Volume 29, Number 6 · April 15, 1982
The Azadovsky Case
By Michael Scammell
In a recent letter to The New York Review [October 8, 1981] Joseph Brodsky wrote eloquently and sardonically of the case of Konstantin Azadovsky—a brilliant scholar of comparative literature in the Soviet Union—who early in 1981 was sentenced to two years of hard labor in Siberia. Brodsky wrote of the grotesque disparity between the charge against Azadovsky—alleged possession of a minute quantity of drugs—and the punishment. As he noted, despite the 'criminal' trappings of the case, only the KGB could be responsible for sending Azadovsky to such a destination, and the chances of further charges being fabricated against him in a remote labor camp are perilously high. But this is only the latest twist in a case whose ramifications would not appear out of place in the pages of Dostoevsky. For that reason I would like to add to Brodsky's account of the affair and comment on its implications, not least for the light they throw on Soviet academic life and attitudes to literature, as well as on the future of cultural exchanges with the West.
Feature, 3494 words
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