В. Note on Literary Movements and Organizations
In the twenty years or so before the October Revolution, Russian literature, reacting against the nineteenth-century realist tradition, went through a period of ferment which is sometimes spoken of as the "Silver Age." Its main feature was a revival of poetry, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century had been almost completely overshadowed by prose.
The first and most influential of the new movements was that of the Symbolists (roughly 1894 to 1910), who, as Mrs. Mandelstam points out, transformed the aesthetic standards of the Russian public. Their precursor was the religious philosopher and poet Vladimir Soloviev, and among the leading figures were: Valeri Briusov, Viacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. There were different trends within Symbolism, but its hallmark was a certain other worldliness: poetry was often a vehicle for mystical insights which could only be hinted at in "symbolic" language.
The Acmeists were members of the so-called Poets' Guild, which was founded in 1912 by Nikolai Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetski in opposition to the Symbolists. Their aim was to restore the autonomy of poetic language; they rejected "mysticism" and strove for precision and clarity in the use of words. Akhmatova and Mandelstam were the most outstanding of the Acmeists, who existed as an organized group only until 1914.
Another important movement launched in 1912 was Futurism, which was also a reaction to the Symbolists. The Futurists (the most prominent of whom were Vladimir Mayakovski and Velimir Khlebnikov) espoused modern technology and urbanism and in their poetry they were distinguished by their penchant for neologisms, slang and words of their own invention. Temperamentally attracted to revolution, most of them were avant-garde in politics as well as in art. Largely for this reason, Futurism was the only literary movement to survive the October Revolution, constituting itself in 1923 as the so-called Left Front (LEF) and stridently claiming to be the only true voice of the new order.
This claim was successfully contested by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), founded in 1925. Though few were true proletarians by origin, the members of RAPP, such as Leopold Averbakh and Alexander Fadeyev, asserted that the chief role of literature must be to serve the interests of the proletariat, as the new ruling class, and to reflect its "ideology." From 1929 to 1932, RAPP was given its head by the Party and exercised dictatorial powers over literature. RAPP's leaders were convinced zealots who welcomed the rigors of the First Five Year Plan and Collectivization—the relative "liberalism" of NEP (New Economic Policy) had seemed to them a betrayal of the Revolution's promise.
In line with this "liberalism," the Central Committee of the Party had in 1925 issued a famous resolution (supposedly drafted by Bukharin) proclaiming its neutrality, for the time being, as between the competing literary groups. In this atmosphere of relative tolerance, it was possible during the middle 1920's for most writers, whatever their "class" background, to carry on as "Fellow Travelers" (the name given them by Trotski). The "Fellow Travelers," who formed the largest group of Soviet writers in the first post-Revolutionary decade, were expected to give over-all assent to the new regime, but were not yet forced to express positive commitment to it in their work.
Some of them, joining together in 1921 in a group known as the Serapion Brothers, (Mikhail Zoshchenko, Konstantin Fedin, Nikolai Tikhonov, and others), tried to establish the independence of literature from all political and social commitment, but this position became progressively more untenable in the latter half of the 1920's. The Serapion Brothers were allied with the Formalists (Victor Shklovski, Victor Zhirmunski, and others), a new school of literary criticism (founded in 1916) which concentrated on problems of form in the artistic process. Toward the end of the 1920's the Formalists came under heavy attack, and "formalism" became a standard term of abuse for any attempt to divorce literature from the political and "educational" functions imposed on it by the Party.
In 1932 Stalin made such functions paramount by abruptly decreeing the disbandment of all separate literary groups, including RAPP, which had appeared to triumph over its rivals during its three-year "dictatorship." Stalin had no use for zealots of any kind, and wanted writers to be obedient instruments of his will, without convictions of their own. They were now all forced to join the Union of Soviet Writers, a bureaucratic machine for the imposition of strict control over literature. The doctrine of Socialist Realism, promulgated at the same time, became binding on all writers who wanted to continue being published. In effect, it meant conveying the Party's "message" in a humdrum realist style derived from the nineteenth-century Russian classics.
In the years since Stalin's death there has been some loosening of the controls imposed in 1932 (and reinforced after World War II in a series of Party decrees associated with the name of Zhdanov), but Soviet writers can still function legally only within the general administrative and ideological framework established under Stalin.
INDEX
Abkhaz Council of People's Commissars,
323-24 Acmeists, 45, 154,1^9 M.'s lecture on, 174, 246-47 M.'s "world-sense" apd, 262-64 permanence of, xi-xii their attitude toward women, 267 Adalis, Adelina Yefimovna, 68, 74, 299- 300
"Adjutant" agents, 36-39 neighbor as, 39, 89-92 semi-military, 171Я "Admirer" agents, 35-36 "Age,The" (Mandelstam), 17171,256 Agranov, Yakov Savlovich, 172 Akhmatova, Anna Andreyevna, 3-4, 127, 144-46, 170, 172-741 "i, 24°« 349» 35°
as "Cassandra," 159
on destroying manuscripts, 46-47
dramatic fragments of, 251
forced cheer of, 314
generation of, 167, 305-6
Gumilev's archive and, 273-75
holy terror of, 29-30
literary taste of, 228-29, 239, 241
on mass deportation, 98
M.'s disavowal of, 173-74
M.'s exile and, 38-40
M.'s first arrest and, 9-12,14-17,19, 27
M.'s hallucinations about, 68
M.'s last visit with, 318
nature of M.'s relationship with, 217-20
obedient to rules of etiquette, 286
pension of, 117
as petitioner for M.'s release, 24-25 poetry of, 203, 226, 327, 344 Acmeist, 154, 237 dedicated to M.'s death, 202 lines on Leningrad, 317-18 literary restrictions, 139 method of composition, 189 period of silence, 162-63 "positive," 153
text of Voronezh poem, 217-18 on poetry, 70, 73, 263
premonitions in M.'s work, 198 poverty of, 112 surveillance over, 17-19, 36 on Tikhonov, 234 on Twentieth Congress, 373-74 on "vegetarian" era, 99 Alexandrov, 294-95
"Aliscans," 240, 252 Altman, Natan Isayevich, 219 Amusin, Joseph Davidovich, 221 Anderson, Marian, 185-86 Andreyev, Andrei Andreyevich, 353-56 Andronikov, Irakli Luarsabovich, 314, 347-48