State farm "Testaments of Galsworthy"

The exodus of writers from the Russian PEN Center continues, whose executive committee recently expelled journalist Sergei Parkhomenko for life "for provocative activities incompatible with the goals and objectives" of the organization (an unprecedented scandal in its history). Russian PEN has already left Lev Rubinstein, Olga Sedakova, Svetlana Aleksievich, Boris Akunin and many other people of their word. Poet, prose writer, critic and essayist Aleksey Tsvetkov recalls from New York what the goals and objectives of PEN really are

A writer, contrary to the illusion cast by Pushkin, does not need to have a conscience at all, it does not add talent or take it away, and the shadow that a lack of this quality casts on the final product can sometimes even serve as additional bait in the eyes of thrill-seekers. Examples, alas, you can fill page after page, but it is enough to mention at least Louis-Ferdinand Celine.

But this is, in fact, the wrong logical route, because we mean conscience in each other by default before this or that profession. After all, there is no provision in any organization's bylaws that members and potential candidates must be bipedal mammals. And yet, bipedalism is implied much more than the usual default when it comes to, say, cyclists and football players.

“There are organizations where conscience is invisibly spelled out in the charter, primarily charitable and human rights organizations. Among the latter is the International PEN Club"

With conscience, the situation is approximately the same, because there are organizations where it is nevertheless invisibly spelled out in the charter, primarily charitable and human rights organizations. Among the latter is the International PEN Club - this is clearly stated in its charter, the first three paragraphs of which came from the pen of the first president of the club, the British writer John Galsworthy. The third one reads:

“PEN members must at all times use all their influence in favor of mutual understanding and mutual respect among peoples, they undertake to do everything in their power to combat racial, class and national hatred and to support the ideal of a single humanity living peacefully in one world."

This, apparently, is the “Galsworthy testaments” that have instantly become a meme in recent days, an example of the striking stylistic deafness of one of the members of the Moscow branch of the organization, who equated the human rights mission with the name of a state farm. For some reason, the minutes of the meeting, which resulted in a document with a meme, are not visible on the organization's website, as well as many other things. Its main content is a series of mutual congratulations to each other on awards, anniversaries and publications. It's hard to think of a greater contrast with PEN International's own website, which mostly consists of calls for human rights action - and not just in defense of pen workers. And it would be good if everything in Russia were in perfect order with the rights of the same writers, not to mention civilians. No matter how you comb the site, you will not find, for example, a single protest against the packaging of books in shameful wrappers with warnings about "obscene language."

“The prototype of the organization into which the current government is trying to turn the Russian PEN Center is well known to both writers and readers - this is the “Griboyedov House”, caustically sung by Mikhail Bulgakov”

Since ancient times, representatives of many professions tend to unite in organizations in order to protect their rights: in corporations, workshops and trade unions. Writers, in principle, also have a common interest: freedom of speech. And the more it is persecuted, the more urgent is the need for protests, especially collective ones. No other desirable benefits are mentioned in the statutes of International PEN. But in the case of the Moscow branch, we are dealing with a mixture of paradigms, and the one that has nothing in common with the precepts of Galsworthy takes over before our eyes. The prototype of the organization into which the current government is trying to turn the Russian PEN Center is well known to both writers and readers - it is the "Griboyedov House", caustically sung by Mikhail Bulgakov. The Soviet government greatly encouraged the right writers, kept an exclusive restaurant, dachas and sanatoriums for them, and built "Drumlit's houses". But there was a price to pay for this: silence about everything that was forbidden to talk about, and praise of everything that was allowed.

The other part of the winning paradigm is the notorious "democratic centralism" that the organization's other national affiliates probably haven't heard of. No initiative from below is allowed to pass, but it simply does not come from above, because the authorities do not like this. The latest scandal, which provoked another wave of mass exoduses, is associated with the exclusion of journalist Sergei Parkhomenko from it, accused of excessive human rights initiative with mentioning the name of the organization in vain. Parkhomenko was a long-standing stumbling block for the government - in particular, he described in detail on his Facebook the story of how a group of PEN members, at the suggestion of translator Olga Drobot and journalist Alexander Arkhangelsky, initiated a petition in defense of Ukrainian cinematographer Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a prison term, and thus forced the creative direction to come up with a similar one of their own in return. Only it was performed in a proper obsequious style, with numerous kneeling and kissing dust at the feet of the authorities, and the demand to release the prisoner into the wild was replaced by a request to mitigate the punishment - apparently, to add cartilage to the gruel.

Incidentally, I don't recall a single case of exclusion of members of other national PEN affiliates, let alone "suspension of membership for a year" or "severe warning". But a member of the Komsomol, which members of the board of a person of a very sedate age accuse Parkhomenko of, was once himself, and I remember well the arsenal from which these tools of censure were extracted.

And one more remark about the recurrence of the paradigm and the state farm “Testaments of Galsworthy”. This meme and the authorship of the wretched expulsion protocol are, according to unconfirmed reports, the pen of the writer Yevgeny Popov. Once Popov was one of the authors of the seditious almanac "Metropol", published in the West and noted in the feuilleton of the famous libel Felix Kuznetsov. Comparing the then style of Kuznetsov and the current Popov, Emory University professor Oleg Proskurin noted a striking similarity and continuity. These are our boomerangs today.

Although I personally am not a member and have not been involved, I know from friends one of the important reasons why many decent people hesitated to leave the Russian PEN Center. The fact is that it provides visa support to its members, and the desire to avoid unnecessary humiliation in the consular chambers is quite forgivable - I understand this even from here, having trampled a lot in lines with St. George ribbons over the window. But today one has to choose between symmetrical humiliations, and the new gradually outweighs the former.

Galsworthy's precepts were ultimately changed not by Parkhomenko and not by his like-minded people, but by those who transformed the human rights organization into Griboyedov's house. It remains to be hoped that Koroviev and Behemoth are already somewhere on the way.