Translated material
Tormented by the Jews
In Moscow, at the age of 93, the writer Ivan Shevtsov died, having devoted his entire adult life, starting from the late 1940s, to the fight against rootless cosmopolitans (read: Jews and persons related to them) through the means of artistic prose.
Although Shevtsov devoted at least a dozen large and small opuses to the topic of Jewish dominance and the fight against it, his first novel entitled “Aphids” remained the most famous work of the classic of Soviet anti-Semitic literature. It was preparing for release in mass circulation back in 1950, at the peak of Stalin’s campaign against cosmopolitans, but due to someone’s machinations (either Jewish-Masonic, or vice versa) it was published only in 1963, in the wake of Khrushchev’s struggle against "abstractionists". In order to adapt the novel, written in the era of The Doctors' Affair, to the needs of the current moment, the author quickly composed an epilogue, an excerpt from which, it seems to me, can give an excellent idea of the artistic merits and semantic depths of the text. Read and enjoy:
Mikhail Gerasimovich was now looking not at this painting, but at the second one, the one that was not allowed at the Moscow exhibition, and, probably for the hundredth time, asked: “Why?” As always, collected, the knight of the revolution Felix Dzerzhinsky sits in half-profile opposite Ilyich and tells how this monstrous crime against humanity was prepared - the shot of Fanny Kaplan, a shot at the very heart of the revolution. He tells Ilyich that according to the original plan, a professional killer, a hired criminal, was supposed to shoot him. But no hand was raised, he refused. The second was a White Guard. I couldn't either. Kaplan’s hand didn’t waver. It was a poisonous snake, slippery and fetid, the enemy of life, the sower of death.
Kamyshev looks at Lenin, Lenin looks at Dzerzhinsky, and maybe at the artist himself. Ilyich’s gaze is concentrated, deep, piercing the thickness of the coming years. It seems that Lenin foresees new shots - at Kirov, at Thälmann, at Patrice Lumumba - and bullets poisoned by the poison of cynicism, hypocrisy and hatred of man. And he warns: be careful!
What is this? Like a bell ringing at the front door? Or did he imagine it? Let them open it there.
And so they break in, they don’t enter, but they break into his studio - artists whose paintings were also not accepted for the Moscow exhibition: Vladimir Mashkov, Pyotr Eremenko, Karen Vartanyan and Pavel Okunev. Four of us. Noisy, booming, excited and fun. And right away, without even saying “Hello,” almost in unison:
- Victory!..
- Victory, Mikhail Gerasimovich!..
- Complete defeat of the formalists and abstractionists!..
And he stood up, also set on fire, and became wary and questioning.
“The leaders of the party and government have now visited the exhibition at the Manege,” Karen said hastily.
- Well...? - Kamyshev is waiting. And those spring faces and eyes shine with joy and delight.
“The formalists and abstractionists got it…” said Mashkov.
“But the most interesting thing,” said the all-crimson Eremenko, “is that somehow Vladimir Ilyich’s words sounded there in a new, fresh way that art belongs to the people, that it should be understandable to the broad masses.”
Kamyshev’s face suddenly became clear, even as if the wrinkles had disappeared. He invited everyone to sit down and carefully lowered himself into a chair.
They vying with each other to tell him in detail what was happening now in the Manege. He listened attentively, his burning eyes wide open. And suddenly his blue lips trembled, his eyes became wet. I couldn't stand it. But these were already tears of joy.
He was such a wonderful writer.
Perhaps the best text about Shevtsov is an interview with Oleg Kashin, taken in 2007 for the then incarnation of Russian Life. A reader familiar with the realities of Soviet history in this text may be offended by the naive and absurd attempts of the journalist to pass off his interlocutor as a dissident, a sufferer and a victim of the regime, although in reality his nomenklatura fate as a professional, career anti-Semite in the USSR was, to put it mildly, more comfortable than that of real writers. The Soviet government did not offend the deceased with either dachas, apartments, positions, circulation, or foreign currency business trips - which is stated in the material in black and white. But this attempt to turn the story of nomenklatura success into a myth about a wanderer persecuted by the world with a Russian soul is a waste of the author’s interpretation. An important advantage of Kashin as a journalist and biographer is precisely that he does not allow himself to lie, distort facts, or tendentiously adjust them to his own vision of the character. The 2007 interview is an excellent biographical sketch about a man who in his long life knew only one, but fiery, passion.