Books in Brief

Meetings with Pasternak , by Aleksandr Gladkov (Harcourt Brace, 223 pp., $8.95). This book is, as its title implies, not a biography, but a Boswellian account of conversations between the two writers, beginning in the early days of the Second World War. Pasternak was just past fifty at the time, and he had not even begun to work seriously on the novel on which (in the West, at least) his reputation now rests. Pasternak in those early days still had a curious sort of naïveté—not, heaven knows, about the nature of the Soviet regime, but about the ubiquitous Socialist Realist cant which, to everyone else’s hilarity and his own intense embarrassment, he often found himself treating as if it could be argued with rationally. Since Meetings with Pasternak was not written for a Western audience (it was originally published in Samizdat), some of what Gladkov says is a bit hard to follow on its own; fortunately, the excellent introduction and notes by Max Hayward, the translator, do much to put it in context and Pasternak in perspective. Westerners tend to think of Pasternak principally in terms of his last years, in the Khrushchev period. This memoir, dealing mainly with earlier years, shows us something of the bizarre relationship between Pasternak and Stalin; Stalin apparently held the poet in a sort of superstitious awe, which saved Pasternak from Mandelstam’s fate no matter how outspoken he was. For Pasternak was, in a sense, his generation’s Solzhenitsyn (“Everything changes under our zodiac, only Pasternak remains Pasternak,” as the saying went in the Thirties). And the differences between them say a lot about the changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union. In a quiet, understated way, Gladkov explains how Stalin himself helped to create the open dissident movement that has plagued his successors: “It seemed inconceivable [after the War was over] that everything would not soon be cleared up in some way and a normal state of affairs restored. Reason found it hard to accept that such an arbitrary method of rule could settle down as a system. As in previous years, every manifestation of it was still seen as a misunderstanding or as a ghastly accident of some kind.” As long as it seemed possible to believe that, most Soviet intellectuals were willing just to work along as best they could; but hope after hope was dashed. They looked for a relaxation after Stalin had consolidated his power; and none came. They looked for one as soon as the dislocation caused by the War had been sorted out; and none came. They looked for one after Stalin’s death; and one appeared to come, and then was brought to a sharp end. And when that happened, they ceased to hope and started to fight.

Linda Bridges

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Meetings with Pasternak , by Aleksandr Gladkov (Harcourt Brace, 223 pp., $8.95). This book is, as its title implies, not a biography, but a Boswellian account of conversations between the two writers, beginning in the early days of the Second World War. Pasternak was just past fifty at the time, and he had not even begun to work seriously on the novel on which (in the West, at least) his reputation now rests. Pasternak in those early days still had a curious sort of naïveté—not, heaven knows, about the nature of the Soviet regime, but about the ubiquitous Socialist Realist cant which, to everyone else’s hilarity and his own intense embarrassment, he often found himself treating as if it could be argued with rationally. Since Meetings with Pasternak was not written for a Western audience (it was originally published in Samizdat), some of what Gladkov says is a bit hard to follow on its own; fortunately, the excellent introduction and notes by Max Hayward, the translator, do much to put it in context and Pasternak in perspective. Westerners tend to think of Pasternak principally in terms of his last years, in the Khrushchev period. This memoir, dealing mainly with earlier years, shows us something of the bizarre relationship between Pasternak and Stalin; Stalin apparently held the poet in a sort of superstitious awe, which saved Pasternak from Mandelstam’s fate no matter how outspoken he was. For Pasternak was, in a sense, his generation’s Solzhenitsyn (“Everything changes under our zodiac, only Pasternak remains Pasternak,” as the saying went in the Thirties). And the differences between them say a lot about the changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union. In a quiet, understated way, Gladkov explains how Stalin himself helped to create the open dissident movement that has plagued his successors: “It seemed inconceivable [after the War was over] that everything would not soon be cleared up in some way and a normal state of affairs restored. Reason found it hard to accept that such an arbitrary method of rule could settle down as a system. As in previous years, every manifestation of it was still seen as a misunderstanding or as a ghastly accident of some kind.” As long as it seemed possible to believe that, most Soviet intellectuals were willing just to work along as best they could; but hope after hope was dashed. They looked for a relaxation after Stalin had consolidated his power; and none came. They looked for one as soon as the dislocation caused by the War had been sorted out; and none came. They looked for one after Stalin’s death; and one appeared to come, and then was brought to a sharp end. And when that happened, they ceased to hope and started to fight.

Linda Bridges