Trojan Horse

From COLIN BRYGGE

MOSCOW

ClTIURE with a capital K tends to bring out the worst in Soviet officialdom; not really surprising, as the cultural front is becoming the most embattled of all. The name Sadler's Wells is still met with cool silence, three years after their refusal to visit Moscow at the time of the Budapest uprising. A year ago Pasternak was given his true niche in contemporary letters: `someone lower than a pig.' And recently we have had a furtive little scuffle over the with- drawal of some twenty-four volumes and a handful of periodicals from the first British Book Exhibition to be held in Moscow.

What makes it so damaging in Western eyes is the fact that British Council officials respon- sible for organising the exhibition had conducted their personal censorship of the exhibits before submitting catalogues to the Russians, to spare both themselves and the publishers unnecessary embarrassment. But we are mere novices at this sort of thing. True, there have been aberrations —jamming in Cyprus, for example—but these have been mercifully brief, and when it comes to executing a censor's fandango requiring any virtuosity the Russians are well out in front. The promptness and certainty shown by the Russians in pouncing on an offending paragraph in a work of, say, 150,000 words points to the existence of a meticulously maintained Soviet index of forbidden works. It presumably means that every book and every magazine published in the British isles is scrutinised page by page by lynx-eyed legions of bilingual bureaucrats— and the same goes for books of other countries —in an effort to preserve the ideological chastity of the Russian people.

Of course, the thousands of Russians who flocked to see the books were totally ignorant of the fuss made by the British press over the enforced withdrawals. It was immensely heart- warming to hear one bright young Russian writer remark : 'I didn't know about the books. But I think this sort of thing is stupid. Anyway, I never did like those people at the Ministry of Culture.' One can only guess at what Messrs. Sholokhov and Ehrenburg (two good anti-bureaucrats) would say. My guess is it would be unprintable. Regrettably this would be a minority view. Pasternak himself is very gloomy on this sub- ject. 'Do you know,' he Said recently, 'I am now the only Russian writer who corresponds with Western writers? Why, in my father's day Rus- sians wrote abroad constantly—in all languages —and received letters from all over Europe. Now it's ended . . . and I am the only one.'

Neither the Russians, nor official Britons for that matter, relished the publicity given to the case of the missing books. It is pointed out, quite rightly, that this has obscured the fact that an excellent display of British books covering a pride range of topics—though not politics, economics or religion—has been seen by some- thing like 40,000 Russians, who queued up to flip through a picture book about the British Royal Family and who stood four deep round fashion magazines. But, of course, the incident is symptomatic of trends in Soviet life which are of the utmost importance to the West. An innocent abroad might be excused for supposing that after forty-two years of Agitprop the average Russian would not have a thought in his head which was not purely Marxist-Leninist. But that's just the rub. Each new generation has to be indoctrinated (`raising the ideological level') afresh and the further these Russian youngsters slip away from the era of the Old Bolsheviks, the tougher the job becomes.

Already a musty atmosphere enshrines many of the early figures of the Revolution. There may be eighteen million Komsomols, but young Rus- sian men and women want more colour, more fun, more space to live in. Maybe not wedding bells, but certainly Chopin or Rachmaninoff when they marry. They want a family car and decent clothes. The idealism which animated their grand- parents in the 1920s has become cold, abstract. It's not in human nature—certainly not in Russian nature—to man the barricades all day, then don slippers and sit in front of the tele- vision screen all night. This is why we are being treated to the curious spectacle of Mr. Khrush- chev pounding for admittance at the door of the West, while at home the bureaucrats fondle their thought-conditioning machines to make sure that every bourgeois impurity is filtered out of the stifling intellectual atmosphere in the Soviet Union. But there is an alarming logic about it all. The more Moscow opens its own doors to visiting statesmen, foreign exhibitions, tourists and delegations, the less efficient the thought- conditioning machines become. Mr. Nixon on television (`One day in' four is spent by the Soviet working man producing arms') is merely doing in public what lots of American, British, French, Greek and Italian tourists are doing in private talks with fellow Russians in the major cities of Russia.

All this has led Mr. G. Zhukov, the Soviet official who negotiates cultural agreements with the West, to try and establish certain rules. Mr. Zhukov makes no bones about his belief that the West is abusing cultural agreements to cor- rupt the innocence of Russians. Both sides could admit, at least in private, that cultural agree- ments are merely an extension of the Cold War by other means; but Mr. Zhukov, who acquired his stentorian style as a Pravda foreign corre- spondent, would certainly not admit this on the Russian side. In a peevish tract recently printed here he outlines Soviet fears quite openly. The Soviet Union, he wrote, will never allow cultural contacts `to be used as a Trojan Horse stuffed with a hash of obscene refuse.' And 'attempts to utilise these exchanges for the propaganda of wild ideas and standards of bourgeois ethics which are alien not only to a Communist but fa every sane person in general' will be repulsed.

What seems really to be biting Mr. Zhukov is a report that American tourists visiting Russia are urged to leave their Intourist guides behind and strike out on their own with a winning smile and a fistful of candies. He is right to be alarmed. Such behaviour strikes at the very roots of his convictions.

Admittedly, it is sad to meet groups of young Russians who have carried out a sponsored Cul- ture tour in the United States. What they do not know about lynch law, unemployment, cartelism, exploitation of labour by the Big Bosses and the trade unions is not worth knowing. They are earnest, patronising and thoroughly blinkered. They are amazed to find not every art gallery stuffed with abstract (ugh!) paintings. They think Eugene Ormandy has 'quite a good orchestra, although the programmes could be much im- proved,' and they lament the almost total absence of a 'burning idealism' among the youth of America. But these are the shock-troops of Com- munism, not the rank and file.

* It is exhilarating to record that this year's November 7 military and civilian parade was much shorter than last year's, thus continuing the process of converting this date, and May 1, into less of a trudge and more of a joy. A con- versation recorded in a restaurant shortly after the holiday is cheering, and typical.

Blonde: 'What did you, do on November 71' Brunette: 'Well, first of all there was this empty room because the people have not moved in yet. We set that aside for dancing. Then there was Aliosha's room. Very small, of course, with a bed—so that was for rest. But then we had this enormous room with a table right from one end to the other. There was a smaller table, too, which could take only five people . . . well, five and a half but not six. Of course, there were not enough chairs, so we sat on boards.'

Blonde : 'How about food?'

Brunette: 'Well, we sat down and there was cold zakouski, a cold turkey and a cold goose, an enormous pierog—a wonderful spread really. And, of course, a bottle in front of every single one of us.'

Blonde, giggling : `Ooh! I bet that went down well.'

Brunette: 'Well, we had one glass at first, then Nina read out a poem in honour of Aliosha's graduation—very moving it was, too. So then we had a toast for Aliosha. Then the accordionist came and sat in the corner and so we all started singing. Things like "Landysh" [a sort of -Lily of Laguna"] and "Moscow Evenings" and "First Love" and so on. Even a little rock and roll.'

Blonde (breathlessly): 'Rock and roll!'

Brunette: 'But then everyone had lots more to drink and then it became a riot—and the songs they sang were not all kulturny. I rather minded it at first. But then I had a little more to drink and stopped minding. Everyone had a wonderful time.'