Vasily Grossman believed that writers must, above all, tell the truth as they see it, which was, of course, impossible under Soviet conditions. Early in his career, he appealed to the influential Maxim Gorky for help in getting his first novel published. “I wrote the truth,” Grossman pleaded. Gorky replied with the standard Soviet distinction between empirical truth and the higher truth of communism. “It is not enough to say, ‘I wrote the truth,’” Gorky instructed. “We know that there are two truths and that, in our world, it is the vile and dirty truth of the past that quantitatively preponderates. But this truth is being replaced by another truth that has been born and continues to grow.”
Source : In Search of an Honest Man
