Hard to Be a God (29 page)

All mass media without exception immediately descended on abstraction and formalism in art, as if for the last ten years they had been preparing just for this, collecting materials and only waiting for permission to speak about this burning topic.

And that was only the beginning. “On December 17, at the Reception House on Lenin Hills, there was a meeting of the leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet government with the writers and artists.” Brezhnev, Voronov, Kirilenko, Kozlov, Kosygin, Mikoyan, Polyansky, Suslov, Khrushchev, and various other prominent plainclothes literary and art critics gathered in one place in order to “make comments and suggestions on the development of literature and art.”

Observations were made. The press was no longer roaring, it was literally howling: T
HERE
C
AN
B
E
No C
OMPROMISE;
T
HE
R
ESPONSIBILITY OF THE
A
RTIST; THE
L
IGHT OF
C
LARITY; THE
W
ORRY
T
HAT
G
IVES
U
S
W
INGS;
A
RT AND
P
SEUDO
-A
RT;
T
OGETHER WITH
T
HE
P
EOPLE;
O
UR
S
TRENGTH AND
W
EAPON;
T
HIS
I
S
O
UR
P
ARTY,
T
HIS
I
S
O
UR
A
RT!;
D
OING
I
T
L
ENIN'S
W
AY;
A
LIEN
V
OICES
… It was as if an ancient abscess had burst. Bad blood and pus overflowed from the newspaper pages. All those who during the years of the “thaw” had gone quiet (it seemed to us), who had flattened their ears and only looked around like hunted animals, as if waiting for the inconceivable, impossible, improbable retribution for the past; all these monstrous offspring of Stalinism and Beria-ism, who were up to the elbows in the blood of innocent victims, all these covert and overt informers, ideological
operators and moronic do-gooders—they all instantly sprang out of their hiding places; they all turned out to be right on the spot, energetic, agile, able hyenas of the pen, alligators of the typewriter.
Go to it!

But that wasn't all. On March 7, 1963, the “exchange of opinions on literature and art” was continued. The experts were joined by a number of other connoisseurs of the fine arts—Podgorny, Grishin, and Mazurov. The exchange of opinions lasted two days. The newspaper howls intensified, even though you'd think that was impossible. T
HE
G
REATNESS OF
T
RUE
A
RT;
D
OING
I
T
L
ENIN'S
W
AY!
(seen before, but now with an exclamation mark); T
HE
P
HILOSOPHY OF
W
ESTERN
A
RT:
E
MPTINESS,
D
ECAY,
D
EATH;
H
IGH
I
DEALS AND
A
RTISTIC
S
KILL:
T
HE
G
REAT
P
OWER OF
S
OVIET
L
ITERATURE AND
A
RT;
T
HERE'S
N
O
“T
HIRD”
I
DEOLOGY!;
C
REATING IN THE
N
AME OF
C
OMMUNISM;
G
LORIFYING,
P
RAISING,
C
ULTIVATING
H
EROISM;
H
OLD
S
TEADY!
(the number of exclamation marks is definitely increasing); P
URSUITS IN
P
OETRY,
T
RUE
A
ND
F
ALSE;
L
OOKING
A
HEAD!

The sun is out, but no warmth—no matter.

There's a flood, flowing floodwater.

All cattle join in joyous song,

A thaw has come, but it's all wrong!

That was Yuliy Kim instantly responding—as always, poisonously and with perfect precision:

Flood water, spring water,

Turbid, wanton, dissolute water …

Grab your nets and toss them quick,

Brothers, you will have your pick!

Go to it!

All the record players in all the intellectuals' kitchens were ringing with his verses, performed in a deliberately cloying and even tender voice.

Oh, what a time! A dream of a time!

How the Kochets crow and crow!

The kind of singing I hear outside,

Even the “October” never did know!

