Most Russian intellectuals listened in tight-lipped silence as word of Nikita Khrushchev's latest cultural crackdown (TIME, March 22) filtered out to the provinces. Not so the writers and artists of Leningrad, Russia's second city. When the local commissars met to give them the word, the intellectuals talked right back.
The Leningrad edition of Pravda reported acidly last week that the curator of the West European art history section of Leningrad's famed Hermitage Museum rose to defend "formalistic distortions and asserted that 'this is buoyant, creative art.' " What's more, the prominent director of...
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