TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/041089/04108900.016

Text File | 1990-10-15 | 19KB | 330 lines

                {¥z                                                      á««ESSAY, Page 129

WOULD I MOVE BACK?

By Andrei Sinyavsky


    Look at Gorbachev's Soviet Union through the eyes of Andrei
Sinyavsky, and prepare to be astonished. As a literary critic in
Moscow, Sinyavsky for years secretly published bitter, moving short
stories in the West under the pseudonym Abram Tertz. When Soviet
officials discovered Tertz's real identity in 1965, they arrested
Sinyavsky, along with his friend Yuli Daniel, another underground
writer. Convicted of "anti-Soviet acts" in a celebrated trial that
for the first time drew the world's attention to Moscow's dissident
movement, Sinyavsky spent almost six years in a labor camp, Daniel
five. Sinyavsky emigrated to Paris in 1973, and Soviet authorities
reluctantly permitted him to return last January to attend the
funeral of his great friend Daniel. In the following pages,
Sinyavsky reflects on those remarkable five days in Moscow, on
Gorbachev, on the Soviet character and on whether his beloved
country has indeed changed for good.

    Recently a lot of people have asked me, Wouldn't you like to
go back and live again in the Soviet Union? After all, now they're
rebuilding the society, they've published Doctor Zhivago, they
don't arrest people anymore under Article 70 (for "anti-Soviet
propaganda and agitation"), and the conscience of Russia,
academician Sakharov, is practically a member of the government...

    Yes, I agree, things have changed. I tell my questioner that
they've also published dissident writers such as Vladimir Voinovich
and Georgi Vladimov, they've begun little by little to publish me,
and they're even allowing some limited criticism of the General
Secretary. If things go any further . . .

    But that's just the question. Will things go further?

    The Soviet system has aroused the interest and attention of
the whole world as, perhaps, the most unusual and frightening
phenomenon of the 20th century. It is frightening because it lays
claim to the future of all humanity and seizes more and more
countries and spheres of influence, considering itself the ideal
and ordained end of the historical development of the entire world.
It is so new, strong and extraordinary that at times even people
nurtured in her womb, her children so to speak, perceive it as if
it were some sort of monstrosity or invasion from Mars, to which
we ourselves, however, still belong. We cannot have the calm
perspective provided by distance, inasmuch as we are not simply
historians but contemporaries and witnesses (and sometimes even
participants) in this process.

    Working on a book about Soviet civilization, I have come to
the conclusion that the Soviet system is made up of massive, heavy
blocks. It is well suited to the suppression of human freedom, but
not to revealing, nourishing and stimulating it. On the whole, it
resembles an Egyptian pyramid built out of colossal stones,
carefully assembled and ground to fit together. A mass of dead
stone, an impressive monumentality of construction, which once
served majestic ends now beyond our reach, a huge structure with
such a modicum of useful space inside. Inside -- the mummy, Lenin.
Outside -- the wind of the desert. Sand. That's the image.

    And so we must ask, Can you rebuild a pyramid into the
Parthenon? The ancient Egyptian pyramids are rightly considered the
most enduring of architectural forms -- much more durable and solid
than the Parthenon. And the legitimate question arises: Do pyramids
lend themselves to perestroika? It would be possible, of course,
to adorn them with decorative colonnades, to cover them with
molding, to suspend Greek porticoes on them. But would these
changes enhance them? Wouldn't they spoil the fundamental style and
profile?

    I'm trying to use this transparent metaphor to explain why --
despite all my sympathy for the works of perestroika -- I share
the doubts of many about the reforms that are being called forth
to rejuvenate the Soviet system in the democratic manner.

