Russia is evoked through the fraught connection between political power and literary life: Stalin’s conversations with Russian writers turn a telephone call into an encounter with an all-powerful figure whom writers both feared and hoped might understand them. The episodes center on Mikhail Bulgakov and Boris Pasternak, while the same ambivalence is also associated with Dmitri Shostakovich, Vsevolod Meyerhold, and Osip Mandelstam.

Literary and Political Setting

The account describes a mutual fascination between Stalin and writers later regarded as dissidents. Stalin is presented as a total Master, imagined by the writers as something like a Freudian primordial father with secret knowledge of life and death. Their attraction to his authority coexists with its capacity to shape their work and prospects; the passage makes that tension visible through brief, abruptly terminated telephone conversations.

Calls to Bulgakov and Pasternak

In April 1930, Stalin unexpectedly phoned Bulgakov and tried to persuade him not to emigrate. He assured the writer that he would obtain a position at the Art Theater, then proposed that they meet and talk. Bulgakov immediately welcomed the prospect and said that he needed to speak with Stalin. Stalin, however, cut the call short, leaving the anticipated conversation unrealized.

In June 1934, Stalin called Pasternak about Mandelstam, who was out of favor and in exile, and asked whether Pasternak was interceding for his friend. Pasternak, fearing a trap, distanced himself from Mandelstam, saying they had not really been friends and that dealing with him had been difficult. He then disclosed that he had long dreamed of talking with Stalin about life and death. Stalin ended the exchange by reproaching Pasternak for failing to stand by his friend: he said that old Bolsheviks did not deny their friends and that he had no reason to discuss other matters with Pasternak.

Significance of the Encounters

The calls expose a contradiction at the heart of the writers’ fascination. Stalin’s power appears in his ability to intervene in a writer’s prospects, question another about an exiled colleague, and abruptly determine when a conversation is over. Yet the writers’ responses disclose a different expectation: that the ruler might offer access to ultimate truths beyond political or literary affairs. Pasternak’s appeal to speak about life and death is met not with the private revelation he hopes for but with a rebuke focused on loyalty.

The passage extends this ambivalence beyond Bulgakov and Pasternak, identifying it in Shostakovich, Meyerhold, and Mandelstam as well. Russia thus functions here not as a described landscape but as the setting of a political-literary relationship in which the writer’s desire for recognition and insight encounters the authority of the state concentrated in Stalin.