Memory day

Nicola, I very much like Mayakovsky, as a personality and as a poet, but one has to admit that he was often a rabble-rouser, in the very worst sense, for the Bolsheviks. Merely recall these lines from his poem "150,000,000":

Into the backs of those who flee [the Revolution],
I shoot my Luger!*

* Luger - literally, Parabellum,  a synonym for this type of pistol.

Nicola, I would submit to you that it's hard to excuse this kind of behavior (basically supporting the murder of anyone perceived as a "counter-revolutionary"), especially from someone so gifted, a true poetic genius. And let us please note, Mayakovsky was not a peasant, far from it, he came from the privileged classes. Moreover, throughout his life he gloried in the aestheticization of violence and liked to have himself photographed looking like a rarefied, Russian version of Mussolini. (Bald head, stern features, looking like he was born not of woman but from a rock.) None of this is accidental, Nicola. It's all well and good to have a fondness for certain intellectuals, who have won our hearts through their genius, but it's quite something else to overlook their very obvious faults. My favorite poet, for example, once noted in his diary that he wondered if the Jews should not be exterminated. I mean, this is heavy stuff. He was writing in the nineteenth century, long before Hitler or Nazism, but still... it makes one pause and it should make one pause. Just because someone is a great artistic genius doesn't necessarily mean they're worthy of making serious political decisions or right in espousing a particular political cause. It doesn't mean they're innocent, in other words. It doesn't mean they used their poetic voice wisely or well all the time.

Furthermore, as to the question of social class, even Solzhenitsyn came from the kulak class, not the ordinary peasantry. His maternal grandfather was a very wealthy farmer - he and his family lived in a mansion, he drove a Rolls Royce (one of the nine or so existing in Russia at that time, I believe). And I never heard Solzhenitsyn making excuses for the political positions of fellow writers like Mayakovsky or Babel or whoever, quite the contrary. Like de Gaulle, for that matter like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, it could be said that Solzhenitsyn believed first and foremost that "talent confers responsibility" - not only towards one's contemporaries on this planet, but towards posterity as well. The role of the writer is sacred in Russian history.

Elisabeth, first of all, I didn't said that Mayakovsky was from peasants. I mentioned only Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn. So, please, don't pervert my words.
 It's also seems to be that we have a slightly different position about this situation. Besides, I think, that you are too exaggerating my words. I simply said that any genius has a peculiar presumption of innocence. If we will just have a look at the past, we would saw there a plenty of genius people, who changed their political and social views dramatically, from radical liberalism to rigid conservatism. I will not even start to name this people, this list is endless. I also think that Mayakovsky simply didn't understood with what people he became engaged. If you and I would have been engaged with him at that time, we sure have explained him all about new regime. Apparently, he didn't find those kind of people and we know what happened to him in the end(suicide). The problem is that we are both not genius. We can have a realistic look at all things. This is our advantage. Moreover Mayakovsky, as I know didn't participated in Red Terror, repressions etc. So, I think we need try to understand this people. And finally, we are the humans, so we need try to understand motivations and prevent such a bad things in a future.
 I think that the main forgiveness from Solzhenitsyn was "The Gulag Archipelago". We don't need any forgiveness from him. This book is a total repentance and forgiveness, in my opinion.

Nicola, I did not seek to pervert your words, either intentionally or unconsciously. I was merely pointing out that many Russian intellectuals, in fact the majority of the most famous Russian intellectuals, came from privileged backgrounds - even if their antecedents were with the peasantry, it was often in the pre-Emancipation past (Chekhov's grandfather was a serf, but he grew up in the middle class, and received a solid education).

I do think we are completely at odds in our view of genius and the responsibility genius confers. You seem to think that genius confers no responsibility whatsoever, and that in fact it is wrong for ordinary mortals like ourselves (non-geniuses) to call geniuses to account. In which case, it is useless and worse for us to call people like Hitler or Stalin to account. Because those men were also geniuses of a kind, albeit very evil geniuses.

But of course, you seem very reluctant to admit that genius itself can come in different forms and guises. It's not necessarily artistic, you know, and when it is artistic it isn't necessarily politically savvy or prescient. People like Osip Mandelshtam and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were of a rare breed - artistic geniuses who had the ultimate insight into and visceral hatred for illegitimate and terroristic political regimes. Unlike you, I don't read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago as a call for forgiveness. On the contrary, in his searing indictment of Gorky, and for that matter, in his searing indictment of the entire Soviet Communist party and all its works (never before has any political regime been subjected to such scathing and intellectually astute criticism, such merciless, bitter sarcasm and vitriolic humor as in Gulag), I read Gulag Archipelago first and foremost as a CALL TO ACTION. In these volumes, which remember, were written back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the evil empire was to all appearances still secure, Solzhenitsyn was not asking his compatriots to forgive. He was asking them to REVOLT.

