«Постоянно бодрствующий дух критики» против стратегий советской культурной дипломатии: письмо Андре Жида послу СССР

Вестник Томского государственного университета. 2020. № 450. С. 66–71.

Kharitonova N.

The paper clarifies circumstances in which in 1935 André Gide wrote his letter in defense of Victor Serge to the Soviet ambassador in Paris. The study is based on the materials of the Congress for the Defense of Culture, Soviet press of that time and documents from the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. After the Congress, which took place in 1935 in Paris, André Gide converged with the anti-Stalinist opposition in France and Belgium, and welcomed a campaign in support of Victor Serge, politician and writer who had passing in the case of the so-called Zinoviev group and had been exiled to Orenburg. The article discusses episodes of criticisms against the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union, carried out by Gaetano Salvemini and Magdeleine Paz, and the reaction of the Soviet participants to them. The main controversy on the Victor Serge’ case was inscribed in the context of the Dreyfus Affair. It shows that the lines of demarcation between the Soviet delegation and the European writers were shaped by the different attitude towards the State and the Individual. For French writers the Dreyfus case was an ideal paradigm for assessing the entire spectrum of relations between the State and the Writer. The Soviet delegates insisted that the interests of the State and the Revolution are above individual freedom, meanwhile for the European intellectuals human rights were a universal value, and there were no excuses for violating them.

Keywords: троцкизм, советско-французские отношения, André Gide, Андре Жид, Trotskism, Soviet-French relations, Congress for the Defense of Culture, The Dreyfus Affair, Дело Дрейфуса, Конгресс в защиту культуры 1935 года