 173; (KhL, 1941), 252. 86. Cf. Komissary, Sochineniia, vol. 2 (1931), 138; (1933), 167. Komissary (1933), 158, 171; 14th ed. (1935), 174, 190. Tsement (1937), 180, 204; (1941), 148, 168. 87. Cf. Tsement (1941), 181-83; Izbrannoe (Moscow: KhL, 1944), 157; Tsement. Kliatva (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1947), 198-200; Tsement (Moscow: Pravda, 1947), 114-15; Izbrannoe (Moscow: KhL, 1948), 189. Mikhail Sholokhov, "Oni srazhalis' za Rodinu," Pravda, 6 May 1943; Oni srazhahs' z.a Rodinu (Moscow; Voenizdat, 1946), 20. The comparison involving the allies was restored either in the late forties (the 1947-49 reprintings could not be obtained) or, more likely, in 1959, when the publication of the novel's chapters was resumed after a ten-year interruption. 88. Cf. Nedelia (1934), 87; Nedelia (Detgiz, 1935), 114. Tikhii Don, vols. 3-4 (Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat, 1941), 5-6, 14; Tikhii Don (1945), 329, 333. 89. Ostrovskii to K. D. Trofimov, 26 July 1935, in Sochineniia, vol. 3 (1968), 320. Cf. Kak [3d ed.] (1935), 110; Kak, Roman-gazeta, no. 10-11 (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1935), 55. 90. Cf. Vsevolod Ivanov, Partizanskie povesti (Leningrad; Izdat. pisatelei v Leningrade, 1932), 57; Povesti velikikh let (Moscow: Fed., 1932), 72; Partizanskie povesti (Moscow: KhL, 1934), 52. Tsement (1934), 54, 55; (Detgiz, 1935), 44, 45. 91. Cf. Nedelia (MG, 1932), 39; (Fed., 1932), 47-48; (1934), 37; (Detgiz, 1935), 48; 9th ed. (Leningrad: KhL, 1935), 40. 92. Cf. Komissary (1933), 220, 259, 269; 14th ed. (1935), 160, 250, 261. 93. Cf. Nedelia (1934), 53, 55; (Detgiz, 1935), 69, 72. 94. Cf. Tsement (1937), 46, 50, 66; (1941), 39, 41, 54. 95. Cf. Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 137; [3d ed.] (1935), 357. Ostrovskii to K. D, Trofimov, 25 November 1934, in Sochineniia, vol. 3 (1968), 257. 96. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 2 (1934): 33, no. 5 (1934): 18, 32; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 35, 137, 153. 97. Cf. "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 175; Rossiia (1932), 422. Komissary (1933), 142-43; 14th ed. (1935), 146. Tsement (1937), 8, 37-38, 220; (1941), 8, 31, 182. 98. Gor'kii to Afinogenov, after 12 April 1933, in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 (1963), 32-33. For all points concerning Stalin's revision of The Lie, see Kumanev, "Korifei," Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 September 1989; Karaganov, Zhizn' dramaturga, 297-98, 300-301, 316. 99. Kumanev, "Korifei"; Karaganov, Zhizn' dramaturga, 306-39, 334-35.
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100. Karaganov, Zhizn' dramaturga, 334; note 1 to Gor'kii's letter to Afinogenov, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 70 (1963), 34. 101. Cf. Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 7, 8, 9-10, 11, 101, 103; [3d ed.] (1935), 185, 310, 312. 102. Ostrovskii to N. 1. Rodionov, 5 April 1935 and to Trofimov, 2 July 1935, in Sochineniia, vol. 3 (1968), 283. Nikolai Rodionov headed the Literary Section in the publishing house Young Guard. 103. Cf. Tikhii Don, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1931), 366-71, 375, 381; (1933), 272, 375, 381. 104. Sholokhov to A. Mitrofanov, 26 September 1932, in "Tikhii Don": Uroki romana, ed. L. P. Logashova (Rostov-on-Don; Rostizdat, 1979), 122. 105. Cf. Mikh, Sholokhov, "Tikhii Don': Otryvki iz 6-i chasti romana," Na pod"eme, no. 6 (1930): 16; Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 38-39. 106. Cf. "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 2 (1932): 15; vol. 3 (1933), 195. "Peregnoi," Rasskazy (Sov. pis., 1936), 209, 240, 243; Izbrannoe (1941), 141, 171, 173. Bruski, vol. 3 (Sov. lit, 1933), 312; (1934), 323. 107. Cf, Tsement (1937), 28, 29, 30, 285; (1941), 23, 24, 26, 239. 108. Cf. Tikhii Don, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1931), 308-9; (1933), 313; 109. Cf. Komissary (1933), 30, 41, 265; 14th ed. (1935), 33, 43, 265. Bruski, vol. 3, Roman-gazeta, no. 6 (1933), 12; (Sov. lit., 1933), 56; (1934), 49. Tsement (1937), 157, 159-64 passim; (1941), 130-36 passim. 110. Cf. Rossita (1933), 259; 3d ed. (1935), 385. Komissary (1933), 34, 225; 14th ed. (1935), 36, 111. 111. Cf. "Tikhii Don," Na pod"eme, no. 6 (1930): 14; Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 37. Tsement (1933), 140; (1934), 143. Tsement (1937), 98; (1941), 81. 112. Cf. Bruski (Sov. lit., 1933), 178; (1934), 166. Rossna (1933), 120, 158, 160; 3d ed. (1935), 175, 335, 336. 113. Cf. "Vziatie Armavira," BoTshoi zapev, 3d ed. (1931), 30; Rossiia (1932), 240. Rossiia (1933), 251; 3d ed. (1935), 211. 114. Cf. "Nesostoiavshiisia of'ezd: Otryvok iz 6-i chasti romana M. Sholokhova Tikhii Don,'" Ogonek, no. 15 (30 May 1930); 12; Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 6. Rossiia (1933), 125; 3d ed. (1935), 179. 115. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 8-9 (1932): 89; Kak, part 1 (MG, 1932), 145. Tikhii Don, vols. 3-4 (Rostizdat, 1941), 307, 385; (1945), 475, 516. 116. Cf. "Tri otryvka: Otryvki iz romana Mikh. Sholokhova," 30 dnei, no.8 (1930): 26; Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 19. 117. "Ob antisemitizme; Otvet na zapros Evreiskogo telegrafnogo agentsva iz Ameriki," Sochineniia, vol. 13 (Moscow; Politizdat, 1951), 28. 118. Cf. Komissary, Sochineniia, vol. 2 (1931), 158; (1933), 191. "Peregnoi," Rasskazy (Sov. pis., 1936), 213; Izbrannoe (1941), 144. Babel', Konarmiia, 7th8th eds. (1933), 88; Rasskazy (Moscow: Khl, 1936), 91. 119. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 5 (1934): 26; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 147, "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 302; Rossiia (1932), 606; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Fragment, 4th ed., enl. (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 559. "Peregnoi," Rasskazy (Sov. pis., 1936), 210; Izbrannoe (1941), 142. 120. Cf. Bruski, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: KhL, 1931), 218; 20th ed. (1933), 221. "Pravonarushiteli," Izbrannoe (1941), 220. 121. Cf. Tikhii Don, 3d ed., vol. 1 (1931), 151; (1933), 142. Tikhii Don, 3d ed., vol. 2 (1931), 48, 124, 145, 203; (1933), 48, 128, 150, 209. 122. Ostrovskii to A. I. Podgaetskaia, 27 May 1934, in Sochineniia, vol. 3 (1968), 224-25. Antonina Podgaetskaia worked in the public relations sector of the publishing house Young Guard.
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123. Cf. Kak, part 1 (MG, 1932), 96. 140, 150; [3d ed.] (1935), pp. 129-30, 148, 162-63. 124. Cf. Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 348; Rossiia (1932), 41. Rasskazy (Moscow: MTP, 1931), 200, 203; Rossiia (1932), 296, 300. Rossiia (1933), 84, 96, 137, 248; 3d ed. (1935), 136, 142, 191, 273. Tikhii Don, 3d ed., vol. 1 (1931), 151; (1933), 142. 125. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 3-4 (Rostizdat, 1941), 111, 517; (1945), 380, 579. 126. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 3-4 (Rostizdat, 1941), 612; (1945), 625. 127. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Rostizdat, 1941), 133, 385-87; (1945), 59, 181. Tsement (1941), 48, 50; Izbrannoe (1944), 40, 41; Tsement (Moscow: KhL, 1967), 61, 62. 128. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 2 (1934): 28, no. 4 (1934): 54; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 28, 78. Bruski, vol. 3 (Sov. lit., 1933), 307; (1934), 317. 129. Cf. Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 74, 104, 105; [3d ed.] (1935), 72, 109, 110. "Tikhii Don," vol. 3, Oktiabr', no. 2 (1932): 20; (1933), 206. 130. Cf. "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 135, 148; Rossiia (1932), 483, 486. Kak, part 1 (MG, 1932), 16; [3d ed.] (1935), 14. Rossiia (1933), 70; 3d ed. (1935), 117, 119. 131. Cf. Tsement (1933), 31; (1934), 35. Rossiia (1933), 31; [3d ed.] (1935), 55. 132. Vs. Surganov, "Slovo o Fedore Panferove: K 90-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia," Moskva, no. 10 (1986): 194; P. I. Pluksh, Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsenskii: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo (Moscow; Prosveshchenie, 1968), 173. 133. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Rostizdat, 1941), 438-39; (1945), 205. 134. Cf. Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 393; Rossiia (1932), 147, 148, Rossiia (1933), 112, 116, 132; [3d ed.] (1935), 168, 171, 187. 135. Cf. "Tikhii Don," vol. 3, Oktiabr', no. 2 (1929): 94; (1933), 39. Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Rostizdat, 1941), 537, 540, 557, 560, 562, 563; (1945), 254, 255, 263, 264, 265, 266. 136. Cf. "Tikhii Don," Na pod"eme, no. 6 (1930): 16; Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 38; Rossiia (1933), 42; 3d ed. (1935), 76. 137. Cf. Rossiia (1933), 248, 249; 3d ed. (1935), 274. Tsement (1937), 196; (1941), 162. 138. Cf. Tsement (1933), 191; (1934), 190. Kak, part 1 (MG, 1932), 173; [3d ed.] (1935), 181. 139. Cf. Deviatnadtsataia godina (1930), 18, 27, 28; Oktiabr', no. 2 (1932): 4, 8. 140. Cf. Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 344; Rossiia (1932), 36. "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 169; Rossiia (1932), 416. 141. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 3 [2d ed.] (Moscow: KhL, 1933), 339; Tikhii Don (Moscow: KhL, 1935), 357. 142. Cf, Rossiia (1933), 7, 212, 214; 3d ed. (1935), 24, 226, 228. 143. Cf. Rossiia (1933), 24, 25, 202, 258; 3d ed. (1935), 46, 47, 215, 284. 144. Cf. "Dikoe serdtse," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 107; Rossiia, 3d ed. (1935), 428. In 1935 "Dikoe serdtse" ("The Wild Heart") was incorporated into Russia Washed in Blood as an "etude." 145. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 3 (1932): 15; Tikhii Don, vol. 3 (1933), 286. Tikhii Don, vol. 3 (1933), 333; [2d ed.] (1933), 360. 146. Cf. Podniataia tselina (Leningrad: KhL, 1934), 21; Podniataia tselina, ed. E. Bolotina (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1934), 20; ed. F. Levin (Moscow: Sov. lit., 1934), 21; (Moscow; KhL, 1935), 20. Rossiia (1933), 367; 3d ed. (1935), 530. 147. Razgrom (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1935), 27; (Moscow: Detgiz, 1935), 18. 148. Cf. Rossiia (1933), 13, 53; 3d ed. (1935), 32, 92. "Dikoe serdtse," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 109; Rossiia, 3d ed. (1935), 429. Tikhii Don, vol. 1 (Moscow:
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KhL, 1934), 521; vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1935), 361; vol. 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1935), 287; vol. 2 (1935), 249; vol. 3 (1935), 252. 149. Cf. "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 177, 178, 179; Rossiia (1932), 423, 424. Piruiushchaia vesna (1929), 355, 447; Rossiia (1932), 48, 187. "Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Glavy iz romana. Osada Ekaterinodara, Vziatie Armavira," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1929); 7; Rossiia (1932), 307. 150. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 5 (1934); 34; Kak, part 2 (MG, 1934), 154. Bruski, vol. 2 (1934), 254-56; 21st ed. (Moscow: KhL, 1935), 238. 151. Cf. Tsement (1932), 199, 426; (1933), 140, 296. Tsement (1933), 139, 141; (1934), 141-42, 143-44. Tsement (1934), 141, 143-44; (Detgiz, 1935), 117. Tsement (1937), 242, 291; (1941), 201, 244. 152. Cf. Tsement (1934), 158; (Detgiz, 1935), 128; Tsement (1937), 148-49; (1941), 123. 153. Cf. Komissary (1933), 88, 143, 145, 261; 14th ed. (1935), 80, 146, 147, 265. 154. Cf. "Tikhii Don," Oktiabr', no. 1 (1932): 27; vol. 3 (1933), 145. Rossiia (1933), 82; 3d ed. (1935), 134. Komissary (1933), 93; 14th ed. (1935), 111. 155. Cf. Tsement (1934), 85; (Detgiz, 1935), 70. Tsement (1937), 11, 142; (1941), 10, 118. Molodaia gvardiia, no. 5 (1932): 42; Kak, part 1 (MG, 1932), 69. "Bronepoezd No. 14-69," Povesti velikikh let (1932), 12; Partizanskie povesti (1934), 8. Tsement (1934), 28; (Detgiz, 1935), 22. 156. Cf. Bruski, 8th-llth eds., vol. 2 (1931), 398; 20th ed. (1933), 355. Rossiia (1933), 132, 175; 3d ed. (1935), 187, 359. Tsement (1933), 98; (1934), 102. Tsement (1937), 88, 160, 161; (1941), 73, 132, 133. 157. Cf. Tsement (1933), 141, 111', (1934), 143, 273. Tsement (1934), 274; (Detgiz, 1935), 225. Tsement (1937), 125; (1941), 104. 158. Cf. Tsement (1933), 226; (1934), 222. Tsement (1937), 141; (1941), 117. "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 173; Rossiia (1932), 421. Rossiia (1933), 249; 3d ed. (1935), 275, 159. Cf. Tsement (1937), 127; (1941), 105. "Strana rodnaia," Povesti i rasskazy (1932), 222; Rossiia (1932), 476. Rossiia (1933), 14; 3d ed. (1935), 34. 160. Notes of Evgeniia Levitskaia, n.d., and Sholokhov to Levitskaia, 2 April 1930, in Lev Kolodnyi, "Istoriia odnogo posviashcheniia: Neizvestnaia perepiska M, Sholokhova," Znamia, no. 10 (1987); 180, 187. 161. For details see Roi A. Medvedev, Problems in the Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov, tr. A. D. P. Briggs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 129; Ermolaev, Mikhail Sholokhov, 39. 162. Quoted from the letter to Pavel Medvedev, 29 November 1935, in L. N, Smirnova, "Kak sozdavalsia 'Tsement,'" Tekstologiia proizvedenii sovetskoi literatury: Voprosy tekstologii, no. 4 (Moscow: Nauka, 1967), 189. 163. Smirnova, "Kak sozdavalsia 'Tsement,'" 190. 164. Ivanov to Gor'kii, end 1935-beginning 1936, in "Iz perepiski A. M. Gor'kogo s Vsevolodom Ivanovym (Publikatsiia Arkhiva A. M. Gor'kogo)," Novyi mir, no, 11 (1965): 256. 165. Entry of 9 October 1940, Vs. Ivanov, Perepiska s A. M. Gor'kim: Iz dnevnikov i zapisnykh knizhek, 2d ed., enl. (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1985), 315. 166. Ivanov, Perepiska, 315. The script was based on Ivanov's novel Parkhomenko (1939), which went through several revisions.
