Essay About Number Of Other Liberal Elements And Russian Literature

Introduction and Background of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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“For the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions
of Russian literature.” – From the Nobel Prize Citation for Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, October 8, 1970.
In mid-century – 1962 to be exact – a bright new talent appeared with
stunning suddenness on the literary horizon. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, together
with his epoch-making work, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, flared up
like a supernova in the Eastern skies and incandesced the Western skies as
well. Today Solzhenitsyn remains the most impressive figure in world
literature of the latter half of the 20th century.
Before One Day was throttled in the USSR, it had become an overnight
sensation. The 100,000 copies of Novy Mir (New World) carrying the novella
sold out in November 1962 in a matter of hours; so did the almost 1 million
copies of immediate second and third printings. But by 1963, not only
Solzhenitsyn, who had earlier been a protege of the Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev, but Khrushchev himself fell under a cloud as a new wave of
political and cultural Reactionism again loomed in the Soviet Union. By the
end of 1964, the editor of Novy Mir (Tvardovsky), Khrushchev, Solzhenitsyn,
and a number of other liberal elements or influences in Soviet culture became
the targets of a widening campaign to restore Stalinist orthodoxy and a rigid
party line to the arts.
Nineteen sixty-two, debut year for One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
and its author, was an important episode in the most unusual, if brief, epoch
in recent Soviet history. This was the time-1961-1962-of crisscrossing,
incongruous developments, both in domestic as well as foreign policy.
Condemnation Of Stalinism
On the Soviet home scene, the De-Stalinization Campaign reached a
crescendo. Stalins embalmed body, which lay next to Lenins, was abruptly
removed from the Lenin Mausoleum on the partys orders and reinterred in a
humble plot at the foot of the Kremlin Wall. This action became a potent
symbol of the widening condemnation of Stalins draconic policies with respect
to other party comrades, the arts, and the population at large. In the arts,
the liberals now sought to make new inroads, to come out of the closet and
with them, their manuscripts out of desk drawers. This process was illustrated
by the liberal poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, and other
writers acquiring new posts in writers unions and on editorial boards of
journals. “The younger generation of Russians,” Yevtushenko announced
confidently during a lecture tour to England in May 1962, “are increasingly
beginning to feel themselves masters in their own country.” The liberal
journal Yunost (Youth) published Vasily Aksenovs trailblazing story A Ticket
to the Stars while a heterodoxical work also published in Yunosts pages (each
issue of which sold like hot pirozhkis) was that a youthful rebellion of sorts
was underway in the USSR, that younger people were becoming outspokenly
critical of the values and policies identified with the older. Stalinist
generation.
Such heretical works and attitudes by no means were left unchallenged by
the conservatives and hardliners attached to the regime. In fact, 1962 and
1963 represented the beginnings of an effort, culminating in the mid-1970s,
to clamp down on the liberal tendencies that were in such evidence during
these years and upon whose crests Solzhenitsyn and One Day rode to prominence.
One of the signs that a crackdown was imminent was barely concealed (by
Aesopian language) in Yevtushenkos sensational poem published during the
Cuban Missile Crisis week in October 1962 entitled, “The Heirs of Stalin.” In
this short but trenchant political poem (which, incidentally, was printed in
the party daily Pravda, edited at the time by Khrushchev allies), Yevtushenko
warned against the possible recrudescence of Stalinism in his country. “A
telephone line is installed [in Stalins coffin],” he wrote. “Stalin has not
given up,” his “telephone line”