Agent materials that have come into the SPO UNKVD [People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs Administration] for L[eningrad] O[blast] recently on the activities of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Writers, as well as materials from the investigation into the case against the c[ounter]r[evolutionary] nationalist group of young writers, point to just how detached the Union's Party leadership is from the mass of writers, the extreme weakness of the mass-political educational work, the ignoring of work with young writers, and the absence of real political direction for the work of the literary circles at factory and plant enterprises in Leningrad.

The Leningrad Union almost never arranges readings or selections of new unpublished works. Writers gather in private apartments. So, for instance: the apartments of the writers Tikhonov, Kazakov [sic],

Recte M. E. Kozakov throughout.

Zabolotsky, Oleynikov, Venus whom we deported, and the critic Manuilov are the site of private gatherings of Leningrad writers where they read and discuss individual as yet unpublished works.

“Evenings at the club are boring, deserted, and cold, and no one listens to the reports” (statement by the writer Kuklin).

“Creative life in our club is being replaced by banquets, dinners, and general reports. The leadership is detached from us, it doesn't know what we find meaningful” (statement by the writer N. Nikitin).

The Union sections, with the exception of the critics' section, are not functioning.

The work methods of Gorelov, the senior secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers and a form[er] activist of the Literary Front, evoke negative attitudes among the majority of the unaffiliated writers.

Since the very first days of the Union's existence, Gorelov has replaced the board's work with his own personal administration, which is leading to a break with the mass of writers.

Writers Union Chairman Tikhonov has frequently complained in conversation with writers Fedin, Slonimsky, Kazakov, and oth[ers] that “in the time of the union's existence he hadn't been given a single document for signature.” “The decisions of a great number of fundamental literary matters by the ‘secretariat’ were frivolous, and the explanation of these matters by Gorelov and Bespamiatny (sec[retary] of the Par[ty] group) has misled me.”

According to Kazakov, he made several attempts to speak to Gorelov on this subject, but the latter always refused to have these conversations.

With respect to the Party group in the Union of Soviet Writers, there is also an absence of leadership for the mass literary movement in Leningrad, which is leading to socially hostile elements penetrating into the movement's leadership.

The writer Tveriak, whom we arrested in the case against the c[ounter]r[evolutionary] nationalistic group, indicated in the investigation that members of the group were trying to take over literary circles with their counterrevolutionary influence:

“… The purpose of this group was supposed to be the fight for asserting our nationalistic ideas in literature. In doing so, Dmitrochenko indicated that our work should follow along the line of literary circles and take them over with our influence. As an example he cited RAPP, which, according to him, was strong because it rested on the mass of literary circles….” (Tveriak's test[imony], 5 April 1935).

A check of the leaders of Leningrad literary circles showed that most of them—78 percent (43 of 55) are unaffiliated and only 6, or 11 percent, are members or candidates for the Party, and six, also 11 percent, are members of Komsomol.

In a number of large Leningrad plants and factories, the leaders of the literary circles are socially hostile and anti-Soviet individuals:

Rozhdestvensky is a poet, he guides a circle at the Lenin Club, in the past he was closely linked with Gumilyov, who was shot in connection with the Tagantsevsky case; with Khodasevich, an emigrant, with Kliuev, who has been imprisoned in a concentration camp for c[ounter]r[evolutionary] activities, and with O. Mandelshtam, who was exiled for c[ounter]r[evolutionary] activities.

Rozhdestvensky is the author of a number of counterrevolutionary poems which are being disseminated in manuscript form.

Based on their literary qualifications, most leaders of literary circles are individuals unsuited for this work.

Of the 55 leaders, only 9, or 16 percent, are members of the Union of Soviet Writers, moreover most of them are not leading Leningrad writers, and 13, or 24 percent, are candidates for membership in the Writers Union. Of the remaining number of circle leaders, most are literature teachers in the schools and workers in cultural institutions who do not have the necessary training to lead circles.