Word: authority
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Shortly after the public announcement of the British decision, Soviet Ambassador Mikhail Smirnovsky stormed into the Home Secretary's office, demanding the author's return. Calllaghan refused. Two days later, Smirnovsky called on Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart and asked that Soviet diplomats be allowed to see Kuznetsov. But Kuznetsov refused to meet with his countrymen. Instead, he wrote a declaration of his reasons for leaving and three letters: one to the Soviet government, another to the Communist Party, and a third to the Writers' Union (see box on following page). His eloquent words provided startling and intriguing...
Like any man beginning a new life, Author Anatoly Kuznetsov last week sought to explain why he ended the old one. Denouncing his earlier published works as hopelessly corrupted by the Soviet system, he even took a new name: A. Anatol. TIME here presents, in documents made available to its editors, Kuznetsov's explanation of why he fled to the West and three letters that he sent to the Soviet Union after his defection...
...then 100-to-l that what they write will not be published. It will simply be buried. It may even be the cause of the author's physical destruction. It is a sad thoueht that Russia has long and deep "traditions" in this connection. The best Russian writers were always persecuted, dragged before the courts, murdered or reduced to suicide...
...hereby, publicly and definitively, disassociate myself from everything that has been published under the name of "Kuznetsov" in the U.S.S.R. or has appeared in translation from Soviet editions in other countries of the world. I solemnly declare that Kuznetsov is a dishonest, conformist, cowardly author. I renounce this name. I want to be, at last, an honest man and an honest writer. All my writings published from this day onward will bear the signature "A. Anatol." I request you to regard only such works as being mine...
...have hope, at least. In any case, these are not the words of Kuznetsov but of a quite different author. Not a Soviet author and not a Western author, not a Red one and not a White one, but just an author living in this 20th century on this earth. And what is more, a writer who has made a desperate effort to be in this century, an honest writer who wants to associate himself with those who strive for humanity in the present wild, wild, wild life of this mad, mad world...