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Chapter 3 1. See "O zhurnalakh 'Zvezda' i 'Leningrad'; Iz postanovleniia TsK VKP(b) ot 14 avgusta 1946 g.," Kul'lura i zhizn', 20 August 1946. 2. "Doklad t. Zhdanova o zhurnalakh 'Zvezda' i 'Leningrad,'" Pravda, 21 September 1946. 3. For details see V. V. Vishnevskii's account of the 9 August meeting, in Benedikt Samov and Elena Chukovskaia, "Sluchai Zoshchenko (Povest' v pis'makh i dokumentakh s prologom i epilogom, 1946-1958)," lunost', no. 8 (1988): 70-71; Denis Babichenko, "'Povest' prikazano rugat' . . . ' : Politicheskaia tsenzura protiv Mikhaila Zoshchenko," Kommunist, no. 13 (September 1990); 72-75. 4. For details see "Stalin, Molotov i Zhdanov o 2-i serii fil'ma 'Ivan Groznyi'; Zapis' Sergeia Eizenshteina i Nikolaia Cherkasova," Moskovskie novosti, 7 August 1988; Konstantin Simonov, "Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia (Razmyshleniia o I. V. Staline)," Znamia, no. 3 (1988); 59, 61. Stalin's views on Ivan the Terrible's attitude toward foreigners are challenged in the historian Vladimir Kobrin's article "Vozhd' i tsar'" {Moskovskie novosti, 7 August 1988). 5. "Ob odnoi antipatrioticheskoi gruppe teatral'nykh kritikov," Pravda, 28 January 1949. The term "rootless cosmopolitans" was used earlier in the orientalist L. Klimovich's article "Protiv kosmopolitanizma v literaturovedenii" {Pravda, 11 January 1949). 6. For details on the linguistic controversy see Arn. Chikobava, "O nekotorykh voprosakh sovetskogo iazykoznaniia," Pravda, 9 May 1950; I. Stalin, Marksizm i voprosy iazykoznaniia (Moscow; Pravda, 1950); M. V. Gorbanevskii, V nachale bylo slovo . . . : Maloizvestnye stranitsy istorii sovetskoi lingvistiki (Moscow: Izdat. Universiteta druzhby narodov, 1991), 15-21, 111-37. 7. V nachale, 148-52. 8. Boris I. Gorokhoff, Publishing in the U.S.S.R. ([Bloomington]: Indiana University Press, 1959), 80. 9. Serov to Omel'chenko, 18 April 1947, in Tsenzura inostrannykh knig v Rossiiskoi imperii i Sovetskom Soiuze. Katalog vystavki (Prilozhenie), comp. Tat'iana Goriaeva [Moscow, 1993], 8; Omel'chenko to Suslov, 20 February 1950, in Tsenzura, 16-17. 10. "Prikaz Upolnomochennogo Soveta Ministrov SSSR po okhrane voennykh i gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati. 26 avgusta 1949 g. No. 70," in Tat'iana Goriaeva, publ., "Tz"iat' vsiakie upominaniia'; Uroki tsenzury," Moskovskie novosti, 9 August 1992. 11 . On this and other points concerning the historicity of Chapygin's Razin see Leon I. Twarog, "Changing Patterns of a Revolutionary Hero," The Slavonic and East European Review (London) 32, no. 79 (June 1954); 368-74. 12. 1. Lezhnev, "Za chistotu iazyka (Novaia redaktsiia 'Podniatoi tseliny')," Zvezda, no. 6 (1953); 157. 13. L. lakimenko, "Novoe izdanie 'Tikhogo Dona,"' Literaturnaia gazeta, 10 August 1954; I. Lezhnev, "O novoi redaktsii 'Tikhogo Dona,"' Zvezda, no. 12 (1954): 169. 14. Cf. A, Chapygin, Razin Stepan (Leningrad: KhL, 1939), 98; Razin Stepan (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1948), 96. 15. Cf, Razin Stepan, 10th ed. (Moscow; Sov. pis., 1938), 113-16, 189-91; (1948), 199, 219. Both passages are also missing from the abridged 1936 edition of the novel (Moscow, Zhurnal'no-gazetnoe ob"edinenie, 132, 200) and from the 1939 edition (124, 205). In the latter case the reasons for the deletions were probably puritanical. However, the censors of the 1948 edition made their corrections not in the
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1939 text of the novel, but, most likely, in its 1931 edition (Moscow-Leningrad, KhL), which, incidentally, has Stepan Razin (instead of Razin Stepan) on its title page. 16. Cf. Razin (1939), 31, 142; (1948), 31, 138. 17. Cf. Razin (1939), 32-33, 64-65, 534-35; (1948), 32, 63, 524. These and some other deletions in the 1948 edition are also discussed by Professor Twarog ("Changing Patterns," 375-79). However, Twarog does not discuss revisions made by the censors of the 1950 edition. 18. References in the text are made to page numbers of the 1948 and the 1950 (Moscow, KhL) editions of Stepan Razin. This method will be applied when two editions of the same work are compared several times in a row or frequently. 19. Cf. Sevastopol'skaia strada [3 vols. in three books], part 1 (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1948), 239, epilogue, 640; Sevastopol'skaia strada [3 vols. in two books] (Moscow; KhL, 1948), 196, 197, epilogue, 690. The Ordeal of Sevastopol' was printed in varying formats: all three volumes in one, two, or three books. The word "volume" was either printed or omitted; but in every publication the novel was divided into nine parts plus an epilogue. Therefore, my references will indicate parts and epilogue. In the text, the number of a part will be followed by a colon and page number, while "epilogue" will be abbreviated to "e." 20. Other deleted passages about the democratization of Europe and British freedom, the Constitution, and political tolerance for foreign revolutionaries are quoted in Maurice Friedberg, "New Editions of Soviet Belles-Lettres: A Study in Politics and Palimpsets," American Slavic and East European Review 13, no.l (February 1954): 80-81. Professor Friedberg compares the 1942 and the 1950 editions of The Ordeal of Sevastopol'. 21. For details see Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London; University of California Press, 1959), 251-52, 261-65. 22. Cf. Sevastopol'skaia strada [3 vols. in two books], part 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1949), 205; Sevastopol'skaia strada [3 vols. in three books] (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1950), 273. The 1948 and 1949 KhL editions of the novel are identical. Subsequent references to the 1949 and 1950 editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 23. Cf. Valentin Kataev, Za vlast' Sovetov (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1949), 23, 154; Za vlast' Sovetov, rev. ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Detgiz, 1951), 9, 186. 24. Cf. Vsevolod Ivanov, Izbrannoe (Moscow: KhL, 1948), 50; Parkhomenko. Bronepoezd 14-69 (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1948), 605-6. These collections were approved for publication on 10 and 16 February, respectively. The same changes were made in the 1947 and 1948 editions of the play. Cf. Bronepoezd 14-69 (MoscowLeningrad; Iskusstvo, 1940), 34; P'esy (Moscow; Pravda, 1947), 89; Sovetskaia dramaturgiia, 1917-1947, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad; Iskusstvo, 1948), 178. The last two titles are collections of plays by different Soviet authors. Though the publication date of the Pravda collection is 1947, it was signed for publication on 30 January 1948. The corresponding date for the 1948 Iskusstvo collection is 21 November 1947. 25. Cf. Sovetskaia dramaturgiia, 1917-1947, vol. 1 (1948), 185; Bronepoezd 14-69, new ed. (Moscow: Goskul'tprosvetizdat, 1952), 55. This edition precedes and is almost identical to Bronepoezd 14-69, new ed. (Moscow; Iskusstvo, 1952). 26. Cf, Sovetskaia dramaturgiia, 1917-1947, vol. 1 (1948), 185, 190; Bronepoezd 14-69, new ed. (Goskul'tprosvetizdat, 1952), 55, 61. 27. Cf. L. N. Seifullina, Izbrannoe (Moscow; Sov. pis,, 1948), 154; Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow; KhL, 1953), 189-90. References to American aid were left intact
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in the 1948 Novosibirsk edition of Povesti i rasskazy, which came out later than Izbrannoe. 28. Cf. A. Fadeev, Molodaia gvardiia (Moscow: MG, 1946), 401; Molodaia gvardiia, rev. and enl. ed. (Moscow; MG, 1951), 553. Molodaiia gvardiia, rev. and enl. ed. (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1953), 551; (Moscow: KhL, 1954), 531. There are at least six 1947 editions of The Young Guard based on its 1946 MG text. I use the 1946 edition in comparisons with the revised 1951 version. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 29. Cf. "Za vlast' Sovetov," Novyi mir, no. 7 (1949); 46; Za vlast' Sovetov (1949), 49. Za vlast' Sovetov (1949), 33, 34, 79, 82, 106, 131, 629; (1951), 17, 50, 52, 71, 94, 575. 30. Cf. "Studenty," Novyi mir, no. 10 (1950): 102-3; Studenty (Moscow: MG, 1951), 81-82. 31. Cf. Novyi mir, no. 11 (1950): 62; Studenty (Moscow; MG, 1951, 1953), 223-24; Yuri Trifonov, Students, tr. Ivy Litvinova and Margaret Wettlin (Moscow; FLPH, 1953), 266-67. The 1951 and 1953 MG editions are identical. The 1953 MG edition came out about three months later than the 1953 FLPH edition. 32. Cf. Studenty (1953), 48, 82, 209; Students, 67, 106, 251. 33. Cf. Sevastopol'skaia strada (Sov. pis., 1948), part 1, 19, 177, part 7, 78, epilogue, 634, 640; (KhL, 1948), part 1, 16, 145, part 7, 220, epilogue, 685, 689. 34. Cf. Sevastopol'skaia strada (Sov. pis., 1948), part 1, 47, part 3, 546, part 6, 505; (KhL, 1948), part 1, 39, part 3, 454, part 6, 103. 35. Crimean Greeks were also deported. Part of the Tartar population was resettled during the Crimean War. 36. Cf. Bruski, vol. 1 (Moscow: Khl, 1934), 50; Bruski (Moscow; Khl, 1947), 36. Mikh. Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Moscow: KhL, 1949), 476; Tikhii Don, rev. ed., vol. 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1953), 131. In the 1949 edition of The Quiet Don, four volumes are evenly divided between two books. The 1953 edition consists of four separate volumes. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by volume and page numbers. 37. Cf. Novyi mir, no. 7 (1949): 60; (1949): 142. 38. Cf. Za vlast' Sovetov (1949), 339, 587; (1951), 266, 537. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. In Fadeev's Young Guard the words "the SS units" were substituted for "Germans" in the author's statement that the retreating Germans looted and drove away civilians and blew up coal mines, factories, and big buildings ([1946], 467; [1951], 688). 39. Cf. Razin (1939), 350, 382-86; (1948), 344, 376. 40. Cf. A. Fadeev, Razgrom (Moscow: KhL, 1949), 3, 34, 38; Razgrom (Moscow: KhL, 1951), 5, 35, 39. 41. Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Anton Chekhov (New York: Knopf, 1967), xv-xvi. Hingley is mistaken in saying that Soviet official policy of the time was to remove the word "yid" and its derivatives "from published correspondence (but not from belles-lettres)." 42. For details see Simonov, "Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia," Znamia, no. 4 (1988): 85, 91-93. 43. Cf. M. Sholokhov, Podniataia tselina (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1952), 35, 52; Podniataia tselina, rev. ed, (Moscow: KhL, 1952), 33, 49. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 44. Bruski, 21st ed., vol. 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1935), 226; Bruski (Moscow: KhL, 1947), 375. Bruski, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 111-12; (1947), 504-5. The 1947 edition has all four volumes under one cover. 45. Cf, L. N. Seifullina, Izbrannoe (1948), 111; Povesti i rasskazy (1953), 147.
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46. Cf. F. Panferov, Bruski, vol. 4 (Moscow: KhL, 1937), 337, 338; (1947), 907, 908. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. The above, 1937, edition of vol. 4 of Bruski, signed for publication on 11 October 1937, was preceded by the 1937 KhL {Roman-gazeta) and the 1937 KhL editions of the same volume, both of which were signed for publication in July of that year. All three editions are nearly identical. 47. For details see 1. G. Starinov, "Front bez komandovaniia (o rukovodstve partizanskim dvizheniem v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny)," Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (May-June 1990): 116-18. 48. For details see L, M. Spirin, "Iz istorii RKP(b) v gody grazhdanskoi voiny i interventsii," Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 3 (1989): 47-50. Stalin's memorandum might have been intentionally misdated, to show his military foresight. Actually, it was written a month later, on 15 November 1919 (Spirin, 50, n. 44). 49. Mikhail Bubennov, "O novom romane Valentina Kataeva 'Za vlast' Sovetov,'" Pravda, 16 January 1950. 50. la. Tavrov, "'Za vlast' Sovetov,"' Komsomol'skaia pravda, 15 September 1949; M. Kuznetsov, "Roman o sovetskikh patriotakh," Pravda, 8 January 1950. 51. Actually, Koshevoi was the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the Young Guard and a member of its staff. He was elected commissar of Molot (The Hammer), a group of Young Guards who were supposed to join a partisan detachment. See Molodaia gvardiia: Sbornik dokumentov i vospominanii o geroicheskoi bor'be podpol'shchikov Krasnodona (Kiev: Molod', 1961), 76, 79. 52. V. Boborykin, "K istorii sozdaniia romana A. A. Fadeeva 'Molodaia gvardiia,'" in A. A. Fadeev, Molodaia gvardiia (Moscow: KhL, 1990), 8. 53. Molodaia gvardiia: Sbornik dokumentov, 70-78. Turkenich's leadership of the Young Guard was minimized both in Fadeev's novel and in the Soviet press, because he spent some time in German captivity before joining the underground. Killed in action in 1944, he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union only in 1990, forty-seven years later than did Koshevoi and four other members of the Young Guard. 54. Cf. L. Seifullina, Rasskazy (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1936), 130; Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: KhL, 1953), 75-76. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 55. Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (Moscow; KhL, 1935), 332-33; (1947), 654. 56. Cf. Lidiia Seifullina, Izbrannoe (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1941), 170-71; Izbrannoe (1948), 124. 57. Cf. Izbrannoe (1941), 114; (1948), 96. Izbrannoe (1948), 108, 115; Povesti i rasskazy (1953), 145, 151. 58. Bruski, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL. 1934), 130, 269-70, 271; (1947), 91, 181. 59. For additional examples of censorial rectification of Gavrik see Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Literature Under Communism: The Literary Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the End of World War II to the Death of Stalin ([Bloomington]: Indiana University Press, 1960), 72. 60. Stalin to Kon, I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 12 (Moscow-Leningrad; Partizdat, 1949), 112. 61. The text of the speech was borrowed from A. A. Frenkel', Orly revoliutsii (Rostov-on-Don: GIZ, 1920), one of Sholokhov's principal sources for the portrayal of Podtelkov. Frenkel' cites the speech as an example of Podtelkov's addresses given anywhere, not necessarily in Kamenskaia (34). In Frenkel's rendition, the speech has a bookish style, atypical of Podtelkov's racy language in The Quiet Don. 62. Cf. Ivanov, Izbrannoe (1948), 50; Parkhomenko. Bronepoezd 14-69 (1948), 606. Seifullina, Izbrannoe (1948), 170; Povesti i rasskazy (1953), 206. 63. "O novom romane," Pravda, 17 January 1950.
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64. V. Egorov and N. Zotov, 907 dnei v tylu vraga (Odessa: Maiak, 1969), 231. A similar statement about the destruction of the harbor appears in Odessa: Ocherk istorii goroda-geroia, ed, M. Kovbasiuk (Odessa; Oblizdat, 1957), 266. 65. "O novom romane," Pravda, 16, 17 January 1950. 66. See, for instance, Galina Martsishek, My na svoei zemle: Vospominaniia o partizanskom otriade Geroia Sovetskogo Soiuza V. A. Molodtsova (Badaeva) (Odessa: Knizhnoe izdat., 1959), 129, 136, 162. The author reports that the daily bread ration was reduced to 100 grams (129) and that there were mice in the catacombs (113). Furthermore, Kataev himself described the life-threatening famine in his article "The Catacombs," based on interviews with members of the Odessa underground. See Geroicheskaia Odessa, ed. I. A. Sosnovskii (Odessa: Oblizdat, 1945), 86, 87. 67. Geroicheskaia Odessa, 84. 68. Cf. Razgrom (1949), 69; (1951), 70. 69. Cf. Izbrannoe (1948), 131-33; Povesti i rasskazy (1953), 167-69. 70. Cf. Razin (1939), 127-28; (1948), 125. 71. Cf. Razin (1939), 547-48; (1948), 536. According to Professor Leon Twarog, Stepan Razin was not the confirmed atheist he appears to be in the novel. Chapygin's portrait of Razin might have been influenced by the author's own atheism. See "Changing Patterns," The Slavonic and East European Review, no. 79 (June 1954): 369-70. 72. Cf. Bruski, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1934), 269-71, 273; (1947), 181. 73. Cf. Bruski, 21st ed., vol. 2 (1935), 205, 208; (1947), 362, 364. Vol. 3 (1936), 36-39; (1947), 461. 74. Cf. Bruski, 21st ed., vol. 2, (1935), 240-41; (1947), 380. Vol. 3 (1936), 3637; (1947), 461. Vol. 4 (KhL, 1937), 241, 243; (1947), 847, 848. 75. Cf. Bruski, vol. 1 (1934), 43; (1947), 32. 21st ed., vol. 2 (1935), 128-29, 131, 149-50, 159-60, 287; (1947), 316, 312, 323, 329, 412. Vol. 3 (1936), 327, 331; (1947), 656, 654. 76. Seifullina, Izbrannoe (1941), 140; Izbrannoe (1948), 95. 77. Cf. Bruski, vol. 3 (1936), 263; (1947), 606. 21st ed., vol. 2 (1935), 207; (1947), p. 363. 78. Razgrom (Voronezh; Oblizdat, 1942), 139; Razgrom. Molodaia gvardiia (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1947), 103. Razgrom (1949), 101; (1951), 101. 79. General A. I. Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty, vol. 2 (Paris: I. Povolozky [1922]), 16-17; V. Vladimirova, Kontr-revoliutsiia v 1917 g.: Kornilovshchina (Moscow: Krasnaia nov', 1924), 55. 80. See G. lanov, "'Paritet,'" in Donskaia letopis': Sbornik mater'ialov po noveishei istorii donskogo kazachestva so vremeni russkoi revoliutsii 1917 goda, vol. 2 (Belgrade; Donskaia istoricheskaia komissiia, 1923), 189, 196; F. G. Kosov, "Podtelkov v Novocherkasske," in Donskaia letopis', 314. 81. After Stalin's death, some Soviet historians attributed the second part of My Reminiscences to Brusilov's wife. Later Soviet sources, however, identify Brusilov as the author of both parts, the second having been completed in 1925 in Czechoslovakia, where he underwent medical treatment. See Dmitrii Volkogonov, "Triumf i tragediia: Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina," Oktiabr', no. 9 (1989): 121; a commentary by V. M. Shabanov and T. F. Pavlova to part 2 of My Reminiscences, in Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 2 (1991): 42-44. 82. Cf. Bruski, vol. 1 (1934), 41-45; (1947), 32. 83. Cf. Bruski, 21st ed., vol. 2 (1935), 66-67; (1947), 268, 269. Vol. 3 (1936), 280; (1947), 651-52. Vol. 4 (KhL, 1937), 305; (1947), 882. 84. Bruski, vol. 3 (1936), 232-35; (1947), 587-88.
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85. Cf. Vladimir Maiakovskii, Polnoe sobr. soch., ed. L, lu. Brik, vol. 1 (Moscow; KhL, 1935), 75; Sobr. stikhotvorenii v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2 (Leningrad: Sov. pis., 1950), 22. 86. Cf. Ivanov, Parkhomenko. Bronepoezd 14-69 (1948), 615; Povesti, rasskazy, vospominaniia (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1952), 72. 87. Cf. Parkhomenko. Bronepoezd 14-69 (1948), 550, 553, 610; Povesti (1952), 6, 9, 66. 88. Cf. M. Sholokhov, Podniataia tselina (Moscow: Pravda, 1947), 41, 78, 128; (Moscow-Leningrad: Detgiz, 1950), 73, 137, 229. 89. Cf. Podniataia tselina (Detgiz, 1950), 36, 95, 108; (KhL, 1952), 33-34, 9092, 112-13. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 90. Sholokhov to A. N. Kotov, 6 September 1951, in V. Gura, Kak sozdavalsia "Tikhii Don": Tvorcheskaia istoriia romana M. Sholokhova (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1980), 426-27. 91. Potapov, '"Tikhii Don' Mikhaila Sholokhova," in Tikhii Don, vol. 4 (1953), 480-82. 92. Gura, Kak sozdavalsia, 423. 93. Valentin Kataev, "Zamysel i vremia," Voprosy literatury, no. 9 (1961): 135. 94. See Konstantin Simonov, "Literaturnye zametki," Novyi mir, no. 12 (1956); 247; Zoia Seifullina, "Stranitsy vospominanii o A. Fadeeve," Sibirskie ogni, no. 5 (1963); 169; Boborykin, "K istorii sozdaniia," Molodaia gvardiia (1990), 18, 20, 21. 95. Fadeev to lu. N. Libedinskii, 25 October 1948, in Aleksandr Fadeev, Pis'ma, 1916-1956, 2d ed., enl. (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1973), 267. 96. Fadeev to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, G. M. Malenkov, and N. S. Khrushchev [1954 or 1955], in Molodaia gvardiia (1990), 523,
Chapter 4 1. N. S. Khrushchev, Vysokoe prizvanie literatury i iskusstva (Moscow: Pravda, 1963), 185-88. 2. Vysokoe prizvanie, 111. 3. See Evgenii Evtushenko, "Plach po tsenzure," Ogonek, no. 6 (2-9 February 1991): 16; V. Lakshin, "'Novyi mir' vo vremena Khrushcheva (1961-1964); Stranitsy iz dnevnika," Znamia, no. 6 (1990): 82. 4. Evtushenko, "Plach po tsenzure," 16. For details on Khrushchev's visit to the exhibition see G. Rezanov and T. Khoroshilova, "Manezh, 1962-i: Kak eto bylo," Komsomol'skaia pravda, 26 December 1990. 5. Vysokoe prizvanie, 204; Laert Vagarshian, "Dve vstrechi rukovodstva strany s tvorcheskoi intelligentsiei v 1962-1963 godakh," Literaturnaia Armeniia, no. 5 (1990): 90. 6. Lakshin, "'Novyi mir,"' Znamia, no. 6 (1990); 96, no. 7 (1990): 91. Subsequent references to Lakshin's diary will be given in the text by the numbers of the magazine issue and page(s). Additional information on the censorial interference with the publication of Erenburg's memoirs in Novyi mir can be found in documents published in Voprosy literatury, no. 4 (1993): 294-310.
