During the years you specify, the attitude of the Soviet Government
toward the artists, writers, composers, etc. was more relaxed than it
had been immediately following the revolution and during the civil
war, and much more tolerant than it would become under Stalin. The
Bolsheviks were certainly aware of the criticism by those in exile,
but there was less concern about it.
ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: EARLY ATTACKS
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/atte.html
"Bolshevik policy toward its detractors, and particularly toward
articulate, intellectual criticism, hardened considerably. Suppression
of newspapers, initially described as a temporary measure, became a
permanent policy. Lenin considered the Constitutional Democrats
(Kadets) the center of a conspiracy against Bolshevik rule. In 1919,
he began mass arrests of professors and scientists who had been
Kadets, and deported Kadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks,
and Nationalists. The Bolshevik leadership sought rapidly to purge
Russia of past leaders in order to build the future on a clean slate.
These harsh measures alienated a large number of the intellectuals who
had supported the overthrow of the tsarist order. The suppression of
democratic institutions evoked strong protests from academics and
artists, who felt betrayed in their idealistic belief that revolution
would bring a free society. Writers who had emigrated shortly after
the revolution published stinging attacks on the new government from
abroad. As a result, further exit permits for artists were generally
denied.
The disenchantment of the majority of intellectuals did not surprise
Lenin, who saw the old Russian intelligentsia as a kind of rival to
his "party of a new type," which alone could bring revolutionary
consciousness to the working class. In his view, artists generally
served bourgeois interests, a notion that fueled the persecution of
intellectuals throughout the Soviet period."
ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: RENEWED ATTACKS
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/attr.html
"The pattern of suppressing intellectual activity, with intermittent
periods of relaxation, helped the party leadership reinforce its
authority. After 1923, when threats to the revolution's survival had
disappeared, intellectuals enjoyed relative creative freedom while the
regime concentrated on improving the country's economic plight by
allowing limited free enterprise under the Lenin's New Economic
Policy.
But in 1928, the Central Committee established the right of the party
to exercise guidance over literature; and in 1932 literary and
artistic organizations were restructured to promote a specified style
called socialist realism. Works that did not contribute to the
building of socialism were banned. Lenin had seen the need for
increasing revolutionary consciousness in workers. Stalin now asserted
that art should not merely serve society, but do so in a way
determined by the party and its megalomaniacal plans for transforming
society. As a result, artists and intellectuals as well as political
figures became victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s."
A book on the Stalinist era suppression of writers is:
THE KGB's LITERARY ARCHIVE - Vitaly Shentalinsky, 1995
It deals mainly with the repression within the USSR.
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