Аннотация: The First Congress of Soviet Writers. A literary and historical note.
The First Congress of Soviet Writers. A literary and historical note.
A many works are devoted to the First Congress of Soviet Writers (1934), which established the Union of Writers (the word "Soviet" from the name of the Union fell out?).
These works give an estimates to the Congress - from completely negative up to very positive.
The most negative assessment is due to the fact that the Congress created a bureaucratic structure resembling the Institute of State Poets and Writers from the novel-dystopia by Yevgeny Zamyatin "We."
Nearby is the understanding of the Congress as a "collective farm," in which writers were losing their individuality and creative abilities, morally decomposing.
The historical and political emphasis is felt in the opinion that the Congress brought the writing environment out off the Trotskyist influence and placed the "writing mass" under the Stalin's influence.
There is an opinion that RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) monopolized the "status of writers" and was eliminating a literary rivals through bureaucratic mechanisms. The elimination of RAPP led to gathering the former rival antagonists in the one organization and were forced to coexist by a peaceful manner. The rivals of RAPP were thus, in some ways, saved from destruction. Summarizing, it can be said that many, though not all (of those who needed it), were saved.
In such a formulation of the issue, there is a clearly positive assessment.
The proletarian character of the dominant literary structure disappeared along with the RAPP. A vector has emerged to achieve a "common good" ("a socialist realism" method).
The skeptical type of a moderately positive appreciation is the view that the First Congress was a deal between the writers' circles and the state power. The state power provided writers with a relative well-being and a relative protection, and writers made a commitment to be loyal to power and to direct their creativity towards socialist (social) development.
There are statistics characterizing the composition of the participants of the Congress. In all materials where these statistics are given, there is a sense of author 's surprise. It seems that the organizers of the Congress understood that literary talent is not determined by social origin. People of different social origins, different individual history was given the opportunity to take their place in a social life and in literature, and to work creatively for social development.
If to remember the first years of the Soviet power when (after October 1917) food-deprived writers were simply doomed to hunger death (Maxim Gorky tried to mitigate a situation), if to believe that RAPP was destroying the literary competitors through the political opportunities, through a political connections, the creation of the Union of Writers (without emphasis on proletarian values and proletarian origin, with a relatively broad view on a literary creativity and with a relative political tolerance) was a real step forward.
According to the memoirs, a first the participants weren't recalling the Congress that ended. They were taking up the improvement of their well-being, own welfare. Maybe they felt that they had taken part in a something important, but they intuitively understood that it was impossible to comprehend the meaning of what the happened - from their individual life positions?
In the Union of Writers the people of different social origin and different individual history united. Someone made a different choice, and did not want to unite, did not want to join the Union of Writers. It was almost impossible for individualists to survive.
In the USSR gradually it's became a sign of good tone to read and write books... Were all the books good? It was possible to leave a boring books, to switch on a reading of a foreign (adventure) literature. In any case, a familiarity with literature and occupation of literature (in different forms) has an advantage over many other types of activities (leisure).
By the 1970s, the USSR had, though not a very developed, a national book market. It was possible, like Vladimir Bogomolov, not to be a member of the Union of Writers at all (in compliance of own principles), to sell 'creative product', and to live financially safely.
In general, the First Congress of Soviet Writers was a manifestation of a moving away from the class approach and the class struggle, a manifestation of a processes and a reaching the goals of national development, one of the signs of reconciliation of groups that fought against each other during the Civil War, a stage on the path to the restoration of a civilized society and the development of a high-tech civilization.
February 18, 2020 17:40
Translation from Russian into English: February 19, 2020 08:53.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Первый Съезд советских писателей. Литературно-историческая заметка'.