Fateh Vergasov. Writers' Union. How the Union of Soviet Writers was born; Creation of the Union of Writers of the USSR

Plan:

Introduction

• 1 Organization of the USSR SP
• 2 Membership
• 3 Leaders
• 4 SP USSR after the collapse of the USSR
• 5 SP USSR in art
Notes

Introduction

Union of Writers of the USSR- organization of professional writers of the USSR.

Created in 1934 at the First Congress of Writers of the USSR, convened in accordance with the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932.

The union replaced all the previously existing organizations of writers: both those united on some ideological or aesthetic platform (RAPP, “Pereval”), and those performing the function of writers’ trade unions (the All-Russian Union of Writers), the All-Roskomdram.

According to the charter of the USSR Writers' Union as amended in 1971 (the Charter was edited several times) - “... a voluntary public creative organization uniting professional writers Soviet Union participating with their creativity in the struggle for the construction of communism, for social progress, for peace and friendship between peoples."

“II...7. The Union of Soviet Writers sets the general goal of creating works of high artistic significance, saturated with the heroic struggle of the international proletariat, the pathos of the victory of socialism, reflecting the great wisdom and heroism of the Communist Party. The Union of Soviet Writers aims to create works of art worthy great era socialism." (From the 1934 charter)

The charter defined socialist realism as the main method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, adherence to which was a mandatory condition for membership of the joint venture.

1. Organization of the USSR joint venture

The highest body of the USSR Writers' Union was the Congress of Writers (between 1934 and 1954, contrary to the Charter, it was not convened), which elected the USSR Writers' Board (150 people in 1986), which, in turn, elected the chairman of the board (from 1977 - the first secretary) and formed the secretariat of the board (36 people in 1986), who managed the affairs of the joint venture in the period between congresses. The plenum of the board of the joint venture met at least once a year. The board, according to the 1971 Charter, also elected the secretariat bureau, which consisted of about 10 people, while the actual leadership was in the hands of the working secretariat group (about 10 staff positions occupied by administrative workers rather than writers). Yu. N. Verchenko was appointed head of this group in 1986 (until 1991).

The structural divisions of the USSR Writers' Union were regional writers' organizations: the Union and Autonomous Republics' Writers' Organizations, the writers' organizations of regions, territories, and the cities of Moscow and Leningrad, with a structure similar to the central organization.

The USSR SP system published “Literary Newspaper”, magazines “New World”, “Znamya”, “Friendship of Peoples”, “Questions of Literature”, “Literary Review”, “Children’s Literature”, “Foreign Literature”, “Youth”, “ Soviet Literature" (published in foreign languages), "Theatre", "Soviet Motherland" (in Yiddish), "Star", "Bonfire".

All foreign trips of members of the joint venture were subject to approval by the foreign commission of the USSR joint venture.

The board of the USSR Union of Writers was in charge of the publishing house “Soviet Writer”, the Literary Institute named after. M. Gorky, Literary consultation for beginning authors, All-Union Bureau for the Promotion of Fiction, Central House of Writers named after. A. A. Fadeeva in Moscow, etc.

Under the rule of the USSR Writers' Union, the Literary Fund operated; regional writers' organizations also had their own literary funds. The task of the literary funds was to provide members of the joint venture with material support (according to the “rank” of the writer) in the form of providing housing, construction and maintenance of “writer’s” holiday villages, medical and sanatorium-resort services, provision of vouchers to “houses of creativity of writers”, provision of household services, supplying scarce goods and food products.

2. Membership

Admission to membership of the joint venture was carried out on the basis of an application, in addition to which must be attached recommendations of three members of the joint venture. A writer wishing to join the SP had to have two published books and submit reviews of them. The application was considered at a meeting of the local branch of the USSR SP and had to receive at least two-thirds of the votes when voting, then it was considered by the secretariat or the board of the USSR SP, and at least half of their votes were required for admission to membership.

The numerical composition of the USSR SP by year (according to the organizing committees of the SP congresses):

• 1934 - 1500 members
• 1954 - 3695
• 1959 - 4801
• 1967 - 6608
• 1971 - 7290
• 1976 - 7942
• 1981 - 8773
• 1986 - 9584
• 1989 - 9920

In 1976 it was reported that from total number members of SP 3665 write in Russian.

A writer could be expelled from the Union of Writers “for offenses that undermine the honor and dignity of a Soviet writer” and for “deviating from the principles and tasks formulated in the Charter of the Union of Writers of the USSR.” In practice, reasons for exclusion could include:

• Criticism of the writer from the highest party authorities. An example is the exclusion of M. M. Zoshchenko and A. A. Akhmatova, which followed Zhdanov’s report in August 1946 and the party resolution “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad.”
• Publication abroad of works not published in the USSR. B. L. Pasternak was the first to be expelled for this reason for publishing his novel “Doctor Zhivago” in Italy in 1957.
• Publication in Samizdat
• There is openly expressed disagreement with the policies of the CPSU and the Soviet state.
• Participation in public speeches (signing open letters) protesting against the persecution of dissidents.

Those expelled from the joint venture were denied publication of their books and publications in journals subordinate to the joint venture; they were practically deprived of the opportunity to earn money through literary work. Exclusion from the joint venture was followed by exclusion from the Literary Fund, entailing significant financial difficulties. Expulsion from the joint venture for political reasons, as a rule, was widely publicized, sometimes turning into real persecution. In a number of cases, exclusion was accompanied by criminal prosecution under the articles “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system,” deprivation of USSR citizenship, and forced emigration.

For political reasons, A. Sinyavsky, Yu. Daniel, N. Korzhavin, G. Vladimov, L. Chukovskaya, A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Maksimov, V. Nekrasov, A. Galich, E. Etkind, V. were also excluded from the joint venture. Voinovich, I. Dzyuba, N. Lukash, Viktor Erofeev, E. Popov, F. Svetov.

In protest against the exclusion of Popov and Erofeev from the joint venture in December 1979, V. Aksenov, I. Lisnyanskaya and S. Lipkin announced their withdrawal from the Union of Writers of the USSR.

3. Leaders

According to the 1934 Charter, the head of the USSR SP was the chairman of the board, and since 1977 the first secretary of the board.

Conversation between J.V. Stalin and Gorky

The first chairman (1934-1936) of the board of the USSR Writers' Union was Maxim Gorky. (At the same time, the actual management of the activities of the joint venture was carried out by the 1st secretary of the joint venture, Alexander Shcherbakov).

This position was subsequently held by:

• Alexei Tolstoy (from 1936 to 1938); the actual leadership until 1941 was carried out by the General Secretary of the USSR SP Vladimir Stavsky
• Alexander Fadeev (from 1938 to 1944 and from 1946 to 1954)
• Nikolai Tikhonov (from 1944 to 1946)
• Alexey Surkov (from 1954 to 1959)
• Konstantin Fedin (from 1959 to 1977)

• Georgy Markov (from 1977 to 1986)
• Vladimir Karpov (since 1986; resigned in November 1990, but continued to conduct business until August 1991)
• Timur Pulatov (1991)

4. SP USSR after the collapse of the USSR

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Union of Writers of the USSR was divided into many organizations in various countries of the post-Soviet space.

The main successors of the USSR Writers' Union in Russia are the Union of Writers of Russia and the Union of Russian Writers.

5. SP USSR in art

Soviet writers and filmmakers in their work repeatedly turned to the topic of the USSR SP.

• In the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov, under the fictitious name “Massolit,” the Soviet writers’ organization is depicted as an association of opportunists.
• The play by V. Voinovich and G. Gorin “Domestic cat, medium fluffy” is dedicated to the behind-the-scenes side of the activities of the joint venture. Based on the play, K. Voinov made the film “Hat”
• IN essays on literary life“A calf butted with an oak tree” A.I. Solzhenitsyn characterizes the USSR SP as one of the main instruments of total party-state control over literary activity in USSR.

Notes

1. Charter of the Union of Writers of the USSR, see “Information Bulletin of the Secretariat of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR”, 1971, No. 7(55), p. 9]

A major event in the literary life of our country was the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers, in the organization and work of which Gorky took a large part.

So, at the end of April 1932, a meeting of writers takes place at the apartment of Gorky, who had just arrived from Sorrento. The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted on April 23 on the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations and the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers is discussed. Another meeting of writers on Malaya Nikitskaya took place in October.

The creation of a single all-Union writers' organization instead of various literary groups that were at war with each other was an important step in the development of Soviet literature. In the 20s, the struggle of literary groups included not only a principled struggle for the party line in art, a difficult search for ways to develop Soviet literature, a struggle against relapses of bourgeois ideology, and the involvement of the broad masses in literary creativity, but also unhealthy tendencies - arrogance, intrigue, squabbles , settling personal scores, a suspicious attitude towards any critical remarks, endless organizational fuss that distracted writers from creative work, from their direct business - writing.

And Gorky did not like groupism - the sweeping denial of everything that was created by writers who were not members of one or another literary group, and, on the contrary, the immense praise of any work written by any member of the group. Gorky evaluated works without regard to which literary group the author belonged to, and, for example, severely condemned some of the works of his comrades in Znanie. He was in favor of creative competition in literature of different writing personalities and trends, and did not recognize the right of some writers (including himself) to dictate their opinions to others, to command them. Gorky rejoiced at the diversity of writers' personalities and artistic forms different from his. Thus, he recognized the individual achievements of writers of the decadent camp, which was generally alien to him. Gorky called the novel “The Petty Demon” by F. Sologub, a writer about whom he has more than once spoken with condemnation, “a good, valuable book.” Gorky participated in the literary struggle - by approving those works that seemed worthy of praise to him, condemning those that he considered harmful and bad, but he never approved of group struggle, groupism in literature, "harmful isolation in the narrow squares of group interests, striving for whatever no matter how to get into the “commanders of the heights”.

“I consider circleism, fragmentation into groups, mutual squabbling, hesitation and vacillation a disaster on the literary front...” - he wrote in 1930, without giving preference to any of the literary groups, without interfering in group discord.

The existence of various literary organizations no longer corresponded to the prevailing situation in the country. Ideological and political unity Soviet people, including the artistic intelligentsia, demanded the creation of a single writers' union.

Elected chairman of the Organizing Committee for the preparation of the congress, Gorky with great energy set about creating a unified all-Union writers' organization; he was helped by A.A. Fadeev, A.A. Surkov, A.S. Shcherbakov.

On August 17, 1934, the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers opens. It was attended by about 600 delegates from more than 50 nationalities.

The congress took place during a period of enormous achievements of the Soviet country in building socialism. New plants, factories, cities arose, and the collective farm system won victory in the countryside. He worked in all areas of socialist construction new person, formed by a decade and a half of the Soviet system, is a man of new morality, a new worldview.

Soviet literature played a major role in the formation of this new man. The elimination of illiteracy, the cultural revolution in the country, and the unprecedented thirst for knowledge and art of the broadest masses made literature a powerful force in the cause of socialist construction. Unprecedented circulation of books clearly evidenced this: by 1934, 8 million copies of Gorky’s novel “Mother” were published, about 4 million of “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov, 1 million of “Tsushima” by A.S. Novikov-Priboy.

The Writers' Congress became a great event in the life of the entire country, the entire Soviet people. And it was not without reason that the congress was talked about at workers’ meetings, in college classrooms, in Red Army units, and in pioneer camps.

The congress lasted for sixteen days, and all these hot August days Gorky, unanimously elected chairman of the congress, sat on the presidium at long meetings, listened attentively to speeches, during breaks and after meetings he talked with guests and delegates, received foreign writers and writers from the allied countries who arrived at the congress. republics

The writer gave an opening speech and made a report.

“The height of the demands placed on fiction by the rapidly renewed reality and cultural revolutionary work of Lenin’s party - the height of these demands is explained by the height of the assessment of the importance that the party attaches to the art of painting with words. There was and is not a state in the world in which science and literature were used if only for such comradely help, such concern for improving the professional qualifications of workers in art and science...

The state of the proletarians must educate thousands of excellent “masters of culture”, “engineers of souls”. This is necessary in order to return to the entire mass of the working people the right to develop their minds, talents, abilities that was taken from them everywhere in the world...” - Gorky said at the congress.

The congress showed that Soviet literature is faithful to the Communist Party, its struggle for art that serves the people, the art of socialist realism. He played a big role in the history of Soviet literature. In the seven years between the First Congress of Soviet Writers and the Great Patriotic War (1934-1941), “Quiet Don” by M.A. Sholokhov, “Walking through the Torment” by A.N. Tolstoy were completed, and “The Road to the Ocean” by L. Leonov received reader recognition , “People from the Outback” by A. Malyshkin, “The Country of Ant” by A. Tvardovsky, “Tanker “Derbent” by Y. Krymov, “Pushkin” by Y. Tynyanov, “The Last of the Udege” by A. Fadeev, “The Lonely Sail Is White” by V. Kataeva, “Tanya” by A. Arbuzova, “Man with a Gun” by N. Pogodin and many other works that make up the golden fund of Soviet literature.

The congress resolution noted the “outstanding role ... of the great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky” in uniting the country’s literary forces. Gorky was elected chairman of the board of the Writers' Union.

Always extremely sensitive and attentive to literary matters (he did not read sent manuscripts if he felt a little unwell, fearing that a bad mood would affect his assessment of what he read), Gorky was aware of the enormous responsibility of his post.

In the field of literature and culture in general, Gorky enjoyed enormous authority, but he always listened to the opinions of others, never considered his judgment to be the “ultimate truth”, in his articles and speeches he expressed concepts developed by Soviet literature of those years as a whole. He considered the work of literature to be a collective matter; shouts, orders, commands in literature seemed unacceptable to Gorky. “...I am not a quarterly supervisor and not a “boss” at all, but a Russian writer like you,” he wrote to B. Lavrenev back in 1927.

The central figure of Soviet literature of those years, a world-famous artist, Gorky did not approve of the hype and endless praise created around him and wrote, for example, that the publication of a memoir about him, “a man still living,” was not to his liking: “Wait a little! "

On the manuscript of one critic, who, wanting to convince the reader of the correctness of his judgments, often quoted Gorky, Alexey Maksimovich wrote: “I consider it necessary to note that M. Gorky for us is not an indisputable authority, but - like everything from the past - is subject to careful study, the most serious criticism."

Gorky was well aware of the authority his word enjoyed, and therefore he was very cautious in his assessments of current literary life, generous in praise, but very careful in censure. In his public speeches and newspaper articles of recent years, words condemning specifically this or that writer are not very often found - this is what Gorky preferred to do in letters and conversations.

“If I praise him, you will praise him, if I scold him, you will bite him to death,” Gorky said at an art exhibition to a reporter who was annoyingly extorting the writer’s opinion about this or that artist.

