ror of the results of the pre- Sent discussion on the arts and literature in the Soviet: Union, during which some of the young stars, such as Yev- Seni Yevtushenko, were criti- Cized for goin g “off the beam”? in some of their works and in interviews published abroad, is that hundreds of talented young writers and poets have emerged, .- They were there before, but had stayed in the shadows because it was the vogue to : Publish the above-mentioned % ‘Stars’?, The stars them- Selves in some cases became Spoiled, as a result, while Others didn’t have as much of a chance as they deserved. The Soviet papers and Magazines today are printing works of many more young writers and poets andthey are Very good, * * * A conference of these talent- €d young writers from all Parts of the country was held in Moscow recently under the auspices of the writers’ union. (Some of those that had been Criticized attended; Yevtush- €nko sent regrets, saying that he couldn’t break his speaking tour), \ After the meeting, along With other foreign correspon- dents, I got the opportunity to meet some of these young People and hear them read Samples of their work. Thus I heard Maya Rum- Yantseva of Lipets, Olga Fok- iha of the Archangelsk area in the north, Vladimir Demi- dov from the Don Cossack area), Vladimir Samgi from Sakhalin, x RS Characteristic of all of hem, in addition to loads of talent, was that they were Working and studying and that hey breathed optimism and 80-aheadness, Several of the bOems were on themes con- Rected with the war against © Nazis, Olga Fokina, for example, Wrote about a tree her fath- €r planted before he went to © front, never to return. ~ Was a very moving poem. €st to have part of their air dyed grey; recalling how “tae young people turned grey n the war against fascism; Ravn DiGia, administrative eectetary of the War Resist- s. €ague, has neen denied a U.- . Passport because he refused Ke Sign an anti-Communist oath WORTH _ READING be rene Co-operation Be- n the USSR and Underdevel- Opeq Cc ; Ount Pricg 55¢ ries, by V. Rimalov. The | SOntrip, pet Union strives to Eto ta vs all within its power id aa hg the peoples of under- Dove Ped countries to overcome Regs Y, economic backward- Coe = Colonial exploitation and ialis ©n on the part of imper- Powers, ’ Soh Soviet people consider trom aC important and useful View he humanitarian point of anit d@ from feelings of sol- Y with all mankind. ~ New Soviet crop of young writers Freedom’—U.S.A. style she saidsyit, was a badge of honor, like a nvedal and should be earned and not dyed. Boris Kulikov, whose grandfather died in the strug- gle for Soviet power during the civil war and whose father and uncle fell in the war against fascism, devoted his poem to the debt youth owes to the older generation. V. Samgi is a Nivkh —that’s -a nationality of only 3,000 people in Sakhalin Island and along the Amur River. Until recently they were fishermen and hunters, had no agricul- ture, no written language. Their religion, animism. held that the earth itself was a ; sacred being that would be ; hurt if it is ‘‘scratched’”’ i.e. ploughed. * * * Samgi told the story of his people and how they leaped in one generation from the most primitive to cultured socialist life, The poem was half-spok- half-chanted, as Homer Greece, and as the sagas of all peoples ancient and those emerging. from the oral to written literature in our own times, were composed and recited, The Nimkh, said the poet, speak a language different from any of the languages in the Far East. They had bor- then added a number of letters of their ownto denote addition- ‘al sounds in their new alph- abet. * * * After the meeting Iasked V. Samgi whether it was not pos- sible that the Nimkh lang- uage was related to Indian dialects spoken in Canada, He replied that there was a theory to that effect and that studies were now under way to test its corectness. The first result of the dis- cussion on literature, then, is the appearance of many new young writers. And their quality is very high. As for the old ‘‘young fav- orites’? — G. Markov, secre- tary of the writers’ union, told us that Yevtushenko and the others are taking the cri- ticism very seriously, andare working on new poems which will be presented to the pub- lic soon. —J. WEIR (PT Staff Correspondent) ' ° on the application. Asa result, he was unable to attend the WRLtri- ennial conference held in Norway recently. ‘‘fyeryone who knows DiGia,”’ commented Liberation Magazine in its Summer issue, ‘‘including government officials, who must have a tull file on his activities, knows that he is no Communist. ‘“sDiGia