The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  Artemy Khalatov (left) with Maxim Gorky. Khalatov had led the effort to persuade Gorky to return to the Soviet Union

  ■ ■ ■

  The transformation of the arts and sciences and the creation of an integral censorship system provided the necessary conditions for the cultural revolution’s principal goal: the penetration of the skull of Comrade Pashka’s psychology and the filling of every nook and cranny of his mind with the Bolshevik ideological substance.

  The best kind of surgery was a purge, or a public confession before a general assembly of the congregation, and the best possible purge subject was the prototypical underground Bolshevik, Aleksandr Voronsky. Voronsky’s purge took place at the State Fiction Publishing House on October 21, 1933, four years after his readmission to the Party and a year and a half after the banishment of all Averbakhs. Asked “what Voronsky had done to root out ‘Voronskyism,’” he said: “Very little. I think that ‘Voronskyism’ is, in essence, correct.” Not everyone was happy with this answer, but he insisted that his political mistakes were distinct from his literary opinions. “I do not think these questions are connected to the opposition. I do not understand what the theory of immediate impressions has to do with Trotskyism…. And, as I said before, I have the same view of the psychology of literary creativity now as I did then, and consider it the only correct theory for Soviet art.”13

  Voronsky was not saying that he had the right to have views contrary to those of the Party: he was saying that the Party—unlike Averbakh—did not have an official view on the psychology of literary creativity. Ultimately, there was only one correct theory of anything, the correctness of any theory depended on what was good for the building of socialism, and the determination of what was good for the building of socialism was the job of the Party leadership. But when the Party leadership was silent, and Averbakhs were in power, it was better to give up altogether. “In the end, I arrived at the conviction that the right thing for me to do was to break my critic’s pen in two. And that is what I did.”14

  According to the purge commission, he had no right to do so. “You say that you broke your pen,” said one of the interrogators. “But that is not your decision to make. The Party must say to you: ‘No, do not break your pen, you must disavow your position on politics and literature, because, with your pen, you did great damage to the whole proletarian revolution, the Party and Soviet literature.’” But this was just the beginning. Since the Party made no distinction between private Makars and the big picture, making things right with the Party meant remaking oneself in its image. “Personally, I don’t doubt Aleksandr Konstantinovich’s sincerity,” said the director of the State Fiction Publishing House, Nikolai Nakoriakov. “But this admission of his errors took so much out of him that he has become inactive…. His breaking of his pen, which was a political weapon handed to him by the Party, will certainly be followed by the breaking of many other weapons and, ultimately, himself.” Voronsky needed to return to the ranks as a Party soldier, and he needed to do so sincerely.15

  Voronsky was willing, but he kept repeating that he could not say things he did not believe, while also claiming (unconvincingly, according to several inquisitors) that his beliefs would change by themselves if the Party issued a formal decree to that effect. While offering a full confession of his fall into heresy and subsequent reawakening, he proposed a general theory of the cultural revolution. “I have thought long and hard about what happened to me,” he said. “My answer is this: the central objective of our opposition was to struggle against the Central Committee and the Soviet apparatus…. And now I ask myself: how did it happen that I set such an objective? My answer to this question is as follows: I gave an incorrect answer to the question of the relationship between the mass movement … and the apparatus, democracy and centralism, democracy and the Party, the Party and its leaders.” This was, he argued, an old question. Bakunin had proposed mass struggle; the People’s Will had proposed conspiracies by the leaders; and Lenin had provided the answer by demonstrating that the leaders were the embodiment of the masses. Lenin’s early disciples (he went on) had constituted an organic body of believers:

  It was based on a certain mutual trust. No one told you that you had to do something in a certain way. You did it yourself, without any need for formal rules. And then after the revolution happened, in the early days, as you well know, spontaneity prevailed…. And then the Civil War ended, and the question of building arose. I saw that a large state apparatus was being built. I also saw that a mass, well-organized, and inclusive Party was being built. And so, the same questions regarding the relationship between mass struggle and the leaders, the class and the Party, the Party and the leaders—those questions arose again, and in this case I was not able to resolve them. It seemed to me that we were being weighed down by domesticity. It seemed to me that our apparatus, both the Party and state branches, was becoming too top-heavy. It seemed to me that the leaders were prevailing over democracy and centralism was prevailing over democracy—and from that everything else flowed.