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7. For OmeFchenko's letters of 16 and 17 July 1953, see Tsenzura inostrannykh knig v Rossiiskoi imperil i Sovetskom Soiuze. Katalog vystavki (Prilozhenie), ed. Tat'iana Goriaeva [Moscow, 1993], 20-21. 8. OmeFchenko's circular letter, 11 December 1953, in Tsenzura inostrannykh knig, 22. 9. Information on the resolution of 3 April 1957 comes from the typed copy of the report on censorship (28-29) prepared by Vladimir Solodin and delivered by him in 1982 at the special meeting in Moscow marking the sixtieth anniversary of Glavlit and attended by Party officials, censors, publishers, and writers. At that time Solodin was a member of the Glavlit Collegium and chief of its Department for the Control of Social Politics and Belles-Lettres. 10. Vysokoe prizvanie, 38-40, 43, 51. 11. The Soviet Censorship, ed. Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell (Metuchen, N.J.; Scarecrow Press, 1973), 51, 65, n. 99; M, D. [Martin Dewhirst], "Censorship," The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, London, New York; Cambridge University Press, 1982), 410. 12. Solodin's report, 29-31. 13. For details on special censorship see The Soviet Censorship, ed. Dewhirst and Farrell, 63, n. 97; Leonid Vladimirov [Leonid Finkel'shtein], Rossiia bez prikras i umolchanii, 2d ed. (Frankfort/Main: Possev-Verlag, 1969), 241-45. 14. For details see Boris 1. Gorokhoff, Publishing in the U.S.S.R. ([Bloomington]: Indiana University Press, 1959), 105-10; Administrativnoe pravo, ed. A. E, Lunev (Moscow: luridicheskaia literatura, 1967), 416-21. 15. A. Kapto, letter to the Party Central Committee, 6 December 1988, in Moskovskie novosti, 14 June 1992. At the time of writing this letter, Kapto headed the Ideological Department of the Central Committee. 16. E. S. Likhtenshtein, N. M. Sikorskii, and M. V, Urnov, Teoriia i praktika redaktirovaniia knigi, 2d ed., rev. and enl,, part 1 (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1964), 79-81. In another place (70) the textbook says that this final stage of work is performed by the head of the editorial board. 17. For details see The Soviet Censorship, ed. Dewhirst and Farrell, 57-59. Information is provided by Leonid Finkel'shtein, who in the first half of the 1960s was in contact with the censors as the head of the technical and industrial section of the magazine Znanie—sila {Knowledge Is Strength). 18. The sources of this information are Lukin's letters to me dated 28 April and May 1994 and "Viktor Goncharov—lurii Lukin: Besedy o Sholokhove," a typed excerpt from radio interviews given by Lukin to the poet Viktor Goncharov on 2-4 December 1991. The excerpt was kindly sent to me by Lukin. 19. "V Soiuze pisatelei," Teatr, no. 10 (1964): 82; VI. Pimenov, '"Mezhdu livniami,"' Pravda, 18 June 1965. 20. lu. Libedinskii, "Ot avtora," Povesti: Nedelia, Komissary (Moscow: KhL, 1955), 3. 21. Cf. lu. Libedinskii, Nedelia, 9th ed. (Leningrad; KhL, 1935), 9, 12, 45, 47, 49, 79, 85, 87, 88; Povesti (1955), 11, 13, 13-14, 40, 43, 59, 64, 65, 66, Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 22. Cf. Komissary, 14th ed., rev. (Leningrad: KhL, 1935), 171-73; Povesti (1955), 195. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 23. lurii Libedinskii, "Moia kritika 'Komissarov,'" Sochineniia, vol. 2 (Leningrad-Moscow: KhL, 1931), 235. 24. Ivanov to Mikhail Minokin, 6 February 1960, in Vsevolod Ivanov—pisateT i chelovek: Vospominaniia sovremennikov (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1970), 221.
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25. Cf. Vsevolod Ivanov, Bronepoezd 14-69 (Moscow: Detgiz, 1957), 19-20, 134; Vsevolod Ivanov, P'esy (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1954), 32; "Bronepoezd 14-69," in Sovetskaia dramaturgiia, 1917-1947, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1948), 185. 26. Cf. Vsevolod Ivanov, "Bronepoezd 14-69," Partizanskie povesti (Moscow: KhL, 1956), 4-5; Bronepoezd 14-69 (Detgiz, 1957), 41-51. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. In many cases, due to insertions and textual rearrangements in the novel's revised version, corresponding pages in the 1956 edition could be indicated only approximately. 27. This phrase was taken from P'esy (Sov. pis., 1954), 66. The greater part of the 1957 insertions concerning Nezelasov came from the play, 28. Cf. Konst. Fedin, Neobyknovennoe leto, Sochineniia v shesti tomakh, vol. 5 (Moscow: KhL, 1953), 632, 637; (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1954), 648, 654. 29. Cf. A. Fadeev, Molodaia gvardiia, rev. and enl. ed. (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1953), 35, 36, 551; (Moscow; KhL, 1954), 38, 39, 40, 531, 30. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia (Irkutsk: Irkutskoe knizhnoe izdat., 1955), 119, 548; (Moscow: KhL, 1955), 102, 464. Mikh. Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, rev. ed. (Moscow: KhL, 1953), vol. 1, 141, vol. 2, 115; Tikhii Don (Moscow: Detgiz, 1955), 71, 230. Subsequent references to these editions of The Quiet Don will be given in the text by volume and page numbers. The Detgiz edition has all four volumes under one cover. 31. Cf. Em. Kazakevich, Vesna na Odere (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1950), 239, 312, 399; Vesna na Odere (Moscow; Voenizdat, 1955), 218, 283, 363. 32. Cf. Valentin Kataev, Za vlast' Sovetov, rev. ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Detgiz, 1951), 333, 599; (Moscow, Sov: pis., 1955), 355, 642. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 33. Cf. A. Fadeev, Molodaia gvardiia (Moscow: KhL, 1955), 195; (Moscow; Sov. pis., 1956), 265. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 34. Cf. Za vlast' Sovetov (1955), 522-31; Sobr. soch. v piati tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1956), 566-69. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. A similar purge of Stalin's name in connection with his role in the partisan movement was carried out in 1959 in Petr Vershigora's book Liudi s chistoi sovest'iu {People with Clear Conscience, 1945-46, 1950). See HansJoachim Dreyer, Petr Vers'igora "Ljudi s c'istoj sovest'ju": Veranderungen eines Partisanenromans unter dem Einflufi der Politik (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1976), 59-67, 93-95. 35. Cf. Za vlast' Sovetov (1956), 15, 570; Valentin Kataev, Volny Chernogo moria, vol. 2; Zimnii veter, Katakomby (Moscow: Detgiz, 1961), 288, 580. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. In 1961 For the Power of the Soviets was renamed The Catacombs, becoming the last novel of the tetralogy Waves of the Black Sea. For revisions in Trifonov's novel, cf. Studenty (Omsk: Oblastnoe knizhnoe izdat., 1954), 21, 50, 213, 434; Studenty (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1956), 22, 49, 205, 415-16. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 36. Cf. Za vlast' Sovetov (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1949), 580; Volny, vol. 2 (1961), 597. In the 1951-56 editions of Kataev's novel, chapters were untitled. 37. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (1953), 119, 212, 271; Tikhii Don, Sobr. soch. v semi tomakh, rev. by the author, vol. 3 (Moscow: MG, 1956), 134, 236, 300. Tikhii Don, vol. 4 (1953), 200-201; Sobr. soch., vol. 5 (1957), 224. Volumes 1-4 of The Quiet Don appear, respectively, in volumes 2-5 of Sobr. soch. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by volume number of The Quiet Don and by page numbers. Volume 8 was added to Collected Works in 1959.
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38. "Viktor Goncharov—lurii Lukin"; Lukin's letter to me, 28 April 1994. 39. Cf. M. Sholokhov, Podniataia tselina (Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1956), 76; Podniataia tselina, 2d ed. (Moscow; Uchpedgiz, 1957), 76. 40. Cf. Podniataia tselina (Uchpedgiz, 1956), 77; 2d ed. (Uchpedgiz, 1957), 77. 41. Cf. Podniataia tselina, 2d. ed. (Uchpedgiz, 1957), 77; Sobr. soch., vol. 6 (MG, 1957), 106. 42. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, Podniataia tselina, vol. 1 (Moscow: MG, 1962), 9899; Podniataia tselina, Sobr. soch. v vos'mi tomakh, vol. 6 (Moscow; Pravda, 1962), 98. Volumes 1-2 of Virgin Soil Upturned appear, respectively, in volumes 67 of Sobr. soch. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by volume number of Virgin Soil Upturned and by page numbers. 43. Cf. Oni srazhalis' za Rodinu: Glavy iz romana (Moscow: MG, 1959), 12, 14, 259-60; Sobr. soch., vol. 8 (1962), 61, 62, 225. The 1959 MG edition of the novel is identical with three other 1959 editions that I checked. 44. Cf. Fedor Panferov, Bruski, vol. 4 (Moscow: KhL, 1950), 537, 589; Bruski (Moscow: KhL, 1957), 533, 576. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by volume number of Bruski and by page numbers. Both editions consist of two books containing volumes 1-2 and 3-4, respectively. 45. See A. Solzhenitsyn, Bodalsia telenok s dubom: Ocherki literaturnoi zhizni (Paris; YMCA-Press, 1975), 48; "Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha," Novyi mir, no. 11 (1962): 65. 46. For information on writing and publication of The First Circle see Solzhenitsyn's preface to volume 1 and afterword to volume 2 of his Sobr. soch. (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1978), n.p.; Bodalsia, 76, 80, 84-100, 102-3, 239-40, 243. 47. Cf. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, V kruge pervom (New York, Evanston: Harper and Row, 1968), 106; Sobr. soch., vol. 1, 177. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers of the abridged version of The First Circle and by volume and page numbers of its full-length original. 48. Bodalsia, 89. 49. Bodalsia, 97-99. 50. Cf. Aleksandr Shtein, "Mezhdu livniami," Teatr, no. 4 (1964): 181; Dramy (Moscow; Sov. pis., 1966), 257-58. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. The revision of the play must have been completed in 1964 or early in 1965. 51. Cf. Molodaia gvardiia (Voenizdat, 1953), 537, 677-78; (KhL, 1954), 518, 652. 52. Cf. Za vlast' Sovetov (1955), 356, 362, 363, 379; (1956), 385, 391, 392, 393, 410. Za vlast' Sovetov (1956), 385, 387; (1961), 502, 503, 504. 53. Hans-Joachim Dreyer erroneously claims that this chapter was inserted in the 1959 edition as a tribute to the growing worship of Khrushchev (Petr Vers'igora , 7172). Actually, the chapter was added to the revised 1951 version of Vershigora's book. In the 1963 edition of the book, this chapter contains only two direct references to Khrushchev. In all other instances his name was replaced with one of his official posts: a member of the Military Council [of the First Ukrainian Front]. 54. For details see Herman Ermolaev, Mikhail Sholokhov and His Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 233-34. 55. For more details on deletions concerning the Party and Soviet Government, see Herman Ermolaev, "Solz'enicyn's Self-Censorship: Two Versions of V kruge pervom," Russian Language Journal, 38, nos. 129-130 (winter-spring 1984): 177-81, 183-84.
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56. Cf. I. Babel', Rasskazy (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 123; Izbrannoe (Moscow; KhL, 1957), 127. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 57. Cf. Bruski, vol. 2 (1957), 388; Bruski, Sobr. soch. v shesti tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1958), 421. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by volume number of Bruski and by page numbers. Volumes 1 and 2 of Sobr. soch. contain vols. 1-2 and vols. 3-4 of Bruski, respectively, 58. Cf. "Za vlast' Sovetov," Novyi mir, no. 8 (1949), 151-57; Za vlast' Sovetov (1956), 529-39; Volny, vol. 2 (1961), 573. 59. Cf. Novyi mir, no. 8 (1949), 29-48; (1956), 303-29; (1961), 451. 60. Cf. Nikolai Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas' stal', Sochineniia, vol. 1 (Moscow: MG, 1953), 253; Kak (Moscow: Detgiz, 1954), 260; Kak zakalialas' stal'. Rozhdennye burei (Petrozavodsk; Gosizdat Karel'skoi ASSR, 1961), 288. Kak, Sobr. soch. v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL., 1955), 348, 350; Kak (Moscow: MG, 1957), 335, 337; Kak (1961), 310, 312. 61. Cf. Mikh. Sholokhov, Lazorevaia step': Donskie rasskazy (Moscow: MTP, 1931), 133; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (Moscow: MG, 1956), 44. 62. Cf. lurii Trifonov, "Utolenie zhazhdy," Znamia, no. 5 (1963): 10, 18, no. 7 (1963): 79; Utolenie zhazhdy (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1963), 76, 89, 354; Utolenie zhazhdy, Roman-gazeta, no, 20 (Moscow: KhL, 1963), 28, 32, 122. 63. Cf. A. Solzhenitsyn, Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1963), 59, 102, 123; Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha . Matrenin dvor (Paris: YMCAPress, 1973), 51, 86, 104. According to Solzhenitsyn, the YMCA edition contains definitive texts of both works. In Bodalsia telenok s dubom Solzhenitsyn admits that he had edited the manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich before sending it to Novyi mir and that he and some of the magazine's editors "softened a dozen expressions" in December 1961 (38, 47). Somewhat earlier, the manuscript's original title Shch-854 (Odin den' odnogo zeka)—Shch-854 (One Day of One Prisoner)—was replaced by One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Tvardovskii said that the original title would never pass censorship (31). See also Solzhenitsyn's comments on One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in his Sobr. soch., vol. 3 (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1978), 327; Gary Kern, "Solz'enicyn's Self-Censorship: The Canonical Text of Odin den' Ivana Denisovic'a ," Slavic and East European Journal, 20, no. 4 (winter 1976): 421-25. Dr. Kern compares various editions of this short novel and gives a list of divergent readings (430-35). 64. For details see Bodalsia, 9, 61-64, 68-71. The original title of Solzhenitsyn's play is Respublika truda (The Republic of Labor). 65. Nagibin's lecture at Princeton University, 26 February 1988. In 1987 the novel appeared in lunost' (no. 10) under the title of Vstan' i idi (Rise and Go Forth). 66. Vsevolod Ivanov, "Bronepoezd 14-69," Prostor, no. 11 (1963): 4, 29, 45. 67. The 1961 Archangel edition of Stepan Razin has a note stating that its text was reprinted from the 1948 Sov. pis. version of the novel. It is possible that the same erroneous information appears in the 1959 Archangel edition, which I have not seen. Judging from publication data in a reference book, the 1959 and 1961 Archangel editions are identical. See Russkie sovetskie pisateli prozaiki: Biobibliograficheskii ukazatel', vol. 6, part 1 (Moscow: Kniga, 1969), 25. 68. Cf. lu. V. Trifonov, Studenty (1954), 50, 213; (1956), 49, 205; (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1960), 221. Subsequent references to the 1956 and 1960 editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 69. Cf. Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (1962), 196, 197; V. Gura, "Vechno zhivoe slovo (Novye materialy o Sholokhove)," Voprosy literatury, no. 4 (1965): 14. In both in-
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stances khokhol is replaced by tavrichanin (a variant for a Ukrainian), and in the 1962 edition of the story this word occurs fourteen times. 70. For all these revisions cf. Artem Veselyi, Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia, 4th ed., enl. (Moscow; KhL, 1936), 109, 184, 197, 203, 256, 292; Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow; KhL, 1958), 111, 324, 333, 337, 375, 376, 401. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 71. Cf. S. N. Sergeev-Tsenskii, Sobr. soch. v desiati tomakh, vol. 6 (Moscow: KhL, 1955), 97; Sevastopol'skaia strada, parts 6-9 (Moscow: KhL, 1958), 237. 72. Cf, Odin den' (1963), 100; (1973), 84. 73. My atttention to this fact was called by a letter of the writer V. Shapovalov quoted, without its addressee or date, in Stanislav Kuniaev, "Palka o dvukh kontsakh," Nash sovremennik, no. 6 (1989); 164. 74. For details see Aleksandr Galich, General'naia repetitsiia (Frankfort/Main; Possev-Verlag, 1974), 8, 169-72, 174, 184-86, 190-93. 75. See Vladimir Stepanov (Rusak), Svidetel'stvo obvineniia: Tserkov' i gosudarstvo v Sovetskom Soiuze, part 2 (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1987), 53, 249. 76. Cf. L. Seifullina, Povesti i rasskazy (Novosibirsk: Novosibirskoe oblastnoe gosizdat, 1948), 26; Povesti, rasskazy, stat'i (Novosibirsk: Knizhnoe izdat., 1957), 115. The entire sentence about the boy carrying the basin is missing from the story's text published in L. Seifullina, Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow; KhL, 1953), 213 and in Izbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 1 (Moscow; KhL, 1958), 100. In both of these collections the text of "Lawbreakers" is identical. 77. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 1 (1953), 172; (1955), 86; (MG, 1956), 192. 78. Bodalsia, 31, 45-46. 79. Bodalsia, 51-52. Tiurin's words can be found in Odin den' (1963), 74. 80. Cf. Odin den' (1963), 19, 41; (1973), 17, 35-36. 81. Bodalsia, 33, 35-38, 55. See also Solzhenitsyn's comments on "Matrena's Home" in his Sobr. soch., vol. 3 (1978), 'ill. 82. Cf. "Matrenin dvor," Novyi mir, no. 1 (1963): 51; Odin den' (1973), 140. 83. For details see Vladimir Markov, "Zagadki, kotorye nel'zia zagadyvat'," in The Supernatural in Slavic and Baltic Literature: Essays in Honor of Victor Terras, ed. Amy Mandelker and Roberta Reeder (Columbus, OH; Slavica Publishers, 1988), 34650. 84. Cf. Odin den' (1963), 64; (1973), 75. 85. Solzhenitsyn's comments on "Matrena's Home," Sobr. soch., vol. 3 (1978), 327. 86. Cf. Novyi mir, no. 1 (1963): 44, 45, 49, 53; Odin den' (1973), 128, 129, 136, 137, 144. 87. Cf. "Batraki," Lazorevaia step': Rasskazy (Moscow; Novaia Moskva, 1926), 144, "Lazorevaia step'," "O Kolchake, krapive i prochem," "Chervotochina," Lazorevaia step' (1931), 22, 86, 302; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (MG, 1956), 264, 177, 295, 282. Incidentally, the word zhopa was spelled out in full in prerevolutionary publications of Sadovnikov's Riddles of the Russian People. All the riddles containing zhopa were excluded from the 1959 reprint of this book. See Markov, "Zagadki," 350-51. 88. Cf. "Virineia," Povesti, rasskazy, stat'i (1957), 54; Izbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 1 (1958), 255. 89. Cf. Mikh. Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Moscow; KhL, 1949), 142; Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (MG, 1956), 159. 90. Cf. Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (1949), 454; Sobr. soch., vol. 3 (MG, 1956), 123.
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91. An. Tarasenkov, "Za bogatstvo i chistotu russkogo literaturnogo iazyka!" Novyi mir, no. 2 (1951): 215. 92. See Oni srazhalis' (MG, 1959), 25, 36, 65, 109, 183, 201, 202. Subsequent references to this edition will be given in the text by page numbers. 93. Quoted from Mikhail Sholokhov, "They Fought for Their Country," Soviet Literature, no. 8 (1959): 43-44. 94. Cf. Lazorevaia step' (1931), 97; Mikhail Sholokhov, Sobr. soch. v vos'mi tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1956), 304. The story, "About the Don Food Committee and the Misadventures of the Deputy Don Food Commissar Comrade Ptitsyn," was not included in the first, 1956 MG, edition of Sholokhov's Collected Works. 95. For examples see Markov, "Zagadki," 352-57. 96. Cf. Lazorevaia step' (1931), 40, 252; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (MG, 1956), 192, 323. Gura, "Vechno zhivoe," 14; Sobr. soch., vol. 8 (1962), 196. 97. Cf. Lazorevaia step' (1931), 26, 275; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (MG, 1956), 180, 342. 98. Cf. Podniataia tselina (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1952), 97; Sobr. soch., vol. 6 (MG, 1957), 103. 99. See Markov, "Zagadki," 351, 357-59. 100. Cf. "Pastukh," "Put'-dorozhen'ka," Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (MG, 1956), 43, 338, 339; M. Sholokhov, Put'-dorozhen'ka (Moscow: MG, 1962), 126, 101. 101. Quoted in Lakshin, "'Novyi mir,'" Znamia, no. 7 (1990): 94,
Chapter 5 1. S. Trapeznikov, "Marksizm-leninizm—nezyblemaia osnova razvitiia obshchestvennykh nauk," Pravda, 8 October 1965. 2. E. Zhukov, V. Trukhanovskii, and V. Shunkov, "Vysokaia otvetstvennost' istorikov," Pravda, 30 January 1966. 3. "K 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Vladimira Il'icha Lenina: Tezisy Tsentral'nogo Komiteta Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza," section II, paragraph 7, Pravda, 23 December 1969. 4. Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR (Moscow: luridicheskaia literatura, 1966), 65. 5. "Rech' tovarishcha L. I. Brezhneva na XIX konferentsii Moskovskoi gorodskoi organizatsii KPSS," Pravda, 30 March 1968. 6. "Aktual'nye voprosy ideologicheskoi, massovo-politicheskoi raboty partii: Doklad chlena Politbiuro TsK KPSS, sekretaria TsK KPSS tavarishcha K. U. Chernenko na Plenume TsK KPSS," Pravda, 15 June 1983. 7. "Utverzhdat' pravdu zhizni, vysokie idealy sotsializma: Rech' tovarishcha K. U. Chemenko," Literaturniaia gazeta, 26 September 1983. 8. For details see The Soviet Censorship, ed. Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973), 65, n. 99. 9. lu. Burtin and A. Vozdvizhenskaia, "Iz istorii obshchestvenno-literaturnoi bor'by 60-kh godov," Oktiabr', no. 9 (1990); 169. 10. Aleksei Kondratovich, "Iz 'Novomirskogo dnevnika,"' Ural, no. 7 (1989): 174, and "Poslednii god; Iz 'Novomirskogo dnevnika,"' Novyi mir, no. 2 (1990): 198, 200. On the meeting honoring Glavlit see "Posviashchaetsia iubileiu," Literaturnaia gazeta, 1 June 1972. 11. Boris Mozhaev, in "Liudi soprotivleniia," interview by Liudmila Saraskina, Moskovskie novosti, 31 July 1988.
