धुक्यांतून रक्तलाल अंधाराकडे...How Russian Communism Enchanted Marathi Literati

त्र्यं शं शेजवलकर, डिसेंबर २६ १९३६:
"आज पुनः इस्लामसारखेच संकट साम्यवादाच्या रूपाने अवतरले आहे."
('निवडक लेखसंग्रह', १९७७, पृष्ठ ४) 

John Gray:

“George Bernard Shaw advocated mass extermination as a humane alternative to imprisonment, lauded Stalinist Russia at a time when millions were dying of starvation and viewed Hitler's Germany as a progressive regime. H G Wells flirted with similar views.”

Wikipedia:

“The Soviet famine of 1932–33 affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, leading to millions of deaths in those areas and severe food shortage throughout the USSR...The famine was the result of the actions of the Soviet state in the implementation of forced collectivization, in economic planning, and political repression in the countryside.”

John Gray, ‘The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death’, 2011:

“...From the time of the Bolshevik seizure of power there were many who believed they could find safety by serving the Soviet state. Lenin and Stalin practised terror by numbers, instructing the security services to arrest quotas of people – hundreds at a time, then thousands and tens of thousands, with NKVD officers using telephone books to pick out people at random and meet their targets. Officers who served in execution squads had to meet targets for each shift. In return they were given special uniforms, including leather aprons, caps and gloves to protect them from blood spray, rations of vodka, extra-high salaries and supplies of eau de Cologne to dampen the lingering smell of death.

Being an executioner did not ensure a long life. Between 1936 and 1938, an entire generation of Chekists that had served in the Civil War and the collectivization campaign was liquidated. Chekists working abroad were called back to their deaths. Theodore Maly, the Soviet undercover agent who served as controller for Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, returned to the Soviet Union in 1938 to be tortured and shot. Those who refused to go back were hunted down and killed. Having warned friends that if he died in the near future it would not be by his own hand, Walter Krivitsky, former head of Soviet military intelligence in Europe, who defected around the same time, was found dead in a hotel room in Washington, DC, in February 1941, surrounded by suicide notes in three languages.

The Terror reached out beyond the Soviet Union. Trotsky was not the first to be killed abroad. Leading figures among the White emigration had been kidnapped and murdered for many years. In 1928 a Soviet assassin (who would himself die in suspicious circumstances) made an attempt on the life of Stalin’s secretary, who had fled to France. In 1930, in an operation Yagoda later described to Gorky, the White Russian general Kutepov was kidnapped in Paris and died en route to the Soviet Union.

Being part of the death machine did not guarantee survival. Still, whenever someone was killed another lived on. So those who operated the death machine went on killing, surviving for another day until the machine consumed them as well.

It might be thought that the Terror would dampen Western support for the Soviet cause. In fact its power to enchant was greatest when the killing was on the largest scale. Western pilgrims came to the Soviet Union to be met by phantasms of the living, shadowy guides who evoked a dreamland of joy and plenty, then disappeared into the netherworld of the camps...”

Svetlana Alexievich, The winner of the 2015 Nobel prize in literature:

“...Communism had an insane plan: to remake the “old breed of man,” ancient Adam. And it really worked…Perhaps it was communism’s only achievement. Seventy-plus years in the Marxist-Leninist laboratory gave rise to a new man: Homo sovieticus. Some see him as a tragic figure, others call him a sovok. I feel like I know this person; we’re very familiar, we’ve lived side by side for a long time. I am this person. And so are my acquaintances, my closest friends, my parents. For a number of years, I traveled throughout the former Soviet Union—Homo sovieticus isn’t just Russian, he’s Belarusian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Kazakh. Although we now live in separate countries and speak different languages, you couldn’t mistake us for anyone else. We’re easy to spot! People who’ve come out of socialism are both like and unlike the rest of humanity—we have our own lexicon, our own conceptions of good and evil, our heroes, our martyrs. We have a special relationship with death. The stories people tell me are full of jarring terms: “shoot,” “execute,” “liquidate,” “eliminate,” or typically Soviet varieties of disappearance such as “arrest,” “ten years without the right of correspondence,” and “emigration.” How much can we value human life when we know that not long ago people had died by the millions? We’re full of hatred and superstitions. All of us come from the land of the gulag and harrowing war. Collectivization, dekulakization, mass deportations of various nationalities…” (‘Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets: An Oral History’, 2013)

