Quote Originally Posted by joysof
You need to express yourself more clearly, then. When you ask 'How was creativity disallowed in the USSR?' (not 'economic creativity'), you leave yourself open to attack from all quarters.
The message that you replied to did not have such questions. Learn to answer questions and not questions to answers to questions.

I never said they were kept off the stage altogether during the 30s. Moliere was refused a performance licence in March 1930, and although it did appear in February 1936, it was cancelled on 9 March of the same year. After six years, it lasted three weeks. As with much Soviet censorship in the 1930s, Bulgakov's persecution was largely determined by Stalin's whims. Like a cat with a mouse, really.
I recall that he developed a sort of personal problem with the director (Stanislavsky) and the director simply refused to continue working on it. Which does not surprise me at all, because there is voluminous evidence that Bulgakov was very arrogant and cooperated poorly.

Oh, and if you believe that Stalin kept an eye on every single person in the USSR and Bulgakov in particular, you ought to reconsider. The only case when Stalin intervened was when Bulgakov had managed to piss off the whole theater and was fired. Thanks to Stalin he was employed again. Do you expect Stalin would have mothered him forever?

[quote:2behx1op]Have you actually read them? I have, and they don't impress me all that much. "Adam and Eve" is particularly bad.
Oh, I see, you don't like them. Well, I take it all back. They were rightly suppressed.

What sort of argument is that?[/quote:2behx1op]

I'm saying that they could be left unpublished or unstaged because they were just bad.

[quote:2behx1op]So they were published in the end.
After some thirty years of refusal. That sort of lag hardly makes for a vibrant literary scene, does it?[/quote:2behx1op]

Are you saying that the "literary scene" was not "vibrant" in the USSR times? Funny, funny. Is it vibrant now?

[quote:2behx1op]What about creativity in child pornography? It was the law, get over it.
What is this fixation on sexual deviancy? And what was so odious about Bulgakov's work to make the comparison worthwhile?[/quote:2behx1op]

Why is that deviancy, joysof? It's OK in certain countries. But you apparently believe that child pornography is bad by definition. Yes it is, because your law defines it accordingly. If some other law defines something else as illegal, then it is illegal. If you don't like it in this country, leave the country or change the law. Don't piss in the wind.

[quote:2behx1op]She should have chosen better time for that. As if there had not been anything more important for the USSR in 1939-1941, when WWII was raging.
Stalin was particularly busy in that period, what with signing pacts with Fascists and having his fingers in his ears the rest of the time.[/quote:2behx1op]

Invading Poland, waging a war with Finland, conducting a coup d'