Soviet Literature (1)

One thing I have read a great deal of is literature written in the Soviet Union or during its existence, in other countries that were known as the Soviet bloc. Literature written during a dictatorship is a very different beast from that produced in ‘free’ countries. As far as I’m aware, there was not much literature written or published in Nazi Germany: most writers fled the country and carried on in exile. But the Soviet Union lasted much longer, and not all writers went into exile.

I’m also aware that, in the nearly quarter century since the revolutions in Eastern Europe which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new generation has grown up, which know astonishingly little of those times generally, and the literature in particular. And this concerns me, because so much powerful literature was written during those times. Some of it was translated into English and published here, but a lot of it was not; is it all going to vanish into history?

There are several kinds of writer from those times: those who knew that what they were writing could not, or would not, be published, and so wrote ‘for the bottom drawer’ (as it was called) or who took the enormous risk of smuggling their manuscripts abroad for publication. So, for example, Vassily Grossmann was told by the KGB that Life and Fate (his epic novel centring on the battle for Stalingrad, that has justly been called a War and Peace for the twentieth century) could not be published for two hundred years, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was eventually driven into exile because novels such as The First Circle and Cancer Ward were published in the West. And then there are those who wrote, and whose novels were allowed to be published, with or without alterations, but always after having gone through censorship. An enormous number of these were undoubtedly hackwork, but by no means all of them: in other words, some decent literature came out of a totalitarian state.

Another thing that isn’t widely known is the huge number of books published in the Soviet bloc countries – turgid political tracts by the million, certainly, but also quality literature (safe works like the classics of the past) at very cheap prices because culture generally was intended to be available to everyone. I’m reminded of this when I see the cheaply produced books sold for ridiculously high prices here in the ‘free world’.

So, what were the constraints on authors? Various topics were completely off-limits, particular recent history, politics and religion. Others had to be handled very carefully if there was to be a chance of publication. I haven’t really formed the impression that writers’ expression was thereby limited; writing was often more symbolic or allegorical in order to avoid censorship, but most of the themes, tropes and topics that have always been explored in good literature are there, if treated and explored in different ways.

It’s when I come on to making comparisons (inevitably subjective, I know) that I feel on rather shakier ground. Somehow, it has often seemed to me, because of the restrictions placed on them, writers from Eastern Europe managed to write better (?) deeper (?) more meaningful or provoking novels than their ‘free’ counterparts, who were often being incredibly narrow, self-indulgent and experimental for the sake of it; similarly, I often feel that novels addressing the key issues of life, its meaning and our future, are often not being written in Europe or the Unites States, and certainly not in English: the energy and dynamism of really good literature has long been elsewhere…

I realise that much of what I’ve written is subjective and provocative; no apologies for that, as it comes from a lifetime of reading, but I hope that I shall be able to provide some evidence and justification in future posts.

To be continued…