War, repression, ban on publishing 1941-1956

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Zoshchenko volunteered and wanted to go to the front, but he was denied permission by the medical commission. Then, together with his son, he joined a fire brigade and stood watch on the roofs of Leningrad at night. At that time, the writer was also publishing in newspapers and magazines—writing propaganda pieces and anti-fascist feuilletons. In September 1941, Zoshchenko was sent to evacuation in Alma-Ata—he was allowed to take only the bare essentials with him. Most of the writer’s luggage was taken up by drafts of The Keys to Happiness. In 1943, he moved to Moscow, where he worked at Mosfilm—writing scripts for war films. That same year, the writer finished The Keys to Happiness and changed the title of the story to Before Sunrise. The work was published chapter by chapter in the magazine October starting in August 1943, but was soon banned by party decision. Zoshchenko began to be criticized in the press and accused of contempt for readers and distortion of Soviet reality.

From the article “On a Harmful Story for the Magazine Bolshevik”: “The entire story Before Sunrise is permeated with the author’s contempt for people. Judging by the story, Zoshchenko did not meet a single decent person in his life. The whole world seems vulgar to him. Almost everyone Zoshchenko writes about are drunks, crooks, and debauchees. This is a dirty spit in the face of our reader. This rude and disdainful attitude towards people he propagates in his story, slandering our people, distorting their everyday life, savoring scenes that evoke deep disgust.”

In April 1946, Zoshchenko, along with other writers, was awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945,” but the attitude of the party leadership towards him was negative. He was especially frequently criticized by party bureau member Andrei Zhdanov. Three months after the award, the magazine Zvezda reprinted the children’s story “The Adventures of a Monkey” (first published in 1945 in Murzilka), and it turned out that “Zoshchenko, entrenched in the rear, did nothing to help the Soviet people in the fight against the German invaders.” From then on, “his unworthy behavior during the war became well known.”

Events then unfolded very quickly.

On August 9, at a four-hour meeting of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) in the Kremlin, Stalin subjected the work of a number of cultural figures to disparaging criticism. In particular, he stated that “the Soviet people will not tolerate the poisoning of the consciousness of youth” by such writers as Akhmatova and the “preacher of lack of ideas” Zoshchenko.

On August 10, the newspaper Culture and Life published articles by Nikolai Maslin “On the Literary Magazine Zvezda” and by Vsevolod Vishnevsky “The Harmful Story by Mikh. Zoshchenko.” Both publications stated that, judging by Zoshchenko’s story “The Adventures of a Monkey” published in Zvezda, “it is better for a monkey to live in a cage than among Soviet people.”

On August 14, 1946, the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) issued a resolution on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad, in which the editorial boards of both magazines were subjected to the harshest devastating criticism for “providing a literary platform to the writer Zoshchenko”—the magazine Leningrad was closed permanently.

On August 15, 1946, all Leningrad writers were gathered as if they were conscripts on alert. Urgently, without warning, without explanation. In Komarovo, where many writers rested and worked at their dachas, a bus was even brought in from the city.

Within a few hours, the entire city’s writers’ organization gathered in the huge white-columned hall of Smolny, along with the city party activists. As soon as they sat down, the presidium—an oblast committee synod headed by the Central Committee secretary Zhdanov, who had arrived from Moscow—rose silently on stage with faces worn only at funerals. Everyone became even more alert. And when Zhdanov approached the podium and embraced it with his well-groomed plump hands, no one had any doubt left: trouble was coming.

Zhdanov began without preamble, immediately stunning the audience with the news of the just-adopted resolution, which stated that both Leningrad literary magazines “are conducted in a completely unsatisfactory manner,” as they abound with “ideologically harmful, idea-less works.” Then followed specific examples—with names and prosecutor-like sinister accusations of “kowtowing to the West,” “slander,” “apoliticism,” “pessimism and decadence”...

But the main culprits were Akhmatova, “whose poems ‘express the tastes of old salon poetry, frozen in the positions of bourgeois-aristocratic aestheticism and decadence,’” and Zoshchenko, who with his stories seeks to “disorient our youth and poison their consciousness.”

At that time, such accusations threatened arrest, and everyone suddenly remembered that neither Zoshchenko nor Akhmatova was present in the hall, meaning they were not invited, which could mean the worst for both. Moreover, Zhdanov, unrestrained in his expressions, immediately switched to personal insults. He called Akhmatova “a mad lady, flitting between boudoir and prayer room,” “neither a nun nor a harlot,” and Zoshchenko “a coward,” “vulgarian,” “libeler,” and “scoundrel of literature.”

The hall listened, frozen with horror. Why did the new purge, which the country had not seen since the late 1930s, begin precisely in Leningrad, which had endured the harshest trials during the war? Why were the main targets Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, whose literary authority was especially high in literary circles? And why, finally, did a little-known children’s story by Zoshchenko, “The Adventures of a Monkey,” provoke such indignation?

