The Thinking Reed

And so we see in the USSR, as in the West, a social degradation of the intelligentsia, but we must consider also the fact that this is happening against a background in which new middle strata are being formed. While the bulk of the intellectuals are being turned into simple proletarians, certain groups of them, directly connected with the statocratic upper stratum, are on the contrary strengthening their position and obtaining fresh privileges. On the one hand these new middle strata confront the intelligentsia, but on the other they form part of it. In relation to the mass of the intelligentsia they can be seen as a sort of aristocracy of labour. In the ideological struggle they perform an important function in defence of the existing order, but their relation to the ruling circles is also heterogeneous. These middle strata consist not only of the upper circle of the ideological and repressive apparatus but also of technocrats, business managers, some scientists and also the auxiliary personnel of the nomenklatura and the ‘commercial aristocracy’ — people who enrich themselves by battening on our economic difficulties. This entire motley mass is certainly linked very closely with the Party bureaucracy but it also possesses its own interests — professional ones included — which it sometimes has to defend against its own protectors.

Furthermore, these middle strata retain fairly close links with ‘the lower orders’, who frequently influence them. Where the intelligentsia working in the humanities are concerned, the rulers constantly strive to integrate their leading representatives into the middle strata. At the same time the reverse tendency operates, with a section of the middle strata constantly drifting down to the level of ‘the lower orders’, sinking to their position. The political ideal of the middle strata is a very moderate reformism, but a political ideal does not determine all one’s thinking, even one’s thinking about politics. Consequently the middle strata, as the intermediate link between the statocracy and the intelligentsia, form that field in society where a bitter struggle is constantly being waged, ‘for the souls of men’, between the government ideologists and the dissidents.

These, broadly speaking, are the social conditions in which the cultural-political process is advancing in the USSR. Before immediately proceeding to expound ideas and events, we must say something about the role of another factor which has had an important influence on the character of social thought: censorship.

On Censorship

It would really be more correct to speak not of censorship but of the censors. Formally the censor’s function is performed by ‘Glavlit’, but it is also carried out by editorial boards themselves. In addition, a variety of higher organizations constantly intervene in the work of those subordinate to them, granting ‘approval’, making observations and, in short, playing the part of censors. What matters, however, in the last analysis is not so much the structure of the censorship apparatus as the influence it exercises on the country’s spiritual life.

The well-known historian A. Nekrich wrote: ‘Censorship, which was introduced by Lenin as a “temporary measure”, has become one of the pillars supporting the edifice of the Soviet regime.’100 What we are concerned with, though, is not only the bans and administrative controls but the combined effect of many different phenomena connected with the censorship — its influence on culture as a whole. The most important feature of the Soviet censorship (one mentioned by A. Sinyavsky) is, perhaps, that it ‘forbids silence. It not only prescribes what you should write and how, it also insists that you do write. Pasternak, for instance, fell silent; Babel was silent; and this was a crime [emphasis added].’101 It is this which ultimately renders the censorship all-powerful in its way, for it leads to the practice of selfcensorship.