“Aleksei Maksimovich’s manner of speaking, especially publicly, from the podium or the chairman’s seat at a meeting, reflected that shy awkwardness and caution that is felt in the movements and general demeanor of a very strong person who carefully measures his gestures, fearing to offend someone,” recalls L. Kassil - Yes, a true hero of words, when Gorky spoke in public, he tried not to accidentally kill anyone with his powerful words, and to an unobservant listener this might even seem like verbal clumsiness, but what a heroic power of influence, what heartfelt depth was felt. behind every word of Gorky!

The greatest writer of his time, Gorky did not consider art as a personal, individual matter. He considered his work, like the work of other writers - old and young, famous and little-known, - part of the enormous cause of all Soviet literature, the entire Soviet people. Gorky was equally kind and equally strict towards both the writer, who deserved honor and recognition, and the author of the first book in his life: “... one should not think that we, writers, received only letters of praise from him. To evaluate our literary works he had the only firm criterion: the interests of Soviet readers, and if it seemed to him that we were causing damage to these interests, he felt forced to tell us the most cruel truth,” writes K. Chukovsky.

It was surprising that writers were not sufficiently attracted to the theme of labor, the theme of the Soviet working class: “For three thousand writers registered in the Union (Union of Soviet Writers - I.N.), the favorite hero is still the intellectual, the son of an intellectual and his dramatic fuss with himself myself."

Gorky paid great attention to the military theme in literature: “We are on the eve of the war...” he wrote in March 1935. “Our literature should take an active part in organizing defense.”

In the thirties, Gorky spoke a lot on issues of the theory of Soviet literature.

He tirelessly repeats that a writer must understand the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the class character of literature: “Literature was never the personal matter of Stendhal or Leo Tolstoy, it is always a matter of the era, country, class... The writer is the eyes, ears and voice of the class... He is always and inevitably the organ of the class, its sensitivity. He perceives, shapes, depicts the moods, desires, anxieties, hopes, passions, interests, vices and virtues of his class, his group... as long as the class state exists, the writer is a man of the environment and era - must serve and serves, whether he wants it or not, with or without reservations, the interests of his era, his environment... The working class says: literature must be one of the instruments of culture in my hands, it must serve my cause, for my cause is a universal cause."

Gorky more than once emphasized that the principle of communist party membership is the main thing in the work of every Soviet writer - regardless of whether he is a member of the party or not. But this partisanship cannot be expressed otherwise than in a high artistic form. Party membership in art was for Gorky an artistic expression of the vital interests of the proletariat, the working masses.

Gorky himself followed the party line both in his works and in his public activities. His work, imbued with passionate, irreconcilable partisanship, was that part of the general proletarian cause, which V.I. Lenin wrote about in the article “Party organization and party literature.”

During these years, Gorky often wrote and spoke a lot about socialist realism - the artistic method of Soviet literature. Gorky considered the main task of socialist realism to be “the stimulation of a socialist, revolutionary worldview and attitude.” He points out that in order to correctly depict and understand today, one must clearly see and imagine tomorrow, the future, based on development prospects, show today's life, because only by knowing and correctly imagining the future can one remake the present.

Socialist realism was not invented by Gorky. No creative method arises overnight or is created by one person. It has been developing over many years in the creative practice of many artists, creatively mastering the heritage of the past. A new method in art appears as a response to the new vital and artistic needs of mankind. Socialist realism was formed simultaneously with the growth of political struggle, with the growth of self-awareness of the revolutionary proletariat, and the development of its aesthetic understanding of the world. The very definition of the creative method of Soviet literature - “socialist realism”, which appeared in 1932, determined an already existing literary phenomenon. This artistic method was generated primarily by the very course of the literary process - and not only in Soviet times - and not by theoretical statements or prescriptions. Of course, the theoretical understanding of literary phenomena should not be underestimated. And here, as in specific artistic practice, the role of M. Gorky was exceptionally great.

The requirement to “look at the present from the future” did not at all mean embellishment of reality, its idealization: “Socialist realism is the art of the strong! Strong enough to fearlessly face life...”

Gorky demanded truth, but truth not of an individual fact, but winged truth, illuminated by the great ideas of a great tomorrow. Socialist realism for him is a realistically accurate depiction of life in its development from the perspective of a Marxist worldview. “Scientific socialism,” Gorky wrote, “has created for us the highest intellectual plateau, from which the past is clearly visible and the direct and only path to the future is indicated...”

He viewed socialist realism as a method that is evolving, forming, and in continuous movement. He did not consider either his own or anyone else’s formulas and “directives” as directive and final. It is no coincidence that he often spoke about socialist realism in the future tense, for example: “Proud, joyful pathos... will give our literature a new tone, help it create new forms, create the new direction we need - socialist realism” (my italics - I. N.).

In socialist realism, Gorky wrote, realistic and romantic principles merge together. According to him, “the fusion of romanticism and realism” is generally characteristic of “great literature”: “in relation to such classic writers as Balzac, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gogol, Leskov, Chekhov, it is difficult to say with sufficient accuracy who they are, the romantics or realists? In major artists, realism and romanticism always seem to be combined.”

Gorky by no means identified his personal writing style with the method of socialist realism, believing that the broad framework of this artistic method contributed to the identification and development of various artistic individuals and styles.

Speaking about the problem of typicality in literature, about the intertwining in man and in artistic image class and individual traits, Gorky pointed out that a person’s class characteristics are not external, “personal characteristics”, but are rooted very deeply, intertwined with individual traits, influence them and to some extent transform themselves into one or another “individual version” of stinginess , cruelty, bigotry, etc. Thus, he noted that “the proletariat according to social status... not always proletariat in spirit,” draws attention to the need for artistic comprehension of social psychology - the character traits of a person determined by his belonging to a certain social group.

The unity of the ideological aspirations of Soviet writers, socialist realism as a method of Soviet literature, Gorky pointed out, in no case requires writers to have artistic uniformity, to refuse creative individuality; he knew well that the writer always chooses the theme, characters, plot, and manner of narration himself, and dictating anything to him here is stupid, harmful and absurd.

In this, Gorky was at one with Lenin, who wrote in 1905 that in literature “it is absolutely necessary to provide greater scope for personal initiative, individual inclinations, scope for thought and imagination, form and content.”

More than once Gorky reminds writers that the decisive force of history is the people, the simple ordinary person. He opposes works in which all the merits in military operations are attributed to commanders (and sometimes even to one person) and ordinary soldiers, the armed people, remain in the shadows. “The main drawback of your story,” he writes to P. Pavlenko (we are talking about the novel “In the East.” - I.N.), “is the complete absence of a heroic unit in it - an ordinary red soldier... You showed only commanders as heroes, but there is not a single page on which you would try to depict the heroism of the masses and the ordinary unit. This is strange, to say the least.”

Gorky, one of the founders of Soviet literary scholarship, does a lot to promote and study Russian classical literature. His articles on literary issues amaze with the breadth of the material involved and contain deep assessments of the work of Russian classic writers. A Marxist analysis of art, according to Gorky, will help to correctly understand the writers of the past, to understand their achievements and errors. “The genius of Dostoevsky is undeniable; in terms of the power of depiction, his talent is equal, perhaps, only to Shakespeare,” wrote Gorky, noting the enormous influence of the writer’s ideas on Russian public life. This influence needs to be understood and not ignored.

“...I am against the transformation of legal literature into illegal literature, which is sold under the counter, seduces young people with its “forbiddenness” and makes them expect “inexplicable pleasures” from this literature,” Gorky explained the reasons why he believed , it was necessary to publish "The Demons", Dostoevsky's novel, which distortedly depicted revolutionary movement In the 70s, atypical extremes were presented as the main, defining, typical.

The General Meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences on March 24, 1934 unanimously elected Gorky as director of the Pushkin House (Institute of Russian Literature) in Leningrad - a scientific institution engaged in the study of Russian and Soviet literature and the publication of academic (the most complete, scientifically verified and commented) collected works of Russian classics; at the Pushkin House there is a Literary Museum, where portraits and editions of the works of major Russian writers, their personal belongings are presented; The rich archives of the institute contain manuscripts of writers.

Modern foreign culture is also constantly in Gorky’s field of vision. Social storms of the twentieth century - the First World War, October Revolution in Russia, the actions of the proletariat of Europe and America significantly undermined the rule of the bourgeoisie and accelerated the political rotting of the capitalist system. This could not but affect the ideology and culture of the ruling classes, which Gorky correctly and deeply revealed: “The process of decomposition of the bourgeoisie is a comprehensive process, and literature is not excluded from it.”

In the thirties, the writer’s speeches on issues of the language of fiction played an important role. Gorky defended the position that language is a means of national culture and “a writer should write in Russian, and not in Vyatka, not in Balakhon”; he opposed the passion for dialectisms and jargon, which was characteristic of a number of writers in the 30s ( for example, for F. Panferov), against artistically unjustified word creation.

Back in 1926, Gorky wrote that language modern literature“chaotically” is littered with “trash of “local sayings”, which, most often, are distortions of simple and precise words.”

The cultivation of jargon and dialectisms by literature contradicted the movement of life itself. The growth of culture among the broad masses and the elimination of illiteracy dealt a powerful blow to deviations from the literary language, its distortions, jargons and dialects.

For Gorky, the demand for rich, figurative language was part of the struggle for high literary culture.

It turned out, the writer noted, that the men of Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Gleb Uspensky spoke brighter and more expressively than the heroes of modern works about the village, but the horizons of the peasants who made the revolution and went through the civil war were wider, their understanding of life was deeper.

In his first years as a writer, Gorky himself “sinned” through excessive, artistically unjustified use of colloquial and dialect words, but, having become a mature artist, he erased them. Here are examples from Chelkash.

The first publication, in 1895, stated:

“Where is the tackle...? Eh...?” Gavrila suddenly asked suspiciously, darting his eyes around the boat.

“Oh, if only the rain would fuck me!” whispered Chel-kash.”

Gorky later rewrote these phrases as follows:

“Where is the tackle?” Gavrila suddenly asked, looking around the boat restlessly.

“Oh, if only it would rain!” Chelkash whispered.

Having realized from his own experience the uselessness of the artistically unjustified use of colloquial and dialect words, Gorky convinced Soviet writers of this as well.

Gorky was supported in the discussion that unfolded before the writers' congress by M. Sholokhov, L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, S. Marshak, Yu. Libedinsky, M. Slonimsky, N. Tikhonov, O. Forsh, V. Shishkov, Vs. Ivanov, A. Makarenko, L. Seifullina, V. Sayanov, L. Sobolev. Publishing Gorky’s article “On Language,” Pravda wrote in an editorial note: “The editors of Pravda fully support A.M. Gorky in his struggle for the quality of literary speech, for the further rise of Soviet literature.”

Gorky struggles a lot and persistently to improve the writing skills of literary youth and their general culture. This work was especially relevant in the years when people from the popular environment who did not have a solid educational base came to literature, and the cultural growth of the reading masses proceeded at an unusually rapid pace. “We are facing a very original, but sad opportunity,” Gorky said with irony, “to see readers more literate than writers.” Therefore, he writes a lot about literary craftsmanship and founded the magazine " Literary studies", on the pages of which experienced authors and critics analyzed the works of beginners, it was told how Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov, L. Tolstoy, G. Uspensky, Stendhal, Balzac, Merimee, Zola wrote; K Fedin, N. Tikhonov, B. Lavrenev, P. Pavlenko, F. Gladkov; Gorky himself published the articles “How I studied”, “Conversations about craft”, “On literary technique”, “On prose”, “On plays” , “On Socialist Realism”, “Conversation with Young People”, “Literary Fun” and others.

The magazine met the enormous interest in literary creativity among the broad masses, talked about the work of literary circles, about the work of Russian classics - Pushkin, Gogol, Goncharov, Shchedrin, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov, Chekhov.

A world-famous writer, Gorky studied until his last days - both from recognized masters and from young writers, from those who had just begun to work, whose voices sounded strong and fresh in a new way. “I feel younger than my years because I never get tired of learning... Knowledge is an instinct, the same as love and hunger,” he wrote.

Calling for learning from the classics and developing their traditions, Gorky severely condemned imitation, epigonism, and the desire to mechanically follow the stylistic or speech manner of one or another recognized writer.

On Gorky's initiative, the Literary Institute was created - the only educational institution in the world for training writers. The institute still exists today. Since its foundation it has been named after Gorky.

Gorky highly values ​​the title of Soviet writer and calls on writers to remember the responsibility of their work and their behavior, condemns the still unresolved sentiments of groupism, bohemianism, individualism, and moral laxity in the literary community. “The era imperatively demands from the writer participation in the construction of a new world, in the defense of the country, in the fight against the bourgeoisie... - the era demands from literature active participation in class battles... A Soviet writer must educate himself as a cultured person, he must look at literature not as a path to satiety and glory, and as a revolutionary cause, one must develop an attentive, honest attitude towards fellow workers."

When one of the novice authors stated that “it is impossible for a writer to be an encyclopedist,” Gorky replied: “If this is your strong conviction, stop writing, because this conviction says that you are incapable or do not want to learn. A writer should know as much as possible. And You are trying to talk yourself into the right to be illiterate." He wrote sarcastically about “seasoned writers of considerable age, seriously illiterate, incapable of learning”; "They compose fiction from the material of newspaper articles, are very pleased with themselves and jealously guard their face in literature."

Being very demanding of the “brother writers,” Gorky at the same time protects them from petty supervision, understanding the subtle neuropsychic organization of the artist, and is very sensitive to the personality of the writer. Thus, to the impressionable and easily susceptible to moods of Vs. Ivanov, he gently and friendly advised: “Do not let yourself into the power of the devil of despondency, irritation, laziness and other mortal sins...” Concerned about A.N. Tolstoy’s illness, Gorky wrote to him: “It’s time “You should learn to take care of yourself for the magnificent work that you do so skillfully and confidently.”

Gorky also helped writers financially. When the aspiring poet Pavel Zheleznov, having received from him an amount equal to his earnings for the year, was embarrassed, Gorky said: “Study, work, and when you get out into the world, help some capable young man, and we will be even!”

“An artist especially needs a friend,” he wrote, and Gorky was such a friend—sensitive, attentive, demanding, and when necessary stern and strict—for many writers—pre-revolutionary and Soviet. His exceptional attentiveness, ability to listen and understand his interlocutor were the basis for his ability to suggest to dozens of writers the themes and images of their books, which became the best achievements of Soviet literature. It was on Gorky’s initiative that F. Gladkov wrote autobiographical stories.