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12. For details see A. Kondratovich, "Po stranitsam 'Novomirskogo dnevnika,'" Voprosy literatury, no. 9 (1989): 161-62, 166-69, 187-88, 191-92, 195. 13. "Poslednii god," Novyi mir, no. 2 (1990); 210. See also In. Burtin, '"Vam, iz drugogo pokolen'ia . . . K publikatsii poemy A. Tvardovskogo 'Po pravu pamiati,'" Oktiabr', no. 8 (1987): 201-2. 14. William H. Honan, "A Soviet Fox Guards Filmdom's Chicken Coop," The New York Times, 10 September 1988, section "The Arts," 11. The source is Andrei Smimov, a Soviet filmmaker. 15. For details see Kondratovich, "Po stranitsam," Voprosy literatury, no. 9 (1989); 181-92 passim, 198, and "Poslednii god," Novyi mir, no. 2 (1990): 233. On Brezhnev's style of leadership see Roi Medvedev, Lichnost' i epokha: Politicheskii portret L. I. Brezhneva," vol. 1 (Moscow: Novosti, 1991), 158-60. 16. Burtin and Vozdvizhenskaia, "Iz istorii," Oktiabr', no. 9 (1990): 168; "Stenographisches Protokoll der Rede von Grigorij Swirskij . . . ," in Literatur und Repression: Sowjetische Kulturpolitik seit 1965, ed. Helen von Ssachno and Manfred Grunert (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1970), 115-16; Romanov's memorandum to TsK KPSS, 15 November 1967, in Tat'iana Goriaeva, publ., "Tz"iaf vsiakie upominaniia'; Uroki tsenzury," Moskovskie novosti, 9 August 1992. 17. M. V. Popov's statement, in "Podmena: Beseda obshchestvovedov po povodu p'esy M. Shatrova 'Dal'she . . . Dal'she . . . Dal'she!" Molodaia gvardiia, no. 6 (1988): 253. The instruction requiring that manuscipts dealing with Lenin be approved by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism was issued on 11 February 1966. By contrast, the Party Central Commitee's resolution of 11 October 1956 gave publishing houses the right to decide the question of publishing scholarly or literary works about Lenin. This information comes from the typescript of Vladimir Solodin's report on censorship at the meeting marking the sixtieth anniversary of Glavlit in 1982 (72-73, 77). In subsequent references this typescript will be called Solodin's report. 18. For details see R. C. Elwood, "How Complete is Lenin's Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii?" Slavic Review, 38, no. 1 (March 1979); 97-105. According to the historian Dmitrii Volkogonov, 3,724 pieces of Lenin's documents had never been published in the Soviet Union. They were deemed injurious to Lenin's reputation, the Party, the Communist ideology, or the Soviet regime. See Volkogonov, '"Leninskaia krepost' v moei dushe pala poslednei,"' interview by Natal'ia Davydova, Moskovskie novosti, 19 July 1992. 19. Tat'iana Ivanova, "Ni slova na veru," Knizhnoe obozrenie, 26 August 1988. 20. Andrei Sinyavsky, "Samizdat and the Rebirth of Literature," Index on Censorship 9, no. 4 (August 1980): 13. For a perceptive discussion of samizdat see also Lev Losev, Zakrytyi raspredelitel' (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ermitazh, 1984), 162-79. 21. My conversation with Viktor Erofeev, 29 July 1988 at Middlebury College. For more details see Viktor Erofeev, "Desiaf let spustia," Ogonek, no. 37 (8-15 September, 1990); 16-18; Vasilii Aksenov, "Prazdnik, kotoryi pytalis' ukrast'," Ogonek, no. 10 (2-9 March 1991): 18-19; N. Zakharov, "Pornoprovokatsiia v kul'ture," Literaturnaia Rossiia, 22 March 1991. 22. Anatolii Gladilin, "Varvary," Novoe russkoe slovo, 30 November 1980; P. Romanov, "Prikaz nachal'nika Glavnogo upravleniia po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR No. 10," Moskovskie novosti, 9 August 1992. The order is undated. 23. Avtor [Kuznetsov], "K chitateliam," in A. Anatolii (Kuznetsov), Babii lar (Frankfort/Main: Possev-Verlag, 1970), 5-6. On Kuznetsov's experience with censorship involving Babii lar, see also his "Vnutrennii tsenzor," Novoe russkoe slovo,
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18 October 1970; his statements in The Soviet Censorship, ed. Dewhirst and Farrell, 26, 28-29, 30, 34, 86-89. 24. For details see "K chitateliam," Babii lar (1970), 9-12, 15. 25. Juri Trifonow, Zeit und Ort. Das umgestiirzte Haus, Ausgewdhlte Werke, vol. 4, tr. Eckhard Thiele, publ. Ralf Schroder (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1983). I am indebted to Professor Sigrid McLaughlin for calling my attention to textual differences in the Soviet and the East German publications of Time and Place. 26. Cf. lurii Trifonov, Utolenie zhazhdy (Moscow; Sov. pis., 1963), 275, 323; (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1965), 273, 320. 27. Cf. Utolenie zhazhdy (Moscow: KhL, 1967), 349; (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1970), 343. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 28. Cf. FaziF Iskander, "Sandro iz Chegema," Novyi mir, no. 8 (1973): 172; Sandra iz Chegema (Ann Arbor, MI; Ardis, 1979), 40. This tamizdat publication of the novel includes material removed from Novyi mir. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by the issue and page numbers of the magazine and by the page numbers in the book. In July 1990 and 1992, at Middlebury College, Iskander told me that extensive deletions involving Stalin, collectivization, and other things were done by the magazine editors. He felt as if the arms and the legs were cut off from his child. Feeling guilty for allowing these amputations, he resolved to publish Sandro of Chegem in the West. 29. Cf. Fedor Abramov, "Dom," Novyi mir, no. 12 (1978): 39; Sobr. soch. v shesti tomakh, vol. 2, Brat'ia i sestry, books 3 and 4 (Leningrad: KhL, 1991), 321. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by the issue and page numbers of the magazine and by the page numbers in the book. Uncensored original versions of volumes 3 and 4 of Abramov's tetralogy appeared for the first time in the 1991 edition of Collected Works. A few exceptions will be touched upon later. Volume 2 of Collected Works contains a very useful list of major revisions made by censors and editors in the manuscripts of volumes 3 and 4 of Abramov's tetralogy. The list, under the heading of "Primechaniia," was compiled by the author's widow, Liudmila Krutikova-Abramova. Also helpful is her article "Fedor Abramov and tsenzura: Po materialam lichnogo arkhiva pisatelia," Moskva, no. 10 (1990): 176-96. 30. In the 1982 Kiev edition, and in all other editions which I examined, these chapters are numbered 20 and 21. 31. Cf. Andrei Voznesenskii, "Oza," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 10 (1964): 20; Akhillesovo serdtse (Moscow; KhL, 1966), 20. Stalin called common people "cogs" in his address at the Kremlin reception honoring participants in the victory parade on 25 June 1945. 32. For all these points cf. Fedor Panferov, Bruski, vols. 3 and 4, Sobr. soch. v shesti tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1958), 207, 427, 444, 570; Bruski, vols. 3 and 4 (Saratov; Privolzhskoe knizhnoe izdat., 1966), 188, 391, 406, 519. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 33. "K chitateliam," Babii lar (1970), 6. 34. For all these points cf. Anatolii Kuznetsov, "Babii lar," lunost', no. 8 (1966); 8, 9, 15, no. 9 (1966): 33, 42, and no. 10 (1966): 34; Babii lar (1970), 24, 28, 6061, 236, 341, 405. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by the issue and page numbers of the magazine and by the page numbers in the book. All of the above deletions were also made in the 1967 MG edition of the novel. 35. "K 90-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia 1. V. Stalina," Pravda, 21 December 1969; "K 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia 1. V. Stalina," Pravda, 21 December 1979. As already noted, there is strong evidence that Stalin was born on 6 December 1978 (Old Style). 36. Cf. Utolenie zhazhdy (1970), 32; (Moscow: Profizdat, 1979), 30.
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37. Cf. Fedor Abramov, "Puti i pereput'ia," Novyi mir, no. 2 (1973): 14; Sobr. soch, vol. 2 (1991), 194. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by the issue and page numbers of the magazine by the page numbers in the book. The novel appeared in nos. 1 and 2 of Novyi mir for 1973. 38. Cf. lurii Trifonov, "Vremia i mesto," Druzhba narodov, no. 10 (1981): 50, 51; Zeit und Ort, 198-99, 200. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by the issue and page numbers of the magazine and by the page numbers in the book. German translations are checked against the original Russian text published in lurii Trifonov, Ischeznovenie. Vremia i mesto. Starik (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989). 39. Information about Children of the Arbat comes from Rybakov's lecture at Princeton University on 1 October 1987, my subsequent conversation with him, and our telephone conversation on 31 August 1992. 40. Foreword of Tat'iana Bek to Aleksandr Bek's "Koba: Iz romana 'Na drugoi den','" Nedelia, no. 31 (8-14 August 1988): 14. 41. Vitalii Zakrutkin, "Sotvorenie mira," vol. 2, Oktiabr', no. 6 (1967): 22-24, Glorification of Stalin in this novel was pointed out by Grigorii Svirskii {Literatur und Repression, 118-19). 42. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Moscow; Izvestiia, 1964), 644; Tikhii Don, vols. 1-2 (Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat, 1965), 551. Tikhii Don (Rostizdat, 1965), 502; Tikhii Don, vol. 2, Sobr. soch. v deviati tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow: KhL, 1965), 234. 43. Cf. Anatolii Kuznetsov, Babii lar (Moscow: MG, 1967), 179; Babii lar (1970), 320-21. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. 44. Soviet publications of Babii lar have only one indication that the demolition of the Kreshchatik was the work of the NKVD. It is a footnote stating that an underground group of the "Chekists" had undoubtedly put its hand to explosions that destroyed places used by the Germans and killed hundreds of them. This information is quoted from a KGB document published in 1963 and containing no mention of civilian victims {lunost', no. 8 [1966]: 20). 45. Tvardovskii to Gazarian, 13 March 1967, in "Ot redaktsii," Suren Gazarian, "Eto ne dolzhno povtorit'sia," Literaturnaia Armeniia, no. 6 (1988): 8. 46. For all these details and Sholokhov's letter to Brezhnev see Svetlana Sholokhova, "K istorii nenapisannogo romana o voine," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 7 (1992): 26-27. 47. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, "Oni srazhalis' za Rodinu," Pravda, 12 March 1969; "Oni srazhalis' za Rodinu: Glavy iz romana," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 7 (1992); 34, 35-37, 38, 39. This is the earliest publication of what is supposed to be the original text of the excerpt published in Pravda in March 1969. Square brackets are used to indicate previously unpublished passages. 48. Cf. Pravda, 14 March 1969; Molodaia gvardiia, no. 7 (1992): 57, 58. Large chunks of the general's autobiographical narrative are erroneoulsy marked in Molodaia gvardiia as being printed for the first time (54, 55-57, 58). They can be found in Pravda for 14 March 1969 and in all subsequent editions of the unfinished novel. The same applies to passages put in parentheses (57, 58-59) to indicate that they were restored in the 1975-86 editions of Sholokhov's Collected Works. See Pravda, 14 March 1969. 49. Beriia headed the state security apparatus from the end of 1938 to 1953. In December 1953 he was executed. A perceptive discussion of several terror-related deletions in The Quenching of the Thirst can be found in Tat'iana Patera, Obzor tvorchestva i analiz moskovskikh povestei luriia Trifonova (Ann Arbor, Mich,: Ardis,
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1983), 146-52. Dr. Patera compares the novel's 1963 and 1979 editions, without indicating that the deletions in question were made in 1970. 50. Trifonov said this in 1977 to Professor Gerald E. Mikkelson, who mentioned it in his paper delivered at the Third World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies in Washington, D.C., on 1 November 1985. 51. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, "Tri," Sobr. soch. v vos'mi tomakh, vol. 8 (Moscow: KhL, 1960), 75; Sobr. soch. v deviati tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1965), 403. 52. Konstantin Priima, S vekom naravne: Stat'i o tvorchestve M. A. Sholokhova (Rostov-on-Don; Rostizdat, 1981), 199. 53. Cf. Lidiia Seifullina, "Peregnoi," hbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1958), 160; Sobr. soch. v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: KhL, 1968), 209. "Pravonarushiteli," hbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 1 (1958), 81; Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (1968), 105. 54. Cf. Bruski, vol. 4 (1966), 288; (Moscow: Izvestiia, 1969), 284; (Gor'kii; Volgo-Viatskoe knizhnoe izdat., 1972), 225; (Moscow: KhL, 1979), 275; (Moscow: Sov. Rossiia, 1984), 267. 55. Cf. Bruski, vol. 4 (1966), 370; (1969), 365; (1972), 289. 56. Cf. Konst. Fedin, Neobyknovennoe leto, Sobr. soch. v deviati tomakh, vol. 7 (Moscow: KhL, 1961), 413, 414, 415; Sobr. soch. v desiati tomakh, vol. 6 (Moscow: KhL, 1971), 369, 370. Konst. Fedin, Pervye radosti. Neobyknovennoe leto (Moscow: KhL, 1979), 893. Mironov, though unauthorized, headed with his troops toward the front to fight Denikin, not to surrender to him. Mironov, under the name of Migulin, is a principal character in Trifonov's novel Starik (Old Man, 1978). 57. Cf. Nikolai Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas' stal' (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1967), 156; Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow; MG, 1967), 172. Kak (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1972), 380. Sobr. soch. v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow; MG, 1974), 387. 58. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, Tikhii Don, vol. 2 (Moscow: Izvestiia, 1964), 48687; (Rostov-on-Don; Rostizdat, 1965), 416-17; Sobr. soch. v deviati tomakh, vol. 3 (1965), 128-29; (Moscow; Voenizdat, 1980), 376-77. 59. See Kuznetsov's statement in the collection The Soviet Censorship, ed. Dewhirst and Farrell, 94. 60. Solodin's report, 94, 61. Cf. Valentin Rasputin, "Proshchanie s Materoi," Nash sovremennik, no. 11 (1976): 34, 64; "Proshchanie s Materoi," Povesti (Moscow: MG, 1976), 149, 195. 62. See Evgenii Evtushenko, "K portretu vremeni," Ogonek, no. 1 (31 December 1988-7 January 1989): 9. "The Forbidden Chapter" from The Blockade Book saw the light in the February 1988 issue of Znamia, but it is absent from the book's 5th edition published in 1989 by Lenizdat. 63. Mikhail Alekseev, "Drachuny," Nash sovremennik, no. 9 (1981): 41. 64. For details see "Liudi soprotivleniia," Moskovskie novosti, 31 July 1988; Ol'ga Martynenko, "Kak khoronili Fedora Kuz'kina," Moskovskie novosti, 5 March 1989. This is an interview with Mozhaev, Liubimov, and the actor Valerii Zolotukhin. The Live One premiered at the Taganka Theater in 1989. 65. See "Liudi soprotivleniia," Moskovskie novosti, 31 July 1988; Boris Mozhaev, "Khleb nash nasushchnyi," interview by Marina Pork, Sovetskaia kul'tura, 14 November 1987. 66. Solodin's report, 80. Both stories can be read in VI. Soloukhin, Smekh za levym plechom: Kniga prozy (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989).
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67. Solodin's report, 91. The sketch can be found in collections of Astaf'ev's prose entitled Rasskazy (Moscow; Sov. Rossiia, 1984) and Padenie lista (Moscow; Sov. pis., 1988). Both of these editions have passages criticized in Solodin's report. 68. "O voine, mire i . . . o zhizni . . . Dialog prozaika Viacheslava Kondrat'eva i kritika Nadezhdy Zheleznovoi," Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 5 (1990): 3, 4. 69. For details see Vladimir Morozov, "Kanarskie ostrova i drugie sekrety," Novoe russkoe slovo, 29 January 1987. Cf. Viktor Astafev, "Pastukh i pastushka," Nash sovremennik, no. 8 (1971): 35; Pastukh i pastushka (Moscow; Sov. Rossiia, 1989), 71. The novel's 1989 edition has only a very vague hint at the master sergeant's having caught a venerial disease, but this fact is clearly stated in Astaf'ev's Sobr. soch. v shesti tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: MG, 1991), 353, 354. 70. Solodin's report, 94-95, 96. 71. Cf. I. Babel', Izbrannoe (Kemerovo; Kemerovskoe knizhnoe izdat., 1966), 131; Izbrannoe, (Moscow: KhL, 1966), 139. It is interesting that the 1966 KhL edition diverged in this case from the 1957 KhL edition of Babel's Izbrannoe. 72. Cf. Valentin Kataev, Katakomby, Sobr. soch. v deviati tomakh, vol. 6 (Moscow; KhL, 1970), 438; Sobr. soch. v desiati tomakh, vol. 5 (Moscow: KhL, 1984), 439-45. 73. See Jakub Blum, "Soviet Russian Literature," in lakub Blum and Vera Rich, The Image of the Jew in Soviet Literature: The Post-Stalin Period (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1984), 11-12. Blum's study does not cover works published after 1972. 74. Telephone conversation with Rybakov, 31 August 1992. Places where the above revisions were made can be found in Oktiabr', no. 7 (1978): 3, no. 8 (1978): 57, and no. 9 (1978): 114-15. 75. Evgenii Nosov, "Usviatskie shlemonostsy," Nash sovremennik, no. 4 (1977); 16; Izbrannye proizvedeniia, vol. 2 (Moscow: Sov. Rossiia, 1983), 9. 76. Cf. Pravda, 12 March 1969; Molodaia gvardiia, no. 7 (1992): 36. 77. Oleg Smirnov, "Eshelon," Novyi mir, no. 2 (1971): 85; Vasil' Bykov, Tret'ia raketa. ATpiiskaia ballada. Sotnikov (Moscow; MG, 1972), 267. 78. Boris Mozhaev, Muzhiki i baby (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1979), 197; Nosov, "Usviatskie," 151. 79. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 1 (Moscow: Izvestiia, 1964), 38; Sobr. soch. v deviati tomakh, vol. 2 (1965), 43. 80. Cf. Artem Veselyi, Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia. Guliai Volga (Moscow: KhL, 1970), 325, 385; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Fragment (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1977), 333, 395; Rossiia, krov'iu umytaia: Fragment (Kuibyshev; Kuibyshevskoe knizhnoe izdat., 1979), 292, 345. 81. All the details concerning "The Image" come from Andrei Bitov, "Kommentarii," Sobr. soch. v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow; MG, 1991), 568-72, and my conversation with Bitov on 26 July 1992 at Middlebury College. The full names of the Avrora editors, which Bitov gave as Vlad. D-ii (570) and V. K-ia (571), are Vladimir Dmitrevskii and Vera Ketlinskaia. 82. Cf. Tikhii Don, vol. 1 (Moscow: Izvestiia, 1964), 36; (Rostizdat, 1965), 32; Bruski, Sobr. soch., vol. 2 (1958), 538; (Moscow: Izvestiia, 1969), 490. 83. Cf. A. Fadeev, Razgrom (Moscow-Leningrad: Detgiz, 1949), 19, 88, 220; (Moscow: Detgiz, 1972), 30, 72, 151. 84. Cf. Razgrom (Detgiz, 1949), 18, 33, 73, 74, 154, 159, 224, 229; (Moscow: KhL, 1951), 15-16, 23-24, 47, 48, 97, 100-101, 139, 142; (Detgiz, 1972), 30, 39, 62, 112, 115, 153, 156. 85. Cf. A. Fadeev, Molodaia gvardiia (Moscow; KhL, 1955), 25; (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1956), 34; (Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1956), 25; (Moscow; Detgiz, 1976), 56.
