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The Challenge of Glasnost: Ogonek's Handling of Russian Antisemitism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

John Garrard
John Garrard*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Extract

When antisemites call me a Jew, I never deny it. My feeling is that if Jews are persecuted in my country, then I too am a Jew. In fact, I am not Jewish. But as long as Jews are persecuted, I will never refuse to be a Jew.

Vitalii Korotich, chief editor of Ogonek

Revolutions devour their children; Nationalism eats its parents.

Jack Gallagher, late Professor of Imperial History, Cambridge University

American citizens have had over two hundred years to judge the differences between liberty and license, but for Russians freedom of expression is a new, heady, unsettling experience. Glasnost has not only permitted them to print liberal, democratic sentiments, but opened up a Pandora's Box of suppressed anger and frustration at what many Russians consider the systematic destruction of their culture during the Soviet period. An ugly side to this eruption of patriotic outrage has resulted in the public expression of violent hostility to the tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the Soviet population who are Jewish. It is in this context that Ogonek's sophisticated handling of certain unsavory aspects of the Russian nationalist movement deserves special attention. Under the guidance of its chief editor, Vitalii Korotich, the weekly magazine has not limited its coverage to such neo-Nazi organizations as Pamyat (Memory) and “Otechestvo” (Fatherland), but focussed attention also on the important role in fomenting antisemitism being played by certain prominent members of an immensely important but little known organization, the Russian Republic Writers' Union. Ogonek has handled both sources of antisemitism with the traditional weapons of democratic pluralism: exposure to public scrutiny, and deflation through satire and ridicule.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 19 , Issue 2: Special Issue - Pamyat , Fall 1991 , pp. 228 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. On the Russian Republic Writers' Union, and its parent organization, see John and Carol Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers' Union (The Free Press: New York, 1990). that this speech was delivered to a national congress of VOOPIK, from which I have suggested that the Pamyat organization emerged.Google Scholar

2. Edvard Radzinskii, “Rasstrel v Ekaterinburge,” Ogonek, No. 21, 1989. The site of the murder, Ekaterinburg, was renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924 (Iakov Sverdlov had died in 1919). Russian nationalists (not Radzinskii himself) have tried to put the entire blame for the brutal murder on Sverdlov, who was Jewish. The Soviet press has now published evidence that shows what has long been assumed or suspected by Western scholars; namely, that it was Lenin who ordered Sverdlov, one of his closest associates, to organize the murder of the imperial family.Google Scholar

3. Following the lead of Literaturnaia gazeta and several leading journals, the editorial staff at Ogonek managed to have themselves declared officially the “founders” (i.e., owners) of the magazine in the Fall of 1990, after a difficult struggle with conservative members of the Party's Central Committee. The staffs of these publications have taken over control from the Soviet Writers' Union, the Party, or other government organizations, according to the provisions of the new Law on the Press, which became effective on August 1, 1990. This law introduced the concept of “registering” periodicals by “founders” (uchrediteli), who determine their editorial policy. For a copy of the entire law, see “O pechati i drugikh sredstvakh massovoi informatsii in Vedomosti s'ezda narodnykh deputatov SSSR i Verkhovnoqo Soveta SSSR, 1990, No. 26, item 492. The new Law on the Press seems destined to create a revolution in the Soviet media. A new law on freedom of information is promised for January 1, 1991.Google Scholar

4. I related the substance of this interview in a paper at the AAASS national convention held at Chicago in November 1989. See also Mihajlo Mihajlov, “A Talk with Ogonek's Chief Editor, Vitalii Korotich,” Radio Liberty's Report on the USSR, Vol. 1, No. 9 (March, 1989), pp. 29–37.Google Scholar

5. Nina Andreeva, a Leningrad chemistry teacher, achieved notoriety through a long letter to the editor, entitled “Ia ne mogu postupitsia printsipami,” published in Sovetskaia Rossiia, March 13, 1988. Andreeva quoted approvingly the conservative views of then Politburo member Egor Ligachev, and many people believed that her letter had been edited and promoted by an anti-Gorbachev and anti-glasnost faction at the highest level of the Party. A month later Pravda published an unsigned although authoritative reply, very likely written by Gorbachev's close ally Aleksandr Iakovlev, countering Andreeva's reactionary, anti-Western, and partly antisemitic views. This response was taken, correctly as it turned out, as a sign that Gorbachev was still firmly in control and that Ligachev had been outmaneuvered and outvoted.Google Scholar

