A LETTER TO THE SOVIET LEADERS
In March 1974, Solzhenitsyn published his “Letter to the Soviet Leaders”, which he had written earlier, on 5 September 1973. The letter aroused a great number of responses of the most varied nature.
The first of these responses “On Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Letter to The Soviet Leaders” was by Andrei Sakharov. In view of the undoubted interest of the developing discussion for the most varied circles of readers, the Chronicle proposes to deal with it in detail in one of its forthcoming issues (see CCE 34.20).
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4 ENTRIES
[1]
LIVE NOT BY LIES
A collection dedicated to the Solzhenitsyn Affair (Moscow, 1974)
The collection covers the period from August 1973 to the end of February 1974.
It presents critical reviews, journalistic statements, newspaper articles, and Open Letters and appeals about the publication of GULag Archipelago and the events connected with it. The material is copiously illustrated with extracts from GULag.
A short review of the collection has been circulated; extracts from it are quoted below.
“The book is in the traditional samizdat genre sometimes known as that of the WHITE BOOK.
“[It] can be compared with Ginzburg’s The Case of Sinyavsky and Daniel (1966), Natalya Gorbanevskaya’s Red Square at Noon (1969) and, to some extent, with Pavel Litvinov’s The Trial of the Four [1968 1].
“As so often with books of this type, the breadth and contradictory nature of the opinions presented lead the reader to feel that a case has been proved; and the terseness of the author’s text, his marked preference for documents, and the heterogeneity of the material, give the work significance as an art form. The collection is, without a doubt, as much a literary event as it is a civic and socio-political act and a documentary record.
“‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. The well-known formula is realized here not only in a moral and ethical sense, but aesthetically as well.”
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[2]
Igor Shafarevich
“On Certain Tendencies in the Development of Mathematics”
A lecture at the presentation to the author of the Heinemann Prize (Göttingen Academy of Sciences)
The eminent Soviet scholar, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, believes that the development of mathematics, because of its lack of a single good, is resulting in an unlimited accumulation of ideas which in principle are equally profound.
However, mathematics
“… is unable to work out, in addition, a concept of its own form; it is left with the ideal of totally unregulated growth, or, more accurately, expansion in all directions.”
“Isn’t mathematics being transformed into a strikingly beautiful variant of Hegel’s ‘bad infinity’ ?” asks Shafarevich. “It is clear that such a development of knowledge rules out any sense of integrality or beauty.”
The author believes that the problem can be solved in two ways.
He decisively rejects the first, “to extract the purpose of mathematics from its practical applications”.
In his opinion, the practical value of many brilliant discoveries of science is nil. Only one possibility remains: “The purpose of mathematics can be supplied not by a sphere of human activity that is lower in comparison to it, but by a higher sphere, religion”. Shafarevich illustrates the possibility of such a solution by looking at the history of the origins of mathematics in the Pythagorean School.
At present, Shafarevich contends, a similar problem has arisen in many branches of human culture. A solution of the problem for mathematics, he hopes
“might serve as a model for the solution of the basic problem of our epoch: to find the higher religious purpose and meaning of the cultural activity of mankind.”
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[3]
Victor Nekrasov
“Who Needs This?”
The writer Nekrasov recounts the various forms of persecution he has endured over the past 11 years.
- A Party investigation into his personal activities and a strict reprimand in 1963 for On Both Sides of the Ocean, his essays on the USA.
- An investigation into his personal activities and a strict reprimand in 1969 for a letter in defence of the Ukrainian writer Chornovil, and for his speech on the 25th anniversary of the massacre of Jews in Baby Yar.
- Expulsion from the Party in 1972 “for allowing himself to have a personal opinion that does not coincide with the Party line”.
Each time, in addition to prophylactic chats, explanations and a ‘working-over’, the investigation led to a halt in the publication of his works [2].
In 1974, Nekrasov suffered a humiliating search and the confiscation of his archives (including his draft manuscripts), followed by interrogation. The author talks about the vagueness and mutability of the concept ‘anti-Soviet’, about the right of an author to keep his own inviolable archive, about an author’s right to the confidence of his country.
