p In the mid-fifties the Soviet Union launched a serious and comprehensive effort to strengthen socialist legality. It was a process of consolidating the socialist principles in the building of a new society, with communism as the ultimate goal. Concern about developing socialist democracy, harsh criticism of the negative phenomena during the personality cult were naturally reflected in the nation’s spiritual life. The Soviet people welcomed and supported Party’s policy.

p However, for a number of reasons—usually highly personal ones—some people chose a different path. They began to disseminate rumors that maligned the Soviet system and interpreted the strengthening of socialist legality as license to violate the norms of socialist society. They declared themselves ‘ideologically’ free. Individually and collectively they were absolutely inconsequential compared to the multimillion Soviet people. But Western intelligence services and the mass media, especially those of the United States, blew up their activities out of all proportion. The moment those so-called dissidents began to clamor for recognition, mostly on cue from the West, the CIA felt its dream had come true: the long-awaited ‘opposition’ to the Soviet system had finally materialized and could be used as an assault force in psychological warfare against the Soviet Union.

p Today there is no doubt that the emergence of the ‘ opposition’ was essentially a reflection of a large-scale and planned psychological warfare operation. Western intelligence services, above all the CIA, launched a concerted effort to try and ‘erode’ the ideological basis of Soviet society precisely in the middle and latter half of the 1950s. That coincided with the wave of conformism and the so-called 141 consensus in the United States. The results of these processes became clearly discernible hy the mid-seventies, and in 1976 Godfrey Hodgson, a serious British journalist, used hindsight to conclude in his America in Our Time:

p ’In September 1955, at precisely the moment when consensus was settling like snow over U.S. politics, something very similar was happening in American intellectual life. That month, some one hundred fifty intellectuals from many countries foregathered at a conference in Milan to debate “The Future of Freedom”. They had been invited there at the initiative of an organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom and their proceedings were later reported in the Congress’s London monthly review, Encounter, by the sociologist Edward Shils. (Both the congress and Encounter were later found to have been in receipt of secret funds from the Central Intelligence Agency.) The title the editor put on Shils’s article was The End of Ideology?

p ’The idea was not new. “Liberal civilization begins when the age of ideology is over”, Lewis Feuer had written in an article called “Beyond Ideology”, published earlier that same year. Seymour Martin Lipset called one of the chapters in his Political Man, published in 1960, “The End of Ideology”. But the person with whom the phrase came to be most closely associated was Lipset’s close friend the sociologist and journalist Daniel Bell. Originally a product of one of the many fragments of the New York socialist Left, Bell became the labor editor of Fortune magazine and was also for a time the director of international seminars for the Congress for Cultural Freedom (that were naturally paid by the CIA—N.Y.). His career epitomized, in fact, the intellectual consensus that underpinned its political equivalent during the 1950s. He saw clearly its double foundation: on the fear of communism abroad and on the assumption that American society could solve its problems without irresoluble conflict.

p ‘ “Politics today”, he wrote in 1960, “is not a reflex of any internal class divisions but is shaped by 142 international events. And foreign policy, the expression of politics, is a response to many factors, the most important of which has been the estimate of Russian intentions ... the need for containment.”

p ’Both those two highly explicit formulations are taken from the book, published in 1960, which Bell, too, called The End of Ideology.

p ’What Bell meant by that was, above all, the end of the ideology of the Left. “By the end of ideology,” even his friend Irving Kristol, the editor who had originally published Shils’s article of the same title (on CIA money—N.Y.), was constrained to comment, “Mr. Bell appears to mean, above all, the collapse of the socialist ideal.”

p ’Bell and his group, in fact, announced the death of ideology somewhat in the way in which the death of royalty used to be announced. “The King is dead”, said the courtiers, “Long live the King!" â€™^^1^^

p In other words, with socialist ideology dead, and bourgeois ideology reigning supreme. That was the goal of a legion of bourgeois writers who took their cue from Bell (and, according to Hodgson, from the CIA) and painstakingly emphasized the need for immediate ’ deideologisation’ throughout the world. That central notion gave rise to concepts of ’creative freedom’, ‘non-partizanship’, and the like. Naturally, they were to be implemented first and foremost in the Soviet Union. Those Soviet citizens who proclaimed that their ’thinking was different’ acted as pawns for the CIA (whether they realized that or not) to implement its plans.

p Today, over 20 years later, spokesmen for the tiny ’ dissident’ handful nostalgically paint an ‘ideology-free’ picture of the first steps of ‘dissent’ in the Soviet Union. In 1978 Andrei Siniavsky, who has long since left the Soviet Union after serving a prison term for anti-government activities, began publishing the tiny magazine Sintaksis in Paris. He dedicated the first issue to Alexander Ginzburg, who is according to Siniavsky an innocent victim. That first issue traced the genesis of samizdat, the illegal squibs ‘dissidents’ disseminated among themselves. According to Siniaksis, it all began in the following way: ’The 143 sudden discovery of the simple fact that poetry existing without permission can be published without permission. That was the way samizdat began, although the word itself was yet to be coined. The books of poems collected by Alexander Ginzburg remained a memorial to the poetic euphoria of the late 1950s ... Alexander Ginzburg—we all know what happened to him—turned from collections of poetry to compiling and publishing The White Book. Samizdat gave birth to Khronika. But it began with poetry.’