कै. अनंत काणेकर Anant Kanekar (१९०५-१९८०) हे तत्कालीन मराठी साहित्यातील अत्यंत वजनदार नाव. खांडेकर, फडके, काणेकर वगैरे... १९५७ सालच्या अखिल भारतीय मराठी साहित्यसंमेलनाचे अध्यक्ष... १९६३च्या मराठी नाट्यसंमेलनाचे अध्यक्ष...पद्मश्री... मराठी विश्वकोश मंडळ सदस्य...त्यांचे काही लघुनिबंध (साधारण दर्जाचे) माझ्या शाळेतील क्रमिक पुस्तकात सुद्धा वाचलेले...

... तसेच दुसरे मोठे नाव कै. शं वा किर्लोस्कर (१८९७-१९७५), साक्षेपी द्रष्टे संपादक, पुरोगामी, लेखक, व्यंगचित्रकार...

२०१६ सालच्या एका 'ललित'च्या अंकात  काणेकरांच्या 'धुक्यांतून लाल ताऱ्याकडे', फेब्रुवारी १९४० चे संक्षिप्त परिक्षण वाचले. ते पुस्तक विकत घेऊन बरेच वाचले.

पुस्तकाचे शीर्षक सरळ सरळ एडगर स्नो यांच्या अत्यंत गाजलेल्या 'रेड स्टार ओव्हर चायना', १९३७ ची आठवण करून देते.

काणेकरांचे पुस्तक इंटरेस्टिंग आहे. पण कम्युनिझमने किती लोकांना किती मोठ्या प्रमाणात मूर्ख बनवले होते याचा तो छोटा ऐतिहासिक ऐवज पण आहे!

पुस्तकाला प्रस्तावना आहे शं वा किर्लोस्करांची, ज्यांच्या संपादीत 'किर्लोस्कर' मासिकात, पुस्तक १९३७ साली  लेखमालिकारूपात पूर्वप्रसिद्ध झाले होते.

शंवाकि प्रस्तावनेत काय म्हणतात ते पहा:

गडद लाल धुक्यातून जेंव्हा सूर्य उगवला तेंव्हा काय काय झाले ते आपल्याला आता समजले आहे... पण वाचून खूप करमणूक होते हे खर!

काणेकर रशियात खूप कमी काळ होते. ३१ में १९३७- ११ जून १९३७. पृष्ठ १०० ते १५७ मध्ये ते वर्णन आले आहे. बरेच काही लिहण्यासारखे आहे त्याबद्दल पण फक्त एकाच गोष्टीबद्दल लिहतोय.

एका म्युझियमबद्दल काणेकर लिहतात:

काणेकर जोसेफ स्टालिन ला देव म्हणतायत!

Artist: Helen E. Hokinson, The New Yorker, August 15 1942

काणेकरांना स्टालिनची खळी कदाचित आधी माहिती असेल पण त्याचे इतर वास्तव हे त्यांच्या मृत्यू पर्यंत कदाचित समजले असेल. काय वाटलं असेल त्यांना आणि शंवाकिंना? त्या दोघांनी स्वतःच्या मूर्खबनण्याबद्दल काही लिहले आहे का? आपल्या वाचकांना त्यांनी समोर आलेल्या वास्तवाची जाणीव करून दिली का? मला कल्पना नाही.

Artist: Herbert Block

अपडेट जुलै ३१ २०१७:

वरील पोस्ट प्रसिद्ध झाल्यावर अनन्त काणेकरांचे खालील लेखन मला आढळले, वाङ्मय शोभाच्या एप्रिल १९५८च्या अंकात. काणेकरांनी त्यांच्या वाचकांना कम्युनिझमच्या खऱ्या रूपाची जाणीव १८वर्षानंतर का होईना पण करून दिली होती.

सौजन्य: काणेकरांच्या साहित्याचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स, वाङ्मय शोभा, बुकगंगा.कॉम