An old Russian tradition. Repression
There is no secret that during the Soviet time many writers, poets, actors were repressed. They were exiled or sentenced to be executed. The authorities have never been interested in the human position different from theirs. Nonconformist political views, honest expression of opinion about things, satire and irony of authorities, used in the artwork, did not end well for artists.
In this article we are talking about the Soviet period. The repression and persecution began before Stalin (but during his "reign" repression had the greatest radius) and continued even under Yeltsin. What do we see now? Whereas before people went into exile, now educators and artists are being labeled as foreign agents. Our government is saying that opinions of these people were paid for by the West [usually represents US and Europe] and that in general it would be good to revoke their citizenship. All because they express an "uncomfortable" position, spread different information, and, like writers of the past, sneer at the authorities and ridicule their actions. From what we all know, the foreign agents (here they are from left to right): Ekaterina Shulman, Yuri Dud, even Maestro [as followers call him] Ponasenkov came under that fine title. But you all know that the list of foreign agents is even longer. We decided to name the most recent and sensational ones.
Just as literature which denounced the authorities and in which nonconformist political views appeared was banned in the past, now various independent media outlets are banned: Dozhd, Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta and others. They too are foreign agents, they too are paid by the West, and they are just as inconvenient as single individuals.
Many people and publications that were declared foreign agents or closed down their business on the territory of the Russian Federation, like Soviet writers, leave Russia to continue their work elsewhere. And in the same way, underground information continues to spread.
Is it a purely Russian tendency to ban art and education, and to repress artists and educators?
If you were lucky enough to have a high-school literature teacher who told you how the most popular poets and writers were exiled or executed, then you know about some of the most famous figures, but there's a lot more than the school (or university) curriculum will tell you.
We will not tell you about Solzhenitsyn, Gumilev, Mandelstam, Likhachev and other famous ones that your teachers may have mentioned or that you may have known about on your own, as we think that most people know the fate of these artists. So we have highlighted the not so obvious individuals who were subjected to repression, exile and execution.
Dubovka Vladimir Nikolaevich – poet, writer, linguist, translator, literary critic. Winner of the Ya. Kupala Literary Award. He wrote fairy tales and stories for children.
For his poem For All Lands, All Nations of the World on July 20, 1930 he was arrested by OGPU [unified state political administration] in the Kremlin on the case of Union for the Liberation of Belarus (the case of the nationalist counter revolutionary anti-Soviet organization Union for the Liberation of Belarus, which was carried out in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1930-1931).
His sentence was extended several times: on April 10, 1931, he was sentenced to five years; in July, 1935, his exile was extended for two years; in 1937, he was arrested again and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
On February 16, 1949, he was arrested for the third time. In April 1949 he was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment by the Special Board of the Ministry of Security of the USSR.
Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya – editor, writer, poet, essayist and memoirist. In 1926 she was arrested on charges of writing an anti-Soviet leaflet. However, the leaflet was actually made by her friend, who simply used Lidia Korneevna's typewriter. Thanks to Lydia’s father she was released after 11 months in prison.
Lydia Korneevna wrote a novella called Sofia Petrovna, a story of the Yezhovshchina [the period of the most massive political repression], presented through the perception of a non-party Leningrad typist whose son was arrested. In it she tells how an ordinary person, not keen on politics, becomes aware of the mass terror around her.
Boris Pilnak – writer.
In 1926 he wrote The Tale of the Unshadowed Moon – based on rumours about the circumstances of M. Frunze's death, with a hint of Stalin's involvement. The story was on sale for only two days, then it was immediately withdrawn. Except for the confiscation of the entire print run, surprisingly, Boris Pilniak was not penalized.
But he was arrested on October 28, 1937, and on April 21, 1938, was convicted on a fabricated charge of state espionage in favor of Japan. The reason was Pilniak's stay in Japan, about which he wrote in his book The Roots of the Japanese Sun. On that charge he was sentenced to death and executed the same day in Moscow.
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov – prose writer and poet. He was arrested on February 19, 1929, for taking part in an underground Trotskyist group and for distributing a supplement to Lenin's Testament. As a "socially harmful element", he was sentenced to three years in a labour camp.
Trotskyism is based on theories of a deformed workers' state, permanent revolution and a continued commitment to classical Bolshevism. Rejects Stalinism and considers it as a harmful distortion of Bolshevism to the politically right.
In January 1937, Shalamov was arrested again for "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities". He was sentenced to five years in a camp.