Demanding of writers, severely criticizing them for mistakes and mistakes, Gorky was indignant when people who had little knowledge of it began to judge the “difficult matter of literature.” He was very worried that critical speeches addressed to individual writers were conducted in an unacceptable tone; he felt an incomprehensible desire to defame them, to present their searches (sometimes mistakes) as political attacks against the Soviet system: “I find that we are overusing the concepts of “class” enemy", "counter-revolutionary", and that most often this is done by people without talent, people of dubious value, adventurers and "grabbers". As history has shown, unfortunately, the writer's fears were not unfounded.

None of the outstanding works of literature of those years passed by Gorky. “Thank you for “Peter” (the novel “Peter I.” - I.N.),” he writes to A.N. Tolstoy, “I received the book... I read it, I admire it, I envy it. How silver the book sounds, what an amazing abundance subtle, clever details and not a single unnecessary detail!” “Leonov is very talented, talented for life,” he notes, referring to the novel Sot. Gorky praised V. Keene’s novel “On the Other Side” (1928).

As before, Gorky pays a lot of attention to national literatures, edits the collections “Creativity of the Peoples of the USSR” and “Armenian Poetry,” and writes a preface to Adyghe fairy tales. He also highly appreciated the story of the Yukaghir writer Tekki Odulok “The Life of Imteurgin the Elder” (1934) - about the tragic life of the Chukchi in pre-revolutionary times.

Thus, the sixth part of M. Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don” frightened some literary figures those years that saw in it a thickening of gloomy colors.

In "October" they stopped publishing Sholokhov's novel, they demanded that passages that depicted the uprising on the Upper Don as a result of erroneous and sometimes simply criminal actions of individual representatives be excluded Soviet power. Prejudiced critics - reinsurers even protested against the fact that the author showed Red Army soldiers who rode worse than the Cossacks. “The important thing is not that they rode poorly, but that those who rode poorly defeated those who rode exceptionally well,” Sholokhov wrote to Gorky.

Gorky, having read the sixth part, said to the writer: “The book is written well and it will go without any abbreviations.” This he achieved.

Gorky also contributed to the publication of “The Golden Calf,” the second satirical novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov, which met many objections from those who believed that satire was generally unnecessary in Soviet literature.

Gorky was the most authoritative figure in Soviet literature of the 30s. But it would be wrong to hold him responsible for everything that happened in her. Firstly, Gorky, aware of the strength of his authority, was careful in his assessments, did not impose his opinions, and took into account the views of others, although he did not always agree with them. Secondly, at the same time as Gorky, other authoritative writers and critics spoke in literature, and lively discussions took place in magazines and newspapers. And not everything that Gorky proposed was implemented.

“I’m not a person, I’m an institution,” Gorky once said jokingly about himself, and there was a lot of truth in this joke. Chairman of the board of the Union of Writers, in addition to his duties as the leader of Soviet writers, he edited magazines, read manuscripts, was the initiator of dozens of publications, wrote articles, works of art... “Yes, I’m tired, but this is not the fatigue of age, but the result of continuous long-term stress.” Samghin "eats me." Gorky was approaching his seventh decade, but his energy was still irrepressible.

Gorky was the initiator of the publication of the magazines: “Our Achievements”, “Collective Farmer”, “Abroad”, “Literary Study”, the illustrated monthly “USSR at Construction”, literary almanacs, serial publications “History of the Civil War”, “History of Factories and Plants” , "The Poet's Library", "The History of a Young Man of the 19th Century", "The Life of Remarkable People"; he conceives "The History of the Village", "The History of Cities", "The History of the Common Man", "The History of Women" - " great value women in the development of Russian culture in the fields of science, literature, painting, pedagogy, and in the development of the art industry." The writer puts forward the idea of ​​the book "The History of a Bolshevik" or "The Life of a Bolshevik", seeing in it "the actual, everyday history of the party."

Having edited many books in the “Life of Remarkable People” series, Gorky points out the need to include in the series the biographies of Lomonosov, Dokuchaev, Lassalle, Mendeleev, Byron, Michurin, biographies of “Bolsheviks, starting with Vladimir Ilyich, ending with the typical rank and file of the party” - like the St. Petersburg Bolshevik, Chairman of the District Council of the Petrograd Side A.K. Skorokhodov, shot by the Petliurites in 1919.

The serial publications that began under Gorky continue to this day: about five hundred books “The Lives of Remarkable People” have already been published (including a biography of Gorky himself; a collection of literary portraits has been published three times). The volume “History of the Civil War”, which appeared during the writer’s lifetime, has been supplemented by four more, multi-volume histories of cities - Moscow, Kyiv, Leningrad - have been published, and books on the history of factories are being published.

More than 400 books were published in the "Poet's Library" founded by Gorky - a fundamental collection of monuments of Russian poetry, starting with folklore and ending with the present day. The series also includes collections of works by the greatest poets of the peoples of the USSR. "The Poet's Library" is still published. It consists of the Large (scientific type) and Small series. Each book has an introductory article and comments (explanations).

The series publishes works not only by major poets and luminaries (such as Pushkin, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky), but also by many lesser-known poets who played their role in the formation of Russian poetic culture (for example, I. Kozlova, I. Surikov, I. Annensky, B. Kornilov).

The magazine "Our Achievements" (1929-1936), founded by Gorky, focused its attention on the successes of the Land of Soviets (the very name of the magazine clearly speaks of this) - the growth of industry, road construction, irrigation, the introduction of technology into agriculture, etc. “Our Achievements” wrote a lot about the collectivization of agriculture; a number of issues were devoted to the achievements of individual republics - Armenia, Chuvashia, North Ossetia.

Gorky attracted leading producers and scientists to cooperate. A.E. Fersman, V.G. Khlopin, M.F. Ivanov, A.F. Ioffe, N.N. Burdenko spoke in the magazine. Thanks to Gorky’s care and help, a galaxy of glorious Soviet writers and journalists grew up in “Our Achievements”: B. Agapov, P. Luknitsky, L. Nikulin, K. Paustovsky, V. Stavsky, M. Prishvin, L. Kassil, Y. Ilyin, T. Tess and others.

The numbers speak eloquently about the extent to which “Our Achievements” met the needs of readers. The circulation of Gorky's magazine reached 75 thousand copies, while the circulation of other monthly publications was much smaller (October - 15 thousand, Zvezda - only 8 thousand).

In four languages ​​- Russian, English, German and French - the magazine "USSR on Construction" (1930-1941) is published, containing photographic documents about the life of the Soviet country, accompanied by short captions (now a magazine of this type is also published - "Soviet Union").

For the magazine "Collective Farmer" (1934-1939), Gorky edited about two hundred manuscripts and rejected about a hundred - while pointing out in detail their shortcomings: the difficulty of presenting the material or the excessive simplification of its presentation, the lack of answers to the questions posed, etc. “On the collective farms, the village ‘peasant’ showed that he knows how to perfectly select a book from the library, and perfectly distinguishes literature from waste paper,” he said. Gorky's stories about old village“Saddler and Fire”, “Eagle”, “Bull”, written in a new artistic manner for the writer, with restrained intonation and sad humor.

The magazine "Abroad" (1930-1938) used rich factual material to tell the reader about foreign life, about the labor movement, showed the moral degradation of the capitalist world, warned about the preparation by the imperialists of a new world war. Gorky persistently sought to ensure that the magazine's material was accessible, varied, and fascinating. He advised to involve writers who had visited abroad in cooperation, recommended to publish cartoons and talk about the oddities of bourgeois life. M. Koltsov, L. Nikulin, Em. Yaroslavsky, D. Zaslavsky, as well as foreign writers - A. Barbusse, R. Rolland, Martin-Andersen Nexe, I. Becher, appeared on the pages of the magazine; drawings by F. Mazereel, A. Deineki, D.Moora.

The book “Day of Peace”, published on Gorky’s initiative, is also associated with the magazine. It tells about one day in the life of our planet - from September 27, 1635, and compares the world of socialism and the world of capitalism.

The manuscript was read by Gorky, but he no longer saw the book.

In 1961, a new book, “Day of Peace,” was published, containing more than 100 printed sheets, reflecting the events of September 27, 1960. Currently, the weekly magazine "Abroad" is published - a review of the foreign press.

Gorky paid special attention to the form of articles and essays published in magazines. He demanded accessibility of presentation, combined with respect for the people's reader, sharply spoke out against “cloth language”, “verbal self-indulgence”, against a simplified condescending conversation with the reader as a spiritually underdeveloped person. No, Gorky passionately argued, and the illiterate worker has a lot of life experience and the wisdom of generations behind him.

The writer also carefully monitored the appearance of the publications - the clarity of the font, the quality of the paper, the brightness and accessibility of the illustrations. Thus, while looking through materials for the magazine "Collective Farmer", Gorky noticed that reproductions of paintings by I.E. Repin "The Prisoner is Being Carried" and V.D. Polenov "The Right of the Master" without explanations may turn out to be incomprehensible to the reader.

The writer follows the workers' correspondence movement with great attention and shares his rich experience. This is how his brochures “Workers' Correspondents”, “Letter to Village Correspondents”, “To Workers' Correspondents and Military Correspondents. About How I Learned to Write” (1928) appear.

Valuing the essays and notes of workers' correspondents as evidence of direct participants in the great construction projects of socialism, seeing in them an indicator of the cultural growth of the working class of the Soviet country, Gorky did not exaggerate the creative capabilities of their authors. Unlike some literary figures of those years, who believed that the future of literature belonged to worker correspondents and demagogically contrasted them with writers of the older generation, he believed that only a few of the worker correspondents could become real writers. Gorky understood well what talent is, what high demands real - “great” - literature places on its creators.

The successes of the Soviet people deeply pleased the writer, and he regretted that he could no longer travel around the country and see with his own eyes the achievements of the Land of Soviets. “Our wish to Alexei Maksimovich,” Yaroslavl collective farmer N.V. Belousov wrote in the “Peasant Newspaper,” “is to go and see not only economically strong collective farms... but also weak collective farms that need their material and economic strengthening, and, taking two of them, strong and weak, write a book about them showing how to run a social economy..." "If my age had not interfered with me,” the writer answered, “I would, of course, walk for two years around the collective farms.” .

Gorky is an active publicist, often appears in print with articles on different topics. In 1931, Pravda published 40 speeches by the writer, in 1932 - 30, in 1933 - 32, in 1934 - 28, in 1935 - 40.

The thirties were an important and difficult period in the history of the Soviet country. The USSR was the first in the world to build a socialist society on a scientific Marxist basis. First in the world... This means going down a path that no one has ever gone before, overcoming difficulties that practically no one has yet overcome. There was an intense search for ways of socialist development of the country, creative practical application of Marxism to solve specific everyday issues.

Industry is growing rapidly in the USSR, collective farms are being created. Turksib connected Siberia with Central Asia, the Stalingrad tractor railway was launched, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station was built, Komsomolsk is growing... From an agricultural country, the USSR becomes a powerful industrial power. Everyday work, successes in the economic and social construction of socialism are the subject of the writer’s constant thoughts and reflections, the topics of his oral and printed speeches.

“Life is becoming somehow surprisingly interesting every day...” said Gorky. “The proletariat of the Union of Soviets has proven that there is no obstacle that it cannot overcome, there is no task that it cannot solve, there is no goal that it unable to achieve... - the predictions of scientific socialism are increasingly being realized more widely and deeply by the activities of the party..."

The writer was concerned with the theme of labor, instilling in a person a love of work, an organic need to work: “Everything in the world was created and is being created by labor - this is known, this is understandable, a worker should feel this especially well... In the Land of the Soviets, the goal of labor is to supply the entire population country with all the products of labor that are necessary so that all people are well-fed, well dressed, have comfortable homes, are healthy, and enjoy all the benefits of life; in the Country of Soviets, the goal of labor is the development of culture, the development of reason and the will to live, the creation model state of cultural workers... all work in the Union of Soviets is state necessary and socially useful, not as work that creates “conveniences of life” for the “elect,” but as work that builds a “new world” for the entire mass of workers and peasants, for each of the units of this mass." Gorky was worried that not everyone was vitally interested in the successes of the Soviet country, that “poetry labor processes is still not felt deeply enough by young people,” that many still do not realize the fundamentally different nature of work under socialism.

Gorky emphasized the importance of labor as the basis of culture, exposed the hostility of the exploiting classes to progress, and asserted the historical role of the working class and the Communist Party in the creation of socialist culture. “The mind, the best, most active and energetic mind of the working people of the Union of Soviets is embodied in the Bolshevik Party,” he wrote in October 1932, greeting the Dnieper construction workers.

Gorky did not consider the rapid growth of the country’s productive forces an end in itself: “The working class of the Union of Soviets does not consider the development of material culture to be its final goal, and does not limit its work to the goals of enriching its country, that is, self-enrichment. He understood, he knows that material culture is necessary for him as soil and basis for the development of spiritual, intellectual culture."

Gorky rejoices, “seeing and feeling how the small peasant owner is reborn, becoming a real social activist, a conscious Soviet citizen, a fighter for the universal truth of Lenin and the party of his faithful disciples.” The writer regards the decisive turn of the village towards the path of collective farming, towards the path of socialism, as “a great victory for the energy of the proletariat.”

“It is a great joy to build a wonderful, good life on collective farm land” - this is the result of many years of Gorky’s thoughts about the difficult destinies of the Russian peasant.

Gorky highly appreciates the role of science and its people in the construction of socialism: “The party of communist workers and peasants, organized by the teachings of Marx and Lenin, is an energetic and the only disinterested leader of the working people in the whole world - deeply understands the importance of science, technology, art as a tool for building a new world.”

He writes with pain about the fruits of mismanagement - the death of fish, forests, and calls for learning careful attitude to nature, the wise use of its resources, reminds that “a person of socialism is obliged to be a zealous owner, not a predator.”

One of Gorky's last appearances in print was a memoir about academician I.P. Pavlov, written in connection with the death of the great scientist.

The struggle for a new world, the world of socialism, was not only a struggle against the economic backwardness inherited from Tsarist Russia, but also a struggle against the remnants of the past in the minds of people, views and ideas alien to socialist society. And here Gorky’s journalism was a bright and effective weapon. He repeatedly spoke out against the religious-church dope and believed that it was necessary to publish church books with critical notes. "Why not publish a Bible with critical commentaries... The Bible is a book in high degree inaccurate, incorrect. And against each of those texts that can be put forward by the enemy, you can find a good dozen contradictory texts. You need to know the Bible,” Gorky said at the opening of the Second All-Union Congress of Militant Atheists in 1929. In religion, the writer saw not only a hostile ideology, but also a reflection of popular ideas, people's experience, elements of artistic creativity: “I consider religious creativity as artistic: the life of Buddha, Christ, Mohammed - like fantasy novels.”

Gorky was always concerned about the position of a woman in society, her role in life in general, the need for a woman to “raise her role in the world - her sovereignty, cultural - and thereby spiritual - remarkableness”; he wrote about this in “Tales of Italy”, “Mother”, stories, novellas, plays, articles. Gorky rejoiced at the deliverance of women from family and social oppression, and wrote with anger about the shameful remnants of the past in relation to women.