On August 27, on the advice of close friends, Zoshchenko wrote a letter to Stalin. But, contrary to the accepted canons of the time, he did not repent of mythical sins but tried to defend his honor. The ending of the letter bordered on a challenge: “I have never been a literary scoundrel or a low person... This is a mistake.”

After the resolution and Zhdanov’s report, Zoshchenko was expelled from the Writers’ Union and deprived of his means of subsistence. The writer was not only stopped from being published—Zoshchenko was completely erased: his name was not mentioned in the press, and even publishers of works he translated did not indicate the translator’s name. Almost all literary acquaintances ceased relations with him.

According to Simonov, “the choice of targets for the attack on Akhmatova and Zoshchenko was connected not so much with them personally as with the dizzying, partly demonstrative triumph in the atmosphere in which Akhmatova’s performances in Moscow took place, and with the distinctly authoritative position Zoshchenko occupied after returning to Leningrad.”

Writers were puzzled not without reason; everyone was confused because Zoshchenko was mainly accused not of his satire but of some tiny children’s story. Could two or three pages for children really have caused such a storm of supreme anger? There must have been some reason after all...

The reason, apparently, really existed: it is enough to recall that even before the war Churchill called the USSR a “Bolshevik monkey house”—and Stalin never forgot such things—and then compare the dates: on March 5, 1946, the hated British prime minister gave a speech in Fulton that marked the beginning of the “Cold War,” and then, a month or two later, the story “The Adventures of a Monkey” appeared in Zvezda. Of course, Stalin must have understood that Zoshchenko had never even heard of those old Churchillian words, but the Kremlin mountaineer could not forgive any offenses, even those inflicted on him by a ridiculous coincidence and without any intent.

From 1946 to 1953, Zoshchenko was forced to engage in translation work. After Stalin’s death, the question of restoring Zoshchenko to the Writers’ Union was raised, with Simonov and Tvardovsky speaking in favor. Simonov was against the formulation “restoration.” In his opinion, to restore means to admit one’s mistake. Therefore, Zoshchenko should be accepted anew, not restored, enrolling only those works that Zoshchenko wrote after 1946, while everything before should be considered, as before, literary rubbish forbidden by the party. Simonov proposed accepting Zoshchenko into the Writers’ Union as a translator, not as a writer.

In June 1953, Zoshchenko was readmitted to the Writers’ Union. The boycott ceased for a short time.

In May 1954, Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were invited to the Writers’ House, where a meeting with a group of students from England was held. The English students insisted on being shown the graves of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, to which they were told that both writers would be presented to them alive.

At the meeting, one of the students asked how Zoshchenko and Akhmatova felt about the 1946 resolution that was ruinous for them. Zoshchenko’s answer boiled down to the fact that he could not agree with the insults directed at him, that he was a Russian officer with combat awards, that he worked in literature with a clear conscience, that his stories could not be considered slander, and that his satire was aimed against pre-revolutionary philistinism, not the Soviet people. The English applauded him. Akhmatova answered coldly: “I agree with the party’s resolution.” Her son, Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov, was imprisoned.

After this meeting, devastating articles appeared in newspapers, and Zoshchenko was reproached: instead of changing as the party prescribed, he still did not agree. Zoshchenko’s speech was criticized at writers’ meetings, and a new wave of harassment began. At a meeting where Moscow literary authorities specially arrived a month after the meeting with the English, Zoshchenko was accused of daring to publicly declare disagreement with the Central Committee’s resolution. Simonov and Kochetov tried to persuade Zoshchenko to “repent.” His firmness was not understood. It was seen as stubbornness and arrogance.

Transcript of Zoshchenko’s speech at this meeting:

I can say—my literary life and fate under such circumstances are over. I have no way out. A satirist must be a morally pure person, and I am humiliated like the lowest scoundrel... I have nothing further. Nothing. I do not intend to ask for anything. I do not need your indulgence—neither your Druzina, nor your scolding and shouting. I am more than tired. I will accept any fate other than the one I have.

Soon articles appeared in the English press stating that the trip to the USSR dispelled myths about the impossibility of free and easy discussion in this country, and attacks on Zoshchenko ceased. However, the writer’s strength was exhausted; depressions became more frequent and longer, and Zoshchenko no longer had the desire to work. Upon reaching retirement age, in mid-August 1955, the writer submitted an application for a pension to the Leningrad branch of the Writers’ Union. However, only in July 1958, shortly before his death, after long efforts, Zoshchenko received notification of the appointment of a personal pension of republican significance (1200 rubles).

The last years of his life the writer spent at his dacha in Sestroretsk.

Sources:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoshchenko,_Mikhail_Mikhailovich

https://www.culture.ru/persons/9974/mikhail-zoshenko

http://zoschenko.lit-info.ru/zoschenko/bio/ruben-zoschenko/vhozhdenie-v-literaturu.htm

https://mozgokratia.ru/2017/07/mihail-zoshhenko-hronika-obyavlennoj-smerti/