6. See the article by Anatolii Golovkov and Aleksei Pavlov in Ogonek, No. 21, 1987.Google Scholar

7. According to information quoted by Julia Wishnevsky in her excellent article, “The Emergence of ‘Pamyat’ and ‘Otecheslvo’,” Radio Liberty Research, RL 342/87 (August 26, 1987), p. 17. The article relies in part on information provided by Dr. Howard Spier of the Institute of Jewish Affairs in London. Wishnevsky does not mention a possible link between VOOPIK and Pamyat. For more on literary and other forms of antisemitism in Russia today, see the following important articles: Josephine Woll, “Russians and ‘Russophobes’: Antisemitism on the Russian Literary Scene,” Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1989; Maurice Friedberg, “The Euphoria of Glasnost and Jewish Fears,” Midstream, April, 1990; Nina Tumarkin, “Russians Against Jews,” The Atlantic, October 1990.Google Scholar

8. See, for example, Rasputin's speech in Gorky (July 1987), as reported in the conservative journal, Nash sovremennik (Our Contemporary), No. 1, 1988. It is significantGoogle Scholar

9. The Presidential Council is being dropped as Gorbachev keeps backing and filling to increase his authority and to divert attention from his own failures to improve the Soviet economy. However, Rasputin continues to enjoy great prestige as a spokesman for the political right.Google Scholar

10. See, for example, the long review by Vladimir Lakshin in Izvestiia, December 4 and 5, 1986. Lakshin's review also deals with Chingiz Aitmatov's novel Plakha (The Scaffold).Google Scholar

11. Vladimir Vigilianskii, “‘Grazhdanskaia voina’ v literature, ili o tom, kak pomoch chitateliu Lva Nikolaevicha,” Ogonek, No. 43, 1988.Google Scholar

12. Literaturnaia Rossiia, March 27, 1987. This paper, edited by another literary bureaucrat, Ernst Safonov, has become one of the chief organs of conservative and often antisemitic articles. It is an official publication of the Russian Republic Writers' Union.Google Scholar

13. Particularly noteworthy was the publication in Ogonek, No. 40, 1987, of an excerpt from Grossman's novel Zhizn' i sud'ba (Life and Fate). Grossman's posthumously published works (he died in 1964) have become major targets for Russian nationalists and political conservatives. See also the fascinating material on the arrest and fate of Isaak Babel, published in Ogonek, No. 39, 1989.Google Scholar

14. Benedikt Sarnov, “Bor'ba za pravo pisat' plokho,” Ogonek, No. 23, 1987. See also Tatiana Ivanova. “Ne sotvori kumira” Ogonek, No. 35, 1987; and “Otrovennost' za otkrovennost',” Ogonek, No. 46, 1987. Ivanova has continued publishing excellent pieces on both the past and present literary scene; see, for example, “Tragediia predannosti i ee komediia,” No. 21, 1989; and “Perekhod cherez boloto,” Ogonek, No. 25, 1989. Also important is the revealing article by Tatiana Kuzmina, “Odin den' v Soiuze pisatelei SSSR,” Ogonek, No. 51, 1987. Note the echo in the title of Solzhenitsyn' s Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha (1962), an expose of life in the Gulag.Google Scholar

15. Natalia Ilyina, “Zdravstvui, plemia mladoe, neznakomoe…,” Ogonek, No. 2, 1988. Further on the widespread corruption of the Soviet literary and publishing system, see: Vladimir Vigilianskii's article referred to above in note 10; and Stanislav Rassadin, “Koe-chto o professionalizme,” Ogonek, No. 48, 1988.Google Scholar

16. Those who signed this notorious letter were: Mikhail Alekseev, Sergei Vikulov, Sergei Voronin, Vitalii Zakrutkin, Anatolii Ivanov, Sergei Malashkin, Aleksander Prokofiev, Petr Proskurin, Sergei Smirnov, Vladimir Chivilikhin, and Nikolai Shundik.Google Scholar

