When novelist Fyodor Gladkov invited Ivan Kirilenko (b. 1902), an infamous hard-liner, and other Ukrainian writers to “tea,” they declined, fearing it would be seen as “a grouping.”376 An NKVD analysis of the delegates turned up several former SRs, anarchists, nationalists, and members of anti-Soviet “organizations.” Someone distributed an unauthorized leaflet to the foreign delegates; nine copies were found, written in pencil, and the NKVD tried handwriting analysis to identify the anonymous author. “You organize various committees to aid the victims of fascism, you gather the antiwar congresses, you establish libraries of books burned by Hitler, all that is wonderful,” the leaflet stated. “But why do we not see your activity in connection with aiding the victims of our Soviet fascism, carried out by Stalin. . . . Why do you not establish libraries to rescue Russian literature. . . . Personally we worry that in a year or two Iosif Jughashvili (Stalin), who did not finish seminary, will not be satisfied with the title of world philosopher and demand, on the example of Nebuchadnezzar, that he be considered, at least, a ‘sacred cow.’”
Stalin, from Sochi, intervened with his whip hand so that the politburo decreed coverage by more than just Evening Moscow and Literary Newspaper.377 “It is necessary for Pravda or Izvestiya to print the speeches of the representatives of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Tatar autonomous republic, Georgia, and other republics,” he had written to Kaganovich and Zhdanov (August 21, 1934). “They need to be printed fully or at a minimum two thirds of each speech. The speeches of the nationals are no less important than others. Without their publication, the congress of writers would be colorless and uninteresting. If this requires that we supplement the number of newspaper pages, then it should be done, without regard for paper.”378 The dictator also expressed outrage at the party organizations of Buryat-Mongolia, Yakutia, the Volga Germans, and Bashkiria for not taking the gathering seriously. “The writers’ congress is a very important matter, for it unites and strengthens the intelligentsia of the peoples of the USSR under the flag of the Soviets, under the flag of socialism. This is very important for us, very important for socialism. The above-named republics turned out to be in the tail of events, they turned out cut off from the living cause and disgraced themselves. We cannot overlook such a failure.”379
The congress would cost 1.2 million rubles, significantly over budget, with breakfasts, lunches, and dinners amounting to about 40 rubles per day per attendee. The average cost of a canteen lunch for a worker was 84 kopecks, for a white-collar employee 1.75 rubles; lunch in a commercial restaurant cost 5.84 rubles.380 (In 1934, worker salaries averaged 125 rubles per month, schoolteacher salaries around 100.)
Delegates could avail themselves of a tour of Moscow’s Museum of Western Painting, an excursion to the planetarium, a trip to the cinema for The Way of the Enthusiasts or Dziga Vertov’s Three Songs About Lenin. A Moscow theater was staging The Miraculous Alloy, Vladimir Kirshon’s comedy of optimistic youth. Pasternak and his company tried Moscow’s recently opened Georgian restaurant, Aragvi, where a meal cost a small fortune. The vast majority of delegates took part in Aviation Day festivities (August 18). Gorky hosted soirées at his dacha for foreign guests and intimates.381 Delegates were also afforded a special showing of the documentary Chelyuskin, about 104 people on an Arctic research mission whose icebreaker of that name had sunk, stranding them on an ice floe for months, until their rescue (on the twenty-eighth landing) by daring Soviet aviators, who were then given a ticker tape parade in Moscow.382 Stalin had gone to greet the returning Chelyuskin expedition scientists and sailors at Moscow’s Belorussia train station. Soviet radio had focused world attention on the expedition’s plight, but the dictator evidently had declined an American offer of assistance.383
FAIRY TALE
