Reprisal against the almanac of “homeless” literature

On January 22, 1979, at an expanded meeting of the secretariat of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of the USSR, participants in the literary almanac Metropol were subjected to devastating criticism, the authors of which tried to publish works that had remained outside the official Soviet literature for many years.

Despite the fact that there was no “anti-Soviet” content in the almanac, the very attempt to legalize an alternative view of Soviet reality caused a stir not only in the Writers’ Union, but also at the very “top”: the Metropol case was dealt with in the Central Committee of the party (in the course of events personally held Mikhail Suslov) and the KGB in the person of Yuri Andropov, who at that time was the chairman of the Committee.

As reported in the preface to the publication of the transcript of the expanded meeting of the secretariat of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of the USSR, held on January 22, 1979 (it was published in the journal “New Literary Review”, No. 6, 2006), the idea of ​​publishing such an almanac arose from two young writers (Vasily Aksyonov and Viktor Erofeev) in 1978. Then they attracted their colleagues – Evgeny Popov, Andrey Bitov, Fazil Iskander, Vladimir Vysotsky, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Evgeny Rein, Genrikh Sapgir, Yuri Karabchievsky, Yuri Kublanovsky and many others.

As Viktor Erofeev later recalled, during 1978 they managed to collect a “thick” almanac, in which more than twenty people participated:

“There were no accidents, everyone, from Semyon Lipkin to the young Leningrader Pyotr Kozhevnikov, is talented in his own way. We consciously developed the idea of ​​aesthetic pluralism. “Metropol” did not become the manifesto of any school. There were discussions. There were constant opponents – the philosophers Leonid Batkin and Viktor Trostnikov. Bella Akhmadulina and Inna Lisnyanskaya were venomously arguing with each other. Someone took the manuscript back. For example, Yuri Trifonov explained this by saying that it was better for him to fight censorship with his books, and Bulat Okudzhava explained that he was the only member of the party among us. They composed Metropol in a one-room apartment on Krasnoarmeiskaya, which previously belonged to the then deceased Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg (Vasily Aksyonov’s mother. – S.I.), author of The Steep Route.

(The memoirs of Viktor Erofeev are quoted from his article “Ten Years Later” in the book “Metropol Literary Almanac”. Moscow, 1991)

The goal of the project, according to the participants, was to publish a collection, which was supposed to include texts that had never been published before due to the fact that they were “impassable” in the Soviet press according to aesthetic and thematic criteria. The publication of these works, as the authors of the almanac argued in their letters to official authorities, could expand the picture of Soviet literature of that time.

“Incomplete literature is sometimes doomed to many years of wandering and homelessness. A blind person just fails to notice that every year there is more and more such literature, that it already forms, as it were, a whole protected layer of Russian literature. (Our almanac consists mainly of manuscripts that are well known to the editors).

The dream of a homeless man is a roof over his head; hence the “Metropol”, the capital’s hut over the best subway in the world. The authors of Metropol are independent (from each other) writers. The only thing that completely unites them under the roof is the consciousness that only the author himself is responsible for his work; the right to such responsibility seems to us sacred. It is possible that the strengthening of this consciousness will benefit our entire culture. Metropol gives a visual, although not exhaustive, idea of ​​the bottomless layer of literature,” wrote Vasily Aksyonov in the preface to the almanac.

The authors and their friends managed to make 12 copies of the forty-page almanac. As the project participants later recalled, the layout of the almanac was developed by the artist of the Taganka Theater David Borovsky. He suggested sticking four typewritten pages on a piece of Whatman paper. Thus, a finished book was obtained, and not a set of manuscripts. The artwork was done by Boris Messerer. One copy was sent to Goskomizdat, another was supposed to be sent abroad, another in the second decade of January 1979 was handed over to Felix Kuznetsov, secretary of the Moscow branch of the USSR Writers’ Union (MO SP USSR).

Of course, the creators of the almanac had a presentiment that clouds were gathering over them, but the fact that they would be subjected to such repression came as a surprise to them. First, they were called to the Ministry of Defense of the joint venture of the USSR for conversations one at a time. They tried to persuade and negotiate. However, when this tactic did not bring the desired results, first, on January 20, a closed meeting of the secretariat was held (without the participation of the authors of the almanac), and then, on January 22, an extended meeting, to which the authors were invited, it was decided to arrange a public “flogging”.

The leitmotif of the upcoming discussion was set immediately in the opening speech of the head of the Moscow writers’ organization, Felix Kuznetsov:

“This is some kind of sophisticated literary hoax. There is no anti-Sovietism here, but together everything forms not into a picture of literary searches, but into an ominous picture.

The attempts of the authors of the almanac to somehow explain and justify themselves were decisively suppressed by the writer Nikolai Gribachev:

“What are you talking about here, what did they say to you there. It does not matter. I’ll tell you how the Stalingrad battalion commander. This is anti-Soviet propaganda. There is bloodshed in Iran, people are dying at Somoza, and we are talking here. Where is the innovation here? These are decadent illiquid assets, and we sit and talk about how they talked to you and what time they called you. This is politics. Because politics is life, and literature is life. Complex. If the almanac comes out in the West, they need to be put facing the people. Let them answer and let their heads fly. Who are they playing to? I suggest that the secretariat finish, discuss them in sections, and then let them answer for their “innovation”.

Writer Yuri Zhukov also supported his comrades in writing and in the party:

“I am sure that the almanac will be published in the West. (He talks about the apathy of writers and the intelligentsia.) “From a glass to a desk. You can not join the party, you can get high fees, apartments, but you don’t have to pay for it. Why don’t they respect their comrades? Maybe if the balance of power in the world system changes, then we will print it, then we will be strong and able to print any nonsense, including this one. And now the international situation is very tense. Aksenov. I respect him as a writer, but I am always amazed at his neglect of the class struggle. There can be no neutrality. It should be discussed in sections, although it will certainly be published in the West. A great evil has already been done. And who is to blame for this? This is a typical samizdat work.”

The secretariat’s draft decision stated that the almanac should be considered “an unacceptable, unprincipled, low artistic matter, contrary to the practice of Soviet literature in terms of the ultimatum nature of preparation:

“To oblige members of the SP, compilers and authors to refrain from actions of a personal or public nature, leading to inflation … If the almanac is printed abroad and the compilers or authors commit these actions, raise the issue of expulsion from the SP.”

Vasily Aksyonov, Viktor Erofeev, Bella Akhmadulina, Evgeny Popov, Andrei Bitov and Fazil Iskander drafted and submitted a letter to the CPSU Central Committee (to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev and – a copy – to the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Zimyanin, also a copy of the letter was sent to the First Secretary of the Union writers of the USSR – Georgy Markov). It said:

“We would like to inform you that the authors of the Metropol almanac feel deeply offended by these actions of the leadership of the Moscow Writers’ Organization. These actions are more reminiscent of the bad memory of the times of the cult of personality than the Leninist policy in the field of culture, which is being pursued by the current Central Committee of the CPSU.

However, despite all these appeals to “Leninist politics”, the repressive apparatus continued to operate: the almanac was banned, Viktor Erofeev and Yevgeny Popov were expelled from the Writers’ Union; someone came out of it himself, out of solidarity (this is what the poets Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin did); someone simply went abroad (this is what Vasily Aksyonov did); and they stopped printing someone, thus depriving them of their favorite work and livelihood …

Sergei Ishkov.