The Expulsion of Solzhenitsyn from the Writers’ Union, 31 December 1969
A pall was cast over the Soviet literary world on 12 November 1969 when the official journal of the Writers’ Union, Literary Gazette, announced the expulsion of author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from its ranks. His sin was to have finished the magisterial manuscript of his Gulag Archipelago, exposing the horrors of the Stalinist prison camp system to his fellow citizens and eventually, to the world. Not fated to be published in the Soviet Union, the three-volume opus was smuggled out to the West and published, and then circulated in typewritten copies in the Soviet Union. The limits of truth-telling had been clearly established.
Original Source: Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, No. 11: 31 December 1969
On 4 November 1969 the great Russian writer A. I. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers’ Union by the Ryazan branch of the Writers’ Union of the Russian Republic (RSFSR). Of the seven members of the Ryazan branch, six were present at the meeting: Vasily Matushkin (Ryazan), Sergei Baranov (Ryazan, chaired the meeting), Nikolai Rodin (Kasimov, brought specially from hospital to form a quorum), Nikolai Levchenko (Ryazan), Yevgeny Markin (Ryazan) and Solzhenitsyn. The branch secretary Ernst Safonov was absent owing to an appendicitis operation. Others present were secretary of the Writers’ Union of the Russian Republic Frants Taurin, propaganda secretary of Ryazan Regional Party Committee A. S. Kozhevnikov, publishing-house editor Povarenkin and three other persons from regional organizations.
There was only one item on the agenda: a report by secretary of the Writers’ Union Taurin concerning the resolution passed by the Secretariat of the Union, ‘On measures to intensify ideological-educative work among writers.’ The speakers accused Solzhenitsyn of not speaking at pre-election meetings; he had not taken part in the discussion of new writers’ works, and had not reviewed their manuscripts; he had behaved superciliously towards Ryazan writers and their ‘modest achievements in literature’; his Ivan Denisovich was an uninspiring character; his “Matryona’s House” was painted entirely in black; his most recent works (although the Ryazan writers actually confessed they had not read them) conflicted with theirs; he had not dissociated himself from the sensation his name was causing in the West; and foreign countries were using his writings as a weapon. Solzhenitsyn spoke in reply and demonstrated the groundlessness of the charges brought against him.
The following resolution was adopted by five votes to one : “This meeting is of the opinion that Solzhenitsyn’s behavior is of an anti-social nature, and fundamentally conflicts with the aims and tasks of the USSR Writers’ Union. For his anti-social behavior, which conflicts with the aims and tasks of the USSR Writers’ Union, and for his flagrant violation of the basic principles of the statutes of the Writers’ Union, the writer Solzhenitsyn should be expelled from the ranks of the Writers’ Union of the USSR. We ask the Secretariat to approve this resolution.”
A transcript of the minutes of this meeting, made by Solzhenitsyn, is circulating widely in samizdat.
On 12 November the Literary Gazette carried a report on the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn by the Ryazan writers’ organization, and on the approval of the resolution by the Secretariat of the Board of the Russian Republic Writers’ Union. There was no mention of any name (apart from Solzhenitsyn’s), nor of any date.
On 14 November Literary Russia reprinted the report from the Literary Gazette, adding the surnames of the Ryazan writers and also the writers who were present at the meeting of the Secretariat of the Board of the Russian Republic Writers’ Union: L. Sobolev, G. Markov, K. Voronkov, A. Barto, D. Granin, V. Zakrutkin, A. Keshokov, V. Pankov, L. Tatyanicheva, F. Taurin, V. Fyodorov, and S. Khakimov. Again no dates were given.
