The New York Times (March 23, 1967)

A CLASSIC OF THE PURGE

    Sir,— I can assure Professor Struve (March 9) that I know all about the two versions of Lydia Chokovskaya's The Deserted House and about the reasons why publication of the Paris version was delayed from 1965 to 1967. But one surely has to use a little tact in these matters and avoid linking the name of the writer who has been — and, let us hope, will be — left in peace with the names of two other writers who have been sentenced to several years of hard labour.

    Nor is Professor Struve being very thoughtful in classifying Chukovskaya's book among "émigré books by non-émigré Russian writers"; it is surely not for somebody living in Berkeley, California, to stick on such labels which come dangerously close to Stalinist-type term of abuse, "internal émigré". That is precisely what Chukovskaya is not. Her book is profoundly Russian and pro-Russian; it is not anti-Soviet; if it is anti-anything, it is only anti-Stalin and anti-Yezhovshchina.
    
    

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