The literary-artistic journals Star and Leningrad are being run in an entirely unsatisfactory fashion. Over the last two years, these journals have published a number of ideologically harmful and artistically very weak works.

In 1945, Star was publishing historical novels, for the most part. Very few works were published in the journal about the life of the Soviet people. Moods of decadence and decline were cultivated in Star's pages. This was expressed especially vividly in the poetry of A. Akhmatova, I. Sadofiev, and M. Komissarova (no. 1,1946).

A. Akhmatova's poem, “A Kind of Monologue” [“Vrode monologa”] is full of pessimism and disenchantment with life. Reality appears gloomy and sinister to Akhmatova, reminding her of a “black garden” and an “autumn landscape.” The poetess perceives the city's sounds as if heard “from the other world” … and “permanently estranged.” Akhmatova's sympathies and attachment are on the side of the past.

I. Sadofiev's poems are saturated with the same feeling of desperate longing as are the poems of Akhmatova. In M. Komissarova's poem “In the Heart's Voice” [“Golosom serdtsa”], the main motifs are grief about the past and the presentiment of death….

In several works the theme of the Patriotic War and the heroic defense of Leningrad is put forward irresponsibly, at a low artistic level. The circle of people shown in these works is extremely narrow, limited primarily to the depiction of the aesthetic intelligentsia, which is not typical for Soviet reality. The authors assign to our intelligentsia features uncharacteristic of it and show it detached from the life of the country.

Thus, in G. Gor's novella House on Mokhovaya [Dom na Mokhovoi], the main hero is an artist who during the days of the war is concerned only about the fate of his pictures. Another hero of this story is a botanist concerned only with preserving his cacti. In A. Shtein's story “Swan Lake” [“Lebedinoe ozero”], a pilot is presented who is more interested in ballet, which he is constantly recalling, than aviation.

The genuine heroes of Leningrad's defense are not shown in the journal's pages.

In V. Knekht's novella At the Nevsky Position [Na Nevskoi pozitsii] (no. 2, 1945), the Leningraders' battle against the fascists during the blockade is only a backdrop for an adventure tale. The central place in the story is occupied not by the soldiers and officers of the Red Army but by the images of a photographer-artist and icon collector. In this story, St. George is proclaimed the symbol of the Russian army….

Among works devoted to the war theme is also L. Maliugin's play Old Friends [Starye druz'ia] (no. 5–6, 1946). The cast of characters in it are young Soviet men and women who survived the blockade in Leningrad. The images created by L. Maliugin are not typical or characteristic for our young people. In this play, young people are shown as ideologically impoverished. Some of the girls work in hospitals, the boys were at the front, but they are little concerned about the fate of the homeland; the war has left almost no trace in their consciousness. They are continuing to live frivolously and to treat life frivolously….

D. Ostrov's stories “Peace” [“Mir”] and “Escape” [“Pobeg”] (no. 1, 1946) emphasize the tenacity of the German officers and soldiers. “Escape” describes the steady resistance of German units surrounded by the troops of the Red Army. The Germans' tenacity is explained by the fact that they had a large supply of wine and were regularly furnished by plane with … prostitutes.

The author reduces the aim of the Soviet command guiding the rout of the surrounded hostile grouping to the destruction of German wine cellars and to the prostitutes servicing the German soldiers.

In no. 5–6 of Star, under the heading “Novelties of Children's Literature,” is printed M. Zoshchenko's story, “Adventures of an Ape.” The events Zoshchenko describes take place in a city in the rear during the war. While the city is being bombed, an ape runs away from the zoo, and finding itself on city streets, has a number of adventures. The author needed the description of the ape's escapades only in order to mockingly underscore the hardships of the life of our people during the war (food shortages, lines, etc.). The ape is starving and begins looking for food. Zoshchenko describes it like this:

“In town, where can she eat? There's nothing edible on the streets. She can't go into a cafeteria with her tail. Or a cooperative. Especially since she doesn't have any money. There aren't any discounts. She doesn't have ration cards. It's a nightmare….She stopped in at a … store. She saw a big line. No, she didn't get in line. And she didn't start pushing people aside to get to the counter. She ran right over the customers' heads and up to the sales clerk. Jumped up on the counter. Didn't ask the price of a kilo of carrots, just grabbed a whole bunch of carrots and, as the saying goes, that's the last anyone ever saw of her. She ran out of the store quite pleased with her purchase. Well—she's an ape. She doesn't understand what's what. Doesn't see the sense of going without food.”

At the end of the story the author cynically states that the ape, which had been taught and quickly grown used to wiping its nose with a handkerchief, not to take others' things, and to eat its kasha with a spoon, could serve as an example for people.

Zoshchenko's story is a faulty, far-fetched work. In Zoshchenko's depiction, Soviet people are very primitive and limited. The author makes our people look dumb.

Idealistic views of art are being propagandized on Star's pages. L. Borisov's novella, The Magician from Gel-Giu [Volshebnik iz Gel'-Giu] (nos. 4, 5–6, 1946), is filled to the brim with appeals to abandon reality for the sphere of “sweet legends,” “the world of fantasy and pure invention.” The writer Grin, who is the hero of this novella, is idealized as the image of the dreamer, the man “not of this world,” plunged into his own endless fantasies. The same propaganda of idealist aesthetics is objectively served by many of the critical articles in Star. S. Spassky, in his “Letter on Poetry” [“Pis'mo o poezii”], in speaking about several Soviet poets is completely silent as to the ideological content of their art and examines works of art exclusively from the formal aspect. The article's formalist tendencies are obvious.

