Evening star., 1950-02-12
By the Associoied Pres,

by me ASSoctdfed FresS
NEW YORK, Feb. IL. - Soviet
writer's, musicians, artists and sci
entists live well, so long as they
consent to wear an intellectual
strait Jacket, an American re-
porter has found.
These intellectuals share the top
rung of the social ladder with the
leading politicians, says Edmund
Stevens, who covered Moscow for
the past three years for the Chris
tian Science Monitor.
Mr. Stevens found that Soviet
morality is predicated on the idea
that anything promoting commu-
nism is moral. Thus. he observes,
the cultural strait jacket and in
tellectual turnabouts are no more
startling than the assumed right
of the government to distort or
withhold the truth, break agree
ments, subdue alien peoples and
outstrip the Cars in imperialism.
The artists, writers and Scien-
fists have cars-like Stain they
seem to prefer the American to
the Soviet models. They have
town flats in addition to country
homes, despite the critical housing
situation. They are the pampered
social lions of the Soviet scene.
Far Above Professional Glass.
They do much better than doc
tors, lawyers or other professional
men, who earn the ruble equiva-
lent of s194 to $582 monthly. They
soar above the white collar peo-
pie, who earn the equivalent of
S97 to $l94 a month, enough for
a sufficient, but monotonous living.
They are miles above the lowest
layer of the social scale, mostly
unskilled workers who barely get
by.
But, Mr.. Stevens reports, the pit
falls are many and the road is
treacherous. The intellectual must
be nimble enough to catch and
ride the current party drift. He
describes the scene something like
this:
Denouncing Americans is the
surest key to literary success, even
for a writer of children's books,
and mo Soviet play or novel now
adays is complete without Ameri-
can diplomats, newspapermen, en-
gineers or businessmen who are
at the same time spies and pro-
vocateurs."
Congress Blamed in Part.
Mr.. Stevens adds in passing that
the Soviet case against Americans
is helped along greatly "by the ir-
responsible statements of certain
United States public figures, in
cluding members of Congress, urg-
ing immediate armed action
against the Soviet Union, includ-
ing use of atom bombs. To the
Soviet public. this sounds like cor
roboration of Pravda."
Konstantin Simonov, the author
whose dramas belabor the United
States incessently, has an open
bank account on which he can
draw at will, and other anti
American, and thus successful.
writers do almost as we'll. 'a
But as an example of what can
happen, last March Tamara Moty-
Iowa, leading Soviet female liter
ary critic. was fred from Gorky
Institutes faculty and had her
doctors degree revoked. Her Of
tense: She urged Soviet literature
to be critical of Soviet surround
tngs and she referred favorably to
the German-Jewish author Lion
Feuchtwanger. This branded her
bourgeois cosmopolite.
Too Much Realism Is Dangerous.
Soviet writer's once celebrated
now are in oblivion. The usual
reason: Too much realism. A
Stain prize book by no less a fig
ure than Alexander Fadayev, head
OF the writer's union, was found
two years after its publication to
have pictured Soviet general as
a bit of a stuffed shirt. The Agit-
prop propaganda and agitation)
ordered Fadayev to revise the
book, and he openly confessed the
Justice" of the criticism.
Often Soviet playwrights or
novelists make their bad, or anti
Communist characters altogether
too plausible, while the Commu-
mist characters do not seem to
come to life. Agitprop gets pretty
upset about this. In one such case
the Litertary Gazette, hatchet
sheet of Soviet letters, had just
finished highly praising such a
work. The Agitprop organ, Gull
ture and Life. blasted both the
play and the Gazette. The Gazette
promptly admitted it was wrong.
Newspaper writer's lead a mo-
notonous life. Pravda is the
nation wide model and other
papers seem like carbon copies.
echoing and re-echoing through
the country.
News Follows Party Line.
"The overall Soviet practice of
doctoring facts to fit the party
line determines the nature of
Soviet news coverage," Mr..
Stevens saws The Y,reqS iS rn
garded as a propaganda weapon,
not as a means of informing the
people. The public is told only
what the government wants it to
know. 1t was never told of the
Berlin blockade, but was given the
impression the airlift was some
sort Of Western publicity stunt
which failed. But when the
blockade was lifted. the startled
public found a brilliant Soviet