Volume 21, Number 12 · July 18, 1974
A Declaration By Vladimir Maramzin
By Vladimir Maramzin
I have a vague feeling of guilt which is probably rooted in what is our elemental absence of awareness of law. My friend, the Leningrad writer and historian Mikhail Heifitz, has been in an investigative prison for over a month now. Judging by echoes which have reached us, he has been arrested for the five-volume samizdat edition of the works of Joseph Brodsky and for his essay about Brodsky's verse. The investigator knows full well that samizdat is not a publishing house; he also knows that Heifitz did not participate in collecting Brodsky's poetry. Everyone knows that I spent three years collecting this poetry, because Brodsky, like many important masters, generously made gifts of his poems, never keeping them himself. I wanted to collect them in order to preserve for Russian culture all that has been done by this great poet. Those who are now part of the persecution of Brodsky will nevertheless come to be proud of him in their own lifetime. As for me, I took one other step in order to preserve the texts collected with such difficulty—I sent them abroad where the author himself now lives. Perhaps there are people whom this will not please, but I was moved only by a concern for Russian culture.
Feature, 479 words
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