A Funeral Feast for Soviet Literature

Abstract

In the Soviet period, of course, there were many talented writers who lived or, more precisely, simply existed or vegetated. But-to use the late Gorky's publicistic jargon-they turned out to be only "mechanical citizens" of Soviet literature, which became a Procrustean bed even for the fanatics of the new world such as Mayakovsky. In the recent post-Stalinist decades, Soviet literature involuntarily usurped the rights to the late classics of the twentieth century, taking them into its ranks after bestowing an executioner's kiss on their faces as though nothing had happened, pouring out crocodile tears, and declaring itself the most humane literature on the face of the earth. Soviet literature was ready to reckon almost all its glorious victims-from Andrei Belyi to Pasternak, from Zoshchenko to Platonov-among the ranks of its own saints. This senile "humanistic" gluttony was only a sign of its impotence and decrepitude, of an inner degeneracy characterized by hypocrisy and an utter lack of talent. I do not...