Disregard for these rights and the impossibility of writing and publishing one’s works at home lead eventually to emigration: Nekrasov names his friends who have left the country.
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If the authorities want to get rid of the independent-minded intelligentsia in this way, says Nekrasov, it will lead to irreplaceable losses for the country and the people:
“For KGB investigators can’t write books for us, can’t paint pictures or compose symphonies.”
If the authorities really want to force people to betray their conscience in this manner …
“No, it is far better for the reader to do without my books … The reader will wait. Not for lampoons and slander but for the truth. I will never degrade my reader by lying.”
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[4]
VECHE, 10
No 10, 19 April 1974 (153 typed pages)
CONTENTS
- Report by the editors [3] (and see * below);
- Statement by the editors, dated 14 March 1974;
- Easter message from Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and All Russia;
- “To Serve Russia Means to Bear its Cross”, I. V. Ovchinnikov, editor-in-chief of Veche, No. 10;
- “The centenary of Berdyaev’s birth”: excerpts from The Fate of Russia (Moscow, 1918), a collection of articles by Berdyaev;
- “In Optina”, by Victor Kapitanchuk. The author’s reflections on a trip to the Optina Pustyn monastery;
- five poems by N. S. Gumilyov;
- “The Polemics between Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn” (A. Skuratov);
- “Russia’s ‘Colonialist’ Policy” (Anon);
- “Certain Tendencies in the Development of Mathematics”, by I.R. Shafarevich (reprinted without the author’s knowledge; see above, item 2);
- two chapters from A. Skuratov’s book, The Triumph of the Suicide Men;
- the conclusion of Bratsk-54, A. Gavrilov’s novella;
- two poems by Oleg Okhapkin. A puzzling statement by the editors precedes them: “… the journal Veche reserves copyright; a special mention will be made when literary works are published with the author’s consent”;
- “A Retort”. A reply to “The Russian National Opposition in the Soviet Union”, a commentary transmitted by Deutsche Welle, the West German radio station (17 April 1974);
- V. Filatov, “About the Metamorphoses of Tastes and Opinions”: a polemic with B. Bursov’s article, “Something about Tastes and Opinions” (Literaturnaya gazeta, No. 9, 1974);
- A letter to the editors of Veche from V. Veresov and their reply;
- A letter to the editors of Veche from Mikhail Agursky and their reply.
{*} See “About the Journal Veche” in this issue, CCE 32.16.
The contents of this, evidently the most recent, issue of Veche (listed above), will not be presented in any detail for the moment.
A significant part of them are connected with preceding issues of Veche, which have been only partially reflected in past issues of the Chronicle [4]. It would be advisable, clearly, to return to certain materials and to No 10 in a special review of the publication as a whole (Nos 1-10).
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NOTES
- Dates here refer to the year that the named works began circulating in samizdat. (See “Texts in English” for more information.)
↩︎ - Nekrasov’s essays were published in Novy mir in late 1962. For the letter in defence of Chornovil, see Michael Browne, ed, Ferment in the Ukraine, London, 1971 (Document 30, pp. 205-7). See also Pavel Litvinov, The Demonstration in Pushkin Square; for Nekrasov’s signing of other protests in 1966 and 1968, see CCE 5.1 [4]; for documents on his 1974 search, etc., see CHR 1974 (Nos 7 & 8).
↩︎ - See “About the Journal Veche” (CCE 32.16) in this issue.
↩︎ - Six issues of Veche (1971-1974) were summarised and reviewed in “Samizdat Update”:
No. 1, CCE 18.11 (6); No. 2, CCE 20.12 (5); No. 3, CCE 22.9 (7); No. 4, CCE 24.12 (14); No. 5, CCE 26.16 (1); and No. 10, CCE 32.18 (4). (And see 16.1, Social Issues, Veche, Poiski, Obshchina, 1969-1980).
Nos. 6-9 of Veche (1972-1974) were not mentioned in the Chronicle.
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