Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40 Despite the appalling record of the Soviet Union on human rights questions, many Western intellectuals with otherwise impeccable liberal credentials were strong supporters of the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This book explores how this seemingly impossible situation came about, examining the involvement of many prominent Western intellectuals with the Soviet Union, including Theodore Dreiser, G.B.Shaw, Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, Albert Marquet, Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet, Victor Gollancz, Lion Feuchtwanger and Jean-Richard Bloch. Previously unpublished documents from the Soviet archives show the ‘behind the scenes’ operations of Soviet organisations that targeted, seduced and led Western intellectuals and writers to action. The book focuses in particular on the work of various official and semi-official bodies, including Comintern, the International Association of Revolutionary Writers (MORP), the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), and the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union, showing how cultural propaganda was always a high priority for the Soviet Union, and how successful this cultural propaganda was in seducing so many Western thinkers. Ludmila Stern is Senior Lecturer in the School of Modern Language Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she coordinates Russian Studies, and Interpreting and Translation Studies. She has published on VOKS and French intellectuals, and her other research interests include courtroom interpreting (Australian War Crimes Prosecutions and ICTY). BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies Series editor Richard Sakwa Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent Editorial Committee: Julian Cooper Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham Terry Cox Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow Rosalind Marsh Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath David Moon Department of History, University of Durham Hilary Pilkington Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Stephen White Department of Politics, University of Glasgow Founding Editorial Committee Member: George Blazyca Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, researchlevel work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. 1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000 Roman Wolczuk 2. Political Parties in the Russian Regions Derek S.Hutcheson 3. Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation Edited by Simon Smith 4. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe J.C.Sharman 5. Political Elites and the New Russia Anton Steen 6. Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness Sarah Hudspith 7. Performing Russia—Folk Revival and Russian Identity Laura J.Olson 8. Russian Transformations Edited by Leo McCann 9. Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin The baton and sickle Edited by Neil Edmunds 10. State Building in Ukraine The Ukranian parliament, 1990–2003 Sarah Whitmore 11. Defending Human Rights in Russia Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and human rights commissioner, 1969–2003 Emma Gilligan 12. Small-Town Russia Postcommunist livelihoods and identities: a portrait of the intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999–2000 Anne White 13. Russian Society and the Orthodox Church Religion in Russia after communism Zoe Knox 14. Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age The word as image Stephen Hutchings 15. Between Stalin and Hitler Class war and race war on the Dvina, 1940–46 Geoffrey Swain 16. Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe The Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction of the changes 1988–98 Rajendra A.Chitnis 17. Soviet Dissent and Russia’s Transition to Democracy Dissident legacies Robert Horvath 18. Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001 Screening the word Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski 19. Russia as a Great Power Dimensions of security under Putin Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen 20. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 Truth, justice and memory George Sanford 21. Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia Philip Boobbyer 22. The Limits of Russian Democratisation Emergency powers and states of emergency Alexander N.Domrin 23. The Dilemmas of Destalinisation A social and cultural history of reform in the Khrushchev era Edited by Polly Jones 24. News Media and Power in Russia Olessia Koltsova 25. Post-Soviet Civil Society Democratization in Russia and the Baltic states Anders Uhlin 26. The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland Jacqueline Hayden 27. Television, Democracy and Elections in Russia Sarah Oates 28. Russian Constitutionalism Historical and contemporary development Andrey N.Medushevsky 29. Late Stalinist Russia Society between reconstruction and reinvention Edited by Juliane Fürst 30. The Transformation of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Russia Konstantin Axenov, Isolde Brade and Evgenij Bondarchuk 31. Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40 From Red Square to the Left Bank Ludmila Stern Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40 From Red Square to the Left Bank Ludmila Stern LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 Ludmila Stern All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Stern, Ludmila. Western intellectuals and the Soviet Union,: 1920–40: from Red Square to the Left Bank/Ludmila Stern. p. cm.—(BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European Studies; 31) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-36005-6 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Communism and intellectuals—History—20th century. 2. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1917–1936—Foreign public opinion. 3. Intellectuals— Attitudes—History—20th century. 4. Communism—History—20th century. 5. Intellectuals—Europe, Western. 6. Intellectuals—United States. I. Title. II. Series. HX528.S74 2006 305.5’52094709042—dc22 2006011021 ISBN 0-203-00814-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-36005-6 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-00814-6 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-36005-0 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-00814-0 (ebk) To my grandparents These writers have to be governed in such a way that they don’t feel that directives may be coming from Moscow. In other words, they have to be influenced in such a way that they say what we want to hear. Johannes Becher Contents Acknowledgements xi Explanatory note xii Introduction 1 1 The Soviet myth and Western intellectuals: from attraction to action 10 2 Comintern: the origins of Soviet cultural propaganda 35 3 MORP: propaganda through coercion 46 4 MORP: the closing years 68 5 Laying the foundations of relations with Western intellectuals: VOKS in the 86 1920s 6 Manufacturing support: VOKS in the 1930s 112 7 VOKS and the ‘famous foreigners’ 132 8 The bond of friendship: Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union and 164 French writers Epilogue 189 Notes 195 Bibliography 232 Index 244 Acknowledgements This book is an extended adaptation of my PhD thesis French Intellectuals and Soviet Cultural Organisations in the 1920s-30s (2000). I was supported by a Postdoctoral Writing Grant from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. I would like to express my gratitude to my Australian and overseas colleagues, and friends and family, especially Jerome, who assisted me during the painstaking task of writing this book. My special thanks go to Claude Bloch, who generously gave me her time and shared her memories. I thank my editor, Andrew McDonald, for his patience and support beyond the call of duty. Above all, this book would not have been written without my grandparents, Moisey and Hanka Salman. They are at the source of my family’s history, the inspiration for this book. Explanatory note This book is based on the mainly unpublished Soviet and, to a lesser degree, French archival sources. The English translations of the Russian and French originals are, for the most part, my own. In the absence of adequate English translations of some of the Russian or French terms and expressions, and in order to reproduce the exact names of organisations, I have provided the original terms, italicised and in brackets. I have adopted the following principles for the transliteration of Russian proper names. I have used conventional transliteration for names of well-known figures (e.g. Trotsky, Gorky and Fadeev). I have used the British Standards Institution transliteration for less familiar names (e.g. Tret’yakov, Kol’tsov, Pil’nyak), with the exception of surnames ending in -skiy, which are transliterated as -sky (e.g. Mayakovsky). In the bibliography and footnotes, authors’ names, book titles, and articles and publishers’ place names have all been transliterated, followed in brackets by the English translation. Where the same titles are referred to further in the text, only the English translation of the title is used. When quoting, I have tried to preserve the style of the original. If words in the original text were underlined, I have done the same.