Literature

In 1932, Stalin declared to a gathering of Soviet writers that they were 'engineers of the human soul'. Their task was essentially a social not an artistic one. They had to reshape the thinking and behaviour of the Soviet people. The goal of the artist had to be social realism. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the Soviet Union of Writers was formed in 1934 it declared that its first objective was to convince all its members of the need to struggle for socialist realism in their works. This could be best achieved by conforming to a set of guidelines. Writers were to make sure that their work:

•  was acceptable to the Party in theme and presentation

•  was written in a style immediately understandable to the workers who would read it

•  contained characters whom the readers could recognize as socialist role models or examples of class enemies.

These rules applied to creative writing in all its forms: novels, plays, poems and film scripts. It was not easy for genuine writers to continue working within these restrictions, but conformity was the price of acceptance, of survival even. Surveillance, scrutiny and denunciations intensified throughout the 1930s. In such an intimidating atmosphere, suicides became common. Historian Robert Service notes in his biography of Stalin that 'more great intellectuals perished in the 1930s than survived'. In 1934, Osip Mandelstam, a leading literary figure, recited a mocking poem about Stalin at a private gathering of writers, which contained the lines 'Around him, fawning half-men for him to play with, as he prates and points a finger'. He was informed on and died four years later in the Gulag. He once remarked, 'Only in Russia is poetry taken seriously, so seriously men are killed for it.'

Stalin took a close personal interest in new artistic works. One word of criticism from him was enough to destroy a writer. The atmosphere of repression and the restrictions on genuine creativity had the effect of elevating conformist mediocrities to positions of influence and power.

This was a common characteristic of totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century.

Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn

Among the most prominent of the writers persecuted under Stalin were Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Pasternak's works were regarded by the authorities as implicitly critical of the Soviet system and therefore unacceptable. His Dr Zhivago, a novel that later became greatly admired in the West, was refused publication in the USSR during his lifetime. Solzhenitsyn, a deeply spiritual man, was regarded by the authorities as a subversive and spent many years in the Gulag for falling foul of Stalin's censors. His documentary novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, which was published after Stalin's death, described the horrific conditions in the labour camps.