17. “Po stranitsam zhurnala TsK VLKSM Molodaia gvardiia, No. 8, 1989,” Ogonek, No. 36, 1989. Page references to this issue of Molodaia gvardiia are given in my text.Google Scholar

18. “Vsezaedino! Stseny VI plenuma pravleniia Soiuza pisatelei RSFSR 13–14 noiabria 1989 goda,” Ogonek, No. 48, 1989.Google Scholar

19. The name referred to the April 1985 plenum of the Central Committee at which Gorbachev, installed the previous month as the new General Secretary, had announced his intention to introduce a series of reforms in Soviet society, later known as glasnost and perestroika. In August 1989, I interviewed at the Writers' Union club in Moscow the leader of the April Committee, Anatolii Pristavkin. He mentioned the harsh treatment he and his colleagues had been receiving from the leading literary bureaucrats in the Russian Republic Writers' Union, and of the Moscow branch itself.Google Scholar

20. Arro's puzzlement was perhaps deliberately ingenuous because he understood perfectly well that Voronin's vast print-runs were threatened precisely by liberalization of the Soviet publishing system. As I said earlier, Bondarev's motives for attacking liberal writers and specifically Russian writers of Jewish background certainly include jealousy of their popularity and fear for the declining print-runs of his own works. Literary bureaucrats like Bondarev have never had to worry about the actual sales of their works, because they are paid enormous advances that bear norelevance to supply and demand. Further on the Soviet publishing system, see Chapter 6, “Purity and Profit,” of Inside the Soviet Writers' Union.Google Scholar

21. It is worth noting here that conservative Russian writers have begun to follow the example of Pamyat by excluding the press and other undesirables from their meetings. For example, journalists from Ogonek, and from other periodicals and a television program called “Vzgliad’ (“Viewpoint”), were prevented from attending a patriotic meeting organized by Kuniaev's journal Nash sovremennik. See article by G. G. Rezanov and T. Khoroshilova in Komsomolskaia pravda, February 2, 1990.Google Scholar

22. For evidence of Zhukov's and Kozhinov's membership in Pamyat see the list of members appended to the Wishnevsky article referred in note 7 above.Google Scholar

Among the signatories were several writers whose names have already cropped up in this article: Petr Proskurin, Tatiana Glushkova, Sergei Vikulov, Stanislav Kuniaev, Vasilii Belov, and Valentin Rasputin. At least three of seven members of an official delegation invited to the United States by USIA in April 1990 had signed the letter: Stanislav Kunyaev, Oleg Mikhailov and Viktor Likhonosov. Ernst Safonov, chief editor of Literaturnaia Rossiia, in which the “letter of the 74” appeared, was also a member of this same group.Google Scholar

23. I have used the excellent translation in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, XLII, 19 (1990), p. 11.Google Scholar

24. Marina Katys, “Toska po Stalinu, ili ‘Novyi AvangardMarksizma’,” Ogonek, No. 13, 1990.Google Scholar

25. Aleksandr Terekhov, “Portret na pamiat',” Ogonek, No. 20, 199 0.Google Scholar

26. “Ne mogu molchat',” Ogonek, No. 14, 1990. Tolstaia's mockery of Bondarev and his conservative allies in the Secretariat of the Russian Republic Writers' Union can be partly explained by the fact that they had earlier used their veto power to block her admission to the Writers' Union (membership is really essential for a successful fulltime professional writing career). They were angered by her liberal views, but also by her great popularity as a prose writer both in the Soviet Union and the West (popularity in the West is automatically viewed by conservatives as tantamount to treachery). But, following reforms of the Union's procedures, the Moscow organization gained the authority to admit new members without reference to the Russian Republic branch, and invited Tolstaia to become a member.Google Scholar

27. See my letter, co-signed by Carol Garrard, in the Sunday New York Times, May 27, 1990.Google Scholar

28. See the report of Korotich's remarks made on October 9, in “The Press and Perestroika,” At the Harriman Institute, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1990.Google Scholar

29. Adam Michnik, “The Two Faces of Eastern Europe,” The New Republic, November 12, 1990.Google Scholar