Soviet Literature

This is not a committee book. Soviet Literature: Problems and People was written by one man, Kornely Zelinsky, who signs his preface "Moscow, 1970" and breaks into his own text often enough - inserting "- K.Z." into quotations to gloss them - that the reader never loses sight of him.

His credentials for the job are the most valuable thing about it, and he states them himself. He graduated from Moscow University in 1918, worked as a civil war correspondent, returned to Moscow in 1922, "joined the constructivist group, attended all the congresses of Soviet writers as a delegate". He knew Mayakovsky, Bely, Pasternak, Fadeyev and Ehrenburg personally. This is a survey of Soviet literature written by a participant, not a compiler.

Twenty-four chapters run from "The Revolution and Literature" to "Literature of the Future", with the middle given over to portraits: Gorky, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Fadeyev, Alexei Tolstoi, Pasternak, Fedin, Leonov, Ehrenburg, Paustovsky, Sholokhov. It is addressed, as Zelinsky says, "not just for specialists" but for the general reader, and the writing has the ease of a man talking about people he has known.

For once the date on the spine is close to the date of the text: the most recent books discussed are Zalygin's Solyonaya Pad of 1967-68, and Paustovsky, who died in 1968, is spoken of as newly dead.

Translated by Olga Shartse. New critical introduction by Dmitry Chasovennikov, on what a witness's silences are worth as evidence.