Tvardovsky’s efforts to secure publication involved a complete circumvention of the normal channels that would, if followed, have resulted in the manuscript’s rejection. Instead, he sought the support of leading literary figures, eliciting favorable reports from them about the manuscript’s merits. He then showed these to some of his political friends, in the hope of persuading them that One Day in the Life could be used to bolster Khrushchev’s policy of debunking Stalinism. Solzhenitsyn was becoming a player in a dangerous game of power politics.
On July 23, 1962, Solzhenitsyn raised the tension and the stakes by refusing to agree to various cuts that would have made the book more politically acceptable. These included a number of alleged insults to Soviet art and the discussions about religion centered on Alyosha the Baptist.
Such were the waves that Solzhenitsyn’s manuscript was causing in the higher echelons of Soviet society that by September it had come to the notice of Khrushchev himself. He demanded to see it and, to everyone’s relief, liked it. He could see no reason why One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich could not be published. The news was greeted ecstatically at the offices of Novy Mir, and on September 16 the glad tidings were dispatched to Solzhenitsyn in a letter: “Now we can say that Ivan D is on the very threshold. We are expecting news any day.”37 With Khrushchev’s approval, it was surely a mere formality; the Central Committee would simply rubber-stamp the decision. Yet the days passed, and there was still no official go-ahead. Tvardovsky was on tenterhooks and is said to have threatened to resign if permission was refused. Finally, at midday on September 21, the long-awaited phone call was received. It was not, however, what Tvardovsky had either hoped or feared. Permission was neither granted nor refused but merely deferred. Instead, Khrushchev ordered twenty-three copies to be delivered by the following morning.
Tvardovsky was thrown into a panic. He did not possess twenty-three copies, and it would be impossible to get that number typed up in a single night. The only option was a limited printing of the necessary copies. He rang the head of the printing department at the leading national newspaper, Izvestia, explained the urgency of the situation, and arranged to have four machines set aside from printing Izvestia that night and reserved for printing twenty-five copies of Ivan Denisovich.
The copies were duly delivered next morning, and Khrushchev ordered that they be distributed to members of the Party Presidium. What transpired at the next meeting of the Presidium is not known for certain and has become a source of legend. It is clear, however, that Khrushchev met considerable opposition from hard-liners in the government who were strongly against publication. “How can we fight against the remnants of the personality cult if Stalinists of this type are still among us?” Khrushchev is alleged to have said.38 Another source reported Khrushchev as saying that “there’s a Stalinist in each of you; there’s even some of the Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil.”39 There were, in fact, more Stalinists at the meeting than Khrushchev cared or dared to admit, each looking for the opportunity to bring about his downfall. One by one, Khrushchev was alienating the powerful interest groups that dominated Soviet politics. His de-Stalinization was unpopular with all hard-line communists and particularly with the KGB; his emphasis on nuclear rather than conventional weapons had lost him the support of the military; and his administrative reforms had struck at the bureaucratic heart of the Party apparatus. Too much was changing too quickly for many sectional interests in the Soviet hierarchy, and it was only a matter of time before they struck back at the man responsible. Like Solzhenitsyn, Khrushchev was walking on a knife-edge. Two years later, in October 1964, he would be toppled in a bloodless coup and presented with his own resignation “for reasons of health”. For now, however, he still had a firm grip on power and forced through the publication of One Day in the Life, proposing the motion that authorized it himself.
Having won this small though significant victory at home, Khrushchev was faced down on the world stage by President Kennedy, being induced to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba in October 1962 at the culmination of an international crisis that had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Meanwhile, Solzhenitsyn, still not even a published author, had gained many powerful enemies among the Soviet leadership, while enjoying the support of a Soviet President who was living on borrowed time. He was making his literary debut in dangerous circumstances.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TOO HOT TO HANDLE
On Sunday, October 21, 1962, without a word of explanation, Pravda, the Communist Party daily newspaper, published “The Heirs of Stalin”, an anti-Stalinist poem by Evgeni Evtushenko, in which he warned against those Stalinists in positions of power who wanted to turn back the clock. It was a timely reminder that the winds of change were themselves inconstant, but the fact that Pravda had chosen to publish Evtushenko’s poem indicated that, for the time being at least, the winds were blowing in favor of the reformers.
In the favorable atmosphere of de-Stalinization, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich made its first public appearance. It was an instant success. Tvardovsky informed Solzhenitsyn that several thousand copies of the November issue of Novy Mir containing Solzhenitsyn’s novel had been diverted to the bookstalls set up in the Kremlin for delegates to the plenary session of the Central Committee. Khrushchev had announced from the platform that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was an extremely important work, which every delegate should read. Dutifully, they had all trooped off to the bookstalls to acquire a copy. Elsewhere in Moscow, it had sold out completely, despite the printing of several thousand extra copies, and was already a collector’s item.
Solzhenitsyn’s popular success was accompanied by critical acclaim. Either the Soviet press genuinely shared the public’s enthusiasm for One Day in the Life, or else the reviewers were merely intent on following the current party line. Whatever the reason, reviews were universally positive. Konstantin Simonov, writing in Izvestia on November 18, 1962, declared that “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is written with the sure hand of a mature, unique master. A powerful talent has come into our literature. I personally have no doubts on that score.” Although Solzhenitsyn would doubtless have been flattered by such praise, he must have found some of Simonov’s other observations a little difficult to swallow. Worst of all was Simonov’s assertion that Solzhenitsyn “has shown himself a true helper of the Party”. Admittedly, Simonov had made the assertion in relation to the role that One Day in the Life was playing in “the struggle against the cult of personality and its consequences”,1 but, regardless of the context, Solzhenitsyn must have balked at any suggestion that he was helping to perpetuate the Party he had grown to despise.