Gulag

This is nothing but his fancy friends ringing all the bells and demanding, “Save the young man!” But he should be treated with forced labor, and no one will help him, no fancy friends. I do not know him personally, I know about him from the newspapers. And I am acquainted with the certificates. I’m suspicious about the certificates which deferred him from service in the army. I’m not a doctor, but I’m suspicious about it.¹⁴

Clearly, the trial was directed not just against Brodsky, but against the remnants of the independent intellectual class, with their connections, their suspected opposition to Soviet authority, and their scorn for “labor.” And, in a certain sense, those who organized the trial had hit an accurate target: Brodsky did oppose Soviet authority; he did feel scorn for pointless, fruitless labor; and he did represent an alienated class, a group of people deeply frustrated by the clampdown which followed the Thaw. Knowing this perfectly well, Brodsky was not astonished or surprised by his arrest, and was not flummoxed by his trial. Instead, he sparred with the judge:

JUDGE: What is your occupation?

BRODSKY: I am a poet.

JUDGE: Who recognized you as a poet? Who gave you the authority to call

yourself a poet?

BRODSKY: No one. Who gave me the authority to enter the human race?

JUDGE: Have you studied for it?

BRODSKY: For what?

JUDGE: To become a poet. Why didn’t you take further education at a

school where they prepare you, where you can learn?

BRODSKY: I didn’t think poetry was a matter of learning.

JUDGE: What is it then?

BRODSKY: I think it is . . . a gift from God.

Later, asked if he had any petitions to make to the court, Brodsky said, “I would like to know why I am arrested.” The judge responded, “That’s a question, not a petition.” Said Brodsky, “In that case I have no petitions.”¹⁵

Technically, Brodsky lost the argument: the judge condemned him to five years of hard labor in a prison colony near Arkhangelsk, on the grounds that he had “systematically failed to fulfill the obligations of a Soviet citizen, failed to produce anything of material value, failed to provide for his own upkeep, as is evident from his frequent change of jobs.” Citing statements made by the “Commission for Work with Young Poets,” the judge also declared that Brodsky—who would later win the Nobel Prize in Literature— was “not a poet.” ¹⁶

Yet, in another sense, Brodsky “won” in a way that previous generations of Russian prisoners could not have done. Not only did he publicly challenge the logic of the Soviet legal system, but his challenge was also recorded for posterity. A journalist took surreptitious notes at the trial, which were ultimately smuggled to the West. Thanks to this, Brodsky immediately became famous, in Russia and abroad. His behavior at his trial not only became a model for others to follow; it also inspired both Russian and foreign writers to petition the government for his release. After two years, release was granted, and he was eventually expelled from the USSR.

Nothing like this had happened while Stalin was alive. “People are as ever thrown behind bars and as ever transported to the East,” wrote Valentyn Moroz, a Ukrainian dissident historian, shortly afterward. “But this time, they have not sunk into the unknown.”¹⁷ And that, in the end, was to be the greatest difference between Stalin’s prisoners, and the prisoners of Brezhnev and Andropov: the outside world knew about them, cared about them, and above all could affect their fate. Nevertheless, the Soviet regime was not growing more liberal—and events moved quickly in the wake of the Brodsky trial.