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Many people have thought that I am or have been an important politician. I do not know how this famous legend began to spread.
One day I was genuinely surprised to see my picture, as small as a postage stamp, on the two pages of Life magazine, which featured the leaders of world communism as something useful to its readers. My presence, stuck somewhere between the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Brazil Louis Carlos Prestes and Mao Zedong, seemed like fun jokes, but I did not write to anyone to convince them that this was not true, because it always i hated the letters where you have to explain. In addition, it was fun to see the CIA make this mistake despite the five million agents it has worldwide. The longest contact I have had with any of the leading figures of world socialism was during our visit to Beijing. It had to do with a toast I drank with Mao Zedong during a ceremony. As our glasses were shaken, he looked at me with smiling eyes and a wide half friendly and half ironic smile. He held my hand to his, squeezing it a few seconds longer than usual. Then he returned to the table where he had previously sat. In many of my visits to the Soviet Union I have seen neither Molotov, nor Vishinsky, nor Berian; not even Mikoyan or Litvinov, who was more sociable and less mysterious than the others. I have seen Stalin in the distance, more than once, always in the same place: in the rostrum erected in Red Square, which was filled with high-level leaders every year on May 1 and November 7. I spent many hours in the Kremlin, as part of the jury for the awards bearing the name of Stalin, without ever meeting him, not even in any hallway. He never came to see us during our voting sessions or lunches, and he never called us for a word of greeting. Prizes were always awarded unanimously, but there were times when the debate over the selection of the winning candidate was very heated. I always had the feeling that, before the final decision was made, someone from the jury panel rushed with the possible end of the voting to the big man to see if the winner had his blessing. But I really can not remember a single time when we had any objection from him, and although it was obvious that he was close, I do not remember that he had ever requested our presence there. Undoubtedly, Stalin systematically cultivated the mystery of him, or must have been extremely shy, a man who was a prisoner of his own. It is likely that this trait has a lot to do with the strong influence Beria had on him. Beria was the only one entering and leaving Stalin’s rooms without warning. However, on one occasion I had an unexpected encounter with the mysterious Kremlin man who even now seems extraordinary to me. Aragon, Luis and Elsa, and I were on our way to the Kremlin to attend the meeting that would set the Stalin Prizes for that year. Heavy snowstorms forced us to stop in Warsaw. We could not arrive on time for our meeting. One of the Russians called in Moscow, spoke in Russian, and gave the names of the candidates whom Aragon and I favored, who, by the way, were approved at the meeting. But the strange thing about this is that the Russian, who got an answer over the phone, called me aside and surprised me by saying, “Congratulations, Comrade Neruda. When the list of possible prize winners was given to Comrade Stalin, he shouted: “Why is Neruda’s name not among them?” The following year, I received the Stalin Prize for Peace and Friendship between Peoples. Maybe I deserved it, but I still wonder how that withdrawn man ever discovered I existed. I heard of other similar interventions by Stalin at the time. As the campaign against cosmopolitanism intensified and became increasingly fierce, and fanatics sought the head of Ehrenburg, one morning the telephone rang at the home of Julio Jurenito author Ilia Ehrenburg. Ljuba replied. A voice resembling a familiar one asked, “Is Ilia Gregorievich there?” “It depends,” replied Ljuba. – Who are you? “I am Stalin,” said the voice. “For you, Ilia, a joker,” Ljuba told Ehrenburg. But when he picked up the phone, the writer noticed Stalin’s familiar voice: -I spent the night reading your book The Fall of Paris. I’m calling you to tell you to keep writing books as interesting as this one, dear Ilia Gregorievich. Perhaps that sudden phone call made possible the long life of the great Ehrenburg. Another case: Mayakovsky was already dead, but his stubborn enemies fiercely attacked the poet’s memory, determined to erase him from the map of Soviet literature. Then something happened that thwarted those plans. His girlfriend Lily Brick wrote a letter to Stalin telling him how shameful these attacks were and passionately defending Mayakovsky’s poetry. His attackers, who thought they were untouchable, protected by their collective mediocrity, were carrying out their harshest blow. In the corner of Lily Brick’s letter, Stalin left the note: “Mayakovsky is the best poet of the Soviet era.” After that, museums and monuments were erected in Mayakovsky’s honor, and many books of his extraordinary poetry were published. His opponents froze, were beaten, and were powerless after the sound of Jehovah’s trumpet. I also learned that among Stalin’s letters found after his death was a list that read, “Do Not Touch,” in his manuscript. This list initially had the name of the composer Shostakovich, followed by other prominent names: Sergei Eisenstein, Pasternak, Ehrenburg, etc. Many people have believed that I am an immutable Stalinist. Fascists and reactionaries have described me as a lyrical performer of Stalin. This does not impress me particularly. Any kind of judgment is possible for a devilishly confused era. The personal tragedy for us communists was to face the fact that, for some aspects of the Stalin affair, the enemy was right. This revelation, which was dizzying, left us in a painful state of mind. Some felt cheated. Desperate, they accepted the enemy’s reasoning and sided with him. Others believed that the shocking facts, which came to light disturbingly during the Twentieth Congress, proved the integrity of a Communist Party which survived, leaving the world to see the historical truth and to accept its responsibility. If it is true that we all share this responsibility, the act of denouncing those crimes led us back to self-criticism and analysis, essential elements of our doctrine, and gave us the weapons we needed to prevent such horrific things from happening. again. This was my position: on this darkness that was unknown to me during the Stalin era, he rose before my eyes, as a man of good heart, with principles, prudent, as a hermit, the titanic defender of the Russian Revolution. Moreover, this little man with the big mustache had turned into a giant during the war. With his name on the edge, the Red Army attacked and destroyed the power of Hitler’s demons. And yet I dedicated only one of my poems to this powerful personality. It was on the occasion of death. Anyone can find it in the summaries of my works. The death of the Kremlin Cyclops had an impact all over the world. The human jungle trembled. My poetry captured the feeling of this panic on earth.
Detached from Memories, Penguin Books, 1992.
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