(of course he had not read it...)

------------------- [excerpt / The Zhivago Affair] ------------ Pilnyak was skeptical of the Soviet project...and described Stalin's and Gorky's literary commands as the castration of art.  Pilnyak's fate may well have been foreordained as early as 1929 when he was accused, falsely, of orchestrating publication abroad of his short novel Mahogany by anti-Soviet elements.  

Set in a postrevolutionary provincial town, the novel includes a sympathetically drawn character who is a supporter of Leon Trotsky -- Stalin's bitter rival.  Pilnyak was subjected to a public campaign of abuse in the press.  

"To me a finished literary work is like a weapon," wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky, the brash and militant Bolshevik poet, in a review of Pilnyak's work that noted, without blushes, he had not actually read Mahogany.  


"Even if that weapon were above the class struggle -- such a thing does not exist (though, perhaps, Pilnyak thinks of it like that) -- handing it over to the White press strengthens the arsenals of our enemies.  At the present time of darkening storm clouds this is the same as treachery at the front."

     Pilnyak tried to win his way back into the party's good graces with some kowtowing pronouncements about Stalin's greatness, but he couldn't save himself....


     In the wake of the arrest of Pilnyak and others, the Pasternaks, like many in the village, lived with fear.

-30-