Look at Gorbachev's Soviet Union through the eyes of Andrei Sinyavsky, and prepare to be astonished. As a literary critic in Moscow, Sinyavsky for years secretly published bitter, moving short stories in the West under the pseudonym Abram Tertz. When Soviet officials discovered Tertz's real identity in 1965, they arrested Sinyavsky, along with his friend Yuli Daniel, another underground writer. Convicted of "anti-Soviet acts" in a celebrated trial that for the first time drew the world's attention to Moscow's dissident movement, Sinyavsky spent almost six years in a labor camp, Daniel five. Sinyavsky emigrated to Paris in 1973, and Soviet authorities reluctantly permitted him to return last January to attend the funeral of his great friend Daniel. In the following pages, Sinyavsky reflects on those remarkable five days in Moscow, on Gorbachev, on the Soviet character and on whether his beloved country has indeed changed for good.
Recently a lot of people have asked me, Wouldn't you like to go back and live again in the Soviet Union? After all, now they're rebuilding the society, they've published Doctor Zhivago, they don't arrest people anymore under Article 70 (for "anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation"), and the conscience of Russia, academician Sakharov, is practically a member of the government . . .
Yes, I agree, things have changed. I tell my questioner that they've also published dissident writers such as Vladimir Voinovich and Georgi Vladimov, they've begun little by little to publish me, and they're even allowing some limited criticism of the General Secretary. If things go any further . . .
But that's just the question. Will things go further?
The Soviet system has aroused the interest and attention of the whole world as, perhaps, the most unusual and frightening phenomenon of the 20th century. It is frightening because it lays claim to the future of all humanity and seizes more and more countries and spheres of influence, considering itself the ideal and ordained end of the historical development of the entire world. It is so new, strong and extraordinary that at times even people nurtured in her womb, her children so to speak, perceive it as if it were some sort of monstrosity or invasion from Mars, to which we ourselves, however, still belong. We cannot have the calm perspective provided by distance, inasmuch as we are not simply historians but contemporaries and witnesses (and sometimes even participants) in this process.
Working on a book about Soviet civilization, I have come to the conclusion that the Soviet system is made up of massive, heavy blocks. It is well suited to the suppression of human freedom, but not to revealing, nourishing and stimulating it. On the whole, it resembles an Egyptian pyramid built out of colossal stones, carefully assembled and ground to fit together. A mass of dead stone, an impressive monumentality of construction, which once served majestic ends now beyond our reach, a huge structure with such a modicum of useful space inside. Inside -- the mummy, Lenin. Outside -- the wind of the desert. Sand. That's the image.