Elisabeth, if we'll begin to delve into this issue more deeply, we'll not finish our light dispute about this difficult subject ever. I'm talking only about the fact that any genius have a peculiar presumption of innocence. But I didn't finish my idea till the end, that's why you probably have a little misunderstood me. Any presumption of innocence has, on my opinion, very strong restriction - human blood. And those "genius", that didn't passed this restriction, no longer have any justifications from us.

In which case, it is useless and worse for us to call people like Hitler or Stalin to account. Because those men were also geniuses of a kind, albeit very evil geniuses.

Dear Elisabeth, I did not said that. Yes, Hitler and Stalin are the people of enormous power, excellent manipulators and the players of the highest degree. Moreover, I think that Stalin was even a bit more cunning. But this is not relevant to our conservation. I told you about other kind of people, a kind of intelligentsia(intellectuals) people. People who had not participated in executions, repressions, in the Red Terror, brilliant poets, writers, scientists, directors etc. But at the same time people who, unfortunately, for one reason or another, have supported the regime. We will never understand the reasons why they did it. And this is their tragedy. But Elisabeth, if you and I, for example, are trying to understand them, understand their motivations, understand why they did those things, it doesn't mean that we support their choice, isn't it?  And that's exactly what I wanted to say.

I was merely pointing out that many Russian intellectuals, in fact the majority of the most famous Russian intellectuals, came from privileged backgrounds - even if their antecedents were with the peasantry, it was often in the pre-Emancipation past (Chekhov's grandfather was a serf, but he grew up in the middle class, and received a solid education).

Elisabeth, where did you found this information? Of course it was a big number of intelligentsia(intellectuals) from aristocracy and nobility. But not the majority, especially in 20th century.

Nicola, I completely agree with you that those who actually spilled blood themselves are obviously guilty and worthy of whatever harsh sentencing posterity metes out, up to and including the death sentence. I was only suggesting that a poet like Mayakovsky, or for that matter, a writer like Gorky (both of them very distinguished, Mayakovsky I think more talented ultimately than Gorky) were guilty not of directly spilling blood but in the moral sense of supporting the Bolshevik October Revolution and not only making excuses for it (as in Gorky's case when he visited the White Canal, which was being built by slave labor - he described it as a wonderful feat of communist ingenuity, in so many words) but in actually supporting and sometimes even applauding and/or glamorizing the violence behind it (Mayakovsky, in the poem I cited, "150,000,00" not to mention Babel in Red Cavalry in which this writer repeatedly aestheticizes and even romanticizes physical violence against other human beings in the name of the revolution). It's all well and good to say, yes, the murderers are guilty, but what about their collaborators? I ask you. How do we resolve this dilemma?

I think your own attitude is typically Russian and therefore Romantic where Russian writers are concerned - you can see that some of these people might have made serious errors, but you don't presume to hold them to account for them. This is fine, since no one is asking for Mayakovsky or Gorky or Babel to be tried (post mortem, no less) before an international tribunal, found guilty, and sentenced to death (after death!) for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. This wasn't my point. My point was only that... Many Russian intellectuals, some of them the most outstanding intellectuals and talents of their generation, were indirectly or even sometimes directly implicated in Bolshevik crimes. It's okay to raise that point, isn't it? I mean, isn't it worthy of at least a modicum of thought and consideration?

As for great Russian literature, it is essentially gentry literature, and everyone who has studied it at university understands that much at least. Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, even Mayakovsky for that matter, all came from the gentry (i.e., the greater or lesser nobility). Someone like the Jewish Osip Mandelshtam stands out for the very fact that he was Jewish and middle class. Chekhov, too, came from the middle class. But when we speak of the middle class, in the Russian context, this also means a very privileged class, if only because some 80% of the Russian population at the turn of the twentieth century was still defined as peasant, and most of this population remained impoverished and uneducated, despite rising rates of literacy throughout the last decades of tsardom.

Maksim Gorky actually belonged to a very rare breed of Russian writer before the October Revolution, because he was both proletarian and peasant in his background. But that, in turn, played a large role in his celebrity in Russia, and later, in the Soviet Union. The fact of the matter is, most famous Russian writers and intellectuals did not come from either the working class or the peasantry. Some of them did, naturally after the October Revolution, but with the exception of Gorky I can't think of a single one who's worthy of being on the current reading list of graduate students of Russian literature.  

Elisabeth, I didn't thought that liberals can be so bloodthirsty. If we would follow your idea till the end, then all that brilliant intellectuals, who stayed in the USSR and supported the regime in different ways, are responsible for all the crimes, that took place at that time? I don't think so, although of course they have some responsibility for that crimes, but I don't think that we, in our relatively calm times, have a right to judge them. Of course they made a wrong choice, I totally agree with you. But who will be evaluate their crimes? Who the judges?

