The Thinking Reed

The film people were the first to appreciate this fact. At the Fifth Congress of their union, in May 1986, they threw out their old leaders and elected a new set who, in most cases, had been put forward as candidates without prior ‘agreement’ with the Party organs. Many participants in the congress spoke of what happened as a ‘revolution’, and in fact nothing like it had been seen before in the entire history of the cultural unions in the USSR. In Khrushchev’s time speeches no less radical had sometimes been made, but it had never been possible to oust the bureaucracy from the leadership of an organization. The new ruling body of the union, headed by Elem Klimov, undertook to prepare a fundamental structural reform of the whole system of film production. Klimov set new tasks before the union: not just to defend film-makers against the censorship, but to fight for decentralization of the industry’s administration.

The debates at the writers’ congress, in June 1986, were even fiercer. Liberal and left-wing authors criticized the censorship, corruption in the union leadership, and incompetent interference by state officials in cultural matters. However, thanks to the votes of provincial delegates, the conservatives managed to hang on to the key union posts. To ensure that provincial writers voted ‘the right way’, Party functionaries had been brought up to Moscow from certain towns to keep an eye on ‘their’ delegates, and although the presence of these outsiders was noticed at the congress nothing could be done about it. The progressive tendency later got its own back at the Russian theatrical union’s congress in December, when the old bureaucracy and persons connected with the Ministry were excluded from the key posts in the union that was formed at the congress itself to replace the All-Russia Theatrical Society.

Thus, the left and liberal intelligentsia not only became politically active but won control of two of the three leading cultural unions. This achievement soon had its effect on the general course of events. Tarkovsky and Lyubimov were invited to return to the USSR. The invitation, to be sure, came too late: Tarkovsky died in Paris while pondering whether to go back; and Lyubimov, who had established himself rather well in the West, said that he had already signed contracts for several years ahead and, in any case, would not be able to work in Moscow in the immediate future. (It is quite possible that what lay behind his reply was also a wish to wait and see how the situation developed in the USSR.) At the same time there was a marked change in film-hire policy. Tarkovsky’s films again appeared on our screens, and works by outstanding Western masters which had been considered ‘too complicated’ for the Soviet cinemagoer (such as Fellini’s 8 ½) were shown to a wide audience.

In these changes a very great role was played by the secretary of the Central Committee, Aleksandr Yakovlev, whom Brezhnev had appointed to take charge of culture and propaganda. Yakovlev had subsequently fallen into disgrace when he spoke out against Russian nationalism and upheld the traditions of the Khrushchev period — actions which led to his removal from the Central Committee apparatus and a posting as ambassador to Canada. But Yakovlev returned to Moscow under Andropov and emerged as one of the most energetic and consistent leaders of the reform movement. Such successes as progressive groups in the intelligentsia achieved were due in no small part to the fact that Yakovlev gave most resolute support to their demands.

In February 1987 the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers adopted a joint resolution enlarging the rights of the cultural unions. This document was drawn up by the Party and Government apparatus together with the leaders of the relevant unions and on the basis of their expressed wishes. Some questions, however, were not dealt with at all — for example, the organization of a publishing house for the film-makers’ union. It was regrettable, too, that intervention by higher authority was requested to secure an increase in the number of pages in the newspaper Sovetskaya Kultura. Such matters can and should be decided by the editorial board itself. Structural reform of the cultural organizations was not obtained, because their leaders, with the exception of Klimov, had no clear-cut programme for change. Most members of the governing body of the Writers’ Union simply feared change, and activists in the theatre union concentrated most of their efforts on getting jobs for themselves in the Ministry of Culture. Thus, despite the exceptionally favourable circumstances, supporters of the liberal tendencies among the intelligentsia achieved relatively little.