On June 22, 1943 he was again sentenced to ten years for anti-Soviet agitation, his rights were also revoked for five years afterwards. The agitation consisted, according to Shalamov, of calling Bunin a Russian classic: "...I was convicted during the war for saying that Bunin was a Russian classic."
One of his major works was Kolyma Tales – in this series of short stories he wrote about hellish conditions in camp shown through the eyes of someone who had been there.
Daniel Kharms – writer and poet.
Three of them – Kharms, Bakhterev and Vvedensky – were first arrested in 1931 on charges of belonging to an "anti-Soviet group of writers". The most surprising thing is that the formal reason for their arrest was their work in children's literature. Kharms received three years in a camp which was replaced with exile in Kursk.
Kharms was next arrested in August 1941 – for "slanderous and defeatist sentiments". In order to avoid being executed, Kharms pretended to be insane. The military tribunal decreed that, "in proportion to the gravity of the crime", he should stay in a psychiatric hospital, where he died during the blockade of Leningrad.
Alexander Vvedensky – poet and playwright. He was arrested with Kharms in 1931.
At that time Vvedensky was denounced for having made a toast in memory of Tsar Nicholas II; according to another version, the reason for his arrest was Alexander Vvedensky's performance of the "former anthem".
On 27 September 1941 Alexander Vvedensky was arrested again on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation.
Boris Petrovich Kornilov – Soviet Komsomol poet and public figure.
On February 20, 1938, Kornilov was convicted as a participant in anti-Soviet and Trotskyist activities. The wording of his sentence was as follows: "From 1930, Kornilov had been an active participant in an anti-Soviet, Trotskyist organisation that targets terrorist methods of fighting against the Party and Government leaders."
Kalinets Iryna Onufrievna – poet, dissident activist, activist of the Ukrainian national and human rights movement, artist, philologist.
In July 1970 she signed the protest of nine citizens of Lviv against the arrest of Ukrainian dissident Valentyn Moroz. In December 1971, she signed a declaration on the establishment of the Public Committee for the protection of dissident Nina Strokataya. In January 1972 she was arrested and in July of the same year was sentenced for "anti-Soviet propaganda" to 6 years of imprisonment in a maximum security camp and 3 years of exile. Six months later her husband – the poet I.M. Kalinets – was convicted of the same crime.
Georgy Zhzhyonov – actor. Spent more than fifteen years in prisons, camps and exile, was repressed twice.
For the first time he was arrested in 1938 under false charge of espionage, convicted to 5 years of labour camps. In 1939 he was transported to Kolyma. In 1949 he was arrested again and exiled to Norilsk prison camp. He returned to Leningrad only in 1954; in 1955 he was fully rehabilitated.
He dedicated his years in the camp and in exile to the story From "The Grouse" to "The Firebird", and most of the stories in his autobiographical prose.
Vsevolod Meyerhold – theorist and practitioner of the theatrical grotesque, the author of the Theatre October programme and the creator of an acting system called "biomechanics".
Meyerhold was arrested in Leningrad on June 20, 1939, and his flat in Moscow was searched at the same time. The search report documented a complaint by his wife, Zinaida Reich, who did not like the methods of one of the NKVD agents. She was murdered by unidentified men on July 15.
Vsevolod Meyerhold was interrogated and tortured for three weeks, but finally he signed the confession. He was executed on 2 February, 1940.
One of the probable reasons for his arrest could be a letter from his wife that was addressed to Stalin but was not sent. This letter was seized during a search of his flat on June 20, 1939. According to people close to Vsevolod Meyerhold, who later managed to find some materials, Zinaida Reich spoke unflatteringly and even rudely about Joseph Stalin in that letter, and accused him of criticising Russian theatre, referring to the fact that he was Georgian.
Of course this list does not include all repressed writers, poets, actors. It’s only a small part, we think you understand that.
For the most part, they were all accused of being anti-Soviet, of spying for other countries, and of course for their stories, poems, novels. It has never been and probably never will be convenient or profitable for the authorities to have people who think differently and see everything the power does because its hands are untied.
Doesn't it remind you of anything? Today the authorities are thinking about removing citizenship for what the government sees as "incorrect" words, how artists are being banned from entering the country, how cultural and educational figures are being labeled as foreign agents.
This has always been in Russia; history is cyclical. Perhaps that is why some of our politicians want to bring back the USSR, to be able to exile and execute people.
The artists listed and not mentioned in this list were also ordinary people who expressed their position. They were not silent, they were not silent till the end. Many of them continued to write books even in exile. So we too shouldn’t be silent, we shouldn’t be afraid. After all, the regime will fall and we will be heard.