“Kochets” doubtlessly refers here to the colleagues and associates of V. Kochetov, the then-chief editor of the pro-Stalin journal
October,
an inveterate Stalinist, anti-Semite, and reactionary who was even occasionally reprimanded by the authorities in order to maintain decorum “in the eyes of the international labor movement.”

They started with the modern artists: Falk, Sidur, Ernst Neizvestny, and then, before anyone knew it, they went after Ilya Ehrenburg, Viktor Nekrasov, Andrei Voznesen-sky, Alexander Yashin, and the movie
I Am Twenty.
And of course, anyone who felt like it walked all over Aksenov, Yevtushenko, Sosnora, Ahmadulina, and even—but politely, bowing the whole time!—Solzhenitsyn. (Solzhenitsyn still remained in favor with the Man. But the rest of the entourage, how they all hated and feared him! In favor with the king, out of favor with his huntsmen.)

In good time, the purulent wave reached even our outskirts, our quiet science fiction shop. On March 26, 1963, there was an expanded meeting of the science fiction and adventure section of the Moscow Writers' Organization. The following people were present: Georgiy Tushkan (the chairman of the section, the author of several adventure stories and the science fiction novel
Black Whirlwind),
A. P. Kazantsev, Georgy Gurevich, Anatoly Dneprov, Roman Kim (the
author of the stories “The Notebook Found in Suncheon,”

“The Girl from Hiroshima,” and “Burn After Reading”), Sergei Zemaitis (the head of the science fiction editorship at the Young Guard publishing house), Yevgeny Pavlovich Brandis, and many others. Here's a characteristic passage from Arkady's detailed report about it:

And that's when the worst began. Kazantsev spoke. The first half of his speech was entirely devoted to Altov and Zhuravleva. The second half I didn't listen to, because I was agonizing, not knowing what to do. Here are the theses of what he was saying. The Altov direction in science fiction had, thank God, never gotten developed. And that's not surprising, because Soviet science fiction writers as a whole are people of principle. At the 1958 meeting, Altov accused “Dneprov and I” of clinging to a single topic which everyone was sick of: the collision of two worlds. No, Comrade Altov, we are not sick of this topic, and you are an unprincipled person. (The stenographers were frantically recording everything. In general, everything was recorded in shorthand.) In the
Star River Test,
Altov takes a stand against Einstein's postulate about the speed of light. But in the '30s, fascists tortured and persecuted Einstein for precisely this postulate. All of Altov's writing in one way or another plays into the hands of fascism. (The stenographers keep recording! Don't worry, I'm not exaggerating, I thought I must be dreaming myself.) Not only that, but all of Altov's writing is so far removed from life, so empty and devoid of vital content, that we can safely call him an abstract literary artist, and therefore a dauber and a slanderer, and so on.

I didn't listen any further. I broke out in a cold sweat. Everyone sat there, still as death, staring at the table, no one was making a sound, and that's when I
realized that for the first time in my life I was faced with His Majesty the Avenging Idiot, with what had happened in 1937 and 1949. Should I protest? And what if they don't support me? How do I know what they have up their sleeve? And what if this had already been approved and agreed upon? A terrible cowardice seized me, and it wasn't for no reason; I was also afraid for you. And then I got so enraged that the cowardice vanished. And when Kazantsev finished, I yelled, “Allow me!” Tushkan, looking at me with displeasure, said, “Now, now, go on then.” “With all due respect to Alexander Petrovich, I strongly protest. It's possible to like Altov or not to like Altov. I don't like him that much myself, but think about what you're saying. Altov—a fascist! That's a label, this is being recorded in shorthand, we're not sitting in a pub, this is God knows what, this is simply indecent!” (I remember this much, but I then kept babbling for another five minutes or so.)

A second of dead silence. Then Tolya Dneprov's steely voice: “For my part, I must state that I haven't heard Altov accusing me of a predilection for the subject of the struggle between two worlds. He accused me of having characters that are not people, but ideas and machines.” Kim: “And he's no abstractionist. On the contrary, when he visited me and saw so and so's picture, he criticized it severely.”

