On Soviet Literature

By Daniel Paquet

This article is mostly a recollection from readings of Soviet literature,  especially by Maxim Gorky.  In 1982, Moscow Progress Publishers released the Collected Works of this fabulous Russian writer, in 10 volumes.  The last one deals with literature: 

“Why does the urge to write arise?  There are two answers to this question, one of which has been given by a correspondent of mine aged 15, a worker’s daughter.  This is what she wrote in a letter to me:  ‘I am 15, but even at so early an age a writer’s talent has arisen in me, the cause of which has been an oppressively drab life.’  (p. 35)

It would have been, of course, more correct to say instead of writer’s talent, simply a desire to write so as to light up and enrich an oppressively drab life. 

Here is a cry coming to me from another correspondent, a young worker of seventeen:  ‘I am so full of impressions that I can’t help writing.’ (Ibidem, p. 37)

In this case the striving to write derives not from the ‘poverty’ of life, but from its wealth, from an exuberance of impressions and an inner urge to describe them.  The overwhelming majority of my youthful correspondents wish to write just because they are rich in impressions of life and cannot remain silent about what they have seen and experienced. 

And so to the question why I began to write I shall reply:  because of the pressure exerted on me by an oppressively drab life and also because I was so full of impressions that I could not help writing.”

Taking into account that life in the present Russia since the 1990s, with the complete restoration of capitalism, one cannot help but understand the comment of Gorky when he said:

“The bourgeoisie is already curtailing the growth of intellectual energy in its midst, cultivating in people instead a zoological will to defend themselves, their nests, burrows, and lairs.  In theory and practice, all the strivings of the bourgeoisie have this one purpose:  to stop the proletariat on its road to power, and to weaken it.  The working masses are starved, and fascist gangs of murderers are formed from the petty bourgeoisie to eliminate the more energetic leaders of the proletariat.  Our literature has to realize its responsibility to the country and learn to perform its great duty worthily, and for this is imperative that writers should make a serious study of the contemporary world scene. (Ibidem, p. 297)

The 19^th century was in the main an age of preached pessimism.  In the 20^th, the preaching degenerated quite naturally into the propaganda of social cynicism, into a total and resolute refutation of humaneness which the Philistines everywhere paraded so cleverly and actually bragged of. (Ibidem, p. 302)

The culture of capitalism is nothing but a system of methods aimed at extending and consolidating the bourgeoisie’s physical and moral rule over the world, over men and women, over the treasures of the earth, and the forces of nature.  The bourgeoisie have never understood the meaning of cultural development as the need for progress for the entire mass of humanity. (Ibidem, p. 312)

The Great Socialist Revolution of October 1917 brought in the forefront intelligent leaders, such as Alexandra Kollontai who worked with Lenin in the first Soviet government as People’s Commissar for State Welfare:

“If I were asked what was the greatest, the most memorable moment of my life, I would answer without any hesitation:   it was when Soviet power was proclaimed.  Nothing could compare to the pride and joy that filled us as we heard pronounced from the tribune of the Second Congress of Soviets at Smolny the simple and impressive words of the historic resolution:

‘All power has passed to the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers and Peasants’ Deputies!’

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was unforgettable at that moment!  He proclaimed the famous first decrees of Soviet power –the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land.

In 1927, she published a novel, Red Love, the first chapter is completely in line with the 10 years old pronouncement of Lenin:

“Vassilissa was a working-girl twenty-eight years old, a knitter by trade.  Thin, anemic, a typical child of the city.  Her hair, cut short after typhus, grew in curls.  From a distance she looked like a boy.  She was flat-chested, and wore a shirtwaist and a wornout leather belt.  She was not pretty.  But her eyes were beautiful:  brown, friendly, observant.  Thoughtful eyes.  Those eyes would never pass by another’s sorrow.

She was a Communist. At the beginning of the war she had become a Bolshevik.  She hated the war from the first.  Collections had been made in the shop for the front; people were ready to work overtime for the Russian victory.  But Vassilissa objected.  War was a bloody horror.  What was the good of it?  War brought hardships to the people.  And you felt so sorry for the soldiers, the poor young fellows – like sheep being led to the slaughter.  When Vassilissa met a detachment on the street, going to war in full military array, she always had to turn away.  They were going to meet death, but they shouted and sang at the top of their lungs!  And how lustily they sang, as if they were out for a holiday.  What forced them?  They should have refused:  We won’t go to our death; we won’t kill other men!  Then there would be no war.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/red-love/ch01.htm .

It was also in line with Maxim Gorky, close friend to Lenin, who inspired other Soviet writers and defined the road for the future of the revolution in the realm of the then young Soviet literature:

“Socialist realism proclaims that life is action, creativity, whose aim is the continual development of man’s most valuable individual abilities for his victory over the forces of Nature, for his health and longevity, for the great happiness of living on earth, which he, in conformity with the constant growth of his requirements, wishes to cultivate as a magnificent habitation of a mankind united in one family.” (Collected Works, volume 10, p. 343)

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