  Everything else included his joining the opposition, signing various appeals, and taking an active part in the events of 1927:

  You see how things could unfold logically. If the apparatus is this way, if it is weighed down, if it is becoming alien, if it is becoming overly bureaucratic, then the building of socialism is out of the question, serious industrialization is out of the question, the real victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat is out of the question. That is how matters looked to me then, and I made my decision….

  So what happened next? Next, I realized that I had made a mistake. And what was my mistake? What made me realize my mistake? The thing that made me realize my mistake was collectivization and industrialization. When the industrialization and collectivization plan began to be implemented, I asked myself: okay, so if our apparatus is so very bad and so very bureaucratic, if Party leadership prevails over work with the masses and mass initiative, then how can this same apparatus move such a huge thing off the ground? It’s one or the other: either this whole thing fails, or my criticism is wrong.16

  In Voronsky’s telling, Stalin’s “revolution from above” was, indeed, from above, insofar as it was launched by the apparatus. It was also, indeed, a revolution, insofar as the apparatus managed to move such a huge thing off the ground. The second coming of the real day was significantly different from the first, but it was accomplishing the same goals: the building of socialism and the real victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The same was true of personal conversion: spontaneous “mutual trust” had been replaced by formal institutional obedience, but the commitment to organic wholeness (intolerance of ambivalence) remained the same. The point of the cultural revolution was to restore and universalize the original spontaneity by decree: to transform a sect into a church without losing innocence. Voronsky, who had once served as a volunteer in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, was again free of doubt and ready to serve.

  The success of the general enterprise—as suggested by the construction/conversion plot—was assured. But was this possible in the case of Voronsky? Was he, in fact, ready to serve again? Most members of the purge commission seemed impressed by his sincerity (and perhaps by his proximity to Stalin), but no one accepted his distinction between the political and the literary. “As for my literary views,” he said at the end of his confession, “I said before, and will say again, that I still consider my theoretical views correct, and cannot, at this time, renounce them. If someone were to come to me and say: ‘One way or the other, you must renounce them,’ I, to be absolutely frank with you, would not be able to do it.”

  Aleksandr Voronsky

  Did this mean that his confession was incomplete? And if so, was it incomplete because he had not fully “disarmed” or because, “at this time,” the Party had no clear position on Voronskyism? And what if the person coming to him were Stalin himself? The chairman of the purge commission (the Old Bolshevik, head of the
printers’ union, and Central Committee member, Boris Magidov) saved his best question for last:

  CHAIRMAN. What is the role of Comrade Stalin in our Party?

  VORONSKY. There is no need for you to ask this question, because, personally, Comrade Stalin and I have always been on the best of terms. Our differences of opinion were exclusively about matters of principle. I, like the Party as a whole, consider him our Party’s best leader and ideologue.

  CHAIRMAN. With this, let us conclude today’s session.17

  Voronsky had passed his purge trial and was retained in the Party.

  ■ ■ ■

  Fedor Kaverin had “passed the test of modernity” and earned his place in the House of Government by staging The Recasting (about the conversion of the redeemable). His subsequent attempt to tackle “the other side of the heart” had proved premature and resulted in a serious financial and creative crisis. His theater’s survival now depended on a new treatment of conversion. His last hope was Mikhail Romm’s The Champion of the World. As he wrote in his diary in May 1932, “I have to do everything possible to make sure this play takes off in the new building.” And as he wrote to the theater’s administrative director, Yakov Leontiev, “in this atmosphere of uncertainty, occasional general hostility, unwanted loneliness, and my own prickliness, the only breath of fresh air is my copy of ‘The Champion.’”18

