|
I
have spent the better part of my professional life studying
cultural issues associated with the ideological and
political history of German communism. Though questions
of politics and literature fascinated me from the beginning
(my first article was on Solzhenitsyn's One Life in
the Day of Ivan Denisovitch, and I took a very early
interest in German exile literature), it was almost
by chance that I came across the subject of my first
book, German Writers in Soviet Exile, 1933-1945. Because
I had been to the Soviet Union several times before
entering graduate school at Stanford University, and
minored there in Russian literature, when the time came
I hoped to find a dissertation topic that would allow
me to work in Moscow for a full year. An oblique reference
in a Soviet archival guide to "editorial materials" related to the German exile periodicals Das Wort and
Internationale Literatur led to a successful application
to the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)
and the entirely unexpected - and to this day rather
inexplicable - access to these unpublished materials.
The year that I spent in Moscow was followed soon after
by another IREX fellowship, this time to the German
Democratic Republic, where I spent six months gathering
additional archival material in what turned out to be
the first and last time that I was permitted access
to any archives located in the GDR.
Following the publication of German Writers in Soviet
Exile in both English and German, in 1983 I received
a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung,
which for several months coincided with a second IREX
grant to East Berlin. Even though I was then finishing
up a second book, Lukács and Brecht, since the
completion of German Writers I had intended to attempt
something of a sequel to it dealing with the Soviet
occupation of Germany from 1945 to 1949. This time,
however, access to all East German archives was denied
me (as I found out later, on the basis of a ban imposed
by the Ministry of the Interior). I used my stay instead
gathering published, but rare, primary material from
the occupation years and conducting extensive interviews
with East German cultural and political figures from
the early fifties. Some of these, with Walter Janka,
for instance, attracted the attention of the secret
police and played an important role in the decision
to deny me the opportunity to return to East Germany
under the auspices of IREX from 1984 to 1989. My last
research visit to the GDR, again without access to the
archives, took place in spring 1989. That fall, just
as I was completing work on The Politics of Culture
in Soviet-Occupied Germany, 1945-1949, the wall fell.
In 1990 and 1991, then, I was able to work extensively
with archival materials held in Potsdam and in the former
SED archive in Berlin and to incorporate this information
into The Politics of Culture. The monograph was published
in 1993.
At the time, Russian archival collections were just
becoming available to scholars. Though The Politics
of Culture did not focus on the Soviet Military Administration
(SVAG), and could not have in the absence of access
to the files of the occupation administration and to
other Soviet offices, agencies, and party departments,
the meticulous reconstruction of the origins and development
of cultural policy in the zone naturally shed a great
deal of light on Soviet objectives and intentions. But
it was already clear to me then that much work remained
to be done. For the fact is, little serious research
on the Soviet zone of occupation can afford now to ignore
the Russian archives. There is good news and bad news
in all this. The good news is that such work is not
impossible; the bad news is, trying to do it still remains
more of a theoretical than a practical possibility.
This is due not just to the usual difficulties of working
in Russian archives, but reflects as well the challenge
of dealing with an enormous quantity of material.
With the support of the Volkswagen-Stiftung, in the
coming years I intend to continue gathering relevant
material related to the Soviet occupation of Germany
held in the National Archives in Washington, in various
formerly East German archives (SED, secret police, and
so on), and in a number of Russian archives in Moscow
for a book or books dealing more specifically with Soviet
politics and cultural policy in Soviet-occupied Germany.
I hope to develop the narrative further to cover the
years 1950 through 1956.
|
