Word: sovietizing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...furor in the Soviet Union over its foremost writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, last week gathered momentum. A month ago, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Russian Writers Union on the charge that his novels, notably The First Circle and Cancer Ward, "threw mud on the motherland." Nine writers are reported to have called personally on the union's secretary to demand reconsideration of the expulsion. Seventy other writers are said to have sent letters or telegrams to the union call ing for a special rehearing of the case, and 300 others have reportedly written letters of protest...
Counterattacking, Nobel-prizewinning Novelist Mikhail Sholokhov, a master of vivid invective, last week likened Solzhenitsyn to a noxious plant pest. At a meeting of 4,500 Soviet farmers at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, the author of And Quiet Flows the Don drew a parallel between literature and collective farming in Russia. "We also have bumper and lean years," he said, "but you farmers have done away with pests, while we, unfortunately, still have Colorado beetles-those who eat Soviet bread but who want to serve Western bourgeois masters and send their works there through secret channels. Soviet...
...less strident than Sholokhov's attack was a report from the Russian Writers Union. The report, printed in the Literary Gazette, charged that Solzhenitsyn had "joined hands with the opponents of the Soviet social system," and that his two banned novels, which were published abroad over his vehement protests, "have become a weapon in the hands of our class enemies." The report even suggested that Solzhenitsyn leave Russia for the West, "where his anti-Soviet works and letters are always received with such delight...
Some Western specialists observed that the implied threat of exile may be a form of blackmail. They believe that Soviet authorities are playing on the only thing that Solzhenitsyn fears-expulsion from his beloved country-in the hope of finally silencing him. "All my life is here," Solzhenitsyn has said, "the homeland-I listen only to its sadness. I write only about...
Rearguard Operation. After Husák visited Moscow in October, he and his Soviet hosts issued a joint statement that spoke of "carrying on to the end the struggle against right-wing opportunism." Husák has been faithful to his word: some Czechs are wondering whether he will go so far as to stage political show trials...