  Mikhail Davidovich Romm (no relation to the film director) was one of Russia’s first soccer players, a member of the 1911–12 national team, Tuscany’s champion as a defender for Firenze in 1913, coach of the Moscow all-stars at the first “Spartakiad of the Peoples” in 1928, and a close collaborator of N. I. Podvoisky at Sports International. The Champion of the World was his first literary effort. It is set in the United States. A magnate named Ferguson sponsors an amateur boxer named Bob, who is training for a championship fight. Bob is a miner; his opponent, Crawford, is black. Ferguson’s plan is to use the fight in his campaign for governor. Crawford is the better boxer, but he receives anonymous threats and throws the fight so as to avoid “Negro pogroms.” Bob finds out about the plot and exposes Ferguson. Ferguson loses the election, blacks and miners find a common language, and the Communist Party gets more votes than usual. According to the censor’s memo, “the play shows the ugly chauvinism of the Americans, the plight of the oppressed Negroes, and the shameless political machinations of American capitalists.”19

  Most important, it showed a doctrinally unimpeachable conversion in an exotic setting perfectly suited for “nonliteral realism.” Kaverin was enraptured to the point of ecstasy, of delirious infatuation. As part of his preparation, he read Theodor Dreiser, Jack London, John Dos Passos, several brochures about sports and racism, and Lenin’s articles on the national question. He designed an important scene in a black club where Negro proletarians in bright clothes get together to sing “Deep River,” drink Coca-Cola, and eat corn and watermelon. As he wrote in his notes for the production, “culturally, the Negro population lags far behind the average level in America. Only the sailor, Strang, is able to establish contact with them by pointing to a way out of slavery in simple language. Strang shows them Soviet illustrated magazines, and when the whole crowd gathers around him, the political leaders who have been arguing with each other—the Zionist Almers, the chauvinist Hollis, and the appeaser Forrest—find themselves together, in one hostile group.” The culmination of the show was to be the fight scene as glimpsed from the locker room to the accompaniment of drums, whistles, loudspeakers, megaphones, and banging doors. During the intermission, the “noisy sensationalism” of the election campaign and championship fight was to follow the spectators to the foyer, café, and back to their seats. The singing of the “Internationale,” by contrast, was to be done with “convincing simplicity.” “Of help here should be the conspiratorial atmosphere in which the Negro workers listen to the new song, and the uncertain performance by Strang, who does not just strike up the tune, but slowly tries to figure it out.” The goal was to depict spiritual awakening by means of “good theatricality” and “forceful expressiveness.”20

  Romm was worried. “I am afraid that the stress on dancing is, on the whole, wrong,” he wrote to Kaverin on July 2, 1932, “and so is the stress on primitiveness, because American Negroes have left primitiveness behind, but have not yet arrived at urbanism.” What was needed was less theatricality and more simplicity. “Sport is about the vast expanse and clean lines of a stadium. Sport is about a simple movement, beautiful in its rationality and devoid of anything superfluous, cumbersome, or ineffective. Sport is about a simple, comfortable costume, a simple, healthy psyche, and simple, healthy relations between men and women.” The theater’s administrative director, Yakov Leontiev, was worried, too. After months of disagreement over the move to the House of Government, the need for a new aesthetic, and the new play, he had decided to resign. In his last letter to Kaverin, he wrote that his excitement about Romm’s play was not warranted “either by the general circumstances or by the quality of the play.” He warned Kaverin about the danger of misguided enthusiasms, but offered his continued affection and sympathy. “I am very sad about the state you are in.”21

  Kaverin persevered. By spring 1933, the production had been completed, and the censor’s approval was secured. The last remaining hurdle was a special review by the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. On March 4, 1933, Kaverin wrote in his diary:

  Very soon, in three hours or so, some very serious and important people will come here, to our theater: Stetsky, Bubnov, Litvinov, Krestinsky, Karakhan, Shvernik, Kamenev, Kiselev, and many others. They will come in order to see the dress rehearsal of “The Champion of the World” and decide whether we will be allowed to go ahead with the production. The show has no great sins, either political or artistic. The issue is America, about which the show has some tough things to say. In this tense moment on the world scene, diplomatic relations with it may require the removal of that toughness—or, simply put, the banning of the show for an indefinite period of time.

