ABSTRACT
Simonov, Ermilov, and the many critics who followed them were taking no risks when they placed Solzhenitsyn’s story firmly within the bounds of official Party policy, emphasizing its role as an instrument in the process of de-Stalinization. Most critics agreed with Tvardovsky that the unsensational presentation of the material enhanced its impact and that the story gained in power from the author's self-restraint. Consciously or unconsciously, Tvardovsky was judging Solzhenitsyn's output by the exceptional standards of his first published story, and in this he was to show a surer judgement than Solzhenitsyn himself, who had a poor appreciation of the worth of his work when it was not prose. It turned out that he had been invited to a grand gathering at the Pioneer Palace on Lenin Hills, where Party leaders were meeting four hundred writers, artists, and other members of the creative intelligentsia.
