ABSTRACT
The poetry that was published in the post-war years of the Stalin period tested its readers’ commitment almost to destruction, presenting them with numerous turgid epics containing ritualized panegyric to Stalin, but precious little that was original or individual. Poets, meanwhile, were faced with the choice either of making their work acceptable to the censor, or setting it aside until times changed. Critical articles of the early 1950s lamented the dearth of good poetry; it was only after Stalin’s death in 1953 that it was possible to begin to discuss just why this had been the case, and how it could be remedied. Well-known poets such as Nikolai Aseev, Il’ia Sel’vinskii, and Ol’ga Berggol’ts all published articles in the mid-1950s which drew attention to the shortcomings of contemporary poetry and argued for the poet’s right to focus on personal and private themes.1
Efforts were made to revive readers’ interest by inaugurating an annual Poetry Day in Moscow in 1955, when poets gave readings of their recent work; this quickly became a tradition in major cities across the Soviet Union, and annual almanacs containing new or newly published poetry as well as critical articles, began to appear in connection with Poetry Day.2
Such successful innovations were a potential threat to establishment poets who, as John and Carol Garrard put it, ‘made handsome careers from rhyming Pravda editorials and celebrating Soviet triumphs with occasional odes’.3 The appearance of poetry which declared a confident awareness of its own value as poetry, rather than a means for transmitting current party policy, threatened to expose the restricted and impoverished nature of such establishment figures’ work. It promoted a new agenda for poetry: the rehabilitation of a genre which had been gravely damaged by the Stalin era.