    When perestroika began, I asked myself if perhaps I hadn't been
mistaken about the pyramid. But not long ago, I had the sad
occasion to spend some time in Moscow. On the evening of Dec. 30,
my friend Yuli Daniel died. If it had not been for his death, they
would not have let me into Moscow. Moscow had been denying my wife
Maria a visa for a year and a half. The Soviet consulate in Paris
had informed us by telephone on the morning of Dec. 30 of the
latest denial. Then, after two days of negotiations, they had to
give us a visa. If they had not, a scandal would have broken out
in the press. After all, for many years -- since our arrest -- my
name has been inextricably linked with that of Daniel's
(Sinyavsky-Daniel, Daniel-Sinyavsky . . .).

    We didn't arrive in time for the funeral. We flew in the day
after, and we spent the five days that Moscow gave us at the home
of Daniel's widow Irina Uvarova.

    Perhaps Daniel's death colored my impressions. Moscow seemed
incredibly dreary. I hadn't been there for 15 years. The darkness
was striking. From the first moment, while we were still at the
airport, it seemed as if the electricity had burned out and that
the meager light was being supplied by a weak portable generator.
The sense of abandonment and homelessness was aggravated by the
piles of dirty, blackened snow along the sides of the dark streets.
It hadn't been like that before. Where were the streetlights? Where
had the stately yard keepers, who used to clean Moscow, disappeared
to?

    It's good that at least they're writing about all this in the
newspapers. Glasnost provides salvation from psychological
destitution. But it's still a long way from physical evidence of
perestroika. The gypsy cabdriver who drove us from the airport
remarked in a melancholy tone of voice on the neglected roads,
filled with potholes, over which we, swearing, were bouncing: "So
have ended many great empires!" I was amazed at the daring and
aesthetic exactness of his maxims. In my time, people didn't talk
so freely . . .

    At the market near the cemetery, where we were buying flowers,
someone tried to photograph our group. A watchwoman objected, "It's
forbidden to photograph the market! The director doesn't allow it!"
Why? Wasn't it because the market was catastrophically empty?

    If the neglected appearance of the city inspired pity and
bitterness, the people who lived in it aroused joy by their calm
dignity and the maturity of their judgments. It seemed as if the
electric light, which was so dim on the streets, had moved into
their hearts and souls and had been rekindled in their illuminated
faces. During the time allotted to us in Moscow, we encountered a
mass of people, many of whom we had never met before as well as old
friends. Mostly they were part of the constant stream of people who
flowed through Daniel's apartment from morning until late at night.
As a result, I can judge the striking change in the minds and moods
of Muscovites.

    The Soviet intelligentsia, particularly the young
intelligentsia, these days are experiencing the enthusiasm and the
happiness of speaking freely on a scale never before allowed them
-- in their entire history. All anyone can think of is how to find
time to read something new or to publish something new while
glasnost still exists! Never before, I admit, have I read so many
contemporary, current works of Soviet literature and journalism.
And never with such intense interest. It seems as if the very
foundations of the Soviet system must be on the point of reeling
just from the change in the tone and language of today's
literature. Of course, this is an illusion. But it's amusing to
note in passing the extent to which the whole iron structure of
the Soviet state rests on language, on trite bureaucratic phrases.
Just blow on it, and it will fall! We are witnessing, for the
umpteenth time, that magical attitude toward the word peculiar to
Russians, to Russian literature and to all Soviet society.

    But most important, the fear that is characteristic of Soviet
people has disappeared. And this despite the obvious, although not
always visible, presence of the KGB, which accompanied us.
Sometimes it seemed almost indecent: after all, this shadowing and
spying were transpiring over a fresh grave. Or should the death of
an old camp inmate and scapegrace writer be arranged just as he
had lived?

    At times I think that thanks to glasnost, the organs of the KGB
are growing out of all proportion. After all, now they have to spy
on so many suspicious people, to listen in on the voice of the
crowd and to keep a hand on the pulse, on the throat of public
opinion! Perestroika is not profitable for the KGB, which is
hostile to the natural condition of freedom, into which society is
trying to move. If the society becomes free, who will pay for this
whole swollen staff of dependents -- specialists in the suppression
of freedom?

