861.00/10–747: Airgram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Durbrow) to the Secretary of State
A–1020. Reference Embassy’s telegram 3281, August 22, 1946.1 Department will recall that reference telegram and many of Embassy’s other reports since that date have recounted and emphasized political importance of great ideological retrenchment which began on August 14, 1946, with passage by Party’s Central Committee of resolution condemning group of Leningrad writers, particularly Mikhail Zoshchenko2 and Anna Akhmatova,3 for their authorship of harmful apolitical works. Zoshchenko, extremely popular writer of humorous short stories, was castigated in venomous terms, and his works received such appellations as “empty and vulgar,” “non-political and devoid of ideology,” “alien to Soviet literature,” and “calculated to set Soviet youth on the wrong path and poison their minds!”
After attack and those which followed as other critics jumped on anti-Zoshchenko bandwagon, Zoshchenko disappeared from literary life, and, so far as Embassy knew, might have received more serious penalties.
With that background it is of interest to note that new series of Zoshchenko’s stories have just appeared in recent issue (No. 9, September) of New World, one of USSR’s chief literary magazines. Quite understandably, Zoshchenko’s new effort is entirely different from his earlier bitingly humorous stories which, by implication at least, painted a scarcely attractive picture of Soviet life. These stories, by contrast, treat life of Soviet partisans behind German lines in ideologically orthodox manner.
Nevertheless, fact that Zoshchenko is able and permitted to write again only a year after high-level, public castigation for major ideological sins would seem to indicate mellowing of Soviet sanctions as applies to errant intellectuals and possibly more mature realization by regime that it has too few good writers to spare.
- Not printed; but see telegrams 3284 from Moscow on August 22, and 3290 from Moscow on August 23, in Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. vi, pp. 774 and 776.↩
- Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko, literary writer famous for satirical short stories.↩
- Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova, lyrical poetess and translator.↩