Word: mir
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nikita spared no group in the restless audience. Writer Ilya Ehrenburg, 72, drew scorn for the title of his 1954 novel, The Thaw, which, said Nikita, suggests political "impermanence and instability." As for Ehrenburg's memoirs, which have been running in the literary journal Novy Mir, Khrushchev remarked caustically, "one notices that he depicts everything in grim tones." Khrushchev warned the veteran Ehrenburg against "slipping into an anti-Communist position...
Last November the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir caused quite a stir by publishing One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch the first novel of an obscure mathematics teacher and former Red Army officer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Released with the express permission of Premier Khrushchev, One Day is a powerful, often humorous account of life in Stalin's forced labor camps. Translator Max Hayward, among others, hailed the novel as a "literary masterpiece" when it was published in the West several months later...
Thus giving permission to publish One Day must be seen as a purely political decision by the regime. First of all the novel serves the cause of anti-Stalinism, and concomitantly the cause of Stalin's denunciator Khrushchev. As the editor of Novy Mir wrote in a preface to the original publication, "Only by going into its consequences fully, courageously, and truthfully can we guarantee a complete and irrevocable break with all those things that cast a shadow over the past...
...relative liberality and boldness of Solzhenitsyn's story adds to the image of progressiveness deliberately fostered by the present regime. The editor of Novy Mir declares "This stark tale shows once again that today there is no aspect of our life that cannot be dealt with and faithfully described in Soviet literature." Here the image is more important than the reality: if Soviet citizens (and Western observers) can be convinced there is greatly enhanced cultural freedom, then the real state of affairs is not so important...
...mentioned Eliot.* He proudly recalls the day he put in their places a couple of young squirts who thought they were In because they could recognize Hemingway in the streets. They thought a little man who followed Hemingway carrying a bag was his butler. "No, that's Miró," Morley said quietly. "Miró! The Spanish painter," they squeaked, and slunk away abashed...