On 14 August 1946, a resolution by the Organisational Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad” was adopted. The magazines had received harsh criticism for publishing “ideologically harmful and artistically very weak works” for two years. The preamble stated the inadvisability of giving space to “such vulgarians and scoundrels of literature as [Soviet satirist, Mikhail] Zoshchenko” and fellow contributor, the poet Anna Akhmatova, was described as a “typical representative of empty poetry foreign to our people”. The newspaper “Leningradskaya Pravda” was also charged with having printed a “suspiciously laudatory” article by Yuri Herman on Zoshchenko's works. The 13 directive clauses included the need to change the management of Zvezda, close down Leningrad, stop further publications of Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, as well as a series of reprimands and dismissals.
The decree has often been thought to be the work of Andrei Zhdanov, head of the party organisation in Leningrad; in fact, several years before the decree was even mooted, it was being prepared and edited directly by Stalin.
The decree went on to destroy many lives and put Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova in a semi-legal state: their books were confiscated from libraries and booksellers, they were expelled from the Writers' Union, and were even denied ration cards for food and bread.
Many talented people - writers and journalists - went on to be harassed and persecuted along the lines stated in the decree. Poet Konstantin Simonov wrote: “We are all mentioned in this decree, even if our names are not there”.
In the autumn of 1988, the Politburo recognised the decree as “erroneous”. However, before this retraction, any attempts to assist victimised writers and journalists were met with the wording: “No one has cancelled the ruling about them”.
Source:
“Government and Artistic Intelligentsia”, Documents of the RCPB-VKPB, VChK-OGPU-NKVD about cultural policy, 1917-1953 / Edited by Alexander Yakovlev - Moscow: International Foundation “Democracy” (Alexander N. Yakovlev Foundation), 1999.