The writer tirelessly called for a fight against philistinism: “The philistinism, blown up economically, is widely scattered by the “blasting” (crushing - I.N.) effect of the explosion and is again very noticeably growing into our reality... A new layer of people is beginning to take shape among us. This is - a philistine, heroically inclined, capable of attack. He is cunning, he is dangerous, he penetrates into all the loopholes. This new layer of philistinism is organized from within much stronger than before, it is now a more formidable enemy than in the days of my youth."

An important theme of Gorky's journalism of the thirties is humanism, real and imaginary humanism. Himself in the first years of the revolution, who sometimes departed from the class, proletarian point of view in matters of humanism, the writer now persistently emphasizes the social and historical conditionality of the approach to the individual.

“We speak out...” Gorky said in 1934, “as people who affirm the true humanism of the revolutionary proletariat, the humanism of a force called upon by history to liberate the entire world of working people from envy, greed, vulgarity, stupidity - from all the ugliness that throughout history for centuries they have distorted working people."

Gorky's socialist humanism is an active, militant humanism, based on scientific knowledge of the laws of social development. Based primarily on the interests of the proletariat, socialist humanism expresses universal human aspirations, because by liberating itself, the working class creates conditions for the liberation of all people.

Gorky often speaks on international issues.

War can and should be prevented, and this is within the power of the masses - primarily the working class.

The threat to peace, humanism, and culture in those years came primarily from German fascism.

The fascist revolution in Germany stunned Gorky: “You are left alone, you imagine the historical swinishness that is taking place, and, blinded by the bright flowering of human vulgarity, meanness, and arrogance, you begin to dream about how good it would be to break several faces belonging to the “creators” of modern reality. And very you begin to think unkindly about the proletarians of Europe... about the degree of political self-awareness of the majority of German workers." Gorky understood the social nature of fascism, saw in it impact force the bourgeoisie, which resorted to the last resort - rabid, bloody terror, in order to try to delay the offensive movement of history, to delay its death.

“The preaching of medieval ideas,” he writes about Western Europe, “takes on an all the more terrible and insane character because it is carried out consistently, persistently, and often with talent.” At the same time, reading about the rampant fascism and its persecution of progressive thought, the writer said: “The more a tyrant suppresses freedom of thought and exterminates the rebellious, the deeper he digs his own grave... The reason and conscience of mankind will not allow a return to the Middle Ages.” .

At a time of growing military danger, Gorky turned to the progressive intelligentsia of the West with a question and appeal - “Who are you with, masters of culture?”: with the world of humanism or with the world of hostility towards everything progressive? He calls on the intelligentsia of Western Europe to support the Soviet Union and the international proletariat in the fight against fascism and the threat of war.

“...If a war breaks out against the class whose forces I live and work with,” Gorky wrote in 1929, “I will also join his army as an ordinary fighter. I will go not because I know that it will be the one who will win, but because, that the great, just cause of the working class of the Union of Soviets is also my legitimate cause, my duty.”

Depth of thought, passion of feeling, mastery of presentation distinguish Gorky's journalism. Before us is a great citizen of a great country, a convinced fighter for peace and socialism, who has an excellent command of the art of journalistic speech. The writer's speeches were free from the templates and stencils that developed in those years in journalism, and annoying repetition." common places", an abundance of quotes.

Journalism, more than any other literary genre, is a direct response to the topic of the day; more closely than other types of literature, it is tied to the demands and needs of the current moment. Journalistic articles of any writer reflect the ideas and concepts that existed in the society of that time, ideas and concepts, some of which undergo changes in the course of history. “The truth of the day” does not always and not in everything coincide with the “truth of the century” and “the truth of history,” and you need to know this when reading the journalism of past years.

Gorky loved children very much. This love was strong and long-standing.

IN early years on holidays, having gathered children from all over the street, he went with them into the forest for the whole day, and when returning, he often dragged the most tired ones on his shoulders and back - in a specially made chair.

Gorky soulfully portrayed children in his works - the works “Foma Gordeev”, “Three”, “Childhood”, “Tales of Italy”, “Passion-faces”, “Spectators”.

The pioneers of Irkutsk visited Gorky on Malaya Nikitskaya. Members of a literary circle, they wrote a book about their lives - “The Snub-Nosed Base.” A copy was sent to Gorky. He liked the book, and 15 “snub-noses” were awarded a trip to Moscow. They arrived during the days of the Writers' Congress. One of the “snub-noses” spoke from the rostrum of the congress, and then the guys were visiting Gorky*.

* They spoke about their meeting with the writer in the book “Visiting Gorky” (both books were republished in Irkutsk in 1962).

The writer was amazed by the education and talent of Soviet children. He recalled: “At their age, even a tenth of what they know was unknown to me.” And once again I remembered the talented children who died before my eyes - this is one of the darkest spots in my memory... Children grow up as collectivists - This is one of the great conquests of our reality."

But Gorky was attentive to children not only as a father, grandfather, participant in their fun, just a person. He was always a writer, a public figure, and always thought a lot about the fate of those who would come to replace his generation.

The writer devotes a lot of effort to the organization and creation of literature for children, defines its principles, makes sure that books for children are written by people who love children, understand their inner world, their needs, desires, interests. “An excellent person and a lover of children, he was put in charge of children’s literature,” Gorky wrote in February 1933 about Marshak, who, on his initiative, was entrusted with the management of the production of children’s books.

The children were Gorky's long-time correspondents, and he answered them in a friendly, often humorous, always kind manner. “I feel great pleasure when corresponding with the children,” the writer admitted. In his treatment of children there was neither sentimentality nor sweetness, but there was interest in them, inner respect, tact, and reasonable demands, taking into account the age and level of development of the children.

“You sent a good letter,” Gorky wrote to the pioneers of distant Igarka, who asked him for advice on how to write a book about their life and studies. “Your cheerfulness and the clarity of your awareness of the paths to the highest goal of life shine richly in his simple and clear words,” paths to the goal that your fathers and grandfathers set for you and all the working people."

The book “We are from Igarka,” written according to Gorky’s plan, appeared after the writer’s death with the dedication: “We dedicate our work to the memory of the great writer, our teacher and friend Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. Authors.”

But, loving children dearly, the writer was demanding of them and did not forgive laziness or illiteracy. Having published in Pravda the illiterate letter he received from Penza schoolchildren, he wrote: “It’s a shame for 4th grade students to write so illiterately, very shamefully! And it is necessary that you, as well as lively slobs and careless people like you, should be ashamed of your inability to clearly express your thoughts and your ignorance of grammar. You are no longer little, and it’s time for you to understand that your fathers and mothers are not working heroically so that their children grow up ignorant...” At the same time, the writer spared children’s pride: “Guys, I’m publishing yours.” a letter in the newspapers, but I don’t mention your names because I don’t want your comrades to cruelly ridicule you for your illiteracy.”

The children paid the writer with reciprocal love. Thus, second-grader Kira V., with childish spontaneity, regretted that Gorky did not manage to live as well as she did in childhood: “I would really like you to live in my place for at least one day when you were little.”

From the end of September 1934 (until December) Gorky was again in Tesseli. He continues to work on “The Life of Klim Samgin” and maintains extensive correspondence.

The whole country was shocked by the villainous murder on December 1, 1934 of a prominent figure of the Communist Party S.M. Kirov. “I am completely depressed by the murder of Kirov,” Gorky writes to Fedin, “I feel shattered and generally miserable. I loved and respected this man very much.”

Summer 1935 Gorky lives in Gorki. R. Rolland is visiting him here. The French writer wrote in his diary: “Gorky completely coincides with the image that you created. Very tall, taller than me, significant, ugly, kind face, large duck nose, large mustache, blond, graying eyebrows, gray hair... kind pale blue eyes, in the depths of which one can see sadness..."

At Gorky's dacha, Rolland met with writers, scientists, metro builders, actors, and composers. D. Kabalevsky, G. Neuhaus, L. Knipper, B. Shechter played. Gorky spoke a lot about the nationality of music, drawing the attention of composers to the rich musical folklore of the peoples of the USSR.

“The month I spent in the USSR was full of great lessons for me, rich and fruitful impressions and heartfelt memories; the main one is three weeks of communication with my dear friend Maxim Gorky,” wrote Rolland.

In Gorki, Gorky was visited by Stalin, Voroshilov and other members of the government, composers and musicians, Soviet and foreign writers (including G. Wells and A. Barbusse, in 1934), Moscow paratroopers, shock workers of the metro construction, pioneers of Armenia, pupils of labor communes , masters of Soviet cinema, whose work Gorky closely followed, speaking approvingly of Chapaev, Pyshka, and The Thunderstorm.

On August 11, the writer travels to Gorky, from where he travels along the Volga with friends and family (daughter-in-law and granddaughters) (he also sailed along the Volga in the summer of 1934).

The writer wanted to admire the Volga for the last time, and those around him felt that he was saying goodbye to the river of his childhood and youth. The trip was difficult for Gorky: he was tormented by heat and stuffiness, constant shaking from the overly powerful engines of the newly built steamship Maxim Gorky (“It could have been done without this,” the writer grumbled when he saw his name on the ship).

Gorky talked with party and Soviet leaders of the cities past which the ship sailed, talked about his youth, about life on the Volga in those years, listened to the latest Chaliapin records, recently brought by Ekaterina Pavlovna from Paris from the great singer.

“Everywhere along the banks of rivers, in cities, the tireless work of building a new world is going on, arousing joy and pride,” Gorky summed up his impressions of the trip in a letter to R. Rolland.

At the end of September, Gorky left again for Tesseli.

Tesseli is a Greek word and translated means “silence.” The silence here was truly extraordinary. The dacha with a large neglected park, closed on three sides by mountains, was located away from roads. The one-story, T-shaped house was surrounded by boxwood and juniper.

Gorky occupied two rooms - a bedroom and an office, the rest were for the common use of all residents of the dacha. In the writer's office, facing southeast, there was always a lot of sun; From the window you can see the sea and the park that goes down to it. There is a bird feeder on a pine branch under the office window.

From three to five o'clock in any weather, at any time of the year, Gorky worked in the garden - digging flower beds, uprooting stumps, removing stones, uprooting bushes, sweeping paths, skillfully using natural springs, not allowing them to flow unnecessarily into ravines. Soon the garden was put in order, and Alexey Maksimovich was very proud of it.

“The correct alternation of mental and physical activities will revive humanity, make it healthy, durable, and life joyful...” he said. “Let parents and schools instill in children a love of work, and they will save them from laziness, disobedience and other vices. They will give them the most powerful weapon for life."

In moments of physical work, the writer said, such thoughts come to mind, such images are born that, sitting at the table, you cannot catch for hours.

Vs. Ivanov, A. Tolstoy, Marshak, Pavlenko, Trenev, Babel, a prominent party leader Postyshev, came to Tesseli to see Gorky. French writer A. Malraux. The famous portrait of Gorky, the petrel of the revolution, is painted here by the artist I.I. Brodsky.

The writer did not like life in Tesseli. He writes to Rolland that, like Chekhov, he is burdened by imprisonment in the Crimea, but is forced to stay here for the winter in order to maintain his ability to work.

“I love all the flowers and all the colors of the earth, and man, the best of it, in all my days has been for me the most wonderful of mysteries, and I am not tired of admiring him,” said the hero of the miniature “The Old Man” in 1906, and this love for life, to man, Gorky preserved until his last days.

And my health is getting worse and worse.

Due to illness, Gorky was unable to go to Paris - to the International Congress in Defense of Culture (his address to the congress was published in Pravda).

“I am beginning to become decrepit. My efficiency is declining... My heart is working lazily and capriciously,” he writes in May 1935. When Gorky was working in the park, there was a car with an oxygen bag nearby - just in case. Such a pillow was also at hand during conversations with guests*.

* Sometimes about three hundred oxygen pillows were prepared for Gorky per day.

Comic verses formed themselves:

I should have lived more modestly, not broken stones in the garden, and not thought at night about retribution on the bastards.

But Gorky could not help but think “about retribution on the bastards.”

“I am afraid of only one thing: my heart will stop before I have time to finish the novel,” Gorky wrote on March 22, 1936. Alas, he turned out to be right - Gorky did not have time to finish “Klima Samgin”: the very last pages remained unfinished.

Devoting a lot of energy and time to organizational, administrative and editorial work, a wide variety of assistance to his fellow writers, and conducting extensive correspondence, Gorky always remembered and said that the main job of a writer is to write. And he wrote... He wrote a lot - "The Life of Klim Samgin", plays, journalistic and critical articles.

Gorky's "farewell" novel "The Life of Klim Samgin" * is an encyclopedia of Russian life of the pre-revolutionary fortieth anniversary.

* The first volume was completed in 1926, the second in 1928, the third in 1930, and the fourth was not finally completed.

The idea of ​​"Samghin" took a long time to mature. At the turn of the century, Gorky began “The Life of Mr. Platon Ilyich Penkin”, then sketched an excerpt “My name is Yakov Ivanovich Petrov...”, then worked on “Notes of Doctor Ryakhin”, wrote the story “All the Same”, conceived “The Diary of a Useless Man” .

But the four-volume history of the “useless” Klim Samgin was not a simple embodiment of a long-standing plan. In the stories about people and events of the past decades, Gorky invested a great meaning that is relevant for our time: “The past fades away with fantastic speed... But it leaves behind poisonous dust, and from this dust souls turn gray, the mind dims. It is necessary to know the past, without "With this knowledge, you will get confused in life and you can again end up in that dirty, bloody swamp from which the wise teaching of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin led us out and put us on a wide, straight path to a great, happy future."

In "The Life of Klim Samgin" Gorky comprehends Russian life in the forty pre-revolutionary years from the position of a great artist and deep thinker, enriched by the experience of the socialist revolution. It is not for nothing that Gorky, Samgin’s senior contemporary, while working on the novel, delved anew into Marxist assessments of the historical process and compiled a list of Lenin’s statements about imperialism and party decisions of 1907-1917.

The writer’s library contains the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” of the 1932 edition and Lenin’s work “State and Revolution” of the 1931 edition with his notes. In the process of his work, Gorky asked historians about the prices of hay, oats and meat in Russia in 1915, studied memoirs and documents. “I need exact dates of deaths, accessions to the throne, coronations, dispersals of the Duma, etc., etc.,” he wrote in 1926 in the USSR and asked to send a book with “the exact chronology of events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the war. 14 years."

The novel masterfully depicts the bloody catastrophe during the coronation of Nicholas II - "Khodynka", the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition, the Ninth of January, the 1905 revolution, Bauman's funeral, the Stolypin reaction, the First World War.

