The Thinking Reed

In 1960 Sappak wrote a long article for Novy Mir and in 1963, after his premature death, his book appeared. The main thing in it was ‘the idea of truth as the only language that television could speak, the idea, so to say, of steady, natural self-turning to truth…,176 Sappak’s approach, from the purely methodological standpoint, is as unusual as it is fruitful. He looks at television as a whole and tries to create a general theory of it. Consequently, for him, ‘the latest news’ or some reportage from a factory is of no less importance as an aesthetic event than a play or film series. This approach is perfectly well founded since television, unlike the cinema or the theatre, broadcasts continuously throughout the day, and the ‘ideal’ viewer should watch everything in succession and receive some sort of integral impression.

Sappak did not take sides in the argument between the advocates of television and its opponents. As he saw it, the trouble is not television itself — what matters is who is in charge of it. The possibilities of the new art are immense: a news programme, let us remember, is here also regarded as an artistic phenomenon; it too has to be presented, the announcers and the material have to be selected and the right way found for putting it across. But in the wrong hands television’s virtue turns into vice. Soviet television is a grand piano being played by a Neanderthal man. The instrument is too perfect — it is not suitable for the aims pursued, and merely betrays the nature of the barbarian who is using it. Analysing propaganda broadcasts, Sappak shows their ineffectiveness and even their capacity to produce the opposite effect to what was intended. Propaganda on television is self-exposing; it sobers people up. When an orator holds forth from the platform it is easy for him to play the demagogue. But when he comes, with the help of the sky-blue screen, into your home — when he has to talk to you as man to man, intimately — he proves helpless. It is harder to deceive someone when you look him in the eye. False intonations give you away:

We do not experience reciprocal feelings when, addressing us viewers, they repeat, pressing down the pedal, in moving tones: ‘Dear friends!’, ‘Dear friends!’… In general, we do not issue advances and guarantees of emotion. And when they say to us ‘Rejoice!’ we reply: ‘Somehow I don’t feel like rejoicing… ’177

The result of a broadcast is very often the opposite of its aim, but that result corresponds to its essence. Sappak concludes:

The TV screen unmasks a lie. However it tries to hide, it will stand out, it makes itself quite clear, it swells up, forcing us viewers to curse the evil thing and switch off the set. A demand for truth and honesty is the first article in television’s code of morality.178

Sappak’s theoretical views differ markedly from many Western conceptions of television and in my opinion are much less speculative and more original. But that is not the point. Ten years after Pomerantsev the talk was still of truth and sincerity. But of what, in essence, had all the critical and literary activity of that generation consisted of, if not of a struggle for truth!

De-Stalinization: The Literary Mirror

The Twenty-Second Party Congress gave a fresh powerful stimulus to de-Stalinization. The criticism of Stalin was now not ‘secret’, but rang out in open session. The struggle against Khrushchev begun in 1957 by Stalin’s former henchmen — Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov — who quickly lost influence, merely intensified the anti-Stalinist tendencies in the new leadership. Criticism of the ‘cult of personality’ remained a mighty weapon for Khrushchev in his struggle for power. At the Twenty-Second Congress he dealt his opponents a powerful blow. ‘After the drab Twenty-First Congress,’ wrote Solzhenitsyn,