One black day in the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Nobody bothers to find out whether Graham Greene, Jean-Paul Sartre or Alberto Moravia are members of any kind of writers' association. In the Soviet Union it is different. This explains the significance of what has now happened to Russia's most important and powerful writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. On Wednesday it was officially confirmed that he had been expelled from the Writers' Union. On November 4th he was expelled from his local branch at Ryazan, at a meeting which he himself attended. Two days later the decision was confirmed by the board of the Russian writers' union in Moscow. Solzhenitsyn himself was not then present; Alexander Tvardovsky, editor of the liberal journal Novy Mir, is said to have argued in his favour.

In the Soviet Union, membership of the writers' union is indispensable if a writer is to get his work published. If he does not belong, his position is comparable to that of a worker in the west who is deprived of his union card in an industry where there is a closed shop. Until the late 1920s writers of various points of view were allowed to express their views in the Soviet Union.

Between 1928 and 1932 the literary scene was dominated by a group of militant Russians. So when a comprehensive union of Soviet writers was created in 1932, this was at first greeted as a liberal move. In fact, during Stalin's period, it became an instrument for party control over the entire output of Soviet writers.

The writers' union is a powerful body. It has several thousand members. It runs a newspaper, a publishing house and several literary magazines. It gets money not just from membership dues but also from a percentage on books published, plays performed and so on. It owns houses in Moscow as well as in the country. It does not act simply as a friendly society providing old-age pensions and health insurance for its members. It gives a writer who is not in trouble many advantages that his western colleagues might envy. It can give him accommodation in a rest-house where he can work in peace. It enables him to make contact with his readers through lecture tours in factories and offices. And so on. But if a writer refuses to conform, he not only loses all these perks; he is deprived of the possibility of exercising his profession at all.

In principle, membership of the union is not indispensable in order to get published. After all, a young titan must to some extent first make his name before he can become a member. But for an established author to get thrown out of the union is the formal and official stamp of disgrace.

A writer can in fact be squeezed or silenced while he still holds his union card, because the ideological section of the party's central committee, either through the ministry of culture or the writers' union, has the decisive say on what is to be published and in how many copies. When ideological questions are involved, the circulation of a book is not determined by popular demand. A book may be sold out in a day and still not get a second printing, or it may not be published at all. The government's censorship office, the Glavlit, can hold it, suggest alterations, and in one way or another prevent it from seeing the light of day.

The case of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a depressing illustration of this control. His first famous book, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” was allowed to go to press only after Mr Khrushchev himself gave the green light in 1962. His memorable short story, “The House of Matryona,” was published afterwards. But since then the conservative critics have gained the upper hand and Solzhenitsyn has been unable to get his books published in Russia since the early 1960s.

Prominent writers are a privileged section of Soviet society. Men like Boris Pasternak can survive a period of disgrace by living on their savings. Young men can take a job outside literature and go on writing in their spare time. Those who refuse to conform can write for the “drawer”—for posterity—or, in the case of the younger rebels, for underground publication. They can all show their work to their friends. Manuscripts circulating in this way sometimes find their way abroad. This is what happened to Solzhenitsyn's later works—“Cancer Ward” and “The First Circle.” They were published in the west without the author's blessing, but his dissociation from their publication abroad was not strong enough for the Soviet authorities, who made it the main charge against him.

Expulsion from the union may not be enough to frighten writers. This is why Sinyaysky and Daniel were put on trial and deported in February 1966. There is a ghastly logic in this return to stalinist methods. What is or is not published in the Soviet Union has a political significance. The appearance of Ehrenburg's “Thaw,” Dudintsev's “Not by Bread Alone” and “On Sincerity in Literature” by the critic Pomerantsev were all signs of political relaxation after Stalin's death. The publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was also a symptom; so is the present silencing of Solzhenitsyn.

In a country where there is no open political debate literature tends to provide a substitute. The mistake of Stalin's heirs was to believe that they could allow more freedom to novelists and critics while stifling debate outside the literary world. Stalin simply frightened everybody into obedient orthodoxy. It may be hoped that his successors, although resorting to his methods, will not be able to frighten people the same way. But the conservatives now in power can gag the most creative of Russia's writers.

From The Economist print edition, Nov 11th 1969