“Allow Writers to Communicate Freely with Soviet Readers”: Mario Vargas Llosa in Defense of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30827/cre.v19.28243Keywords:
Censorship in the Soviet Union, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet Writers’ UnionAbstract
In the 1960s, Mario Vargas Llosa, not yet disillusioned with socialism, interacted occasionally with the Soviet Writers' Union, following and reacting vividly to developments in Soviet literary life. By the time Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed the Fourth Writers’ Congress in 1967, calling for the abolition of all censorship, Vargas Llosa had already formed his own view of Soviet control over literature. Therefore, the writer could not remain indifferent to the fate of colleagues struggling against state control in literature. When he learned of Solzhenitsyn’s appeal in 1967, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote in solidarity an essay entitled Censorship in the USSR and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose translation is offered in the article together with an explanatory commentary. In the essay, Vargas Llosa insists that censorship is born out of the authorities' irrational fear of the power of speech, rather than the real danger emanating from the text. The work is ba sed on Mario Vargas Llosa's previously untranslated essays and on archival materials.
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