Excellent essay, James. Grossman is added to my list for future reading. I can see that if an uncompromising anti-Soviet Russian writer did manage to survive until the start of the Great Patriotic War, she/he might well become less anti-Stalin in the sense that beating the Fascist threat became a higher priority. That choice between two evils haunted Churchill and Roosevelt, of course, and shaped my own Young Communist League enrolment in the 1940s.
SKB
On 03/06/2010 00:58, "James Twiggs" <jtwigzz@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
Here's a link to a review that may be of interest to Carolyn, Stan, and others who have been discussing Soviet writers. Nabokov is mentioned near the end of the review.
THE NEW REPUBLIC
May 18, 2010
Anti-Socialist Realism
MICHAEL WEISS on THE MASTERPIECES OF VASILY GROSSMAN
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/actually-existing-social-realism
Jim Twiggs