Первые визиты писателей ФРГ в СССР

Abstract

The first trips of West German writers to the Soviet Union after 1955 are practically not highlighted in the research literature. The article relies on RGALI documents: letters of German writers and reports made by their translators for the Soviet Writers’ Union. Establishing official contacts with West German writers became the main direction of Soviet literary policy in the post-war period. Before 1955, when diplomatic relations between the FRG and the USSR began, the writers of West Germany did not come to the USSR. The Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union had insufficient information about contemporary German literature: new authors and their works, new literary groups, and artistic trends were not known in the USSR. The first West German guests of the Soviet Writers’ Union were little-known authors and journalists, as well as writers who sympathized with the USSR. In 1959, two famous West German authors, Heinrich Böll and Stefan Andres, were invited to the Third USSR Writers’ Congress. Böll refused the invitation, and Andres came to the USSR unofficially. In Moscow, Andres succeeded in meeting with the German Ambassador to the USSR to touch upon cooperation between West German and Soviet writers. Hermann Kasack, one of the most prominent German writers, was also in Moscow in the autumn of 1959, at the invitation of his son, an employee of the German embassy, and took part in the organization of the first Moscow delegation to the FRG in 1960.