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86. Cf. Mikhail Sholokhov, Podniataia tselina (Moscow; Detgiz, 1968), 368; (Moscow; Detgiz, 1974), 391; Podniataia tselina. Nakhalenok. Sud'ba cheloveka (Moscow: Detgiz, 1977), 369. 87. "Pis'mo IV-mu Vsesoiuznomu s"ezdu Soiuza sovetskikh pisatelei," in Solzhenitsyn, Bodalsia telenok s dubom: Ocherki literaturnoi zhizni (Paris: YMCAPress, 1975), 486, 488. The English translation of the letter can be found in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. and intro. Leopold Labedz (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London; Harper and Row, 1971), 82-87. For a more detailed discussion of origins, contents, and effects of Solzhenitsyn's letter, see Michael Scammell, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography (W. W. Norton and Company: New York, London, 1984), 584-91. 88. Letters and telegrams in support of Solzhenitsyn's letter can be read in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, 88-97. All of them were composed and sent on the eve of or during the Fourth Writers' Congress. 89. Chetvertyi s"ezd pisatelei SSSR: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1968), 4. 90. "Stenographisches Protokoll," Literatur und Repression, 114, 115. 91. "Stenographisches Protokoll," Literatur und Repression, 116, 117 92. "Istina—eto besstrashie: Besedy o Fedore Abramove," Knizhnoe obozrenie, 30 December 1988. This is an interview given by the writer's widow, Liudmila Krutikova-Abramova, to Viacheslav Ogryzko. 93. "Vnutrennii tsenzor," Novoe russkoe slovo, 18 October 1970; The Soviet Censorship, ed. Dewhirst and Farrell, 36.
Chapter 6 1. "Doklad General'nogo sekretaria TsK KPSS M. S. Gorbacheva na Plenume TsK KPSS 23 aprelia 1985 goda," Kommunist, no. 7 (May 1985): 6, 14—15. 2. "Oktiabr' i perestroika: Revoliutsiia prodolzhaetsia. Doklad General'nogo sekretaria TsK KPSS M. S. Gorbacheva," Pravda, 3 November 1987. 3. "Demokratizatsiia—sut' perestroiki, sut' sotsializma. Vstrecha v Tsentral'nom Komitete KPSS," Literaturnaia Rossiia, 1.5 January 1988. Lenin's phrase about literature comes from his article "Party Organization and Party Literature" (1905). It should read; "part of the common cause of the proletariat." It is quite possible that in this article Lenin spoke exclusively of the political literature of the Social-Democratic Party, not of belles-lettres. 4. See Sergei Zalygin, "Nachinaem s 'Arkhipelaga'—takova volia avtora," interview by Vladimir Shevelev, Moskovskie novosti, 16 July 1989; Vadim Borisov, "U Solzhenitsyna v Vermonte," interview by Alia Latynina, Literaturnaia gazeta, 29 November 1989. 5. For details see John B, Dunlop, "The Almost-Rehabilitation and Re-Anathematization of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn," Working Papers in International Studies 1-89-5 (The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, February 1989); 18-20. 6. Three letters to Gorbachev can be found in "Obrashcheniia i pis'ma," Novoe russkoe slovo, 9 December 1988. The first is dated October 8; the second, October 21; and a third is undated. 7. See Felicity Barringer, "Kremlin Keeping Solzhenitsyn on Blacklist," New York Times, 30 November 1988, 1.
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8. See Felicity Barringer, "Soviets Allow Solzhenitsyn to Be Praised," New York Times, 13 December 1988, A5. 9. "Stat'ia Solzhenitsyna v kievskoi gazete," Novoe russkoe slovo, 11 November 1988; Bill Keller, "Obscure Soviet Magazine Breaks the Ban on Solzhenitsyn's Work," New York Times, 20 March 1989, 1. 10. See excerpts from Minushov's report in Knizhnoe obozrenie, 24 August 1990; Andrei Mai'gin, "Pamiati sovetskoi tsenzury," Novoe russkoe slovo, 10 September 1990. Minushov's name, as the author of the report, is given only in Mai'gin's article. Vladimir Boldyrev, with a doctorate in economics, became chief of the USSR Glavlit in 1986. 11. Quoted in David Remnick, "Soviet Journal To Publish 'Gulag,'" Washington Post, 21 April 1989, C9. 12. "Estonskii zhurnal nachal pechatat' 'Arkhipelag Gulag,'" Novoe russkoe slovo, 5 July 1989. 13. Quoted in Felicity Barringer, "Moscow Magazine Is Leader in New Openness," New York Times, 22 March 1987, 18. 14. Louise Branson, "Revealed: Kremlin Guide to Soviet Editors," Sunday Times (London), 5 January 1986, 1. The report does not give the printing date of the manual. 15. For details see lu. V. Galochkin's letter to the editorial board of Znamia, 9 September 1987, and other correspondence concerning his casse, in Znamia, no. 7 (1988): 234-35. 16. See Fedotov's statement in "Slova i sanktsii; Venskie soglasheniia i budushchee tsenzury v SSSR," Vek XX i mir, no. 7 (1989): 25. 17. A. Kapto, "Vopros Glavlita SSSR" [ memorandum of 31 December 1988 to the Party Central Committee from the head of its Ideological Department], in Tsenzura inostrannykh knig v Rossiiskoi imperii i Sovetskom Soiuze. Katalog vystavki (Prilozhenie), comp. Tat'iana Goriaeva [Moscow, 1993], 38. 18. Somewhat different information came from Vladimir Solodin, a member of the Glavlit Collegium and chairman of the interdepartmental commission set up to reduce the spetskhrany holdings. According to Solodin, most of the titles kept in spetskhrany in 1988-89 were printed during the Civil War on territories held by the Whites or by Russian dmigrds. For details on the treatment of spetskhrany see S. Taranov, "Spetsfondov bol'she ne sushchestvuet," interview with V. Solodin, Izvestiia, 27 November 1988; "Vozvrashchaiutsia knigi," interview with V. Solodin, Literaturnaia Rossiia, 14 July 1989. 19. A. Kapto, letter to the Party Central Committee, 6 December 1988, in Moskovskie novosti, 14 June 1992. 20. V. Solodin, in "A Soviet Censor, Uncensored," interview by Laura Starink, New York Times, 13 February 1989, A21. For interviews with Boldyrev see Bill Keller, "The Life of a Soviet Censor: Anything Goes? Not Just Yet," New York Times, 18 July 1989, Al, A10; "Gosudarstvennye tainy i glasnost'," Argumenty i fakty, 1117 November 1989; "Tsenzury net, no tainy ostaiutsia," Izvestiia, 26 July 1990. 21. Yu. M. Baturin, M. A. Fedotov, and V. L, Entin, "Law on the Press and Other Mass Media Means," XX Century and Peace, no. 4 (1989): 33-45. 22. "Statement" and "Letter One; Censorship of the Mass Media," XX Century and Peace, no. 4 (1989): 30, 31-32. The text of the Final Document of the Vienna meeting appeared in Izvestiia, 26 January 1989. 23. For details see V. Dolganov, "Odobren proekt zakona o pechati," Izvestiia, 21 September 1989; V. Dolganov and A. Stepovoi, "Zakon o pechati: Ostalos' soglasovat' popravki," Izvestiia, 9 June 1990; M. Gorbachev, "Zakon Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik o pechati i drugikh sredstvakh massovoi informatsii,"
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Izvestiia, 20 June 1990; A. Luk'ianov, "Postanovlenie Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR o vvedenii v deistvie Zakona SSSR 'O pechati i drugikh sredstvakh massovoi informatsii,'" Izvestiia, 9 June 1990. 24. "Tsenzury net, no tainy ostaiutsia," Izvestiia, 26 July 1990. 25. See A. Illesh and V. Rudnev, "Tsenzura otmenena, tsenzory ostaiutsia; Popytka retsenzii na knigu o gosudarstvennykh tainakh," Izvestiia, 9 October 1990. The authors were members of the Izvestiia editorial board. 26. For details concerning the demise of GUOT and the birth of the State Inspection see B. El'tsin, Prezident RSFSR, "Ukaz Prezidenta RSFSR. O merakh po zashchite svobody pechati v RSFSR. No. Ill, 11 sentiabria 1991 goda," in Normativnye akty, deistvuiushchie v sfere upravleniia i pravovogo regulirovaniia sredstv massovoi informatsii i izdatel'skoi deiatel'nosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Dokumenty (Moscow: Rossiia, 1992), 63-64; O. Lobov, zamestitel' Predsedatelia Soveta Ministrov RSFSR, "Postanovlenie Soveta Ministrov RSFSR. Voprosy Gosudarstvennoi inspektsii po zashchite svobody pechati i massovoi informatsii pri Ministerstve pechati i massovoi informatsii RSFSR. No. 566, 25 oktiabria 1991 goda," Normativnye akty, 99-101; M. Poltoranin, Ministr pechati i massovoi informatsii RSFSR, "Prikaz ministra pechati i massovoi informatsii RSFSR. Ob uprazdnenii organov Glavnogo upravleniia po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain SSSR i obrazovanii organov Gosudarstvennoi inspektsii. No. 210, 22 noiabria 1991 goda," Normativnye akty, 146-47. 27. See "Prezident predlagaet i otkazyvaetsia," Moskovskie novosti, 27 January 1991. 28. For details see Serge Schmeman, "Soviet TV Reflects the Kremlin's Grimmer Picture," New York Times, 8 February 1991, Al, A6; "'TSN'—pod tsenzuroi," Nezavisimaia gazeta, 19 January 1991; Mikhail Fedotov, "Tsenzura nikogda ne ischezala," Moskovskie novosti, 10 February 1991. 29. See "'Tvoe vsevidiashchee oko' 1991 goda," "Ideologicheskie zaprety," "Nakazanie rynkom," Moskovskie novosti, 14 July 1991. 30. O. Volkov—D. Urnov, "O perezhitom, dozvolennom i nedozvolennom," Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (1990); 63-65. According to Professor Urnov, the deletions were proposed by the editors of the Soviet Writer and the Glavlit representative assigned to this publishing house. Volkov unwillingly accepted them to secure the publication of his book (Urnov's letter to me, 2 January 1996). 31. Zhigulin's letter to me, 19 April 1993, and my conversation with him on 27 May 1993 in Moscow. 32. Grigorii Baklanov, ". . . No 'Dama s sobachkoi' mne dorozhe," interview by Elena Grandova, Literaturnaia gazeta, 25 November 1992. 33. Artyom Borovik, "Epilogue," The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan (London, Boston; Faber and Faber, 1990), 279. 34. Borovik, "Epilogue," 279. 35. For details see Vladimir Voinovich, "The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman," Index on Censorship, no. 5 (1985): 9-10; Fedor Guber, "Vozvrashchenie romana Vasiliia Grossmana," Knizhnoe obozrenie, 10 March 1989. 36. "Gosf 13 stranitsy: Anatolii Anan'ev," interview by Andrei Mal'gin, Nedelia, no. 34 (21-27 August 1989): 13. 37. Sergei Kaledin, "la sluzhil v stroibate," interview by Timur Gaidar, Moskovskie novosti, 20 November 1988. 38. Cf. Vladimir Nabokov, Drugie berega (New York; Izdat. imeni Chekhova, 1954), 121, 225, 232; Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1988), 123, 125. Chapters 12 and 13 are missing from Vladimir Nabokov, Mashen'ka. Zashchita Luzhina. Priglashenie na kazn'. Drugie berega (fragmenty) (Moscow: KhL, 1988). Chapter 12 must have been
Notes
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removed because it contains the sharpest condemnations of the terroristic nature of the Bolshevik government. 39. Cf. Anatolii Zhigulin, "Chernye kamni," Znamia, no. 7 (1988); 13, 17, 73, and no. 8 (1988): 94; Chernye kamni (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1989), 10, 19, 130, 225. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by the issue and page numbers of the magazine and by page numbers in the book. 40. Artem Borovik, "Spriatannaia voina," Ogonek, no. 49 (2-9 December 1989): 20; The Hidden War, 127-30; "Spriatannaia voina," Afganistan: Eshche raz pro voinu (Moscow; Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1990), 129; Spriatannaia voina (Moscow; PIK, 1992), 95. 41. Cf. O. Volkov, Pogruzhenie vo t'mu: fz perezhitogo (Paris: Atheneum, 1987), 10; "Pogruzhenie vo t'mu; Iz perezhitogo," Vek nadezhd i krushenii (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1989), 10; Pogruzhenie vo t'mu (Moscow: MG, Tovarishchestvo russkikh khudozhnikov, 1989), 6. Subsequent references to the first two editions will be given in the text by page numbers. The third edtion will be mentioned only in cases when it did not restore the original text completely. Its page numbers will be given in the text. 42. Cf. Vasilii Grossman, Zhizn' i sud'ba, ed. S. Markish and E. Etkind (Lausanne; I'Age d'Homme, 1980), 139; "Zhizn' i sud'ba," Oktiabr', no. 1 (1988): 110; Zhizn' i sud'ba (Moscow: Knizhnaia palata, 1988), 199. 43. Cf. Zhizn' i sud'ba (1980), 450; "Zhizn' i sud'ba; Glavy iz romana," Ogonek, no. 40 (3-10 October 1987): 20; Oktiabr', no. 4 (1988): 21. This deletion is discussed in Efim Etkind, "Net dvukh pravd: O sovetskom izdanii romana Vasiliia Grossmana 'Zhizn' i sud'ba,"' Strana i mir, no. 6 (November-December 1988): 13435. In his article Professor Etkind compares the 1980 Lausanne and the 1988 Oktiabr' editions of Life and Fate. 44. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 2 (1988); 59; Zhizn' i sud'ba (1988), 283; Zhizn' i sud'ba, 2d ed. (Moscow; Knizhnaia palata, 1989), 229. 45. Cf. Andrei Bitov, "Chelovek v peizazhe," Novyi mir, no. 3 (1987): 64; Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1988), 252. On the publication story of "A Man in the Landscape" see Andrei Bitov, Sobr. soch. v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow; MG, 1991), 573. 46. For details see Lev Miroshnichenko, "Vo chto obkhoditsia trezvost'?" Ogonek, no. 37 (24 September-4 October 1988); 20-23. 47. Cf. I. Babel', Izbrannoe (Minsk: Mastatskaia litaratura, 1986), 64, 79, 94, 106; Ogonek, no. 4 (21-28 January 1989): 12; Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow: KhL, 1990), 75, 94, 114, 128. 48. [S. N. Povartsov], "Kommentarii," Sochineniia, 558. 49. Cf. Ivan Shevtsov, Vo imia ottsa i syna (Moscow; Mosk. rab., 1970), 54; Izbrannye proizvedeniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow; Voenizdat, 1988), 353. The author called Deutscher's scholarly study a novel and misdated its publication. The three volumes of the study appeared in 1954, 1959, and 1963, respectively. 50. Aitmatov, "Plakha," Novyi mir, no. 8 (1986): 144; Granin, "Zubr," Novyi mir, no. 2 (1987): 52; Pristavkin, "Nochevala tuchka zolotaia," Znamia, no. 4 (1987): 58; Rybakov, "Tridtsat' piatyi i drugie gody," Druzhba narodov, no. 10 (1988); 46. This last novel is a sequel to Children of the Arbat. 51. Cf. Drugie berega (1954), 214; Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1988): 119; Mashen'ka (1988), 497. 52. Drugie berega (1954), 210, 224; Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1988): 118, 122; Mashen'ka (1988), 495. The last statement is absent from Mashen'ka as part of chapter 12 which was not included in this collection.
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53. Cf. Strana i mir, no. 2 (1988): 125; Znamia, no. 7 (1988): 14. Zhigulin told me about the KGB censorial intervention during our conversation on 27 May 1993. 54. Cf. Drugie berega (1954), 224; Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1988): 122. This passage is absent from Mashen'ka as part of the omitted chapter 12. 55. Cf. I. A. Bunin, Okaiannye dni, intro. and notes by S. P. Kryzhitskii [Kryzytski] (London, Canada: Zaria, 1973), 31, 35, 41-42, 131; Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 4 (1989); 104, 105, no. 7 (1989): 97. 56. Cf. Okaiannye dni (1973), 88; Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 6 (1989); 103. 57. Cf. Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 7 (1989): 105; Slovo. V mire knig, no. 12 (1989): 70. Before its May 1989 issue, this magazine was called V mire knig. The double title lasted until January 1990 when the magazine became Slovo. 58. Cf. Zhizn' i sud'ba (1980), 187, 201; Oktiabr', no. 2 (1988); 48, 58; Knizhnaia palata (1989), 264; 282. The first two examples were cited in Etkind, "Net dvukh pravd," Strana i mir, no. 6 (1988); 134. 59. "Cost' 13 stranitsy," Nedelia, no. 34, (21-27 August 1989): 13. 60. Cf. Vladimir Voinovich, "Moskva-2042," Novoe russkoe slovo, 1, 5 June 1986; Moskva 2042 (Moscow: Vsia Moskva, 1990), 160, 177. In the second example Voinovich plays on the phonetic similarity between the first parts of the compounds gazoprovod (gas pipeline) and govnoprovod (shit pipeline). 61. For lakovlev's reaction to Children of the Arbat, see A. S. Chemiaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym: Po dnevnikovym zapisiam (Moscow; Progress—Kul'tura, 1993), 51-52. 62. My telephone conversation with Rybakov, 31 August 1992. 63. Excerpts from letters of the Druzhba narodov editorial board to Rybakov, 15 and 28 August 1986, in Anatolii Rybakov, "Vchera i segodnia," interview by Irina Rishina, Literaturnaia gazeta, 22 May 1991. 64. "Vchera i segodnia." In our conversation on 31 August 1992, Rybakov said that much of the material cut by Druzhba narodov was transferred to 1935 and Other Years. He gave no details about the contents of these restorations. 65. Anatolii Rybakov, "Deti Arbata," Druzhba narodov, no. 5 (1987): 113. The quotation comes from Lenin's speech about economy delivered on 31 March 1920 at the Ninth Party Congress. See V. 1. Lenin, "Rech' o khoziaistvennom stroitel'stve 31 marta," Polnoe sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 40 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1963), 272. In his quotation Rybakov mistakenly uses the words "socialist centralism" instead of "socialist democratism." 66. Druzhba narodov, no, 5 (1987): 187. 67. My conversation with Rybakov on 1 October 1987 in Princeton, N.J. 68. Cf. Zhizn' i sud'ba (1980), 460; Oktiabr', no. 4 (1988): 28. This deletion was discussed by Etkind in "Net dvukh pravd," Strana i mir, no, 6 (1988): 132. 69. E. lu. Zimin, "Dva voprosa generalu Volkogonovu," Literaturnaia Rossiia, 1 June 1990. Rear Admiral Zimin contributed to the appearance of Poliakov's book by turning to high military and Party institutions. 70. For this information see editorial statement preceding Sergei Kaledin, '"Pod lezhachii kamen' voda ne techet,"' interview by lurii Zainashev, Nedelia, no. 13 (26 March-1 April 1990); 20. 71. Cf. The Hidden War, 130, 254, 258, 260, 267; Afganistan, 130, 229, 233, 240. Subsequent references to these editions will be given in the text by page numbers. The same omissions concerning Antonenko's brutality are encountered in Ogonek, no. 52 (23-30 December 1989): 27, 28, 29. 72. The number of the army and the location of its reserve command post were given only in Ogonek (no. 50 [9-16 December 1989]: 29).
