Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain

14 The Pen Is Mightier . . .

14 THE PEN IS MIGHTIER . . . Crooked letters, but straight sense. —  Writers are respected, honored, and widely read in Russia, where they have long been regarded as the conscience of the nation. Because of the strict controls on what could be published, under tsars as well as commissars, Russian writers attempted to treat in their works subjects of political and social import that could not be discussed openly. That explains, in part, their importance in a nation that reveres the written word. Until the s, the vast majority of Russians were illiterate , and it seems as if the Russians of our time are trying to make up for all the books their ancestors were unable to read. Writers were privileged people in the Soviet Union, especially those who were members of the Union of Soviet Writers. Membership in the Union, as in the case of other professional unions, brought a number of perks, including access, in major cities, to the Houses of Writers with their good restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, at low, subsidized prices; the screening of foreign films; vacations at rest homes; month-long no-cost stays at rural retreats where they could write in peace and quiet; preference in assignment of housing; financial benefits; quality medical care; access to special food stores; and that highest privilege of all for the favored few—travel to the capitalist West. Foreign travel, especially to Western countries, was a special treat for writers, as it was for all Soviet citizens. In the early years of the cultural agreement, a few Soviet writers came to the United States, usually in groups accompanied by the Union’s English-speaking Freda Lurye, whose official role was listed as interpreter but who also served as political chaperone. Edward Albee and John Steinbeck spent a month in the Soviet Union in  under the cultural agreement, and Albee later recalled that they had had “freewheeling discussions with an entire spectrum of writers—from the brilliant, outspoken revisionist young to the stony-faced elders who had, with some honor or not, survived Stalin . . . and we had more than one night of vodka-drinking, table-thumping arguments with Stalinist holdovers in the bureaucratic apparatus of the Soviet Writers Union. It was an exciting time.”1 In a press conference with  . Edward Albee, in Mel Gussow, Edward Albee: A Singular Journey, A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, ), . American correspondents before departing Moscow, Albee described the Soviet writers he had met as “not depressed and not optimistic, but ironic” about their situation, and living in“isolation from the mainstream of contemporary writing.”2 Another American writer, Ted Solotaroff, had a somewhat different reaction when he spent a month in the Soviet Union on the exchange: What I sensed they got out of visiting American writers was, to them, our spectacular freedom to speak our minds. I mean, there we were, official representatives of the U.S.—sort of the equivalent of their Writers Union apparatchiks—who had no party line at all, in most cases, except the party of humanity, and who had the writer’s tendency to speak out on controversial issues. I did so often in the month I was there, and each time I could see how much I was envied. In other words, the exchanges enabled Soviet writers, intellectuals, students et al. to see that the “Free World” wasn’t just political cant.3 Other American writers who visited the Soviet Union in an attempt to end that isolation included, among others, John Cheever, James Dickey, E. L. Doctorow, Arthur Miller, and William Jay Smith. The isolation of Soviet writers was partly eased during the détente years of the s, when controls on travel to the West were somewhat relaxed and exchanges expanded. Some writers were allowed to accept invitations from American universities and to travel individually, rather than as members of a delegation, and without a Writers’ Union watchdog. Chingiz Aitmatov, the celebrated Kyrgyz writer, came to the United States in  on a State Department grant to attend the American premiere at Washington’s Arena Stage of The Ascent of Mount Fuji, a play he coauthored. As a sign of his status in the Soviet Union, he was accompanied, not by a political chaperone but by one of his English-speaking sons, Sanjarbek, who was then an analyst at Arbatov’s institute. (Another son, Askar, later became a deputy foreign minister in the independent Kyrgyzstsan, and is currently a senior adviser to the Kyrgyz president...