p Certain explanations are in order here. Although the collections were called Sintaksis (Syntax) and were supposedly ‘ideology-free’, their pornographic content—both literary and political smut—make it impossible to quote them. About that time Siniavsky began to publish his samizdat anti-Soviet squibs in the West, hiding behind the penname of Abram Terts. Naturally, he has always valued the poems selected by Ginzburg above all others. To him, the most important thing was ’creative freedom’, allegedly nonexistent throughout Russian history. Why, take Pushkin as an example. According to Abram Terts’ Strolls with Pushkin, published in the West in 1975, the contribution of the great Russian poet could not stand any comparison with what Ginzburg and Siniavsky advocated.

p Soviet people cherish the legacy of Pushkin that includes patriotism and civic virtues. But Abram Terts completely ignores Pushkin’s role in Russian and world literature and describes him as follows: ’If ... we look for Pushkin’s prototype in his contemporary environment, the best man would be Khlestakov, the poet’s human alter ego... Like Khlestakov, he flutters and affects the French ways, like Pushkin, Khlestakov is flighty, garrulous, insolent, and empty.’ ’Who else has managed to fool his way into literature with such ease?’ ’Pushkin lived off women, he made a fortune off them.’ ’His life was a playful joke ... and so was his death—he simply overbluffed.’ ’A man of boyish rashness, he died that way too, amid a scandal.’ ’A crazed poet.’ About Eugene Onegin: ’Pushkin wrote a novel about nothing in particular... his works are like a reference book, a telephone directory... Instead of describing life, he simply itemized it.’ About the goals of Pushkin’s work: ’There were no goals. He wrote for the hell of it and juggled with motives; he substituted women for civil virtue, money for women, diversion for lofty ideals, and business 144 ventures for diversion.’ ’Everything Pushkin invented— everlasting shame be on it—is all for rent in art.’

p For Abram Terts, this mockery of Pushkin is not an end in itself but a prelude to his main blow: ’Progress in literature began with Pushkin... Oh, that tasteless, frenzied desire of the 19th century to describe everything... That frantic yearning to itemize every inch of fleeting reality ... in stacks of protocols with dull titles: The Poor People, The Dead Souls, An Ordinary Story, A Boring Story (if it is boring, why tell it?), until not a single corner remained undescribed... War and Peace (all war and all peace in one book!).’

p At one stroke Abram Terts maligned all Russian literature and dismissed Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Goncharov, Chekhov, Tolstoy. They did not measure up to samizdat criteria. The explanation here is not only Abram Terts’ megalomania (he claims to be an author too) but also obviously a plan to clear the coast for certain ’ ideology-free’ literary pillars who would suit the CIA and Abram Terts and would stand out in greater relief.

p One of the people who at that time got caught in the web of the dissidents—let us call him X (he suffered greatly and is no longer among the living)—recalled the literary demimonde of those years in the memoirs he wrote shortly before his death. Cursing his delusions, he wrote bitterly, producing sketches of the emergent ’ideology-free samizdat’ and of those whom the West declared to be the ’true spokesmen’ of the Soviet people. X was a gifted author: judge for yourself of his style and disgust with his own past:

p ’Let us now take a look at the salons, Moscow’s literary salons of the 1960s. Those were apartments of some literary widows and pseudo-literary hostesses, where the “elite of literature and art" gathered.

p ’An evening in such a salon was considered a success if one, or, better still, two members of the artistic world’s older generation could be goaded into attending. To be quite truthful, however, some literary lions attended quite willingly. It was fashionable to invite beginners to these “ literary evenings”, young poets, authors, artists and just “outstanding young people”, accompanied by affectedly bohemian young women who could be described in one, not quite literary word. The lions had for some time thought 145 themselves duty-bound to associate more often with the younger generation. Just in case: “who knows, anything can happen...” The atmosphere of such “literary evenings" with the lions smelled strongly of cognac and coffee. The young poets and novice authors recited their works. After a glass of cognac, the lion uttered something encouraging and recounted two or three jokes about literary luminaries; another glass had him muttering something vague but portentous about liberalization and democratic transformation. The “outstanding young people" indistinctly grumbled something abusive and chanted “ literary gendarmes" and the KGB. The bohemian girls smoked, affected poses, whispered secretively, giggled and sighed. They wanted to marry an author who drove his own car.

p ’You want to know who those “outstanding young people" were? “Outstanding” should here be understood literally—they did all they could to make themselves stand out. Take Alexander Ginzburg as an example. A frequent guest in the salons, he posed as a poet and prose writer, a disciple of Boris Pasternak, although no one had ever had the honor to see any of his works. They said he had been a student but had been “persecuted for his beliefs" and disappeared for two years. Then he reappeared and performed in some theater. Then he was about to be persecuted again but recanted just in time ... True, some “gentlemen” of the underworld who knew Ginzburg better maintained that he had “disappeared” for two years for swindling and not for his beliefs, but those “ gentlemen" were never invited to the salons ... Other “ outstanding young people" were of that ilk too, all those Bukovskys, Osipovs, Khaustovs, Amalriks; putting it bluntly they were dropouts, conceited and pretentious idlers who blamed their own inferiority complex on society. They were cowardly, lazy and malicious, and they sensed that the salons offer great opportunities for satisfying their personal vanity.

