In 1925, a questionnaire was distributed to writers to gather their opinions, which were then summarized in a special issue of the newspaper, Literary Life. 

This was a significant development, as it occurred in the wake of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party's Resolution on Literature. 

This was yet another manifestation of the persistent concern for the fate of culture during a period of social transformation.

Now read on, Boris Pasternak’s views on Poetry written on 18th January, 1926. The reply is to a questionnaire from Leningradskaya Pravda –

You say that people have not stopped writing verse, although it is not printed, and what has been published is not read. That's a valuable observation, but it is not what convinces me that poetry is in decline. We write things on a large scale, we strive for the epic, and that is definitely a second-hand genre. 

Poems no longer charge the air, no matter what their merits. The medium of dispersal for their vibrations was the personality. The old personality has been destroyed; a new one has not been formed. Without resonance, lyric poetry is inconceivable.

In short, the condition of poetry is most lamentable. But in all this, there is one highly gratifying fact. It is a great happiness that there is one area incapable of simulating maturity or wellbeing in a period which is conventional to the extreme and develops in a constant state of calculated reliance on the new man, a reliance, let us add, which is itself sickly and in the process of modification from the agitational slogan of the day to the driving force of a generation. 

Who is to blame for the disastrous state of poetry?

The year twenty-six, for not being the year thirty.

Is there anything that can be done to help?

Only by means of black magic.

Is poetry of any use at all?

The question alone is sufficient to indicate the gravity of its condition. In periods of its prosperity, no one ever doubts its uselessness. At some time, this will once again cease to arouse any doubt, and it will rise again. However, for the time being, it is accepted that art is necessary to preserve continuity, serving as a line cast across from the old to the new, future culture. 

I encountered this view in response to my suggestion that this matter should be dealt with straightforwardly and abruptly. It's easier for nature to fight against a sudden obstacle than a continuous hindrance draped in the robes of indulgence.

But how can you ban art, they answered me. Isn't that the end of poetry? Would it still exist? Probably, I think its termination would be hindered by phenomena of somewhat greater significance than this questionnaire. 

For instance, Shviva Hill might suddenly erupt because it is an extinct volcano or something of the kind. 

In any case, no matter how low poetry may have fallen, I wouldn't swap it for ten copies of our superbly brilliant prose, or anything even grander. But not as a poet, oh no, as a person enthralled by history, as a character drawn into its action at the moment when socialism is recovering the immense moral content that has been obscured by a feverish reformation-mania.

It is only poetry that really cares whether the new man will be formed in reality, or only in the fiction of journalists. Poetry's faith in him is evident from the fact that it is still smoldering and glimmering. 

That it is not content with mere appearances is evident from the fact that it is dying.

(A typed copy of this text is kept in the Central State Archives of Literature and Art amongst the materials of the album ‘Pasternak on Poetry’)