  My conscience is clear. And yet, I am very nervous. I am nervous because the plan for the year, derailed by the construction of the stage, which is still not quite finished, is unraveling and slipping through my hands. I feel awful about the seven months of work by the whole troupe (and, in my own case, almost a year). I am afraid that before such an audience, the actors will feel unsure of themselves, and the show will lose its vitality for reasons that have nothing to do with substance. Such important, but nontheatrical, people will not take this into account, and the accidental casualty will be the fate of the show that was supposed to be the start of our new life.22

  According to Aleksandr Kron’s version of Fedor Kaverin’s favorite dinner-table story, the important people came, “sat stone-faced through the whole show, and, when it was over, whispered for a long time among themselves and left with hardly a word of goodbye.” The show was put on hold, but Kaverin did not lose hope, and he eventually managed to reach the people’s commissar of foreign affairs, Litvinov, who lived upstairs in Apt. 14. Litvinov promised to come to a private performance:

  Several days later, a middle-aged man with extraordinarily intelligent and mischievous eyes in a broad face was sitting in the fifth or sixth row of the cold and empty theater with a winter coat draped around his shoulders. The performance was meant for him alone. There were no more than ten people in the auditorium, all theater employees or friends. They had received no instructions from Kaverin, but it was understood that they would not be looking only at the stage.

  The famous diplomat turned out to be a remarkably responsive spectator. He laughed, gasped, slapped his knees, and even wiped his eyes with his handkerchief several times. It was a joy to watch him. With each new act, hope grew.

  After the viewing, Fedor Nikolaevich walked over to the people’s commissar in his usual bobbing way and, smiling shyly, asked what he thought of the show. Maksim Maksimovich shook Kaverin’s hand warmly and repeatedly:

>   “Thank you for getting me out. With my awful schedule, I hardly ever make it to the theater. And, in this case, it was both business and pleasure—work-related and fun.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Very much. You know, I knew almost nothing about your theater. It’s been a while since I got so caught up in a performance.”

  “So, you think that we have succeeded in conveying, to some degree …”

  “More than some. It’s very accurate. That’s exactly how it works.”

  Fedor Nikolaevich beamed:

  “So, the show can be released?”

  Litvinov’s expression changed abruptly.

  “Absolutely not. Don’t you know, my dear fellow? Oh well, I guess you don’t. No, this is the worst possible timing.”

  “Maksim Maksimovich, but this is a catastrophe. So much work, so much money! We’ve used a whole train car’s worth of plywood …”

  Livinov burst out laughing. He could not stop for a long time. The train car’s worth of plywood had amused and touched him.

  “My dear man … A train car’s worth of plywood …”

  Suddenly, he turned serious, took Kaverin by the arm, and walked toward the exit.

  When Fedor Nikolaevich came back, he looked so happy that everyone thought there was still hope.

  “What a man! If only everyone talked to me this way …”

  The show was banned.23

  On November 16, the Soviet Union and the United States established diplomatic relations. On December 19, the Politburo issued a secret decision on the desirability of joining the League of Nations.24

  All millenarian eruptions—from Jesus to Jim Jones—take place in hostile surroundings, real or imagined. The Stalin revolution had been framed by the “war scare” in 1927, the Comintern’s turn against appeasement in 1928, the Wall Street crash in 1929, and the launching of Litvinov’s “collective security” policy in 1933–34. The immediate threat from Germany had resulted in the postponement of the potential threat from the rest of the capitalist world. The siege had been lifted, and the Stalin revolution was coming to an end. Fedor Kaverin had failed his test by the House of Government. The Champion of the World came too late.