The Many Voices of Vladimir Voinovich

The Many Voices of Vladimir Voinovich By Dragan Milivojevic* The fate of most outstanding Russian writers both in Tsarist and Soviet Russia has been perilous when their artistic endeavors followed their social and philosophical commitments. Solzhenitsyn's strident clamor for freedom and his subsequent repression was followed by Voinovich's satirical portrayal of totalitarian society on behalf of sanity and common sense. Both writers suffered social ostracism, and both were exiled from their homeland. In a peculiar way, their fates were interwoven as Voinovich stood up to defend Solzhenitsyn's right to artistic freedom and thereby caused his own downfall and exile. Vladimir Voinovich, a dissident Russian writer who is now residing in the United States, was born in the Tadzhik Republic in Stalinabad (now changed to Dushanbe) in 1932. His social and educational background are atypical for a Soviet writer. He worked as a cabinet maker and carpenter among other manual occupations, completing only five years ofthe ten-year gymnasium. His father was a journalist with literary ambitions, and his mother was a teacher. His literary career resembles that of Maxim Gorky and proletarian writers in the twenties for whom life was their only school. His entry into Soviet literature was quite different from that of other writers of his own generation; Yevtushenko, Voznesensky, Aksyonov, Kuznetsov, and others who were graduates from the Gorky Literary Institute and other institutions of higher learning. Twice he applied for acceptance to the Gorky Literary Institute, and twice he was rejected. After coming back from the Eastern regions ofthe Soviet Union and settling in Moscow he studied without much enthusiasm at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute for a year and a half. His life seemed to have led nowhere until 1961 when he wrote a patriotic poem, "March of the Cosmonauts"1 which became an overnight success and almost an official anthem of the Soviet space flight program. This poem brought him fame and recognition. •DRAGAN MILIVOJEVIC is a Professor of Russian inthe Department ofModern Languages and Literature at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. ' Also named. "Fourteen Minutes Until the Start." According to Voinovich the poem was written in fourteen minutes. "Incident at the Metropole." Kontinent, Number 2. 1977. p. 27. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW55 Dragan Milivojevic Immediately afterwards, Voinovich gave up poetry permanently and turned to prose with his story "My zdes' zhivyom" ("We Live Here"), published in "Novy mir," 1961, No. 1, and followed by "Khochu byt' chestnym" ("I Want To Be Honest"), published in the literaryjournal "Novy mir," No. 2, 1963. The time was auspicious since it was a liberal period in Soviet letters. Foreign writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Salinger, and Remarque were being translated into Russian. Tvardovsky was at that time the liberal editor of "Novy mir," and Khrushchev announced that the party would not interfere in the arts. Although "Khochu byt' chestnym" was written completely in the spirit of socialist realism, indicating certain imperfections in the Soviet society while maintaining that they could be corrected, the official reaction was negative. It was severely attacked by Illichev, Khrushchev's advisor, and Voinovich was reduced to a five-year silence. In 1967 his short novel, Dva tovarishcha2 (Two Friends) appeared. The official reaction to this work, unlike the previous story, was positive, and a promising career for him as a writer appeared to be assured. Few people knew at that time that Voinovich had started, already in 1963, his novel, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin. The pendulum in the Soviet literature had, in the meantime, swung again to the right with the arrest ofwriters Sinyavsky and Daniel in September, 1 965. Whatever illusions the liberal writers had about the continuation of liberalization in Soviet literature were now shattered. Voinovich's literary career was at that time upset by several incidents: his signature on behalf ofthe two arrested writers during their trial in 1966, and the circulation of Chonkin in Samizdat, that is to say, in typewritten copies of the novel circulating from hand to hand. His story ("By Way of Private Correspondence") also appeared in Samizdat.3 Finally, both works appeared in the West (In 'Tamizdat'—being published abroad). The first chapter of Chonkin...