The Writer in Modern Russia

This formula has long been a commonplace; and it certainly held true during the nineteenth and into the first half of the twentieth centuries. In that era, the word “writer” carried weight and significance. Alexander Pushkin, the nineteenth century Russian genius—poet, intellectual, and, by many counts, European—earned the dubious honor of having the czar himself as his personal censor. In other words, the writer was respected! In other words, he was feared!

Half a century later, the Russian reading public fell into two camps: devotees of Tolstoy, and disciples of Dostoevsky. The role of these writers in forming the worldviews of generations was enormous. The fates of both these classical writers were fraught: Dostoevsky was condemned to penal servitude, and Tolstoy was excommunicated, by decree of the ecclesiastical authorities of the church. In 1901, the entire country was reeling from the news of this unprecedented event.

Very few important writers in Russia have managed to avoid clashing with the authorities. Classical Russian literature had stored up a deep reservoir of humanism, and writers often fell afoul of the powers-that-be, who were harsh, and at times brutal.

After they came to power, the Soviet authorities were in need of support from writers. In the first years, however, Soviet power recoiled even from writers who sympathized with the Revolution, such as Gorky. In 1922, Lenin issued a decree banishing 160 writers and cultural figures. They were sent off on two ships, which came to be known as the Philosophers’ Ships, to Stettin (now Szeczin). This was how the new dispensation struggled against non-conformist thinkers. Later, the struggle against ideological non-conformity in the USSR assumed more extreme forms: trials, prison terms, executions.

But it is often writers, journalists, public figures, and sometimes scientists and scholars, who become a mouthpiece for the interests of the individual. And I want to stress that this is the case not only in Russia.

During the Soviet era, the authorities were determined to “tame” writers. And, it must be said, this effort frequently met with success. The Soviet era produced a particular type of writer—one who wrote on command. When the Soviet Writers’ Union was established, its members generated works of literature that responded to the demands of the authorities, or were at least ideologically acceptable. In turn, writers received various kinds of state subsidies and incentives, from government dachas and state prizes, to huge print runs of books, far outstripping the ability or desire to consume them. These writers were fulfilling a “social mandate.” But there were also writers who resisted the lure of “contractual relations” with the government. Not infrequently, their fates were tragic.

Potboilers and underground literature

Today, the landscape has changed. There are several reasons for this. Perhaps the most significant one is that people have stopped reading. The status of the writer has diminished considerably. At one time, Russia was thought to be the “most well-read country in the world,” which was a source of great pride to culture-managers. But the question of what Russians read, apart from the literary classics, remained unasked. And what they were reading was pulp literature, potboilers written by hack writers.

In the nineteen sixties, a phenomenon known as “samizdat” emerged. People began to reproduce and distribute books themselves, typing them at home in multiple copies, or photocopying them. These were books that were not printed by Soviet publishing houses, but imported from abroad. Some of these books had even been banned! People who were caught engaging in this activity were persecuted, severely punished, or sometimes sent to prison. One of the articles of the Criminal Code—the law against “storing and distributing forbidden literature”— carried a sentence of seven years in prison. I was lucky—I just lost my job. Such is the heroic history, tinged with the comic, of the lovers of modern literature.

Cheers and grumbles

When the present era arrived, at the beginning of the nineties, all the books that had once secretly passed from hand to hand—works of Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky, Daniel, Nabokov, Poplavsky, and many other marvelous writers living in Russia and abroad—were published and distributed widely. At this point we can stop and rejoice. And we will stay happy for about ten years. But the happiness will end, because the picture changes radically.

Reading matter was now readily available. We no longer passed on a rare and valuable little book to a friend, to be read overnight. With one click, the computer can produce a book, whether Soviet or anti-Soviet, pro-American, or anti-American. Or any other kind of book.

The consequences of this new situation are varied and unpredictable. The thrill of the “forbidden” has been stripped away, and today, reading the formerly proscribed Solzhenitsyn, you pay more attention to stylistic faults and imperfections than to the explosive power of his protest. You begin to make a distinction between the political significance of the writer and his artistic worth.

Should the author try to write something appealing and enticing enough to make the darn reader buy the book? Should she make adjustments to cater to the reader’s taste? And what kind of taste does the reader have anyway? What is on the menu today? Sweet? Savory? Exciting? Fanciful? There are whole armies of marketing experts at work, trying to predict what the reader will want in the next season, what color he prefers for a book cover, what subjects are most engaging, which corners of life he prefers not to delve into at all...

This is a central question for the writer: for whom does she write? The question is, in fact, somewhat contrived. The writer writes, in the first place, for herself, because she likes the activity. I say this on the basis of my own experience. But there are some who write for humanity, who write for certain groups of people, who write for children, who write for... (fill in the blank).

And it has always been this way, everywhere; not only in Russia.

In addition to the changes described above, the sheer numbers of writers have increased. There are not dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands, but countless numbers. During the Soviet era, the Moscow Writers’ Union had about three thousand members. Now, in the age of the Internet, the age of cyberspace, anyone who knows the alphabet can produce a poem, a novel, a research article. Anyone who writes is already a writer. There are thousands upon thousands of them. And yet, out of this enormous Internet cloud, some truly talented writers have come forth. I find all of this very exciting.

A desacralization of the profession of writing is underway, and this is a good thing. New genres that are free, not bound to strict canons, are welcome. It’s not at all necessary that the writer be a bearded sage, operating within a predictable framework. Let her be a free seeker, pursuing adventures that unfold in texts, among new ideas that are born out of countless minds...

If you want to serve the powers-that-be, be my guest! If you don’t want to, don’t. You can earn money pursuing your profession—books are published, and purchased, and the censor behaves far more decently than he did during the Soviet era: he affixes a sticker to a book indicating its age-appropriateness, and he won’t tolerate cursing. If a writer wants to protest against the powers-that-be, or butt heads with them, one is always free to go to an unsanctioned demonstration and watch the police break it up. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I feel absolutely free in my profession.

Translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon

© Ludmila Ulitskaya, all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with ELKOST International literary agency, Barcelona, Spain. Photo © ELKOST literary agency