The Writer and the Commissar

ALONG THE WAY I will. inevitably. be asked: Russian critics and the Russian readers were warm, receptive.

over-generous. and extravagant in their praise.

Where am going? Thousands have already asked.

For it is. 1 think a characteristic of men of good will to In the course of years, I had developed a copious correspondHence with people all over the earth. My life as a communist see our brief time on eatth as a passage—wherefore the was Very open; I have always detested concealment and consdestinulion assumes supreme importance. Yet even when piracy as unbecoming and degrading. and I wrote openly to the destination becomes a faith akin nearly to certainty, whom I pleased. there are those who see it as secondary to the particular 1 thus developed a large correspondence with Soviet people roads leading to it. concerning my work: not a week went by without my receiving three. five. or For me, the destination has remained La dozen letters from Soviet students, unchanged—total brotherhood of man. 4 eiegees, saa ah workers. Sates, world-wide entity of love and creativity. in which life is neither wasted nor engineers, scientists. and so torth, telling me what they had or had not despisedEr liked in my writing.

For many of us. the road to this goal

An airmail letter to the United States was the Communist Party, and in all too from the Soyiet Union takes between two and three days. many of us the road became primary to the destination. In time, the road became sacred, whereas the destination blurred The interview in which I announced publicly my separation from the Communist Party appeared on the morning of Febwith increasing unreality.

In what follows, I shall reveal something of the particular ruary 1. 1957.

On February 4. I received my last mail from the Soviet experience of a writer within the Communist Party of the Union, except for two letters from two officials of the Writers’

United States, and also as a part of the world communist movement.

In other words. a gate had closed; a curtain, the very exisThis is not a record of dillusionment. for a broadening of tence of which I had so hotly denied in the past, had been knowledge and deepening of experience must be the very opposite of disenchantment. quietly drawn, Nor am [ bitter. If I and so many others have paid a The Soviet post office had quietly and efliciently halted and considerable price for certain knowledge, no knowledge comes seized every piece of mail addressed to me; for no one, apart cheaply and others have paid in larger sums.

PLL LPPL LD LIS DL LLL L LLL LLL DLP LLL LPL DL ILD DP PID I have not turned ‘anti-communist.” for I believe that ‘anti- ; communism. as we know it in America. is as fraudulent as This article is published with acknowledgments to ‘anti-Sovietism’ is dangerous. 2 Prospectus, a new American magazine. The article as $ 2 it appeared in Prospectus is about half of a book due ; * * * N to be published in the USA later this month. bs Many things in my story will evoke anger and resentment SPALL LLLSLLSS SDSL LS LIL LLL DILL LLP LL LLLP LP DLP va from various people. and some will hold that these things are better left unsaid. But to me. at this point. truth is the only from the party bureaucracy, knew that anything was different criterion of what should be said. 1 will make the attempt at about Howard Fast. least to be as truthful as I can.

Not a word about my interview in the [New York] Times ever appeared in the Soviet Press. nor one word about a * theoretical statement of my position published a month later in Mainstream, an Ameri¢an pro-communist periodical.

On February 1. 1957. 1 simply ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. All reference to me in retrospect also ceased. A play

HAD BEEN honoured by the Soviet Union as few of mine, “General Washington and the Water, Witch’, was curliving writers had, Russian or otherwise. Millions of rently being performed at the Red Army Theatre in Moscow;

the performances continued. but no reference to the play copies of my books had been printed and sold there.

appeared in the Press again.

One book alone, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, had The millions of books continued to be read. but the author an initial printing of half a million copies.

disappeared from being and memory. Thus, within Russia. no anger. no attack, no debate, no refuiation, no erificism—simply Two of my plays had been produced there: two others dramalized from my books; and another book became the basis for a negation, I was not. a Soviet opera. Consider this, and you will understand something of what Dozens of critical articles had been written about my work, I felt. Thad been prepared for anything else—rage, persuasion. as well as two book-length critical studies that I know of. The mockery. even for the possibility that the reaction might be 1917—1957 1917—1957__1917—1957__1917—1957__1917—1957 _1917—1957__1917—1957__1917—1957__1917—1957_ & = See back page for details of next week's special 44-page issue of The Newsletter com- = = = memorating the fortieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. vas La )

rn ME 1917—1957 1917—1957 19171957 19171957 1917—1957 1917—1957 1917—1957 1917—1957 IS

civilized to the extent of stating, “Well. Fast has the right to do as he wishes. We do not judge him by what organization he belongs to. but by what he does. He has the right to join the Communist Party or leave it, as he desires.”

Instead. both question and answer were completely blotted out.

* "THERE IS an addendum to the above, almost in the not new to many people today. Some of it I would like to put down here, but I cannot. Because this is what the diplomat said when we rose to leave our luncheon table:

‘I must do something that makes me deeply ashamed of myself—because my very mention of it impugns you. Yet do it I must, if not for myself. then for my wife and children.

T must tell you. Mr Fast. that if my delegation should learn, not what I told you, but simply that I met with you alone.

I will be arrested when I return to my homeland and in all likelihood put to death. JI am not pleading for myself: but