Sixty years ago, Alexander Tvardovsky called Alexander Solzhenitsyn by telegram to the editorial office of Novy Mir. After Vladimir Lebedev, Khrushchev’s assistant, who admired “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” suggested that Tvardovsky write a letter to Sammy requesting that he approve the story’s publication, the editor-in-chief decided to argue. Ask at the editorial office itself.
On June 23, 1962, Solzhenitsyn arrived in Novy Mir, where in the chief’s office a discussion began about the author’s story Shch-854, while drinking tea with special bagels, which are sold only on the corner of Chekhov Street and Sadovoe Koltso. He called himself “the story”.
Statements from “from above” and the editorial staff were voiced. Alexander Dementyev, Tvardovsky’s assistant and housemate on the set of Kotelnicheskaya, went too far, giving a critical speech. According to the notes of Vladimir Lakshin, who has just started working at Novy Mir, Solzhenitsyn was offended and said: “The integrity of this work is more valuable to me than printing.” The author himself claimed to have said in “A Calf Crushed Oak”: “I’ve been waiting for ten years, and I can wait another ten years. take my time. My life is not dependent on literature. Give me the manuscript back and I’ll go.”
Finding the gold mine in Ivan Denisovich, Tvardovsky could not allow this – the discussion was interrupted. Solzhenitsyn began to work with explanations from above. And the editors took the long and painful composition of a letter to Khrushchev, in which every word could become a mine that could give up hope of publication. On August 6, the letter went to Vladimir Lebedev, whom “unconditionally silent intelligence” Solzhenitsyn asked for only on August 6 in subsequent acquaintances.
After the preparation of the letter to Khrushchev, after Tvardovsky once again rewrote the possible preface for the publication of the “story”, and went to the Central Committee, a long and anxious period of waiting began. The editor-in-chief went on vacation and, tormented by the heat in Koktebel, tried to finish “Terkin in the next world”. The letter from Novy Mir to Khrushchev was written largely personally: “If this were not a truly exceptional circumstance, I would not occupy your time on a particular literary topic. We are talking about the incredibly talented story of A. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” … But due to the unusual nature of the material considered in the story, I urgently need your advice and approval. ”
In September, in the remainder of the first secretary of the Central Committee in Pitsunda, Lebedev chose the moment when he could read “Ivan Denisovich” aloud to Khrushchev. He got carried away and approved of the possible broadcast of the event. In the “New World” this news was perceived as a victory, Tvardovsky, having received the news from Lebedev, burst into tears. More than 20 copies of the story were specially typed in the Izvestia printing house – for high officials, whom the first secretary of the party had already had to overcome in the debates resistance. On October 20, in Pitsunda, Khrushchev received the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir. “Ivan Denisovich would have been stabbed to death by censorship,” Tvardovsky told Khrushchev. “They would have been stabbed,” the head of the Soviet state agreed, laughing.
It is surprising to think that this meeting took place during the Caribbean crisis, when the whole world was on the verge of a nuclear disaster. This is really black and white Nikita Sergeevich – then he provoked a nuclear conflict and was not too lazy to talk with the poet, with whom he discussed the cleansing of society and the state from Stalinism.
Several people, sometimes very far from each other, were preparing simultaneously for this breakthrough in the public consciousness, due to the publication of a six-part novel by an unknown author in November 1962.
Inspired by the anti-Stalinist pathos of the 22nd Congress of October 1961, the removal of Stalin from the mausoleum, and Tvardovsky’s speech at the party forum, Lev Kopelev and Raisa Orlova persuaded Solzhenitsyn to transfer the manuscript of Shch-854 to another country. they started. Novy Mir. Years later, a dispute over who decided to send “Ivan Denisovich” on an unsafe editorial journey caused old friends Kopelev and Solzhenitsyn to break off relations (although this was just an excuse, the conflict turned into an ideological one). But at least no one argues with the fact that the next person in the chain is Anna Samoilovna Berzer, the editor of the prose section, but Tvardovsky did not like it. The manuscript with the pseudonym A. Ryazansky nevertheless attracted the attention of the editor-in-chief. The next morning she called Kopelev: “Anna Samoilovna said it was you who brought the camper’s story. Why did you talk to me about all kinds of nonsense and not say a word about it? I read all night.”
In the end, the publication was provided by the editors themselves, who still mocked Glavlit, stunned by the arrogance of Novy Mir, who did not know about Khrushchev’s decision and sent the camp story to censorship. However, Solzhenitsyn spoke with deep discontent towards key members of Novy Mir. For example, the horsepower of the editorial office, Alexei Ivanovich Kondratovich, was described by Alexander Isaevich as follows: “Small, as if with alert ears and a sniffling nose, twitching and afraid of censorship.” Confused, yes, but certainly not intimidated. For Solzhenitsyn, Novy Mir was not a radical enough part of the Soviet system. It was there and it couldn’t be otherwise. Only without the status of the main literary magazine of the USSR, of course, the story could not change the consciousness of the whole country. As Kondratovich wrote: “Solzhenitsyn came to our court because that was the case.” And more: “After number 11 with the story “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962, the arrow of our magazine, which points to the truth and only the truth once and for all, the only criterion of art , this arrow has been seen by all.” Thus, a phenomenon that went down in history as Tvardovsky’s “New World” was born.
Lebedev, who had built a bridge between the editorial staff, who sought a way not to make mistakes and not spoil the publication, in the first approaches, when the initial enthusiasm passed, and in the subsequent texts, Solzhenitsyn created problems, he said from his heart that he helped in vain with the passage of the manuscript. But as much as he wanted: “Ivan Denisovich” could not help but open the floodgates. Any landmark act of liberalization causes public sentiment to spiral out of control and begin to stand in the way of undermining the very foundations of the system. This is where the reverse movement arises – the state begins to take the opposite, even tighter, control of society, including its literary incarnation. First Deputy Secretary “Ivan Denisovich” returned like a boomerang. After Khrushchev’s resignation, Lebedev was exiled from the Central Committee apparatus to Politizdat and died very soon at the age of 50.
The defeat of the “New World” in 1970 was deciphered as a natural consequence of the frosts after 1968. The bastion of intra-Soviet, intra-system liberalism, which had been besieged for many years, has fallen. In his diaries, Kondratovich complained that, in principle, the death of this island was almost unnoticed even by readers, rather than as much freedom as the truth. There were those who refused to subscribe, but they were “few”. For radical opponents of Soviet power, Tvardovsky’s project was no longer relevant – the era of samizdat and tamizdat had already begun. Solzhenitsyn judged Novy Mir for his work “The Calf Butted the Oak”, and in 1975, in response to this, Lakshin said: But what if this propeller also falls? You have to learn to live without it.”
“A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” shook the foundations of the system – it played its part even a quarter of a century after the Soviet Union faltered. But its influence turned out to be not very long-term, the de-Stalinization of public consciousness did not occur, in today’s ideas this publication is simply a fact of distant history. Stalinism is in remission, and the emergence of a new “Ivan Denisovich” will not go unnoticed. However, this is impossible.
All that remains is to remember those July days of hope sixty years ago – 46-year-old Lebedev is sitting in a small office on Staraya Square and dialing the poet’s phone number; inspiring 52-year-old Tvardovsky calls 43-year-old Solzhenitsyn by telegram; A writer in canvas trousers and an open-collar shirt climbs the wide stairs in Novy Mir’s former editorial office, not far from where the collective would soon move and collapse eight years later. Tea and bagels from a shop on the corner of Chekhov and Sadovoe.