refused to sign the oath because he considers such a requirement #n interference with the basic freedom totr: vel, regardless of one s political be- liefs or associations.” The constitutionality of the. anti-Communist oath is being challenged in a suit brought by Milton Mayer and supported by the American Civil Liberties Un- ion. i A McCarren Act denial of pass- ports to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Herbert Aptheker is being brought to the U.S. Supreme Court. ‘ManandPhilosophy’debated STANLEY B. RYERSON, author of “The Marxist Quarterly, was a member of the delegation of the Can- adian Philosophical Associttion to the recent World Congress of Phil- osophy in Mexico City. He mailed his comments of the congress to the ‘PT’, which we are pleased to publish below. or over half a century the philosophical sccieties _ of many lands have been holding international congresses, gener- ally at five year intervals. The XIlIth. International Congress of Philosophy, held in Mexico City Sept 7 to 14, brought together close to 1,000 participants from 48 countries. Two main themes dominated the agenda: “The Problem of Man” and “The Criticism of our Epoch”. They were discussed in 12 major introductory commun- ications and 140 individual papers; in addition some 200 other pa- "pers were delivered in a series of symposiums on a wide range of subjects. The very broad spectrum of views represented may be at least faintly suggested by a sam- pling of names and topics: Gab- briel Marcel, French existential- ist: ‘“‘The existential aspect of human dignity”; P. Fedoseev, So- viet philosopher: ‘“‘Humanism in the World of Today’’; Herbert Schneider (U.S.A.): ‘Global Or- ientation’; P.T. Raju (India): “Life’s Ideals: East and West’; Derisi (Argentine): ‘Divine Ba- sis of the essence and existence of man’; Mitin (USSR) ‘Man as object of philisophical inves- tigation”; Loenen (Holland): “The Philosopher’s responsibilty for the future of mankind’; Leys (USA) ‘Irrelevence as a_ philo- sophical problem of our time”; Melvil (USSR) ‘‘Man in the space age’; Bourke (USA) ‘‘Man in the space age’’. * * * The congress was a forum on questions of peaceful co-exist- ence. It was a massive confron- tation of opposing world-outlooks. It was a dialogue, a debate, a symposium, with rare moments of serenity and innumerable cla- shes. The plenary sessions, held in the great auditorium of the Cen- tro Medico (a huge complex of buildings of the Social Security administration), were attended daily by two: to three thousand people; the smaller meetings were held in the University City, in the southern outskirts of the capital. A notable feature was the very great interest shown by the Mex- ican press; coverage in the daily papers ran to two or three pages of each issue, reporting the de- bates, commenting, interviewing participants. (One would never know, from the press in Canada, that such a congress had taken place at all.) On the eve of the proceedings the conservative dai- ly, Excelsior, hailed the congress as ‘‘a clear example of the feasi- bility of a confrontation of hu- man thought’, and as a contri- bution to peaceful coexistence and understanding among peoples. A note of raucous discord was promptly struck by Herbert Sch- neider, as a leading member of the U.S. philosophical ‘‘estab- lishment’, who gave a cold-war interview inciting anti - com- munism, denouncing Marxism as the source of ‘‘hate and envy” in the modern world. A rejoinder came from another American, STANLEY B. RYERSON who asserted that universal dis- armament was the crucial is- sue of our time. * * * Thus, despite the awesome number of highly abstract meta- physical contributions, the though was strongly affirmed that phil- osophy today more than ever possesses actuality, that it is rel- avent to practical, compelling problems of the life of man. More than one non-Marxist par- ticipant emphasized this, as did also several progressive Ameri- can philosophers, e.g. Howard Parsons, in a paper on philosophy and mental health, and John Somerville (author of “A Phil- osophy of Peace’) speaking on East-West ideological conflict. P. Fedoseev, leader of the 18 member Soviet delegation put it this way: “The first and foremost res- ponsibility of the philosopher in the modern world is the respon- sibility for the present and fut- ure of man Philosophy sheuld use a simple and common -human language because it is only natural that human prob- lems which bestir every man’s mind should be the main prob- lems of philosophy’’. : A highlight of the congress was a meeting of the Soviet delega- tion with some 40 or 50 