'It's not very important'

Examining Herbert George Wells’s “Russia in the Shadows” and Stefan Zweig’s “Journeys”, Emrah Maraşo recounts the situation in Russia during the 1920s, amidst the conditions of the First World War and the October Revolution, and highlights how intellectuals were an integral part of society. Emphasizing that his reason for recounting these is not to praise an ascetic life or to glorify poverty or deprivation, Maraşo also warns against a bourgeois elitism that fails to become populist.

Maraşo's article is as follows:

Two books are sitting in front of me. One is Herbert George Wells’s “Russia in the Shadows”, the other is Stefan Zweig’s “Journeys”…

Wells is a world-renowned author, best known for his science fiction works. In our country, his book “The Outline of History,” which was translated into our language upon Atatürk’s instruction, constitutes a critical milestone in terms of influencing the Republican Revolution’s perspective on history based on Darwinian evolution. One of the most important features of the book, which consists of observations from Wells’s 1920 visit to Russia but, more importantly, his own “judgments,” is the face-to-face interview he conducted with the leader of the revolution, Lenin, in 1920, and the polemical interview he had with Stalin during his second visit to the Soviet Union in 1934… These two unique examples of journalism are likely rare. They are significant not only in terms of meeting the figures at the head of a socialist country that left its mark on world history, but also in terms of observing the most turbulent and dark periods of the 20th century and seeing the change in a comparative way.

A section of Stefan Zweig’s book “Journeys,” which consists of his travels, is also devoted to his 1928 visit to Russia. With that cinematic language of Zweig’s that draws the reader in, the scene is set instantly, and Russia’s panorama, sense of time, atmosphere, people, museums, and cities come before your eyes.

However, the subject I will focus on in both books is neither Wells’s meeting with Soviet leaders nor Zweig’s powerful descriptions of Russia… While they certainly bear traces of these, the point that draws attention in the writings of these two famous men of letters is the Russian intellectuals amidst war, hunger, and deprivation. I see them as intellectuals in the cold because being tested in the cold requires as much skill as being scorched in the fire. Why? Think for a moment: A country literally destroyed in 1920, where even finding bread is very difficult, gangs and thieves rob people in broad daylight, corpses in the streets, lands occupied by foreigners, and a wounded but resilient people who have mobilized all their resources, energy, and hope under the leadership of the Bolsheviks… In such an environment, the world-famous brilliant members of the Academy of Sciences: Geologist Karpinski, Nobel laureate Pavlov, Radloff, Bielopolski… Orchestra conductor Glazunov… Members of the Literary Society… The questions they asked as soon as they saw Wells were not about satisfying their hunger or a cry for help:

‘What is the state of scientific developments?’ ‘How can we access books?’

Artists and writers were busily preparing a Russian encyclopedia on world literature… Wells, who came “to judge Russia” in his own words and acted as an honest intellectual without ever holding back his criticism, writes the following despite all his sharpness: “In Russia, that strange country of conflict, cold, famine, and pathetic deprivations, a literary work is being carried out that would be unimaginable to realize in today’s wealthy England and America.”

What Zweig says about his 1928 visit, although the intensity had decreased slightly, is a subtle self-criticism that almost destroys the arrogance of the Western intellectual. He begins by saying that the situation of the people was better, but that the intellectuals had regressed both spatially and spiritually. He then says he visited a famous scientist who was sharing a two-room apartment without a kitchen with three people, and recounts that the scientist, seeing Zweig’s astonishment, smiled and, comforting his guest, said “Nitschewo,” meaning “It’s not very important.” Zweig also pays another visit to the famous director Eisenstein. He, too, has to live in a single room and meet all his needs there; he had rejected an offer from Hollywood and pushed the money away with the back of his hand. Zweig says: “They did not care at all that their earnings were very low, that they were barely getting by, and that they had to give up a lot of small comforts that are considered very normal for us European colleagues.”

The reason we are telling these is not to praise an ascetic life or to glorify poverty or deprivation. Science, art, and literature certainly grow and develop in an environment where there is prosperity and opportunity; however, opening the path to those opportunities itself inevitably deserves enduring difficulties in a social sense. If one is to be a dissenter, one must be a dissenter precisely in this sociality. Otherwise, dissent is not clusters where loyalty to the neighborhood or the network of relationships is proven; this is at most a bourgeois elitism that looks left-wing but is never left-wing, because it does not become populist. Yes, it represents exactly this, because there are many individual gains, material and spiritual capital that are “very important” there. And what we need are intellectuals who will say “it’s not very important”…

Emrah Maraşo
GazeteBilim Editor-in-Chief