Word: simonov
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...About once a week, a convoy of 50 Gorky trucks rolls in over primitive Route Seven from Vinh in North Viet Nam. The rebels have more than 60 Gorky trucks. 40 Soviet jeeps, about 25 command cars and six Russian armored cars. They have Kalashnikov submachine guns. Simonov carbines. Degtiarev light machine guns, ZPU antiaircraft machine guns, as well as Russian assault guns and 60-and 81-mm. mortars. In the hills around the plain are new Russian 85-mm. cannon manned by Viet Minh "technicians." The Viet Minh are everywhere. They drive trucks, operate radios, build roads, teach tactics...
Looking at Simonov's work one finds Communism rarely mentioned. The emphasis is rather on nationalism and on people. Communism is affirmed indirectly, however, because the people and nation about which Simonov cares all accept it. One is reminded of a passage in Days and Nights in which a priest, the father of one of the soldiers is being described: "... he was a powerful man, and sometimes a rough one. But the father had never known hatred. He had not loved the demobilized Red Army soldier, Stepanyuk, who had opened a branch of "The Society of the Godless...
...Simonov then began to describe a film which he felt had been better done, Ballad of a Soldier. As he retold the plot, his hands, which are nearly always active, became powerfully expressive. He would push his fist forward with a twisting motion, suddenly pull a chunk of space toward himself with both hands; sometimes, when he was looking for a word, he would feel the air with his fingers in a "je ne sais quoi" gesture. Then he would explain, "I can't say it. I can just express it like this, with my fingers...
...U.S.S.R., in addition to doing his own creative work, Simonov is also an active and very important member of the Union of Writers. As literary editor of the Union magazine, Novyi Mir, he was among the first who read and refused to publish Doctor Zhivago. "There were two reasons why I didn't like the book. First, it seemed to me that Pasternak considered the February revolution a good thing and that he thought the October revolution was evil. I think the October revolution was a good thing. So, from the standpoint of ideas, I disagreed. Then, the fact...
Asked earlier in he converation, "Are you a Marxist?" Simonov replied in a low voice, but with obvious pride, "I am a Communist" (i.e. a party member). When he was asked, however, whether or not he wrote Marxist books, he smiled and said "I never thought of describing my work in just that way. I was never particularly good in philosophy and so my books aren't very philosophical. Just the same, I can see no contradiction between my writing and my politics...