ABSTRACT
In his letter to Stalin, Bukharin added a postscript saying he had been visited by [Boris] Pasternak, who was upset by the arrest of Mandelstam. The purpose of this postscript was clear: it was Bukharin’s way of indicating to Stalin what the effect of M.’s arrest had been on public opinion. It was always necessary to personify ‘public opinion’ in this way. You were allowed to talk of one particular individual being upset, but it was unthinkable to mention the existence of dissatisfaction among a whole section of the community – say, the intelligentsia, or ‘literary circles’. No group has the right to its own
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shoes. Bukharin knew how to present things in the right way, and it was the postscript at the end of his letter that explained why Stalin chose to telephone Pasternak and not someone else. . . .