    The KGB tried in every way possible to hamper and restrict my
contacts, and intentionally created a flagrant show of vigilant
shadowing, as if trying to force me out of my native city.
Observers stood tramping their feet outside the building the whole
time. Maria swore at them: "How can they stand there like that
without doing anything! Give them each a shovel. At least they
could clear the sidewalk in front of the building."

    When we stopped for an hour or so at the dacha (twelve miles
outside Moscow) where Daniel spent the last years of his life, the
police turned up unexpectedly and announced in embarrassment that
as foreigners we were "violating a forbidden zone." The
good-natured policemen did little to hide the fact that they were
being forced to draw up a report on the orders of the KGB. The
quiet snowfall beyond the window, reminding us of an old-style
Russian winter, was our reward for this "violation."

    But in Moscow I was a welcome guest. I had not experienced such
a surge of love and warmth in a long time. Perhaps only once before
in my life had I been accorded a similar welcome -- when they
brought me to the camp. But that was given to me by those zeks,
who, like myself, were classified as "particularly dangerous state
criminals." They greeted me as a brother, and the more furiously
the newspapers stigmatized and the authorities pressured Daniel and
me, the better they treated me . . .

    A protracted ideological civil war is being waged in our
homeland. Not long before our departure from Paris for Moscow we
received a letter from a well-known Moscow poet:

    "Today everything is gloomy and vacillating, a lot of people
are hoping for a bloodletting, for atrocities and cruelties with
all the `ancient attributes': tyranny, the iron fist, a threatening
master, army order. Already from every quarter appeals are heard
to curtail Ogonyok editor Vitali Korotich; he irritates them more
than anything else, and now the hosts of the `loyal and prudent'
are marching on him . . . No matter what those who are optimistic
about perestroika say to you -- the situation is very grave, and
it's a dreadful time to live, an enormous stock of malice has
accumulated, oceans of worthless money, the fury of poverty, hunger
and homelessness, of ethnic hostility and contempt -- all this is
bursting forth from the depths and is being channeled against the
intelligentsia, which have ungratefully forgotten that under the
Genius of All Times and Peoples prices went down every year, there
was order and every national group knew its place."

    If the magazine New Times publishes an interview with Lev
Kopelev, a well-known Russian dissident who today supports
perestroika from his home in Cologne, then the newspaper Sovetskaya
Rossiya attacks Kopelev in the best traditions of Stalinist
phraseology, explaining in the same breath that Kopelev is a Jew.
This recalls the old Russian round-dance game in which one group
of dancers sings, "And we the millet have sown and sown . . ." And
the other answers, "And we the millet shall trample, trample. . ."

    The Russian intellectual, by his very nature a liberal and a
democrat, is arrayed against the Russian nationalist, who is always
trying to trample into the ground what the democrats try to sow.

    The verbal tempest testifies, among other things, to the
steadfast conservatism of this society, which wrings its hands and
craves its perestroika but simply doesn't budge. It has turned out
to be a lot easier to print Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago
than to produce salami. And if there's no salami, little by little
glasnost will die away as well. Besides the bureaucracy, the huge
army, the KGB, the necessity of holding on to the republics and
other countries in "socialist cooperation," the inertia of the
masses, who have forgotten how to display individual initiative
after being deprived of it for so many years -- all hang like
weights on the legs of the country . . .

    I am far from saying that glasnost and perestroika are nothing
but a smoke screen released by a clever hand to deceive the
population of Russia and the West about impending "liberating
reforms." I rejoice in glasnost, proclaimed by "General Dissident"
Gorbachev, who has translated some of Sakharov's ideas into the
language of the party. Still, it's hard to shake off the
expectation, born of experience, that one fine day all this
perestroika will turn back on itself along the tried-and-true path
to new "stagnations" and "freezes," as has happened so many times
before. In the Soviet Union it is easier to forbid fragile
"freedoms" than to grant them and inculcate them.