Along with the directly named Nicholas II, Kerensky, Chaliapin, Rodzianko, the novel shows, “without naming names,” Savva Morozov (“a man with the face of a Tatar”), the writer N. Zlatovratsky (“a gray-bearded fiction writer”), E. Chirikov (“ a fashionable writer, a rather oaky man"), M. Gorky himself ("red-moustached, looking like a soldier"), etc.

But “Samghin” is not a historical chronicle, not a textbook or anthology on history. The novel does not cover a number of important events, there are no many people who played an important role in Russia in those years. Russia's movement towards the socialist revolution is shown not in historical events, but in spiritual life, philosophical disputes, personal dramas and the fate of heroes. "The Life of Klim Samgin" is, first of all, an ideological novel, showing the country's movement towards revolution through ideological disputes, philosophical movements, books that are read and discussed (the work mentions hundreds of works of literature, music, painting - from the Iliad to Gorky's plays "At the Bottom"). The characters in the novel think and talk more than they act. In addition, life is shown by Gorky as Samghin sees it, but he does not see much or sees it incorrectly.

Before the reader pass the populists, legal Marxists, idealists, decadents, sectarians, Bolsheviks - in the words of the writer, “all classes”, “currents”, “directions”, all the hellish turmoil of the end of the century and the storms of the beginning of the twentieth." "The Life of Klim Samgin " - a novel about Russian pre-revolutionary society, about the complex interweaving of ideological and social forces in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The writer depicts the collapse of populism, the emergence of legal Marxism and revolutionary Marxism, the emergence and social roots of decadence, its diverse ramifications, the turbulent entrepreneurial activity bourgeoisie, revolutionary events of 1905-1907, rampant mysticism, pornography and cynicism at the time of reaction, the growth of the forces of the proletarian party.

Gorky's novel is directed against bourgeois individualism, variously embodied by the writer in the main character - lawyer Klim Ivanovich Samgin.

“Individualism is a contagious and dangerous disease, its roots are in the instinct of property, nurtured over centuries, and as long as private property exists, this disease will inevitably develop, disfiguring and devouring people like leprosy,” wrote Gorky.

Since childhood, Klim has been convinced of his originality and exclusivity: “I have never seen anyone larger than him.” This desire to be original, not like everyone else, was instilled in him from childhood - by his parents. But soon Klim himself began to “invent himself”, turning into a little old man, alien to children’s games, fun, and pranks.

Klim’s childhood and youth bring to mind Pushkin’s lines:

Blessed is he who was young from his youth... or the wise quatrain of Marshak: There was once a proverb, That children do not live, but are preparing to live.

A child should have a childhood with its joys and pranks, and not childhood old age - Gorky himself spoke about this more than once. He looked with sadness at the “senilely experienced” young poor people who came to his Nizhny Novgorod Christmas tree, and in 1909 he wrote to Baku children to be children (“do more pranks”), and not little old men.

Convinced of his exclusivity, Klim Samgin is in fact an “intellectual of average value,” an ordinary person, devoid of both great intelligence and simple humanity.

Samghin lives in troubling pre-revolutionary times. No matter how much he wanted, there was no hiding from the inevitably approaching political upheavals. In his soul, Klim is afraid of the coming revolution, he internally understands that he does not need anything from the revolution, but the more he boasts of selfless service to it, providing some services to the revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks trust Samghin, Klim carries out their instructions - without sympathizing with the revolution at heart. During the mighty revolutionary onslaught of the masses, it is more profitable and safer to be a fellow traveler of the revolution - this is what Samghin thinks. Vanity and the desire to play the role of a prominent public figure prompt him to do this.

Klim is a “rebel against his will”; he helped the revolutionaries not out of faith in the revolution, but out of fear of its inevitability. So he comes to the conclusion: “Revolution is needed in order to destroy revolutionaries.” It is not for nothing that the gendarme colonel, an intelligent man, having become acquainted with Samghin’s notes, is sincerely surprised why he did not side with the government: after all, his soul is for the existing order.

Exposing Klim Samgin, tracing his life path from the cradle to death in the revolutionary days of 1917, the writer was far from fatalism - recognition of the inevitability of fate, the powerlessness of a person to change his life path. Man - Gorky asserted with all his creativity - is not doomed by the circumstances of life, he can and must rise above them. Like Matvey Kozhemyakin, Klim had the opportunity (and more than one!) to leave his path, to truly enter the “big life” - both personally and socially. He is carried away by a woman - and is afraid of passion, runs away from her. The atmosphere of revolutionary upsurge in the country also influences Samghin.

In the novel, Gorky explores how the intelligentsia, who spoke a lot about the people, that the country and power should belong to them, and only to them, after 1917, when the people actually took power into their own hands, found themselves in no small part of the hostile revolution. The writer sees the reason for this in individualism, in “sluggish, but unquenchable and unquenchable conceit.”

Gorky's novel is not a novel about the entire Russian intelligentsia. Quite a few intellectuals accepted October - some earlier, some later, some completely, some to a significant extent. Klim Samgin is an artistic generalization by the writer of those features of the intelligentsia that - taken together - determined the hostility of its part to the socialist revolution.

Samghin completes and summarizes in Gorky’s work the gallery of bourgeois intellectuals shown in “Varenka Olesova” and “Dachniki”, who increasingly moved away from the people, increasingly emptying themselves spiritually (it is not for nothing that the subtitle of the novel is “The History of an Empty Soul”). This image also contains the features of many people who met at life path Gorky, but Samghin is not a portrait of any specific person. The writer himself named among those who gave him material for Samgin the writers Mirolyubov, Pyatnitsky, Bunin, Posse - people with different characters and destinies.

Samghin is opposed in the novel by the Bolshevik Kutuzov, a man with a broad outlook who believes in the proletariat. In contrast to the spiritually sick Klima, he is a healthy person in body and spirit, charming, and understanding of art. All the best is concentrated around him - both in the proletariat and in the intelligentsia. No, Klim Samgin is not the entire Russian intelligentsia, although he is a significant part of it. There is Kutuzov - a superbly erudite person, a talented speaker and polemicist, there is Elizaveta Spivak, and Lyubasha Somova, and Evgeniy Yurin and others.

Approaching the camp are Kutuzova and Makarov, Inokov (he has some features of Gorky himself), Tagilsky, Marina Zotova, Lyutov - complex, contradictory, restless people.

Gorky extensively shows in the novel the life of the people, the growth of popular consciousness, the desire of the masses for freedom. Real people - strong mentally and physically, smart - are not to Samghin’s liking. But both the reader and the writer himself see the truth of life through the head of the hero of the novel. The people in "Samgin" are in a complex interweaving of the "damned legacy" of the past and revolutionary, spiritual growth. Both faithful servants of the throne and fighters for the people's cause come from among the people.

In “The Life of Klim Samgin,” written by an old writer, no decline or weakening of talent is visible. Before us is a new powerful rise of genius. The writer's memory is unfadingly fresh, and the artistic power of his book is enormous.

The original artistic device of “mirroring” runs through the entire novel. All of Samghin's traits are reflected - more acutely or less so - in other characters in the novel. This, on the one hand, debunks the “uniqueness” of the novel’s protagonist, and on the other, makes him a generalization of an entire social group. This is the dialectic of the artistic image.

The calm manner of presentation also conceals a deeply critical, ironic attitude towards the world depicted, and admiration for those who are preparing the revolution. Without hiding (in his letters) his sharply negative attitude towards Samghin, Gorky tried in every possible way to avoid the author’s assessments of the hero in the novel, allowing him to expose himself - in words, thoughts, actions.

Very complex artistically, the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin” is not easy to read. It requires great erudition, deep knowledge of the era depicted, and a thoughtful attitude to what is read. No wonder Gorky thought of writing a “shortened” version of the novel.

Samghin is a literary type of global significance, embodying the spiritual impoverishment of the bourgeois individualist intellectual in the era of proletarian revolutions.

How “Manilovism”, “Khlestakovism”, “Oblomovism”, “Belikovism”, “Samginism” became an artistic generalization of the system of views and actions characteristic of a certain social type. Samginshchina - the ideology and psychology of the bourgeoisie - is especially dangerous, because it is difficult to catch and difficult to punish. Samgins infect those around them with indifference, imaginary “smartness”, prepare the ground for evil deeds, hinder the development of life, hate everything bright, unusual, talented, but they themselves remain on the sidelines, not committing legally punishable deeds - moreover, external, visible involvement in the great the case quite reliably shields them from reproaches and accusations.

The image of Klim Samgin is not only the result of the great artist’s observations and reflections on life. He is closely connected with Russian and world literary tradition; It was not for nothing that Gorky emphasized that the individualist intellectual, a person “certainly of average intellectual abilities, devoid of any bright qualities, passes through literature throughout the entire 19th century.” Gorky’s contemporaries also wrote about the bourgeois intellectual of the Samgin type, but they attached unjustified spiritual significance to this figure and were unable to see, like Gorky, the inner dullness and emptiness behind the imaginary uniqueness and originality.

A deep and multifaceted, artistically perfect generalization of the traits of human character, the laws of social life, inherent in more than one historically specific situation, not only in one generation of people, makes “The Life of Klim Samgin” an important, instructive and interesting book for subsequent generations. In the novel, Gorky explores social and psychological issues that are by no means limited to either Russia or the historical era shown in the novel. The events depicted in Samghin are 50-100 years away from us. But the novel is still relevant today. The Samgins, Dronovs, Tomilins, Zotovs, Lyutovs are heroes of today in capitalist countries. Their doubts, wanderings, and searches reveal a lot about the searches and wanderings of the intelligentsia of bourgeois countries. Yes, and in our country some of the features of Samgaism and bourgeois consciousness have not yet completely become a thing of the past. The critic M. Shcheglov called Gratsiansky, one of the heroes of L. Leonov’s novel “Russian Forest,” “Samginsky seed.”

May 1936 in Crimea was dry and hot; it was also sunny in Moscow, where Gorky went on May 26. The carriage was stuffy and the windows were often opened. The writer had to breathe from an oxygen pillow more than once.

And in Moscow it is also stuffy, but also a strong wind and a merciless sun. On June 1, in Gorki, the writer became seriously ill with the flu, which aggravated his lung and heart disease.

Since June 6, Pravda, Izvestia and other newspapers have been publishing daily reports about the writer’s health, but a special issue of Pravda was printed for him, without this bulletin.

“When the writer fell ill,” recalls L. Kassil, “millions of readers grabbed the newspaper in the morning and first of all looked for a bulletin about his health, as they later looked for a report from the front or before that - the degree of northern latitude where the Chelyuskin ice floe was drifting.”

Party and government leaders visited the patient. From all over the country, from all over the world, there were wishes for a speedy recovery. Moscow pioneers brought him flowers.

Shortness of breath did not allow Gorky to lie down, and he sat in a chair almost all the time. When temporary relief came, Alexey Maksimovich joked, laughed at his helplessness, talked about literature, about life, and several times recalled Lenin. He endured the pain patiently. The last book that Gorky read was the study of the famous Soviet historian E.V. Tarle “Napoleon”; The writer’s notes have been preserved on many of its pages, the last of which is on page 316, in the middle of the book.

Gorky was not afraid of death, although he thought about it more than once.

“Several times in my life, willingly or unwillingly, I had to experience the proximity of death, and many good people died before my eyes. This infected me with a feeling of organic disgust towards “dying”, towards death. But I never felt fear of it,” - he admitted in 1926.

But I didn’t want to die: “I wish I could live and live. Every new day brings a miracle. And the future is such that no imagination can foresee...” he said. “Medical science is cunning, but powerful. If only we could hold out a little, there will be diseases on earth.” They’ll hatch and we’ll be able to live for about a hundred and fifty years. Otherwise we’re dying early, too early!”

Thoughts about death, about tragic brevity human life often worried the writer in recent years. They were reflected in the play "Egor Bulychov and Others"; The writer thought of dramatizing Leo Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich."

Gorky showed great interest in the problem of longevity and did a lot to create the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, which, among other issues, dealt with the problems of extending human life. One day he asked Professor Speransky whether immortality was feasible. "It is not feasible and cannot be feasible. Biology is biology, and death is its fundamental law."

“But can we deceive her? She’ll knock on the door, and we’ll say, come on in a hundred years?

We can do this.

And I, and the rest of humanity, are unlikely to demand more from you.”

On June 16, the last temporary relief came. Shaking hands with the doctors, Gorky said: “Apparently, I’ll jump out.” But it was not possible to “jump out” of the disease, and at the 11th hour. 10 min. on the morning of June 18, Gorky died at his dacha in Gorki.

When Gorky's hand still held a pencil, he wrote on pieces of paper:

“Two processes are combined: the lethargy of nervous life - as if the cells of the nerves are extinguishing - are covered with ashes, and all thoughts turn gray, at the same time - a stormy onslaught of the desire to speak, and this rises to delirium, I feel that I am speaking incoherently, although the phrases are still meaningful ".

The Soviet people experienced great personal grief over the death of Gorky.

The mountains are crying, the rivers are crying: “Our Gorky has died,” Something has become boring everywhere.

In the courtyards, the guys are crying: “Our Gorky has died.”

“O brave Falcon, you soared high above the earth, breathing the struggle. From cruel battles you brought a heart full of love.

You proudly cast a curse on the greedy, who idly live on the blood of others. You gave your hand to the misfortune of the poor, and the slave saw the path to the light.

For generations moving towards life, you will forever be the shining sun.

You lived a glorious life... We will learn from your life and we will forever breathe the struggle, like you, beloved, like you, our Falcon!

We will remember and praise your cares forever and we will be strong, like you, beloved, - oh brave Falcon.

We bear our loss, the loss of a friend, with sobs in our hearts.

Goodbye teacher! Farewell, beloved!"

The coffin with the writer’s body, and then the urn with his ashes were installed in the House of Unions. Thousands of people have passed through Hall of Columns, paying his last debt to the great son of a great people.

On June 20, a funeral meeting took place on Red Square. Artillery salvos thundered, orchestras played the anthem of the working people of the whole world, “The Internationale”. The urn with the writer's ashes was walled up in the Kremlin wall - where the ashes of outstanding figures of the Communist Party, the Soviet state and the international labor movement rest.

“Great people do not have two dates of their existence in history - birth and death, but only one date: their birth,” Alexei Tolstoy said at the funeral meeting. And he was right. The writer is not with us, but his books “help us build and live,” they teach us truth, fearlessness, and the wisdom of life.

Gorky passed away more than thirty years ago. But all this time - both during the Great Patriotic War and during the years of widespread communist construction - he remained and remains with us. Gorky's stories, novellas, and novels continue to excite the reader today and pose serious and interesting problems for him. Like any truly great artist, new generations see in Gorky not only what their predecessors saw, but also discover something new, little noticed or completely unnoticed, in tune with today.