Elisabeth, I have a compromise solution, let the History to evaluate them, they all died long time ago, most part of that people are already forgotten, let's again remembered them and read their books. I'm talking not only about those who stayed in USSR, also about those who emigrated. A big number of great writers, poets, directors, musicians, etc.

I don't agree with you specific attitude, my position is typically a human position without any national features and restrictions. Perhaps my evaluations are seems to be too soft for you. But I've just tried to understand those people, nothing more.

Elisabeth, I didn't thought that liberals can be so bloodthirsty. If we would follow your idea till the end, then all that brilliant intellectuals, who stayed in the USSR and supported the regime in different ways, are responsible for all the crimes, that took place at that time? I don't think so, although of course they have some responsibility for that crimes, but I don't think that we, in our relatively calm times, have a right to judge them. Of course they made a wrong choice, I totally agree with you. But who will be evaluate their crimes? Who the judges?

Elisabeth, I have a compromise solution, let the History to evaluate them, they all died long time ago, most part of that people are already forgotten, let's again remembered them and read their books. I'm talking not only about those who stayed in USSR, also about those who emigrated. A big number of great writers, poets, directors, musicians, etc.

I don't agree with you specific attitude, my position is typically a human position without any national features and restrictions. Perhaps my evaluations are seems to be too soft for you. But I've just tried to understand those people, nothing more.

Normally I would agree with you, Nicola, that we should let bygones be bygones, the only problem... and it really sticks in my throat... is that if you let people like Gorky and Babel off the hook, so to speak, then you're letting down all those Soviet writers, Russian and non-Russian, who refused to kowtow to the Soviet system, even if it cost them their lives, even if it cost the lives of those nearest and dearest to them. I mean writers like Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and so on and so forth. The list of writers who would not bow their necks to Lenin or Stalin or any of their successors is actually quite long. And I have only listed writers who did not emigrate (Tsvetaeva chose to return from emigration). The list of Russian writers who chose emigration or were forced into it because they would not applaud the Soviet regime would take another post - Evgenii Zamiatin, most outstandingly in the first decade of forced political exile, the 1920s; Joseph Brodsky, in the early 1970s. To my mind, these two political exiles virtually encapsulate the history of the Russian emigration, and its valiant stance against the Soviet regime for almost a century. But of course that's leaving out the most important writer of all, and the most political, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who literally risked life and limb in composing and publishing Gulag Archipelago, in which the millions of victims of Lenin and Stalin, both dead and living, were finally given a voice. As a result the KGB actually attempted to assassinate him, and he was ultimately deported to the West by force.

So... sorry, but I can't excuse Gorky or Mayakovsky for their political shenanigans. They were not innocents, they were playing with real human lives, after all, and at some level they must have known it. Of course they knew it, it was the Russian Revolution, for God's sake! Everybody who was anybody, and they were anybodies, knew that the future course of Russian history was entirely on the line, and consequently, that the course of millions of lives was at stake. I can only imagine if we were discussing German writers who stayed in Germany and prospered while Hitler was in power. What outrage would be expressed, what disgust! Well, excuse me, but where exactly is the difference?

"We must put an end once and for all to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life."

Leon Trotsky, 1918, as quoted in Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West , London: Penguin Books, 2006, p. 148.

Nicola, you don't think that Gorky and Mayakovsky and Babel and their coevals heard statements like this? You think they were deaf, dumb, and blind to the new political scene and its wider implications? These geniuses, these poets, these great writers... they couldn't see what was coming, even when they were warned, straight to their faces, that it was coming?

Elisabeth, it seems to be that in out light dispute between two irreconcilable liberals, I looked as a "defender of a evil"(Mayakovsky, Babel, Erenburg, Gorky, Bulgakov.....). Well let's continue our interesting discussion .

Of course they knew it, it was the Russian Revolution, for God's sake! Everybody who was anybody, and they were anybodies, knew that the future course of Russian history was entirely on the line, and consequently, that the course of millions of lives was at stake.

Elisabeth, you are amaze me with your confidence. Why are you definitely sure that they knew about it? How can you so confidently talk about it? I'm just amazed!

Nicola, you don't think that Gorky and Mayakovsky and Babel and their coevals heard statements like this? You think they were deaf, dumb, and blind to the new political scene and its wider implications? These geniuses, these poets, these great writers... they couldn't see what was coming, even when they were warned, straight to their faces, that it was coming?

