Novel of a Novel (eBook)

This book provides an abridged translation of the writings of Ervin Sinkó, the Hungarian writer and intellectual, during his visit to the Soviet Union in 1935–37. It describes his initial sympathy for the Soviet project and his eventual disillusionment after witnessing what he considered to be Stalinism’s betrayals of socialist ideals.

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One of the first critiques of Stalinism from within the communist movement, The Novel of a Novel is a memoir in the form of a journal. It was first published in Yugoslavia in 1955 based on the journal, letters, clippings, and other materials kept by the Hungarian-Jewish novelist Ervin Sinko during his two years in Moscow between 1935 and 1937, years in which the Soviet cultural policy of the Popular Front was giving way to the Great Terror. Sinko and his wife travelled to the home of socialism with great hopes. He had just completed his novel Optimists on the Hungarian Revolutions of 19181919 but could not find a publisher for it in Depression-era Paris. He went to Moscow at the urging of Romain Rolland and at the invitation of VOKS, both promoters of the Soviet Union as the center of a new civilization. Sinkos optimism however soon gave way to grave doubts. Fearful publishers kept him in limbo and starving despite the support that Sinko had from Bela Kun and Alfred Kurella of the Comintern. Sinko deplored the over-centralization of cultural policy, attacks against the avant-guard, the forcing of Socialist Realism, the cult of Stalin, the reverses on abortion, the development of a privileged class of managers and Stakhanovist workers, and finally, the advent of the show trials. He tried to understand these developments through conversations with a great many people of the German and Hungarian communist diasporas, the visiting French Left, and local Russians among whom he was allowed to live. In the second year of his stay, the Sinkos shared an apartment with the writer Isaac Babel and his wife, Pirizhkova. The story of the tragic misunderstanding that ensued between the two men reveals much about Babels difficult situation and about the limits of Sinkos understanding of the Terror. The Sinkos were fortunate to be expelled from the country. But even back in France, Sinko was prevented by his fear of the fascist threat from openly criticizing the Soviet Union. It was a miracle that the couple survived both the terror and the Holocaust.