The Great Terror

The most extraordinary thing is that the rumor was given public circulation. On its basis, Pilnyak, hitherto an almost entirely nonpolitical writer (who had said that he knew nothing of politics and not being a Communist could not write like one), produced his Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, subtitled Murder of the Army Commander. The hero, Gavrilov, is described as a well-known Red Army leader who returns to Moscow on orders and reads in the papers that he has come back for an operation. He has had stomach ulcers, but is now fully recovered. He goes to see a man described as the most important of the “three who lead” the Party, who orders him to have the operation. The doctors examine him, and report that an operation is necessary, but afterwards in private conversation say that it is not. The operation is performed, and he dies of an overdose of chloroform. The story has a very sinister and gloomy tone. It was about to be printed in

Novyy mir, but the issue was confiscated and the editors admitted in the following number that accepting it had been a mistake, and printed letters describing it as “a malicious slander of our Party.” In the circumstances then prevailing, there were many copies circulating, and the story was printed in 1927 in Sofia.

It is clear, indeed, that no one with any political sense would have written a story like The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, and it seems likely that Pilnyak was put up to it by some friend more deeply involved in the struggles of the time. But no more was said about the matter for the moment.

In 1929, Pilnyak was President of the All-Russian Union of Writers, a genuine association then resisting the maneuvers of RAPP to enforce ideological and bureaucratic control of the writers. (Mayakovsky’s suicide in 1930 is now attributed, in part, to persecution by officials of RAPP.)⁴⁹

In the face of opposition from all the best writers, and to a large degree from Maxim Gorky too, the RAPPists failed in their task, and, as we saw, later lost favor and were themselves purged. But this did not save the non-RAPP writers.

Pilnyak’s last effective work, Mahogany, served as a pretext for action against him. It was published in Germany as a preliminary to its coming out in Russia, then a common practice for copyright reasons. But it was then denounced as anti-Soviet and its publication abroad alleged to be a White Guard provocation. Pilnyak was now in great trouble and ready to submit to any ruling. Zamyatin, chairman of the Leningrad branch of the Writers’ Union, was also under attack; his We (on which Orwell was to draw for

1984) had been published abroad in much the same circumstances as Pilnyak’s Mahogany. He boldly demanded to be allowed to leave the country, refused to retract, and exposed the whole mechanism which literary persecution was already setting in motion, mild though its actions were compared with later developments. He said that the Moscow branch had passed its resolution “without hearing any defense: first there was a condemnation and only then an investigation. I imagine that no court in the world has ever heard of such a procedure.” He added that he could not belong to an organization that behaved like this and resigned his membership in the Union. Finally, Maxim Gorky interceded for both Pilnyak and Zamyatin in Izvestiya:

… We have got into the stupid habit of raising people up into high positions only to cast them down into the mud and the dust. I need not quote examples of this absurd and cruel treatment of people, because such examples are known to everybody. I am reminded of the way in which petty thieves were lynched in 1917–18. These dramas were generally the work of obyvateli [obtuse philistines] and one is reminded of them every time one sees with what delight people throw themselves on to a man who has made a mistake, in order to take his place.⁵⁰

Pilnyak was “allowed” to settle down to write pro-Soviet literature, while Zamyatin’s boldness was rewarded by permission to leave the country. Zamyatin was one of the few trained Marxists among Soviet writers, and on this account he had rejected Bolshevism, which was welcomed in a vague and romantic fashion by Futurists like Mayakovsky—at a time, indeed, when the Futurists of Italy were showing a similar romanticism toward the other new and dynamic movement, Fascism.