The Union of Soviet Writers (Soiuz sovetskikh pisatelei) was the first creative union organized by the Communist Party to solidify its influence on the arts. The Party leadership considered literature and other arts to be potent weapons which could work for or against them. For almost sixty years, the Union employed a mixture of enticements to mobilize writers behind the Party’s agenda, and punishments to discipline those believed to have transgressed.
The Union’s creation marked the final step in the politicization of Soviet literature. It replaced the less- inclusive Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), which was dissolved in 1932. The new Union was open to all loyal Soviet writers. Although the Union’s creation was announced in May 1932, its founding Congress did not occur until August 1934. In the interim, an Organizational Committee dominated by Party officials developed the vaguely defined aesthetic doctrine of Socialist
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Realism, which became the guiding tenet of Soviet literature. Maxim Gorky was also involved in the Union’s creation, though scholars disagree about his actual role. The Union’s First Congress was a widely publicized event, with speeches by leading writers and prominent political figures.
The Union had chapters at the All-Union, republic, regional, and city level; however, there was no Russian Republic chapter until 1955. In theory, the Union’s activities were funded by membership fees; in reality it was heavily subsidized by the Soviet state. The Union’s controlling body was known at different times as the Presidium, Secretariat, or Litburo (Literary Bureau). Appointments to this body were controlled by the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Union leaders, who were often little-known writers, were expected to ensure the implementation of Party policies in literature. By having writers police one another, the Central Committee created the illusion of peer review and undermined group solidarity.
The Union oversaw Soviet literary journals and ran its own publishing house, Sovetskii pisatel. It organized meetings where writers were encouraged to discuss themes favored by the Party, and local chapters sometimes held preliminary readings of members’ works. Its main task, however, was to reward or punish writers, depending on their level of cooperation with the Party’s agenda. The Union controlled many aspects of its members’ everyday lives, from housing, medical care, and vacations, to access to consumer goods; the quality and extent of these benefits depended on writers’ cooperation. Rewards could be considerable. As a result, election to the Union was a coveted prize.
On the other hand, the Union could publicly censure members or prevent the publication of their work. Under Stalin, Union leaders were expected to sanction members’ arrest or execution. After 1953, however, the Union’s worst sanction was expulsion from its ranks. Not only were expelled members deprived of access to Union resources, but they could no longer publish in the Soviet Union. Only Union members could engage in writing as their main profession. The poet Joseph Brodsky, who was not a Union member, was arrested in 1964 as a social parasite.
The Writers’ Union provided the template for other creative unions, such as those for composers, filmmakers, and artists. The Union’s influence ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, though some branches have reconstituted themselves. The
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Russian Federation branch has become a bastion of extreme nationalism. See also: BRODSKY, JOSEPH ALEXANDROVICH; GORKY, MAXIM
Brown, Edward J. (1982). Russian Literature Since the Revolution, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Garrard, John and Carol. (1990). Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union. New York: The Free Press. Soviet Writers’ Congress. (1934). The Debate on Realism and Modernism in the Soviet Union. London: Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd.
Although preceded by several smaller groups, the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class was the first important Marxist revolutionary organization founded inside Russia in the 1890s. Established in 1895 in St. Petersburg, it adopted its permanent name in December of that year. Its twenty or so members, mainly students and student-age intellectuals, included future leaders of Social Democracy, the movement that gave birth to Bolshevism, Menshevism, and the October Revolution. Among them were Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), the future Bolshevik, and Iuly Tsederbaum (Martov), the future Menshevik. Some workers were associated with the Union, but not with membership rights.
During its first years the Union’s most noteworthy activity was the distribution of agitational leaflets to Petersburg workers in support of their strike actions. As a matter of caution, the Union tended to avoid leaflets that were overtly political or revolutionary, but because strikes were still illegal, even leaflets confined to workers’ economic grievances were treated as acts of rebellion by the police. In the winter of 1895-1896 and again that summer, the Union was weakened by arrests, anticipating many more arrests and hence frequent turnovers in its membership and a weakening of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, it continued functioning, and in early summer 1896 and January 1897 it played a major role in supporting the milENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY itant textile strikes that forced the government to recognize the power of workers and to reduce the length of the workday (law of June 2, 1897). During this period the Union spawned similar organizations in other cities and maintained contact with revolutionaries abroad.
In 1896 and 1897 the successes of the Petersburg workers’ movement precipitated conflicts within the Union. Younger members (molodye) believed that the time was ripe to open the organization’s ranks to worker representatives chosen by participants in the grassroots labor movement, while the somewhat older “veterans” (stariki), including exiled founders of the Union such as Lenin, while not opposing the admission of individual workers who met their political and ideological standards, balked at the admission of workers chosen by worker groups lest their presence dilute the Union’s political ideology. Tensions over this issue persisted, but as Lenin and the stariki became less influential, the organization became increasingly worker-friendly. From 1898 to 1902 it was run mainly by worker-phile Marxists whose position was subjected to intense and exaggerated criticism by Lenin, Martov, and others, who accused it of economism. Although the influence of the Union waxed and waned, it managed to survive this period of internal disagreement, rivalry, and fragmentation among Russia’s Marxists, remaining a focal point of organized Social Democracy in St. Petersburg. Until the summer of 1902, when it briefly and tentatively adhered to the organization “Iskra”-then dominated by Leninist fears of worker spontaneity-the Union was mainly a close ally of workers’ organizations. By 1903, however, its independent identity was lost, as its niche in the organizational life of Russian Marxism became indistinguishable from that of the Petersburg Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. See also: BOLSHEVISM; MENSHEVIKS; SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WORKERS’ PARTY; WORKERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frankel, Jonathan, ed. (1969). Vladimir Akimov on the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism, 1895-1903. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Haimson, Leopold H. (1955). The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keep, John L. H. (1963). The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia. London: Oxford University Press.
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Pipes, Richard. (1963). Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885-1897. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wildman, Allan K. (1967). The Making of a Workers’ Revolution: Russian Social Democracy, 1891-1903. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