Then everyone started clamoring, talking, Kazantsev began to explain what he wanted to say, and I was shaking with anger and couldn't hear anything else. And when it was all over, I got up, cursed (using strong language, I think), and told Golubev, “Let's leave this place, they are handing out labels.” I said it loudly. We went downstairs to the pub, and guzzled down a bottle of some liqueur.

So now it seemed like absolutely everyone got what was coming to them.

However, no one was arrested. No one was even kicked out of the Writers' Union. Moreover, in the midst of the purulent stream we were even allowed to put together two or three articles containing careful objections and an outline of our (and not the party's) point of view. These objections were immediately trampled and crushed, but the fact of their appearance already meant that the authorities were not aiming to kill.

And already, the reigning Soviet playwright Anatoly Sofronov (a real piece of work, I'm sorry to say), was arrogantly soothing the frightened: “Some are now expressing concerns: that there might be excesses, that someone might be ‘suppressed,' etc. Don't worry, they won't ‘suppress' us, no need to fear. Our Soviet regime is kind, our party is kind and humane. We must do honest, good work, then everything will be all right.”

But we weren't as much afraid as disgusted. Everything felt vile and repulsive, like rotten meat. No one really knew what had caused this rapid return to the abscess. It was possible that the authorities were upset about the very recent painful flick on the nose they had received during the Cuban Missile Crisis and were taking out their anger on their own people. It was possible that the agricultural situation had deteriorated even further, and shortages of bread were already being predicted for the near future (they did occur in 1963). It was possible that it was simply the time to show the swollen-headed “intelligoosia” who's the master of this house and who he stands with—not your Ehrenburgs, not your Ernst Neizvestnys, not your suspicious Nekrasovs—but with the good old guard, tried and true, long since bought, cowed, and reliable.

One could pick any of these versions or all of them at once. But one thing became, as they say, painfully clear. We shouldn't have illusions. We shouldn't have hopes for a brighter future. We were being governed by goons and enemies of culture. They will never be with us. They will always be against us. They will never let us say what we believe is right, because what they believe is right is something completely different. And if for us communism is a world of freedom and creativity, for them communism is a society where the people immediately and with pleasure perform all the prescriptions of the party and government.

The realization of these simple—although then far from obvious for us—truths was painful, like the realization of any truth, but beneficial at the same time. New ideas appeared and strongly demanded their immediate implementation. The “fun story in the spirit of
The Three Musketeers”
that we had thought up began to appear in an entirely different light, and I didn't need long speeches to convince Arkady that they needed to make a substantial ideological adjustment in
The Observer.
The time of “light things,” the time of “swords and cardinals” seemed to have passed. Or maybe it simply hadn't come yet. The adventure story had to, was obliged to, become a story about the fate of the intelligentsia, submerged in the twilight of the Middle Ages.

From Arkady's journal:

… 12–16 (April 1963) was in Leningrad…. Made a decent sketch of
The Observer
(formerly
Seventh Heaven)
…

08/13/1963— … Wrote
Hard to Be a God
in June. Now hesitating, unsure what to do with it. Detgiz won't take it. Maybe we should try
Novy Mir?

We never did try
Novy Mir,
but we did try the thick journal
Moskva.
To no avail. The manuscript was returned with a condescendingly negative review—apparently
Moskva
didn't print science fiction.

In general, the novel inspired contradictory reactions from the reading public. Our editors were especially puzzled. Everything in this novel was unusual to them, and a lot of requests (quite friendly, by the way, and not at all meanly critical) were made. On the advice of I. A. Efremov, we renamed the Minister of the Defense of the Crown Don Reba (he had previously been Don Rebia—an overly simple anagram, in the opinion of Ivan Antonovich.) Moreover, we had to do a lot of work on the text and add an entire big scene where Arata the Hunchback demands lightning from the hero and doesn't receive it.