The Thinking Reed полностью

He noted the spiritual degeneration suffered under Stalinism by the reader and by the writer, whose mind gradually ‘got used to seeing in life only comforting phenomena’,106 which enabled him quite sincerely to write lying sketches about nonexistent successes and dubious achievements, to describe the hungry countryside like a ‘happy Arcadia’, where, ‘under the influence of sky-blue fences, rose-coloured cottages and the heartfelt words of good leaders, the countryside is undergoing moral rebirth and even the eradication of alcoholism.’107 Arguing against Lunacharsky’s idea of the ‘higher’ truth of the future, which had hitherto been the foundation of ‘socialist realism’, Shcheglov wrote: ‘Ignoring the everyday “arithmetic” of facts in the name of some “higher algebra” can lead to no good.’108 He was able to quote in support more than enough examples which had accumulated in the Stalin era. One had only to look back over the Soviet theatre in the previous twelve years to be convinced. Shcheglov observed that the theatres preferred to put on classics because the Soviet repertory contained no real ‘plays from life’:

Liberalization facilitated access to foreign culture, and many people encountered Western literature for the first time. (A journal entitled lnostrannaya Literatura — ‘Foreign Literature’ — even began to appear, something without precedent in Stalin’s last years.) ‘The vigorous curiosity’ of educated Russians who contrived — heaven knows how — to become aware of the latest plays in the London theatres and the latest books in the bookshops of Paris, it was admitted by many Western observers, ‘cannot fail to surprise and astonish the visitor from abroad.’110 The rehabilitation of writers put to death under Stalin confronted the history of literature with complex problems. It was necessary, as an American journalist said, ‘to see beyond the wreckage of the thirties and forties back to the cultural world of the twenties.’111 Novy Mir printed articles in which the authors sought to take a fresh look at literary history. S. Shtut wrote:

At the same time, despite the general critical re-evaluation, there was an effort to find in the past something beyond question — an authority, a principle, a direction on which one could rely in the struggle against Stalinism and for the renewal of spiritual life. The intelligentsia saw the exposures at the Twentieth Congress as proof that there were healthy forces in the system; that it was not in itself to be blamed; that its primordial basis was sound. The task was to get back from the Stalinist distortion of principles to the principles themselves. The decisions of the Congress constituted a return to Lenin, and a similar rebirth of principles could be observed in the sphere of art. Moreover this was conceived, by those who participated in it, as a single process. ‘Such was the time, the time of the Twentieth Congress…’ O. Yefremov, the founder of the Contemporary Theatre, recalled later. ‘It could not fail to affect art.’113 And so a discussion began in the theatrical world concerning Stanislavsky’s system, which until then had been regarded as obligatory upon everyone. Stanislavsky’s pupil M.O. Knebel' wrote in those days: