A Literatura Sob Stalin

Resenha do livro The Soviet Writers’ Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority Under Stalin, by Carol Any (Northwestern University Press: October 2020), 336 pages, escrita por Saul Morson: What exactly was the Soviet Writers’ Union? Like all unions in the USSR, it existed not to pressure authorities on behalf of its members but, quite the contrary, to transmit party orders. If writers obeyed, they earned material rewards out of the reach of ordinary citizens; but if they did not, they would be humiliated or worse. Proclaimed in 1932, the union began with 2,200 members. By the time Stalin died in 1953, 2,000 had been arrested, three-quarters of whom were executed or perished in labor camps. The dead included Isaac Babel, Boris Pilniak, Osip Mandelstam, and many other significant talents. While Stalin was alive, the union did not publish a directory because, as Carol Any points out in the present study, “directories would have served as reminders of those who had been erased.” (...) Writers, like other professionals, were “cadres,” a word with no precise English equivalent. A “cadre” was more than a mere functionary, and “cadres” (in the plural) were more than human resources: the term carried numerous implications, such as dedication to communism, membership in an honor group, pride in being entrusted with important work, and a lifelong mission. “Cadres decided everything,” Stalin once proclaimed, a slogan that meant that individuals decide nothing. (...)Since the party line often shifted, one could find oneself accused of errors that, at the time they were made, were not errors at all. The party constantly invented new mistakes, whether in ideas, practices, or phrases, so that one could never free oneself from the risk of humiliation. One sign of this sort of shame culture is the constant creation of new offenses, usually applied retroactively. No matter how many times the cadre manages to overcome his, he must always overcome them yet again.