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73. Philip Taubman, "Soviet Poet Looks Hard at Suffering of the Jews," New York Times, 20 October 1986, A10. 74. Irina Rishina, "Strasti po uchreditel'stvu, ili v ch'ikh rukakh 'Znamia,'" Literaturnaia gazeta, 19 December 1990. 75. Cf. "Smirennoe kladbishche," Novyi mir, no. 5 (1987): 47, 69; Sergei Kaledin, "Smirennoe kladbishche," Koridor: Povesti (Moscow: Sov. pis., 1987), 20, 56. I learned about these excisions from Dr. Tat'iana Patera. 76. Cf. Zhizn' i sud'ba (1980), 450; Ogonek, no. 40 (3-10 October 1987): 20; Oktiabr', no. 4 (1988): 21, 77. Cf. Zhizn' i sud'ba (1980), 332-35; Oktiabr', no. 3 (1988): 81. 78. For a detailed discussion of chapter 32 and the circumstances surrounding its excision and publication, see Etkind, "Net dvukh pravd," Strana i mir, no. 2 (1988): 135-37. 79. Quoted in Nataliia Arkusheva, "Chelovek iz goriachei tochki," Novoe russkoe slovo, 2 April 1990. 80. "300 slov," Moskovskie novosti, 31 March 1991. 81. Cf. Strana i mir, no. 2 (1988): 127; Znamia, no. 7 (1988): 16; (Mosk. rab., 1989), 14. 82. Cf. I. Babel', Rasskazy (Moscow: KhL, 1936), 134; Sochineniia, vol. 2 (1990), 128, 558. 83. Druzhba narodov, no. 5 (1987): 104. 84. Cf. Strana i mir, no. 3 (1988); 130; Znamia, no. 8 (1988); 94; (Mosk. rab., 1989), 225. 85. For details see Oksana Antich, "Religioznaia politika pri Gorbacheve," Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, PC 75/87, 27 June 1987. 86. My conversation with Bitov, 26 July 1992 at Middlebury College. Cf. Andrei Bitov, Pushkinskii dom (Ann Arbor, Mich.; Ardis, 1978), 319; Novyi mir, no. 12 (1987); 63. 87. My conversations with Erofeev, 4 August 1989 and 3 July 1990 at Middlebury College. Cf. Viktor Erofeev, "Popugaichik," Ogonek, no. 49 (3-10 December 1988): 24; Telo Anny, ili konets russkogo avangarda (Moscow: Mosk. rab., 1989), 57. This collection consists of eight short stories written in the second half of the 1980s. 88. Telo Anny, 18, 21, 22, 23. Words deleted or replaced in this collection were written out by Erofeev on its galley proofs. He allowed me to xerox the pages containing the revisions which, as he said, were all made by the Glavlit censors. Omissions were indicated by three dots enclosed, as a rule, in parentheses. 89. Viktor Erofeev, Russkaja krasavitsa (Moscow; Vsia Moskva, 1990), II, 200. In this book, omissions of words or letters are indicated by dots whose number almost always corresponds to the number of deleted letters. This method greatly facilitates the identification of censored words. 90. Pristavkin, "Nochevala tuchka zolotaia," Znamia, no. 3 (1987): 50; Rybakov, "Deti Arbata," Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1987): 75. 91. "Net dvukh pravd," Strana i mir, no. 6 (1988): 133-34. Cf. Oktiabr', no. 4 (1988): 62, 113; Zhizn' i sud'ba (1988), 676, 762. 92. Cf. Vas. Grossman, Vse techet . . . (Frankfort/Main: Possev-Verlag, 1970), 102, 113, 117; "Vse techet," Oktiabr', no. 6 (1989): 68, 73, 75. 93. Russkaja krasavitsa, 36. 94. Russkaja krasavitsa, 109. A derivative from the vulgarism for penis cropped up unabridged in the verses of the Moscow poet Timur Kibirov printed in the Riga information bulletin titled Atmoda {Awakening). The bulletin was almost brought to trial. See A. A. Iliushin, "larosf pravednykh: Zametki o nepristoinoi russkoi poezii XVIII—XIX vv.," Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 11 (1991): 14.
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95. My conversation with Erofeev, 3 July 1990. 96. "Vchera i segodnia," Literatumaia gazeta, 22 May 1991. 97. For details on the upsurge of erotic writings see Sergei Chuprinin, "Peremena uchasti; Russkaia literatura na poroge sed'mogo goda perestroiki," Znamia, no. 3 (1991): 227-30. 98. "Luka Mudishchev," Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 11 (1991): 36-38. The common belief attributes the poem's authorship to Ivan Barkov (1732-68). However, some literary scholars argue that the poem was written later. 99. Cf. Viktor Erofeev, "Popugaichik" (typescript), n.p., n.d., 8, 11; Ogonek, no. 49 (3-10 December 1988): 23; Telo Anny, 54-55, 57. A copy of the story's typescript was given to me by Erofeev. 100. For this and preceding quotations see Russkaja krasavitsa, 7, 8, 199. 101. Cf. Russkaja krasavitsa, 190; Victor Erofeyev, Russian Beauty, tr. Andrew Reynolds (New York: Viking, 1993), 312. 102. See lurii Zhukov, "Svoboda slova ili vsedozvolennost'?" Pravda, 26 August 1989; Barringer, "Moscow Magazine is Leader in New Openness," New York Times, 22 March 1987, 18. 103. Rasputin's speech, Literatumaia Rossiia, 21 December 1990,
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
In view of the large number of sources used for this study, entries are limited primarily to reference books mentioned in the text or listed in footnotes. Additional bibliographical information can be found in The Soviet Censorship (1973) and The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR (1989) listed below in Section III.
I. Archival Materials. 1. Tsentrai'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv RSFSR (Moscow). The meaning of figures and slashes used below in the identification of materials is explained in note 12 to chapter 1 of this study. A-2306/1/3367/56-57: Information on Glavlit Bulletin, no. 1 (January 1923). A-2306/1/3367/58-143: Glavlit reports on domestic and emigre publishing in 1922. A-2306/1/3396/130, 249, 249 ob.: Glavlit structure and salaries, 1923-February 1924. A-2306/1/3396/132-33, 135-47, 340-42, 344, 348, 350, 352, 354; Evaluations and brief biographies of Glavlit officials and censors, January-February 1924. A-2306/1/3396/149-58 ob.: Reports of Glavlit departments for July-September 1924, A-2306/3/131/8-10 ob., 20, 24: Glavlit structure and staffing, August 1922. A-2306/69/158/5, 8-9: Problems with Glavlit staffing, February-March 1927. A-2306/69/514/2, 4-7, 10: Changes for Glavlit projected by the Party Central Committee and the Narkompros, 1926. A-2306/69/514/12-15: Lebedev-Polianskii's report on Glavlit activities in 1925. A-2306/514/16-33: Glavlit charts on publishing and censorship in 1925. A-2306/69/1584/1-8: A protest against a Glavlit prohibition, 1926-27. A-2306/69/2093/19, 24; A protest against a Glavlit prohibition, 1929.
2. Records of the Smolensk Oblast' Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1917-41 (Microfilm, National Archives, Washington, D.C.). This collection is usually called the Smolensk Archive. The meaning of letters and figures used below in the identification of materials is explained in note
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12 to chapter 2 of this study. Some of the archival items have no or unclear pagination. T 84, Roll 28, WKP 530, p. 189; Glavlit Bulletin, no. 8 (1934). T 87, Roll 23, WKP 176, pp. 55-56: Circular letter of the Western Province Committee of the Communist Party on censorship, March 1934. T 87, Roll 28, WKP 230, pp. 3-20, 31-42, 44, 46-68, 75-79: Primarily instructions to censors issued by Glavlit or the Obllit of the Western Province, 1933-36. T 87, Roll 29, WKP 237, pp. 169-71: Removal of "counterrevolutionary" literature from libraries, June-July 1935. T 87, Roll 31, WKP 265, pp. 12-17, 28-37; Removal of "counterrevolutionary" literature from libraries, February, June 1935. T 88, Roll 11, Reel 57, pp. 73, 106: Removal of "counterrevolutionary" literature from libraries, March, May 1936.
11. Printed Sources Containing Basic Governmental Decrees on Censorship or Publishing. Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti. Vol. 1. Moscow: Politizdat, 1957. Fogelevich, L. G., comp. Deistvuiushchee zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik. Moscow: luridicheskoe izdat. NKIu RSFSR, 1927. . 2d ed. Moscow; Izdat. narkomtorgov SSSR i RSFSR, 1929. . 3d ed. Moscow; Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1931. . Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: K piatnadtsatiletiiu OGIZa, 1919-1934. 4th ed. Moscow: Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1934. . Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik. 5th ed. Moscow: Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1935. . Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pechati: Sistematicheskii sbornik. 6th ed. Moscow; Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo, 1937, Gorbachev, Mikhail. "Zakon Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik o pechati i drugikh sredstvakh massovoi informatsii." Izvestiia, 20 June 1990. Goriaeva, Tat'iana, comp. Tsenzura inostrannykh knig v Rossiiskoi imperii i Sovetskom Soiuze. Katalog vystavki (Prilozhenie) [Moscow, 1993]. Izdatel'skoe delo v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917-1922): Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Moscow: Kniga, 1972. Izdatel'skoe delo v SSSR (1923—1931): Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Moscow: Kniga, 1978. Nikolaev, N. M., comp. Zakony o pechati: Sbornik dekretov, postanovlenii, ustavov, instruktsii i rasporiazhenii. Part 1. Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924. Normativnye akty, deistvuiushchie v sfere upravleniia i pravovogo regulirovaniia sredstv massovoi informatsii i izdatel'skoi deiatel'nosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Dokumenty. Moscow; Rossiia, 1992. O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i televidenii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Moscow: Mysl', 1972.
Bibliography
307
O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati: Sbornik dokumentov. Moscow; Pravda, 1954. Sistematicheskoe sobranie zakonov RSFSR, ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta RSFSR i reshenii pravitel'stva RSFSR. Vol. 1. Moscow: luridicheskaia literatura, 1968.
III. Sources Devoted Wholly or Partly to the Implementation of Censorial or Publishing Policies. Antonov, A. U mysli stoia na chasakh. A typescript (309 small pages). Moscow, n.p., 1978. A samizdat study divided into the following parts: (1) Introduction; (2) History of Censorship; (3) Development of Soviet Censorship; (4) The Statutes of Censorship; (5) Special Types of Censorship; 6) Imitation of Stanislavskii [theater censorship]; (7) Forbidden Themes; (8) Advocates of the Gag; (9) Marx and Lenin on Censorship; (10) Censorship, Society, and State. A creditable general account of Soviet censorship supported by references to appropriate sources, whose facts of publication are not always easy to establish due to the absence of footnotes and bibliography. Babichenko, D. L. Pisateli i tsenzory: Sovetskaia literatura 1940-kh godov pod politicheskim kontrolem TsK. Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1994. This book consists of three chapters focusing on political control of literature by the Party Central Committee in 1940, 1941-45, and 1946, respectively. The author shows how the literary policy of the Party leadership, implemented chiefly through the Central Committee's Propaganda and Agitation Directorate, impacted works and careers of Soviet writers. Interesting information is provided on the situation in the Soviet Writers' Union. The book has a bibliography and index of names. , comp. "Literaturnyi front": Istoriia politicheskoi tsenzury 1932-1946 gg.: Sbornik dokumentov. Moscow: Entsiklopediia rossiiskikh dereven', 1994, This collection offers 101 documents, all but nineteen of them stemming from the 1940-46 period. The documents encompass the Party Central Committee's resolutions pertaining to literature, works by individual writers, and literary periodicals; letters by top officials of the Propaganda and Agitation Directorate to secretaries of the Party Central Committee; writers' letters to Party leaders; and the MGB reports on Mikhail Zoshchenko and on the reaction of Soviet citizens to the Party attack on Zvezda and Leningrad. Part of these documents is discussed in Babichenko's book Pisateli i tsenzory (see entry above). The collection has a very useful annotated index of names. Biulleten' Glavlita RSFSR i OVTs (dlia raionov). No. 8. Moscow: Glavlit, 1934. Blium, Aden. "Drugikh portretov t. Stalina k pechati ne razreshat' (Sekretnye tsenzurnye tsirkuliary 1920-kh godov)." Peterburgskii literator, no. 6 (12) (1993): 5. . Za kulisami "ministerstva pravdy": Tainaia istoriia sovetskoi tsenzury, 1917-1929. Saint Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1994. This study gives a detailed, solidly documented account of the Soviet censorship between 1917
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and 1929, frequently drawing upon previously untapped archival materials. The author concentrates on general censorial policies of Gosizdat, Glavlit, GPU, and Glavrepertkom concerning private publishers, journalism, Russian classics, Soviet literature, emigre press, and children's literature. The study does not deal with close textual censorship of belles-lettres , publ. and intro. "Protesty Vserossiiskogo Soiuza pisatelei protiv tsenzurnogo terrora (1920-1921 gg.)." Voprosy literatury, no. 4 (1994); 275-89. Brostrom, Kenneth N. "The Enigma of Pil'njak's The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea.'''' Slavic and East European Journal 18, no. 3 (fall 1974): 27198. Bulgakov, Mikhail. "Pis'mo M. Bulgakova sovetskomu pravitel'stvu." Grani, no. 66 (1967): 155-61. Bush, Robert L. "Gladkov's Cement: The Making of a Soviet Classic." Slavic and East European Journal 22, no. 3 (fall 1978): 348-61. Choldin, Marianna Tax, and Maurice Friedberg, eds. The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR. Russian portions tr. Maurice Friedberg and Barbara Dash. Boston, London, Sydney, Wellington: Unwin Hyman, 1989. A major book on Soviet censorship consisting of presentations and discussions recorded at a conference on "Soviet Direction of Creative and Intellectual Activity" held in May 1983 at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Concerned mainly with the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, the book offers extremely valuable insights into censorship of Soviet literature, cinema, theater, journalism, mass media, and translated works of Western political thought. An expertly compiled bibliography reaches into the late 1980s. Dewhirst, Martin, and Robert Farrell, eds. The Soviet Censorship. Metuchen, NJ; Scarecrow Press, 1973. This excellent, pioneering book derives its material from presentations and discussions at a symposium on Soviet censorship organized by the Munich Institute for the Study of the USSR and held in London in January 1970. Dealing primarily with the 1950s and the 1960s, the book covers censorship in literature, science, cinema, and music. Considerable attention is given to self-censorship. Detailed footnotes provide a wealth of bibliographical information. "Dokumenty svidetel'stvuiut. . . Iz fondov khraneniia sovremennoi dokumentatsii (TsKhSD)." Voprosy literatury, no. 1 (1993): 215-57; no. 4 (1993): 294-325. Dreyer, Hans-Joachim. Petr Vers'igora "Ljudi s c'istoj sovest'ju": Veranderungen eines Partisanenromans unter dem Einflufi der Politik. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1976. Dunlop, John B. "The Almost-Rehabilitation and Re-Anathematization of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn." Working Papers in International Studies. 1-89-5 [Stanford]; The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, February 1989. Ermolaev, German. "Politicheskaia pravka 'Tikhogo Dona.'" Mosty (Munich), no. 15 (1970): 265-89.
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, Herman. "Solz'enicyn's Self-Censorship: Two Versions of V kruge pervom." Russian Language Journal 38, nos. 129-30 (winter-spring 1984): 175-85. Evtushenko, Evgenii. "Plach po tsenzure." Ogonek (1991): no. 5 (26 January -2 February): 24-26; no. 6 (2-9 February): 14-16; no. 7 (9-16 February): 2225. Fainsod, Merle. Smolensk under Soviet Rule. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958. Friedberg, Maurice. "Keeping Up with the Censor." Problems of Communism 13, no. 6 (November-December 1964): 22-31. . "New Editions of Soviet Belles-Lettres: A Study in Politics and Palimpsests." American Slavic and East European Review 13, no. 1 (February 1954): 72-88. . "Soviet Literature and Retroactive Truth." Problems of Communism 3, no. 1 (January-February 1954): 31-39. . "What Price Censorship?" Problems of Communism 17, no. 5 (September-October 1968): 18-23. Galich, Aleksandr. General'naia repetitsiia. Frankfort/Main: Possev-Verlag, 1974. Gladilin, Anatolii. "Varvary." Novoe russkoe slovo, 30 November 1980. , Anatoly. The Making and Unmaking of a Soviet Writer: My Story of the "Young Prose" of the Sixties and After. Tr. David Lapeza. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1979. Gorchakov, N. A. Istoriia sovetskogo teatra. New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1956. Goriaeva, Tat'iana. "Zhumalistika i tsenzura (Po materialam sovetskogo radioveshchaniia 20-30-kh godov. Istochnikovedcheskii aspekt)." Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (July-August 1990): 112-23. , publ. "Tz"iat' vsiakie upominaniia': Uroki tsenzury." Moskovskie novosti, 9 August 1992. Gorokhov, Boris I. Publishing in the U.S.S.R. [Bloomington]: Indiana University Press, 1959. Gromova, T. V., ed. Tsenzura v tsarskoi Rossii i Sovetskom Soiuze: Materialy konferentsii 24-27 maia 1993 g. Moskva. Moscow: Rudomino, 1995. The book is comprised of presentations and discussions recorded at the international conference on censorship of foreign and domestic books in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union held in May 1993 at the Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow. The greater part of the text covers censorship in Soviet literature, cinema, and theater, as well as the removal of books from libraries. The purge of libraries receives additional treatment in the concluding section ofthe book which contains fragments of proceedings of the 1991 conference on the guarding of state secrets held in Leningrad. Underpinned by numerous firsthand accounts, the book is indispensable for the study of Soviet censorship. Index on Censorship. Vols. 1-23. London; Writers and Scholars International, 1972-94. This magazine publishes materials concerning suppression of free speech throughout the world.
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Kern, Gary. "Solz'enicyn's Self-Censorship; The Canonical Text of Odin den' Ivana Denisovic'a." Slavic and East European Journal 20, no. 4 (winter 1976): 421-36. Kimmage, Dennis, comp. and ed. Russian Libraries in Transition: An Anthology of Glasnost Literature. Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland and Company, 1992. Kondratovich, Aleksei. Novomirskii dnevnik, 1967-1970. Moscow: Sov. pis., 1991, Krutikova, L. "Fedor Abramov i tsenzura: Po materialam lichnogo arkhiva pisatelia." Moskva, no. 10 (1990): 176-96. Kumanev, V. A. "Korifei 'sovershenstvuet . . . ': Stalin v roli literaturnogo redaktora i kritika." Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 September 1989. Labedz, Leopold, ed. and intro. Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper and Row, 1971. Lakshin, Vladimir. "Novyi mir" vo vremena Khrushcheva: Dnevnik i poputnoe (1953-1964). Moscow: Knizhnaia palata, 1991. Likhtenshtein, E. S., N. M. Sikorskii, and M. V. Urnov. Teoriia i praktika redaktirovaniia knigi. 2d ed., rev. and enl. Part 1. Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1964. Loseff, Lev. On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature. Tr. Jane Bobko. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1984. Losev, Lev. Zakrytyi raspredeliteT. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ermitazh, 1984. Lunev, A. E., ed. Administrativnoe pravo. Moscow; luridicheskaia literatura, 1967. Lutokhin, D. "Sovetskaia tsenzura (Po lichnym vospominaniiam)." In Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, edited by 1. V. Gessen. Vol 2. Berlin: SIovo, 1923. Meshcheriakov, N. L. "O chastnykh izdatel'stvakh." Pechat' i revoliutsiia, no. 6 (J uly-August1922): 128-34. Okorokov, A. Z. Oktiabr' i krakh russkoi burzhuaznoi pressy. Moscow: MysP, 1970. "Trodolzhaetsia rabota po razmezhevaniiu uchastnikov 'Metropolia.'" Voprosy liteatury, no. 5 (1993): 323-38. Raymond, Boris. Krupskaia and Soviet Russian Librarianship, 1917-1939. Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow Press, 1979. Seifullina, Lidiia. "Loskutki myslei o literature." Sobr. soch., edited by Valer'ian Pravdukhin. Vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1926. . " O kritikakh." Sibirskie ogni, no. 9 (1988): 143-45. Solodin, Vladimir, Untitled report on censorship delivered at the official meeting marking the sixtieth anniversary of Glavlit. Typescript [Moscow, 1982]. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. Bodalsia telenok s dubom: Ocherki literaturnoi zhizni. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1975. Ssachno, Helen von, and Manfred Grunert, eds. Literatur und Repression: Sowjetische Kulturpolitik seit 1965. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1970. Tekstologiia proizvedenii sovetskoi literatury: Voprosy tekstologii. No. 4. Moscow: Nauka, 1967.