    We find that attempts at democratization are possible only with
the collusion of a leadership that has the courage to introduce
freedom in carefully prescribed doses. Democracy is being
introduced by order of the authorities, who at any moment can
expand it or restrict it at will. Coercion is a condition of
"freedom." Hence the inconsistency and timidity of perestroika,
which seems to be afraid of its own shadow, constantly glancing
back over its shoulder at its own "stagnant" past.

    We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Gorbachev's good
beginnings and intentions. All the same, the final foothold of
Soviet liberalism and of Russian sovereignty remains the goodwill
of the Little Father Czar and his faithful courtiers. We are
experiencing a period of enlightened absolutism, and God grant that
it continue. As always, tyranny serves as the only guarantor of
progress and enlightenment in Russia.

    Having called Gorbachev, according to the standards of the
Brezhnev era, "Dissident No. 1" (for which I've already been
harshly criticized in the ever vigilant emigre press), I am not at
all inclined to idealize him. Gorbachev, like many in the Soviet
leadership, passed through long bureaucratic training before he
became a leader. The burden of those same traditions with which he
is struggling so selflessly lies on him as well. He is not, I
think, by nature a liberal but a pragmatist.

    All the same, the only alternative to Gorbachev's perestroika
remains war. The Pamyat society, with its anti-Semitic,
pogrom-promoting sentiments, is the alternative to glasnost.

    We felt the slanting, deadly shadow of the KGB, which falls
over Moscow, for the last time at the border and in customs when
we were leaving for Paris. I've never seen such a crowd of border
guards, nor have I ever seen such a surplus of personnel work so
slowly and take so long, examining our passports and luggage. What
were they guarding? Our despoiled homeland?

    They threw themselves on manuscripts, telephone numbers,
addresses, receipts from Parisian dry cleaners. My wife, corrupted
by Western notions about personal inviolability, couldn't
understand for the life of her what business CUSTOMS had with her
intimate correspondence and assorted panties and bras. She told the
customs officers in some detail what she thought of them, and they,
huffing dolefully, continued to read our personal papers: "Call
Zhenya in the morning . . . don't forget about Yura . . . Sima .
. . Sonya . . . Lyusya . . . In the evening -- 157-29-09 . . ." My
wife didn't let up. I was bored. Why were they doing all this?
After all, they didn't confiscate anything . . . Were they just
trying to spoil the mood? Were they sniffing out bits and pieces
now to remember for the future? Are they just waiting for the
present freedom to end, and everything they find now will be usable
then as operational material? Or perhaps it's simpler and cruder
-- they don't want us to forget ourselves and give way to euphoria.
"We, the KGB, are the masters here. We can do anything here, we can
peep into any hole -- either from above or from below, and you have
no business coming here." So we knew whom we were dealing with!

    At passport control, Maria asked a severe and inaccessible
young border guard, "Why are you so serious? Please smile!" The
border guard loudly stamped her passport -- and suddenly he smiled.
My wife said, "Try to smile more often. Then your life will be more
interesting and easier to live . . ." Thus we bade farewell to
Moscow.

    "Well, even so," the correspondent persists, "aren't you
thinking of returning to the Soviet Union?" The very posing of the
question seems incorrect to me. As long as we a-re asked such
questions, it's clear that we can't talk about any serious
perestroika. Why, for example, when the English writer Graham
Greene moved to France, didn't anyone ask him whether or not he was
planning to return to England? Who cares where Graham Greene lives
-- in England or in France? And Hemingway, he lived quite
peacefully in Cuba (can you imagine! on an island!) and didn't
hurry back to his Great Homeland. But Russia, it seems, possesses
particular advantages (borders, the KGB, internal passports,
patriotism, perestroika, nostalgia) that for some reason must be
satisfied. The whole world begs you: Since you're a Russian writer,
live in Russia. Especially since there's perestroika!

    Seventeen years before my own (physical) emigration, I
emigrated from Russia in my books, and I don't regret it. In the
final analysis, isn't it all the same where the body of a writer
dwells, if his books belong to Russia?