The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

The repressed edition—a first effort on the history of American literature in the Russian language—was conceived by the authors in two volumes and written with great love and profound knowledge. The second volume was near completion at the time of the crushing of the first volume. But after the scandal, the materials for the second volume were rejected and destroyed without any discussion. (“I lament the fact, that we were not permitted to complete the second volume,” said Startsev many years later. “They could have castigated and abused us later, but the book would have remained!”)

After the reprisals against the Americanists, there came charges of “cosmopolitism” and the exclusion of a number of Jews who were Communists from the party. The “working-over” proceeded as follows. A commission would be formed within the Communist Party of the institute which would divide amongst itself the principal works of the accused, read them and elicit “ideological errors” which were evidence of the author’s obeisance to the West. All of this would be consolidated and presented at a Party meeting. The overall picture would be solid and convincing, and everyone would be amazed how it was that such a cosmopolite malefactor could do his foul deeds within the walls of the institute without punishment. The “malefactor” of course would try to defend himself. But this was quite difficult to accomplish. His students and admirers suddenly “having seen the light” in the best case would blink their eyes in confusion or, in the worst case, join the pack of enraged dogs in the frenzy of pursuing their game. Then everything would be presented at a general Party meeting where, as a rule, the unanimous decision would be: “Expel from the Party and remove from work.”

Today, after the passing of so many years, it is worth contemplating by what means such unanimity was achieved. It cannot be denied that elements of fear and faint-heartedness played a role in this. After all, we lived in an atmosphere of all-penetrating government terror against which struggle was impossible. However, it was more complex than that. We had all been raised to respect the collective, the mass, the opinion of the majority, to reject individualism which had become a word of censure, so that in the end we had totally lost our individual face. It would never even enter our heads to defend

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an opinion against the opinion of the majority, the embodiment of which we believed was the Party, or more precisely, the Party leadership. Therefore, mass psychosis, even though organized and “pushed down” from the top, gripped and convinced substantial numbers of people.

I will refer to the story of one of the contemporary members of the Party executive committee, E.M. Evnina, a member of the foreign literature division. In her words one of the most shameful acts of her life for which she is ashamed even now was connected to the “case” of Tamara Motyleva. When the first “cosmopolites,” Iakovlev and Kirpotin, were expelled, E.M. reacted rather indifferently because she was not especially familiar with their work, simply believing the report of the investigative commission and what was said in the executive council. Having mindlessly voted, E.M. went on vacation, but having returned to Moscow in a month learned that the case of Motyleva had come up at the last executive meeting.

Though many considered Tamara to be an unprincipled chameleon and called her a “dry old stick” and a pedant, E.M. knew that she had a great capacity for work, clarity of purpose, was very erudite and had a command of several foreign languages. She had been an exemplary university student, always on the honor roll and maintained these qualities in her scholarly work. Upon hearing that Motyleva was being expelled from the party for having made mistakes in her doctoral dissertation, E.M. was extremely surprised since she always considered her a strong scholar and a “correct” communist.

Evnina and Motyleva worked in the same department and, while never having been close friends, knew each other quite well. Naturally, Motyleva turned to Evnina for aid and advice. Their conversation took place in the home of Motyleva in the presence of her mother, an old woman, doctor by profession, who fiercely insisted that it were not Tamara’s mistakes that were the cause, but her nationality. After all, Ania Elistratova, a fellow student of Tamara’s, was not being “worked over” by anyone. Tamara cut her mother short several times, returning to the main theme of the conversation. “I would like to limit it to a public censure rather than expulsion,” she would repeat. E.M. thought that there were no grounds even for public censure. They parted with the understanding that E.M. would defend this position.