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The Novel of a Novel - Abridged Diary Entries from Moscow, 1935-1937 (Hardcover)
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The Novel of a Novel - Abridged Diary Entries from Moscow, 1935-1937 (Hardcover)
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One of the first critiques of Stalinism from within the communist
movement, The Novel of a Novel is a memoir in the form of a
journal. It was first published in Yugoslavia in 1955 based on the
journal, letters, clippings, and other materials kept by the
Hungarian-Jewish novelist Ervin Sinko during his two years in
Moscow between 1935 and 1937, years in which the Soviet cultural
policy of the Popular Front was giving way to the Great Terror.
Sinko and his wife travelled to the home of socialism with great
hopes. He had just completed his novel Optimists on the Hungarian
Revolutions of 1918-1919 but could not find a publisher for it in
Depression-era Paris. He went to Moscow at the urging of Romain
Rolland and at the invitation of VOKS, both promoters of the Soviet
Union as the center of a new civilization. Sinko's optimism however
soon gave way to grave doubts. Fearful publishers kept him in limbo
and starving despite the support that Sinko had from Bela Kun and
Alfred Kurella of the Comintern. Sinko deplored the
over-centralization of cultural policy, attacks against the
avant-guard, the forcing of Socialist Realism, the cult of Stalin,
the reverses on abortion, the development of a privileged class of
managers and Stakhanovist workers, and finally, the advent of the
show trials. He tried to understand these developments through
conversations with a great many people of the German and Hungarian
communist diasporas, the visiting French Left, and local Russians
among whom he was allowed to live. In the second year of his stay,
the Sinkos shared an apartment with the writer Isaac Babel and his
wife, Pirizhkova. The story of the tragic misunderstanding that
ensued between the two men reveals much about Babel's difficult
situation and about the limits of Sinko's understanding of the
Terror. The Sinkos were fortunate to be expelled from the country.
But even back in France, Sinko was prevented by his fear of the
fascist threat from openly criticizing the Soviet Union. It was a
miracle that the couple survived both the terror and the Holocaust.
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