philos- ophers from the United States (some members of the Canadian delegation also were present?. This encounter, the first of its kind, did not come within the forma! confines of the congress agenda, but was arranged with- in the the American Philosophi- cal Association: the Society for the Philosophical Studay of Dia- lectical Materialism. * * * The themes that came to the fore in this question-and-answer session were: changes and con- tinuity in Marxist-Leninist phil- csophy in present conditions of world technological and social de- velepment; the meaning of dia- lectics for natural science (this seemed a _ particulary prickly point for the Americans);coex- istence and ideology. On this last, a query was put: why the Soviet condemnation of ‘peaceful co- existence in the realm of ideol- ogy’. To which Fedoseev replied that while renunciation of war be- tween states with differing social systems is fully possible, there can and should be no renunciat- ion of the battle of ideas. Giving up one’s convictions cannot be made a condition of peace, for either side. Competition, debate, exchange of views must go on; and this * can occur without turning it in- to a Cold War that endangers peace. ‘‘We are against the Cold War but not in favour of elim- inating the struggle of ideolo- gies’. He contrasted the debate between Protestant and Catholic ideologists, in the period of the Reformation, with the resort to violence in the St. Bartholomew massacre and the Thirty Years~- War. With peaceful coexistence be- tween states, the struggle of ideas on the level of principle, the ar- gument over the respective ad- vantages of competing social sys- tems, can be carried forward, he asserted. * * * Two episodes during the cong- ress were reminders of Cold War methods encroaching on free- - dom of though. A delegate from the German Democratic Repub- lic protested that over a hundred velumes sent for inclusion in the Exposition of the Philosophical Book (held in conjunction with the Congress) had been excluded from the display. (Just like La-" val”, commented a Canadian philospoher, recalling a similar act of discrimination at the last Learned Societies meeting.) An eloquent message to the congress, dealing with the rela- tion of art to philosophy and to society, in the light of the trad- ition of Mexican realist painting and graphic act, was published as a paid advertisement in the press. Its author regretted his inability to participate directly in the debates; one of the world’s greatest living painters, he sits in cell-block “T’’ in the Mexico City prison: he is David Alfaro Siq- ueiros. He is charged with the crime of ‘“‘social dissolution’’ for having supported the strike of ‘railway workers. One cf the strike leaders, Vallejos, sentenced to 16 years, had just received the ruling on an appeal of his sen- tence: the judge added six more years to the sentence. AUUC youth evening is success he ‘*Evening With Youth’’ pre- sentation of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, held at the Pauline Johnson Theatre (Queen Elizabeth Playhouse) last Saturday evening, was an unqual- ified success. ; Over 500 people warmly ap- plauded the varied fare, high- lighted by Earl Robinson’s cant- ata on Abe Linclon—‘‘The Lone- some Train.’’ The cantata itself, traditional Ukrainian (and other Slavic) folk dancing, as well as guest appearances by pianist Andrea Kalanj and the Vancou- ver Chinese and Russian dance groups were all enthusiastically - welcomed. ‘Lonesome Train’’ is a work which would present a challenge to many an accomplished choir and soloists. The fact that it came off as well as it did is a tribute to the hard work of the AUUC Youth Choir and its con- ductor, Karl Kobylansky. The accomplishment looms even larger when considering that it is quite early in the seas- on for such an ambitious under- taking. There were certain minor weaknesses which will no doubt be improved when the cantana - is presented again, as it should be. Central among these was the lighting, which could have been used with much more ef- fect in spotlighting soloists. Another criticism could be in programming the evening; of 15 items, only four were Ukrainian in content—less than 25 percent. For a Ukrainian cultural organi- zation, this proportion would ap- pear to be a mite low. However, as we stated at the outset, the main impression was one of success. In no uncertain way, the young people who par- _ ticipated in the evening made up for whatever minor faults were to be found with youthful zest and enthusiasm. JERRY SHACK October 4, 1963—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9