To love a big brother

How they broke the Soviet intelligentsia

The Ministry of Love. So in the novel "1984" is called to perfection the torture bolt. It is to force everyone who got there to love a big brother

All the confessions that are pronounced here are true. We make them true ... We do not destroy the dissenter because he rebelled at us, never kill him while he resists. We turn him on the path of truth, master him with heart and soul, remake him. We burn all the evil and all sorts of illusions in him; We achieve that he stands on our side, not as necessary, but sincerely, with all our hearts, with all our souls ... We cannot allow the slightest slope of thought, no matter how secret and harmless this bias is.

George Orwell. "1984"

This is a gloomy fantasy. And here is reality.

Confusion of feelings

In January 1936, the article “Polbur instead of music” was printed in Pravda, in which the opera D. Shostakovich “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district” was subjected to total defeat. This article was read by the writer Yuri Olesha, the author of the romantic fairy tale about the revolution “Three Fat Men” and the novel about the intelligentsia “Envy”. And this is what he thought: “ The first sensation was a protest. I thought: it is wrong. Shostakovich cannot be scolded, Shostakovich is an exceptional phenomenon in our art. This article greatly hit my mind. I always liked Shostakovich’s music ... And suddenly I read the truth in the newspaper that Shostakovich’s opera is “confusion instead of music”. This was said by Pravda. What should I be with my attitude to Shostakovich? .. ”(“ Great folk art. From the speech of Comrade Yu. Olesha. ”“ Literary newspaper ”No. 17 of March 20, 1936)

It would seem that a normal person can have only one way out: to remain with his own, special opinion. It is not necessary to even declare it publicly. Is it really alone with himself that he cannot afford to have his own opinion on such a purely private question, as the attitude to Shostakovich's music?

It turns out that it cannot: “ It was easiest to say to myself: I am not mistaken, and reject the opinion of“ Truth ”for myself, inside. What would this lead to? To very severe psychological consequences. We, comrades, have an extremely clutch of the whole drawing of public life. We do not have in the life and activity of the state independently growing and moving lines. All parts of the drawing are linked, dependent on each other and subordinated to one line ... If I do not agree with this line in any segment, then the whole complex drawing of life, which I think and write about, will collapse for me personally: I should stop like a lot that seems to me so charming. For example, the fact that the young worker in one night made a revolution in the production of coal and became world famous /.../ or the fact that Stalin's answers Roy Howard are cited by the seal of the whole world with enthusiastic respect. If I do not agree with the articles “Pravda” about art, then I have no right to receive patriotic pleasure from the perception of these excellent things - from the perception of this aroma of novelty, victorious, good luck that I like so much ... ”(from the speech of Yuri Olesha.)

Consciousness that he cuts out a malignant tumor from which there may be metastases, this fear prompted Olesha to be especially conscientious ... Here, for example: how can he be with Joyce? Once Olesha had the imprudence to admit that he feels the genius of this artist, that Gorky for him (Gorky himself !!!) "formally less interesting than Joyce." It would seem, what does Joyce have to do with it? The article “Pravda” about Joyce is not a word. But he, Olesha, will not engage in this unworthy self -deception. He knows: Joyce has a lot to do with it. Joyce is complicated, the elitren is no less than Shostakovich. If he fails with Joyce now, then it will be too late. No, better right away, in advance: “ I will give an example from Joyce. This writer said: “Cheese is a corpse of milk.” Here, comrades, how scary. The Western writer saw the death of milk. He said that milk could be dead. Well said? Fine. This is said correctly, but we do not want such correctness. We want artistic dialectical truth. And from the point of view of this truth, milk can never be a corpse, it flows from the mother’s chest to the child’s mouth, and therefore it is immortal . ” (From the speech of Yuri Olesha.)

At the First All -Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Yuri Olesha was honored to read the appeal to the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b): “We declare the Central Committee that we will do everything ... so that the wonderful life of our country sparkles in art with all the wealth of our colors”

Sublimation of fear

About the terrible deformation of the soul, which ultimately finished Olesha, crushed him, is well known. Arkady Belinkov in his famous book “The Survey and Death of the Soviet Intellectual. Yuri Olesha ”presented a detailed and deep study of his drama. In this work, he speaks of “surrender and death” and other Soviet intellectuals (A. Tolstoy, Ehrenburg, Shklovsky). It can be added to the brilliant analysis of this collision that not only those who surrendered, but also not surrendered to one degree or another were also zombified by the fact that Orwell called “Love for a Big Brother” in his novel: Chukovsky, Pasternak, Bulgakov ... For some time, even Mandelstam hit the field of this irradiation. (He himself then called it a psychosis.)

Needless to say, all these pathological attacks of love for a big brother were nothing more than a sublimation of fear.