For the Good of the Cause [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION i ! "None of us denies his talent." I i —^Konstantin Fedin, as chairman of a meeting of the Ij Secretariat of the Soviet Union of Writers, called ^ to discuss the "Solzhenitsyn affair" on September li 22nd, 1967. j On October 8, 1970, the Swedish Academy of ¦ Letters announced its decision to award the 1970 t Nobel Prize for Literature to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The award had been made, the Academy said, in f recognition of the high moral level of Solzhenitsyn's work which continued "the best traditions of Russian ^ literature". The storm that then broke over Solzhenitsyn's head served to demonstrate to the world the unfortunate 'plight of a great writer, and of contemporary Russian ! literature as a whole, under a rigid Communist dictatorship. The award was generally welcomed in the democratic world, where Solzhenitsyn was already recognized as an author of remarkable power as a result of the pubHcation in translation of his major works—"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "Cancer Ward" and "The First Circle"—as weU as shorter stories, such as "For the Good of the Cause", "Matryona's Home" and "An Incident at Kreche-tovka". In the West he was already a "best-seller". But in Russia itself only "Ivan Denisovich" and a few of the shorter works had appeared in print; "Cancer Ward" and "The First Circle" were known to 9