Safe Conduct and Other Works, Boris Pasternak

[p025] Safe Conduct and other Works. By B. Pasternak. Elek. 15s. The fuss about Dr. Zhivago will perhaps have justified itself if it leads to revived interest in the litera- ture of Soviet Russia in the 1920s taken as a whole, to serious study of what effect she October Revolution had upon Russia’s writers, and how it was that darkness and dullness fell across the scene towards the end of that decade. Mr. Zavalishin gives a series of brief literary biographies, with out- lines of the principal works and numerous quotations, all grouped under the various ‘schools’ which flourished in this lively period — symbolists, acnieists, realists, futur- ists, imagists and the rest. Here is Demyan Byedny, the popular dog- gerelist, Trotsky’s generous appreci- ation of whom will be remembered by readers of Literature and Revolu- tion. ‘As soon as he became con- vinced that Trotsky’s career was over, Demyan Byedny became Stalin’s police dog; in obedience to his master’s orders be would fling himself, growling, on the ap- pointed victim. In addition to his printed poems attacking Stalin’s enemies and_ glorifying Stalin’s policies, he circulated porno- graphic poems—also with political overtones and of unimpeachable ideology—in manuscript form.’ But here, too, are a number of able writers, victims of Stalin, whose books, some of which have been translated into English, it is good to have brought to the notice of the new generation fascinated by Soviet Russia and seeking to understand it ~—Babel, Pilnyak, Tarasov-Rodionov, Tretyakov and others. Mr. Yershov. supplements Mr. Zavalishin with his study of the rise and decline of comedy in the Soviet theatre. Particularly interesting is the account given of such works as Mayakovsky’s The Bath-house, writ- ten in 1929, not long before the poet’s suicide, in which a character could declaim : ‘Who rode in streetcars before? Declasse intellectuals, priests and the gentry. For how much did they ride? They rode for five kopeks. What did they ride in? In a yellow streetcar. Who will ride in streetcars now? We, the workers of the world, are going to ride in them now. How will we ride? We are going to ride with all the Soviet conveniences (i.e., in great discomfort) in a red streetcar. For how much? For only ten kopeks.’ ‘The book which helped him to win the Nobel Prize’, is the some- what dubious inscription on the dust jacket of Pasternak’s Safe Conduct, originally published here in 1945, It is an autobiographical essay. In- cluded also in the volume are some short stories and poems. B.P. Labour History