The literary-artistic journal Leningrad is filled with material that just happened to come its way. In the last few years, the journal has not published a single full-fledged work of art. Frequently they print excerpts from novels that, because they're broken up, are of no interest whatsoever to readers.

Leningrad publishes barely artistic, ideologically faulty works. The journal has run quite a few works about the Patriotic War, but the courageous struggle of the Soviet people against the fascists has not found a worthy artistic expression on its pages. The few stories on this theme printed in Leningrad in the last two years were contrived, distorting and trivializing images of the soldiers of the Red Army.

S. Varshavsky and B. Rest's story “Incident over Berlin” [“Sluchai nad Berlinom”] (Leningrad, no. 3–4, 1946) shows Sergeant Korotkov, who, while flying off to carry out his military assignment, takes along a bottle of beer. Then it describes how this bottle of beer, which Korotkov has hidden in his jumpsuit, breaks during the flight and the shards of glass get stuck in his leg. The frightened sergeant, thinking he's wounded, informs his commander of this. When the plane returns to the airstrip, the “wounded man” is taken away to the hospital and only there is the whole misunderstanding cleared up.

M. Slonimsky's story “At the Outpost” [“Na zastave”] (no. 3–4, 1946) gives an extremely ordinary image of a Soviet officer. It describes the following incident. When abandoning his border outpost in 1941, together with the retreating troops, an officer hid a bottle of wine in the cellar of the building, hoping to drink it upon his return. As the author informs us, these hopes were not realized—the officer returned to the outpost at war's end, but the bottle was broken. Why all this is recounted is unknown.

The journal prints many poems, but the artistic level of most of them is very low. In “Sevastopol” [Sebastpol] (no. 1–2, 1946), I. Selvinsky describes his impressions from visiting a hero-city after its liberation by the Red Army. But the poet says nothing about the city's courageous defenders; he recalls merely how once in the years before the revolution he met a girl on the street. He describes this girl's appearance in a vulgar tone:

In issue no. 1–2 for 1946, there is a parody, A. Flit's “My Nekrasov” [“Moi Nekrasov”], in which the author attempts to make fun of E. Katerli's story about Nekrasov published in Star. However, the parody itself is nothing but a desecration of the great poet. “Nekrasov,” writes A. Flit, “woke up with a belch and late. He was tormented by heartburn and the tsar's censor. All night he had dreamed of soaked apples and Nikitenko the censor. The pit of his stomach ached. He felt sour deep down inside. He'd been hiccupping since the night before. ‘What am I going to tell the muzhik!?’ thought Nikolai Alexeevich gloomily, drawing on his expensive, fragrant cigarette. His conscience and the serf-owning landowners tormented him. Nekrasov listlessly stuck his skinny yellow heels into his worn shoes and wended his way toward the window. He felt sick at the thought of his impotence in the face of the tsar and his toadies, and from the French cognac he'd been drinking the night before. Out the window Nekrasov saw the main entrance and a crowd of muzhiks. He sighed, with his yellow hand he dipped the nib of his pen in the ink, and yawning unconsciously and scratching, he wrote: ‘Thoughts at the Main Entrance’ [“Razmyshlenia u paradnogo pod”ezda”]. He felt like seeing Turgenev, but he was abroad. Nekrasov lay down on the sofa and turned his creased face toward the shabby wall. He couldn't sleep. Serfdom weighed upon him.”

In issue no. 10 of the journal for 1940, in the parody section, there are poems composed by A. Khazin entitled “The Return of Onegin: Chapter Eleven. Fragments” [“Vozvrashchenie Onegina: Glava odinnadtsataia. Fragmenty”]. These poems describe with malicious mocking and scoffing the daily life of modern Leningrad….

The criticism department is run quite unsatisfactorily in the journal. Reviews of the works of Leningrad writers are nearly exclusively laudatory in nature.

In the issues of the journal for 1946, the works of V. Rozhdestvensky, I. Avramenko, and Rakhmanov, were praised wildly and hoisted on a shield, and at the same time a work like V. Inber's Leningrad Diary [Leningradsky dnevnik] was the subject of coarse ridicule (no. 13–14, 1945, parody by A. Flit).

Several critical articles (Banner, no. 11, 1945, no. 2–3, 1946; Literaturnaia gazeta, 8 September 1945) have been published about the shortcomings of Star and Leningrad. However, even after these signals the quality of the journals did not improve, which points to the inability of the editors of Star and Leningrad to cope with the demands placed on them.

The Board of the USSR Union of Soviet Writers and its Leningrad division have turned the journals over to a group of writers, have not guided their work, and have not given them any assistance.

The Leningrad VKP(b) committee is not paying sufficient attention to the literary-artistic journals, is missing the major ideological errors in the content of the works published in Star and Leningrad, and is not supervising the editorial work.

A new editorial board must be approved for Star that is capable of improving the journal's work in a fundamental way.

As for Leningrad, its further existence should be deemed inexpedient.

A draft of the TsK VKP(b) resolution on Star and Leningrad is attached.