p ’Having spent a decent amount of time in the literary lady’s salon, having admired the famous liberal-minded daddy-o—“the old man likes you"—and having seen for themselves that the old man lived not by bread alone but by cognac too, the “outstanding young people”, together with the bohemian girls, went to a different, simpler 146 salon—that is, to the apartment of one of them; true, there was no cognac there, hut vodka there was and one could drink it not from small vodka glasses but from more capacious containers. There, getting drunk, they spoke loudly, convincing one another that if the “old man" talked about “liberalization”, then we are free to do as we please, if famous grownups say, “these ... what do you call them ... democratic transformations”, then down with everything! We’ll get away with it! Times have changed! A “thaw” is on!   [146•* 

p ’The gleeful cry of “thaw” went round the salons. It referred to the period from 1956 to the 1960s. “Today’s a thaw, and what was before was bitter cold.” Since it was a thaw, moldy “lame ducks" and other vermin—nobody even suspected they were still alive—crawled out of the woodwork into the sun, and their offended little faces appeared in the salons too. There they were welcomed and plied with cognac. After all, they were a rarity, an attraction. Meanwhile, cunning and vicious Ivan Denisoviches   [146•**  scurried about Moscow streets, gleefully spilling sops on the “paths the higher-ups walk".

p ’Of course. It was a thaw, and toadstools are the first to get into the sun.’

p Newcomers could now be glimpsed among the toadstools—some with various diplomatic passports, others with plain tourist visas. They quickly understood who they were dealing with and what bait could be used to make those idlers do the bidding of the CIA and other Western intelligence services. Psychological warfare strategists believed, for example, that 24-year-old Ginzburg could find better use for his business talents. Really, getting his hands on literary compositions at graduating examinations in schools for young workers and offering to take the place of idlers at those examinations for 50 roubles. But then something completely unexpected happened: a newsreel crew came to film examinations in the school where Ginzburg was cribbing under a false name. He smilled into the camera, but the people who knew the student Ginzburg was 147 impersonating saw the newsreel. The court sentenced the swindler to two years of corrective labor. That was Ginzburg’s first conflict with the law, in the early 1960s. It was later pictured by Western propaganda as merciless persecution of a seeker after truth.

p But all that was still in the future. Meanwhile, the CIA decided to secure the cooperation of such a valuable man. For obvious reasons he was contacted and guided in his samizdat activities not directly but through the NTS. That organization supplied him with money and printing plates for Posev, an underground newspaper that specially emphasized it was a ’Moscow edition’. Ginzburg was now ready to call for terrorism. As concerns poetry, he found an associate in Yuri Galanskov. The latter wrote poems, which were not quite mature and sometimes anti-Soviet, and was therefore declared a poet, on silent signal from the CIA. What happened later is well-known. In 1968, Ginzburg was sentenced to five years of corrective labor for crimes committed on the instructions of the NTS—anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Galanskov was also convicted.

p The CIA was happy—the first stage of the operation had gone well: there were people in the Soviet Union who had broken free of ‘ideology’ and were being ’persecuted for their beliefs’. What remained was putting a martyr’s halo on one of them. Galanskov suited them fine: an unbalanced and frail man, he followed Ginzburg’s advice and refused medical assistance, although a gastrointestinal operation was in order. When the doctors finally operated him in 1972, it was too late. The Western media, the CIA’s willing tools, made all possible and impossible capital out of Galanskov’s death: it was alleged that the victim was an innocent poet.

p Five years later, while wheedling money from their sponsors, the NTS admitted that Galanskov had been its agent. The people deceived by the CIA-NTS campaign in defense of the ‘poet’ were stunned: talking about a framedup innocent man was one thing, but defending a paid agent was quite another. There was consternation in those quarters in the West which make it their business to be concerned about Soviet ‘dissenters’. Then, on May 4, 1977, Artemov, leader of the NTS, declared publicly in Frankfurt: ’There has been harsh criticism of our disclosure of the fact that Galanskov was a member of the NTS. Some 148 even assert that they know for sure that it is not true. But Galanskov’s letters to the NTS headquarters prove that, naturally, he never admitted his membership in our organization and even expressly denied it when necessary.

p ’Others do not question our relations with Galanskov but accuse us of “divulging” them: they allege that this corroborates the court’s verdict and puts all those who defended him in a “very difficult" position—“that means they defended the cause of the NTS!" He died in prison in the autumn of 1972, almost five years ago. We never published anything as long as we could keep it a secret. But we cannot forever “hush up" Galanskov’s links with the NTS.’

So much for the much-vaunted ‘ideology-free’ poetry combined with very prosaic subversion.