The Soviet Intelligentsia and the Socialist Revolution: On Yury Olesha's "Envy"

Abstract

Yuri Olesha is assiduously and habitually described as having always been a great martyr, a man of exalted abstinence and chastity who was never seduced by the beloved Party. That is a most serious social and historical error: Yuri Olesha was seduced. And this fact had exceedingly grave consequences: he contracted and died of an infectious social disease. Ignoring medical ethics, I will quote excerpts from the case history of Comrade Olesha, Yu. K. (1899-1960), member of the USSR Union of Writers: The power of genius is a magnificent power. Life on Soviet soil is getting better every day. . As patriots of our happy homeland, we shall elect to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR the worthiest and best of her sons, men ready to defend with honor every inch of our land and the great ideas of Communism, the ideas of the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Stalin. Those who are now being judged were the direct agents of fascism. They made an attempt on Stalin's life, on the life of a great man whose strength, genius and bright spirit are directed toward one end, the welfare of the people. Now the French can dream of Khrushchev pouring them a jug of good milk or merry wine. dreams have come true. I have quotes from the works of Yu. K. Olesha which were written between 1934 and 1960. For twenty-six out of the thirty-six years of his writing life, Yu. K. Olesha wrote without neglecting anything in the standard Soviet repertoire: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev; vigilance, the struggle for peace and the adored party. As a member of the commission on the literary legacy of Yu. K. Olesha, and as the first to have opened his archives, I maintain that in