A group of Moscow writers — [S.] Antonov, [G.] Baklanov, [V.] Voinovich, [V.] Maksimov, [B.] Mozhayev, [V.] Tendryakov and [Yu.] Trifonov — paid a visit to the secretary of the Russian Republic Writers’ Union, Voronkov. They expressed their disagreement with the expulsion from the Writers’ Union of a writer as great as Solzhenitsyn by a group of obscure litterateurs from Ryazan. They demanded that in view of the especial importance of this affair, it should be discussed at a Plenum of the Writers’ Union in conditions of maximum publicity. They requested that this opinion, which was not only theirs but the opinion of many writers who had not presented themselves for official interviews, should be made known to all the secretaries of the Writers’ Union and also to the Party Central Committee. Voronkov assured them that he would pass it on. After this, some people (Party members) were summoned to their district Party committees, where they were worked over by their first secretaries and also by Yu. Verchenko, head of the Culture Department in the Moscow city Party committee.
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Soon there began to circulate very widely in samizdat an Open Letter from A. Solzhenitsyn to the Secretariat of the Russian Republic Writers’ Union. It is worth quoting in full here:
“Shamelessly trampling underfoot your own statutes, you have expelled me in my absence, as at the sound of a fire-alarm, without even sending me a summons by telegram, without even giving me the four hours I needed to come from Ryazan and be present at the meeting. You have shown openly that the RESOLUTION preceded the ‘discussion’. Was it less awkward for you to invent new charges in my absence? Were you afraid of being obliged to grant me ten minutes for my answer? I am compelled to substitute this letter for those ten minutes.
“Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you—you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside. It is no longer that stifled, that sombre, irrevocable time when you expelled Akhmatova in the same servile manner. It is not even that timid, frosty period when you expelled Pasternak, whining abuse at him. Was this shame not enough for you? Do you want to make it greater? But the time is near when each one of you will seek to erase his signature from today’s resolution.
“Blind leading the blind! You do not even notice that you are wandering in the opposite direction from the one you yourselves have announced. At this time of crisis you are incapable of suggesting anything constructive, anything good for our society, which is gravely sick—only your hatred, your vigilance, your ‘hold on and don’t let go’. Your clumsy articles fall apart; your vacant minds stir feebly—but you have no arguments. You have only your voting and your administration. And that is why neither Sholokhov nor any of you, of the whole lot of you, dared reply to the famous letter of Lydia Chukovskaya, who is the pride of Russian publicistic writing. But the administrative pincers are ready for her: how could she allow people to read her book [The Deserted House] when it has not been published? Once the AUTHORITIES have made up their minds not to publish you—then stifle yourself, choke yourself, cease to exist, and don’t give your stuff to anyone to read!
“They are also threatening to expel Lev Kopelev, the front-line veteran, who has already served ten years in prison although he was completely innocent.30 Today he is guilty: he intercedes for the persecuted, he revealed the hallowed secrets of his conversation with an influential person, he disclosed an OFFICIAL SECRET. But why do you hold conversations like these which have to be concealed from the people? Were we not promised fifty years ago that never again would there be any secret diplomacy, secret talks, secret and incomprehensible appointments and transfers, that the masses would be informed of all matters and would discuss them openly?
“’The enemy will overhear’—that is your excuse. The eternal, omnipresent ‘enemies’ are a convenient justification for your functions and your very existence. As if there were no enemies when you promised immediate openness. But what would you do without ‘enemies’? You could not live without ‘enemies’; hatred, a hatred no better than racial hatred, has become your sterile atmosphere. But in this way a sense of our single, common humanity is lost and its doom accelerated. Should the Antarctic ice melt tomorrow, we would all become a sea of drowning humanity, and into whose heads would you then be drilling your concepts of ‘class struggle’? Not to speak of the time when the few surviving bipeds will be wandering over a radioactive earth, dying.
“It is high time to remember that we belong first and foremost to humanity. And that man has distinguished himself from the animal world by THOUGHT and SPEECH. And these, naturally, should be FREE. If they are put in chains, we shall return to the state of animals.
“OPENNESS, honest and complete OPENNESS — that is the first condition of health in all societies, including our own. And he who does not want this openness for our country cares nothing for his fatherland and thinks only of his own interest. He who does not wish this openness for his fatherland does not want to purify it of its diseases, but only to drive them inwards, there to fester.
A. SOLZHENITSYN
12 November 1969
Source: A Chronicle of Current Events, from the English to the Russian
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