Above the Hidden Line

“I must tell you… I managed—perhaps I’m lucky: in all my arduous work—probably no less than 40 books—I have never mentioned Stalin’s surname. I have not even so much as mentioned Stalin… not once…
— And your heroes don’t mention him either?
— No, the heroes do mention him. Not so much about Stalin as about terror. My latest novel is called ‘Beneath the Clandestine Line’—it isn’t known yet; it will be printed in the ninth issue of the magazine ‘Zvezda.’ It’s a story about how a person was found who… who… no… (Veniamin Alexandrovich coughed)… Anna Moiseyevna, give me a handkerchief, please…
Olbyok: Here you are, a napkin…
— No, the handkerchief… (After a pause). The novel that has just been written… In this novel, the hero writes ‘clandestine lines.’
We wanted to leave Veniamin Alexandrovich, but he stopped us with a wave of his hand. He asked us to restore the interrupted thought.
— You spoke about your latest novel, which will be printed in ‘Zvezda.’
— I’d be a bad writer if I didn’t write the atmosphere in which my heroes act. And this atmosphere was closely connected with the communists who were shot in the North. With fear. That’s why I didn’t mention Stalin’s name, feeling that I harbored hatred for him. I always tried to fit my heroes into circumstances where the reader would understand how tough it is for him because he lives in Russia in this epoch. So I didn’t turn away from life. The difference is that I perceived it poetically. I mean, for example, the novel ‘Two Captains.’ It was written in 1937. It was a novel where the defense of justice was proclaimed. The unknown dead captain was the sought-after ‘thing’ my main character hunts for. The atmosphere is colored mainly by a romantic appeal: what is decided—be fulfilled! to fight and to seek, to find and not to give up! Maybe all this belongs to literature for youth, but the novel is published every year and has been like that for 40 years… And the number of print runs has surpassed a hundred…"
from the last interview with Veniamin Alexandrovich Kaverin.