Read The Stalin Epigram for Free Online Page B

station without first purchasing tickets to the quay,” the boss said with a smirk.
    The people around Comrade Stalin, seduced by the khozyain ’s conviviality, began to relax. Mikhail Sholokhov, sitting across from my boss on Gorky’s left, wanted to know if
there was any truth to the rumor that the Central Committee was thinking of renaming Moscow Stalinodar .
    “I can reveal—though it must go no further than this room—that the subject was raised, but Stalin flatly refused.”
    Sholokhov, a favorite of Comrade Stalin’s, asked the boss which in his opinion was the highest art, prose or playwriting or poetry. Stalin gave this some thought. “Clearly poetry is
head and shoulders above the other arts. Stalin talked about this very question the other day with the American writer Dos Passos, who is visiting us in connection with the Writers’ Congress.
Dos Passos agreed with my formulation and quoted the British novelist Maugham, something to the effect that the poet makes the best of the prose writers look like a piece of cheese. That is also
Stalin’s opinion.”
    Gorky, his voice pitched higher than usual, said, “I cannot say I agree—”
    The boss sucked noisily on his dead pipe. “Nobody asks you to agree,” he said in a tone so silkily pleasant Gorky couldn’t fail to understand that he had ventured onto a limb.
The khozyain didn’t appreciate being contradicted in public; he once confided to me that it came close to being a criminal offense.
    When the waiters got around to setting out bowls of fruit and biscuits, the khozyain rapped his Dunhill on the table. “Comrade writers,” he called. Whatever conversation there
was in the room faded instantly. “So: You will surely be wondering why you were invited to share Gorky’s hospitality on this particular February afternoon. We thought there was
something to be gained by giving you, who are among the most prominent Soviet writers and editors, a preview of the new cultural policy the Politburo is about to promulgate in connection with the
First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. We are in the process of redirecting the Party line from modernism to what we call Socialist realism. What is Socialist realism? Henceforth, it is the
obligatory aesthetic for the visual arts, for the theater and the cinema, for all forms of creative writing. Socialist realism recognizes that there is no such thing as art or culture in the
abstract. All art, all culture either serves the Revolution and the Party or it doesn’t. Socialist realism proclaims that art in all its forms must be realistic in form and Socialist in
content—it recognizes that writers are engineers of the human soul and as such have a moral obligation to inspire the Soviet proletariat to dream Socialist dreams.”
    At the far end of the long table a young short story writer raised a finger.
    “There is no need to ask permission to speak,” Comrade Stalin instructed him. “Here we are all equals.”
    The young man scratched nervously at the stubble of a beard on his broad peasant’s face. “I would like to ask Comrade Stalin how a writer—working in the obligatory aesthetic of
Socialist realism—is to deal with the question of collectivization. If we are to be realistic in form, we must portray the chaos, the distress . . .”
    The only sound in the room came from outside the windows of the villa—automobiles klaxoning impatiently near a construction site at the foot of the hill. The khozyain leaned forward
in order to get a better look at the speaker. “What is your name, comrade?”
    “Saakadze, Sergo.”
    “Saakadze, Sergo,” the boss repeated amiably. “Stalin thanks you for your intervention. So: Inasmuch as collectivization of the peasants has been a catastrophic success, a
certain amount of chaos and distress was inevitable. When a great Socialist homeland moves to eliminate waste and poverty on a grand scale, stuff happens. You—the cultural workers who have
the