The first shots were fired by Yuri Barabash, a well-known literary critic and champion of the old guard who considered Solzhenitsyn’s description of a corrupt bureaucracy at the heart of Soviet life to be a fantasy invented by the author: “We are presented with an artificially constructed, imaginary world, where honest, decent, but weak-willed champions of justice are found to be helpless… in the face of some indifferent, unfeeling force, which can be sensed behind the faceless, nameless representatives of unnamed institutions.” These were serious defects in the very conception of Solzhenitsyn’s story, which adversely affected its literary qualities, rendering it a failure.13
Barabash also scoffed at the moral tone in Solzhenitsyn’s work, derisively dismissing the concept of the righteous woman in Matryona’s House and the fruitless efforts to discuss right and wrong in terms other than those dictated by dialectical materialism. Furthermore, Solzhenitsyn’s insistence on such an unprogressive moral outlook illustrated that his “view of life and his attitude towards it will be seen to have remained just as unmodern, and in many respects as archaic, as they were in Matryona’s House”.14
The case for the defense was put by the Leningrad novelist Danil Granin, who replied to Barabash’s original article in the leading literary journal Literaturnaya Gazeta. Granin wrote that Solzhenitsyn in For the Good of the Cause was demanding justice and asking some very important questions about life in Soviet society.15 An irate reader, R. N. Seliverstov, replying to Granin, was incensed at the very suggestion that the Soviet system was unjust: “Genuine justice, fought for and won by the Party and our whole people—and not ‘abstract’ justice—runs through our life today and is triumphant! A writer who takes it upon himself to deal with an important contemporary theme cannot fail to take all this into account.” Seliverstov’s remarks were accompanied by a statement from the editors of the Literaturnaya Gazeta: “It seems to the editors that R. N. Seliverstov makes valid comments on Solzhenitsyn’s story and Granin’s article.”
Furthermore, they insisted that Barabash’s original criticisms of For the Good of the Cause were well founded. The editors chastised Solzhenitsyn for employing the universal approach to concepts of justice rather than the class approach, reminding him that “a socialist-realist artist handles themes from the standpoint of the communist view of the world”.16
At this stage, the editors of Novy Mir became embroiled in a bitter feud with their rivals at the Literaturnaya Gazeta that would keep the debate over For the Good of the Cause in the forefront of both publications for the rest of the year.
Toward the end of the year, the editors of Novy Mir controversially nominated Solzhenitsyn for the coveted Lenin Prize for Literature for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was a bold gesture but had no real chance of success. The prize was awarded by a jury consisting overwhelmingly of reliable members of the old guard, who would never contemplate awarding someone so heretical as Solzhenitsyn such an accolade. On April 11, 1964, an article in Pravda quoted extracts from letters that the editors had allegedly received from a number of readers whose addresses were not given. “They all come to the same conclusion”, the article stated. “Solzhenitsyn’s short novel deserves a positive assessment but it cannot be placed among such outstanding works which are worthy of the Lenin Prize.”17
While the controversy surrounding his previous work raged in the pages of the Soviet press, Solzhenitsyn was putting the finishing touches to his next book. This was The First Circle, the novel based on his experiences and discussions at Marfino special prison. Not only was it his most ambitious work to date, it was easily his most audacious, going far beyond his other work in its fundamental questioning of Soviet preconceptions. Having read the attacks that his work had provoked already, he must have had serious concerns about its reception and, more to the point, serious doubts about its chances of ever being published.
The First Circle has been described by the critic Leonid Rzhevsky as “a ruthless rejection of Stalinism”.18 By early 1964, the ruthless rejection of Stalinism was not as safe as it had been two years previously. It now seemed, in the rapidly changing political climate, that the more ruthless the rejection of Stalinism the more ruthless would be the consequences.
Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn put his doubts and fears to one side, inviting Tvardovsky to his home in Ryazan on May 2, 1964, to read the finished manuscript of The First Circle. It was Tvardovsky who had nominated One Day in the Life for the Lenin Prize, and he was still Solzhenitsyn’s most valued and influential champion. If anyone would appreciate the literary merit of The First Circle, it was Tvardovsky, and if anyone could get it published, he could.
Natalya accompanied her husband to the station to meet their distinguished guest. Surprisingly, it was the first time she had ever met Tvardovsky, even though her husband had worked closely with him for nearly two and a half years, an indication of how far she had been marginalized during Solzhenitsyn’s rise to fame. The next day, when Tvardovsky was enchanted by Natalya’s piano playing, he found Solzhenitsyn more interested in a BBC broadcast on the radio. Husband and wife had drifted apart since the days of courtship many years before when Solzhenitsyn himself had been enchanted by her playing.
As Tvardovsky sat down to read The First Circle, he found himself becoming more and more enthusiastic. “Great stuff!… So far, so far: I promise nothing!” Increasingly intoxicated by both the book and the bottle of cognac he was consuming while reading it, he even became flippant about the dangers that the book presented to all concerned: “This is great, as good as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. So far, so far! When you’re inside I’ll bring you parcels! You’ll even get the odd bottle of cognac.” Through the drunken numbness, he endeavored to inject a word of caution, urging Solzhenitsyn to tone down the Stalin pages, but ultimately a heady mixture of undiluted praise and undiluted alcohol prevailed: “This is wonderful, Alexander Isayevich—not a superfluous line!… I shall be put inside for publishing it! Even though it’s basically optimistic.”19
It was a far more somber and sober Tvardovsky who presided over the editorial meeting to discuss the manuscript of The First Circle on June 11. “By the normal standards,” he began, “this novel should be scuttled and the author arrested. But what sort of people are we?” Tvardovsky’s colleagues on the editorial board of Novy Mir were thrown into confusion. One, with a show of indecision that nevertheless put the problem in a nutshell, remarked that it was impossible to publish, and morally impossible not to. Another procrastinated, requesting a second reading, while a third, clearly disturbed by the issues raised in the novel, said that the writing was tremendous, but “the novel plunges us into doubt and dismay”.20 Only the youngest member of the group, the bright-eyed head of the criticism section, argued warmly and unequivocally for acceptance. He would clearly go far—perhaps all the way to Siberia.