4 RETURNING to Moscow after q five years, I must say I was | Very impressed.

In spite of the grievous er- ) tors of the latter years of ') Stalin’s life, the Soviet Union 7} temains a remarkable monu- | ment to the efficacy of the so- | Cialist system, the essential +) tole of the Communist party ) 4nd the ability of the working

| People to organize society.

_ Thad only one week in Mos-

ow and refused point blank 7) to look at any museums, kin- 7} dergartens or factories or e Schools. I saw too many last | time’ and know material pro- | &ress is assured. ' I wanted to talk to people and talk to them I did, chauf- feurs, porters, men and wo- Men in the street, film direc- tors and above all, writers. Thad long conversations with Such writers as Ilya Ehrenberg, nstanin Simenov, Alexei

A HOOTENANY held at 647

Granville Street here last Sunday evening drew more _ ~8n 100 enthusiasts (‘Hoot- 3 “hany” is an American word “scribing folk music perform- ag in which audience and

a een eae

umber of local groups wit bated to the sneretn radio a ‘SAaiece Vancouver Mc. artist, acting as

ony Friedman, with his i ~stringed banjo, was much soley sence as accompanist and Slst. He is best known for on with the Vancouver 4 broth Singers, directed by his ap er Searle Friedman, who Peared twice on the program. n enthusiastically received Tise performance was giv- the gifted young violin- ein tthur Poulson, in a pro- ranging from Bach to a

Te dance tune. .€? artists included Claire Reg Dickson and _ his elen Osipov, Winona

aN Hootenany was organ- Rive? marily on the impetus ; Usic y Pete Seeger’s Folk Cent : Orkshop after his re- ay imeecarance here. It had

euste goal of raising aoe! . : . ®dian folk S aia of Can

augrile the enthusiasm and Praise of the project deserve tradition {ot tunately the main Tsj, 8 Of Canadian folk

lane .£°t Scant attention. The Madey ett of the program Music

Oted to American folk ™ and not even that

Charkovski, Mikail Lobochov and Alexei Surkov, the latter three old friends from my pre- vious visit.

xt it ces

I spent the evening with Simenov and his wife at their country home outside Moscow. In intervals between me talk- ing about Australia and telling dubious yarns, we discussed the ideological problems of Communist writers especially in relation to the 20th con- gress of the Soviet Commun- ist party.

People in the socialist world are struck by the fact that Australian left wing writers largely avoided the schematic, doctrinaire creative writing that characterized far too much of the output of many left writers, including Soviet -writ- ers.

In this regard, the main tenor of discussions with film

Many contribute to Hootenay

in city

ye

with an established tradition in Canada.

Moreover, only occasionally involved the audience, contrary to advance

the Hootenany

promise, N. E. STORY

Plans cabaret-dance

for Swedish Press

A CABARET and dance will will be held Friday, Dec. 28 at 9 p.m. as a benefit for the Swedish Press, the only Swe- dish newspaper published in Western Canada.

The affair will be staged under’ the auspices of the Booster Club and will take place in the Swedish Hall, 1320 East Hastings Street.

The sponsors promise lively Scandinavian music and tasty refreshments.

New era in Soviet literature, | films seen by Australian author

workers and writers in the Soviet Union was their deter- mination to rid themselves of doctrinairism, phoney epics, art without conflict and life without humanity which has often marred their work since the last war, under the influ- ence of the utilitarian theories of art which characterized the period of Stalin’s decline.

As one who has been pri- vately and publicly critical of weakness of Soviet literature in recent years I am pleased to state that, from what I learned in Moscow, we can expect to see Soviet films which have the stuff of life in the scenarios, and we can expect a great new renais- sance of Soviet literature.

For example, Simenov him- self has almost completed a novel. which, from what he said, makes an artistic gener- alization on the main conflicts of the last twenty years in the Soviet Union, false arrests and all.

Ehrenberg has completed the sequel to The Thaw, and younger writers have com- pleted and are working on, books and stories that tear to shreds the old errors and deal in a realistic, human manner with the every day life of the people building socialism.

x x xt

I spent my last afternoon and evening in the USSR with Ilya Ehrenberg at his house, fifty miles from Moscow. As he came down the steps to greet me, I was shocked at his aged appearance. He is a sick man, worn out with his labors.

After greeting me and Ok- sana, my wife, he said: “I want to introduce you to a fellow countryman of yours.”

I followed him into the back- yard thinking he must have secreted there Ted Hill, or Cec Holmes, or Rex Chiaplin, or Bert Keesing, Australians in those parts at that time.

But no, it was a gum tree growing in his back yard!

We talked literature until it was time for me to leave for the airport. If his body is failing, his mind remains as lucid and incisive as ever. We discussed a variety of prob- lems affecting a writer in his death struggle to master hu- man reality.

Ehrenberg defended The Thaw without qualification, and I told him I was one of those who supported it when it was under attack in Aus- tralia. We tried to analyze the mentality of those in the Communist movement who had attacked it so bitterly and without reserve. We finally reached a charitable conclu- sion and shook our heads more in sorrow than in anger.

FRANK HARDY

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DECEMBER 21, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 13