7) Did the Secretariat accept or reject K. M. Simonov's proposal to publish a collection of my stories?

(8) Why have I not yet received the transcript of the September 22 meeting of the Secretariat to study it?

I would greatly appreciate clarification of these issues.

Solzhenitsyn

[7]

MEMBER OF THE UNION OF WRITERS OF THE USSR

Soon it will be a year since I sent my irrevocable letter to the Congress of Writers. Since then, I have written to the Secretariat of the Chamber of Writers twice more, and I have been there three times myself. Nothing has changed to this day: my archive has not been returned to me, books are not published, the name is banned. I have persistently warned the Secretariat about the danger of my works going abroad, since they have long been widely circulated. The secretariat not only did not help the publication of "Cancer Ward", which had already been typed in Novy Mir, but stubbornly opposed it, even preventing the Moscow section of prose from discussing the second part of the story.

A year has been lost, the inevitable has happened: the other day the chapters from "R. Corpus" were published in the literary supplement to "The Times". Now other publications are not excluded - perhaps from inaccurate and incomplete editions of the story. What has happened compels me to acquaint our literary community with the content of the attached letters and statements, so that the position and responsibility of the Secretariat of the Union of Writers of the USSR may become clear.

The enclosed summary of the meeting of the Secretariat on 22.9.67, recorded by me personally, is of course incomplete, but it is absolutely reliable and can serve as sufficient information until the publication of the full transcript

16.4.68

Solzhenitsyn

Application:

1. My letter to all (forty-two) secretaries of the SP dated 12.9.67.

2. Summary of the meeting in the Secretariat 22.9.67.