Yes, I believe, that people can make mistakes, starting from just innocent mistakes, then to mistakes, that even can change their own life's. Intelligent, creative and even genius people are not an exception from this list. The main thing is to understood in right time that you've done a mistake and fix it. And if we prefer, for example Wagner's music, I think that, we shouldn't abandon his music, only because of his different controversies(about Jews, etc.). Elisabeth, I suggest to differentiate the works of the genius(writers, poets, etc.) and their personal qualities and attitudes. This is a very important addition to our conservation, I think that, although we are both liberals, but we have a very different view about this problem. I rigidly separate for myself personality and political, social views with the creative life of the person. And if we would evaluate those people with this law, then no problem. And after all this I can say, that I simply like the works of Mayakovsky, and for me doesn't matter his personal views. First of all, for me he is a great poet.

I hope that you are solidarity with me.

Well, Nicola, I think we are less far apart than you believe. I am perfectly able to separate a great writer's creative achievements from his political beliefs and actions, otherwise I would not have said that I like Mayakovsky and his poetry, or for that matter, that my favorite poet is Charles Baudelaire, who at one point in his diary (composed in the 1850s and early 1860s), noted almost en passant that perhaps the Jews should be exterminated. Now there's a statement I find absolutely atrocious and appalling. And I don't doubt that Baudelaire was anti-Semitic and politically reactionary in the very worst sense of the term - but then, so was Richard Wagner, and I am like you, I love Wagner's music even if I know intellectually that the man who created this music was probably deeply evil. I say that about Wagner because I don't think he was emotionally disturbed or mentally ill (which I think was certainly the case with Baudelaire from childhood on). Richard Wagner is probably the evil genius par excellence in the arts.

But you're probably right, maybe I've been sounding awfully harsh and over-critical in my recent posts. I do think we have to take into account writers' biographies, their mental and emotional states, their own particular and in some instances very peculiar personal backgrounds - in the effort to understand why they chose a particular political stance and either stuck to it, or, as in Mayakovsky's or even Blok's case, apparently became disillusioned with it. The only problem is, that most collaborators with evil regimes don't get even half this amount of consideration. And personally I find Babel, Gorky, and the numerous Soviet hacks who followed them quite distasteful. I don't find them interesting as personalities and I find their art either coarsely imitative (Gorky) or flat-out revolting (Babel, Gladkov, etc.). The sole exceptions are Blok and Mayakovsky, both of them outstanding artists, and both of them, as previously noted, expressing doubts about the new regime towards the end of their lives.

Elisabeth, you are more and more agree with me, while I become more and more agree with you. Good tendency! I would be honest with you, and must say to you that you before last reply a little bit confused me. Especially your uncompromising words about those people(Mayakovsky, Erenburg, Gorky, etc.)

Now I understand your position more clearly. And I totally agree with all words, that you wrote in your last post. Of course we, as a humans must be a little bit calm and consistent in our evaluations of those geniuses. Must try to go to the essence of man, his experiences, etc.  Also, let's do a little footnote about those difficult times (1917-1922). That brutal period of the Russian History.

Elisabeth, I think, that after our long and interesting discussion, two irreconcilable liberals have agreed for the first time and found finally(I hope!) normal and common consent.
It was a big pleasure for me to talk with you.

It was a great pleasure to talk with you, too, Nicola. I only regret that the conversation, inevitably, has to end. Perhaps we can take it up again in some other thread, but only time will tell!

I do have a human side, even if I sometimes come across as very harsh and unrelenting. That's because first and foremost I love literature, and not history. History is cruel, it must be said, while literature is forgiving. Not all-forgiving, but forgiving nonetheless, especially to those who have talent.

Okay, I'll cop to being so interested in the discussion that I failed to stop a bona fide diversion from the topic! May I suggest that Elisabeth and Nicola begin a new topic on the responsibilities of intellectuals under a criminal regime?

Esteemed Lisa Davidson,
Thank you for such a tempting and interesting request. Thank you also, that you hadn't stopped our hot and interesting discussion with Elisabeth.

But unfortunately, it sounds like little bit as a discussion by request (although by request of a very good and intelligent person).
I think that we, with Dear Elisabeth have already agreed all our main issues. Moreover, I also think that we have a very similar social and political views with a little inessential and minor differences. So, we haven't now any obvious subject of a discussion. Moreover, it seems to be that here, on this forum, the majority of an intelligent and educated people are also have a similar to both of us views. (Liberal - democratic, Human rights oriented, personal liberty oriented, existential oriented views, etc) And this is absolutely clear and understandable for me, because main amount of an intelligent people on this interesting forum are from democratic, free and civilized countries.

I can only hope, that maybe someone else, with another position about this difficult problematics (intellectuals & regime) revive this interesting discussion;)
Then, I'll surely support this conversation with a great pleasure.

Nicola.