Bibliography
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Twarog, Leon I. "Changing Patterns of a Revolutionary Hero." The Slavonic and East European Review (London) 32, no. 79 (June 1954): 367-84. Veresaev, Vikentii. Statement. In "Chto govoriat pisateli o postanovlenii TsK PKP." Zhurnalist, no. 8-9 (August-September 1925): 30. Veselyi, Artem. "Potokov rozhdenie." Literatumaia gazeta, 26 December 1934. "Viktor Goncharov—lurii Lukin; Besedy o Sholokhove." Typed excerpt from radio interviews given by Lukin to Goncharov on 2-4 December 1991 in Moscow. Vladimirov, Leonid. Rossiia bez prikras i umolchanii. 2d ed. Frankfort/Main: Possev-Verlag, 1969. Walker, Gregory. Soviet Publishing Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Yarmolinsky, Avrahm. Literature under Communism: The Literary Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the End of World War II to the death of Stalin. [Bloomington]: Indiana University Press, 1960.
IV. Miscellaneous Publications Related to Discussion of Censorship in the Present Study. Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, L. I. O, med vospominanii. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1979. Blum, Jakub, and Vera Rich. The Image of the Jew in Soviet Literature: The Post-Stalin Period. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1984. Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union. Cambridge, London, New York; Cambridge University Press, 1982. The Central Committee Resolution and Zhdanov's Speech on the Journals "Zvezda " and "Leningrad." Doklad t. Zhdanova o zhurnalakh "Zvezda " i "Leningrad." Bilingual edition. Tr. Felicity Ashbee and Irina Tidmarsh. Royal Oak, MI: Strathcona Publising Co., 1978. Cherniaev, A. S. Shest' let s Gorbachevym: Po dnevnikovym zapisiam. Moscow: Progress-Kul'tura, 1993. Conquest, Robert, ed. The Politics of Ideas in the USSR. London, Sydney, Toronto; Bodley Head, 1967. Chetvertyi s"ezd pisatelei SSSR: Stenograficheskii otchet. Moscow: Sov. pis., 1968. Chudakova, Marietta. Zhizneopisanie Mikhaila Bulgakova. Moscow: Kniga, 1988. Dal', Vladimir. Tolkovyi slovar' zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka. 2d ed., rev. and enl. 4 vols., 1880-82. Reprint. Moscow: Gosizdat inostrannykh i natsional'nykh slovarei, 1955. Denikin, A. I. Ocherki russkoi smuty. Vol. 2. Paris: I. Povolozky [1922]. Dolzhenkova A., comp. Odesskie katakomby. Odessa; Maiak, 1970; 2d. ed., rev. and enl., 1973.
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Donskaia letopisSbornik mater'ialov po noveishei istorii donskogo kazachestva so vremenirusskoi revoliutsii 1917 goda. Vol 2. Belgrade: Donskaia istoricheskaia komissiia, 1923. Egorov, Vasilii, and Nikolai Zotov. 907 dnei v tylu vraga. Odessa: Maiak, 1969. Ermolaev, Herman. Mikhail Sholokhov and His Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. . Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963. Eventov, I. Sila sarkazma: Satira i iumor v tvorchestve M. Gor'kogo. Leningrad: Sov. pis., 1973. Fadeev, Aleksandr. Pis'ma, 1916-1956. 2d ed., enl. Moscow: Sov. pis., 1973. Frenkel', A. A. Orly revoliutsii. Rostov-on-Don: GIZ, 1920. Gamburg, losif. Tak eto bylo: Vospominaniia. Moscow: Politizdat, 1965. Garrard, John, and Carol Garrard. Inside the Soviet Writers' Union. New York: Free Press, 1990. Gessen, I. A., ed. Arkhiv russkoi revolutsii. Vols. 3-4. Berlin: Slovo, 1922. Gorbanevskii, M. V. V nachale bylo slovo . . . : Maloizvestnye stranitsy istorii sovetskoi lingvistiki. Moscow: Izdat. Universiteta druzhby narodov, 1991. Gosudarstvennaia ordena Lenina biblioteka SSSR imeni Lenina. Zapisi otdela rukopisei. Vol. 37. Moscow: Kniga, 1976. Gura, Viktor. Kak sozdavalsia "Tikhii Don": Tvorcheskaia istoriia romana M. Sholokhova. Moscow; Sov. pis., 1980. Hingley, Ronald. A New Life of Anton Chekhov. New York: Knopf, 1967. Ivanov, Vsevolod. Perepiska s A. M. Gor'kim: Iz dnevnikov i zapisnykh knizhek. 2d ed., rev.and enl. Moscow: Sov. pis., 1985. Karaganov, Aleksandr. Zhizn' dramaturga: Tvorcheskii put' Aleksandra Afinogenova. Moscow: Sov. pis., 1964. Khrushchev, N. S. Vysokoe prizvanie literatury i iskusstva. Moscow; Pravda, 1963. Kovbasiuk, M., ed. Odessa: Ocherk istorii goroda-geroia. Odessa: Oblizdat, 1957. Krylov, S. M., ed. Puti razvitiia teatra (Stenograficheskii otchet i resheniia partiinogo soveshchaniia po voprosam teatra pri Agitprope TsK VKP (b) v mae 1927gf. Moscow-Leningrad: Kinopechat', 1927. Lenin, V. I. Polnoe sobr. soch. 5th ed. Vols. 16, 25, 43. Moscow: Politizdat, 1961-63. . Sochineniia. 2d ed., rev. and enl. Vol. 25. Moscow-Leningrad; Gosizdat, 1928. Literaturnaia entsiklopediia. Vol. 2. Moscow: Kommunisticheskaia akademiia, 1929, Literatumoe nasledstvo. Vol. 70, Moscow; Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1963. Literatumoe obozrenie, no. 11 (1991). Litovskii, O. Tak i bylo: Ocherki, vospominaniia, vstrechi. Moscow: Sov. pis., 1957.
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Logashova, L. P., ed. "Tikhii Don": Uroki romana. Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat, 1979. Lunacharskii, A. V. Sobr. soch. v vos'mi tomakh. Vols. 3, 7. Moscow: KhL, 1964, 1967. Mandelker, Amy, and Roberta Reeder, eds. The Supernatural in Slavic and Baltic Literature: Essays in Honor of Victor Terras. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, Inc., 1988. Martsishek, Galina. My na svoei zemle: Vospominaniia o partizanskom otriade Geroia Sovetskogo Soiuza V. A. Molodtsova (Badaeva). Odessa; Knizhnoe izdat., 1959. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy. Edited by Lewis S. Feuer. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Medvedev, Roi. Lichnost' i epokha: Politicheskii portret L. /. Brezhneva. Vol. 1. Moscow: Novosti, 1991. , Roy A. Problems in the Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov. Trans, by A. D. P. Briggs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Molodaia gvardiia: Sbomik dokumentov i vospominanii o geroicheskoi bor'be podpol'shchikov Krasnodona. Kiev: Molod', 1961. Nemirov, I. I. Zhizn'—podvig. Kishinev: Kartia moldoveniaske, 1967. Ostrovskii, Nikolai. Sochineniia v trekh tomakh. Vol. 3. Moscow: MG, 1968. Patera, Tat'iana. Obzor tvorchestva i analiz moskovskikh povestei luriia Trifonova. Ann Arbor, Mich.; Ardis, 1983. Pluksh, P. I. Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsenskii: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo. Moscow; Prosveshchenie, 1968. Priima, Konstantin. S vekom naravne: Stat'i o tvorchestve M. A. Sholokhova. Rostov-on-Don: Rostizdat, 1981. Proffer, Ellendea. Bulgakov: Life and Work. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984. Reck, Vera T. Boris Pil'niak: A Soviet Writer in Conflict with the State. Montreal and London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 18251855. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1959. Rudnitskii, K. Rezhisser Meierkhol'd. Moscow: Nauka, 1969. Russkie sovetskie pisateli prozaiki: Biobibliograficheskii ukazatel'. 7 vols. Leningrad, Moscow; Kniga, 1959-72. A helpful guide to first publications and reprintings of the works of Soviet prose writers. Volume of information varies from author to author. Sadovnikov, D. N., comp. Zagadki russkogo naroda: Sbornik zagadok, voprosov, pritcht i zadach. 1876. Reprint. Edited by V. P. Anikin. Moscow: Izdat. Moskovskogo universiteta, 1959. Scammell, Michael. Solzhenitsyn: A Biography. New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1984. Smelianskii, Anatolii. Mikhail Bulgakov v Khudozhestvennom teatre. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986; 2d ed., rev. and enl., 1989. Stalin, I. V. Marksizm i voprosy iazykoz.naniia. Moscow: Pravda, 1950. . Sochineniia. Vols. 11-13. Moscow: Politizdat, 1949-51. . Sochineniia. Ed. Robert H. McNeal. Vols. 1 [XIV], 2 [XV], 3[XVI]. Stanford: The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1967.
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Stepanov (Rusak), Vladimir. Svidetel 'stvo obvineniia: Tserkov' i gosudarstvo v Sovetskom Soiuze. Part 2. Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1987. Teatral'naia entsiklopediia. Vols. 1, 3. Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1961, 1964. Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR. Moscow: luridicheskaia literatura, 1966. Vinogradskaia, I. Zhizn' i tvorchestvo K. S. Stanislavskogo: Letopis'. Vol. 4 (1927-38). Moscow: Vserossiiskoe teatral'noe obshchestvo, 1976. Vladimirova, V. Kontr-revoliutsiia v 1917 g.: Kornilovshchina. Moscow: Krasnaianov', 1924. Vsevolod Ivanov—pi sat el' i chelovek: Vospominaniia sovremennikov. Moscow; Sov. pis., 1970.
INDEX
Abramov, F.: The House, 188, 196-97, 202, 204, 214; Roads and Crossroads, 190, 202, 204; on censorship, 220 Adamovich, A.; The Blockade Book, 202-3 Afinogenov, A.: The Lie, 72, 78-79; and Stalin, 72, 79 Aitmatov, Ch., 239; The Executioner Block, 234, 252 Akhmatova, A., 48, 99 Aksakov, I., 112 Aksenov, V., 185; reaction to censorship, 220 Alekseev, M. (general), 88 Alekseev, M. (writer); Pugnacious Boys, 204; and Peasant Men and Peasant Women, 205 Aleviz the New, 107 Alexander II, 250 Alksnis, la., 32 Allilueva, S.: Twenty Letters to a Friend, 220 Anan'ev, A., 192, 233, 243 Andropov, lu., 182 Angarskii, N., 16, 19 Anikin, V., 171 Antaeus, 72 Antonenko, S., 247 Antonov, A., 185 Antonov, S., 220 Antonov-Ovseenko, V., 70 Apanasenko, I., 24 Aragon, L., 145 Arakcheev, A., 36 Armand, I., 184 Astafev, V.: "Parania," 206; The Shepherd and the Shepherdess, 207; "The Sad Detective Story," 233; "The Blind Fisherman," 252 Averchenko, A., 6-7 Averin, E., 224 Avetisian, S., 146, 179 Avtorkhanov, A., 244 Babel', I., 11, 13, 24, 57, 69. Works: "At Saint Valentine's," 31, 32, 84; "Berestechko," 168; "Chesniki," 24,
31, 45, 162, 207; "The Commander of the Second Brigade," 24; "Evening," 45; "Letter," 24; "The Life of Pavlichenko Matvei Rodionych," 266 n. 74; "The Rabbi's Son," 46, 168, 238, 250; Red Cavalry, 11, 13, 24, 59, 147, 186, 259; "Salt," 68, 238, 263; "Squadron Commander Trunov," 238; 'The Story of a Horse," 24; "Treason," 68-69, 238; "Two Ivans," 31, 46 Baklanov, G.: July 1941, 193; reaction to censorship, 220; and The Black Rocks, 231-32 Batmanov, K., 55 Baturin, lu., 228 Bek, A.: The Next Day, 191, 192 Belinskii, V., 108, 244 Belov, V.: Everything Is Still Ahead, 251; On the Eve, 251; The Year of the Great Change, 253 Beriia, L., 143, 191, 196, 237 Bill'-Belotserkovskii, V., 39, 40 Bitov, A.; "The Image," 216; "Man in a Landscape," 236-37; The Pushkin House, 253 Blium, V., 38, 39, 50 Bogaevskii, M., 129 Boldyrev, V., 224, 226-29 Bondarev, lu.; Silence, 165 Borovik, A.: The Hidden War, 230, 232, 235, 247-48, 253; military censorship of The Hidden War, 232, 247 Brezhnev, L., 181, 202, 205, 259; on culture and ideology, 181-82; and literary matters, 184; and Sholokhov, 195 Brodskii, I., 185 Brusilov, A., 130, 285 n. 81 Bubennov, M., 104, 119, 123, 124, 138 Bubnov, A., 6 Budennyi, S., 24—25, 32, 72 Buguraev, M., 43 Bukharin, N„ 24, 52, 56, 69, 131, 141, 158; in literary works, 14, 24, 69,
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130-31, 163-64, 199, 238 Bulgakov, M., 14; on censorship, 50. Works; Adam and Eve, 32; Batum, 72-73; The Crimson Island, 49-50; Days of the Turbins, 37-39; Flight, 37, 39-40; Master and Margarita, 185; "Heart of a Dog," 19, 225; The Theatrical Novel, 146; The White Guard, 38 Bunin, I., 185; Accursed Days, 241-42 Bykov, V., 220 Camus, A.: The Plague, 145, 146 Catherine the Great, 234 Chadaev, V., 26 Chaianov, A., 8 Chaikovskii, P., 241 Chaplin, N., 70, 163, 199 Chapygin, A.; Stepan Razin, 102, 1067," 114, 126, 127, 147, 166, 208, 213, 259 Charskaia, L., 7 Chekhov, A., 32, 114 Cherkasov, N., 99 Chernenko, K.: on tasks of creative intelligentsia, 182 Chernetsov, V., 160-61 Chernoutsan, Igor', 145, 146 Chuikov, V., 246 Churchill, W., 115, 154 Clarendon, 4th earl of, 109 Committee on Arts Affairs, 54, 73 Couthon, G., 241 Dadiani, Sh., 73 Dal', V.: Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great-Russian Language , 169 Dement'ev, A., 145, 170 Denikin, A., 38, 129, 165 Derevlianyi, T., 247, 248 Deutscher, I., 238 Dewey, Th., 112, 166 Dickens, Ch., 112, 166 Dostoevski!, R, 18, 48, 210, 260 Dudintsev, V.: Not by Bread Alone, 147 Dunlop, J., 224 Dzerzhinskii, R, 16, 236, 239-40, 241 Eizenshtein, S., 99 Engels, P., 34 Entin, V., 228 Erdman, N., 14; The Mandate, 23; The
Suicide, 22-23 Erenburg, I., 102; People, Years, and Life, 142 Erofeev, Venedikt, 185; The Journey from Moscow to Petushki, 237; "My Little Leniniana," 244; Walpurgis Night, or "The Commendatore's Footsteps," 249 Erofeev, Viktor, 189; "The Little Parrot," 253, 256; Anna's Body, or the End of the Russian Vanguard, 253, 256; "Govnososka," 253; The Russian Beauty, 253, 254—55, 256 Etkind, E., 253 Evtushenko, E., 141; "Stalin's Heirs," 141; "Babii lar," 187; "The Russian Miracle," 203; "Fuku!" 237 Ezhov, N., 13 Eadeev, A., 11 100, 103, 118, 120, 123, 137, 162, 178; The Rout, 11, 14, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 58-59, 60, 91, 95, 96-97, 105, 114, 125, 128, 131, 133, 134, 136, 147, 186, 218, 259; The Young Guard, 103, 111, 117, 118, 119-20, 123-24, 134, 136, 138, 139, 147, 153, 154-55, 159, 162, 176, 188, 218, 230, 259; self-censorship, 123-24; reaction to censorship, 138 Fedin, K.: No Ordinary Summer, 153, 154, 157, 186, 199 Fedotov, M., 226, 228 Fioraventi (Fioravanti), A., 107 Fourier, F., 108 Frunze, M., 25 Furtseva, E., 205, 220 Galich, A.: The Sailor's Stillness, 169 Galin, A.: Stars in the Morning Sky, 234 Galochkin, V., 225-26 Gamburg, I., 25 Gazarian, S.: This Should Not Be Repeated, 194 Gerasimov, I.: "A Knock on the Door," 164-65, 248 Gertsen, A., 108 Gimpelevich, M., 136 Ginzburg, E.: Journey into the Whirlwind, 220 Gladilin, A., 185
Index Gladkov, F., 11, 25, 58; Cement, 11, 13, 14, 16, 20, 22, 27-30, 36-37, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 58, 66, 71, 74, 75-76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92-93, 94, 95, 98, 105, 135, 147, 186, 259; reaction to censorship, 98 Glaviskusstvo, 9 Glavlit: creation and tasks of, 3; structure of, 4; number of employees, 4, 57, 227; chiefs of, 4, 53, 56, 57, 101, 143, 224; education and professions of employees, 4-5; censorial activities, 5-10, 17-18, 23, 53-58, 64, 101-2, 144-46, 169, 183-86, 200, 205-6, 207, 224-25, 232; complaints against, 8-9; opposition to censorship of, 47-50, 80, 97-98, 137, 142, 17879, 219-21, 224; changes in 195364, 142-44; changes in 1965-84, 182-83; during glasnost', 224—28; abolished, 229; impact on literature, 259-60 Glavpolitprosvet, 3, 6 Gogol', N., 108, 111 Golovanov, V., 145, 146 Gorbachev, M.; calls for democratization and glasnost, 223; condemns Stalin's terror, 223; on Soviet press, 223; and The Gulag Archipelago, 224, 225; proposes control of mass media, 230; and antialcohol campaign, 237; and religion, 252 Gorbatov, B., 100 Gorina, I., 67 Gor'kii, M, 23-24, 36, 39, 70, 79, 98; in literary works, 23-24, 112, 163, 166, 194, 238-39; The Hard Worker Slovotekov, 25-26, 47; on treatment of enemies, 238 Gosizdat, 2, 3, 7, 17 Granin, D., 239; The Blockade Book, 202 Gribachev, N., 183 Grossman, V.: Life and Fate, 232-33, 236, 243, 246, 248, 249, 253, 259; Everything Flows, 243, 246, 251, 253 Gul', R., 5 GUOT; replaces Glavlit, 229; issues
317
