Ismail Kadare – three minutes with Stalin

On June 13, 1934, the phone rings at Wolchonka Straße 14 in Moscow. Boris Pasternak, who lives in two out of five rooms with his wife in a community apartment, a so -called Kommunalka, goes into the hallway and takes off the listener. At the other end of the line, Alexander Poskrjobyschew, the secretary of Stalin. “The comrade Stalin will now speak to you,” says he only briefly and connects to the dictator. Or did he say something else? Pasternak himself later told friends about the conversation, but left no written records. Everything you know about the telephone call between poet and dictator today comes from third parties.

After all, it is certain that she spoke about Ossip Mandelstam, who had previously been arrested on May 16. In a preserved letter that Pasternak directed to Stalin in November 1935, to work for Anna Achmatowa’s arrested husband and her son, he wrote: “You once accused me that the fate of a comrade was indifferent to me.” With ” Comfort «could only be meant to Ossip Mandelstam and the phone call. After several of the versions brought in circulation, Stalin was said to have asked Pasternak at the time what he thinks of the poet. Pasternak replied, but he respected, but he respectes him. “We Bolsheviks defended our friends better,” Stalin said and immediately hung up.

Kadare never let go of the experience in Moscow and the question of how the telephone conversation in June 1934 really went.

Perhaps this conversation between the dictator and poet would have remained a footnote in Russian literary history if it had not been brought out again in 1958, after the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the poet. The Soviet propaganda wanted to discredit him with his allegedly lack of commitment to Mandelstam with his novel “Doctor Schiwago”, which was finally fallen into disadvantage in 1957 in the west. All levers were set in motion propaganda. The chairman of the KPDSU youth organization Komsomol, Vladimir Semitschaastny, said about Pasternak at the time: »A pig never strewn the place where it eats and sleeps. Therefore, if you compare pasternak with a pig, it can be found that a pig would not have done what he did. “

Pasternak was also publicly reviled at a student meeting at the famous Gorki literature institute in Moscow. At that time, a young Albanian literary student was also sitting in the lecture hall, in which a meeting for the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak was awarded to Pasternak: Ismail Kadare, who later became famous. In addition to him, he writes in his book now published in German. Investigations «, only a student was silent and did not join the speeches, who asked for the pasternak to do without the price. As he later found out, it was the daughter of Olga Iwinskaja, Pasternak’s lover.

Kadare never let go of the experience in Moscow and the question of how the telephone conversation in June 1934 really went. In his book, the Albanian author, who died last year, once again listed the versions that he thought were the most important twelve. In a 13th version “in the form of an epilogue”, he draws his own conclusions from the three -minute phone call from Pasternak and Stalin. Already after the eighth version he wrote: “For years, a crowd of experts have been dealing with the three minutes of the now far ago far ago in 1934, without something coming out.” Nevertheless, Kadare then discussed four other versions – and in the end his own .

The almond stamic researcher Pavel Neher goes in his book »Ossip Mandelstam’s last years. Ending, exile and death of a poet 1932–38 «not at all on the exact wording of the conversation, but divides the versions brought into circulation in two groups: those who represent Pasternak negatively, and those who are more positive See the light. Neher comes to the conclusion that the question of whether Pasternak Mandelstam has abandoned or not, did not play a role in his pardon by Stalin. What is more important is why the dictator Pasternak called, even though he had previously decided to loosen the exile of the poet.

Stalin was able to do this, writes as the kind appearance in contrast to his alleged friend Pasternak. He was able to stage himself as God who brought Mandelstam back into life from the zone of death. He knew that the phone call would get around very quickly. And after Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet regime was able to use the Soviet regime to discipline Pasternak.

Basically, the phone call between poet and dictator has paradigmatic character. It is exemplary for the relationship between absolute ruler and artist. This is also the reason why Ismail Kadare was so interested. As an author, he was in Albania, which was ruled by Stalatistic until the 90s, in a similar situation to Pasternak at the time in the Soviet Union. He also got a call from the dictator of his country, Enter Hoxha. However, he only wanted to congratulate the young carcass on a poem that he read in the newspaper and which he had liked.

However, the conversation, Kadare, could have gone very differently at the time, because Enver Hoxha was in no way inferior to Stalin’s brutality. At the same time, Kadare was said to be too much close to Enver Hoxha after the end of the Stalinist regime in Albania. That was understandably busy. “The call” tries to show that you shouldn’t break the staff too quickly through someone whose statements and deeds are only rumored.

This convinces over long distances. The reader of “The Call” learns from the Albanian conditions under Hoxha, for example about Kadares struggle for the publication of “The dawn of the Steppen gods”, a novel, which is about his time as a student at the Gorki -Institut goes.

As far as the subtitle of “The Call” is concerned – “investigations” – you shouldn’t expect too much. A sober analysis of circumstances, content and function of the telephone conversation between Stalin and Pasternak can be found in Pavel Neher’s book. Although Kadare’s examination is also a literary examination, which naturally leads to inaccuracies. For example, there is more verifiable for the telephone conversation between Stalin and Pasternak than Kadare in the end, in his short epilogue, the reader believes.

But he is right when he writes that everything that goes beyond the verifiable facts leads “into the zone of death”. In this zone in which the fear is omnipresent, the rumors sprout. And in addition to the immediate repression for a dictator, rumors are known to be a popular means of rule.

In some places in “The Call”, Kadare lacks the required distance. In individual formulations, its aversion is particularly evident against women of the then Russian literary scene. Anna Achmatowa taps pejorative as “DIVA”; Elsewhere, she is only the “writer”, although she almost only wrote poems.

Sinaaida Pasternak, the wife of Boris Pasternak, also gets her fat away. Allegedly, she is said to have been “very Soviet”, which Kadare takes out, the truth of which he questions in her husband. But if you can read about it and if you do not expect factual, scientific analysis, “call” is a book worth reading.

Ismail Kadare: the call. Studies. S. Fischer, 176 pages, born, 24 €.