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