instructions, 229; abolished, 233 GURK, 54 Hamsun, K., 210 Has'ek, Ja., 213 Hitler, A., 52, 154, 193, 201, 236, 245, 249 lakimenko, L., 105 lakir, I., 70, 163, 199 lakovlev, A., 244, 252 Il'ichev, L., 142, 146 Ingulov, S., 56, 57 Iskander, F.; Sandro of Chegem, 188, 190-91, 193, 203-4, 207, 210, 213, 294 n. 28 Ivan the Terrible, 88, 99-100 Ivanov, V., 11, 98; Armored Train No. 14-69 (novel), 11, 14, 29, 41, 5960, 76, 89, 90, 93, 95, 105, 110, 122, 133, 135-36, 148, 149, 15153, 165, 176, 178, 186; Armored Train 14-69 (play) 29, 41, 105, 110-11, 152, 153, 186; Armored Train 14-69 (film script), 165; Parkhomenko, 98; reaction to censorship, 98; self-censorship, 151-53 Kaganovich, L., 23, 40 Kaledin, A., 122, 129 Kaledin, S.: A Humble Cemetery, 234, 248-49; The Construction Battalion, 247, 249 Kalinin, M., 53, 157, 191 Kamenev, L., 6, 16, 51, 56, 131 Karpov, V., 205 Kataev, V., 103, 118, 138, 139, 149, 162; For the Power of the Soviets, 103-4, 110, 111, 113-14, 115, 116, 117, 118-19, 121, 123-25, 127, 136, 138-39, 146-47, 154, 155, 160, 162-63, 163-64, 165, 186, 207-8; The Lone Sail, 103; self-censorship, 124-25; "The Catacombs," 125; reaction to censorship, 138-39, 220; The Catacombs, 186, 207-8 Kaverin, V., 220 Kazakevich, E.: Spring on the Oder, 154, 157, 167 Kerzhentsev, P., 40
318
Censorship in Soviet Literature, 1917-1991
KGB: censors The Black Rocks, 231, 232, 234 Khodasevich, Valentina, 26 Khodasevich, Vladislav, 230 Khorikov, N., 8-9 Khrushchev, N., 141, 144, 145, 172; and debunking of Stalin, 141, 142, 154, 157; and literature, 141-42, 146; in literary works, 118, 160, 187-89, 246; and religion, 170; permits publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 141, 146, 171; permits publication of "Terkin in the Other World," 142, 179 Kirov, S., 51, 52 Kochetov, V., 209 Kon, F., 121 Kondrafev, V.: on portrayal of World War II, 206; Encounters in the Sretenka Street, 206 Kondratovich, A., 183-84 Kornilov, L., 5, 18; in literary works, 37, 88, 113, 129, 137, 165, 177, 199 Kornilov, V., 112-13 Korotich, V., 225, 257 Kosarev, A., 70, 163, 199 Koshevoi, O., 120, 284 n. 51 Kosygin, A., 202-3 Kotov, A., 137 Kozhevnikov, V., 183 Krasnov, P., 129 Kravchenko, L., 230 Krivoshlykov, M., 121, 122, 137 Krupskaia, N., 3, 6 Krylenko, N., 69-70 Kudinov, P., 68 Kuibyshev, V., 16 Kuznetsov, A., 185; Babii lar, 186-87, 189, 192-94, 200-202, 203, 2067, 208-9, 210, 211-12, 213-14, 215, 216, 217; on censorship and self-censorship, 220-21 Lakshin, V., 142, 145, 146 Larin, lu., 2 Law on the Press; struggle for, 227-28; adoption of, 228; points of, 228; at the close of perestroika, 257 Lazarev, S., 125 Lazo, S., 41
Lebedev, V., 142, 146, 158, 159, 164, 170, 171 Lebedev-Polianskii, P., 4, 6, 8, 17-18 Lenin, V., 1, 6, 14, 28, 144, 158, 159, 181, 198, 234, 241, 243, 251, 293 n. 18; and treatment of press, 1, 2; in literary works, 23, 68-69, 74-75, 76, 78, 82, 116, 117-8 129, 13031, 148, 152, 153, 155-56, 157, 158, 159, 161, 172, 192-93, 199, 200, 230, 233, 234, 235, 236, 239, 240, 241-44, 245; on Russian peasants, 34; writings of, censored, 184 Lezhnev, L, 104, 105 Libedinskii, lu., 11, 75, 138, 149, 151; The Commissars, 11, 12, 19-20, 21-22, 26, 45, 58, 62, 68, 69, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 84, 90, 93, 94, 148, 149, 150-51, 186, 259; A Week, 11-12, 15-16, 24, 27, 58, 62, 68, 69, 76-77, 95, 148, 149-50, 151, 186, 259 Library purges, 6-7, 56, 57, 102, 14243, 185 Liebknecht, K., 130 Lipkovich, la.: And the Fighting Broke Out, 207 Literary Moscow, 143 Litovskii, O., 23 Liubimov, lu., 205 Liutikov, F., 119, 154, 162 Lobachevskii, M,, 81 Luka Balls, 255 Lukin. lu., 80, 147, 148, 155, 156 Lunacharskii, A., 6, 7, 25, 38-39, 241 Maiakovskii, V., 132; "To You!" 132, 173, 214, 253; "At the Top of My Voice," 132; Bunin on, 242 The Maiden's Toy, 255 Main Repertory Committee, 7, 23, 29, 38, 39-40, 50, 262 n. 21 Makhno, N., 178 Maksimov, V., 185 Malakhov, K,, 64 Malenkov, G.. 73-74 Malkin, 70 Mao Tse-tung, 101 Marfin, M., 147, 148, 155, 156 Markov, V., 171 Marr, N., 100, 101
Index Marx, K.: on peasants 33-34; in literary works, 62, 74, 128, 157, 161, 173, 178, 189; and linguistics, 100; editors and Marxism, 144 Medvedev, V., 224 Meierkhol'd, V., 23 Menshikov, A., 112-13 MetropoV, 185, 221 Mikhalkov, S., 184 Minushov, I., 224 Mironov, F., 130, 199 Molotov, V., 51, 160, 201 Morozov, P., 201 Mozhaev, V.: Peasant Men and Peasant Women, 183, 205, 215, 251; From the Life of Fedor Kuz'kin, 204—5; reaction to censorship, 220 Nabokov, V., 230, 239, 242; Other Shores, 232-33, 234, 239, 241 Nagibin, lu.; The Tale of My Father, 164-65 Napoleon I, 153 Nationalities: Americans, 41, 110, 112, 153, 166, 167, 251; Armenians, 85, 168; "Asians," 85; Balkars, 249; Chechens, 248, 249; Chinese, 33, 85, 114, 167-68; Cossacks (as nationality), 84-85, 168; Englishmen, 108, 109; Finns, 112, 166; Frenchmen, 109; Germans, 86, 107, 112, 113, 135, 168, 211-12, 250, 283 n. 38; Greeks, 112, 168; Hungarians, 168; Ingush, 113; Japanese, 41, 153, 168; Jews, 24, 32-33, 68, 81, 83-84, 100, 101, 114-15, 126, 142, 168, 169, 186, 207, 208-10, 236, 238, 248-50; Kalmucks, 167, 249; Latvians, 85, 86, 114, 168; Lithuanians, 251; Moldavians, 248; Negroes (American), 167; Poles, 85, 107, 168; Rumanians, 113, 114, 168; Russians, 85, 32-33, 106-9, 115, 166, 168-69, 209, 211, 250; Tartars, 112-13, 249; Turks, 107, 112, 168; Ukrainians, 33, 84, 85, 115, 168, 169, 209, 210-11 Nekrasov, V., 185 Nemirovich-Danchenko, V., 73 Nicholas I, 109 Nicholas II, 36, 72
319
Nikol'skaia, A.: "Pass On!" 237 Nilin, P.: "A Moscow Doctor," 200 Nosov, E.: The Helmet Wearers from Usviaty, 211, 215 Okudzhava, B., 220 Ol'ga, Princess, 212 Omel'chenko, K., 101-2, 142-43 Ordzhonikidze, G. (Sergo), 157 Orlinskii, A., 38 Ostrovskii, N., 58, 60, 77, 79, 85; How the Steel Was Tempered, 60-61, 6566, 67-68, 69, 70, 76, 77-78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 1056, 131, 132-33, 147, 163, 176, 186, 199, 259 Panferov, F„ 11, 58, 63, 87, 97, 178; Bruski, 11, 14-15, 26, 31-32, 3435, 41, 47, 59, 62-63, 64-65, 69, 71-72, 81, 82, 84, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 104, 113, 115, 116, 120, 123, 126-27, 128, 130-31, 132, 136, 147, 157, 162, 164, 168, 173, 176, 186, 189, 199, 217, 259 Paracelsus, Ph., 108 Parkhomovskii, E., 226, 228 Pasternak, B., 141; Doctor Zhivago, 259 Paustovskii, K., 220 Peter the Great, 21, 37, 100 Petliura, S., 38, 76, 85, 165 Pikul', V.: At the Last Frontier, 209 Pil'niak, B., 15, 57; Mahogany, 20-21, 23; The Volga Falls into the Caspian Sea, 20-21, 23, 28; "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon," 25, 71 Pinkerton, A., 110 Pirozhkova, A., 238 Platonov, A., 14; Chevengur, 18-19; For Eventual Use, 35-36; The Foundation Pit, 35, 225 Podtelkov, F.: In the Quiet Don, 44, 121-22, 137, 160-61 Pokrovskii, M., 163 Polevoi, B., 187, 200 Poliakov, lu.: One Hundred Days Before the Order, 247 Polikarpov, D., 145, 146 Polonskii, V., 20, 25, 39 Polyphemus, 242 Ponomarenko, P., 118, 160
320
Censorship in Soviet Literature, 1917-1991
Postyshev, P., 194 Potapov, K.; censors Sholokhov's works, 104-5, 115, 131-32, 13334, 135, 136-38, 155-57, 161, 178, 199 Pravdukhin, V., 48 Preobrazhenskii, E., 69 Pristavkin, A., 239; The Golden Cloud Slept There, 248, 253 Pugachev, E., 242 Pushkin, A., 82, 100, 241, 255 Raskol'nikov, P., 20 Rasputin, G., 45 Rasputin, V.; Farewell to Matera, 202; The Fire, 233; on "nymphomania," 257 Razin, S., 102. See also Chapygin, Stepan Razin Razumovskaia, S., 97 Repin, I., Ill Riurikov, B., 145 Robespierre, M., 241 Rodimtsev, A., 246 Rogach, I., 210 Romanov, P., 143, 146, 183, 184, 185, 233 Romanovskii, I., 129, 177 Russian Erotic Literature from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Selected Pages, 260 Rybakov, A., 239, 257; Summer in Sosniaki, 165; Children of the Arbat, 191-92, 237-38, 244-45, 250, 253, 255; Heavy Sand, 20910; The Year 1935 and Others, 239; on The Russian Beauty, 255 Rykov, A., 56, 131 Sablin, lu., 130 Sadchikov, N., 57, 227 Sadovnikov, D.: Riddles of the Russian People: A Collection of Riddles, Questions, Parables, and Puzzles, 171, 175, 176 Saint-Just, L., 241 Saint-Simon, comte de, 108 Saint Vladimir of Kiev, 126, 212-13 Sakhnovskii, V., 73 Samizdat, 184-85, 244 Sarychev, S., 19 Seifullina, L., 11, 104; on censorship,
48; Humus, 11, 12, 17-18, 23-24, 32, 34, 45, 59, 62, 68, 81, 84, 91, 105, 116, 120, 125, 128, 147, 186, 197-98; "Lawbreakers," 11, 12, 59, 71, 84, 105, 111, 122, 147, 170, 186, 198; Virineia, 11, 12, 59, 105, 120, 121, 127, 128, 131-32, 147, 186 Seleznev, lu., 205 Sel'vinskii, I.: "To Whom Russia Sang Lullabies," 72, 73-74 Semenova, G., 145 Semiradskii, G., Ill Sergeev-Tsenskii, S., 87, 108; The Ordeal of Sevastopol', 87, 102-3, 106, 108-10, 112-13, 147, 166, 168, 186, 208, 213, 259 Serov, L, 101 "The Shadov of Barkov," 255 Shalamov, V.; "From the Kolyma Notebooks," 237; "Lesha Chekanov, or a Codefendant in the Kolyma Region," 253-54 Shatrov, M.: The Tirthieth of August (Bolsheviks), 184; The Peace of Brest, 238; Onward. . . Onward. . . Onward!, 238 Shauro, V., 220 Shcherbakov, A., 64 Shevtsov, L: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, 209, 238; Love and Hatred, 209 Sholokhov, M, 11, 59, 97, 104, 121, 129, 134, 137, 138-39, 146-47, 149, 162, 176-77, 178; reaction to censorship, 80, 97, 137-38, 15556, 220-21. Works: "About Kolchak, Nettles, and Other Things," 45, 46-47, 173; Aleshka's Heart,"30-31, 148, 178; "Alien Blood," 175; "The Birth Mark," 218; "Dry Rot," 173; "The Farm Laborers," 173; "The Foal," 24, 37; "The Food Commissar," 167, 21011; "Galoshes, 167, 211; "Offense," 167, 175; The Quiet Don, 11, 14, 27, 44, 45, 47, 59, 65, 66, 68, 6971, 74, 75, 76, 80-81, 82, 84-85, 86, 87-88, 89, 90, 91, 97-98, 1045, 113, 114, 115-16, 117-18, 12123, 125-26, 127, 129-30, 131-32, 133, 134-35, 137-38, 139, 147,
Index 154, 155-56, 160-61, 162, 163, 165, 168-69, 170, 173-74, 174, 175, 176, 177, 186, 192, 198, 208, 215, 259; "The Shame Child," 178, 218; "The Shepherd," 164, 178; They Fought for Their Country, 75, 76, 157, 174, 195-96, 211, 218, 221, 230; "The Three," 198; "The Tulip Steppe," 173, 175-76; "The Way and the Road," 175, 178, 218; Virgin Soil Upturned, 35, 60, 71, 90, 91, 95, 96, 104, 115, 116, 121, 131, 132, 133-34, 135, 136-37, 138, 139, 147, 156-57, 161, 174, 175, 177, 186, 190, 214-15, 21819; The Year 1919, 59, 70 Shtein, A.: Between the Downpours, 148, 159, 161, 162, 172 Shtemler, I.: The Archive, 249 Simonov, K., 100, 102, 115 Skoropadskii, P., 38 Skvortsov-Stepanov, I., 25 Smelianskii, A., 38, 73 Smiraov, A., 40 Smimova, L., 98 Smushkova, M., 6 Socialist Realism, 53, 56, 58, 65, 79, 133, 134, 234, 259 Sokol'nikov, G., 16 Sokolova, A., 169 Solodin, V., 200, 207, 225, 227 Sologub, F., 48 Soloukhin, V.; "The Bell," 205; "The First Mission," 205 Solzhenitsyn, A., 257; self-censorship, 161-62; reaction to censorship, 178, 219, 220; works of, purged from libraries, 185; and promotion of glasnost', 223-25. Works: Cancer Ward, 219; "Matrena's Home," 148, 170, 171, 172, 178, 225; The First Circle, 146, 148, 158, 159, 161-62, 178; The Gulag Archipelago, 223-24, 225, 239; Lenin in Zurich, 210; "Live Not by Lies!" 224; The Love-Girl and the Innocent, 164; "The Nobel Lecture," 225; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 141, 146, 158, 164, 168, 170-71, 172, 178, 290 n. 62 Speranskii, N., 4, 5 Spetsfondy, 226
321
Spiridonova, S., 225 Stalin, I., 6, 40, 41, 51-52, 67, 69, 73, 74, 75, 77, 85, 88, 102, 105, 118, 127, 130, 134, 142, 146, 148, 159, 162, 163, 171, 231, 241, 243, 251, 276 n. 77; on In a Blind Alley, 17; on The Suicide, 23; and "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon," 25, 71; on Virgin Soil Upturned, 35; on Days of the Turbins, 39; on Flight, 40; and Socialist Realism, 53; in literary works, 59, 60, 63, 69, 7173, 96, 100, 115-18, 119, 129, 131, 147, 148, 153-59, 177, 18992, 193, 200-201, 218, 234, 235, 236, 244-46, 249, 251; censors The Lie, 72; on anti-Semitism, 83-84, 115; and the resolution of 14 August 1946, 99-100; on Ivan the Terrile, 99-100; on Peter the Great, 100; against foreign influences, 100; on Marxism and linguistics, 100-101, 104, 174; inspires critique of The Young Guard, 103; on Bolsheviks in The Quiet Don, 121, 137-38; and the church, 126; on Maiakovskii, 132; de-Stalinization, 141, 146, 154, 157, 161, 177; cult of, 181, 188 Stanislavskii, K., 23 State Inspection for Protection of Freedom of the Press, 229 Stepakov, V., 220 Stolypin, A., 205 Strugatskii, Arkadii and Boris: The Yids of the City of Peter, or Joyless Conversations by Candlelight, 24950 Sudakov, I., 29, 38 Suslov, M., 101, 187 Sviderskii, A., 39 Svirskii, G., 184; attacks censorship, 220 Syrtsov, S., 69, 121, 122 Tamizdat, 184-85 Tarasenkov, A., 174 Tendriakov, V.; reaction to censorship, 220; "Donna Anna," 246; "Bread for a Dog," 251 Tikhonov, A., 241 Tikhonov, N., 102 Timoshenko, S., 24
322
Censorship in Soviet Literature, 1917-1991
Tito, J., 102 Tiulenin, S., 123 Tolstoi, L,, 259-60; Anna Karenina (play), 39 Tomskii, M., 56, 131 Trapeznikov, S., 181 Trifonov, lu.: Students, 104, 111-12, 147, 155, 166-67; The Quenching of the Thirst, 148, 164, 186, 18788, 189-90, 196; Time and Place, 186, 187, 191, 197-98, 208, 215, 217, 230; Dissappearance, 198, 237 Trotskii, L., 6, 56, 118, 141, 158; in literary works, 23-24, 59, 61, 6769, 136, 163-64, 192, 198-99, 238, 241 Truman, H., 112, 166 Tsvetaeva, M., 185 Tukhachevskii, M., 70 Turgenev, I., 32, 82 Turkenich, I., 120, 284 n. 53 Tvardovskii, A.; The Land of Muraviia, 64; opposed to censorship, 142, 146, 178-79; struggles for publication of The Theatrical Novel, 146; "Terkin in the Other World," 142, 179; and Solzhenitsyn' works, 158-59, 164, 170; "By the Right of Memory," 183-84; and Brezhnev, 184; and Children of the Arbat, 192; on This Should Not Be Repeated, 194 Unshlikht, I., 6 Uspenskii, V.; The Leader's Secret Advisor, 246 Vanek, K., 213 Vatsetis, I., 118 Verbitskaia, A., 7 Veresaev, V., 14; In a Blind Alley, 1617, 33; on censorship, 48 Vereshchagin, V., Ill Vergasov, I.: The Regiment Commander, 207 Vershigora, P., 164: People with a Clear Conscience, 160, 188-89 Veselyi, A., 11, 12, 14, 45, 58, 90; opposes censorship, 48-49. Works: "Fiery Rivers," 11, 13, 23, 32, 33, 42-43, 44, 46, 48-49; My Native Land, 11, 12, 13, 20, 30, 32, 33, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 61-62, 78, 84, 87;
Russia Washed in Blood, 12-13, 18, 22, 30, 32, 33, 36, 37, 43, 44, 45, 46, 61, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 148, 16768, 176, 186, 214, 215, 259; "Shrovetide in the Village," 42; "The Swift Justice," 31; "The Taking of Armavir," 83; "The Wild Heart," 11, 13, 42, 44 Vidrashku, F., 253 Vikulov, S., 205 Vladimov, V., 185; reaction to censorship, 220 Vlasov, A., 151, 200 Vlasov, S., 54, 56 Vodolazov, G., 243 Voinovich, V., 185; reaction to censorship, 220; Moscow 2042, 243-A4; The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, 246 Volin, B,, 53, 54, 55, 56, 64, 90 Volkov, O.: Sinking into Darkness, 230, 231, 235-36, 239-40, 242, 243, 245-46, 250, 251-52 Voloshin, M., 48; "Russia," 17, 36 Voroshilov, K., 24-25, 31, 160, 188, 191; on Flight, 40 Voynich, E., 82 Voznesenskii, A.: "Oza," 189; "The Ditch: A Spiritual Process," 248; "Sonet [ragtime]," 254 Vrangel', P., 165 Watt, J., 108 Zakrutkin, V., 192 Zaks, B., 170 Zalygin, S., 223, 225 Zamiatin, E., 14; We, 18; " I Am Afraid," 47; on lack of creative freedom, 47 Zazubrin, V.: "The Chip: A Tale about Her and about Her," 17 Zetkin, K., 84 Zhdanov, A., 52, 53, 99 Zhigulin, A. 230, 231; The Black Rocks, 230, 231-32, 234, 237, 240-41, 245, 246, 250, 251-52, 253, 254, 255-56 Zhloba, D., 69, 70, 163, 199 Zhukov,lu, 257
Index Zimianin, M., 195 Zinov'ev, G., 14, 51, 56, 69, 141; in literary works, 14, 69, 131, 163, 164, 238 Zoshchenko, M., 99
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Herman Ermolaev is Professor of Russian and Soviet Literature at Princeton University. A graduate of Stanford University, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Slavic languages and literatures from University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of the books Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism and Mikhail Sholokhov and His Art. He also edited and translated Maxim Gorky's Untimely Thoughts. In 1970-72 he served as president of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.
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