to pressure, recanted publicly, in many cases rewrote their works, and devoted themselves to turning out the gray eulogies to Communist construction demanded by the dictatorship. Other writers, like Babel and Olesha, chose silence. Many committed suicide. Zamyatin's destruction took a different form. One of the most active and influential figures in the , which included a variety of literary schools, he became the object of a frenzied campaign of vilification. He was dismissed from his editorial posts; magazines and publishing houses closed their doors to him; those which ventured to publish his work were persecuted; his plays were withdrawn from the stage. Under the pressure of the Party inquisitors, his friends began to be afraid to see him and many of his comrades in the Writer's Union denounced him. He was, in effect, presented with the choice of repudiating his work and his views, or total expulsion from literature." Instead of surrendering, Zamyatin, whom Mirra Ginsburg has dubbed "a man of incorruptible and uncompromising courage," on 24 September 1929, wrote and mailed a letter resigning his membership in the Union of Soviet Writers. According to Mirra Ginsburg: "in his letter of resignation, he wrote that it was impossible for him to remain in a literary organization which, even indirectly, took part in the persecution of its members." In 1931, Zamyatin appealed directly to Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, requesting permission to leave the Soviet Union. In this letter Zamyatin wrote: "I do not wish to conceal that the basic reason for my request for permission to go abroad with my wife is my hopeless position here as a writer, the death sentence that has been pronounced upon me as a writer here at home." During the spring of 1931, Zamyatin asked Maxim Gorky, to intercede with Stalin on his behalf. After Gorky's death in 1936, Zamyatin wrote: "One day, Gorky's secretary telephoned to say that Gorky wished me to have dinner with him at his country home. I remember clearly that extraordinarily hot day and the rainstorm - a tropical downpour- in Moscow. Gorky's car sped through a wall of water, bringing me and several other invited guests to dinner at his home. It was a literary dinner, and close to twenty people sat around the table. At first Gorky was silent, visibly tired. Everybody drank wine, but his glass contained water - he was not allowed to drink