Gorky's books are still our friends, advisers, and mentors today. He is alive, living that life whose name is immortality. His great creations are alive - his novels, novels, plays, stories. Soviet literature became the first literature in the world, at the cradle of which stood the great, wise mentor and teacher Alexei Maximovich Gorky.

The centenary of Gorky's birth, celebrated in 1968, turned into a nationwide celebration of the great writer in our country. This speaks of the vitality of Gorky’s legacy, of his role in the struggle for the triumph of communism. Years go by, generations change, but the fiery word of the Petrel of the Revolution is always with us in the fight for Man, for communism.

80 years ago, on April 23, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations.” The document contained a directive according to which all writers' organizations that existed in the first years of Soviet power were subject to dissolution. In their place, a single Union of Soviet Writers was created.

RAPP AND RAPPOVTSY

The New Economic Policy, pursued by the Bolsheviks from the spring of 1921, allowed for some freedom and relative pluralism in all spheres of society, with the exception of politics. In the 1920s, unlike later times, different artistic methods and styles openly competed. Various directions, trends and schools coexisted in the literary environment. But squabbles continued between the factions. Which is not surprising: creative people have always been arrogant, vulnerable and envious.

While people were reading Yesenin’s poems (judging by requests in libraries), organizations that preached a narrow class, sociological approach to the problems of literature began to gain the upper hand in the intergroup struggle. All-Union Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP) and Russian Association proletarian writers (RAPP) claimed to be the spokesman for the position of power. Rappovites, without mincing words, criticized all writers who, in their opinion, did not meet the criteria of a Soviet writer.

Rapp’s magazine “On Post” expressed its claim to become an ideological overseer of writers. Already in its first issue (1923) it went to many famous writers and poets. G. Lelevich (pseudonym of Labori Kalmanson) stated: “Along with the severance of social ties, Mayakovsky is characterized by some special sensitivity of the nervous system. Not healthy, even furious, anger, not ferocious anger, but some kind of twitchiness, neurasthenia, hysteria.” Boris Volin was indignant that in the book “The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov” Ilya Erenburg “smears tar on the gates of the revolution not only with large strokes, he also splashes small splashes on them.” Lev Sosnovsky kicked Gorky, who lived abroad: “So, the revolution, and its most acute manifestation - the civil war - for Maxim Gorky - a fight of large animals. In Gorky’s opinion, you shouldn’t write about this fight, because you’ll have to write a lot of rude and cruel things... Let’s read and re-read the old (i.e., more correctly young) Gorky, with his fight songs full of courage and daring, and we’ll try forget about the new Gorky, who has become sweet for the bourgeois circles of Europe, and who toothlessly dreams of a serene life and the time when all people will eat... one semolina porridge" However, it was not possible to forget Gorky. But more on that below.

In 1926, the magazine “At the Post” began to be called “At the Literary Post.” At the same time, a very colorful character, the critic and publicist Leopold Averbakh, became its executive editor. It’s worth saying something special about him.

Averbakh was lucky (for the time being) with family connections, which provided the young man with a comfortable life under the tsarist regime and a career under Soviet rule. The future ideologist of RAPP was the son of a large Volga manufacturer and nephew of the Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov, then he became the son-in-law of Lenin’s longtime ally Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich and the brother-in-law of the all-powerful Genrikh Yagoda.

Averbakh turned out to be an arrogant, energetic, ambitious young man and not without talent as an organizer. Shoulder to shoulder with Averbakh, the fight against alien ideology was carried out by ideologists and activists of the RAPP: writers Dmitry Furmanov, Vladimir Kirshon, Alexander Fadeev, Vladimir Stavsky, playwright Alexander Afinogenov, critic Vladimir Ermilov. Kirshon would later write: “It was in the magazine “At the Literary Post” that the ideologists of bourgeois, kulak literature, Trotskyists, Voronshchina, Pereverzevism, leftist vulgarism, etc. were rebuffed.” Many writers got it. In particular, Mikhail Bulgakov. They say that the unforgettable image of the Shvonder house manager was inspired by the Npostovites (from “At the Post”) to the author of “Heart of a Dog.”

Meanwhile, the curtailment of NEP, which began in the late 20s on Stalin’s initiative, was not limited to the complete collectivization of agriculture and the course towards socialist industrialization. It was also decided to place the activities of the creative intelligentsia under closer organizational, ideological and political control of the individually ruling party. In addition, the claim of the RAPP to become the ideological organizer of Soviet literature clearly did not come true. Its leaders were not authoritative for the other writers, who were called “sympathizers” and “fellow travelers.”

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL GENIUS AND THE DEATH OF RAPP

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks knew a lot about literature and cinema, which he treated more than carefully. Despite his workload, he read a lot and regularly attended the theater. I watched Bulgakov’s play “Days of the Turbins” 15 times. Like Nicholas I, Stalin preferred personal censorship in relations with some writers. The consequence of this was the emergence of such a genre as a letter to the leader from a writer.

In the early 30s, the country’s leadership formed an understanding that it was time to end the confusion and groupism on the “literary front.” To centralize control, a consolidating figure was required. This, according to Stalin, should have been the great Russian writer Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. It was his return to the USSR that was the final point in the history of RAPP.

Fate played a cruel joke on Averbakh. Thanks to Yagoda, he took an active part in the operation to lure Gorky out of Italy. The writer liked the distant relative, who wrote to Stalin on January 25, 1932: “During the three weeks that Averbakh lived with me, I took a closer look at him and believe that he is a very smart, well-gifted person who has not yet developed as he should, and who Need to study". In 1937, when Gorky had already died and Yagoda was arrested, Averbakh was also taken. In a statement to the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov, “a well-gifted man” admitted that he “was especially in a hurry to move Gorky from Sorrento,” since Yagoda “asked me to systematically convince Alexei Maksimovich of his speedy complete departure from Italy.”

So, the leaders of RAPP were surprised to learn that their organization, which gossips called “Stalin’s baton”, Stalin no longer needs it. In the Kremlin “kitchen” a “dish” was already being prepared, which became known as the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations.” During preparation, the document was redone more than once at the very top. It was also edited by Lazar Kaganovich, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee, first secretary of the Moscow Committee and the Moscow City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

On April 23, 1932, the resolution was adopted. It said that the framework of proletarian literary and artistic organizations had become a brake on the growth of artistic creativity. There was a “danger of transforming these organizations from a means of the greatest mobilization of Soviet writers and artists around the tasks of socialist construction into a means of cultivating circle isolation, separation from the political tasks of our time and from significant groups of writers and artists who sympathize with socialist construction.” The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, recognizing the need to liquidate the Proletkult organizations, decided to “unite all writers who support the platform of Soviet power and strive to participate in socialist construction into a single union of Soviet writers with the communist faction in it.” And “to carry out similar changes in other types of art (association of musicians, composers, artists, architects, etc. organizations).”

And although the document did not cause joy among all writers, many of them welcomed the idea of ​​​​creating a single union of writers. The idea put forward by the authorities to hold an All-Union Congress of Writers also inspired hope.

“I ASKED STALIN...”

The reaction to the Central Committee resolution in the Rappist camp can be judged from Fadeev’s letter to Kaganovich dated May 10, 1932. Fadeev lamented: eight years of his “mature party life were not spent fighting for socialism, in the literary sector of this struggle, it was not spent fighting for the party and its Central Committee with the class enemy, but on some kind of groupism and circleism "

After the Presidium of the Organizing Committee of the All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers held its first meeting on May 26, Kirshon addressed a letter to Stalin and Kaganovich. This message to the leaders, quite daring for that time, is worthy of detailed quotation. The author of the poem “I asked the ash tree...” (song written by Mikael Tariverdiev) was indignant:

“It was decided to change the editorial boards of all literary newspapers and magazines. This change, as is clear from the attached protocol, is aimed at the complete elimination of the former leadership of RAPP and the writers and critics who shared its positions. Not only were the editors Averbakh, Fadeev, Selivanovsky, Kirshon removed, but the editorial board was composed in such a way that only t.t. Fadeev and Afinogenov were brought into the editorial office, where besides them there were 8-10 people each, comrade. Averbakh remained a member of the editorial board of the “Literary Heritage”, and the remaining comrades - Makaryev, Karavaeva, Ermilov, Sutyrin, Buachidze, Shushkanov, Libedinsky, Gorbunov, Serebryansky, Illesh, Selivanovsky, Troshchenko, Gidash, Luzgin, Yasensky, Mikitenko, Kirshon and others were removed from everywhere and are not included in any edition according to this resolution.

I believed that such a massive removal from everywhere of a group of communist writers who for several years had defended, albeit with errors, the party line on the literary front, could not achieve the consolidation of communists in a single union. It seems to me that this is not consolidation, but liquidation...

Comrade Stalin spoke about the need to put us on “equal conditions.” But in this situation, the result may not be “equal conditions”, but defeat. The resolution of the Organizing Committee does not leave us with a single journal. Comrades from the philosophical leadership who fiercely fought against us and support Panferov’s group were appointed as the responsible editors of the Organizing Committee...

I did not think that communist writers had discredited themselves so much before the party that they could not be trusted to edit a single literary magazine, and that comrades from another section of the ideological front - philosophers - should be invited to guide literature. It seems to me that the intended comrades, who have not carried out any literary work and are unfamiliar with its practice, will manage magazines worse in new and difficult conditions than communist writers.”

Kirshon was especially outraged by the fact that he could not “express his thoughts” at the meeting of the communist faction of the Organizing Committee: “The decision was made as follows: the faction bureau (ie. Gronsky, Kirpotin and Panferov) made all these decisions without any discussion with communist writers, at least with members of the Organizing Committee, and then brought it to the Presidium with non-party writers, where it was approved.”

Concluding the letter, Kirshon asked: “We want to actively and energetically fight for the implementation of the decision of the Central Committee. We want to give Bolshevik works. We ask that you give us the opportunity to work on the literary front, correct the mistakes we have made, and rebuild ourselves in new conditions. In particular, we ask the Central Committee to leave us the magazine “At the Literary Post”. Under the leadership of the party, we created this magazine in 1926, which for 6 years basically correctly fought for the party line.”

The Stalinist Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) unpleasantly surprised the Rappovites this time too. The resolution of June 22 “On Literary Magazines” ordered “to combine the magazines “At the Literary Post”, “For Marxist-Leninist Art History” and “Proletarian Literature” into one monthly magazine.” Members of its editorial board were appointed “comrade. Dinamov, Yudin, Kirshon, Bel Illesh, Zelinsky K., Gronsky, Serafimovich, Sutyrin and Kirpotin.” Fadeev became a member of the editorial board of the Krasnaya Nov magazine.

Averbakh received another responsible assignment. In 1933, he became a participant in the famous writers’ excursion to the White Sea Canal (in 1931, the canal was transferred to the jurisdiction of the OGPU and its acting leader Yagoda). The fellow travelers turned out to be Alexey Tolstoy, Vsevolod Ivanov, Leonid Leonov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Lev Nikulin, Boris Pilnyak, Valentin Kataev, Viktor Shklovsky, Marietta Shaginyan, Vera Inber, Ilf and Petrov and others. Then the writers created a collective work - “White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin." Averbakh, who wrote only a few pages, had the dubious honor of editing the publication. His name as co-editor appears on title page books along with the names of Gorky and Semyon Firin, the head of the White Sea-Baltic forced labor camp.

FIRST CONGRESS OF WRITERS: THE FACE AND THE WRONG END

Preparations for the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers lasted for more than two years. The writers continued to sort things out and complain to Stalin about Gorky and each other. Thus, Fyodor Panferov told “the best friend of Soviet writers”: “Averbakh wants to break my back with the help of Gorky.” Pravda published Gorky’s article “On Language” (03/18/1934). He writes about Panferov that he uses “meaningless and ugly words that litter the Russian language,” although “he is at the head of the magazine (“October.” - O.N.) and teaches young writers, although he himself is apparently incapable or wanting to learn.” Panferov turned to Stalin for support. And he, considering that the discussion had gone beyond acceptable limits, put an end to it.

The first congress of the Union of Soviet Writers, which began on August 17, 1934, became a major event in the life of the country. Gorky greeted the delegates (377 with a casting vote, 220 with an advisory vote): “With pride and joy I open the first in the history of the world congress of writers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, embracing 170 million people within its borders (stormy, prolonged applause).”

Guests of the congress were Louis Aragon, Andre Malraux, Friedrich Wolf, Jakub Kadri and other foreign writers. It took 26 meetings to discuss all the issues. Gorky made a report on Soviet literature, Marshak - on children's literature, Radek - on modern world literature, Bukharin - on poetry, poetics and the tasks of poetic creativity in the USSR. There were four speakers on dramaturgy - Valery Kirpotin, Alexey Tolstoy, Vladimir Kirshon and Nikolai Pogodin. Reports were also made on more specific issues. Nikolai Tikhonov spoke about Leningrad poets, and Kuzma Gorbunov spoke about the work of publishing houses with aspiring writers. Representatives of all Union republics made reports on the state of affairs in their literature (I wonder where and to whom they are speaking today?).

However, the “organs” were not left without work. They discovered an anonymous anti-Soviet letter criticizing Stalin, and also recorded the words of Isaac Babel: “Look at Gorky and Demyan Bedny. They hate each other, but at the convention they sit next to each other like lovebirds. I imagine with what pleasure they would each lead their own group into battle at this congress.” Alexander Zharov responded to Bukharin’s critical statements about poets with an epigram:

Our congress was joyful

And bright

And this day was terribly sweet -

Old Bukharin noticed us

And, going into the grave, he blessed.

The words turned out to be prophetic: four years later, “old man” Bukharin, who did not live to be 50 years old, was shot...

On September 1, closing the writers' forum, Gorky proclaimed the victory of “Bolshevism at the congress.” Socialist realism was declared a method of artistic knowledge of the world.

However, from the inside, the work of the congress did not look so rosy. Gorky's behavior caused serious discontent in the Politburo of the Central Committee. The fact that Stalin was not delighted with his report is confirmed by a telegram that came on August 30 from the Secretary General, who was vacationing in Sochi: “Gorky acted disloyal to the party by omitting the Central Committee’s decision on RAPP in his report. The result was a report not about Soviet literature, but about something else.”

In his report to Stalin on the results of the congress, Zhdanov wrote:

“We are done with the Congress of Soviet Writers. Yesterday the list of the Presidium and Secretariat of the board was unanimously elected... Most of the noise was around Bukharin's report, and especially around the concluding remarks. Due to the fact that communist poets Demyan Bedny, Bezymensky and others gathered to criticize his report, Bukharin, in a panic, asked to intervene and prevent political attacks. We came to his aid in this matter by gathering the leading workers of the congress and giving instructions that Comrade. The communists did not allow any political generalizations against Bukharin in their criticism. The criticism, however, came out quite strong...

Most of the work was with Gorky. In the middle of the congress, he once again tendered his resignation. I was tasked with convincing him to withdraw his statement, which I did. Statement on the role of the Central Committee decision on RAPP, which he made in closing remarks, Gorky reluctantly said verbally that he didn’t really agree with this decision, but it was necessary - that means it was necessary. All the time he was encouraged, in my deepest conviction, to make all sorts of speeches, such as resignations, his own lists of management, etc. All the time he talked about the inability of communist writers to lead the literary movement, about the wrong attitude towards Averbakh (he was not at the congress - O.N.), etc. At the end of the congress, a general upsurge captured him too, giving way to streaks of decline and skepticism and a desire to get away from the “quarrelsome people” in literary work”.

Numerous letters and appeals from writers to Stalin testified that the “petrel” was not able to fully “move away from the “quarrelsome” people into literary work” even after the congress. However, this was already Gorky’s personal problem. The “Leader of the Nations” achieved his goal: the Union of Soviet Writers, created on his initiative, became an important and reliable element of the Stalinist system of power.

Oleg NAZAROV, Doctor of Historical Sciences

Direct speech

From the speech of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Andrei Zhdanov at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers on August 17, 1934:

Comrade Stalin called our writers engineers of human souls. What does it mean? What responsibilities does this title impose on you?

This means, firstly, to know life in order to be able to depict it truthfully in works of art, to depict it not scholastically, not dead, not simply as “objective reality,” but to depict reality in its revolutionary development.

At the same time, the truthfulness and historical specificity of the artistic depiction must be combined with the task of ideological reworking and education of working people in the spirit of socialism. This method of fiction and literary criticism is what we call the method of socialist realism.

Our Soviet literature is not afraid of accusations of bias. Yes, Soviet literature is tendentious, because in the era of class struggle there is not and cannot be literature that is not class-based, not biased, supposedly apolitical (applause).

Document

“On the situation in the Union of Soviet Writers”

Secretaries of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - t.t. STALIN, KAGANOVICH, ANDREEV, ZHDANOV, EZHOV

The current state of the Union of Soviet Writers is extremely alarming. The creative association of writers, designed to politically and organizationally unite the mass of writers and fight for the high ideological and artistic quality of Soviet literature, through the efforts of its current leaders is increasingly turning into a kind of bureaucratic department for literary affairs.

The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932 has been virtually ignored by the leadership of the Union over the past two years. The Union does not carry out any serious work with writers. The center of his attention is not the writer and his activities, but mainly only various economic affairs and literary squabbles.

The Union has turned into some kind of huge office, in the depths of which endless meetings take place. Writers who do not want to break away from the Union, due to the incessant bustle of the meeting, have, strictly speaking, no time to write. Things, for example, came to the point that at one of the meetings of the secretariat, Comrade. Stavsky suggested giving the writer Vishnevsky a sabbatical. Vishnevsky, as is known, does not work in any institution and, therefore, “sabbatical” means for him a vacation from endless meetings in the Union.

As a result of such an organization of affairs in the Union, real writers are faced with a dilemma: either they should “work” in the Union, i.e. sit, or write...

The party organization is not united; there are incessant squabbles and bickering within it. Without trying or not being able to find the right approach to non-party writers, individual communist writers, essentially resurrecting Rappism, are trying to take the path of indiscriminately denigrating non-party people...

Head Department of Press and Publishing of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks

A. NIKITIN

From the Charter of the Writers' Union as amended in 1934 (the charter was edited and changed several times): “The Union of Soviet Writers sets the general goal of creating works of high artistic significance, saturated with the heroic struggle of the international proletariat, the pathos of the victory of socialism, reflecting the great wisdom and heroism of the Communist Party. The Union of Soviet Writers aims to create works of art worthy of the great era of socialism."

According to the charter as amended in 1971, the Union of Writers of the USSR is “a voluntary public creative organization uniting professional writers of the Soviet Union, participating with their creativity in the struggle for the construction of communism, for social progress, for peace and friendship between peoples.”

The charter defined socialist realism as the main method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, adherence to which was a mandatory condition for membership of the joint venture.

Organization of the USSR SP

The highest body of the USSR Writers' Union was the Congress of Writers (between 1934 and 1954, contrary to the Charter, it was not convened), which elected the USSR Writers' Board (150 people in 1986), which, in turn, elected the Chairman of the Board (since 1977 - - first secretary) and formed the secretariat of the board (36 people in 1986), which managed the affairs of the joint venture in the period between congresses. The plenum of the board of the joint venture met at least once a year. The board, according to the 1971 Charter, also elected the secretariat bureau, which consisted of about 10 people, while the actual leadership was in the hands of the working secretariat group (about 10 staff positions occupied by administrative workers rather than writers). Yu. N. Verchenko was appointed head of this group in 1986 (until 1991).

The structural divisions of the USSR Writers' Union were regional writers' organizations with a structure similar to the central organization: the Writers' Union of the Union and Autonomous Republics, writers' organizations of regions, territories, and the cities of Moscow and Leningrad.

The printed organs of the USSR SP were “Literary Newspaper”, magazines “New World”, “Znamya”, “Friendship of Peoples”, “Questions of Literature”, “Literary Review”, “Children’s Literature”, “Foreign Literature”, “Youth”, “ Soviet Literature" (published in foreign languages), "Theater", "Sovietish Gameland" (in Yiddish), "Star", "Bonfire".

The board of the USSR Union of Writers was in charge of the publishing house "Soviet Writer", Literary consultation for beginning authors, the All-Union Bureau for the Promotion of Fiction, the Central House of Writers named after. A. A. Fadeeva in Moscow, etc.

Also in the structure of the joint venture there were various divisions that carried out management and control functions. Thus, all foreign trips of members of the joint venture were subject to approval by the foreign commission of the USSR joint venture.

Under the rule of the USSR Writers' Union, the Literary Fund operated; regional writers' organizations also had their own literary funds. The task of the literary funds was to provide members of the joint venture with material support (according to the “rank” of the writer) in the form of housing, construction and maintenance of “writer’s” holiday villages, medical and sanatorium-resort services, provision of vouchers to the “house of writers’ creativity”, provision of personal services, supply of scarce goods and food products.

Membership

Admission to membership in the Writers' Union was made on the basis of an application, to which the recommendations of three members of the joint venture were to be attached. A writer wishing to join the Union had to have two published books and submit reviews of them. The application was considered at a meeting of the local branch of the USSR SP and had to receive at least two-thirds of the votes when voting, then it was considered by the secretariat or the board of the USSR SP and at least half of their votes were required for admission to membership.

The size of the USSR Writers' Union by year (according to the organizing committees of the Union of Writers' congresses):

• 1934-1500 members
• 1954 - 3695
• 1959 - 4801
• 1967 - 6608
• 1971 - 7290
• 1976 - 7942
• 1981 - 8773
• 1986 - 9584
• 1989 - 9920

In 1976, it was reported that of the total number of Union members, 3,665 wrote in Russian.

The writer could be expelled from the Writers' Union "for offenses that undermine the honor and dignity of the Soviet writer" and for "deviating from the principles and tasks formulated in the Charter of the USSR Writers' Union." In practice, reasons for exclusion could include:

• Criticism of the writer from the highest party authorities. An example is the exclusion of M. M. Zoshchenko and A. A. Akhmatova, which followed Zhdanov’s report in August 1946 and the party resolution “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad.”
• Publication abroad of works not published in the USSR. B. L. Pasternak was the first to be expelled for this reason for publishing his novel “Doctor Zhivago” in Italy in 1957.
• Publication in samizdat
• There is openly expressed disagreement with the policies of the CPSU and the Soviet state.
• Participation in public speeches (signing open letters) protesting against the persecution of dissidents.

Those expelled from the Writers' Union were denied the publication of books and publications in magazines under the jurisdiction of the Union of Writers; they were practically deprived of the opportunity to earn money through literary work. Exclusion from the Union was followed by exclusion from the Literary Fund, entailing tangible financial difficulties. Expulsion from the joint venture for political reasons, as a rule, was widely publicized, sometimes turning into real persecution. In a number of cases, exclusion was accompanied by criminal prosecution under the articles “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system”, deprivation of USSR citizenship, and forced emigration.

For political reasons, A. Sinyavsky, Y. Daniel, N. Korzhavin, G. Vladimov, L. Chukovskaya, A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Maksimov, V. Nekrasov, A. Galich, E. Etkind, V. were excluded from the Writers' Union. Voinovich, I. Dzyuba, N. Lukash, Viktor Erofeev, E. Popov, F. Svetov.

In protest against the exclusion of Popov and Erofeev from the joint venture in December 1979, V. Aksenov, I. Lisnyanskaya and S. Lipkin announced their withdrawal from the Union of Writers of the USSR.

Managers

According to the 1934 Charter, the head of the USSR Joint Venture was the Chairman of the Board.

• Alexey Tolstoy (from 1936 to gg.); the actual leadership until 1941 was carried out by the General Secretary of the USSR SP Vladimir Stavsky;
• Alexander Fadeev (from 1938 to and from);
• Nikolai Tikhonov (from 1944 to 1946);

According to the 1977 Charter, the leadership of the Writers' Union was carried out by the First Secretary of the Board. This position was held by:

• Vladimir Karpov (since 1986; resigned in November 1990, but continued to conduct business until August 1991);

SP USSR after the collapse of the USSR

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Union of Writers of the USSR was divided into many organizations in various countries of the post-Soviet space.

The main successors of the USSR Writers' Union in Russia and the CIS are the International Commonwealth of Writers' Unions (which was led by Sergei Mikhalkov for a long time), the Writers' Union of Russia and the Union of Russian Writers.

SP USSR in art

Soviet writers and filmmakers in their work repeatedly turned to the topic of the USSR SP.

• In the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov, under the fictitious name “Massolit,” the Soviet writers’ organization is depicted as an association of opportunists.
• The play by V. Voinovich and G. Gorin “Domestic cat, medium fluffy” is dedicated to the behind-the-scenes side of the activities of the joint venture. Based on the play, K. Voinov made the film “Hat”
• IN essays on literary life“A calf butted with an oak tree” A.I. Solzhenitsyn characterizes the SP of the USSR as one of the main instruments of total party-state control over literary activity in the USSR.

Criticism. Quotes

Notes

see also

• SP RSFSR

Links

Wikimedia Foundation.

2010.

Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

Union of Writers of the USSR K: Organizations closed in 1991

- organization of professional writers of the USSR.

From the Charter of the Writers' Union as amended in 1934 (the charter was edited and changed several times): “The Union of Soviet Writers sets the general goal of creating works of high artistic significance, saturated with the heroic struggle of the international proletariat, the pathos of the victory of socialism, reflecting the great wisdom and heroism of the Communist Party. The Union of Soviet Writers aims to create works of art worthy of the great era of socialism."

According to the charter as amended in 1971, the Union of Writers of the USSR is “a voluntary public creative organization uniting professional writers of the Soviet Union, participating with their creativity in the struggle for the construction of communism, for social progress, for peace and friendship between peoples.”

The union replaced all previously existing organizations of writers: both those united on some ideological or aesthetic platform (RAPP, “Pereval”), and those performing the function of writers’ trade unions (All-Russian Union of Writers, All-Roskomdram).

Organization of the USSR SP

The board of the USSR Union of Writers was in charge of the publishing house "Soviet Writer", Literary consultation for beginning authors, the All-Union Bureau for the Promotion of Fiction, the Central House of Writers named after. A. A. Fadeeva in Moscow, etc.

The charter defined socialist realism as the main method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, adherence to which was a mandatory condition for membership of the SP.

Also in the structure of the joint venture there were various divisions that carried out management and control functions. Thus, all foreign trips of members of the Union were subject to approval by the foreign commission of the USSR SP.

Membership

Admission to membership in the Writers' Union was made on the basis of an application, to which the recommendations of three members of the joint venture were to be attached. A writer wishing to join the Union had to have two published books and submit reviews of them. The application was considered at a meeting of the local branch of the USSR SP and had to receive at least two-thirds of the votes when voting, then it was considered by the secretariat or the board of the USSR SP and at least half of their votes were required for admission to membership.

The size of the USSR Writers' Union by year (according to the organizing committees of the Union of Writers' congresses):

• 1934-1500 members
• 1954 - 3695
• 1959 - 4801
• 1967 - 6608
• 1971 - 7290
• 1976 - 7942
• 1981 - 8773
• 1986 - 9584
• 1989 - 9920

Under the rule of the USSR Writers' Union, the Literary Fund operated; regional writers' organizations also had their own literary funds. The task of the literary funds was to provide members of the joint venture with material support (according to the “rank” of the writer) in the form of housing, construction and maintenance of “writer’s” holiday villages, medical and sanatorium-resort services, provision of vouchers to “writers’ creative houses”, provision of personal services, supply of scarce goods and food products.

The writer could be expelled from the Writers' Union "for offenses that undermine the honor and dignity of the Soviet writer" and for "deviating from the principles and tasks formulated in the Charter of the USSR Writers' Union." In practice, reasons for exclusion could include:

• Criticism of the writer from the highest party authorities. An example is the exclusion of M. M. Zoshchenko and A. A. Akhmatova, which followed Zhdanov’s report in August 1946 and the party resolution “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad.”
• Publication abroad of works not published in the USSR. B. L. Pasternak was the first to be expelled for this reason for publishing his novel “Doctor Zhivago” in Italy in 1957.
• Publication in samizdat
• There is openly expressed disagreement with the policies of the CPSU and the Soviet state.
• Participation in public speeches (signing open letters) protesting against the persecution of dissidents.

Those expelled from the Writers' Union were denied the publication of books and publications in magazines under the jurisdiction of the Union of Writers; they were practically deprived of the opportunity to earn money through literary work. Expulsion from the Union was followed by exclusion from the Literary Fund, entailing tangible financial difficulties. Expulsion from the joint venture for political reasons, as a rule, was widely publicized, sometimes turning into real persecution. In a number of cases, exclusion was accompanied by criminal prosecution under the articles “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system”, deprivation of USSR citizenship, and forced emigration.

For political reasons, A. Sinyavsky, Y. Daniel, N. Korzhavin, G. Vladimov, L. Chukovskaya, A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Maksimov, V. Nekrasov, A. Galich, E. Etkind, V. were excluded from the Writers' Union. Voinovich, I. Dzyuba, N. Lukash, Viktor Erofeev, E. Popov, F. Svetov.

In protest against the exclusion of Popov and Erofeev from the joint venture in December 1979, V. Aksenov, I. Lisnyanskaya and S. Lipkin announced their withdrawal from the Union of Writers of the USSR.

Managers

According to the 1934 Charter, the head of the USSR Joint Venture was the Chairman of the Board.
The first chairman (1934-) of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR was Maxim Gorky. At the same time, the actual management of the activities of the Union was carried out by the 1st Secretary of the Union, Alexander Shcherbakov.

• Alexey Tolstoy (from 1936 to gg.); the actual leadership until 1941 was carried out by the General Secretary of the USSR SP Vladimir Stavsky;
• Alexander Fadeev (from 1938 to and from);
• Nikolai Tikhonov (from 1944 to 1946);
• Alexey Surkov (from 1954 to gg.);
• Konstantin Fedin (from 1959 to gg.);

According to the 1977 Charter, the leadership of the Writers' Union was carried out by the First Secretary of the Board. This position was held by:

• Georgy Markov (from 1977 to gg.);
• Vladimir Karpov (since 1986; resigned in November 1990, but continued to conduct business until August 1991);

Control by the CPSU

Awards

• On May 20, 1967 he was awarded the Order of Lenin.
• On September 25, 1984 he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples.

SP USSR after the collapse of the USSR

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Union of Writers of the USSR was divided into many organizations in various countries of the post-Soviet space.

The main successors of the USSR Writers' Union in Russia and the CIS are the International Commonwealth of Writers' Unions (which was led by Sergei Mikhalkov for a long time), the Writers' Union of Russia and the Union of Russian Writers.

The basis for dividing the single community of writers of the USSR into two wings (the Union of Writers of Russia (SPR) and the Union of Russian Writers (SWP)) was the “Letter of the 74s”. The SPR included those who were in solidarity with the authors of the “Letter of the 74's”; the SWP included writers, as a rule, of liberal views.

SP USSR in art

Soviet writers and filmmakers in their work repeatedly turned to the topic of the USSR SP.

• In the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov, under the fictitious name “Massolit,” the Soviet writers’ organization is depicted as an association of opportunists.
• The play by V. Voinovich and G. Gorin “Domestic cat, medium fluffy” is dedicated to the behind-the-scenes side of the activities of the joint venture. Based on the play, K. Voinov made the film “Hat”
• IN essays on literary life A.I. Solzhenitsyn characterizes the SP of the USSR as one of the main instruments of total party-state control over literary activity in the USSR.
• IN literary novel“Little Goat in Milk” by Yu. M. Polyakov events unfold against the backdrop of the activities of the Soviet writers' organization. The idea of ​​the novel is that an organization can make a name for a writer without delving into his work. As for the identification of characters with reality, according to the author, he tried his best to keep future readers of the novel from making false identifications.

Criticism. Quotes

Andrey Malgin, “Letter to a literary friend”:

Address

The board of the Union of Writers of the USSR was located at Povarskaya Street, 52/55 (“Sollogub’s Estate” or “ City estate princes Dolgorukov").

Write a review about the article "The Writers' Union of the USSR"

Notes

see also

Links

• Union of Writers of the USSR // Great Soviet Encyclopedia: [in 30 volumes] / ch. ed. A. M. Prokhorov. - 3rd ed. - M. : Soviet encyclopedia, 1969-1978.

An excerpt characterizing the Writers' Union of the USSR

Boris did not succeed in marrying a rich bride in St. Petersburg and he came to Moscow for the same purpose. In Moscow, Boris was indecisive between the two richest brides - Julie and Princess Marya. Although Princess Marya, despite her ugliness, seemed more attractive to him than Julie, for some reason he felt awkward courting Bolkonskaya. On her last meeting with her, on the old prince’s name day, to all his attempts to talk to her about feelings, she answered him inappropriately and obviously did not listen to him.
Julie, on the contrary, although in a special way peculiar to her, willingly accepted his courtship.
Julie was 27 years old. After the death of her brothers, she became very rich. She was now completely ugly; but I thought that she was not only just as good, but even much more attractive than she was before. She was supported in this delusion by the fact that, firstly, she became a very rich bride, and secondly, that the older she became, the safer she was for men, the freer it was for men to treat her and, without taking on any obligations, take advantage of her dinners, evenings and the lively company that gathered at her place. A man who ten years ago would have been afraid to go every day to the house where there was a 17-year-old young lady, so as not to compromise her and tie himself down, now went to her boldly every day and treated her not as a young bride, but as a acquaintance who has no gender.
The Karagins' house was the most pleasant and hospitable house in Moscow that winter. In addition to parties and dinners, every day a large company gathered at the Karagins, especially men, who dined at 12 o'clock in the morning and stayed until 3 o'clock. There was no ball, party, or theater that Julie missed. Her toilets were always the most fashionable. But, despite this, Julie seemed disappointed in everything, telling everyone that she did not believe in friendship, nor in love, nor in any joys of life, and expected peace only there. She adopted the tone of a girl who had suffered great disappointment, a girl as if she had lost a loved one or had been cruelly deceived by him. Although nothing of the sort happened to her, they looked at her as if she were one, and she herself even believed that she had suffered a lot in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her from having fun, did not prevent the young people who visited her from having a pleasant time. Each guest, coming to them, paid his debt to the melancholy mood of the hostess and then engaged in small talk, dancing, mental games, and Burime tournaments, which were in fashion with the Karagins. Only some young people, including Boris, delved deeper into Julie’s melancholy mood, and with these young people she had longer and more private conversations about the vanity of everything worldly, and to them she opened her albums covered with sad images, sayings and poems.
Julie was especially kind to Boris: she regretted his early disappointment in life, offered him those consolations of friendship that she could offer, having suffered so much in life, and opened her album to him. Boris drew two trees in her album and wrote: Arbres rustiques, vos sombres rameaux secouent sur moi les tenebres et la melancolie. [Rural trees, your dark branches shake off darkness and melancholy on me.]
Elsewhere he drew a picture of a tomb and wrote:
"La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille
“Ah! contre les douleurs il n"y a pas d"autre asile".
[Death is salutary and death is calm;
ABOUT! against suffering there is no other refuge.]
Julie said it was lovely.
“II y a quelque chose de si ravissant dans le sourire de la melancolie, [There is something infinitely charming in the smile of melancholy," she said to Boris word for word, copying this passage from the book.
– C"est un rayon de lumiere dans l"ombre, une nuance entre la douleur et le desespoir, qui montre la consolation possible. [This is a ray of light in the shadows, a shade between sadness and despair, which indicates the possibility of consolation.] - To this Boris wrote her poetry:
"Aliment de poison d"une ame trop sensible,
"Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
"Tendre melancolie, ah, viens me consoler,
“Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite
"Et mele une douceur secrete
"A ces pleurs, que je sens couler."
[Poisonous food for an overly sensitive soul,
You, without whom happiness would be impossible for me,
Tender melancholy, oh, come and comfort me,
Come, soothe the torment of my dark solitude
And add secret sweetness
To these tears that I feel flowing.]
Julie played Boris the saddest nocturnes on the harp. Boris read Poor Liza aloud to her and more than once interrupted his reading from the excitement that took his breath away. Meeting in a large society, Julie and Boris looked at each other as the only indifferent people in the world who understood each other.
Anna Mikhailovna, who often went to the Karagins, making up her mother’s party, meanwhile made correct inquiries about what was given for Julie (both Penza estates and Nizhny Novgorod forests were given). Anna Mikhailovna, with devotion to the will of Providence and tenderness, looked at the refined sadness that connected her son with the rich Julie.
“Toujours charmante et melancolique, cette chere Julieie,” she said to her daughter. - Boris says that he rests his soul in your house. “He has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive,” she told her mother.
“Oh, my friend, how attached I have become to Julie lately,” she said to her son, “I can’t describe to you!” And who can not love her? This is such an unearthly creature! Ah, Boris, Boris! “She fell silent for a minute. “And how I feel sorry for her maman,” she continued, “today she showed me reports and letters from Penza (they have a huge estate) and she is poor, all alone: ​​she is so deceived!
Boris smiled slightly as he listened to his mother. He meekly laughed at her simple-minded cunning, but listened and sometimes asked her carefully about the Penza and Nizhny Novgorod estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholic admirer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of disgust for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her unnaturalness, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of true love still stopped Boris. His vacation was already over. He spent whole days and every single day with the Karagins, and every day, reasoning with himself, Boris told himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in the presence of Julie, looking at her red face and chin, almost always sprinkled with powder, at her moist eyes and at the expression of her face, which always expressed a readiness to immediately move from melancholy to the unnatural delight of marital happiness, Boris could not utter a decisive word: despite the fact that for a long time in his imagination he considered himself the owner of Penza and Nizhny Novgorod estates and distributed the use of income from them. Julie saw Boris's indecisiveness and sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was disgusting to him; but immediately the woman’s self-delusion came to her as a consolation, and she told herself that he was shy only out of love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn into irritability, and not long before Boris left, she undertook a decisive plan. At the same time that Boris’s vacation was ending, Anatol Kuragin appeared in Moscow and, of course, in the Karagins’ living room, and Julie, unexpectedly leaving her melancholy, became very cheerful and attentive to Kuragin.
“Mon cher,” Anna Mikhailovna said to her son, “je sais de bonne source que le Prince Basile envoie son fils a Moscou pour lui faire epouser Julieie.” [My dear, I know from reliable sources that Prince Vasily sends his son to Moscow in order to marry him to Julie.] I love Julie so much that I would feel sorry for her. What do you think, my friend? - said Anna Mikhailovna.
The thought of being a fool and wasting this entire month of difficult melancholy service under Julie and seeing all the income from the Penza estates already allocated and properly used in his imagination in the hands of another - especially in the hands of the stupid Anatole, offended Boris. He went to the Karagins with the firm intention of proposing. Julie greeted him with a cheerful and carefree look, casually talked about how much fun she had at yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Despite the fact that Boris came with the intention of talking about his love and therefore intended to be gentle, he irritably began to talk about women's inconstancy: how women can easily move from sadness to joy and that their mood depends only on who looks after them. Julie was offended and said that it was true that a woman needs variety, that everyone will get tired of the same thing.
“For this, I would advise you...” Boris began, wanting to tell her a caustic word; but at that very moment the offensive thought came to him that he could leave Moscow without achieving his goal and losing his work for nothing (which had never happened to him). He stopped in the middle of his speech, lowered his eyes so as not to see her unpleasantly irritated and indecisive face and said: “I didn’t come here at all to quarrel with you.” On the contrary...” He glanced at her to make sure he could continue. All her irritation suddenly disappeared, and her restless, pleading eyes were fixed on him with greedy expectation. “I can always arrange it so that I rarely see her,” thought Boris. “And the work has begun and must be done!” He blushed, looked up at her and told her: “You know my feelings for you!” There was no need to say any more: Julie’s face shone with triumph and self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to tell her everything that is said in such cases, to say that he loves her, and has never loved any woman more than her. She knew that she could demand this for the Penza estates and Nizhny Novgorod forests and she got what she demanded.
The bride and groom, no longer remembering the trees that showered them with darkness and melancholy, made plans for the future arrangement of a brilliant house in St. Petersburg, made visits and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.

Count Ilya Andreich arrived in Moscow at the end of January with Natasha and Sonya. The Countess was still unwell and could not travel, but it was impossible to wait for her recovery: Prince Andrei was expected to go to Moscow every day; In addition, it was necessary to purchase a dowry, it was necessary to sell the property near Moscow, and it was necessary to take advantage of the presence of the old prince in Moscow to introduce him to his future daughter-in-law. The Rostovs' house in Moscow was not heated; in addition, they arrived for a short time, the countess was not with them, and therefore Ilya Andreich decided to stay in Moscow with Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long offered her hospitality to the count.
Late in the evening, four of the Rostovs' carts drove into Marya Dmitrievna's yard in the old Konyushennaya. Marya Dmitrievna lived alone. She has already married off her daughter. Her sons were all in the service.
She still held herself straight, she also spoke directly, loudly and decisively to everyone her opinion, and with her whole being she seemed to reproach other people for all sorts of weaknesses, passions and hobbies, which she did not recognize as possible. From early morning in the kutsaveyka, she did housework, then went: on holidays to mass and from mass to prisons and prisons, where she had business that she did not tell anyone about, and on weekdays, after getting dressed, she received petitioners of different classes at home who came to her every day, and then had lunch; There were always about three or four guests at the hearty and tasty dinner; after dinner I made a round of Boston; At night she forced herself to read newspapers and new books, and she knitted. She rarely made exceptions for trips, and if she did, she went only to the most important people in the city.
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived, and the door on the block in the hall squealed, letting in the Rostovs and their servants who were coming in from the cold. Marya Dmitrievna, with glasses down on her nose, throwing her head back, stood in the doorway of the hall and looked at those entering with a stern, angry look. One would have thought that she was embittered against the visitors and would now throw them out, if she had not at this time been giving careful orders to people on how to accommodate the guests and their things.
- Counts? “Bring it here,” she said, pointing to the suitcases and not greeting anyone. - Young ladies, this way to the left. Well, why are you fawning! – she shouted at the girls. - Samovar to warm you up! “She’s plumper and prettier,” she said, pulling Natasha, flushed from the cold, by her hood. - Ugh, cold! “Undress quickly,” she shouted at the count, who wanted to approach her hand. - Cold, I guess. Serve some rum for tea! Sonyushka, bonjour,” she said to Sonya, highlighting her slightly contemptuous and affectionate attitude towards Sonya with this French greeting.
When everyone, having undressed and recovered from the road, came to tea, Marya Dmitrievna kissed everyone in order.
“I’m glad with my soul that they came and that they stopped with me,” she said. “It’s high time,” she said, looking significantly at Natasha... “the old man is here and they are expecting their son any day now.” We must, we must meet him. Well, we’ll talk about that later,” she added, looking at Sonya with a look that showed that she didn’t want to talk about it in front of her. “Now listen,” she turned to the count, “what do you need tomorrow?” Who will you send for? Shinshina? – she bent one finger; - crybaby Anna Mikhailovna? - two. She's here with her son. My son is getting married! Then Bezukhova? And he's here with his wife. He ran away from her, and she ran after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. Well, and - she pointed to the young ladies - tomorrow I’ll take them to Iverskaya, and then we’ll go to Ober Shelme. After all, you will probably do everything new? Don't take it from me, these days it's sleeves, that's what! The other day, the young Princess Irina Vasilievna came to see me: I was afraid to look, as if she had put two barrels on her hands. After all, today the day is a new fashion. So what are you doing? – she turned sternly to the count.
“Everything suddenly came together,” answered the count. – To buy rags, and then there is a buyer for the Moscow region and for the house. If you're so kind, I'll find some time, go to Marinskoye for a day, and show you my girls.
- Okay, okay, I’ll be intact. It’s like in the Board of Trustees. “I’ll take them where they need to go, scold them, and caress them,” said Marya Dmitrievna, touching the cheek of her favorite and goddaughter Natasha with her big hand.